‘Well – yes, anything one knows about him—’
‘But think, girl. When it all hits the fan, isn’t his father’s place where he’s likely to show up?’
Chapter 3
Killing ‘Hector’ wouldn’t conflict with any SOE principles. Might even call it standard practice, in dealing with double agents. Necessary and justifiable even as self-protection. One traitor dead, how many good lives saved? Or leave an informer alive, you’re dead. A precedent she knew of for sure was when a réseau (network) organizer had asked London for cyanide capsules for precisely such a purpose and Baker Street had promptly had them delivered by a courier from London en route to his own réseau.
She’d woken thinking about it. After a night in which she’d heard cars or trucks passing on the mountain road; it had sounded like a small convoy, and during curfew hours would almost surely have been German. Heading for Natzweiler, perhaps: one had heard that prisoners from camps in Germany were shipped there in batches from time to time, to be finished off. Her waking thought though had been what attitude would Baker Street take, whether if/when she did find herself back in working order, they’d sanction her remaining in the field long enough to eliminate ‘Hector’ or to arrange for his elimination. Their first reaction on hearing that she was alive would be to recall her, get her out of it; it was standard procedure anyway with an agent who’d been in Gestapo hands and might have been turned.
And the prospect of getting back – to Ben, who’d have had no news of her at all since the end of April, the weekend they’d planned to spend together, instead of which he’d have had a telephone call from Rosie’s flatmate saying, ‘Rosie sends her love and says please not to worry but she can’t make it’ – which would have told him she’d gone back into the field: by the time he’d have known it, she’d been there, pedalling through foul weather towards Rennes. No one at 62–4 Baker Street would have told him anything about her disappearance from Châteauneuf-du-Faou, for instance: he’d have been waiting, hoping, having no idea at all – no more than she did – whether the wait would be weeks, months, a year; having only to trust that one day, some day… Not so different in her own mind, either: the thought of return, final return, the war approaching its last stages so you’d have in clear sight the dreamworld she and Lise had envisaged: Lise and her man Alain Noally, and Rosie and Ben Quarry: a foursome in paradise – that had been the vision to which Noally’s death had put a full and final stop. He’d been shot in an ambush by the SD – security branch of the SS – in or near Rennes not long after Rosie had spent a night there with the two of them and then pushed on westward to Châteauneuf; Lise had told her about it just the other day when they’d met in a Fresnes prison cell. Noally had been attending a Resistance meeting and an informer had tipped off the SD – an informer whose activities were almost certainly a derivative of ‘Hector’’s treachery. Rosie and Lise had gone over and over it, in the train between Paris and Alsace, ensuring that each knew everything the other knew in case one survived and the other didn’t, and the link to ‘Hector’ was based on what another résistant had told Lise when he’d telephoned, devastating her with the news of Noally’s killing and warning her to run for it – which she had done, into the trap in which she’d been caught. A domino-effect though – one SOE circuit blown, some of its members arrested and maybe tortured, and one who talks has links to Noally’s contacts in or around Rennes. To which they might have been pointed by Rosie’s own arrival, destination Rennes, of which ‘Hector’ definitely had known. But Noally had been a highly unusual man, and the loss to Lise had been shattering. Her voice in memory, whispering into Rosie’s ear in that filthy cell at Fresnes: If you get back and I don’t, tell them what happened to Alain? And that I didn’t tell them anything and I have no fingernails on this hand? I fainted: before that I shut my eyes, screamed blue murder, also I thought about being in Pont Aven with Alain, and you and your Ben – Rosie, that would have been such bliss!
Memory wandered. From some parts, shied away. Underlying the whole thing had been Lise’s crushing sadness, and now the doubt as to whether she could possibly have survived – let alone got clean away. Also the problem of coming to terms with her own ambivalence, which seemed like disloyalty to Ben – recognizing that if she’d been fit and able to move now and Baker Street recalled her, she’d be reluctant to go, leaving the ‘Hector’ mess unresolved – unfinished business and in more ways than one personal business: the Lise/Noally disaster, and the train, the girls who’d been with her and had not escaped; and before that herself in that chair on the top floor of 11, Rue des Saussaies, wrists strapped to the chair’s arms, dog-whip handy on the interrogator’s desk and ‘Hector’’s eyes and tone of voice pleading, urging her to answer the Gestapo’s questions, save herself by sending others to their Calvaries.
In full awareness – his as well as hers – that she could have told them every damn thing she knew and still have been shipped east to Ravensbrück.
How about him? When they’d finished with him – what?
Scrape of Thérèse’s wood-soled shoes on the ladder. She’d been up here a little while ago – woken her patient, checked she was OK, then gone down to let the dog off its chain and prepare breakfast. Rosie with her eyes open again now, squirming into a position from which she’d be able to sit up. Another pink dawn, she saw, in that little window: Thérèse had pulled the blanket off it when she’d been up before. In daylight there was a view of the mountains framed in it: smoothly rounded, peculiarly balloon-like tops and dark forests that were home to some Maquis groups, she’d told Rosie. In the other direction – which one couldn’t see, there being no window at that end – you’d be looking down a twisting, wooded valley at a distant view of steep, grey roofs. A couple of kilometres away, and only partially visible because of the twists in this cleft in the foothills. To the south were vineyards; Thérèse’s late husband had begun to experiment with vines on his own land here, but after he’d been killed, and the so-called ‘Armistice’ – meaning surrender, 1940 – facing economic necessity she’d grubbed them out and switched to a few cows – had only one now – for milk, and numerous pigs, chickens, and a few ewes – produce for which there was a steady and certain local market.
This was Monday. On Saturday, she’d had to soak Rosie’s blouse off, where it had stuck to wounds and lacerations. She’d been very gentle and patient, spent about two hours bathing her, sponging the blood off, washing and disinfecting. It had still hurt: the iodine had stung like fire, in the recent, major wounds and also in the festering whip-cuts. She’d reserved the sulphur powder for use after the sage-femme’s visit, as there’d only be enough for one application and if it formed a crust once it was on, one could assume the technique would be to leave it on, undisturbed, until the healing process was complete. In fact the sage-femme, who’d arrived in the afternoon by bicycle, hadn’t wanted anything to do with it at first. She was a small, wiry, determined woman, grey-haired, fiftyish, with small slits of eyes and thin lips that seemed barely to move when she spoke. The name ‘Lotte’ had been an alternative to her given name of ‘Lorette’, apparently, the preference of her late husband – who’d been a master wine-maker in Colmar, about forty kilometres south, on the plain between the mountains and the Rhine.
‘He was German, Thérèse mentioned.’
‘Was indeed.’ A challenging gleam in the little eyes. ‘And as fine a man as ever walked the soil of France. He despised the Nazis. Oh yes, they’d have murdered him – certainly they would, he’d have been dead by now in any case!’
‘What did he die of?’
‘Pneumonia. He wasn’t a young man, by then. Now – we’ll have you in the window there. Bring up a kitchen stool, Thérèse. No – two stools, one for me. Where’s that syringe?’ Adding presently as she loaded it with morphine, ‘You’re lucky, to have this. Unobtainable here – except by stealing from the Fridolins.’ Fridolins apparently meant Boches; Rosie had never heard the term before. She’d been st
anding then, to receive the injection – surprisingly, in her left buttock. After it had taken effect they’d put her on the stool, lolling slightly and supported by Thérèse while Lotte used wads of antiseptic-soaked material in forceps to poke around, probing and sterilizing the wounds, also feeling the bones inside the damaged shoulder. By her assessment – and jerky commentary, which Rosie heard only vaguely through waves of sleepiness, hardly any bodily sensation at all – the bullet had scraped under the left clavicle with a glancing impact which had fractured but very fortunately not shattered it, the bullet however being deflected downward, emerging through torn muscle and cartilage ten centimetres lower than it had entered at the back. A little lower still, it would have found the heart – and/or, as Lotte had grimly pointed out, exited through the left breast.
‘Christ…’
‘Yes – plenty to thank Him for… Mind you, it’ll hurt for some while. You don’t get away scot-free from damage of this kind. Morphine or no morphine. She’ll have to keep this arm in a sling for a few weeks at least. But she was lucky other ways too: a centimetre or two this way – or lower – could have smashed the scapula. The shoulder joint, even. Not to mention the arteries here.’ Addressing Thérèse, by this time… ‘Not surprising they took her for dead. Would have looked to them like a bullet through the heart. And with the blood all over… And this head-wound. Which again – a few centimetres to the left, say… See the way it slants? When it hit her she must have been already falling, she’d had this one in the shoulder first – uh?’
She’d viewed the white sulphur powder with distrust, told Thérèse she could risk it, if she insisted, but she, Lotte Frager, wouldn’t be responsible for administering some unknown cure-all. Fair-ground medicines, she called such things. Rosie had no recollection of these stages, had been in dreamland by that time. In retrospect had a feeling that they’d been happy dreams: which seemed odd. A morphine side-effect, maybe. But her recollections even of the start of it were hazy, a lot of gaps being filled in by Thérèse when she’d woken in the late evening, in racking pain. That night had been fairly hellish.
Thirty-six hours ago, though, and the powder had crusted. Through the bandage surrounding her head, touching it very lightly with her fingertips, she could feel the slant of a hard ridge of it above that ear.
Using her good arm to push herself up now: the damaged one was in a sling made of green velvet, perhaps curtain material, with another strip holding it close across her body, while inside the chemise which Thérèse had provided her entire torso was bandaged, dressings front and back.
Bandages were strips of old sheets or shirts.
‘Did you sleep all right?’
‘Amazingly, yes. Although Bruno’s barking had me awake for a while.’
And her heart had been beating unevenly. She’d never experienced any such thing before. It was OK now, quite normal… Thérèse saying, ‘Fox, probably. Human intrusions, it’s a different bark altogether.’
‘Clever dog… Have you had many human intrusions?’
‘Plenty. But mostly friends bringing others in transit. I doubt we’ll have any while you’re here.’
‘D’you mean you’ve put the word out?’
A shrug: ‘I mean it’s taken care of. Don’t worry.’
‘So what happens if other escapers—’
‘There are other safe houses, Rosalie.’
‘But when they arrived with me, for instance, you’d had no warning—’
‘Don’t worry, we’d cope all right. How’s the shoulder?’
‘Hurts. As she said it would. But less than it did yesterday. Back’s still sore – same again though, nothing like it was. And my head doesn’t hurt at all. Thanks, Thérèse.’ Her breakfast porridge – a large bowl of it, on a tray; she’d wriggled around so it could rest across her knees. ‘Giving you a lot of work, aren’t I? I could come down to the kitchen – d’you think?’
‘No. The ladder – if you slipped—’
‘Michel was up and down it easily enough, with only one arm.’
‘He’s used to being one-armed. You aren’t. He lost his in 1940.’
‘Oh. I’d meant to ask, but—’
‘He and other survivors of his division left from Dunkirk – in a British destroyer, but he was on a stretcher, and the arm was amputated after he got to England. But – speaking of you, Rosalie – if you slipped, and grabbed for a better hold with that one…’ Nodding towards the strapped arm: ‘– which you might do, just instinctively…’ She put the spoon in Rosie’s right hand. ‘Manage all right?’
‘Easily. Thank you… Michel might come today, I suppose.’
‘Or tomorrow, or the next day. Who knows? But my nephew – Charles – will be here this evening. On weekdays he comes after school, you see. Rosalie, I don’t think I’ll tell him you’re here. He’d never breathe a word – knowingly – but – anyway, when he’s here – well, we’ll keep you hidden, and that window covered. Get into trouble if we show lights anyway. And I may have to leave you alone a lot while he’s here. He does come into the house sometimes, of course, but there’s no reason he’d go upstairs.’
Rosie nodded. Enjoying her porridge. ‘OK.’
‘Better that children shouldn’t be burdened with secrets, when they don’t have to be.’
‘Better nobody should. Lovely porridge, Thérèse.’
‘He’s more than once had to know about such things before, when I’ve had escapers here for a night or two. Comings and goings… But with you here probably a month or more—’
‘Month!’
‘Lotte said at least that long.’
‘Never heard of sulphur drugs though, had she… Thanks to Michel, therefore – touch wood. I agree, anyway, about Charles… Thérèse – two things to ask you now: I was ready with one, but first about Charles – what sort of nephew is he, a brother or a sister’s son?’
‘Sister’s. Lisette. She was widowed too, and re-married, Charles isn’t his son – and he and I don’t get on. Consequently I only see Lisette very occasionally – meet in the village sometimes. Charles is a very nice lad, though, he adores the animals and the country life, I’ve left him this place in my will.’
‘Does Lisette know you’re an active résistante?’
‘She wouldn’t want to know. She won’t speak French, even in private, although it’s our own natural language, our birthright… She doesn’t like the boy coming up here, either. Nor does her precious husband. The fact they permit it has a lot to do with what I just told you – his inheritance. They wouldn’t risk missing out on that. Huh?’
‘You didn’t have any children of your own?’
‘No. We were not so blessed. Was that the other question?’
‘Sorry – no, an extra one. I was going to ask you about Michel, and Dunkirk – summer of 1940. I was thinking – must have been during that retreat you lost your husband?’
‘Yes. That time.’ Coming from the window, with the light brightening behind her. ‘Our First Army. End of May, first days of June. That dreadful time. You’re right, to connect the two events. About half of them got away through Dunkirk, but the rest were trapped around Lille. Jacques was one of them. Five divisions, and they held off seven Boche divisions for four days. People say this was to some extent what made the Dunkirk evacuation possible. By the end, poor things, they had no food or ammunition left, the survivors could do nothing but surrender. But my husband had been killed before that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yes. Me too.’ She’d crossed herself. ‘But life goes on. At least, life of some sort. Have to – try, don’t we? God gives us strength, it’s up to us to use it, eh? Survive, then start again – when it’s over. Listen now – with a supreme effort, you could manage another helping, couldn’t you?’
‘Well—’
‘Good. Lotte said you had a survivor’s strength. “Nothing of her, but she’ll come through all right,” she told me. Inner strength, she calls it. What she admires �
� the old devil. OK – back in a minute…’
The regular intake of real, solid food was already having an effect almost as miraculous as the sulphur powder’s. Not only physically but mentally, just these two days had made a huge difference. Thérèse had groused once, ‘My God, if I ate like that I’d be the size of the barn out there!’ But rest, as well as food, was doing the trick. The one craving she was conscious of from time to time was a desire to smoke. She always had smoked, until the car crash and hospitalization in Morlaix, but since then the only chance she’d had had been a stub-end she’d picked up in a stone-floored passageway in the Fresnes prison and persuaded a comparatively humane wardress to light for her. She’d smoked it because she’d been starving, and it had sickened her. Now, she had no money – had literally nothing – and Thérèse who didn’t smoke, would have had to buy cigarettes on her forays to the village market, if she’d asked for them; they weren’t cheap, and were also rationed, the ration itself minute but saleable. ‘F’ Section in Baker Street would eventually be compensating her for all the expenses she’d occurred – standard procedure, and more than just compensation, there’d be a reward element in it as well – but providing cigarettes now would have meant immediate outlays of hard cash, of which it was obvious there wasn’t much about.
* * *
July 10th: another Monday.
Thérèse sat down, on a kitchen stool she’d left up here a week ago. Half an hour past noon: lunch, which she’d just brought upstairs, was a ragout of pork and beans – Rosie having hers in a soup-plate, and a spoon to eat it with. The plentiful food, she’d gathered, was due largely to an illegal system of bartering, run discreetly by local farmers. But at noon, the news had come in a Swiss radio broadcast that yesterday Caen had been taken by British and Canadian troops – the news triggering recollection of Michel’s exposition of the military situation – nine days ago, now, and he’d said he’d be back in two or three.
In at the Kill Page 4