by John Eider
The two other soldiers I’d been billeted with had already been re-assigned, leaving the apartment feeling empty, and gloomy of an evening. Knowing I had things to prepare for the next day, but not enthusiastic to return to the four walls I had been cooped up inside of for so long; nor either very keen for that day’s ten pages of bad news from Britain and statements by exiled Government officials (for they soon realised many more people read Le égal than their own publications), I lingered awhile at the railing across the road from the book stall. The beach was quietening then as afternoon prepared for evening, those making attempts to cross the water tending to do so first thing. It was a clear sky and I fancied you could even make out the White Cliffs.
‘Are you feeling nostalgic?’ asked an English voice beside me.
‘Not to a fault, sir,’ I not knowing who was talking, only recognising authority when I heard it.
‘Good, good. Private Crofts, yes? I believe you survived Southampton.’
‘I was carried out of Southampton, sir. My mates got me back.’
‘The mates you’d been fighting beside protecting those people in the public house? …and you with what the doctor tells me were torn muscles in your leg, the blood collecting beneath your skin and leaving you at risk of infection? Another few hours wasn’t it, the surgeon told you in Bruges, before you’d have lost it?’
‘I was lucky, that’s all.’
‘Well maybe a lucky soldier’s what I need? Lucky for us at any rate, when there’s hardly a trooper in Calais at the moment not injured, drunk, mad or already given his orders back.’
‘They’ve had a tough time of it, sir.’
‘I know, I know, I don’t blame them.’
I left aside deducing this man’s motives and continued to look out across the Channel, my hand shielding my eyes from the lowering sun. Across the horizon shapes of boats big and small could still be made out. The smaller ones were the last of those heading south for the beach we stood on or for the ferry ports nearby; the larger ones the vessels of the French and British Navies, there to take onboard whoever they could from craft close to sinking, and to guide those capable of it to the less-populated ports west towards Cherbourg. There were so many craft that they couldn’t reach them all.
‘Three months on,’ the man continued, ‘and still they come. It makes you wonder what it’s like over there by now.’
‘Have you been back?’ I asked him, still with little idea who he was.
‘I wasn’t even there that day, I’m ashamed to say. I managed to avoid the whole messy business. Walk with me to the pier-head?’
He continued talking as we walked,
‘You haven’t asked me who I am yet.’
‘I know you’re British, and can guess you’re not my base commander.’
‘Right so far.’
‘But you are Army, or Navy?’
‘Major Trevellyan, formerly of the Scots Guards; latterly of Airwatch defence; more latterly still a special advisor to NATO; and most recently retired and living – very comfortably, I might tell you – at a chateaux just outside of Mûr-de-Bretagne; where I’m hoping you might visit with us this evening. You are fit?’
‘Signed off this morning.’
‘And will anyone miss you tonight?’
‘I’m due at base tomorrow.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘No, there’s no one at home.’
‘Anyway, I understood you had a few more days’ grace from base?’
‘But I’m fit… and needed.’
‘What, to break up fights outside the Prince William?’
‘But the Second Wave…’
‘The Second Wave is far from finalised, and there’s a lot you don’t know yet; or rather you might had I not interrupted you before you’d had a chance to read the article.’
‘What, Union Jack’s?’
‘He’s a wiser man than his pieces sometimes show.’
‘You know him?’
‘We have our dealings.’
‘So what does he say?’
‘That the Second Wave will be mostly civilians, that almost every soldier we have available is already over there; French and Americans too.’
‘Oh?’
‘I ought to know, I helped write it. Most of those who regrouped in Calais have gone back over, while units who held on at home are being made contact with all the time. You and the others still in France, injured or elsewhere occupied, will be brought over and filtered in as and when… but meanwhile there are other ways to make a contribution.’
He sensed my doubt, continuing, ‘Private, do you think I would be talking to you now if it was to the detriment of the reconstruction effort? Don’t worry, it’s been taken care of: your base commander’s been advised that he may have to wait a little while longer than expected before you present yourself for duty.
‘Well, shall we go?’
‘But I don’t have my things.’
‘Don’t worry, you won’t be with us for long; and we are very well appointed.’
‘But the apartment will be left empty.’
‘And is there anything there worth anyone’s time pinching?’
He didn’t mean that to be cruel, instead merely acknowledging the possessionless state we were all in – or rather all bar him it turned out, as I was soon to discover. Yet he empathised, and that empathy drove a strong charity.
As we arrived back at the town I refused his half-serious offer of a drink at the Prince, to which he answered,
‘Very sensible. My father always advised me never to drink at any hour when it would be daylight in winter. Anyway, we have a good cellar back at the maison.’
Not sure that it would still have been bright at that time in December, I let the point go, more concerned with figuring out what the Major’s business was with me; but he had become distracted by the graffiti,
‘So they call us the Bastard English, I see? Bastards… I ask you: to call us such a thing with all we’ve lost; when wouldn’t orphans be better?’
Parked just off the front and behind the shops was a tired-looking Peugeot with French plates. At another time, to leave a vehicle blocking a shop’s designated service road might have resulted in a fine, though there was hardly the capacity to police such minor matters at present.
‘Don’t be fooled by the car,’ explained the Major. ‘This is British official business; it just pays to keep such things under wraps in the current climate. I have a Bentley in the garage, though that won’t be seeing the light of day for a while.’
‘I’ve heard they tip over right-hand drive cars in Paris, sir?’
‘A British numberplate’s all it can take, in the wrong neighbourhood and at the wrong time. Still it could be worse: I wonder if we ever imagined it might be a blessing that there were no British makes of car left? Imagine the carnage now were the roads full of burning Austins?’
He drove purposefully and fast, and without the momentary flinching at junctions and roundabouts that can betray a foreign driver unused to cars coming at them from the opposite angles.
‘We’ll avoid Le Havre,’ he said a way into our journey. ‘It’s as inundated as Calais, and they don’t need us getting in their way.’ Of course he meant he didn’t need them getting in our way, when where we were going was obviously of such importance to him; and so we continued south-west, shadowing the coast though never quite meeting it. Like many of us newly expatriated, I had had a crash course on the geography of Northern France, and so recognised as we continued due west from Caen that we had left the coast behind. Had we turned north at any point along this stretch we might have met Saint-Lo, and then Cherbourg, the busy port that tipped the peninsula forming above us. That city had suffered as badly on E-Day as anywhere in France, for the great storm had blown as far south as the northern suburbs of Paris; yet with the rump of their nation unaffected, France’s networks of help and repair had absorbed the work. That great port had eventually proved as vital to the evacuation effort
as any in Europe.
Towards Rennes as dark was falling, I began to see what I had thus far only read of in Le égal, as on the patches of land between vineyard and orchard were appearing rows and rows of tents. It was like something from an African famine relief camp absurdly transplanted to a land of such plenty. The spaces among the canvas coverings were filled by people and washing lines and water butts, and dotted among these and travelling between the sites in their white four-by-fours were the UN officials managing the effort. I imagined these plots were what were normally farmed fields, and so the cost to agriculture must have been enormous.
‘Brittany is our saving grace,’ began the Major spotting my interest. ‘The efforts of the original ex-pat community have been immense; and having so many people who’d held good jobs before retiring here gave us an influence and an ability to help not found in many other places, or none so near anyway.’
A sign for Rennes appeared, as the Major instead turned off between suburban houses, explaining,
‘I doubt if there’s a busier city centre in Europe right now; but a visual appreciation of its special contribution can wait for a time when we have less pressing business to discuss.’
Past Rennes the roads were quieter and more rural, with further tents appearing as we neared Loudéac. We were passing the first signs for Mûr-de-Bretagne as the Major’s house appeared. Large and brick built and looking like the gentleman’s farmstead it was, it seemed the kind of place that could be kept up by someone playing at farming in retirement without needing to make the sacrifices to mechanisation that would be required to make a proper living from it.
‘The best thing I ever did was buy this place in the Eighties,’ said my driver proudly. ‘We only got here once a year – if that – while I was working; but I suppose my wife and I can say that whatever happens now, whatever crisis we have been delivered into, that since I retired this house has given us the best times of our lives. And now it is been invaluable, and not just for us. The ex-pat community are if nothing else a well-connected bunch; and what with our Government operating in exile, this place has served as a veritable proxy-Chequers.’
The car swung in between hedgerows and onto crunching gravel, to roll in beside another large but unedifying vehicle already parked. Standing beside it were two young men in black trousers and polo shirts. Had I not already guessed, the coiled cables falling from their earpieces to disappear under their collars would have given their role away,
‘Oh good, I was hoping he would still be here,’ said the Major as he turned off the engine and led me into the house through the kitchen. ‘I wanted you to meet him.’
Chapter 3 – Mûr-de-Bretagne