Parkside never solved the riddle of the cross-country running schoolboy. The bullying ebbed away, as there were now other new boys to persecute. The caning continued. I think I managed to collect seventy-four strokes from the rattan cane over my three and a half years, always administered to me in the bending position, my head under a table, protected only by thin pajamas.
I never contrived to develop those strange deviances so often attributed to the English, but only two things in their place: the ability to take pain in silence and a contempt for harsh and arbitrary authority.
Summer term ended in July 1955. Blue Bell Hill promised to welcome me back for the flying tests in late August. Meanwhile, one of my few mates at Parkside, John Gordon, and I decided to hitchhike from Newhaven on the Sussex coast across France to Ventimiglia on the Italian border, via the length of the Côte d’Azur. John was fifteen to my sixteen. We thought it might be an adventure. It was.
A LONG HIKE
Hitchhiking is rare nowadays, but back in 1955, for a youngster with no money, it was common. Middle-aged men, mindful of their own impecunious teenage years, would take pity on the figure by the roadside with right fist extended, thumb erect, slow down, pull over, and ask the face appearing in the passenger window where he was heading.
National Servicemen in their uniforms, heading home to Mum and Dad with a weekend pass or struggling back to camp, could usually expect some help. Most middle-aged men had once done it themselves. John Gordon and I, though we did not know it, had an even bigger advantage than a uniform.
John had an aunt who lived in Cooden, close to the Sussex coast and not far from Newhaven. There was a ferry across to Dieppe. I ran down to Cooden on the Vespa and the aunt took us to Newhaven the following morning for the first ferry. We had two return tickets and a very tiny budget.
We firmly expected to sleep rough in sheds, outbuildings, and even ditches, and eat the cheapest of foods, probably bread and cheese. We were in tough hiking boots, short khaki drill pants, knee-high socks, and canvas shirts. Those, plus a haversack. I had taken the precaution of tacking a Union Jack onto the back of my rucksack. We would march in single file, with me at the rear so that motorists coming up behind could see it clearly. It turned out to be the game changer.
By midmorning, we were out of the Dieppe ferry terminal and heading for the highway to Paris when a car swerved up behind, tooted, and a voice asked—in French, of course—where we were heading. I replied in French, and within seconds the haversacks were in the boot. John telescoped into the rear seat and I was beside the driver, answering his question as to how I spoke such fluent French. Then we learned the reason for the rapid pickup.
In 1944, only eleven years before our hiking jaunt, the Allied armies curved out of Normandy and proceeded to liberate France. The British and Canadians turned north for Holland and Belgium, passing through all of northern France. Anyone over twenty-five would clearly have remembered the German occupation and the liberation. It was the British flag that did it.
There were no motorways back then, just the usual Route Nationale, narrow and winding, with one traffic lane on each side and occasionally a central and pretty lethal overtaking lane, disputed by cars approaching each other at a hundred miles an hour. It was encouraging if the driver would stop looking sideways and keep his eyes on the road ahead. In three rapid lifts, I believe we made it to Paris ahead of the boat train.
Once in the city, we took the Metro and arrived unannounced at the flat of the Princesses Dadiani. Completely unfazed, as if teenage hitchhikers were always turning up at their door, the lovely ladies welcomed us in and gave us supper. At ten, I parked John on the sofa and went back into the night.
I had worked out that there was a very long haul from Paris south to Marseille and there was one way that, if it worked, would be a terrific way of covering the distance in a single day. Every day, thousands of trucks—big snorting rigs with trailers we would now call juggernauts—brought fruit and vegetables from the subtropical south, the Midi, to replenish the stomach of Paris. And then they went back empty.
The gigantic fresh-produce market they made for was in the district called Les Halles, long since moved to the outer suburbs. But then it was right at the heart of Paris, a square kilometer of sheds and warehouses, blazing with light and activity through the night, its bars, restaurants, and bistros the haunt of the workers and the social night owls. I began to inquire and had no luck.
I went from café to café, asking perfectly politely if anyone was a truck driver heading south in the morning. The answer was always no, until the proprietors chased me out for not spending anything. Then I got a tap on the shoulder from someone who had followed me out to the pavement.
It was a small and scruffy market worker, an Algerian, who said he had a friend who was exactly what I sought and who was sleeping at his small flat a few hundred yards away. I should follow him and he would lead me there. Like a fool, I fell for it.
The streets became narrower and dirtier, mere alleys between blocks of slum. Finally he led me through a door and up one flight of stairs. He unlocked his own bed-sitter and gestured me inside. The filthy little room was empty. I turned. He had closed the door and locked it. He gave me a snaggle-toothed smile and gestured at the grubby bed.
I reckoned there was not much point in calling for help. This was obviously not that kind of community. I shook my head. He gestured again, adding in French, “Pants down, over the bed.” I just said, “Non.” He ceased smiling, fumbled at his flies, and produced his penis. It was semi-tumescent. He repeated his instruction.
I am not homophobic but just have a personal aversion to sodomy. I repeated “Non” and then added, “I’m leaving.” Then he produced a knife. It was a lock knife that needed two hands to open it. The blade was curved; I assumed it was used mainly for cutting fruit. But it would do just as well on a human body.
By great good fortune, my father, several years before, when I used to camp out in the fields of Kent, had given me a hunting knife, horn-handled, with seven inches of Toledo-steel blade. It was for paunching and skinning rabbits brought down with my air rifle, for cutting twigs for the campfire, or trimming branches for a hide.
I was carrying it horizontally across the small of my back. I fumbled under my shirt. The Algerian thought I was loosening my belt. When the hunting knife came out, his eyes widened and he came forward.
There was a scuffle—quite short, really. A few seconds and it was over. I found myself in the doorway, the door open, my hand on the handle. The market porter’s knife was on the floor. He had sustained a long gash to the right bicep, about which he was making rather a fuss. In Arabic. I saw little point in waiting around in case he had friends elsewhere in the flophouse, so legged it down the stairs and out into the alley.
The incident was not entirely without benefit, because on my way back to the streetlights, I came across what I needed, a sort of elephants’ graveyard; row after row of parked juggernauts, waiting for the dawn. The drivers were saving their overnight allowances by bedding down in their cabs. I found one relieving himself against the rear wheel of his truck, and when he had finished, approached him with my problem. He thought it over.
“It’s not allowed,” he said. “Company policy, no hitchhikers. It’s more than my job’s worth.”
But again, luck cut in. He was from Marseille, which had never been occupied by the Germans. But his wife was from the north and her father had been in the Resistance in Amiens. He was in jail, destined for execution, when Group Captain Pickard led his Mosquitoes on the Amiens jail raid. They had ripped open the cell block with precision bombing and destroyed the outer wall. His father-in-law had escaped and was still alive.
“I’ll have to lock you in
for the whole trip,” he said. “If we are caught, you say you stowed away during the night while I slept. Agreed? OK, be back here at six.”
It was still dark at six, but the graveyard was slowly stirring. Our new friend cleared a space at the rear of the trailer, near the door, piling the empty crates further to the front to create a cubbyhole about eight feet by eight. Once John and I were curled up inside, he locked the doors and went to his cab. By six thirty, we were rolling.
There was a distinctive odor to the crates that had once contained his cargo. Melons. At seven, in the southern suburbs, the sun rose. By eight, we were out on the Route Nationale Eight, heading for Marseille, eleven hours away. By nine, it was getting hot; by ten, it was a small furnace. By eleven, the melon smell had become an overpowering stench. John was as white as a sheet and complaining of advancing nausea. By midday, he was on his knees by the door trying to deposit what remained of his Russian supper through the crack where the doors joined the floor. The stench of the melons joined that of human puke in a heady cocktail.
There was no way to contact the driver, way up front in his cabin. At one, he pulled into a roadside halt for fuel and lunch, but with other drivers milling around, he did not approach the trailer or let us out. After half an hour, he resumed the run south, but we had not a clue where we were and John was very sick indeed. He had ceased bringing up and was just moaning.