Every time he kissed her she had the same habit of closing her eyes, then laying her head on his shoulder for a moment before she raised it and looked at him with her dark eyes in a searching manner that was hard to define. Then she would kiss him again and sigh. What happened after that depended on whether they were greeting each other or parting, or whether they had just come back to her flat or to a hotel room from an evening out; whether they were getting ready for bed, or already lying naked in each other’s arms. But, whatever the circumstances, it was the same sequence of kiss, close embrace, the deep look and kiss again, and the sigh.
He had had many mistresses and casual erotic encounters, but Nicole was the only girl he had ever loved and the only one with whom he had accumulated such a store of little rituals; for there were many more. Now that he no longer had her with him or within easy access, he treasured this fund of memories as he had never before valued any sentiment and he found that constantly drawing on it strengthened, not diminished, the clarity with which he recalled her and the longing he had to be with her again.
James believed in an empirical and pragmatic approach to all matters, whether they involved the emotions or the ability to rationalise. He tried from time to time to look at himself in the perspective of the years since he became, in practical terms, an adult: which meant when he had become a Royal Air Force officer at the age of 18. Although he did not dwell morbidly on his deficiencies, he was aware of them; or as many as he could detect in these half-hours of introspection.
It was beginning to worry him that he could not account completely for the love he had for Nicole or for the love which he knew she had for him. It was important to him to understand both, because he was certain that she would he coming back and that they would resume the relationship on exactly the terms at the time when she had gone away. It was important also because all the time that they were separated they were developing, they both were surely changing. When they were reunited they would be in some ways different people from the two who had been so close. It was essential to know himself and to know the intrinsic reality about Nicole if they were to remain in the old harmony and bound by the same strong ties.
There was a certain amount of blind irrationality about his attraction to her; but there was always an element of that in any romance. Without it a love affair would be cool and calculating instead of the wonderful bewildering excitement and loss of power over oneself that it had to be to make it any good; whether it was a transient matter of a few dizzy hours or an enduring affection.
One obvious reason for falling in love with Nicole was her beauty: for him an essential element in any affair. Another was her gentleness; and another her sense of humour. There was her sexuality. She was an entirely satisfactory lover. She aroused and fulfilled him. He felt protective and possessive towards her in a way he had never otherwise experienced. She had been a virgin until he...what? Seduced her? There had been no seduction about it: they had come together with equal enthusiasm on both sides. Initiated her? Inappropriate word, which suggested Freemasonry or Boy Scouts. Deflowered her? On the contrary, it had made her bloom, blossom and erupt into the full panoply of womanly foliage. Took her? There was a suggestion of reluctance in the term. He’d settle for made love to her, in the modern meaning.
All those were reasons but the dominant one surely was that which came later: his respect and admiration for her courage. Bravery was a quality for which he had developed a fanatical regard. All the more because it was not a fit topic for overt attention, certainly not for conversation. As the war advanced, bravery increasingly dominated his aspirations and his evaluation of others. He knew that it created the hardness, the harshness even, with which he had dealt with Higgs and Millington and a score of others. He could forgive any defect, virtually any evil, if it could exist in such men, in anyone comparable with Garland, who had won the R.A.F’s first V.C. of this war; with Hughie Edwards, Douglas Bader, Sailor Malan, Victor Beamish, Robert Tuck or Alan Deere.
As for the feeling she had for him, he had to hope that he would remain enough the same man that he was when they fell in love with one another fog it not to change.
Love and loyalty did not necessarily impose celibacy. His body needed attractive women as much as his spirit needed Nicole. He was impervious to the charms of any other except in a superficial and physical way. There was no danger of his falling in love with anybody else. He even despised the girls with whom he went to bed, because they lacked Nicole’s courage: which was unfair; given the chance, they may have proved equally brave. It was not a concession he would have been willing to make if the thought had occurred to him.
FIVE
After the misadventure with the Lysander, Roger’s leg had swollen and become inflamed: the result of being forced to cover a long distance too fast, across country and with several falls into ditches and over tree roots.
He had remained immobile for two days and hobbled for the rest of a week. The pain of his injury was made more grievous by Viviane’s absence. The local Maquisards were lying low.
When he felt his leg recovering he disguised the fact by continuing to limp.
Devonshire’s impatience to be off and on their way to Spain had increased since he had seen the British aircraft and talked to its pilot. His first words every morning were “How’s your leg, Rodge?”
The reply was also stereotyped. “Feels a bit better, but I can’t tell until I try walking.”
One afternoon, at last, Viviane turned up at the farm on her bicycle. Devonshire was out working on the land with Laurent and his sons and daughter. Roger was in the kitchen with Laurent’s wife, reading a newspaper while she baked. When he heard the coded knock on the door and Viviane appeared, he was so eager to touch her that he nearly forgot to feign a limp.
The farmer’s wife stopped work as soon as she heard the knock. She stood rigid, looking pale and anxious. Had the Boches learned the secret signal and come to pay a brutal visit? If it was one of the Maquisards, what message did he bring that would again endanger the lives of her husband and sons?
Viviane came in, smiling.
“Yes, Viviane, what is it?”
“Don’t worry. I haven’t brought bad news. I mostly came to see how it is with you and how Roger’s leg is getting on.”
Madame pushed a bottle of red wine and a tumbler towards her. She poured herself a drink and looked questioningly at Roger.
“Yes, I’ll have a coup de rouge with you, Viviane.”
“So, Roger, how goes it?”
“The leg is much better, thank you, but not yet well enough to walk to Spain.”
Madame turned sharply. “You won’t have to walk. Someone will take you by truck and train.”
“I’ll still have to cross the Pyrenees when I get there.”
Madame shrugged.
Viviane winked at him behind Madame’s back. “There’s no hurry. There’ll be another surprise for the Boches soon, and we’ll be glad of your help. And Sid’s.”
“When?”
“In a week or so. I have some information for Laurent. It is up to him to take the decisions and give the orders.”
Madame, who was not a regular church-goer but disapproved of hanky-panky — perhaps all the more because her disfigured daughter was an unlikely candidate for matrimony — spoke tartly.
“He’s in the bottom pasture, hedging and ditching. If you want to get home well before curfew, why don’t you go and speak to him. He won’t be in for hours yet.”
“Come with me, Roger? I’d like you to hear what I have to tell him.”
Roger, with mounting excitement — and the rising (sic) excitement of prospective mounting — stood up. “Of course.”
He and Viviane crossed the yard and turned out of sight around a corner of the building, then made for a small copse which lay across the path towards the bottom pasture. He took Viviane’s hand in his and she slid him a knowing sideways smile.
“Don’t be in a hurry to make for Spain.
We need you here.”
“I’m in no hurry. It’s Sid who wants to be on the move.”
“Let him get on with it, then.”
It was cool in the little spinney, with grass underfoot. Viviane drew him into a nook where undergrowth encircled a patch of soft turf. She stopped, faced him and put her arms around his neck.
Her suntanned legs were slim and smooth, her clothes were scanty and slid easily off her narrow-waisted body. Roger, in only shirt, trousers and canvas shoes, stripped as quickly.
Everything seemed possible at that moment to Roger. He would see out the war here. He was no coward. It was only flying that frightened him. He was not afraid of the Germans or of fighting them with his feet firmly on the ground. He could make as useful a contribution to winning the war as a Maquisard as he could as a bomber pilot. He saw Viviane as the means of justifying his decision; and his affection for her, already exaggerated by his long spell of celibacy, flared into an illusion of a much more significant and enduring emotion.
He looked down at her. She held him hard against her, her legs around his, her ankles locked behind his thighs. Her eyes were bright with excitation and misty with emotion.
When his cousin, James, had remarked, years ago, that Roger would make a highly successful bank manager or confidence trickster, because old ladies would unhesitatingly put their trust in his boyish look, he was alluding to a physical quality which also had the same effect on young women. There was another, also. He may not be as tall as James or Christopher but he had that extra couple of inches where it could give a woman much greater pleasure than mere stature. Once discovered, they were always reluctant to relinquish it.
“I love you, Viviane.”
“And I love you, Roger.”
It was a spurious sentiment, but sincerely expressed. Both of them were under a delusion because each saw in the other the means of salvation from a dilemma. To Viviane, he was the vigorous lover who supplied what she had been missing so badly since the death of her husband. To Roger, she was the reason why he must remain in France: as long as brave women like this were risking their lives, he was justified in trying to protect one of them.
They were half an hour later in arriving where Laurent was working than Madame had supposed. “Well, Viviane, what news?”
“Bluthner is going to Paris on leave in a few days. We don’t know exactly when. Not by train, but in his car.”
“Good. We’ll get the swine.”
“They’ll shoot at least twenty hostages.”
Laurent shrugged. “We have to do it. By killing him we’ll save a hundred lives.”
Roger knew who Bluthner was: the area chief of the Gestapo. He seldom left the town where he had his Headquarters. They were in an old barracks near the centre and he lived in a flat within the compound; where he kept a French mistress.
Killing Bluthner would whip the Germans into a frenzy of searching, arresting and executing: an activity which he and Devonshire would not welcome.
“Could it be made to look like an accident? Can we infiltrate someone who would sabotage the car?” Laurent’s look made Roger feel ashamed.
“What’s the matter? Worried about reprisals?”
“Not worried about them finding Sid or me, but they’ll search the farm and who knows what they’ll find.”
“They’ve searched before and found nothing. If they do happen to break into the arms cache, it’s booby-trapped. It’ll blow them to Kingdom Come. And us along with it, if we’re in the house. But that would be preferable to being tortured to death.”
“Drastic.”
“If these Nazi barbarians can’t be got rid of, what will be the point of continuing to live? We’ve already had two years of occupation. A lifetime of it? Rather be dead.”
“Britain isn’t occupied. Nor ever will be. They tried to invade once...or, rather, they didn’t even try; but they were all ready to do so. They’ll never have another chance.”
Laurent stepped so close to Roger that Roger could smell his sweat and the sour breath of coarse red wine. He looked angry and contemptuous.
“Then go back to England. Who’s stopping you? There’s a reliable organisation at your disposal to get you safely home.”
Roger’s gaze did not flinch.
“I’ll share whatever risks are taken here by those who have already done so much for me.”
Laurent looked at him musingly, then nodded. He glanced at Viviane.
“Pretty good man you’ve found.”
“You stick to organising our group, Laurent, and leave me to look after my private affairs.” But it was said without rancour. She cast a swift expressionless glance at Roger but he showed no reaction.
He had often thought that there was no lonelier lot than being an only child. He had always envied James and Roger their closeness. But loneliness bestowed certain benefits. It made one self-reliant and it enabled one to feel at home anywhere without any particular sense of belonging. He had the ability to adopt any temporary dwelling place and make it seem as though he were in his natural surroundings. He could move on without any regrets. At that moment he did not want to be anywhere else but here; because that was where Viviane was. If he was making a fine prodigal gesture by staying, it was prompted by too many reasons for facile analysis.
He said “I think it would be truer to say that I have found a pretty good woman.”
They exchanged a few more words, then Laurent said he had work to do and would meet some of the other Resistance fighters that night to plan the ambush.
“And I must go home.” Viviane lived with her widowed mother, who worried when she knew her daughter was out on Maquis business.
She was not in too much of a hurry, however, to sneak into the loft over the barn with Roger, through a side door free from Madame’s observation.
“I meant what I said, you know, Viviane. I do love you. I love you very much and I’m not going to leave you.”
“I know you meant it. A woman can tell when a man speaks from the heart and not simply to make gallant speeches. But you must do whatever your conscience tells you is your duty. I think you should go back to England. What we are doing here is nothing compared with dropping bombs on the dirty Nazis. There are plenty of us who have enough skill with a gun for the occasional attack on the sales Boches. There are few like you, who are expert at flying and dropping your bombs.”
“I don’t think I can leave you, Viviane; whatever my duty.” He said it simply. He had convinced himself and the only assurance he wanted to give her was that he loved her.
“I know you are a brave man. The medal ribbons on your blouson prove that.” His battledress was hidden away under the straw and he did not want to be reminded of it. “So I know that if you really want to stay it must be because you love me and not because you are afraid to fly.”
*
Six days passed in midnight meetings, comings and goings at the farm, false alarms and contradictory information from the group’s informer in the Gestapo building.
One evening, two hours after sunset, the ambush party met at a point where the road ran parallel to a railway embankment with flat fields on either side where there was no cover. It was a poor place for a fire fight and that was why Laurent had chosen it. The Germans would not expect to be attacked on such open ground.
Bluthner, not wishing to draw attention to himself, was travelling without close escort. Two motor cycle combinations armed with machine-guns were going two minutes ahead and 100 yards apart. An ambulance was following, which would take Bluthner 100 kilometres on the road to Paris, where he would be well beyond this district and could transfer to a civilian car.
The Resistance group watched the motor cyclists pass. Devonshire squatted on the side of the railway embankment, facing the road, with a Bren gun. Another man was similarly positioned thirty yards to his left. Four men, of whom Laurent and Roger were two, hid behind the embankment with grenades and either Sten or Tommy guns. That was all.
T
hey heard the ambulance and Devonshire called back over his shoulder to Roger. “This is bloody daft, Rodge. I could be sitting in a turret with four Brownings at 20000 feet, instead of here with my arse on the cold ground and one bloody Bren in me ‘ands.”
The masked lights of the ambulance appeared. Devonshire fired at the driver and then dropped his aim to the radiator and front wheels. The vehicle lurched and careered across the road. The other Bren gunner opened up and fired at the vehicle’s back doors. His bullets made an unpleasant spanging noise.
“It’s armoured!” someone shouted.
Spandaus and Schmeissers were shooting from the ambulance, which had come to a stop on the far side of the road and fifty yards away, at an angle, with its front half off the road.
Grenades were bursting near the ambulance and on the side of the embankment. Troops were scrambling from it and falling prone to cover one another while advancing on the attackers. There were cries as men were hit.
Then there was the roar of the motor cycle combinations racing back, alerted by tracer fire and the sound of weapons.
One of the Maquisards ran, crouched, towards the ambulance, throwing grenades, trying to set it ablaze. A spray of Schmeisser bullets cut him down and he lay writhing and screaming until a single shot blew his skull apart.
The vehicle was burning and Roger saw a man in civilian clothes scramble out. He aimed his Tommy gun at Bluthner and, as he fired, the Bren and someone’s Sten rattled simultaneously. Bluthner was lifted off his feet and hurled three of four yards backwards. One of his arms, severed at the shoulder by the heavy Tommy gun ammunition, went whirling off on its own. A severed foot lay where he had been momentarily standing.
The first pair of motorcyclists arrived, the Spandau in the sidecar blazing at the embankment.
“Come on,” Laurent called, beckoning Roger and Devonshire, the only other survivors. They tumbled down the far side of the embankment and began to sprint through the darkness. Tracer fire followed them.
They had reconnoitred the route thoroughly, but even so it was bad ground to traverse in the dark. They repeatedly stumbled. They were panting along a hedgerow when two figures formed where they had each thought a stunted tree stood. Flashes of fire at the muzzle of a Schmeisser took them by surprise. Devonshire, burdened with the Bren, fell prone. Roger fired a dozen rounds with his Tommy gun. Laurent fell flat and chucked a grenade. They crawled forward with caution and another machine-pistol sent them flat again. Laurent tossed another Mills bomb. When it detonated the base plug whizzed low over Roger’s head. There was no more movement. They found little left of the two Germans. Lying dead beside them was one of their own Maquis group who had not been on the ambush.
The Daedalus Quartet Box Set Page 65