Emergency in the Pyrenees

by Ann Bridge

  After lunch—Luzia again gave them plancia steaks, this time off the meat-van—Dick Heriot reverted to the subject of Bonnecourt, over coffee; he was plainly troubled by the bad impression local gossip might have created about a man he liked. ‘He helped a lot of English to escape into Spain during the war’he said.

  ‘Airmen?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Yes, but not only airmen. English civilians living in France too, who missed the bus at all the French ports as they fell to the Germans, one after another; a lot of them came trickling down to Pau, hoping to be safe—but then of course when the Germans occupied the whole of France they were sunk, and had to get out, or try to. Nick, you can remember the story of that funny old English couple that B. rescued, can’t you? I seem to recall that it was rather dramatic.’

  ‘It was’ Nick said. ‘The man had been in business in Paris for years; when the Germans came he and his wife drove to port after port, but always too late. At last they fetched up at St. Jean de Luz, where a British destroyer was lying off-shore; one of her officers was standing on a sand-castle on the beach, bellowing through a megaphone that the ship would take anyone with a British passport to England—but with one suitcase only. The wretched Smiths, or whatever their name was, couldn’t face that; they had a car-ful of all their most treasured possessions. So they drove on to Tardets, and took rooms, and settled down there, hoping for better times.’

  ‘Where is Tardets?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Oh, a good way west of here.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well of course food was terribly short, and everyone collected whatever they could, to keep alive; this old pair were up in the woods one afternoon gathering beech-nuts—full of oil, most nourishing—when they heard a lorry on the road below. They peered out, and it was full of German soldiers in Pickel-Hauben.’

  ‘Good Heavens!’ Julia exclaimed.

  ‘Yes. If you want drama, that was it. The poor old things had never bothered to get visas for Spain, and the only place for them was Pau; old Smith came bumbling over, but when he saw the queues, and the faces of the people coming out empty-handed, he passed it up, and decided to try to drag his old wife across the frontier. He’d got quite a lot of French money, so he could afford to hire a guide; but apparently he hit on a bad type.’

  ‘What do you mean by that, exactly?’ Julia asked, frowning over this story.

  ‘Oh—well; he’d lived in France long enough only to pay the man half till they were actually on the path leading into Spain, but that Tardets devil was too smart for him. They had to go at night, of course, and it was pitch dark, and teeming with rain; old Smith was holding his brolly up over his wife when the guide stopped and said—‘Alors, now go 200 metres up this slope in front of you, and you come to the path; then turn left. Now my money, or I shoot!’ What is more he grabbed the umbrella, for good measure.’

  ‘But this is hideous!’ Luzia exclaimed.

  ‘Oh, well, yes—some of the French are hideous, where money is concerned—let’s face it. Anyhow the old pair struggled up the slope, alone, and sure enough at the top there was a tiny path, and they went along it, to the left; but they were dead beat, and presently they decided to sit down and have some coffee—old Smith had a Thermos in his knapsack. So down they sat, right on the path; nowhere else to sit—cliff above, a steep slope below—anyhow it was running with water, so they weren’t too comfortable.’

  ‘How ghastly!’ Julia interjected, thinking of the miserable and exhausted old couple sitting in puddles on a mountain-side, in the middle of the night.

  ‘Oh yes, not at all nice!—but there was worse to come. For safety Smith had stowed some £300 worth of English fivers in the Thermos, between the glass flask and the outer metal cover; most of the touchable capital he’d got left, of what he’d been able to raise and bring from Paris. Well they each had a cup; but their torch was giving out, and somehow or other, in the dark and that cramped space, between them they managed to knock the Thermos over the edge of the path, and heard it clattering away down the slope below.’

  ‘Good God!’ Colin ejaculated.

  ‘Yes. Not exactly a cheerful situation’ Nick said. ‘And it was there, sitting in the wet, waiting for daylight in the hope of retrieving the flask and their money, that Bonnecourt came on them on his way back from seeing a couple of British airmen across the frontier into Spain.’

  ‘What did he do?’ Luzia asked, her fine dark brows knitted over this horrifying story.

  ‘Everything he could. He was carrying a powerful torch with spare batteries, and first of all he went down the slope and found the Thermos. The extraordinary thing was that the glass hadn’t broken, so the notes weren’t drowned with coffee! Then he gave the soaking old Smiths brandy, and aspirins, and chocolate; and as soon as day began to break he led them down into Spain.’

  ‘He shall also have been soaked, in the rain all night’ Luzia put in.

  ‘Oh obviously—but he wasn’t old. He did his best for them with the Spanish authorities, but there wasn’t much he could do; they spent weeks in that camp at Vitoria, till at last our Embassy in Madrid got them out and sent them home to England.’

  ‘What a story!’ Julia said. ‘Who did you hear it from? M. Bonnecourt?’

  ‘Not originally—we were hardly born then! Her Ladyship ran into the old pair somewhere in England, a bit later on, and they told her about it; and when we got to know Bonnecourt Nick had the curiosity to get his version. Nick is the one with the good memory’ Dick said cheerfully. ‘But let’s finish this bottling job, and then we’ll go down and rustle the old thing up, and make him take us out to get you some isard, Mrs. Jamieson.’

  The bottling finished—the twins were much better at using the machine than Colin—this plan was carried out; but it was Luzia who suggested, in the most natural way in the world, that Colin should go with them to meet this so interesting and merciful person—the young man gave her a grateful glance.

  Bonnecourt’s house was on the outskirts of the village on the farther side, above the dam. He was in, and as usual Dick did most of the talking.

  ‘This gentleman, Monsieur Monro, is the brother of the lady who stays at present in the Stansteds’house. She is so déçue that you never brought her the gigôt d’isard that you promised her the other day.’

  While Bonnecourt was regretting, and excusing himself, Colin studied him with interest. Medium height, rather slender, with noticeably long arms—he must have a magnificent reach on rocks; a dark, keen face; probably in the late forties or early fifties, Colin concluded; an educated accent, a certain crispness of speech.

  ‘Well, we must not keep this so exceptionally beautiful lady’—a sketch of a bow to Colin—‘waiting a moment longer than we can help, after my unfortunate miss the other day. If you two sluggards can be up here tomorrow morning, at six hours precisely, with your rifles, we will see what we can do.’ He opened the window and leaned out. ‘Yes, the wind should be right.’ He turned to Colin. ‘And Monsieur? I know that you make ascensions.’

  ‘I’d very much like to come, but I’m afraid that I’m no shot with a rifle’ Colin said. ‘Could I just be a spectator?’

  ‘You can be a porter, and help to carry down the meat!’ Bonnecourt said, with a rather pleasant grin. ‘A demain, then—and please convey my apologies to Madame votre soeur.’

  They all mustered at six the next morning at the isard-hunter’s house, and set off. Their route lay first up open slopes overlooking the dam and the pool behind it; then they entered thick woods, passing a small inn; the valley now narrowed to a wooded gorge, beyond which it broadened out again and stretched ahead of them, wide and open, full of grazing merino sheep, with their pearl-coloured fleeces. This valley led them close in under the silver saw-teeth of the ridge, and a pull up a steep slope brought them to a group of shepherds’ cabanes, low wooden structures with rather flat roofs—a bearskin, freshly killed, was pegged out to dry on the door of one of them, to Colin’s amazement. There wa
s no one about, but as they examined the skin a couple of the appallingly savage Pyrenean sheepdogs appeared, looking like cream-coloured wolves—and every bit as savage as wolves; Bonnecourt stopped as if to pick up a stone and yelled ‘Couchez!’—the creatures retreated, snarling. Colin had in fact been warned never to go out without a stick, because of the dogs—but so far he had not encountered any.

  They pushed on towards a col on their right, some two hundred feet above the cabanes; just before they reached it Bonnecourt said ‘A plat ventre!’—they lay on their stomachs and wormed their way up, the hunter slightly ahead. He had got out a pair of powerful field-glasses, and from behind a small rock he examined the valley beyond. Yes, there were some isard there, he told his companions, but they would have to manoeuvre a little, to approach them against the wind; sliding down off the skyline he gave his instructions with great precision. Dick and Mr. Monnro, keeping well below the col on this side, were to make their way up to the summit ridge on their left—‘to prevent these creatures from escaping into Spain’; when they were in position on the ridge, up by that big rock tower, he and Nick would start to stalk the animals. ‘You may shoot only when we have shot’he said firmly to Dick, ‘if they should pass close to you.’

  Colin and Dick, obediently, kept just below the col, and found a gully up which, by a stiffish scramble, they reached the frontier ridge; they crawled cautiously along this, keeping as far as possible to the Spanish side, till they reached the rock tower. There they lay on the sun-warmed rocks and looked out over France into a valley running westwards, roughly parallel with the Larége shelf, but separated from it by a lower intervening ridge. As soon as their heads appeared Nick and Bonnecourt crossed the col, also crawling; they made a wide détour, and presently disappeared from view. The two young men lit cigarettes, and waited for some time.

  ‘By the way, Julia—Mrs. Jamieson—is my cousin, not my sister’ Colin said. ‘You might explain that sometime.’

  ‘Oh, sorry! Still if you’re staying with her like this, it might be just as well to be her brother, especially in Larège!’ Dick Heriot said, with a very amiable grin.

  At that moment they heard the crack of a rifle, almost simultaneously followed by a second shot—then came two sharp blasts on a whistle.

  ‘That’s his signal—we can go down now’ Dick said; he got up and began to climb carefully down the rather loose limestone of the ridge, Colin following. The rock presently gave way to extremely steep grass slopes, and on these Colin admired Dick’s technique: heels in, knees wide apart, and so bent that he was almost squatting on the ground behind him—the only way to negotiate steep grass fast without the risk of breaking an ankle, or pitching forward headlong. As they reached the foot of the ridge Nick suddenly appeared, some three hundred yeards away; they walked over to him.

  ‘Yes, two’ he said. ‘Old B. let me have the first shot; he can kill them on the wing!—and he got his as well. Did you see the rest of them? There were five.’

  ‘No, they didn’t come our way,’ Dick replied. ‘I wish they had—I’d have liked Monro to see them.’

  Monro would have liked to see running isard too, but he was interested to see a dead one. When they came up to Bonnecourt he had just finished lacing the fine slender legs of the first ibex, with their small pointed feet, together; he slung the animal over the barrel of Dick’s rifle.

  ‘There—you and Monsieur Monnro can carry that one’he said, and walked off.

  ‘Why doesn’t he gralloch it? It would weigh much less’ Colin said.

  ‘They never do, here. You see on steep ground one has to tie them round one’s neck to carry them, and they’re cleaner whole, for that.’

  ‘This isn’t steep ground’ Colin objected.

  ‘Well, they just don’t’ Nick said, with finality.

  They came up with Bonnecourt some fifty yards further on, again lacing the delicate legs of the second creature together; when he had finished he walked over to a minute stream, washed his hands, and returned to the others. ‘Now, let us eat something’ he said.

  By now it was 11.30, and some food was very welcome. Bonnecourt praised Nick’s shot, Nick praised his—‘Yours was moving!’ But soon they were interrupted by two Spanish frontier-guards; drawn by the sound of the shots, they had come down to investigate—they greeted Bonnecourt with friendly warmth.

  ‘Ah, Señor Coronel! You have had good sport, evidently. But who are these?’

  ‘Surely you know the Señores Heriot?’ The Spaniards now nodded agreement. ‘And this is a Señor Ingles, who makes a holiday in Larége.’ The guards, delighted with this break in the monotony of their lonely patrol, sat down; Bonnecourt and the Heriots offered them some of their sandwiches, and Colin followed suit—the guards in return proffered their wine-skins, which they carried slung at their backs. Both Bonnecourt and the Heriot boys knew the trick of drinking from a wine-skin: to hold it a little away from the face, and pour the wine from the spout straight into one’s open mouth. Colin had never mastered this art—it is an art—and rather apologetically brought out a collapsible aluminium mug, and drank from that; this greatly amused the Spaniards. But they were intrigued by the mug, and when it was empty they examined it closely, expanding it and pushing it together again. ‘Very intelligent—very convenient’ one said. ‘Can one buy such in France?’

  ‘This came from England’ Colin told him.

  ‘Ah, the Señor speaks Spanish. Does he know Spain?’

  ‘Morocco better’ Colin said prudently.

  ‘Morocco! Do the Moriscos speak Spanish, then?’

  ‘Many of them.’

  ‘Ah. Well, tell them that we shall not give up Ceuta!’

  ‘You might tell the Caudillo that we shall not give up Gibraltar either’ Dick said laughing.

  ‘Ah, my Señor, this is another matter’the older guard said earnestly. ‘Gibraltar is Spanish territory.’

  ‘And Ceuta is Moroccan territory’ Dick replied. ‘The Señor can’t have it both ways.’

  Bonnecourt intervened. ‘Assez!’ he said curtly to Dick; he took out a packet of Gauloises cigarettes, and offered it first to the Spaniards, then to the others. Colin, who loathed Gauloises, refused with a polite apology, and pulled out a packet of Players; to his amusement the senior guard leaned across to him, holding out his hand.

  ‘The Señor Coronel will excuse, but when I have the opportunity to smoke a Playaire, I take it’he said, and suited the action to the word; his companion did likewise, but both tucked the less acceptable Gauloises into their breast pockets. Bonnecourt smiled.

  ‘And how did the Señor bring in these cigarettes?’ the younger guard asked—though quite amiably.

  ‘I bought them on the plane to Bordeaux. For travellers, it is permitted to bring in a certain quantity.’

  ‘You see that you have no chance of impounding the Señor’s cigarettes!’ Bonnecourt said mockingly. ‘Tell me, are you catching many smugglers just now?’

  But the Spaniards could take a hand at mockery too.

  ‘Ah, Señor Coronel, when you are occupied with hunting isard, who is to do the smuggling?’ one asked. The twins shouted with laughter, in which Bonnecourt joined.

  Colin was immensely puzzled and interested by all this: that the guards should know Bonnecourt so well, and be on such easy terms with him, although they definitely regarded him as a smuggler. And why did they address him as Colonel? His mind went back to a morning in the office, sitting at a desk with a very senior grey-haired clerk, drinking the usual horrible office tea, and examining rather fragmentary notes from the card-index on various Pyrenean characters. Wasn’t there someone who had been in the French Army?—who was it? And was he for or against the régime? Could this be the same man? Oh, what a nuisance that one always had to destroy one’s notes!—and that his own memory was so fallible. He wondered if he would get anything out of a talk alone with Bonnecourt; he decided to try it on.

  When the frontier-guards had gone off, climbing up to
wards the ridge, the others started homewards, Dick and Colin carrying one isard slung from a rifle, Nick and Bonnecourt the other. They did not return via the cabanes, but took an easy lower col which led over onto the slopes above Larége, below the woods where the inn stood. Further down on these slopes, near the village, were patches of potatoes, many of them being steadily and audibly destroyed by Colorado beetles; Colin was as appalled as Julia had been in the Post Office garden.

  Back at his house, Bonnecourt turned to active and deft butchering—a hind-quarter of isard was soon handed to the twins—‘pour Madame votre mère. Your chef can skin this.’ Another haunch he skinned himself, rapidly and skilfully. ‘At last, here is the promised gigot for Madame votre soeur’he said to Colin—‘I know she has no chef!’ While Dick and Nick were carrying their piece of meat out to the car, Colin took the opportunity of asking Bonnecourt if he would not come up and have a drink with him at Barraterre’s?

  ‘Monsieur Monnro, let us dispose of les jumeaux, and then have a little glass quietly together, here; then we can talk peaceably. Un petit moment—Lady ‘Eriott will want the liver and the kidneys.’ He quickly produced these from the insides of one animal, and stowed them in a polythene bag, which he handed to the twins when they returned to say Goodbye—‘I know that Milord likes kidneys.’

  ‘And how!’ Dick said. They also thanked their host, and took themselves off.

  Bonnecourt, again apologising for the delay, hung up both carcases inside a neat wire-meshed game-larder, standing in a shaded space on the north side of the house, and stowed the offals in it on dishes; then he washel his hands at an outside tap, above which a towel hung from a nail, and ushered his guest into the sitting-room, where he produced Vermouth and glasses. Over their drinks Colin opened, rather tentatively, by saying that he had learned from the Heriots how much Bonnecourt had done for English refugees and escapees during the last War—his host agreed, though deprecatingly and very nicely. ‘Did the boys also tell you that I smuggle?’ he asked, cheerfully.