Flawed Banner

by John Harris

  His weight sent two of the men reeling, but the attackers were stubborn and came back. A whirling scuffle started and something hit Woodyatt over the right eye. In a fury he swung the petrol can as a weapon. It hit one of the men at the side of the head and sent him flying, then Dominique fired the revolver twice more and the attackers scuttled to safety. Still dazed by the blow over his eye, Woodyatt snatched the weapon from her. He almost had to fight her for it.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he snarled. ‘Give it to me!’

  The men had vanished and he took his fury out on Dominique. She was as edgy as he was and her retort was angry, but then she stopped dead and her expression showed concern. ‘Your eye’s bleeding.’

  He lifted his hand to his forehead and saw there was blood on his fingers. ‘It’s nothing.’

  She was calmer than he was and insisted that she should do something about it. She managed to persuade him to sit on the running board of the Ford and bent over him, her face close to his. ‘It’s split your eyebrow,’ she said.

  She managed to stop the bleeding and he apologised for the anger he’d shown. Lifting his head to look at her, he got the corner of her handkerchief in his eye. It made it water and he snatched out his own grubby handkerchief and started rubbing it.

  ‘How splendid,’ she said with a nurse’s prim disapproval. ‘What have you been using that for? Cleaning the windscreen? Dusting the floor? Wiping the oil from the engine? You’ll probably get glaucoma and go blind.’ She nodded towards the old man in the car. ‘He’s got a gun,’ she pointed out. ‘I think he has it now, on his lap.’

  As Woodyatt approached, the old man’s head lifted. He had made no attempt to leave his seat. ‘Well?’ his voice was calm and indifferent as if what might happen to him was a matter of no great moment. Woodyatt’s face reddened. ‘You have a gun!’ he snapped.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you use the bloody thing?’

  ‘I might have hit Dominique. She was leaping about like a dog with fleas. There was plenty of time.’

  Woodyatt stared at him angrily. ‘Let me see it,’ he said.

  The old man held up a huge black revolver.

  ‘That’s a British gun.’

  ‘In fact, it’s American. Colt 45.’ Again the hint of amusement came. ‘I promise not to use it on you.’

  The weapon was a monstrous thing. No wonder the old man had not been afraid of being kidnapped back at the bridge.

  ‘British officers carried revolvers like that,’ Woodyatt said. ‘In the last war.’

  ‘And before that. It’s a little large but I have capacious pockets.’

  ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘It was given to me.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘A German officer. In 1919. All he wanted was to be rid of it.’

  ‘Redmond had one like that.’

  ‘No wonder he didn’t use it to kill himself.’

  Woodyatt pounced at once. ‘How do you know he didn’t use it to kill himself?’

  There was the faintest pause, as if the old man realised he had been caught in an error. Every time it happened, Woodyatt disliked him more. He felt Montrouge was crafty, cunning and devious, and too clever by half. Now the old man was even smiling.

  ‘I heard,’ he said.

  Dominique had joined them and Woodyatt gestured at the revolver. ‘Keep the bloody thing handy in future,’ he said. ‘And use it. The roads seem to contain the sweepings of all the jails of France.’

  Dominique had listened to the exchanges silently, her expression worried. She could tell Woodyatt was still angry but she kept her eyes steady on his. ‘I’m sorry for what is happening in my country,’ she said quietly, trying to defuse the atmosphere.

  ‘Forget it.’ Woodyatt stopped dead. ‘You called me “James”,’ he said remembering. ‘When I arrived, you called me “James”.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  She avoided his eyes. ‘I don’t know.’

  He grinned. ‘It makes a change.’

  Her eyes still held his steadily, her expression frank. ‘Perhaps a change has taken place,’ she said.

  Eight

  The petrol Woodyatt had brought was of low grade and their progress back to Madame Gonville’s was slow.

  She was waiting for them. Woodyatt explained that Dominique was Montrouge’s niece and a nurse and was there to look after him. He wasn’t sure that Madame Gonville believed him but she offered no objections.

  The rooms over what had been the stables were spartan and tidy, though they smelled of mothballs and damp. Woodyatt decided to put Montrouge in the furthest of the two. ‘I’ll sleep on a mattress in the entrance,’ he suggested.

  Madame Gonville provided a rough and ready meal which they ate outside to the constant sound of distant traffic.

  Montrouge was already asleep in the small room so they left him to it. His suitcase was alongside the bed where he could reach out and touch it. As Woodyatt discovered when he stealthily investigated, it was locked.

  He had noticed that Madame Gonville had a telephone and he requested permission to use it. She seemed to wonder if he were a fifth columnist, but he agreed to speak in French so that she could listen.

  Darby recognised his voice at once. ‘Bring him here,’ he said. ‘I’ll identify him. I knew him well. I’ll contact the consul in Bordeaux. Ships are coming in. The bloody place is filling up with Brits coming from Italy, Majorca, Spain, the South of France. Especially now that Mussolini’s joining the fun. I’ll make sure we have boarding passes.’

  It had grown hot again after the rain and the air was shimmering over the road. In the distance they could hear anonymous thuds and see a column of smoke rising.

  In front of the house, the country sloped away in a series of folds, with clumps of trees and long lines of poplars. The last of the sun glinted on the river, and now that the traffic had stopped for the night, the area was quiet.

  For the first time in days Woodyatt felt at peace with the world. They had a long way to go still but the heavy load of worry had lifted a little with the disappearance of Zamerski. Montrouge was out of the way and for the time being out of Woodyatt’s mind, and Madame Gonville had provided enough from her garden to satisfy them all. She had killed a chicken, gathered fresh potatoes and beans, and produced a large flask of the harsh red wine of the district.

  And for the first time almost, there seemed to be warmth between Dominique and himself. She kept looking at him strangely, her eyes gentle, as though trying to make out something about him that puzzled her.

  ‘You were brave,’ she said almost shyly.

  ‘Not really.’ He was smiling but she turned on him angrily.

  ‘The English are such fools!’ she snapped. ‘Why should you risk your life in that way for two such ungrateful people?’

  He touched her hand. ‘Don’t make too much of it,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s no more than most men would do.’

  ‘Not my Monsieur Maladroit,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t have.’ Tears sparkled unexpectedly in her eyes. ‘And I am not ungrateful,’ she murmured. ‘Not really. It is only that I have been so lacking in trust. It is since Monsieur Maladroit. It is a bad trait in me.’

  The stable block was dark when they went inside and Montrouge was snoring quietly in the second of the two rooms. The other one contained a large bed and a sagging armchair. Dominique gave Woodyatt her usual quizzical, half-amused look at the situation into which they had been forced.

  ‘Do you mind very much sharing a room with me?’ he asked.

  She gave a nervous little laugh. ‘I’ve shared one before. And you’ll remember I occasionally shared one with Monsieur Maladroit.’

  There was a wash basin and, as she bent to her suitcase, Woodyatt took off the checked shirt and sloshed water on his face then stepped back to allow her to use it, too. As he turned, she was studying him.

  ‘Your poor shoulder,’ she said softly. She touched the livid mar
k where he’d been burned at Marville.

  ‘It’ll get better,’ he said shortly.

  There was a long silence before she spoke again. ‘I hope you succeed in what you are trying to do, James Woodyatt,’ she said.

  It was the first time she had offered any encouragement whatsoever and he studied her, looking for the reason. She returned his gaze in her usual frank manner and he had a feeling she had indeed undergone a change of heart.

  ‘If he’s proved to be who I think he is,’ he asked, ‘what will you do?’

  She shrugged. ‘I was a nurse and I will continue to do what I can for him. I can’t change overnight. What about you?’

  What about him? Woodyatt considered. What were his plans? He didn’t know. He hadn’t expected the job of getting the old man to England to be fraught with so many problems, so many evils, so many unlooked-for disasters. When he had told the old man he was a brute-force Intelligence officer, he had meant that his part of the affair was simple, practical, and if necessary, a matter of straightforward organisation. He had to find Redmond, identify him and take him to England. There had, however, proved to be occasion after occasion when he had had to rely on his own resources, his own ingenuity, nerve and cunning – and brute strength.

  ‘If you need me,’ Pullinger had said, ‘contact me.’ Well, he needed him now but, unfortunately, the whole German army was between them and communications had broken down. It had changed things a little. ‘Take your time,’ Pullinger had said. ‘Just make sure you’ve got the right man.’ But from a careful investigation of a forty-year-old mystery, it had become a rushed job to unravel an enigma-inside-a-puzzle-inside-a-catastrophe – and to boot involved a rescue from what Woodyatt felt sure were German agents. And by this time he didn’t believe for one minute that even if he got Montrouge to England the best men that Pullinger could put on the job would ever get anything out of him. The simplest thing, he decided bitterly, would be to shoot the old bastard. That way, though the British wouldn’t get him, neither would the Germans.

  He looked up. Dominique was still standing quietly alongside him, waiting for an answer. Most of the time she was a sobersides, grave of expression and manner, as if loneliness had given her extra resources, but there was something else at that moment. It had been a terrible and terrifying two days and she looked tired. And there was also a tremulous uncertainty about her, as if she were afraid of herself and needed reassurance.

  ‘We shall be with the Darbys soon,’ Woodyatt said. ‘They’ll help. Darby knows why I’m here and he promised to contact the British Consul.’

  She touched his hand. ‘Those men who took the car. Were they the same men we saw in Marville.’

  ‘No. I think they were caught by the flames.’

  ‘Will the men who took the car come again?’

  ‘They weren’t after Montrouge.’

  ‘Did they kill the old man at the hotel?’

  ‘I don’t think so. It was the others who did the killing. The ones we saw at Marville. They thought he was your uncle.’

  There was a long silence then, ‘I’m frightened. I said I wasn’t, but I am. I’m all right when things are happening but afterwards – haven’t you noticed?’ She was begging for a little praise, a kind word.

  As she had been talking, she moved to the wash basin. She had taken off her dress and was standing in her slip to wash. She was slender, with a graceful neck topped by a striking head. He noticed she was trembling in little shudders that shook her whole frame.

  She turned, a towel in her hands, and caught his eyes on her. For a moment, she stared back at him, her glance unwavering.

  ‘You have seen me without my dress before,’ she pointed out sharply, scoldingly.

  Realising he had been frankly admiring her, he turned away and busied himself with the blanket Madame Gonville had given him. He was reflecting that he ought to have been evaluating the secrets of what he believed to be a flawed old man in the next room rather than the shape of the attractive young woman in this.

  She shrugged, her face rigidly expressionless, as if she were controlling her emotions with difficulty. ‘It doesn’t matter, anyway,’ she said. ‘Does that sort of thing ever matter? We’re all made the same and we’re not children. You are married–’

  ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Very well. You have been married. I had a lover – my little Monsieur Maladroit who dropped me like a hot cake when my mother became ill. We have both seen the opposite sex unclothed. We’re adults and broadminded. There’s nothing odd about this situation. It was forced on us and doubtless hundreds have had to adapt to it.’ She was almost too matter-of-fact for comfort.

  They were standing close together, their bodies almost touching, his eyes locked on hers.

  ‘I’ll sleep in the corridor outside,’ he said quickly.

  ‘No!’ The word came out sharp and abrupt.

  ‘All right.’ He glanced about him and indicated the armchair in the corner of the room. ‘I can sleep there.’

  She gave him a confused look. In her weariness, she was desperately in need of affection and warmth. As her emotions welled up, almost suffocating her, her voice was beseeching.

  ‘I’d rather you were closer than that.’

  He shrugged and pulled the armchair across the room. As he stood alongside her, holding the blanket, she gave him a look of such despair he put his arms round her. As she leaned against him, her arms went round him, too, clinging to him. Tears were rolling down her cheeks now, blinding her, and she was shaking with the reaction to the events of the last two days.

  ‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘You’ve just had one hell of a time.’

  ‘I don’t think being in the chair will be enough,’ she whispered.

  He felt a pulse start in his temple and sensed his heart beating against the wall of his chest.

  She was silent for a moment, almost as if she regretted what she had said. Then, as he gently took the towel from her, he heard her whisper – so low he could barely catch it – ‘Please…’

  Nine

  When Woodyatt awoke the following morning, Dominique was lying with her head against his shoulder, her hand on his chest. He knew she was awake, too, warm and drowsy like himself, preferring to forget the horrifying events they had lived through. There had been a hint of terror in her passion, as if she were clinging to a floating spar after a shipwreck. She had been hungry for the tenderness she had constantly denied herself.

  She moved and he saw her looking down at him. Her expression was faintly puzzled.

  ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ she said, speaking softly so as not to disturb Montrouge.

  Woodyatt smiled and she tried to make a joke of it. ‘I said a prayer,’ she pointed out. ‘I felt God would understand.’

  She was silent for a while. ‘I expect you’re disgusted with me,’ she went on, the familiar stiffness returning.

  Woodyatt’s eyebrows rose. ‘Am I?’

  ‘Crying. Doing what I did. Inviting you into my bed. It was wrong. You have a wife.’

  ‘That’s over.’

  She was silent for a moment. ‘Is it?’ she asked. ‘I don’t think anything like that is ever over. There are too many small things you remember, too many words that have been spoken, too many things shared. I still think of my Monsieur Maladroit. I don’t wish to, but I do. Things remind me, and it will go on until someone else comes along to make me forget them.’

  What she said was true enough. Woodyatt’s wife had gone but that didn’t stop him remembering – sometimes with bitterness, sometimes with guilt, often with nostalgia and regret. But remembering, nevertheless.

  ‘Most of the time it was difficult,’ she admitted. ‘His wife was suspicious and we had to make love in his car or in the woods. Often I didn’t enjoy it. I got grit stuck to my bottom.’

  He gave a hoot of laughter. She joined in reluctantly and he put his arms round her and pulled her to him. ‘You’re a cynic,’ he said.

  ‘I do
n’t want to be a cynic,’ she admitted quietly. ‘But sometimes life takes a hand, doesn’t it? I suppose really the affair was sordid. But to be in love is always to be a little unbalanced. Things appear clearer, different, sometimes more confused.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘The trouble was that I wanted more from my lover than he was prepared to give.’

  ‘Optimists try again with someone else.’

  ‘Are you an optimist?’

  ‘I suppose so. But I wouldn’t start again with the same woman. It would have to be real love.’

  ‘When you married her, didn’t you think then it was real love?’

  It was an awkward point. She had a strange prickly gift of always introducing a jarring note into their conversation and he avoided answering, preferring to think how pleasant it was to be there with her beside him, her flesh warm against his. He turned towards her and kissed her. She responded enthusiastically.

  ‘Cynicism wastes a lot of valuable time,’ he said.

  She smiled and was just lifting her arms to him when a sound from the old man’s room brought them both out of bed at a run. Within two minutes they were looking as if they had been fully dressed and on their feet all night. As they headed for the door, their eyes met and she gave him one of the wonderful grins that made her so unpredictable, like a shaft of light through her stubborn sobriety.

  ‘How nimble guilt can make one,’ she said.

  They left as soon as they could and almost immediately found petrol. For a long time they drove in silence. Dominique had hardly spoken and Woodyatt had a feeling she didn’t quite know what to make of what had happened between them. Eventually, with the old man in the wide rear seat enjoying the sunshine that came through the window of the car, she stirred.

  ‘I’m not really a loose woman.’ She was back in her sober mood and the words came quietly. ‘But so much has happened. It is still happening. Perhaps last night I was just tired.’