For King and Country

by David Monnery

  And after that they slept, their bodies entwined, with the birds singing overhead. One of them should have been on guard while the other slept, but they were lucky, and neither friend nor foe came upon them. Around noon he woke up to find her looking at him, and this time she came down upon him, enclosing him and swaying above him as he caressed her naked breasts and flanks.

  They slept again, finally waking as the sun went down, and lay for a while in each other’s arms before succumbing to passion once more. Afterwards, lying on the grass with her head in the crook of his arm, Farnham watched the clouds scudding across the darkening sky, thinking that never in his life had he felt so good as he did at that moment. He felt reborn, felt like laughing out loud for joy.

  Instead his stomach rumbled, loud and long.

  ‘You sound as hungry as I feel,’ she said.

  With the light almost gone they made their way down into the valley, heading for the nearest farm. Barking dogs heralded their approach, and a man with a shotgun stood silhouetted in the farmhouse door, but a few words from Madeleine were enough to win them a hastily prepared package of bread and cheese, together with a half-full bottle of white wine. They began consuming this feast as they climbed the other side of the valley, savouring each mouthful as the energy seeped back into their limbs.

  After a couple of hours of working their way across country they found another military road to take them south along the back of a major ridge. The moon had not yet risen, but the sky was as clear as the night before, the vast armada of stars twinkling above the endless slopes of dark and silent trees. Farnham learned that Madeleine’s brother worked for the PTT – the French Post, Telegraph and Telephone Ministry – in St Dié, and that she had become, almost by accident, the liaison between this hotbed of urban resistance and the Maquis in the hills. Her home was in the town, but an aunt who lived in Le Chipal, just below the Maquis camp, provided her with a legitimate reason to travel between the two.

  She asked him what he wanted to do after the war, and he realized that he had no real plans, just odd desires, like the one to visit Italy again. He asked her what she was hoping for. ‘A family,’ she said simply.

  The moon came up, the miles went by. They reached another wide valley – the town of Ste Marie aux Mines, Madeleine said, was just out of sight to their left. After watching the road below for the time it took to eat the rest of their food, they cautiously made their way down, crossed the empty ribbon of tarmac and scaled the other side. They now had less than ten miles to travel, and as they marched down yet another winding track through the trees Farnham tried to shake off the sense that it would soon be over, that he would lose her. This was just the beginning, he told himself, but it didn’t feel that way.

  They were skirting a small, moonlit clearing not much more than a mile from the camp when she reached out to take his arm and bring him to a halt. ‘I shall have to leave again soon after we get there,’ she told him, ‘so that I can be at my aunt’s house before dawn.’ Her arms were around his neck now. ‘And this seems like a good place to say our goodbyes,’ she murmured between kisses.

  They arrived at the camp two hours later, and Yves was woken with the news of their arrival. ‘I was just wondering what to tell London,’ the Maquis leader told Farnham. ‘A plane is coming to collect you on Saturday night, and I didn’t know whether you’d be here to take it.’

  ‘Well, I suppose I am,’ Farnham said. Inside his head a voice was shouting: ‘Fuck the plane! Fuck London! Fuck the war!’

  ‘I must be getting down the hill,’ Madeleine told Yves. ‘Will you walk some of the way with me?’ she asked Farnham.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We’ve become friends,’ she told Yves with a smile.

  Farnham accompanied her to within a stone’s throw of the sleeping village, and after a passionate goodbye kiss watched as she walked away down the path, hair dancing on her shoulders. He had wanted to tell her that he loved her, but some deep fear had held him back.

  For Farnham, the next three days passed by in a whirl. Jules accompanied him on a two-night trip to explore the railway between St Dié and Saale, and they came back with a plan for the simultaneous destruction of five railway and two road bridges, which they thought would effectively halt all military transport on that route for at least a week. It would be put into effect in the days immediately preceding the Allied invasion of the Continent, whenever that might be.

  Arriving back at camp early on the day of his planned departure, he half hoped to find her there waiting, but there wasn’t even a message. He spent the day filling in any last gaps in the training, talking with Yves and saying his goodbyes. Returning to his tent to pack, he found her waiting for him.

  ‘It is against the rules of the unit for a man to have a woman in the camp,’ she told him after they stopped kissing, ‘so we must be quiet.’ And after that there was only the rustle of clothes being removed, the faint swish of their naked bodies on the groundsheet, the whispers of endearment and the low groans of pleasure given and taken.

  All too soon they were getting dressed again, and Henri was outside waiting for him. ‘I love you,’ she whispered as they kissed goodbye, and the words seemed to explode with joy inside him. ‘And I you,’ he told her, and there was a smile in her eyes which he couldn’t help but believe.

  All the way up the hill he could see her in his mind’s eye, standing there saying goodbye, or naked above him in the forest, or her eyes searching his as they had reached climax in the tent not half an hour before. And a mixture of elation and sadness and panic whirled round his brain, and he wanted to insist on staying here in France, but he knew that neither of them knew how to let passion take precedence over duty.

  They reached the meadow on the hilltop. Yves, Farnham and young François stayed beside light A, where the Lysander was supposed to touch down, while Jules, Henri and Jean-Paul carried lights B and C, which would mark the plane’s turning circle, to their positions some six hundred yards away across the grass. The meadow hardly seemed flat enough to Farnham, but the RAF had told him it fell within the specifications.

  François had laid the Eureka-Rebecca beacon beside light A, and was now wearing the S-phone apparatus, the two webbed straps around the neck supporting the set itself, the T-shaped aerial protruding out in front of the young Frenchman’s chest like a stationary propeller. Earphones were clamped around his skull, and while his left hand held the microphone his right jiggled the frequency knob in search of the best reception.

  As they waited Farnham mused that though it was only three weeks since he had landed in this meadow, it felt like months. War distorted time, he decided – days in Italy had seemed like weeks, and the weeks in Ayrshire, in retrospect, seemed like days. Nothing of importance had happened in those weeks, but here his life had changed for ever.

  They heard the plane before they saw it. The homing device in the Eureka-Rebecca set had already told the pilot that this was the right place to land, and François now confirmed on the S-phone that it was safe for him to do so. A few seconds later the Lysander came into view, a dark wedge against the moonlit sky, and then it was bumping safely down about fifty feet past them, before being swallowed in the dark background of the distant trees. A couple of minutes later and it was taxiing back towards them. The pilot turned the plane into the wind and stopped alongside light A, cheerily shouting, ‘All aboard for Blighty.’

  First they had to unload the boxes of new Stens and explosives which Yves had ordered from London, but once this was done Farnham clambered up the metal ladder and into one of the passenger seats behind the pilot. He had a last glimpse of grinning Frenchmen, their arms upraised in farewell, and the plane was surging forward, its wheels bumping wildly on the uneven ground. The eaves of the forest rushed towards them but the Lysander suddenly took to the air, and then there were only trees below. Away to the north a bright-yellow glow marked the St Dié railyards. ‘I’ll be back,’ Farnham murmured to himself.

 
4

  United Kingdom, July–August 1944

  The newspaper which McCaigh had found on the bench at Oxford had a blow-by-blow account of the battle for Caen, which Monty’s 2nd Army had brought to a successful conclusion a couple of days before. Each of the four men read it in turn, and not surprisingly the same thoughts crossed all their minds. Nearly five weeks had now passed since the Allied landings on the Normandy beaches, and the Germans had made them fight for every bloody yard. Maybe this was the battle that heralded a general break-out. And maybe then their time would come.

  Playing silly buggers in the Cotswolds had been bad enough when everyone else was chafing at the bit, but now that the fucking country seemed almost empty of soldiers it seemed like purgatory. Four parties of the British 1 SAS and 2 SAS, and a similar number of the French 3 SAS and 4 SAS, had been dropped into France in the days immediately before and after D-Day, and another half-dozen parties were scheduled to leave in the next week or so, but Farnham’s squadron was not among them. The word from above was that their time would come, but that didn’t make it any easier to answer the question that they seemed to see in everyone’s eyes – what the fuck were they still doing on this side of the bloody Channel?

  For Rafferty, McCaigh and Tobin it was doubtless a lot worse than it was for Farnham. If the promotion to Major was anything to go by, he’d already done one good job in France, while they’d been deafening each other on the firing range, cleaning weapons, cross-country running, and occasionally breaking glasses in the local pub. The announcement, soon after Farnham’s departure, that they were leaving Ayrshire had been greeted with whoops of exultation, but their new home in deepest Gloucestershire didn’t seem much of an improvement. Nearer to France, maybe, but then so was Switzerland.

  All three of them were approaching their weekend leave with feelings of anxiety, though in Ian Tobin’s case the context was likely to be pleasurable. Megan’s letters over the last three months had become increasingly racy, and his thoughts had often returned to the night of the party and the way she had squirmed against him. This time he was prepared, a chemist in Cirencester having obliged. Buying the condoms had been a deeply embarrassing experience – he still blushed whenever he thought about it – but the thought of having to enter a similar shop in Swansea had been incentive enough.

  He had thought long and hard about Megan’s brother and his deserter friends in the black market, and had shared his qualms with both McCaigh and Rafferty. The Londoner had told him it wasn’t worth risking a breach with his girlfriend – ‘There’ll always be shits like that in wars, just like there’ll always be maggots in a rotten apple. If you shop one bunch of the bastards another bunch’ll just pick up the business. It’s not worth it.’ Rafferty, on the other hand, had been full of righteous anger when he heard the story, but then Rafferty seemed to be angry most of the time these days, and Tobin had decided to take McCaigh’s advice.

  Unlike Tobin, McCaigh knew why Rafferty was walking round like a man with multiple toothaches. A couple of weeks after their last leave the two men had got happily drunk together in a Fairford pub, and Rafferty had spilled the whole sad story of his wife’s American boyfriend. It was a plot-line McCaigh had heard more than once over the past couple of years, but that didn’t make it any less sad, and Rafferty obviously had no idea how to deal with the catastrophe which had befallen him. He’d always been such a contented sort of bloke, the kind that things like this weren’t supposed to happen to, and he just couldn’t understand why it had. Time and distance were what he needed, but the fact of the kid put paid to any notion of a complete break, and Rafferty seemed in for a rough ride this coming weekend. He had even asked McCaigh to come to Cambridge with him, but the Londoner had guiltily declined – he had family troubles of his own to sort out.

  He had received three letters from his mother during the last month, which had just about doubled her tally for the war. The SAS men in Gloucestershire were apparently not the only people getting their knickers in a twist at the thought of sitting out the rest of the war. McCaigh’s brother Patrick had apparently been searching high and low for someone to supply him with the false papers he needed to enlist. ‘I’ve never seen him so worked up about something,’ Susan McCaigh had written, adding that she was occasionally tempted to put a bullet through her younger son’s foot with his grandfather’s old Webley, but was frightened of the consequences for the boy’s football career.

  McCaigh smiled to himself and opened his eyes. He looked across at Farnham, who was sitting, eyes closed, with a faint smile playing on his lips. His disposition had changed as radically as Rafferty’s over the last few months, only in the opposite direction. McCaigh didn’t know why, but his best guess was a piece of French skirt. One of those Resistance women from the films, with the beret and the delicious accent and the last-resort Derringer in the garter belt. Ah, France, he thought, come and get me.

  Tobin’s train pulled into Swansea High Street soon after dark, and after eating a quick supper with his parents he walked across town to Megan’s home. Her family were still at the table when he got there, and the food on display looked fit for royalty. ‘It’s our wedding anniversary,’ Megan’s mum explained, ‘and Barry managed to get us something special.’ Their elder son grinned knowingly, just as the younger – seven-year-old Cliff – tipped his dish of custard on to the floor.

  Barry soon made his exit, and Megan’s parents, it soon transpired, were going out for a celebratory drink together. ‘I’m sorry we can’t go out,’ Megan told Tobin once they’d been left holding the baby, ‘but it is their anniversary, and you didn’t give me enough warning you were coming…’

  ‘I couldn’t…’

  ‘I know. And anyway,’ she said, putting her arms round his neck and giving him a kiss, ‘we can have a nice time here, listening to the radio and cuddling on the sofa. Barry left us some beer.’

  ‘Black-market beer, I suppose.’

  ‘It tastes the same. You’re not still upset about that, are you?’

  ‘I just think it’s wrong.’

  She sighed. ‘OK, but can we just enjoy ourselves tonight? Please.’

  He couldn’t resist the fingers massaging the back of his neck. ‘Yeah, of course.’

  And they did, exploring the limits of what was possible given that her mum and dad might arrive back at any moment. Between bouts of ‘canoodling’ – as she liked to call it – they talked about their lives without each other, and it seemed to Tobin that she was getting a lot more out of hers than he was out of his. She taught him a new dance she had learnt – from who, he wondered, but didn’t ask – and they dutifully listened to the nine o’clock news on the radio. ‘The war’ll be over soon,’ she said afterwards, but there didn’t seem much joy in the way she said it.

  At ten-thirty her parents arrived back and Tobin got up to go. ‘I’m working tomorrow,’ Megan told him at the door, ‘but there’s another party in the evening.’ She gently rubbed herself up against him. ‘And maybe we can carry on where we left off at the last one.’

  Tobin walked home through the dark streets torn between desire and a feeling of discontent which he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Why wouldn’t she be happy that the war was ending? They’d known each other since they weren’t much more than kids but sometimes lately she seemed a complete mystery to him. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure he liked her. But one thing he did know – he wanted her more than ever. Walking up his own street he patted the pocket with the packet of johnnies as if it contained a lucky talisman.

  The next morning he helped in the shop for a while, chatting with all the regulars, and then took the bus down to Rhossili and walked along the cliffs above Worm’s Head. A stiff wind was blowing in from the Atlantic, hurrying the clouds across the blue sky, and he felt invigorated, almost purified, as he made his way back to wait for the return bus.

  Back at home he spent an hour bathing and getting himself smartened up. Megan hadn’t told him not to wear his uniform, b
ut he assumed as much, and made the best of what else he had. At ten to seven he left the house and started walking. The johnnies were now sharing his inside jacket pocket with his wallet, and he had to be careful not to pull them out by accident.

  There had been a short shower late in the afternoon and the trees were glistening in the evening sun. Tobin repressed a desire to skip.

  It was one minute past seven when he knocked on the Allchurches’ front door. It opened almost immediately, but not to reveal a dolled-up Megan. Instead, Tobin found himself face to face with a surprised-looking Mr Allchurch. Surprised, and almost hostile. ‘What are you doing here?’ Megan’s father asked.

  ‘We’re going to a party. Is Megan ready?’

  ‘I doubt that,’ Mr Allchurch said, and turned his head. ‘Megan!’ he shouted. ‘He’s here.’

  Somewhere inside the house Tobin could hear a woman crying, but it wasn’t Megan. She was now standing in front of him, arms folded across the overall bib she wore for work. ‘What are you doing here?’ she snapped. The words echoed her father’s, but the tone took no prisoners.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Couldn’t you have climbed down off your high horse just this once?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked, bewildered.

  ‘Are you going to try telling me that you had nothing to do with Barry being arrested?’

  ‘He’s been arrested,’ Tobin repeated stupidly. And then he understood.

  ‘You should be in the films,’ she said angrily.

  ‘Don’t be stupid!’ he shouted back, feeling his own anger rising to match hers. ‘Of course I didn’t!’

  ‘I’m stupid, am I? You told me you wanted to turn him in last time you were here, and the day after you get back they arrest him. Well, it doesn’t take a brainbox to work that one out.’

  He looked at her helplessly. ‘Megan, why would I come to take you to a party if I’d done that?’