If there had been a side road Howard would have taken it, but there was no side road. It was impossible to make a detour other than by walking through the fields; it would not help him to turn back towards Joigny.
It was better to go on.
They passed other casualties, but the children seemed to take little interest.
He shepherded them along as quickly as he could; when they had passed the target for the final load of bombs there would probably be an end to this parade of death.
He could see that place now, half a mile ahead.
There were two motor-cars jammed in the road, and several trees seemed to have fallen.
Slowly, so slowly, they approached the place.
One of the cars was wrecked beyond redemption.
It was a Citroen front drive saloon; the bomb had burst immediately ahead of it, splitting the radiator in two and blasting in the windscreen.
Then a tree had fallen straight on top of it, crushing the roof down till it touched the chassis.
There was much blood on the road.
Four men, from a decrepit old de Dion, were struggling to lift the tree to clear the road for their own car to pass.
On the grass verge a quiet heap was roughly covered by a rug.
Pulling and heaving at the tree, the men rolled it from the car and dragged it back, clearing a narrow passage with great difficulty.
They wiped their brows, sweating, and clambered back into their old two-seater.
Howard stopped by them as the driver started his engine.
'Killed?' he asked quietly.
The man said bitterly: 'What do you think?
The filthy Bodies!'
He let the clutch in and the car moved slowly forward round the tree and up the road ahead of them.
Fifty yards up the road it stopped.
One of the men leaned back and shouted at him:
'You - with the children. You!
Gardez le petit gosse!'
They let the clutch in and drove on.
Howard looked down in bewilderment at Rose.
'What did he mean?'
'He said there was a little boy,' she said.
He looked around.
'There's no little boy here.'
Ronnie said: 'There's only dead people here.
Under that rug.'
He pointed with his finger.
Sheila awoke to the world about her.
'I want to see the dead people.'
The old man took her hand firmly in his own.
'Nobody goes to look at them,' he said. 'I told you that.'
He stared around him in bewilderment.
Sheila said:
'Well, may I go and play with the boy?'
'There's no boy here, my dear.'
'Yes there is.
Over there.'
She pointed to the far side of the road, twenty yards beyond the tree. A little boy of five or six was standing there, in fact, utterly motionless.
He was dressed in grey, grey stockings above the knee, grey shorts, and a grey jersey.
He was standing absolutely still, staring down the road towards them.
His face was a dead, greyish white in colour.
Howard caught his breath at the sight of him, and said very softly:
'Oh, my God!'
He had never seen a child looking like that, in all his seventy years.