Touch wood, that was a fairly sound assessment. She reached left-handed over the boy’s head, to touch the door. Getting as bad as Lise, she thought: Lise’s belief in what she called ‘Fate’ – some malignant influence against which one was powerless. Leaning back against the wall, then: checking the time. Twelve fifteen. As projected, zero-hour. Owls were vocal again, in the woods to the south. Nothing else: no traffic sound now, she realized; a convoy had passed, that was all. Her right hand in the jacket pocket, ball of the thumb caressing the pistol’s safety-catch. But André was safe from her, too, tonight. First because the successful conclusion of this operation was as important for her as it was for him, and second because the body of André Marchéval, shot either in the street or inside the factory and the door then shut and locked, would lead directly to his father – who’d be talking before they even asked him.
But in any case – killing him in cold blood, which as things had turned out now would be closer to plain revenge—
Correction: for ‘revenge’, read ‘justice’.
A tug at her sleeve: ‘Listen!’
Key scraping in the lock…
They heard it click over, then a squeak of hinges. A man’s whisper: ‘Go on!’ Emerging then – from this angle of sight, initially like a bulging of the wall itself: then for a moment static… She raised a hand – with no more than a metre of darkness between them – and he reciprocated, in the same gesture giving the boy’s shoulder a comradely squeeze. Padding away then, soft-footed and close to the wall. One out and away: and now a second – swifter than the first, breaking into a trot before the night swallowed him. Two to come, before André. This one she thought might be Duclos – shouldering through, checking round quickly and seeing them – a grunt as he swung away – and from inside a clatter, the fourth man’s Sten caught up on the half-open door. He’d pulled back, swearing, then came on through but glancing back, stumbled… Recovering, lurching away. Might have been audible right up in the square – if anyone had been there to hear it.
Waiting for André now. She moved another pace out from the wall. Thumb easing the safety off the Llama. Purposes of self-defence only, Marilyn’s extreme caution… And aware that (a) her own analysis might be based at least partly on wishful thinking, (b) he might use a knife rather than a firearm. Although until the boy did take off…
Positioning himself to do just that – like a competitor in a relay race, ready to snatch the baton and run. And from that moment, with everything working out as planned, to the next – the crash of an explosion – inside – and a fire-coloured flash outlining the doorway, blinding orange, reverberations slamming through the ruined night and – like some super-imposed recording – Charles Saurrat’s squawk of alarm overtaken by a man’s despairing wail – ‘Ah. Jesus Christ!’ The boy had staggered against her: all part of the same cataclysm, you couldn’t have separated any one split second from the next. She was in the doorway but in that moment not seeing anything, flash-effect still blinding her: then a torch-beam wavering around inside another open doorway, one of a pair in the near-end of a Nissen-like shed – inside the factory area now, this was – with a line of identical curved-roof shapes away to the right, only this one open. Reek of burning – scorching – as she dashed in; the torch fell, went out as it hit the tarmac, but she’d seen him as he reeled against the timber door-jamb and she was there, holding him up against it, Saurrat diving past her to pick up the torch – and André sliding steadily downward, despite her effort to hold him up. Saurrat – with the torch working again, its beam poking around in fumes, a smell like shoeing horses, repeating ‘The keys – the keys’ and then a shout of ‘There!’ As surprising as anything else – she’d have looked in André’s pockets. André on his knees by this time – balancing, she’d let go of him – moaning ‘Christ, what’s happening…’
‘Try to stand?’
‘Stand. Christ…’
Torch-beam licking over him. No obvious sign of wounding. But she’d seen the Sten lying further inside, leant to scoop it up, slung it over her left shoulder. Both André’s hands rising as if to shield his eyes, the torch stabbing this way – the boy’s idea of helping?
‘Came to kill me, didn’t you?’
‘Kill you?’
Could have, too. Who’d know, piece it together? Shoot him, and clear out – with everything accomplished? Saurrat asked her, as she looked round to see where he was, ‘Shall I go with the keys?’
‘No. Help me get him up. I think his jacket’s burning. Can’t leave him here, I can’t manage on my own. André—’
‘But the keys, he said so important—’
‘Wouldn’t help his father – or any of us – if we left him here. So –’ it was dawning on her as she spoke – ‘we’ll take him and the keys to the manor.’
‘But – see…’
In the torch beam, André’s head lolling, face above the beard black-looking. Head falling back then as her own movement tilted him: eyes half open, their whites showing momentarily. Flesh burnt? She told the boy, ‘Between us we’ll manage. He’s conscious again – I think… Jacket first – it is smouldering. André – you’ve got to help too. Come on now!’
‘Oh, Jesus…’
‘Just try. Come on – up… Charles, help me. Here. Now, André – that’s it, that’s it—’
‘But all that way?’ Silly question from Saurrat.
She told him, ‘No alternative.’ Making it this far, anyway: André was up, more or less, sagging between her and the corrugated door, arms round her neck and heavy on her shoulders. The boy was helping now – to some extent. She pushed one of André’s arms off her and swung round beside him with his left arm round her shoulders, her own left hand clamped on that wrist. ‘Lean on me, André. We’ll get you to your father. Your face is – scorched, I know, you’ve had a bang on the head too, haven’t you? Doctor’ll fix it anyway. Stay that side, Charles. Edge him forward now. That’s it… Try to walk, André. Or just shuffle. Come on!’
‘But where, what…’
‘Try…’
Thinking of trying a fireman’s lift, which in SOE training had been child’s play, probably was even in the Girl Guides, but he was about twice her weight and her left shoulder still wasn’t up to much hard usage. Doing press-ups for instance, she’d found she could only manage at a slant with nearly all her weight on the right arm, using the left simply as a prop. She had him off the door, anyway: and the smouldering woodsman’s jacket off – at last. Next stage, out into the street and lock the bloody door, be gone and out of their reckoning before they woke up to—
Should be going on one’s own. Should be. Over that bridge and—
Thud of a more distant explosion. Not a big one, more like a gunshot. She realized – Jacques…
Might draw them: divert them. Especially if it did start a good-sized fire. No one jarred out of sleep by the sound of an explosion at some distance could be sure exactly where or what: so now another and a fire – second blink, they’d be sure they did know. Charles began, ‘Monsieur Jacques’ bomb—’
‘Did you hear it, André?’
‘He say Jacques’ bomb?’
‘Bomb you made.’
The answer had to be concussion: flung back violently against something particularly solid, she guessed. And the scorching, the facial burns – what she remembered Ben referring to as ‘flash’, burning caused by shell-bursts. Something like it, anyway: and from the concussion, awareness coming and going – but mainly absent, this far. Except for that startling accusation out of more distant memory. Blast-damage affecting the nervous system – i.e. brain – she supposed, including ability to move. Hadn’t happened to her like that, but – different, several ways. She had her left arm out, in contact with the door to the street. Wondering whether if this hadn’t happened he would have tried to kill her. With such a positive view of her intentions, wouldn’t he have reckoned on pre-empting them? She told him, ‘We’ll get you to your father anyway. Don’t kno
w what then, but – get you there, that’s the thing. Charles – the shed door inside – nip back in, shut and lock it?’
‘D’accord—’
‘Use the torch but only downward… André, we’re going to edge out sideways. Lean against me. If you really tried, might find you could move quite well. That’s it. Door’s behind me, nothing in your way. Come on, come on…’
If he’d used a knife: let the boy get away first, then had the field to himself?
So why bloody not be taking off on one’s own?
The boy was back, on André’s other side. ‘It’s locked. Hellish racket up there, vehicles and—’
‘Nothing happening inside the factory though?’
Not yet, there wasn’t. She hoped… Answering that question now: for Jacques and Colette’s sake, that’s why… Because if the Boches found André – then inevitably nobbled his father too… A flickering light in the sky was the Poste going up like firewood: you could hear that well enough. Sergeant Hannant would know kids had played in it at times; and the fact Boche troops had been billeted there could have made it a target for résistants. Easy target, might be all – a demonstration, no loss to the village either: might even be kids at play!
‘André – can you see? See the torch?’
‘Hunh?’
Responding to his name but not to questions. Manoeuvring him through: just about were through. ‘This door now, Charles?’ And thinking ahead: one, that from here it was about thirty metres to the bridge: two, into the stream somewhere down there – for cover, which she’d thought about before – and three, say four hundred metres – three-fifty, maybe, but in present conditions a long haul anyway – to the bottom end of the wall that ran down this side of the manor’s grounds.
‘I’ve locked it.’
‘Fine.’ As far as one knew there’d be nothing to tell anyone inside that it had just been used as an exit. The tube in which the charge had blown prematurely was in that locked store-shed, no reason to think they’d find it the minute they got in there. Smell it, maybe, catch on soon enough, but not that soon.
Time now – her left wrist up where she could see it – twelve twenty-nine.
‘Doing well, André…’
He was, too. Groaning and gasping – more gasps than regular breaths – and by no means steady on his feet, but shuffling along, the down-gradient doubtless helping. Having found he could stay up: like a child taking its first steps.
‘Doing much better!’
‘What is it with him?’
‘Mainly what I think they call une commotion cérébrale.’ A quick racking of her own brain had come up with that, as a translation of ‘concussion’… ‘André, you’re doing well…’
As one might talk to a child. His helplessness meanwhile triggering thoughts in the back of her mind of perhaps being able actually to get him out – quick vision of a Hudson pick-up from Parnassus. If one could somehow persuade Jacques… First things first though – being committed to this now – to get him under cover. He was doing better: halfway to the bridge now, roughly. Not breaking any speed records, but better than it had been and much less weight on her: mostly a matter of just steering him – not having to break one’s back… Returning to her interrupted thinking about using the stream-bed as their line of escape, though – better not get out into the manor’s trees after passing the end of the first wall. You’d be on the wrong side of the house for access to Monsieur Henri’s end of it; and once having left the trees there’d be no cover as good as the stream. Crossing the garden in front of the house in fact there’d be none at all. Stay in the stream to where the wall on the west side of the house ran down to the stream, therefore. Out there, and then only – what, sixty or seventy metres, say?
Under the Briards’ noses, of course. Have to watch out for the bloody Briards, who’d most likely be awake and taking notice. And Monsieur Henri doubtless sweating blood…
Send the boy ahead to give him his keys and warn him she was bringing André?
Better not. Safer, let him sweat a little. Might yet need the boy’s help here. And his arrival might alert the Briards: one didn’t want to find a whole reception committee waiting. The Boches might already have been on to Monsieur Henri: certainly would be once they realized the factory had been the target. They’d want him there, then—
Christ. Without his keys…
Twelve thirty-six now. Jacques, she guessed, would be back in the auberge, having started for home as soon as he’d thrown his bomb in.
‘Hear that?’
The boy had asked it: she muttered an affirmative. Sky flickering with light over the Poste end of the village, and ‘that’ had been a car or truck coming from the direction of the manor, passing the market square at speed. There’d been several before that. Twelve thirty-seven – another eight minutes, there should be about nineteen explosions.
Unless they – Wachtel and Gaspard Legrand, one thought of – had got in there already.
‘André. We’re nearly at the stream and we’re going to climb down into it. Think you’ll manage?’
‘Hunh?’
An automaton, shambling on. Cold water was good for burns, she remembered. Charles said, ‘I’ve done that before.’
‘So where’s a good place to get him down?’
‘Right at the bridge here. I’ll get down first. OK?’
‘André – slow up, stop a minute?’
‘You said – using the stream…’
So he’d caught on. Mulled it over, finally made sense. Charles had gone ahead, prospecting. She explained, ‘To get to the manor without being seen. Along the stream-bed, wading.’
The boy’s whisper: ‘Here. Where I am?’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Charles Saurrat, he’s helping us, was to have got the keys straight back to your father – remember?’
‘Why’re we doing this?’
‘To save all our lives. Yours, your father’s, Jacques’ and Colette’s, my own too. Charles?’
‘Here. Here – here’s my hand. Monsieur André—’
Groping forward: surprisingly, under his own steam. ‘Where?’
‘Here.’ Rosie was with him: climbing some of the way down so as to steer him on down to the boy. But he was managing it pretty well on his own. Physical coordination returning towards normal maybe. Saurrat was murmuring to him down there now. She whispered into the dark, ‘Help him bathe his face.’ Twelve forty-one: four minutes to go. She let go, slid down the rock-and-earth bank, found them both crouching, André whining, moaning. With relief, maybe? She and the boy had to drag him up then, and there were only about two minutes to go by the time they were plodding up the bed of the stream, through water less than knee-deep. There was a dam on the river, Jacques had told her, where this stream branched off from it, to maintain a minimal supply of water to the factory. André was coping surprisingly well, sloshing along in front of her. If she hadn’t forced him to start moving, she guessed, he’d still have been lying there inside the factory. Although the time she herself had had concussion – spinal, after a fall from a pony when she’d been nine or ten years old, on holiday from France at her uncle’s place in Buckinghamshire, she’d come off and landed on her back across a tree-stump, one end of a make-shift jump – she hadn’t lost consciousness until several hours after the fall. Fainted at high-tea, been put to bed, doctor summoned, woken late next day with no memory of those hours at all, beyond having started out for the ride that afternoon. All she knew of it even now was what she’d been told.
You could smell the fire – like rubbish burning. Smoke might be an element in the darkness. Time now – twelve forty-three.
‘Your charges should blow soon.’
No response…
‘André?’
Hoarse whisper, after a moment: ‘My – charges?’
‘PE. In the factory, charges you placed?’
Obviously no memory of it. But as information, explanation, might add up eventually. There
was a new sound now – distant, and nothing explosive about it, more like a landslide or coal thundering down a chute. She guessed – the Poste, roof falling in? André, looking around at her, stumbled but then recovered with an arm out to the bank: instincts and coordination definitely returning to normal. Saurrat called back to her, ‘The wall here – see?’
Eastern boundary of the manor’s grounds, a wall about three metres high, buttressed where it ended close to the stream. They’d already passed it, were now therefore crossing the manor’s garden frontage. Hence no trees at all now: she hadn’t seen up there, had been preoccupied with monitoring André’s performance. Couldn’t hear the fire now, she realized: the building’s collapse might have snuffed it out. Certainly still smell it… She hitched the strap of the Sten higher on her shoulder: didn’t especially want it, had been averse to leaving it there, was all.
Twelve forty-six. Visions of failure: charges defused, all of this for nothing… More trees in sight ahead, towering against stars. Nature impervious, aloof, everlasting, only humanity chasing itself around like crazed insects intent on self-destruction.
A charge exploded. One single, distinctive thud – not all that loud but solid, clearly defined. Then another just like it: and three more hard on each other’s heels. Saurrat laughing: André crouching, head down, immersing his face in the stream again. Now a rapid tattoo of the same explosions. Rosie’s feeling was of partial satisfaction in that at least something had been achieved – minimally eighteen rockets that would not be fired when the time came for the next bombardment of English towns and villages. Helping André up again: the three of them in a close group then, knee-deep in the moving water, listening…
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