“Why did you bring the clothes up here?” asked Myles.
“They were dry.” They damned well weren’t dry, thought Myles, and Hearne knew it as well as he did. He spread his trousers and shirt flap on the wooden floor thoughtfully.
“We’ll sleep well,” Hearne said very clearly in French, and sat down heavily on the nearest bed. It creaked satisfactorily. “There are enough blankets, anyway. We have thirty-six hours for sleep. That should be enough.” He yawned loudly.
Myles finished arranging his clothes and his boots. He looked towards the door and pointed silently. One eyebrow was up.
Hearne nodded. The American sat noisily down on the bed next to Hearne’s and yawned in turn. The two men rolled the blankets tightly, round themselves, and then lay still. The rain had stopped. There was morning sunshine outside the window, and a smooth stretch of blue sky.
When they at last heard the sound of Basdevant’s large feet moving about in the room below, Hearne raised himself on an elbow. He whispered, “We’ll sleep in relays.”
“You can begin. I got some shut-eye yesterday. It is only my feet which worry me. What’s wrong, anyway?”
Hearne considered for a moment. He owed the American a warning. He couldn’t expect any intelligent co-operation if he kept Myles completely in the dark.
“What do you think of all this?” he asked Myles.
“I liked the fire and the food.”
“And Basdevant?”
“He’s a big fellow, very big.”
“That’s just about what I thought.”
The two men looked at each other and grinned.
Hearne said, “To be quite frank, I don’t like it.”
“Strong smell of fish,” agreed Myles. And then he was suddenly serious. “Isn’t that buzzard all right? You should know.”
“I thought I did. He’s certainly the man I was looking for. I got his name from someone reliable.” Or was Fournier reliable? God, nowadays you had even doubts of your own grandmother, Hearne thought. Or was he being too jittery, worrying over trifles, finding suspicions where there should be none? Lack of sleep, probably: perhaps if he got some sleep he would stop seeing mysteries.
The sky outside the window was a pale, ruthless blue.
“Well?” the American asked. “I’m old enough to know.”
The footsteps still moved about downstairs.
Hearne spoke quickly. “This is the place, and that is the man. He’s probably just careless, or simple, or goodnatured. I’m probably dizzy with sleep and cursed with a doubting mind. But, first of all, he let us into the house without proper identification. He seemed eager to get us inside. He was eager to identify himself. He was eager to get down to business. He made all the moves. And then he didn’t like our idea of bringing our clothes up here. It was he who suggested we should dry them at the fire, but he didn’t rush to offer us any others, although he was a good host in every other way. Last of all, he said the tide wouldn’t be right: that was an excuse for a couple of land-lubbers. We seemed that all right, by suggesting something about a hole being knocked in someone’s boat.”
“That explains a lot,” Myles said. “Now I’ll add my nickel’s worth. He lives too damned well. Did you notice the oil he wasted when he fried that fish? I’m telling you there hasn’t been a farm-house in my travels which slopped the oil about that way: And there was butter, even if it did taste like a goat. And cheese, a big one at that. And brandy, and red wine, and good coffee, and cigarettes. It’s what I would call pre-armistice standard. Look, you’ve a farm and the Germans have only started to penetrate your district, but you live more carefully than he does. He’s slap bang beside Saint-Malo, and the Germans have settled nicely into the place by this time: I bet every inch of bread, every spoonful of oil, in the district is noted down in their little black note-books.”
“We are making a nice case out of very little,” Hearne said. “He may smuggle a lot of things in here, by his boat. He seems to enjoy poaching. He may even—” He paused. The room below was silent. There might have been a movement at the foot of the stairs.
Myles had noted it too. “ Sleep,” he whispered.
Hearne added a few snores to that advice. He felt warm and comfortable. The food and wine and brandy were doing their work. Another five minutes of pretending, and he would act himself into sleep. He heard the door open slightly. Myles stirred, turning in the way which light sleepers do at the suspicion of a noise. Then the door was closed again; careful footsteps descended the steep wooden stairs.
“You sleep,” Myles whispered again. “I’ll keep watch.”
“Half an hour. Wake me then. We may have to be ready to move on.”
Myles nodded his agreement.
The blue of the sky was bolder.
Myles was wakening him, shaking him lightly but determinedly.
“Sorry,” the American was saying, “but I thought I’d better let you in on this. I can’t get the hang of the accent.”
Hearne sat up in bed, shaking his head to waken himself fully. The room was now warm with the sunlight which streamed through the window. Later than I meant to be, he thought. The clothes stretched out on the floor were crumpled but dry enough.
He looked at Myles and grinned. “That’s better,” he said. “I feel much better.”
“I thought you needed more than a half-hour. You’ll be able to run all the faster if we have to. But look!” He pointed to the half-open door. Standing in the shadows was a thin boy in Breton fishing clothes. “I’ve been struggling with his language for five minutes. He’s nearly bawling because he can’t understand me.”
The boy spoke, his dark, anxious face looking at Hearne expectantly.
“The gentleman speaks French?” His accent was pure Breton. “Yes. What is it?”
“My sister sent me.”
“Well?”
“She says you are to hurry.”
“Where?”
“You must go away.”
“Now?”
The boy nodded.
“Why?”
The boy looked anxiously over his shoulder.
“Please,” he said.
“Where’s your sister?”
“Downstairs in the bar.”
“Where’s Basdevant?”
“Big Louis has gone to Saint-Malo. He will be back in an hour, perhaps more, perhaps less. My sister is in the bar.”
A sudden light dawned on Hearne. “You mean she’s in charge?”
“Yes.”
“Who else is there?”
“The others.”
“What others?”
“The men who live here: all except big Louis and Corbeau.”
“Who’s Corbeau?”
“Big Louis takes him on his boat now. He’s his cousin.”
“And your sister sent you up here...Did the others know she sent you up?”
“Yes.”
Hearne bit his lip. Myles, watching the boy’s face intently, said in English, “He’s scared stiff at what he’s doing.”
Hearne suddenly got out of bed. “We’ll dress and go down and see this sister. Better hurry. How are the feet?”
“Could be worse.”
They dressed quickly and simply. The boy’s face relaxed. His brown eyes were smiling now.
He led the way down the rickety stairs. In Basdevant’s living-room, he halted and pointed to the door by which they had entered this dawn.
“No, thank you,” Hearne said, “we want to see your sister first.” He moved towards the door which lay opposite the window in the room. His guess last night had been that it led to the bar. He had probably been right: even now, with his hand on its latch, he could hear voices arguing.
The boy tried to catch his arm. “Not that way. This way.” He pointed again.
“It’s all right, sonny. We’re friends,” Myles was saying. “We only want to thank your sister.” As the boy turned his head to answer the American, Hearne opened the door.
&n
bsp; The noise inside the little room with its four marbletopped tables, its dark wood counter, its brightly coloured calendars and paper flowers on the walls, ceased abruptly. Five men, their faces bronzed and lined from sea and wind; three boys, large-eyed and alert; a dark-haired woman leaning over the counter. That was all. They seemed to be one person as they turned and looked at Hearne and Myles. However divided had been the opinions which had caused their violent discussion, they were now united in thought and reaction as they faced the strangers.
“Pierre,” the woman said angrily, “I told you—”
“We insisted on coming to thank you,” Hearne cut in. “This isn’t Pierre’s fault.”
Someone cleared his throat, feet shuffled, but no one spoke.
At last the woman said, “You’ve thanked me. Now go as you came.”
“In this daylight?”
“It is safer now than at night.”
“But we have a bill to pay,” the American said.
“We don’t want your money.”
“Big Louis will.”
The woman shrugged her shoulders. “Go now,” she insisted.
Myles exchanged a look with Hearne. “You handle this,” he said in English. “The smell of fish is stronger.”
Hearne nodded. He put his elbows on the counter of the bar and leaned forward so that his face was no more than a foot across from the woman’s. She wasn’t so old as he had thought. Her resemblance to the boy Pierre was extraordinary: there was that same thin, high-cheeked shape of face, the same broad brow and deep-set brown eyes. The fine black hair was smoothed into a knot at the nape of her neck. There was colour in her cheeks, and her skin was tanned as deeply as the men’s. She wasn’t so old after all; probably not even thirty. The lines and little wrinkles on her face came from strong sun and sea wind, not from age. The large eyes, fixed on him so intently, were young, and so were her strong arms and hands. It was the severity of her hair, the seriousness of her face, the fine lines on her skin which had made her seem more like Pierre’s mother than his sister. He kept his eyes on hers, and a smile on his lips, as he fumbled in his mind for a beginning. A dull red flush mounted over the colour in her cheeks and surged down into her neck. She moved a step backwards from the counter, and stood under the vase of paper flowers which had been hooked to the wall. But her eyes were still fixed on his.
“Please go,” she said. Her voice was quieter now.
“Yes, we are going. And we thank you for warning us. But we must find out why you warned us, so that in turn we can warn any others who might come here as we did.”
“You could stop them from coming?” The woman’s face was suddenly animated with relief.
“We could stop many.”
She turned to the boy quickly. “Pierre, go down and wait at the jetty. When you see him coming, let us know.” Pierre left the room obediently. Myles and Hearne exchanged glances. So it was big Louis all right.
“We’ll have a drink,” Hearne said. “We’ll all have a drink.” The silent men behind him were beginning to worry him. “What about a drink?” he said to them. Two of them came forward, the others hesitated and then followed.
The woman uncorked a bottle of white, colourless liquid. She shook her head as she said, “You are in danger by staying.”
“We’ll be all right. We wakened and came down for a drink. If he comes, then we pretend nothing has happened, that you didn’t warn us. And we’ll leave at the first chance we get.” That seemed partly to satisfy her: she was pouring the drinks carefully into the small thick tumblers.
“Tell us one thing,” Hearne said. “Would it be impossible to sail from here tonight?”
The men were amused: he must have said something highly funny.
“Is the tide unfavourable?”
The men were trying to hide their laughs. One of them failed. It was the seaman’s prerogative over the stupid land-lubber.
“Stop that,” the woman said sharply to them. She turned towards Hearne and. Myles politely. “The tides never prevent us from sailing on this part of the river at any . time. There’s a deep channel in the middle.”
“Big Louis said the tide was wrong tonight. That was why we must wait until tomorrow.”
The men were amused no longer. The mention of big Louis had frozen them into silent watchfulness. Again Hearne had. the feeling that he was facing an individual, and not five men and one woman. Myles was pretending to concentrate on his drink, but his eyes were missing nothing.
Hearne went on calmly, “Are there any German-lovers here?”
The effect was electric. The woman’s eyes dilated and then narrowed. Two of the men slipped their hands into their pockets. Myles reached for the bottle casually as if to pour himself another drink but he paused with his fingers round its neck. One of the younger men suddenly cursed, spat into his drink, and pushed it away from him so violently that the glass upset.
“I knew you weren’t,” Hearne said in the same unhurried tone, “but I had to make sure. You do not look like the type of men who would lick the soles of the German’s feet. Some do; and some even like the taste of it.”
“So what?” the young man asked, his cold blue eyes hard with anger. He looked as if Hearne’s words had soured the saliva on his tongue.
“What will the other fishermen on this river begin to say about you when they learn that big Louis sells their allies to their enemies? And they will learn some day. You can’t hide such things: they come out.”
“That is our business.” It was the oldest fisherman who spoke. The others nodded. Only the woman and the man with the angry eyes looked as if they didn’t agree with that, but they said nothing. Those Celts, thought Hearne irritably: clannish was another word for them. He was the stranger sticking his nose into their business. They could say what they liked to each other about Basdevant, but they would have no foreigner criticising him for them. And a foreigner was anyone who had not been born and brought up in this little village of eight houses.
“That is your business,” Hearne agreed. “You must deal with him yourselves. But what if other men come here for help? Will you stand aside and let the Boches catch them? And what is going to happen to you if Basdevant quarrels with any of you and informs the Germans that you helped men to escape from him?”
“He wouldn’t do that,” the old man said, but his tone lacked conviction.
It was the woman who spoke next. “I’m sick and tired to death of hearing you men talk. Shall we do this, shall we do that? You argue yourselves into your graves. First, let Jules tell what he knows, what we all know. Then these two men will go away, and we alone shall deal with big Louis and that Corbeau he brought here to help him. This man is right: big Louis is on trial. I didn’t lose two brothers and my father in this war for other men to grow fat on the leavings of their murderers. Jules, tell what you know.”
The young man with the angry blue eyes said, “At first, everything was as it should be. When I got back from the war, I helped with the others. We’d sail out to fish, and we’d take any man who had come to big Louis, and we’d meet the English boats, and sometimes we’d land them in England ourselves. We know places on that coast like the back of our hand. We didn’t ask for money. If they had any, they gave us it. If they didn’t—well, that didn’t matter. We helped nine men to escape. Some were French, some were English, one was a Pole. Five days ago, we no longer had to sail so far. Big Louis said he and the Corbeau could do it by themselves. It was safer that way, he said. And then he seemed to have money, and food. He gave us good reasons. We could say nothing.”
There was a general murmur from the men, and a shuffling of feet.
“But two days ago I was in Saint-Malo, and there I saw something.” Jules paused. He looked gravely from Myles to Hearne as if to warn them to listen well. “Three days ago, two Englishmen were brought here by a man from Dinan. Big Louis sailed with them that night. There was also Corbeau, and young Yves from the next village.”
The wo
man explained, “Young Yves is the son, the only son left, of Yves who is the head of that village.” She smiled as if to excuse this interruption. Anyway, thought Hearne, she is really anxious we shouldn’t miss a trick. He smiled back and nodded. The only son left...something important was behind that.
“But why did young Yves come here to sail for England? Couldn’t one of the men from his own village have taken him across the Channel?”
“Old Yves had forbidden it. This was his only son, now that the other two had been torpedoed in the war.”
“And young Yves was determined to join the Frenchmen in Britain, even against his father’s will?”
“Yes, and he had come to Basdevant for help.”
Hearne and Myles exchanged quick glances. If Basdevant had betrayed young Yves, then here was the makings of a blood feud between the two communities; if the boy’s father ever learned of the betrayal, that was. And the woman realised this. Hearne could see that in her eyes.
“Go on, Jules,” she said impatiently.
“Well two days ago I was in Saint-Malo. Some prisoners were being marched through the street. We stood in silence and watched them go. There weren’t very many, and all were wearing civilian clothes. Among them I saw the two Englishmen: the young one, and the big one with red hair. And I saw young Yves.”
No one moved. The dark, silent faces of the fishermen stared into emptiness. The woman’s eyes were fixed, unseeing, on the pool of alcohol from Jules’s overturned glass.
At last Hearne said, “You, you must deal with him yourselves. And if any others come here asking for Basdevant, will you help them?”
Jules nodded slowly. “If we see them arriving. We would not have known that you were here if you hadn’t been late this morning, and I saw you by the grey light. We help anyone who hates our enemies.”
Hearne thought, Now there’s the explanation for Basdevant’s haste to get us indoors. He said, And you hate anyone who helps your enemies?”
The men were still silent. At last the oldest one said, “He is a good fisherman, the best on the river. We’ll never find another like him.”
Assignment in Brittany Page 17