by John Harris
‘The Germans are here,’ Neville whispered in a panic.
Reinach nodded. ‘But not on this side, monsieur. Leave it to me. I’ve worked here on and off for years. Repairing furniture. Replacing panelling. At the moment I’m repairing the Baronne’s bed. The de Fragers have fornicated in it, slept in it and died in it for three hundred years. No one will question me.’
They followed him between tall old outhouses until they were standing beneath the great building which reared up above them with steep roofs, turrets and chimneys, on a small mound that rose gently to the front and fell away steeply at the back, so that there was an extra floor behind and below the rest of the house. In front of them stone arches were stuffed with winter hay, at which Reinach dragged so that a whole wedge of it, tied with string, came out. Behind, mere was a narrow gap against the wall like a passage.
‘We’re not a wine region,’ he whispered. ‘But if we’re wealthy we still have cellars to store it.’
He slipped behind the hay and motioned to them to follow. A yard or so along, there was a great square door of thick worn planks that hung awkwardly from a crumbling pillar. Beyond it was an arch and another broken door, and beyond this a vaulted cellar containing empty wine vats on gantries. Stonemason’s tools lay about, together with square blocks of stone.
‘It goes right back under the chateau,’ Reinach explained. ‘With half a dozen smaller ones leading off. They stuffed the harvest in here when the Germans came in 1870 and 1914. In 1940 they were too damned fast. You’ll be safe here.’
He disappeared, closing the door behind him, and they sat down in the darkness to wait. Neither of them spoke, both of them conscious of the emptiness of their stomachs and the dry dusty atmosphere of the cellar. After a while, they saw a glimmering of light between the cracks in the door and stood up as it opened. Reinach was the first to appear, followed by an old manservant in a green baize apron and black alpaca jacket carrying an acetylene lamp. They saw, now that the light fell on Reinach’s face, that he was a large squarely-built man in blue smock and trousers, with a flat cap sideways on the back of his head. He gave them a wide grin that showed a mouth only half-filled with teeth. Behind him was a tiny woman withered as an old apple but with outrageously red hair. She was dressed in what appeared to be a long sheepskin coat. With her was an old man wearing a toupee, his thin frame bidden in a shabby overcoat.
‘Madame la Baronne,’ Reinach introduced and the old woman held out her hand.
‘You must kiss it,’ Reinach whispered, and Neville bent over the withered claw.
‘You’re welcome here,’ the old woman said in a cracked ancient voice. ‘The de Fragers have lived here for three hundred years.’
She gestured with her thin fingers, quite unperturbed, as though she received escaping aircrew every day of her life. ‘My great-grandson, the Baron, should be here to welcome you, too,’ she went on, ‘but he’s away on business at the moment. He’s a good de Frager, however, in spite of his youth - not like some who carry titles these days. The Vicomtesse de la Chattel at Bourg was once a chorus girl and has a lover who works the black market. She’s even a collaborator and what can one say about someone who collaborates?’
She sniffed as though she’d caught the whiff of a bad smell. ‘The old aristocracy’s been infiltrated by the middle class, of course, and lack of money has kept most of us from shutting out the vulgar, but this family at least has escaped the need to “manure the land” with moneyed marriages. Our title dates from the Monarchy; not the Empire, which doesn’t even impress the servants. The people one sees in the salons nowadays are either nobodies or Germans. Three times I’ve seen those filth in my country. They’re upstairs in my salon now.’
The old manservant produced cheese and a bottle of wine and, turning her back abruptly, the old woman headed for the door. Reinach paused and winked. ‘She’s not such a cold fish as she looks,’ he whispered as she disappeared. ‘Look, I’ll show you something.’
Deep in the cellar, he indicated an arch almost blocked in by a half-built wall. Beyond the old stones that were being used, in the light of his torch they could see paintings stacked one against another in the dusty shadows. Alongside them were vases, glassware, chairs and roped trunks.
‘The Baronne’s,’ he said. ‘Her husband collected them for her. But she cuckolded him with the old boy with the wig. He’s an artist and she was his mistress. He used to come to copy the old masters and he had dozens in his attic in the end because they were at it for years; every time the Baron went out, he dropped his brushes and they popped into bed.’ Reinach gave a little cackling laugh. ‘When the Baron finally died and they were free to do as they pleased, they were too old to enjoy it any more.’
Neville indicated the paintings. ‘What are they doing down here?’
‘When the Germans arrived in 1940, they made it an Occupation law that museums weren’t to be abused or occupied, so everybody grabbed everything they valued, declared it a treasure, and stuck it in the chateau so the Germans wouldn’t steal it. But they occupied the place anyway, in the end, and when that fat idiot, Goering, started grabbing everything we couldn’t get the stuff back.’
The empty mouth widened. ‘When this lot didn’t arrive on time, we grabbed our chance and stuffed everything that was worth anything down here and filled the chateau with rubbish. Théyras the mason’s building the wall. One more day and it’ll be bricked up, and then they’ll never know there’s anything behind it. They won’t even know the paintings existed.’
The following day seemed interminable. Urquhart knew his temperature had risen and the pain in his foot now was agony. Neville suggested taking the boot off but, guessing that they hadn’t finished their wanderings, Urquhart refused in case he couldn’t get it back on and spent the day in a blur of pain.
As the faint cracks of light they could see through the door disappeared with evening, Reinach returned and they slipped out of the cellar into the darkness of the courtyard. There was no sign of life as they edged between the outbuildings into the park.
It was difficult following Reinach among the trees and Urquhart kept blundering blindly into bushes. They seemed to have walked right round the village, with his mind only a red blur, when they breasted the brow of a hill and saw a faint chink of light below them and made out a huddle of ancient buildings surrounded by a windbreak of horse chestnuts.
As they began to descend, it started to rain. At first it was only light but it soon grew heavier until it plastered their hair over their eyes and they were spitting it from their mouths.
‘Mon dieu,’ Reinach spluttered. ‘Cest comme une vache qui pisse!’
Vaguely aware of a dog barking, Urquhart saw a woman muffled against the weather, a man’s heavy coat over her shoulders, a man’s hat pulled down over her eyes, a man’s boots on her feet. Then he was being pushed blindly up a ladder into a loft full of straw. Conscious of the drip of rain through the roof and the warmth generated by the cows below him, he felt the place whirling about him and, putting his head back in the straw, he quietly and entirely without fuss slid into unconsciousness.
4
For a while Neville stood staring down at the man lying in the dusty straw.
Urquhart was good-looking in a strong, ragged way. His nose was straight and his jaw-line firm but he was powerful-looking rather than handsome with his fair hair and ruddy complexion, like someone who enjoyed being out of doors. He was normally a man with a great deal of energy but he always used it sparingly in a stolid, deliberate manner so that he never seemed to be in a hurry, and at that moment he was still, his eyes closed, his muscular body curiously helpless-looking.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ The voice that came from the shapeless bundle of men’s clothes alongside Neville was light and he realized that the woman who’d met them wasn’t as old as he’d thought.
Then, as she lifted the lantern she carried, the light fell on her face and he saw even that she was little more than
a girl, with smooth cheeks and a clear skin under the ugly man’s hat she wore. Her hair, damp and lank from the rain, hung over her face, but as she lifted her head he saw clear unafraid eyes staring at him from the shadows.
‘Is he ill?’
‘No,’ Neville said. ‘I think it’s his foot. He damaged it.’
An older woman appeared at the top of the ladder, a woman with greying hair and red cheeks who looked as though she might be the girl’s mother.
‘He’s hurt,’ the girl said. ‘He’ll have to come inside the house.’
The older woman said something under her breath, gesturing fiercely, and the girl turned on her. ‘He can’t stay here,’ Neville heard her whisper.
It took some doing to get Urquhart down the ladder again but, with help from the girl, Neville and Reinach managed it. He showed no sign of consciousness as they carried him
into the house and up the stairs and laid him on one of the beds. The older woman bent over him to stare more closely.
‘He’ll be all right,’ she said shortly. ‘He looks tough to me, that one.’
Neville nodded. ‘I suppose he is,’ he agreed. ‘He was pretty fit. He was a regular soldier who transferred to the air force.’
‘Are you a regular soldier?’
Neville was faintly hurt at the thought that he even looked like a Regular. ‘Not me,’ he said firmly.
The girl had managed to unzip Urquhart’s flying boot and pull it off, ‘His foot’s swollen,’ she said. ‘How did he manage to walk?’
Looking at the bruised and darkened foot, Neville couldn’t imagine, but it seemed typical of Urquhart with his strong hard body that he had.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘He did it as we parachuted from the aeroplane.’
‘One thing,’ Reinach said. ‘When he’s better, we can get you away quickly. You speak French. Most of them can’t.’
‘When can we set off?’
The girl turned. Still bundled in the old clothes, she was bent again over Urquhart, unfastening his shirt at the neck and loosening his battledress. ‘Not yet,’ she said shortly.
As she pulled the blanket up and arranged an eiderdown covered with pieces of patchwork material, Neville leaned forward.
‘When then?’
‘A week or two. Perhaps more.’
The first thing Urquhart became aware of as he came round was that it was daylight and Neville was bending over him, looking anxious. Then he realized a doctor was holding his foot, that he was in a bed, and that there were two women watching too; one an older woman with greying hair and red cheeks; the other a girl, whom he recognized at once as the woman he’d seen the night before. She had a splendid figure, a straight back and thick chestnut hair, and she was smiling reassuringly to show even white teeth.
‘This is Doctor Mouillet,’ she said in English. ‘He say you have some broke bones in your foot.’
The doctor smiled apologetically. ‘You must keep it very still for a day or two,’ he said. ‘There is no plaster in Occupied France for French fractures so I have had to- bandage it. When the swelling goes down I’ll tighten it so you can put it to the ground.’
Urquhart frowned. ‘How long will it be before I can walk on it. I want to get over the frontier and back to England.’
The doctor straightened up and moved to the door with the women. There’ll be no walking for you for a while,’ he said. ‘Perhaps in three weeks you’ll be able to walk just a little, but certainly not as far as the frontier.’
When the doctor had gone, Urquhart stared furiously at Neville.
‘I’m staying too,’ Neville reassured him quickly. He had been wondering all night how Urquhart with his background, his simpler education, his regular service and North Country upbringing, would accept the enforced stay in France and the need to adapt himself to foreign patterns and culture, and he had decided it was up to him to see him through. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘we’re members of the same crew.’
Urquhart decided he sounded like a boy trying to play the game according to the rules he’d learned at public school. I think you’re barmy,’ he said. ‘If I were you, I’d shove off.’
‘And leave you here?’
‘It’s your job to escape.’
‘Together. Well do it together.’
Oh, Jesus, Urquhart thought. I really am stuck with this one. ‘I’d be all right,’ he growled. I’d cope.’
‘We’d be better together. I know France, remember. I spent a month here every year of my life.’
‘And I spent nine months here soldiering in 1939 and ‘40,’ Urquhart snapped back. ‘You learn a lot about a country that way, especially when you’re running for your bloody life.’
Neville was a little disconcerted by his ingratitude but before he could say anything the girl reappeared. She now wore a bright flowered dress, a spotless apron and what looked like her best shoes with high heels. She carried a tray which she put down on Urquhart’s knees, Behind her the older woman carried a large coffee pot.
‘For the English the bacon,’ she announced, her Rs like rolling drums. ‘This is not usual in France, you understand - especially these days when the meat ration is eighty-eight grammes and it is a public holiday if you get it - but you will be hungry.’
The bacon turned out to be ham, but there was an egg -undercooked in the French fashion but an egg nevertheless - and toast cut from a baguette and shrivelled almost black in the oven.
‘We do not have tea,’ the older woman said. ‘But we have butter and honey, which are very good for the digestion.’
The sleep had sent Urquhart’s temperature down and he tucked into the food with enjoyment.
The two women studied him from the end of the bed. ‘I am Marie-Claude Defourney,’ the girl said. ‘This is my mother, Madame Lamy du Roux. When you saw me last night, I was in my disguise. We cannot get new clothes under the Occupation, of course, and my cousin in Dijon, who grew out of his at eighteen, even had to join the police force to get some more. Today I am très swing and in my battle-dress.’
She was tall for a French girl with firm breasts and a brown skin and she was clearly independent, intelligent and sturdy-minded, with a vibrant personality and more education than her surroundings might suggest. ‘There is also a dog outside,’ she went on. ‘Called Elsie. She was brought here as a puppy but she spends most of her time at the Dréos’ forge down the lane. Sergeant Dréo is the smith. He has a grandson, Jean-Frederic, who is fourteen, who takes her with him wherever he goes. He has taught her to sit up when we say ‘Winston Churchill’ and ‘Charles de Gaulle’ and to growl at ‘Hitler’. She also barks at German cars but I think this is because she barks at all cars. You must write down your names because sometimes we can send messages to England. There is a radio operator in Rolandpoint nearby.’
She glanced round the room and for the first time Urquhart became aware of the vast feather bed and an enormous Norman wardrobe with a mirror where he could see himself, burly and square-faced, his chin dark with reddish bristles. ‘You must forgive the dust,’ she went on. ‘We have had to neglect the house to keep the farm going. We have no man about the place, you see. The 135th Regiment drew its reserves from this district in 1939 and all our young men have disappeared. My husband went with them.’
He didn’t dare to ask where he was and she shrugged. ‘He was killed at Albert in 1940 and my father died last year. Now there are only two of us. Most of the young men who were left escaped to North Africa or to join General de Gaulle. Some have been taken to work in Germany. Some joined the Resistance. I was going to marry one of them. He was killed by the Germans near Suvigny. Twice they’ve destroyed the Resistance in this area.’ She paused and drew a deep breath. ‘You are lucky. One group of Germans has just gone. The others don’t know you, so as soon as you have papers you’ll be safe.’
She had brushed aside her gloom defiantly and, clearly dying for information, was gazing at them with shining eyes. ‘Is it true there are still
cinemas in England?’ she went on quickly. ‘And that the cows are milked by machines and the fields are fertilized not with dung but with scented products made in factories? And what about the Free French ? When will they return to France?’
Urquhart and Neville glanced at each other and she pushed on eagerly. ‘General de Gaulle has promised to drive the Germans from our soil,’ she said. ‘We’ve heard it on the radio. I remember clearly what was said: ‘In this historic year of 1944 we shall bring you tremendous news.’ Doesn’t that mean they’re coming?’
‘I suppose it does.’
‘When do you think they’ll come?’
‘God knows,’ Urquhart said.
‘But you must have seen signs! The troops marching to the ships! The preparations! ‘
‘There are unbelievable precautions,’ Neville pointed out.
She seemed satisfied. ‘Of course. I understand. You have been sworn to silence. But it will be France, won’t it? It can only be France. And all France knows it will be soon. We get many messages.’
‘Who do?’
‘We do. On the radio. From the British Broadcasting. For this area they are always prefaced by the words ‘D’Auguste à César’ and then we know we have to listen. After that there are two lines from La Fontaine that tell us the message is for us.’ Her eyes became sad. ‘That was a long time ago, of course. There have been no messages lately.’
As Urquhart finished eating, they heard a bicycle bell outside and a voice calling. A few moments later the priest appeared in the doorway. Fat, ugly, his eyes hidden by thick pebble glasses, he looked warm with pedalling and there was a rank smell of sweat about him.
‘God shower his blessings on you, my sons!’ he said. ‘I am the Abbé Pol.’ He picked up the paper on which they’d written their names. ‘Neville,’ he said, reading it in the French fashion. ‘Ewer-cue-’art.’
‘Urquhart.’
‘Urk’t?’ The old man’s eyebrows shot up. ‘It is not possible!’
They assured him it was; especially in Scotland where such names originated.