The Escape - Robert Muchamore Page 0,14
the house, but luckily it was summer. The fireplaces were dormant and the only blaze was caused by an oil lamp coming down from its hook and spilling across the floor. The flames were extinguished by two quick-thinking boys, who smothered them with a mattress.
Marc and his tiny companion were amongst the last to get out of the ash and dust. They both coughed as they stepped into a sunset made even more dramatic by towers of flame erupting in two directions on the horizon.
The German Stuka had been one of hundreds zigzagging across the countryside that evening, scouring the roads for convoys of French soldiers and equipment. After passing the orphanage, the stricken aeroplane had torn apart the neighbouring barn, its flaming engine setting fire to the vegetable store and the chicken coops inside. It finally crashed in the field beyond, coming to a halt in a deep furrow before the flames ignited its remaining cargo of bombs, incinerating the pilot and throwing up tonnes of earth as every building within a kilometre shuddered.
A hundred metres in the other direction, two French army trucks bombed by the Stuka were ablaze and a third had lost its rear axle when the blast threw its back end off the road and several metres into the air.
Soldiers – some badly burned – were staggering across the front lawn, whilst nuns and some of the older boys rushed their way offering help. The younger boys had divided amongst gawpers who’d run out into the field beyond the orphanage to study the crater left by the aircraft and a smaller group who’d begun rounding up chickens, which had done a remarkable job of escaping the flames.
As Marc set the toddler on the grass, he noticed Director Tomas rushing from his small cottage on the west side of the orphanage.
‘Is everyone OK?’ Tomas asked, before shielding his eyes from the low sun and glancing upwards at the damaged chimney. He then charged into the building, almost knocking down a nun who was carrying out rags and a bucket of water to attend to the burn victims.
Seeing the director reminded Marc that he was hungry. Tomas lived alone in his cottage and supplemented the basic fare served to orphans with goodies delivered from a delicatessen in Beauvais.
Marc glanced around before striding purposefully towards the cottage. The walk took less than a minute and while it seemed unlikely that the director would return home in the midst of the present crisis, his heart started to bang. As far as he knew, no boy had ever dared to enter Tomas’ cottage and two beatings in one day would be more than his body could take.
If you were the kind of person who liked dinky little cottages, you might have found the director’s home pretty. Its white exterior was immaculate – repainted every summer by two teenagers who would be thrashed if they did a poor job – and Tomas gave his garden the kind of love and attention that he unfailingly spared the orphans. But Marc was only impressed by the great ocean liners and office towers he saw in comics and magazines. The cottage was just a quaint symbol of the countryside that he was determined to leave the instant he got the chance.
The front door was ajar and Marc craned his neck inside before stepping on to the uneven stone floor. The cottage was no more than six paces in either direction and the single ground-floor room had a kitchen range, a sink and a few cabinets on one side in front of a leaded window that had cracked in the blast. There was a dining table in the centre and on the opposite side a cosy space with two armchairs and a bookcase with a radio standing on top. Stairs at the rear led to the upstairs room and they were so narrow that the director must have had to turn sideways to climb them.
All Marc’s life the director had been like a god, with the unquestionable power to withhold food and inflict pain. Yet seeing the humble cottage reminded Marc that the director of a rural orphanage was not a president or a general; not even a landowner like Morel, or a respected figure within the local area such as the priest. This realisation of Director Tomas’ insignificance was liberating and Marc felt more confident as he opened the larder cabinet, to be confronted by all manner of food.
His eyes dashed excitedly over things