Those in Peril

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘No, it is not necessary to tell me that. What will be necessary for me, though, is to have English money in order to pay Madame Hillyard. The bank in the town can only change a few pounds’ worth of my francs.’

  ‘You brought French francs with you?’

  ‘Quite a sum.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get them all changed for you. French francs will come in very handy for us. And, of course, you’ll be recompensed for your services. Not riches exactly, I’m afraid, but we’ll see you’re not out of pocket.’ Powell stood up. ‘We’ll have to move your boat, if you don’t mind. She’s rather in the way.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I’ll find another mooring further upstream.’

  ‘I should like to empty the locker before she’s moved.’

  ‘By all means.’ They shook hands. ‘Goodbye for the moment, then.’

  ‘There is one other thing, monsieur . . .’

  He turned. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I should like my passport and identity card back,’ Louis Duval said. He smiled and added in English, ‘If you don’t mind.’

  Alan Powell encountered Mrs Hillyard by the side door. She was carrying secateurs and a flower basket, on her way into the garden. He said, ‘I’m just leaving, Mrs Hillyard. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’

  ‘I hope there isn’t any problem for Monsieur Duval?’

  ‘No. None at all. Everything’s fine.’ He guessed that she took him for some busybody official, causing trouble. ‘I didn’t introduce myself. My name is Powell. Lieutenant Commander Powell. I just wanted to clear up a few points with Monsieur Duval, that’s all. We have to check on these things, you know – can’t be too careful these days. All part of national security.’ She looked relieved – though whether for the Frenchman’s sake or her own, it was impossible to say. He thought of Duval’s smiling remark about his landlady, not at all like Madame Hillyard. There was certainly nothing sour about her. The word womanly came into his mind, and the word warm. Warm and womanly. She had beautiful thick, wavy hair and large grey eyes. He realized that he was staring, pulled himself together and went on hurriedly, ‘I hope it will be all right with you if Monsieur Duval stays on here, for the time being?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘He’s going to make himself useful to us doing some translating and interpreting. Very handy having him around for that sort of thing. We’ll need to call on him from time to time.’ He had made it up on the spur of the moment and she seemed satisfied as well as relieved.

  Later on, he phoned Harry at his number in London. ‘I’ve just been to see Louis Duval.’

  ‘What did you make of him? Any good?’

  He said cautiously, ‘Yes, I think he should be fine.’

  Barbara clipped away with her secateurs, dead-heading the roses and keeping at a distance from the Frenchman who was at work again on his painting, back turned. She clipped as quietly as she could but he must have heard her because after a while he turned round and called to her, smiling.

  ‘Madame Hillyard . . .’

  She walked over to him, carrying her basket of dead rose heads. ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you once again.’

  ‘You did not. But I need to rest for a moment. To smoke a cigarette. Will you have one? I only have the French kind, I’m sorry to say.’

  She hesitated. ‘I’ve never tried those.’

  ‘Then you should. A new experience – that’s always good.’ She put down the basket and the secateurs and took one of the French cigarettes. He lit it for her and one for himself. The foreign tobacco scented the air. It smelled of France, she thought; or how she imagined France might smell. He was watching her closely as he put away the matches. Artists must see everything, notice everything. It was an unnerving thought.

  ‘Well, do you like it?’

  ‘It’s quite nice.’

  ‘Only quite? In English that is a polite way of saying that it’s not nice at all. I have learned this. Don’t finish it, if you don’t want to.’

  ‘No, really . . . it’s all right.’

  ‘All right is much the same as quite. If an English person says they are all right, very probably they are not all right at all – but they would sooner die than say so and become a nuisance.’

  She smiled. ‘Are French people so different?’

  ‘Oh yes. Very different, in so many ways. If you were French you would have said to me, this cigarette is dégoutante – disgusting – and thrown it away. And I should not be in the least offended.’

  ‘Well, it is a bit strong . . .’

  ‘So, you can throw it away.’

  She ground it out carefully under her shoe and put it in the flower basket with the dead roses. ‘I’m sorry to have wasted it.’

  ‘I have plenty more. I brought some packets from France. Also bottles of wine. Still on my boat. Do you like to drink wine?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’ve only drunk it once or twice.’

  ‘Mon dieu! how is that possible? Life without wine. What a tragedy!’ He drew on the French cigarette, exhaling the smoke. She liked the smell of it much better than the taste. ‘In France wine is like a mother’s milk. And just as good for you. Have you never been to France?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Do you speak any French?’

  ‘A little. We were taught at school. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten most of it.’

  ‘But you still remember some, perhaps? A few words.’

  ‘Yes, a few words.’

  ‘And your charming house is called by a French name. Bellevue – which means beautiful view.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  He pointed to the bench. ‘Shall we sit down for a moment to enjoy it?’

  ‘I ought to get on.’

  ‘Get on?’

  ‘Start getting lunch ready.’

  ‘Ah . . . for a woman, there is always something that must be done in the house and especially in the kitchen. But a few moments will make no difference – while I finish my cigarette.’

  She sat down at the very end of the bench, the flower basket balanced on her knees, practising what she had preached to Esme: that they must make the Frenchman feel welcome. But his presence, so close, disturbed her. Everything about him was foreign – the way he looked and dressed and spoke and behaved. The way he seemed to study her all the time. He had taken some sunglasses from his pocket and dangled them loosely from his fingers. ‘It is you who has done all this garden, madame?’

  ‘Oh, no. It was here already. I just planted some new things – the roses for instance.’

  ‘The English love to garden, isn’t that so?’

  ‘Don’t the French?’

  ‘Not in the same way. French gardens are not at all like yours.’ He gestured round with the cigarette. ‘This is very natural. Very English – except, of course, for the palm tree.’

  ‘They can survive in Devon. We hardly ever get frost.’ His forearms and the backs of his hands, she noticed, were covered with thick black hairs, like a monkey’s. It should have been repulsive, but wasn’t. And she noticed his hands – not sensitively thin and tapering as she would have supposed an artist’s hands to be, but broad and strong with thick, short fingers, like a workman’s. She found herself fascinated, her eyes drawn to them.

  ‘Tell me, how long have you lived here?’

  ‘Eight years.’

  ‘It is that long since your husband died?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘You decided then, to leave the nice place on the south coast that I remember you spoke of and to move all this way?’

  ‘I had been here for holidays and I liked it very much.’

  He nodded. ‘It is very pleasant. Pont-Aven where I live in France is not so different. On a river by the sea.’

  ‘How sad for you to leave it.’

  ‘Indeed, it was a great sadness.’

  She sought for something encouraging to say. ‘The lieutenant commander told me you are going to
help them with translating and interpreting.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, I have put myself at their disposal.’

  ‘So, you’ll be staying on here for a while?’

  ‘If you have no objections, madame?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Far from it, she was glad. His cigarette was almost finished. She half-rose. ‘Well, I’d better get on.’

  ‘There is something that I wished to ask you . . . if you have just one more little moment.’

  She sat down again warily. ‘Yes?’

  ‘It concerns a cat.’

  She said, surprised, ‘A cat? I don’t have one.’

  ‘No, I know. This is a French cat. A stowaway, you call it. He or she – I am not certain which it is – came with me in the boat, all the way from France to England. And now it will not leave. It stays with the boat and the boat is to be moved somewhere else – Lieutenant Commander Powell tells me that it cannot remain where it is. So, I’m not sure what will happen to the cat. And I think to myself that, perhaps, it might be able to come here – for the time being.’ As she made no comment, he spread his hands apologetically. ‘No, it is too much to ask of you. I regret that I spoke.’

  She found her voice. ‘Not at all. It can come here. Of course it can.’

  ‘I must be honest – it’s not a very beautiful cat. Rather ugly. In fact, very ugly.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. If it needs a home.’

  ‘You are very kind, madame. I will pay for the food.’

  ‘We always have some scraps . . . I’m sure we’ll manage.’ She looked at her watch. ‘And now I really must go and get on.’

  Mrs Lamprey was making her entrance into the garden, pausing for effect against a backdrop of pink hydrangeas before she advanced across the grass. As Barbara went into the house, she could hear her voice, pitched as if to the upper gallery. ‘Bonjour, Monsieur Duval . . . il fait chaud, n’est-ce pas?’

  The requisitioned house that Harry had spoken of was on the Kingswear side of the river. It was an early Victorian building with large, airy rooms, built on the hillside above a small creek and surrounded by overgrown gardens and trees that almost completely concealed it in summer. The owners, Alan Powell discovered, had not been in residence since long before the outbreak of the war and the place had obviously been neglected for years. All private furniture and furnishings had been removed to storage and in their place he found assembled a collection of desks, lamps, typewriters, filing cabinets, tables, chairs, carpets, beds, crockery, pots and pans . . . As Harry had promised, some naval personnel were already installed – a small band of people gathered together in haste, like the equipment, and without any clear idea of why they were there.

  ‘Nobody’s told us much, sir,’ the young naval lieutenant seconded to assist him said. ‘But I gather it’s pretty hush-hush.’

  Lieutenant Smythson, Harry had informed him, had been picked out for some good reasons. ‘His mother is French and he’s completely fluent in the language. Also he’s a damn good yachtsman and knows the Brittany coast well. He’ll be a useful man to have around.’ Fresh-faced and very keen, he reminded Powell of how he had once been himself, long ago.

  He took him with him to Falmouth to look at the French fishing boats that had taken refuge there and to interview their crews. The lieutenant’s superior French proved a valuable asset, since he himself found the Breton accents of the fishermen almost impossible to understand. The five-strong crew of a crabber from the Ile de Sein impressed him as good, reliable men. They volunteered at once to return for the purpose he outlined but, on closer questioning, he discovered that all of them had left wives and a large number of children in France. The risk on such a perilous venture was too great for men with families, he decided. Two other possible crews had become disenchanted with Falmouth and already decided to take their boats back to Brittany.

  In the end, the choice fell on a sardine trawler from Douarnenez, the Espérance. Rather a suitable name, he thought: Hope. She was sixteen metres long and fitted with an excellent engine. Her only fault seemed to be a small leak that could easily be repaired. The crew of three Bretons who had brought her over were all single men and declared themselves eager to help. It only remained to take on board the petrol needed and to victual the ship. He began arranging for British naval rations to be loaded, but the Bretons’ faces at the prospect were comical in their disgust, and so he took the lieutenant off on a foraging expedition round the harbour and found an abandoned French vessel with a barrel of Algerian red wine and tins of French beef and biscuits on board. He left Smythson to organize their transfer to the Espérance and to sail her with her crew round to Dartmouth while he drove back alone. The next step, he decided, was to talk again with Louis Duval.

  Duval unloaded the remaining bottles of wine and the quarter-full brandy bottle from Gannet and put them in the empty suitcase. The ham was finished and the last of the Camembert and the sausage were both past keeping, so he threw them to the seagulls who swooped on them in a shrieking frenzy. The cat sat on the deck and watched him, scratching from time to time. ‘Well now, little one,’ he said to it. ‘It seems you are in luck. Lodging has been offered – at least for the time being. But will you permit me to take you there, I wonder?’

  He picked up the animal and held it under his free arm, carrying the suitcase in the other. Its four legs dangled limply and without protest. He set off from the quayside, up the steep road leading to Madame Hillyard’s house, pausing from time to time to rest. The cat weighed next to nothing but the suitcase and the bottles were heavy and grew heavier as he went on. He let himself into the house, put down the suitcase and knocked on the door that led to the kitchen. She opened the door, wearing an apron over her dress and with a long white streak of flour down one cheek.

  ‘I have brought the cat, madame – as you were kind enough to permit.’

  She stared at it hanging under his arm. ‘Poor thing – it looks awfully thin. Shall I give it some milk, do you think?’

  ‘I am sure it would be very grateful.’

  He followed her into the kitchen – a most agreeable room, he noted, not having seen it before. Glass-fronted cupboards, an old-fashioned dresser, a white enamel-topped table in the centre with a mixing bowl and rolling pin on it – some pastry rolled out. The domain of a home-making woman. She took a bottle of milk from the larder, poured a little of it into a saucer and set it down on the floor. They both watched as the cat sniffed gingerly at the saucer and then began to lap up the milk. He regretted that the animal was so unappealing – so dull-coated and scrawny and with the patch of mange on its neck.

  ‘It seems to like it,’ she said. ‘Does it have a name?’

  ‘I regret not. The truth is that I know nothing whatsoever about this animal, madame. Perhaps you could think of a name for it? Or your daughter?’

  ‘My daughter?’

  ‘The little girl.’

  ‘Oh, Esme, you mean. She’s not my daughter. She’s an evacuee.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘They sent a lot of children out of London at the beginning of the war – so they’d be safe. In case the Germans bombed the city. I had three others as well but they went home.’

  ‘Ah . . . I understand.’

  ‘I’m afraid she’s not very happy here. She wants her mother to come and take her home.’

  ‘But the mother is not coming?’

  ‘She doesn’t seem very interested in Esme.’

  ‘Poor little one.’

  ‘I know. It’s awfully sad.’

  ‘Perhaps she will like the cat.’

  ‘Yes, it might help.’

  ‘I must warn you, though,’ he said solemnly. ‘There is a difficulty. This cat does not understand any English. Not a word.’

  She laughed and he thought, watching her, that in the same way that Mademoiselle Citron did not comprehend her unattractiveness, this woman did not remotely realize her appeal. Perhaps no man, not even her late husband, had ever complimented h
er or made her feel desirable. It was perfectly possible, especially in England. He said, ‘I also brought some wine from the boat, madame. And a little brandy. Perhaps you would like to share it with me?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, thank you. But I think Mrs Lamprey might, and the rear admiral, too. I’m not sure about Miss Tindall.’

  ‘I shall ask them. At dinner.’ He gestured at the table and the pastry. ‘You are cooking for this evening?’

  ‘Just a vegetable pie.’ She seemed embarrassed again. ‘The meat ration doesn’t go far. I’m afraid you must find our food very dull.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said politely, though he did. In general, very dull and with so little flavour. Except the fish and chips. Eaten very hot, out of newspaper, it was magnificent. ‘Excuse me, madame, but you have something on your face . . . de la farine. I don’t know the word in English. No, on the other cheek.’ He removed the streak with the tips of his fingers, brushing it away gently. ‘Voilà . . . it has gone.’ The cheek was red now instead of white, and she was looking shaken as though he had taken a great liberty. ‘I’m sorry, I should not have done that. My apologies.’

  ‘It’s quite all right,’ she said, avoiding his eye. ‘And the word’s flour.’

  At dinner that evening he produced one of the bottles of wine. As predicted, Madame Lamprey was delighted to join him, raising her glass and shouting at him across the safe divide between their tables, ‘À votre santé, Monsieur Duval.’ He responded gallantly in French. Miss Tindall declined but the rear admiral accepted with a dry smile. Before very long it was necessary to refill Madame Lamprey’s glass.

  Esme climbed into her bed. ‘I don’t like that cat. It’s got a disgusting bare patch. Does it have to stay here?’

  ‘It’s got nowhere else to go. It came with Monsieur Duval on his boat from France and I said we’d look after it.’

  ‘It’s a horrible French cat, then.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You haven’t given it a chance yet. I thought perhaps you’d like to think of a name for it.’