by Robert Ryan
‘Later, Pat,’ Lucy said curtly. ‘Has the bastard left me any hot water?’ She turned to Harry. ‘And get out of the robe.’
Harry went into the bathroom and reluctantly changed back into the same clothes he’d arrived in. He’d find a room and get a new suit for this evening, then discover what delights the Old Port had to offer. He was pretty sure that Neave’s approval would mean the Belgian would agree to fund him, despite the misunderstanding over the whisky.
As he shuffled out of the door, Harry hesitated in front of Lucy and tried to offer an apology, but there was a yelp as he managed to pin some indefinable part of the dog to the floor with his boot. Lucy scooped up the furball and cuddled it, nodding at the door.
Down on the street, the shadows were lengthening as the afternoon wore on. The other three men were about to go their separate ways, but the residual taste and smell of whisky made Harry want a drink even more. He suggested Neave tell him all about his Colditz adventures in a bar across the street and they took their leave of the Scot and the Belgian. As he shook his hand, the Scot said sadly: ‘Bit of a poor show in there. You know, Mason, I wouldn’t make an enemy of Lucy Hodge if I could help it.’
Harry raised his arm as if waving the thought away, but carefully filed it for further consideration.
Neave walked across to the table in the corner of the bar and placed the beer in front of Harry. He picked up where he had left off a few minutes previously. ‘You know, Mason, he’s a sad creature, the prisoner of war. Stuck in limbo, facing an indeterminate sentence, left to feel terribly guilty. Guilty that he got caught, guilty he didn’t try to escape, guilty he is alive and his fellow men dead. It’s a tragedy with no crime to expiate, except personal folly. It gnaws away at you, day after endless day. You see the bitterness getting to them, clouding the soul as month drags into month. Strong men, not the ones you expect to go under. Brooding, brooding, brooding. And the atmosphere … I wished I was an NCO, I really did. They seemed to cope better than the officers. Something about the camp brings out the worst in the public schoolboy. And you had to know your place … otherwise, God help you. Saw men ostracised for stepping out of line. I tried to write for the prison magazine, but they told me I was too flippant and simply not talented enough. Couple of them had worked on university rags, thought they were bloody Beaverbrook. After that, what else was there to do but dream of escape? It was the only way to take on Despair and Boredom, the twin terrors of the POW. And I tell you, Harry, your fellow inmates will eventually drive you to make an attempt, no matter how futile.’ Neave paused to take a large gulp of his beer. ‘You see, every one of their mannerisms, every little tic becomes a giant irritation, an itch you want to scratch by punching the poor fellow as hard as you can. The one who hums all day long, oblivious to it, the scrounger who only appears when you rustle your Red Cross parcel, the over-competitive table tennis player, the preener, combing his hair all day long, the miserable cuss or even worse, believe it or not, the relentlessly cheery chap who is always telling you to look on the bright side when you really want to throttle the bugger … Ready for another?’
Harry nodded, feeling as if he was serving a prison sentence himself, wondering at what point the free drinks would no longer compensate for another dull tale from Colditz.
‘It sounds pretty miserable. But, look, how exactly did you escape?’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Neave, as if it were a foolish question.
‘What were the mechanics? The technique?’
‘Technique? There’s no … Well, there was the uniform. That was pretty crucial.’
‘Is that all it is? Having the right uniform?’
Neave puzzled for a moment or two. ‘There are a few pointers, I suppose. I think, first, never give up. Always keep your eyes open for an opportunity. Second, once you’ve made your play, it’s a question of attitude. Cockiness, I think it is. That I-belong-here swagger.’
Harry almost smiled. It sounded like his manifesto. Copying the posh swagger of the privileged always worked wonders for him. ‘Third?’
‘Third? Have a prop. It might be a person, a pile of wood, a document. If you have something about you, you look as if you have a purpose in life and are less likely to be challenged. And fourth … a lot of good luck.’
‘You should write it down.’
‘What?’
‘A guide to escaping. Imagine if every pilot, every gunner had a blueprint for escape.’
‘There you go again,’ said Neave, clicking for a refill. ‘Thinking like a spy.’ But he suddenly went very quiet.
Harry raised his glass, feeling the first stirrings of drunken camaraderie, and said, ‘You’re a brave man, Lieutenant Neave.’
‘Me? No, I think you are the brave one, Harry.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Harry, taken aback.
‘I have come through France once, and that was bad enough. You do it almost daily, moving people around, getting them on trains, feeding, clothing them. All these things that could get you shot. I’d say that was bravery.’
It was Harry’s turn to fall quiet. He’d never before thought of himself as brave.
‘Come on,’ said Neave, tossing back his drink and slapping his new friend on the back. ‘One more for the road.’
Lucy Hodge threw an arm across the bed and felt only a cold sheet where her husband should have been. For one second she thought perhaps Henri had risen to fetch a glass of water, but her sleep-fuddled brain remembered that the chill was long-term, the bed empty for too many weeks now.
She let herself think for a second of what it would be like back in New York at that moment, to be in a city where conversations concerned something other than war, routes across the mountains, boats to Algeria, where gossip was about illicit trysts, consummated flirtations, secret abortions, hidden mistresses, not betrayals, forged travel passes and the amount of Jewish blood flowing through your veins.
She opened one eye to try to focus on the clock in the dark and was astonished to see it clearly and, even more bizarrely, the wooden case casting a flickering shadow on the wall. She rolled over, instinctively pulling the sheets to her throat, feeling vulnerable, wishing she had worn a nightdress for once.
On the floor was a low, fat candle, its yellow flame waving in the breeze from the doors leading to the small ornate balcony, doors that she was certain she had bolted, but which were now open enough to billow the curtains.
The gun was in the drawer right next to her, a small Italian automatic, that felt feeble and ineffective in her hand. Strange, it had frightened her before. Now she wished she had something three times the size, something that might stop an intruder in his tracks. She slid out of bed and crossed to the closet, quickly wrapping a robe around her, pulling the cord tight so there was no chance of it falling open, swapping the pistol from hand to hand as she did so, noticing the crimson petals strewn across her carpet to the door.
Henri?
Possibly. It was conceivable that a few weeks’ absence had turned him into some incurable romantic and he was out there at the table with flowers and champagne, but she doubted it.
Lucy stepped out into the corridor, and gasped at the thick river of petals, apparently carelessly tossed across the polished floor, but forming a pathway to the entrance of the apartment.
She stopped, feeling ludicrously melodramatic as she pointed the gun held, as she had seen in the movies, at waist height, describing an arc of a few degrees, left to right and back again. She listened carefully, hearing only the everyday creakings of an old building.
There was nobody in the apartment, she was sure of that. She would sense it, the displacement of the air, the breathing and the companion beat of a second human heart. All she could hear was the soft snoring of Liberty—confirming her status as the worst guard dog in the world—in her basket in the kitchen.
She stepped quickly alongside the flowers, the red triangles fluttering lazily in the draught of her passing, and pulled open the door to th
e common hallway. She pushed on the timer light. More petals, a softer pink this time, snaked across the marble floor, stopping at the foot of the stairs and hopping up, one small heap per step, and disappearing as the flight turned, the shifting yellow blush on the stairwell walls suggesting another candle. She pocketed the gun in the robe, but kept her hand round the butt, and, aware of the slap of her bare feet on the cool marble, followed the fluttering trail, up the stairs to the next landing where, finally, there stood a large wooden box, topped by two pewter candlesticks and an extravagant vase of flowers, petals intact. She stepped up to it and suppressed a grin. A case of whisky.
She reached down and took the note and saw the address, a bar in the Old Port, and the time, and screwed it up into a ball, tossing it over the banister. Bracing herself, she lifted the case and struggled back to her flat, kicking the flower trail as she went, still alternately smiling and smarting. As if he could get round her that easily.
Fifteen
THE BAR ENTRANCE WAS a scruffy doorway with a hastily handwritten sign, suggesting it had a new name and new owners—or at least new front people—on a regular basis. It was a couple of blocks, as she still called them, from the port itself. Inside, it opened up from a tiny entrance lobby to a vast space, still smelling sweetly from its days as a spice warehouse, overlaid with more than a hint of hashish in the air.
Lucy stepped in and felt eyes rake her. She had dressed down for the occasion, plain and well covered. Half the women in here would be whores she knew, and a large proportion of the rest on the verge of joining the business, as they realised that in this city, at this time, women’s options were severely curtailed when it came to negotiable goods.
Why had she come? a voice asked her. Not because one side of her bed was cold and clammy in the night, that was for sure. She felt nothing like that for this man. Because of another voice, the one she had answered since she could remember: go on, I dare you.
She hadn’t been in this particular dive before, but a dozen like it, and she felt confident enough to return the stares and flash a smile where appropriate. Straight ahead was a long zinc bar, to the left tables and chairs, beyond that a stage and a dancefloor. Musicians were milling around, blowing tentatively, plucking at strings, ready to start. She couldn’t see Harry.
The clientele was mixed, the dress code running from grubby jellabas to tweed and wingtips. However, a strange inversion had occurred: the scum of the docks, the type who ran raggedy-arsed boats in all weathers, or knew those who did, moving tobacco or drugs or drink or people as the market demanded, they were the elite, the kings of this particular castle now, and the cultured, well-presented middle classes, they were at the mercy of the habitués of these dives.
Lucy shucked her coat at one of the tables and draped it over the back of a chair. She sat, lit a cigarette, ordered a whisky and soda, hoping they had the real thing and not the medicinal spirit they sometimes stuck you with, and watched the ebb and flow of customers, the small furtive groups constantly coalescing and breaking apart, as deals were done and undone.
The musicians began to tune up as a group, the dissonant sound causing most of the clients to flick a glance at the low stage. As the ripple spread, she spotted Harry, previously hidden from her by a cluster of over-painted women in tight dresses, talking animatedly in the ear of a tall, swarthy man who had to bend to catch the words. Cheb. Cheb ran boats across to Algeria, or had until he’d been shut down two weeks before. Rumour was there were other access points on the coast for his ramshackle fleet, such as Canet Plage, and she knew Guérisse, the Belgian who went by the name of Pat O’Leary, for one, was anxious to find out what he was up to. He might not approve of this crew, but any alternative route out of France was more than welcome.
She screwed another cigarette into her ebony mouthpiece and waited for Harry to look over. She had smoked half before his eyes casually flicked around the room and alighted on her and she could almost see the pupils dilate with pleasure. Harry spat a sentence in Cheb’s ear and came across, lifting a bottle of Algerian wine from the bar as he went. He sat down opposite her, signalled for a couple of glasses and said, ‘You got my message then?’
‘It’s not as good as the stuff you opened,’ she said disdainfully.
Harry laughed, and said with exasperation, ‘There’s a dozen bottles.’
‘Quality, not quantity. That’s my motto.’
‘Or both if you can get it.’
She gulped back the last of the whisky. ‘Now that’s a rare thing.’
He opened his mouth to speak, but at that moment the music began, a strange concoction of guitar, flute, accordion and a hand-played drum. It was a throbbing, simple beat, two chords, hammered over and over, the guitarist playing so hard his fingers ought to have been bleeding. There was a smattering of applause as the singer took her place, all diaphanous robes and kohl eyes, a caricature of Arab exoticism. There was nothing phoney about the voice though; it came out deep and throaty and heartfelt, its smoky tones stilling the conversation for a second, although Harry, like most people, had no idea what she was singing about.
‘What the hell is this?’ he asked Lucy.
Against her better judgement, she helped herself to some of the rough red wine.
‘You know the story of the Blackbird?’
Harry shrugged. He had a feeling he was about to find out.
Lucy cleared her throat for the well-rehearsed tale. ‘It begins in Baghdad when a freed slave, Zyriab, sang so beautifully he incurred the jealous wrath of the court musicians. He had to run for his life and he ended up in Cordoba, where he created the nuba, the basis of classical Andalucian music—’
The singer switched to French and, to Harry’s surprise, there were a few boos, quickly silenced.
‘Rebel songs,’ explained Lucy. ‘She sings for a free Algeria. Anyway, Zyriab was known as the Blackbird, and after the expulsion of the Arabs from Andalucia, the music he created ended up in North Africa. Now it’s come back up to France, but to Marseilles, where it has got mixed with the music of the Camargue gypsies. Only here, in the Old Port, does it sound like this.’
He listened for a moment once more, but it was too atonal for his taste. ‘I suppose that’s something to be thankful for,’ he sniffed. ‘How do you know all that stuff?’
‘I’m an amateur anthropologist.’
‘Like Houdini?’
She gave him an indulgent smile. The wine was scouring her throat, but she could feel the effect starting to pulse in her temples.
There was a small scuffle at the bar that flared and died within a minute, the protagonists shaking hands, the very best of friends. Selling freedom as the prime commodity made for a very volatile market.
‘How did you find Cheb?’ she asked.
‘Who?’
‘The man you were talking to?’
‘Cheb? I thought he was called Remitti.’
‘That’s probably just today. I mean, I guess you’ve been in town, what? A day? Two at most? Most people take a week to even hear of places like this, two to find Cheb.’
Harry took one of her cigarettes and lit it. ‘Most people don’t ask the right question.’
‘Which is?’
‘Where are the bad boys? Works every time. You carry on asking and people keep telling you until sooner or later someone says: “We are the bad boys. What do you want?”’
She laughed at this. In a town full of double dealing and subterfuge it was refreshing to hear such a straightforward approach. She stubbed out her cigarette and looked into his eyes, noting how the green was flecked with impurities of brown and even blue. ‘And are you a bad boy, Harry?’
The band moved back to a pulsing Arabic drone, a song that made him imagine and smell places he had never seen, except perhaps at the Gaumont, Mile End. Was he a bad boy? Not for a long time. Not really. But now and then, he found himself trying to remember if all breasts felt like Odile’s, if sex had been better in Hong Kong or London, but they would
n’t come back, those lovers, they were locked out. He would need to create fresh memories if he really wanted to know the feel and taste of other women. But did he?
‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’
There was such anger in the voice, a tremulousness suggesting a temper on the very edge of control, that Harry spilled a glob of wine down his shirt. He looked up and the Belgian had both fists on the table and was glowering at him.
‘You were meant to be out of here this morning, man. For God’s sake. You have thou—’ he lowered his voice—‘thousands of francs on you. In this town they’d kill everyone in the bar for that kind of money. And Lucy …’
He turned to look at her, letting his disappointment hang in the air, but she drew on her cigarette and blew smoke at him. ‘Oh, Pat, he was only trying to make amends.’
‘He can make amends … by getting the fuck out of here and on a train north.’
Harry realised the Belgian wasn’t going to move until he did and, reluctantly, he stood up, retrieved his jacket from the bar, and made to leave. As he passed the table where the Belgian had slipped into his seat, he leant close to Lucy’s ear and took a lungful of her perfume.
‘A bad boy? Only when I get the chance.’ Without another glance at O’Leary, he turned and pushed through into the lobby and out into the warm embrace of Marseilles.
As he settled down on the train heading north to Paris, back in the grimness of the Occupied Zone, Harry thought about Lucy. Had the evening progressed to a second bottle and maybe a dance—if you could dance to that racket—would he have run his hands over that body, pushing her, and him, towards infidelity? A definitive answer wouldn’t come.
The train stopped at Blois, the compartment suddenly crowded with bodies. The dodge for crossing back into the Occupied Zone had been easy. You picked up a discarded ticket that someone arriving from Paris had dumped, then queued up and pretended to want access to the ZNO, where a French gendarme and a German official examined papers and listened to your hard-luck stories. Harry’s was transparently poor—the need to visit a sick mother routine—so they sent him brusquely away with a flea in his ear and a return ticket to Paris. Perfect.