Free Léon and Louise by Alex Capus, John Brownjohn Page B

putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the approaching storm and getting to Saint-Luc before it descended on them.
    As it turned out, the thunder was not an atmospheric phenomenon but German artillery fire. The rumble developed into a series of crisp detonations. Then the air was rent by hisses, whirrs and howls, and the first columns of debris erupted beyond a small wood. Panic-stricken, they pedalled madly along the highroad while more columns of debris went up behind, ahead and beside them. They rode past a fresh, smoking shell-hole with the roots of a fallen apple tree jutting skywards from its lip. The air was filled with acrid smoke. They were completely disoriented. Since danger seemed to threaten them on all sides, any thought of turning round and going back was out of the question.
    Faster and faster they rode through the exploding countryside, Louise in the lead and Léon in her wake, and when the distance between them increased and she looked back enquiringly, he waved her on. ‘Keep going, keep going!’ he shouted. When she hesitated and seemed to be waiting for him, he lost his temper and yelled, ‘Keep going, damn it!’ So she resolutely stood up in the saddle and pedalled off.
    Louise had just disappeared over a rise in the ground when a cloud of smoke and debris spurted into the air at that very spot. Léon uttered a yell and pedalled madly uphill. He had almost reached the brow of the hill when the road exploded a stone’s-throw ahead of him. Debris flew tree-high into the air and a pall of brown smoke billowed outwards. At that moment an aeroplane appeared. It sprayed the road with machine-gun fire, then banked away just as Léon, travelling at full speed with two bullets in his stomach, rode blindly into the crater, where he lost a molar, consciousness, and, in the next few hours, a great deal of blood.

 
7
    A t half-past five on 17 September 1928, when Léon Le Gall hung up his laboratory apron in the locker, took out his hat and coat, and set off for home as usual, he never guessed that his life would take a decisive turn in the next few minutes. As he had a thousand times before, he walked along the Seine by way of the Quai des Orfèvres, conducting his usual survey of the second-hand booksellers’ stalls as he passed them, then crossed the bridge to the Left Bank and the Place Saint-Michel.
    This time, however, he did not for once walk on up the boulevard into the Quartier Latin and turn down the Rue des Écoles, where he lived with his wife Yvonne and their four-year-old son Michel on the third floor of No. 14, immediately opposite the Collège de France and the École Polytechnique, a new, airy, three-bedroom flat with parquet floors and moulded ceilings. This time he deviated from his usual route home by going down into the Place Saint-Michel Métro station and travelling two stops in the Porte d’Orléans direction so as to get some tartes aux fraises from Yvonne’s favourite pâtisserie. It was the end of the working day in all the French capital’s banks, offices and department stores, and the streets and the Métro were populated by thousands of men who looked indistinguishable in their dark or grey suits, white shirts and discreet ties. Many wore hats and most of them sported moustaches, some carried canes and many wore spats, and each was on his way from his very own desk to his very own kitchen table, whence, after his very own supper, he would retire to his very own wing chair and thereafter to his very own bed, where, if he was lucky, his very own wife would keep him warm throughout the night until, after shaving, he would drink coffee from his very own cup and set off once more for his very own desk.
    Léon had long ceased to marvel at the banal absurdity of this daily mass migration. For the first few years after he succumbed to the city’s gravitational pull, he had continued to suffer from nostalgia