And sniffed hard.
Only to get the sickly-sweet smell of rotting leaves so strongly in his nostrils and down his throat he almost retched. Struggling upright again, he saw he had muck all over his leather coat now, his screech of frustration echoing back at him from the forest.
Wiping the mess off as best he could with both hands Werner staggered forward, back toward the way he’d come in, tripped and landed face-first in the rotting filth once more. Fighting painfully to his feet yet again, the broken end of a fallen branch clawed at his coat sleeve. Attempting to free it if at all possible without tearing its black leather – that would be too much to bear – Werner noticed something white.
A small piece of fabric. Pierced by a twig protuding from the branch.
Werner reached out, felt it. Rubbed it between his forefinger and thumb. In the gloom of the forest, a bright, clean white. And smooth as satin.
Though it wasn’t satin…
It was silk.
Parachute silk.
British parachute silk.
From Werner’s downed British flyer; he’d been here alright…
And if he wasn’t here now, there was only one place he could be and that was where Werner was now heading.
The nearest fucking farmhouse.
*
‘Jacqueline…’ Mick peered down through a crack in the shutters at the yard below – still nothing. ‘D’y’mind if I ask you a question?’
She looked up at him from her spot by the loft wall against which she sat. He looked good in Jean-Noël’s clothes, she thought. Though the sight made her sad. ‘No I do not mind…’
‘Your dad’s a farmer.’ He now angled back towards her. ‘And from the little I’ve seen of it, it’s a very nice farm…’
She smiled up at him. ‘Oui. It is true. Et merci. Papa is very proud of his apples.’
‘Oh, he should be,’ Mick nodded squarely at her. ‘But I can’t help feeling that, like, if the war hadn’t happened… that you’d be somewhere far from here.’
Her smile became softly wry. ‘Oui. C’est vrai. And I think perhaps you are very perceptive, Mick.’
He grinned, though it faded. ‘Where would you be?’
‘I would be at la Sorbonne.’
‘What’s that?’
She let go a short but audible sigh. ‘It is a great université. In Paris.’
‘That’s wonderful. You must’ve been a very gifted student.’
She did her father’s quick brow-lift-and-shrug: ‘The nuns of Saint-Saëns, they arranged for me a – qu’est-ce que c’est en Anglais? – ah, oui: a scholarship, yes?’
‘Yes. Yes indeed. What would you be studying?’
She let go a long, long breath. ‘So as to become un journaliste. Oui.’ Though now she chuckled. ‘Papa, he thinks I will become a great author.’
‘Why on earth shouldn’t you?’ put Mick straight-faced.
One of her eyebrows rose most markedly. ‘That, Flight Lieutenant Mick, is the question of our age.’
‘How’d’y’mean?’
She cocked her head slightly to one side, her focus very sharp on him. ‘ Why, Mick, why should I not have the chance to become a great author? Why should I be cut off from the opportunity of heading where my gift would so love to send me? … Why? …You and I are the young. And there are millions like you and I who are now but dancing puppets of one old man. Oui! Like sad, dancing string puppets of one old man who wants the war and of others whose job is to avoid it and yet who cannot do their job. And these senile old men hold our lives in their hands! And we are the lucky ones!! We still have our lives.’ She paused. ‘When the war came Jean-Noël was called up to l’Armée, as were two other boys who worked for Papa. One of these is now dead and the other, who can say? All the young men have gone. So yes, Mick, it is for me to stay behind and help Papa. This I am willing to do because I love him so very much. Yet it is hard, I will not lie. When the war is finished, and the young men who are perhaps still alive can return, then perhaps it will be possible for me to go on with my life as it was before some arth-ritic puppeteer took it over. This is why you must get away from here, Mick: so as to come back and finish it. Finish the war.’ Her eyes were blue jewels. ‘And win it… These old men, we know them for what they are: evil or incompetent. And yet they have us trapped. Oui. For we, the young, have now no option but to fight and finish their war. Fight and win.’ She breathed out long, long again and looked at the floor.
Mick soon broke their silence. ‘I have a little sister. I think you’d like her very much.’
‘Why do you think this?’
‘She’s always angry at injustice.’
Blue jewels again: ‘She should be.’
Both their attentions shot to the floor as up through it came the creak of the ladder in the barn below. As the trap door edged open – and with precious little option but surrender if it should reveal a German soldier – Mick recommenced breathing only as he perceived the brown, wary eyes of Orval though, on sighting Mick in turn, all the sun-bronzed colour departed the man’s round face: He continued up through and out of the trap door, squatting to close it behind himself, in which position he remained, his silent focus returning to the young man in his own dead son’s clothes. It was a sight for which he had not been prepared, let alone for how well the clothes seemed to fit. His focus lingered, until his eyes betrayed the faintest edge of a smile.
‘C’est bien,’ he breathed finally, then looked to Jacqueline: ‘L’uniforme Australien, it has been burned?’
‘Oui, Papa.’
‘Bon. Jacqueline. C’est ce soir. Le ferme de Monsieur de la Croix, tu l’connais?’
‘Oui, Papa.’
‘Là. À vingt-trois heures. Un Lysander.’ He looked back to Mick. ‘It is tonight. My daughter will explain and will take you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mick.
‘N-non. Do not thank me, my friend: Come back and drive the bastards out of my orchard. And we will drink together.’ Orval broke into a grin. ‘Remember: I am good bloke, yes?’
‘Yes,’ Mick smiled warmly.
But then all three of their faces spun to the window shutters; engine noise. Grinding truck engine noise. Some way off, but on approach.
With no further word Orval opened the trap door, climbed down into the hatch, Mick helping him lower the door, Orval halting them a moment; to look up at Mick. ‘Bonne chance, my friend,’ he said. ‘Come back to us.’
‘I will, sir,’ nodded Mick.
To his daughter: ‘À bientôt, chèrie.’
‘À bientôt, Papa.’
As the door closed shut, together Mick and Jacqueline pushed the heavy crate over it, then knelt very carefully together by the window shutters.
Through a narrow slit Mick now saw Orval making his way, quite unhurried, across his yard towards their farmhouse – engine noise intensifying – when around the far corner of the stone building swept a German Army motorcycle and sidecar, heavy machine-gun mounted, close behind it the chrome inverted-double-V radiator of a black Citroën, bringing up the rear the grey mass of a German Army truck, white-outlined black crosses on its sides. As the whole formation squealed to a stop in front of the farmhouse, still Orval ambled towards them – wiping his hands on a rag as he went, a dab to the back of his neck: a man on a welcomed breather from work.
Out of the truck German Army troops with rifles now piled – Mick counted five. Out of the Citroën stepped a black-hat-and-coated figure, from the driver’s side another German soldier. With widening eyes Mick now saw one of the soldiers jostling Orval up against the stone wall of his house, halting him by a window box with flowers, the soldier then quick-marching away to take his place at one end of what he and the other soldiers now looked like.
A firing squad.
‘Right, I’ve seen enough,’ issued Mick, any further attempt at hush abandoned, already sprung from his knees and heaving the crate back off the trap door. ‘Goodbye, Jacqueline.’ Gripping the han
dle of the trap door he glanced up at her a final time, only to see her still glued to the window and now mutely, madly paddling the air with one palm back towards him.
‘N-NON, ATTENDS-ATTENDS!! ’ she whispered fiercely.
‘WHAT the fuck?!’ Mick loosed aloud as he strode towards her, dropping down beside her once again and peering between two shutter slats with far less care than before.
What he then saw was some kind of argument clearly in progress between the black-coated figure and the occupant of the motorcycle sidecar, the firing squad soldiers peering at one, then the other and back as the pair traded verbal blasts, the sidecar soldier also talking and listening into a field radio receiver the whole time, as well as peering furtively skyward. When it came…
Aircraft noise.
Against which the black-coated one got even louder.
As the truck multi-beeped its horn, Klaus Steinhoff centred on his motorcycle saddle, drew two fingers to his mouth and whistled sharply. With the firing squad’s undivided attention now he drew a single, unmistakable finger across his throat: THAT’S IT. LET’S GO. He was their Sergeant; they respected him, not this jumped-up Gestapo git. And they knew Standing Orders as well as Klaus did: Enemy aircraft in vicinity, get the hell out. Klaus stood on his kick-starter, his BMW thickly purring.
As the squad uncocked and shoulder-slung their rifles, Kriminalinspektor Werner Gruber hit fever pitch: ‘It’s the Russian Front for ALL of you, you cowards!! EVERY last fucking ONE of you.’ Still they only quick-timed it towards the truck…
From the upper floor Mick heard the aircraft engines looming louder – Merlin engines by the sound of it, yet by some thicker note in their tone Mick knew he was hearing no Spits. As the last one of the soldiers hauled up into the truck Mick saw the fear in the young German’s face as he stole a glance up at the sky, the truck clattering to life, the black-coated man still screeching. Perched so close to Mick he could hear her breath, Jacqueline’s ‘ Dieu merci’ was French he didn’t need translated; passing her lips the sound of sweet salvation. Then he caught a glimpse, just the briefest glimpse of two aircraft whipping left to right across the middle distance, a type he’d not seen before: each twin-engined with a tall, eliptical tail-fin hurtling low and fast – FAST – out of sight.
Werner Gruber drew his PPK out of the pocket of his leather coat. Flicked the safety catch off. Pointed it at the Frenchman’s head. Beyond his outstretched arm, he saw disgusted pity in the Frenchman’s eyes. And pulled the trigger.
Mick’s left forearm tightly across Jacqueline’s chest, his right hand clasped even tighter over her open mouth to mute her scream.
*
They buried him at dusk, beneath the trees of his orchard, at this hour in the desperate hope that the Germans would not return that day yet while some light still remained. Mick dug as the girl knelt weeping by her father’s lifeless body, from time to time touching his hair, finally closing his eyes.
Mick had intended to dig six feet down. ‘N-non,’ the girl breathed. ‘He would wish to lie nearer the sun… This I know…’
*
It was some hours before she next spoke and only then in response to Mick’s vital questions on their way to ‘le ferme’ – as far as Mick could make out a farm belonging to a local Resistance member: Yes, she said, ‘vingt-trois heures’ meant 2300 hours, yes, there would be a Lysander landing to pick him up – if all went as arranged – to take him back to England. No, she had not seen a pick-up like this before, only heard of them. Clear and still, the frosty chill of the half-moon night Mick found a mercy as Jacqueline set them a punishing pace down narrow lanes, through hedges, over fences, across fields, two bridges and a ford, after about four miles, Mick estimated, the luminous dial of his wristwatch reading 2250. Yes, there should be members of the Resistance in the area, she said; they would signal the aircraft with lights and take supplies the Lysander brought from England: Mick was a ‘trade’.
As to his expected ride, Mick had only ever seen aircraft recognition diagrams of the Westland Lysander, a sturdy-looking craft but verging on ugly: A single-engined transport, its high sparred wing up on this great hefty fixed uncarriage made it look to Mick a cross between a giant gull and a draught horse.
Yet now his stomach tingled and tightened as he perceived a human figure standing silently by the side of the path just ahead. The metallic shick of a weapon cocking back confirmed it. Mick checked his watch. It read 2255. Jacqueline slowed their pace.
‘Bonsoir,’ she said evenly.
‘Bonsoir,’ gruffed the figure. ‘Qui êtes vous?’
‘Je suis Jacqueline Orval. Et un ami.’ She halted them a few feet before their questioner, a large man in a heavy coat and beret, the muzzle of what looked to Mick like a British ‘Sten’ sub-machine gun pointed to one side, off it the slightest glint of the moon.
‘Ah oui,’ said the man – his tone had softened. ‘On a appris les tristes nouvelles de ton père. Je suis désolé, mademoiselle.’
‘Merci, monsieur.’
‘Il sera vengé. Alors. Suivez-moi, s’il vous plaît.’
They followed the man through a farm gate, which he closed behind them, then across a flat field in complete silence until, after a hundred yards or so, he sided, ‘Restez ici,’ an emphatic gesture with the Sten gun to their present position, and continued on without them.
In their first prolonged stillness since setting out, between the sound of their breaths Mick caught another sound. A sound that electrified him as, in the instant he heard it, he realised he hadn’t truly thought he would. Yet he heard it: The sound of an approaching aircraft. Distant. But definite. He checked his watch: It read 2259.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ he released. ‘He’s even on time.’ Though now Mick turned to the girl. ‘You could come with me.’
‘Non,’ came her reply, resolute, the hum of an aero engine now thickening. ‘It is wonderful of you, Mick, that you should offer this to me, mais non.’
‘But what will you do?’
‘I am Française,’ she said. ‘This is my home.’
He was just about to speak again when a light pierced the darkness – a hand-torch not fifty yards off. Then another, and another, and another, now a score of them forming two parallel lines into the distance down the field. Peering left and right, then behind them, Mick saw that he and the girl were, in fact, surrounded by the French Resistance.
‘Le couteau,’ she said over the intensifying radial burr.
‘Eh?’ Mick returned, straining to catch sight of the surely black-painted aircraft in the half-moon sky.
‘The knife, Mick. You still have it, yes?’
‘The dagger?!’ he turned to her with a jolt.
She nodded silently.
‘Yes I still have it…’ – The thing was safely sheathed and buttoned inside a pocket of his denim jacket: Having used it that morning to cut down his flying boots into RAF escape kit ‘shoes’, he sure as shit hadn’t been about to leave it lying around.
‘Oui. The dagger. Would you permit me to keep it, Mick?’
‘Jacqueline…’ He yearned for the proper words… With the Lysander by its sound on very definite approach he yearned in vain: ‘Jacqueline, if it hadn’t been for that rotten bloody pistol, your father…’
She stopped him with gentle fingertips to his lips. ‘You know I do not believe it your fault, Mick… yet if you must believe it, then do this one thing for me. Please.’
The Lysander was a resonant riot overhead. About a hundred feet up its wing cut across the half-moon, Mick following its flight on down the field, a glimmer of moonlight on the upper surface of the wing as it lifted into climbing turn. He spun back to her. ‘Girl, the Gestapo’ll come looking for you just as soon as they go through the town records after…’ he cut himself short, ‘after today… And you want me to leave you behind with a British Commando dagger for them to find on you?!’
Her shoulders squared at him. ‘Oui.’
‘Why?!’
‘Because I am at war.’
As the Lysander banked broadly back around, audibly throttling off in its descent to the lights on the field, Mick considered this Jacqueline girl… This outstanding young lady who just yesterday had seen her beloved country on the verge of liberation, then not, and who, because she had then saved his lousy skin, had this day buried her father. Hearing the unmistakable landing bump of the Lysander not far beyond them, Mick unbuttoned his jacket pocket, and drew out the sheathed weapon. ‘It’s the least I can do,’ he said as he handed it to her. He watched her unsheath it, consider its slender blade and handle, touch its razor edge and point. ‘It’s meant for stabbing,’ he said, ‘and throwing too, I think.’
‘Then I will learn to throw it.’
Over her shoulder he could now quite clearly make out the silhouette of the aircraft taxiing towards them past the lights all up the field. Its engine grew louder and louder as it neared until, at around thirty yards off and in near profile to them, it came to rest, human silhouettes rushing in towards it as its engine idled. One climbed like a monkey up to what seemed a rear cockpit on the thing, opened it, passed down several objects to others, jumped down again and all were away, except for one now bolting directly head-on. Panting heavily as he reached Mick and the girl, it was their guide, Sten gun still brandished.
‘Venez vite!!’ he hoarsed, Mick chasing the girl in the Frenchman’s wake back to the plane. The noise terrific as they reached it, they drew up aft of its enormous port wheel spat and high wing, the Frenchman gesturing urgently with the Sten up to the still open rear cockpit. Leading the ten or so feet up to it was a fixed ladder curved to the fuselage, Mick clasping a metal rung. He angled back to the Frenchman, who quick-saluted him. Mick returned it, and faced the girl. She leant in to him, shouted something in his ear. In the sea of noise, he shouted hopelessly back. There was a moment’s stillness between them before she kissed him firmly on the lips – with warmth, and intent – and was gone.
Mick took a breath, climbed the ladder, saw the leather helmet and goggles of the pilot craned back towards him, orange-lit instrument panel dials beyond. Mick dropped into the rearward-facing seat awaiting him, tried like mad to pull the perspex cage of the canopy back and shut, managed it, locked it. The noise now physical pain in his ears, the pilot opened the throttle fully wide, Mick fighting not to be thrown fully forward in his seat as they accelerated away. He saw one light flash past, then another, felt the aircraft lift, and they were airborne, two distinct lines of lights falling behind, then just pin-pricks, then just one, then none, now only faint moonlight on fields, on forest, a glint off a river. Untangling then clipping up his safety harness, he then padded the near-total darkness of the cockpit for the leather helmet that should be there, found it, pulled it on; anything to muffle the awful noise in his ears. With blessed relief he secured it snugly down over them, its oxygen mask dangling to one side, no oxygen supply cord attached but the radio cord was. Clipping the mask across his face, he flicked its ‘snout’ switch to ‘Intercom’.
Ghosts of the Empire Page 18