Liberation

by Imogen Kealey

  “Yes, I have a cunt. You think that makes me weak? That I’m a little girl who will run away at the sight of blood? Juan!” She shifted her aim to the oldest of the men. “Is that what you think, Juan?”

  “No, señora.”

  She kept her aim, her hand steady as a rock. “Mateo, hand me my towel.”

  He ran past her to grab it and put it into her free hand, trying very hard not to look at her at all, then returned to his place between his two compatriots and lifted his hands again. Nancy managed to suppress a smile.

  “No, señora,” she said. “That’s right. Because I’m a grown woman, aren’t I, Rodrigo?”

  Rodrigo was staring fixedly at a point six inches above her head.

  “Yes, señora.”

  “And do you know what that means, Mateo?”

  He shook his head.

  “It means, you idiots, I’ve been bleeding half my goddam life.” She studied them, one after the other, all of them looking into the clouds.

  She uncocked the pistol and let her hand fall to her side, then started to dry her hair, still not making any attempt to cover herself. They still kept their arms raised.

  “Now, when you address me, you address me by rank. I am Captain Wake to you, got it?”

  “Yes, Captain,” they chorused. She didn’t even bother looking at them.

  “Good, now sod off.”

  They ran for it, back up the slope toward camp and, shivering in the chill, Nancy dressed.

  She climbed the path slowly after them. Most of the men had snatched some sleep where they lay, others were finishing the last of the brandy even as they started boiling water for their breakfast mash of oats. Nancy saw the three Spanish men, away from the others, looking sullen and guilty. Fournier was still swilling the last of the brandy from his bottle by the embers of his fire. He saw her and leered, his eyes traveling from head to toe.

  “Did you give our boys a good show?” he said.

  She didn’t plan it. Didn’t think. She went straight at him, covering the ground between them at a run, then smacked him across the side of his face with the back of her hand, knocking the cigarette from between his lips and making him drop the bottle into the embers. He scrambled to his feet, a good six inches taller than her, and raised his fist. Then hesitated. She spat into his face. He struck, knocking her sideways to the ground and started to turn away. She struck out with her boot, catching him square on the shin and making him yell. He fell on her then, punching into her sides, while she held her arms up to defend her head. She didn’t make a sound.

  With a roar of rage, Fournier got to his feet and started to walk away. Nancy could feel the blood on her lips, but she couldn’t feel the pain yet. She rolled onto her feet and grabbed his smoldering fag from the ground and launched herself at him again, landing her full weight on his back so he fell forward onto the earth, the breath coming out of him in a sudden grunt, and she drove the smoldering butt into the side of his cheek, then got her arm around his neck in a choke hold. He grabbed at her wrist but he couldn’t get purchase, thrashing and trying to throw off her weight. She could feel him beginning to weaken.

  “Captain…” said one of the French fighters, keeping a careful distance, softly. Pleading even.

  She dropped her hold and stood up, then walked away toward the high path. Behind her she could hear Fournier choking and cursing and the murmurs of the men helping him up.

  Well, they weren’t fucking laughing now.

  29

  They watched her. Not with smirks on their faces any more, but there was nothing friendly about the looks she got either. The day after her fight with Fournier, Nancy kicked them out of their sleeping bags as soon as it was light and ordered them into ranks. News of the drop had brought two other groups of men who had been hiding in the hills all winter to join them. There were forty of them now. Not enough, nowhere near enough, but enough to make a start. All local lads apart from the Spanish boys.

  Fournier was in the front row, at the far right, staring, but saying nothing and giving no hint to the men about which way to jump either. Below them the patchwork of trees and pasture flowed down into the valley, in a million shifting greens, a land to love, but not their land any more. Not while one German in uniform was within France’s borders. They knew that. Their families knew that. Then she realized she had the key in her hand to unlock their stubborn hearts.

  She chose her words carefully, but kept it simple. No more brandy and no more cigarettes until they had learned to handle the weapons that had been dropped, planned escape routes from the camp and started on a full program of marksmanship and physical training. But she had something else to offer them.

  “The liberation of France is coming,” she told them, her voice raised and clear. “And we need to be ready when it does. You don’t want us and our guns and our gold, fine. Your funeral. You can stay up here and be slaughtered by the first company of SS soldiers they decide to send up here after you. I’ll take my treasure somewhere else. But do the training, and it won’t be just you who gets British help. Any of you have family, wives, children, mothers struggling on their own while you’re up here?”

  A few of the men nodded.

  “I’ll give them fifty francs a day, every day you train. First weapons session is in an hour. If you want your family to eat, be there.”

  Who was going to leave their people to starve for the sake of their pride? Not these men. For the next week they did what they were told. Sort of.

  When she briefed them on tactics, they stared over her head and yawned. When she showed them how to put the Bren guns together, they chatted to each other in undertones. When she sent them on PT runs, they rambled. On Sunday afternoon they practiced marksmanship, and as Nancy was demonstrating the double tap, a bullet bit into the bark six inches above her head.

  She shot at her target and struck it before she turned round. Fournier was holding his rifle loosely in the crook of his arm. He smiled at her for the first time since their fight. It was not a nice smile.

  That evening she gathered addresses from the men and told them they’d get half the money promised. They swore at her, but under their breath.

  “Shall I tell your mother you said that?” she asked one Maquisard from Chaudes-Aigues.

  He looked startled. “No, Captain.” He scratched behind his ear and grinned. “Not unless you want her up here trying to take it out of my backside.”

  She dismissed him with a nod, then went back to her usual spot at the edge of the tree line where Tardivat was working at his silk supply and Denden was setting up to listen to the BBC transmissions. She flopped down onto the grass next to him.

  “What do you think, dearie?” he murmured. “Shall we chuck it all in and pop up to Paris for a cocktail and a show? I’ll take you dancing.”

  She turned onto her stomach. “I would, if I didn’t know perfectly well you’d ditch me for the first handsome Frenchman we met.”

  “I do love a Frenchman,” he said musingly.

  “How can I get these bastards to pay attention to me, Denden?”

  “Just do your job, respect yourself and don’t give a crap what they think. It’s their funeral.”

  Nancy felt a black rage swirl in her gut. “That’s exactly the point, Denden. If they don’t train, if they don’t listen, they are going to die. The odds are against us anyway. If they try and fight the Germans as they are now, they are going to get slaughtered. And they’ll die without doing any damage. I hate the Boche, but they are well trained. These boys… they are going to be wiped out.”

  “Well, yes, that would be a shame,” Denden said as he twitched the dial. A sudden burst of speech, French and very clear, came tripping out of the speaker.

  “The Germans are our friends, the true enemy of every Frenchmen are the traitors who undermine their efforts for peace.” Denden put his hand to the tuning knob again, but Nancy stopped him. “We know these vagabonds and criminals who steal the food from your mouths and att
ack our allies on orders from communists and the treacherous English are not the real French. Remember all it takes is a word to one of our friends and they can be scrubbed from our beautiful land. Wives and mothers of France, daughters of France, these men leave you to battle on alone while they hide in the shadows. Let us defend you. Let us protect you.”

  “Weasly sods,” Denden said, turning down the volume. “And these guys are almost as bad as the propaganda says they are.”

  Tardivat looked up from his sewing. “With respect, you have delivered guns, yes, but these men came to fight. You want them to go to school.”

  “They’ll be no bloody good in a fight without training,” Nancy snapped back. “And we need them for the actions after the invasion. Can’t risk wasting lives and weapons taking them on a little field trip just for the fun of it.”

  Tardivat snipped a thread and gave one of those French shrugs that seemed to communicate more than should be possible. “You have training. Show them what you can do with it and perhaps they’ll want to learn then. Fournier’s a good man, he was a soldier before the war, but he’s never trained for anything but leading a hundred men into a field to shoot at a hundred other men in different uniforms.”

  “Give them a taster of what we might get up to when the invasion kicks in you mean?” Nancy said. “Whet their appetites?”

  Tardivat smiled at her. “An amuse-bouche, a salty snack of an attack.”

  “You can’t risk it, Nancy!” Denden huffed.

  “But if I took a small group…” She sat up again. “Denden, where is this shit transmitting from?”

  “Close, I’d say. Chaudes-Aigues would be my guess.”

  “I might have a look around while I’m in town handing out disbursements and picking our next landing site tomorrow.” Denden pursed his lips, but didn’t argue. “Tardi, you haven’t given me your address. I want to drop off your pay to your wife.”

  He shook his head. “That is not necessary.”

  “I won’t blunder in saying, ‘Hello all, I’m a British Agent, you know.’ I can be discreet.”

  He still didn’t look at her. “That is not the point, Capitan. My wife has everything she needs.”

  “Fine.” Nancy lay back on the ground. She was growing used to the earth of France as a bed, even if she hadn’t slept much since she’d jumped out of that damned plane, but as she lay there, thinking about that voice on the radio, what Tardivat had said about an aperitif to sharpen the appetite, she began to feel a plan forming, and thought that perhaps tonight she might sleep very well indeed.

  30

  By the time Nancy was halfway through her trip handing out money to the dependents of the men in Fournier’s band, she was glowing. For one thing, riding a bike along the forested tracks had given her time to think, and for another—and my God what a blessing it was—she had had the chance to spend some time with women.

  She had been greeted like an old friend in hamlets and villages all the way to Chaudes-Aigues and back. She told all of them their son or husband was a credit to them, a brave fighting man, vital to the fight for liberty, and was rewarded with smiles and hugs; they touched her arm or held her hand as she walked to the door. It was the war—no French countrywoman would be so affectionate with a stranger in peacetime—and Nancy knew she was a proxy for the missing men, a connection with the boys in the woods. Still, she took comfort in it.

  She learned something useful about almost all the men up on the plateau. This one had a weak chest, that one was in love with a girl in the next town who didn’t want to be the wife of a farmer. Another loved birds, the feathered sort, and another was a superb fisherman. Jean-Clair loved to climb, and before the war would spend all his pay from the garage where he worked traveling in the Alps. She counted out little piles of notes into the hands of these hungry families, played games with the children and flirted with the old men and young boys still trying to do the work on the farm.

  By the time she reached Chaudes-Aigues she was sure she had something on most of them. She had two families to meet in the town, and the second was the elderly mother of the lad who had sworn at Nancy only the day before. The old lady introduced herself with a dry, light handshake as Madame Hubert, and led Nancy into the kitchen with a faltering step, but Nancy noticed as they chatted the woman seemed to drop a dozen years.

  “You will be careful in town, Madame Wake,” she said, examining Nancy over the rim of her teacup with a sharp eye. “I think the Germans are beginning to pay more attention to us here.”

  “Why do you say that?” Nancy said carefully.

  “The mayor is not brushing his coat, and the local gendarme is drinking too much. They are growing nervous. More cars are going through town, running on petrol, and with men in them I do not know, uniforms I do not recognize. Nervous men, petrol and strangers—I think that means Gestapo, don’t you?”

  “No one else has said anything, Madame,” Nancy said.

  Madame Hubert waved her hand. “Pfft, they do not sit at their window all day looking out into the square with their knitting on their lap as I do.”

  Fair point. “Thank you for telling me.” Nancy studied Madame Hubert’s calm, lined face. “Most people are afraid to speak of the Gestapo, Madame.”

  Madame Hubert shrugged. “I am too old to be scared; my son is too young. It is the men of the town here—a little too old to fight, a little too rich to lose everything—they are afraid. They bluster about the Boche in the café in the square, then take a little trip to Montluçon, perhaps to whisper in a friendly Nazi’s ear, do them a little service. Like Pierre Frangrod. His mother, God rest her soul, would be ashamed of him. He gifted the Germans a field she left him to build one of their radio transmitters so it can broadcast that… shit into our homes. And it is a good piece of land too. They got his soul into the bargain.”

  Nancy had spotted the transmitter on the way in. Felt her mouth water when she saw it too.

  “Madame Hubert, the saints have brought us together. I would like to do something about that transmitter. How well do you know the land?”

  When Madame Hubert got up to fetch paper and pencil there was nothing faltering about her walk at all. She was grinning as she sketched the terrain and the tracks and roads leading to and from the station.

  “I walk past it every day. It is just on the edge of town. Always at least six men on guard. Wire fencing, searchlights here and here. It is a strong signal; they have their generator there.”

  Nancy studied the map on the carefully polished table. “Madame Hubert, you are a gift from God.”

  The old lady looked pleased and straightened the crochet doily between them. “Would you like to meet my cousin Georges? He helped build the transmitter building and he hates the Germans. You can trust him.”

  If the Gestapo were circling the area it was not a time to make new friends, but Nancy liked this woman, liked her very much.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Come tomorrow afternoon then, Madame Wake. He will be here. He is sad he is too old to join my Georges on the plateau with you. It will cheer him to help you.”

  Nancy looked around the neat, modest home again. “Are you sure you aren’t afraid for your boy?”

  Madame Hubert stopped smiling. “I would rather be afraid for him and proud, than know he was safe and despise him. That is why I am glad my friend”—she tapped the map—“died in thirty-seven before she was forced to realize her boy was a coward.”

  Nancy scouted the land, and Georges turned out to be an absolute treasure. On the ride home the following day Nancy made her plan. They would go tonight. When she got back to the camp, she stowed her bicycle in the broken-down hay barn in the corner of the field and then went to find Fournier’s men, hunched over their dinner. They looked bored.

  “I need five men.”

  “What for?” one of the men asked.

  “It’s not a menu, Jean-Clair. I’ll tell you what for when you’ve volunteered.”

  The silen
ce stretched until Nancy could feel it in the air.

  “I’ll come.” Tardivat, bless his parachute-stealing soul.

  “So will we.” It was one of the Spaniards, Mateo. “We owe amends.” He led his brothers with him. Nancy was surprised—they had kept away from her since that moment by the springs and she hadn’t been to Spain and given money to any of their families. She put out her hand and Mateo shook it; Rodrigo and Juan did the same.

  She raised her eyebrow. “Any other Frenchmen want to fight the Boche?”

  That got them. There was a shuffling among the men, but Fournier moved before the others.

  “I’ll come. Let’s see what you can do, Captain.” Nancy looked him up and down. “I assume you meant to miss me in the forest?”

  “Of course.” She put out her hand and he shook it, but as if he feared some sort of contagion. She put her hand on his shoulder. “Your little sister told me yesterday you can shoot a swallow out of the sky. You are our sniper.”

  She pulled them aside and took them through the plan, then showed them Madame Hubert’s map and Cousin Georges’s plans. “Each one of you will be able to draw the map of the compound from memory before we leave. Fail, and I won’t take you. You’ll just have to stay at home with the other little boys. One hour.”

  She dropped the plan in the grass at their feet. Mateo bent down and picked it up as she stalked off to put her own kit together.

  Denden strolled over to join her. “You don’t want me to come, Nancy?”

  She shook her head. “You’re too valuable.”

  “Good, because I hate all that running about and shooting.” He gave a theatrical shudder.

  “If it all goes tits up,” Nancy went on, “get a message through to London and go back to Gaspard. You might get on with him better than I did.”