Tomorrow When The World Is Free (OutlawQueen)

August 1942

"Don't cry for me, my darling little Bluebird..."

~'Bluebird', from the musical concept album of the same name by Gareth Peter

Robin held on to the last dregs of his sanity as he hauled himself on his belly across the fields. The crops had yet to be harvested and there was a strong breeze coming from the sea, so he was praying every moment that the wind would hide his motion as he crawled for his life. The sun was blistering overhead; he was starving, exhausted, dehydrated and void of almost all hope. The Dieppe Raid had gone south very quickly, and while most of the men had been killed or evacuated he and others had been left behind in the wreckage. He still had no idea how he'd managed to avoid capture so far but he wasn't banking on avoiding it forever. He hadn't been so lucky with the bullets: he was gritting his teeth against the pain in his leg and torso and his wrist was badly sprained from falling badly with the impact.

As long as he could find a friendly town and get some food and passage to England on credit for the meagre sterling he knew he had still in the safe he'd left with Regina, he would be all right. His wounds could wait.

He soon found himself crawling on sand, through the thick stalks of dunes, and knew he'd made it to a beach. Which, he didn't know, but where there were beaches there were people looking for anything they could salvage from the wreckage left behind by the soldiers, people who might help him.

He peeked out of the dunes to make sure he hadn't got this far only to run into Germans. Two boys of no more than ten were kneeling beside a small motor boat, patching up the hole. Robin's uniform was now so dirty and ripped as to be unrecognisable, so they didn't run off when he sat beside them with a pained humph. He introduced himself by pointing at his chest and saying "Robin", and they did the same. Jacques and Pierre.

"Do you boys have any bread?" he asked in less-than-perfect French. Regina had had the highest education and she had insisted on teaching him some basics of communication in French, German and Italian, 'so we have a choice of where to run away to for a while' she'd joked a month before war was declared.

"Oui, Monsieur," Pierre replied, digging through his satchel to reveal a rather hard loaf of bread. After a nod of assent and an explanation in which the only word he understood was the one for 'bakery', he dug in with abandon. The other, squatting with a spanner in his hand and a thoughtful look on his face, suddenly said in accented English,

"You need boat?"

Robin breathed a sigh of relief at the English, nodding through his mouthful.

"I need to get back to the woman I love." Here he pulled out the photo of Regina from his breast pocket to show his meaning, and the boys nodded.

"Papa want to go to Angleterre," Jaques said, swapping his spanner for a hammer and banging the wooden planks making up the decent-sized, but old-looking, boat back into place. "He say it not safe for us en France. He say he go today in boat, Mama and Pierre and me follow."

"Do you think it's safe here?"

"Non, Monsieur. Bad people come and they shoot at us."

"Do you think your father would let me go with him? I have money, back in England. I can help him find work so you and your mother can join him quickly." The loaf of bread was now almost gone, and Pierre wordlessly handed him a small flask of water. Knowing he'd encroached upon the boys' generosity enough he took only small sips. It was remarkable what starvation could do to a man's gratitude.

"Here he is. You ask him. Papa!"

The approaching man and Jacques conferred in rapid French while Pierre appraised him with piercing eyes, eyes that had seen too much for a boy so young. After a few tentative minutes of Robin fearing the man would turn him away, he came and introduced himself, shaking Robin's grimy, cut hand without hesitation.