The Death of the Fronsac_A Novel

by Neal Ascherson

  The Commandant pulled a face. He didn’t seem much discomposed. He ordered coffee on the room telephone, and, while we waited, we caught up on my war, his war.

  ‘No, the base is closed of course. My only ship on the Clyde now is Fronsac. That’s why I am here, in this hotel full of drunken Brits and their girls, eating the lamentable food of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway.’

  He and the French consul were waiting to perform a final, doleful act. This was to take formal possession of the remains of Fronsac’s crew. The wreck’s forward accommodation was being opened up, and whatever was found would be delivered to French care. Meanwhile, caskets had been ordered. A small ceremony would follow when they were brought ashore and handed over to the Consul as the representative of France.

  ‘Ketling will call me when they are ready. You remember him, naturally. Me, I can’t like him; there’s something... snake-like there. But, as everybody is saying, he has turned out outstanding at this job, exceptional even. Did you know that he is planning to lift the whole wreck in one piece? Ketling goes around saying that if he brings it off, he will be famous.’

  It was half an hour before the coffee appeared. The silver jug was splendid, but the coffee was lukewarm and tasted of chicory. While le Gallois spat and grumbled, I took the first Paris letter out of my briefcase.

  Le Gallois read it. He lay back in his armchair and gave me that strange stare, with dilated pupils, which I had seen before.

  ‘Shoosky, my dear, this is a letter for me as well as you. Thank you for showing it to me. But I should have foreseen it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Let me tell you about Jean-Marie Guennec. He went back to France and joined Vichy; he rallied to that pathetic old shipwreck, our Marshal Pétain. You remember all that. And in the Vichy Navy’s legal branch, he even helped to draw up the indictment of General de Gaulle as a traitor.’

  I must have looked shocked. The Commandant laughed at my expression. ‘I mean, you must understand, Jean-Marie is not pro-German, not a Nazi. No, he is just an ambitious imbecile, brought up in a Catholic-Royalist family in some mucky backwoods. Anyway, soon the wind changed. The Americans were in Algeria; Germany was going to lose the war. Oh-oh, Jean-Marie! It’s time to invent a new past, in case the Gaullists and Communists are unkind to you after the Liberation!’

  ‘He turned his coat again?’

  ‘Not exactly. But as the Allies landed in 1944, he made discreet contact with the Resistance, sacked one or two real Fascists in his office. And after Vichy collapsed, he denounced many of his own colleagues to de Gaulle’s security men. Before they could denounce him!’

  The Commandant laughed again. ‘But here comes the really shameless bit. You remember how the French fleet at Toulon scuttled itself, when the Germans occupied southern France in 1942? Well, Guennec is claiming now that he helped to organise it all from his navy office. It was he who sent secret messages encouraging the ships’ captains. It was he who guaranteed that they would not be arrested. It was he who had the German naval mission’s telephone disconnected. But no, sorry, it absolutely wasn’t him. Several of those Toulon officers are old friends of mine. The truth is that Guennec didn’t even know the scuttling was going to happen.’

  ‘So this letter...’

  ‘But exactly! Captain Guennec steps forward as the backroom Resistance hero, and then as the righteous avenger hunting down collaborators in the navy. But, Shoosky, I am one of the people who knows his true story very well. He has obviously got hold of the crazy Kellerman confession I once showed you. And that tells me he is going to suggest that – because I knew you and that Melville family – I was implicated somehow in a plot to sink the Fronsac and then cover up the conspiracy. So you, poor Shoosky, must be destroyed too. But only as a way of getting to his real target. Which is me.’

  ‘Are you worried?’

  ‘No. It’s disgusting but not serious. There’s a lot of this shit flying round in France, and Guennec – well, in reality he has his back to the wall. Too many people know his ‘patriot’ story is a fabrication. Sooner or later, he’s doomed.’

  Le Gallois slowly shook his head. ‘The only thing that worries me is the Kellerman paper, that so-called confession. Evidently, Guennec has read it. But that means that somebody in our intelligence services is helping him; otherwise he would never have known it existed. That’s bad news. Well, bad for you. Me, I can deal with them. But if the French spooks get interested in Shoosky again and pass the file on to les Anglais – their famous secret service – then who would protect you?’

  I told him that I had applied for resettlement in Britain.

  ‘Not wise! Seems I am always telling you to run away, escape. But you’d be safer in Canada. Or, better still, your Poland? Surely it can’t be so bad there.’

  *

  In the train to Greenock, I wondered what I would find. For nearly eighteen months, I had heard nothing from Helen. Christmas cards had reached me from Union Street twice, in Holland and then, only ten days ago, in Germany.

  Mrs Melville’s cards hoped I was safe and warm; in Scotland there were shortages but victory was on the way. Was there anything they could send me? Jackie’s last card said she was planning to ask for a job after university in a fishery research station. She said that she was studying hard but the house was awful noisy. It ended: ‘Mother sends love’. So not in Canada?

  Helen opened the door with one hand. The other was holding the baby against her shoulder. ‘Meet Major Mike,’ she said to him, and to me, ‘Meet Mister Hugh Douglas.’ A big, heavy baby, amazed to see me. ‘Well, he’s a wee bit over a year old now. Aren’t ye?’ She kissed him and then me. Her hair had grown long and her cheeks had hollowed; she was thinner, but she gave me a huge, pleasant smile. I thought resentfully: like the smile you give to a favourite uncle.

  Helen followed me into the kitchen, as Mrs Melville put her arms round me. No kiss, but a sharp, measured squeeze. I studied Jackie as she stood up from her jotters and books and came round the table. Almost as tall as Helen, a face less angular, breasts... I would not have recognised her on the street. Still wearing glasses, which she now took off. Large, sceptical grey eyes, black brows.

  Her kiss and embrace were passionate. ‘I’ve missed you, Uncle Mike, so I have. I was that feared the Germans would get you; I was cutting out the war maps in the papers to see where you were. Was I not?’

  ‘Aye, she was!’ said the others in chorus. They all looked at me in fond surprise, as if I were a purse left on the bus and unexpectedly returned by Lost Property.

  Tea was herring fillets grilled in oatmeal. I had never quite forgotten that taste and ate slowly. But by the time we had finished, Helen’s baby had grown tired and began to girn. ‘I’ll just put him down. Don’t start without me.’ Start what? I looked at the three women. Mrs M was expressionless. Jackie grinned at me and poured tea.

  When Helen came back, it was Jackie who sat very upright in her chair and said: ‘There’s some things want straightened out here. When we knew you were coming, we thought: this is the moment. Mike is the missing piece. We’ve to talk about my dad.’

  ‘No need for this,’ Mrs Melville said. ‘It can end in tears.’

  ‘Who knows what? We are none of us saying. You two, Mum and Mike, know some things, but I’ve no way to tell how much. It’s just... ridiculous.’

  A pause. ‘Okay,’ said Jackie, ‘I’ll begin. I’m in touch with my dad now. Did you know that? He was waiting for me at the station one morning, a few months back. “D’ye no ken yer ain faither? I’m no deid, Jackie.” I says: “Father, I know that fine. How are you keeping?” So he tells me he’s working just across the water from us, on the wreck of the French ship. He’s chief salvage engineer. Seen him three more times since; he comes through to the station and waits on me. He’s saying: “I’ll send a boat for ye, come and watch what we do.”’

  Mrs Melville set her tea cup down and pursed her lips.

  ‘Young lad
y, your trouble is you collect secrets and then can’t keep them. Don’t think I didn’t know all about that. Your father and I have been in contact for a long while. On and off, that is. He sent me a letter from Rosyth in wartime, and then I agreed to meet him in Glasgow when this job on the wreck began. That’s when he told me he was going to find you, Jackie. I said to him that was about the worst idea possible, dangerous and upsetting, too. But he wouldn’t be told.’

  Helen said: ‘I’m hearing stuff I never knew, and I don’t want to know. You all lied to me. Who d’ye think I am, some sort of daft evacuee woman with a baby and a mind the size of a peanut? Mike, you lied to me, telling me Johnston was away at sea. And, ach, Jackie, how could you be with your mother all these months and seeing your dad and no telling me, not a word? Yer ain mother? Ye’re just dead selfish and cold, nae normal feelings, so ye are.’

  Mother and daughter were both crying now. Mrs M started to say that she had warned us it would end in tears, but I interrupted her. I said: ‘Listen! Helen, Jackie. It’s not over. Now we all know where Johnston is, but nobody must give him away. Which of you has learned his new name?’

  There was no answer. Three stubborn women looked back at me. Helen wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Jackie wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Mrs M stirred her tea.

  ‘Johnston has to stay dead, understand. The salvage man has to be somebody you never met before. All right, I tell you his name: he is Mr Ketling.’

  ‘Alex Ketling! And he’s grown a wee red beard.’ Jackie sounded defiant. Her grandmother looked at her and looked away again.

  ‘Now I explain why it has to stay a secret.’

  I didn’t go into all the details and names. But I described how the police and French intelligence were still looking for Nazi agents who they thought had blown up Fronsac. They were after me, for no good reason, and I might have to disappear. But if they thought Johnston – their first suspect – was still alive, then they would come after everyone else who might have helped or hidden him.

  ‘That means every one of you. Well, maybe not Helen so much; she was in Canada. But now, as from today, we are all in this together, hiding a wanted man. So we have to keep the secret, for our own sakes.’

  ‘What about my son’s sake? You speak about him as if he were guilty. But there’s no a scrap of evidence that he would ever do such a dreadful thing. You have no right even to hint that he could. So you can just leave this house!’

  I kept silent. Helen went round the table and took the older woman’s hand: ‘No, Mabel, give us all a break. He’s only saying what others are saying; he’s never saying he believes it. I’m not in the know about what went on after the sinking. But I’d guess that if it weren’t for Mike, Johnston wouldnae even be in the land of the living. Am I no right?’

  *

  I stayed in the spare room upstairs, where I had slept before. It was convenient: le Gallois had invited me to the handing over of the crew’s remains, down at Princes Pier two days later.

  It was January, but the house seemed warmer than I remembered. On the second night, Helen slipped into the room while I still had the light on, leaving the door slightly ajar. ‘In case wee Shuggie wakes.’ She sat on the edge of the bed. I wasn’t sure what she wanted. She seemed not to be sure either.

  ‘Got a ciggie?’

  ‘Started again?’

  ‘Nobody’s smoking in this house now. But it’s the sight of you puts me in the mood.’

  She fetched a soap dish for an ashtray, and we lit up and quietly talked.

  ‘You’ll be going home soon. When are ye away?’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘But everyone else, the Yanks, the Free French, even the Italian prisoners is going home. What’s wrong with Poland?’

  ‘The Russians are there.’

  ‘So what’s so bad about that? They’ll be wanting home to Russia soon, just like you want home to Poland.’

  ‘Not so easy, Helen. Talk about something else.’

  ‘Okay, tell me about Johnston. Was I right, you saved his life and hid him? Why did you do that?’

  ‘I don’t know why. Don’t even like him... perhaps because he was on the run, he was alone.’

  ‘Was it for me?’

  I put my hands gently round her strong neck. ‘No. I think about you so often, but not then. Like I said before I went to the Invasion, don’t try to see him again.’

  ‘I never thought about you for a whole year. But here you are back, the only person round here I’m not feared of. Wouldn’t say I trusted you, though. Huh, did you not tell me Johnston was at sea? Liar!’

  She lay down beside me, and I kissed her. I could smell the baby on her skin, but when she pulled her nightdress off, I forgot about it.

  Before she went back to her room, she leaned over me and whispered ‘Old times, eh?’ But it had been different. She was softer, less playful. And at one moment she suddenly pulled up her knees, covered her eyes and made a sound: the despairing groan of a woman cornered by an enemy. Never before, with me. Was it Craig who had shown her how to get there?

  *

  The ceremony was not grand. A picket boat came across from the Tail of the Bank to where we stood, lined up on the quay. Le Gallois was back in uniform, and I noticed that his heavy chest had acquired more medal ribbons.

  French naval ratings with black armbands shouldered two coffins up the weed-slippery steps and laid them before the Consul. Only two caskets, for twenty-eight dead men?

  A woman officer marched up and presented the Consul with two folded tricolours, which he spread over the coffins. As she saluted, I recognised the Martine who had recently had more than enough in the Central Hotel. She gave no sign of recognising me.

  Mr Alexander Ketling had followed the escort up the steps. He was wearing a black tie, and a blue suit which went strikingly with his new red beard. Bugles rang out. He took his hat off, showing pale scalp through thinning ginger hair. I kept behind the rank of French officials and edged away from him, but it was impossible not to glance at his face as the sailors gently handled the coffins into the hearse.

  I thought: ‘Here, passing you, are the bones of men whose death you must have brought about, whether by criminal negligence or on purpose.’ But this Mr Ketling was clenching his jaw, simulating Churchillian sorrow. ‘We have to endure our grievous losses with courage and renewed resolve...’ that would have been the caption to his photograph.

  As the hearse bumped slowly towards the dock gates, I turned away to seek the Commandant. I suggested a drink at the Bay over in Gourock, after the Consul’s party had left. As he nodded, somebody else nudged me from behind.

  ‘You’ll be away back to your own country now.’ I couldn’t tell whether Ketling meant it as a question or a suggestion. Walking away from him, I headed after the hearse.

  *

  The Commandant slapped the mahogany bar with affection. ‘Our last time. I mean goodbye time, Shoosky. Day after tomorrow, I will be in Paris.’

  He looked around. Once seething with men from half a dozen navies, the Bay Hotel lounge was almost empty. A few civilians sat at the tables with beer, but le Gallois and I were alone at the bar. I saw the vacant armchairs where Helen – trim in her blue tunic – had once offered me a Camel. No sign in the bar of Martine, or of any other woman. Scotland was reverting to normal.

  ‘Only two caskets?’

  ‘Well, they tell me there was nothing much there. Don’t forget how bad the fire was before she sank, my God. I imagine they just filled the coffins with whatever they could.’

  I thought of Dougie the undertakers’ man, at Johnston’s ‘funeral’.

  ‘Anyway, Shoosky, I’m tired of half-mast flags, coffins, writing letters to widows. I’m tired of the sea. Lovely men I knew, strong, funny men. One, ten, a hundred of them, all dissolved into the ocean like pinches of salt.’

  He looked down into his whisky. ‘You don’t know how many ships of our little Greenock navy we lost out there in the Atl
antic. The submarines, the brave little corvettes. Alysse, Mimosa, Aconit. Well, Aconit survived. She sank two U-boats in twelve hours. Even les Anglais said it was a record.’

  ‘The town will miss you.’

  ‘Ha! Certainly not! The mothers of Greenock will be dancing. They no longer have to go looking for their daughters in those cosy little train compartments, in the railway carriages parked for repair behind the station. Yes, I knew where to find the boys when a ship had to put to sea in a hurry.’

  Before we left, he wrote an address on the page of a notebook. ‘My wife and Françoise are there already. Some day you must come. You must sample the life of a lazy Provençal seed merchant who sits in the sun, reading the Fables of la Fontaine because they tell me more about our politics than the newspapers.’

  The scrap of paper was thrust into my tunic pocket. ‘And you, when are you going home? I see everyone is asking you Poles the same question. But evidently there’s no easy answer.’

  ‘I am thinking about it.’

  ‘Stop thinking. Do something before it’s too late, before Guennec and the other silly bloodhounds catch up with you. Start a farm in Australia. Get married. Shoosky, you are such a loner, so passive, always waiting for that wind from the sea to make up your mind for you. But these times are deadly dangerous for a promeneur solitaire. Join something – somebody.’

  We paid and went to the door.

  ‘Such a pity that she drowned, that handsome woman of yours that Guennec used to fancy. Do you still miss her? Where I come from, the old men in the café say: “Young widows are best!”’

  *

  It was true that everyone was asking me – asking us – when we were going home. The mood in Scotland had changed. Once heroic guests when we stood alone with Britain against Hitler, we had become guests who had overstayed their welcome. In Edinburgh and in Glasgow, I had seen ‘Poles Go Home’ painted on walls over the fading ‘Second Front Now’ slogans. Painted by the same people, I suspected.

  At Union Street, I read the papers carefully. There had been a packed-out rally in the Usher Hall in Edinburgh, where a Church minister had been cheered as he abused the Poles as scroungers and Papists. They were hanging on in Scotland to take the jobs in mining and steelmaking which belonged to our men coming back from the war. Didn’t the Poles have their own country to go to? They should be rounded up and sent home.