by Thomas Wood
“Please,” I repeated, “I think there’s something stuck in there. It could end up being serious.” My face was still burning, as if the fireball that engulfed the wreckage had left a permanent heat source on my cheek and that my skin would feel as if it was flushed with embarrassment for eternity.
With a grunt I was thrown a small kitchen towel and instructed to begin tending to my own wounds. My aim of trying to distract them from their hatred towards the British had evidently failed and the quicker that I died and left them alone, the better.
The air in that kitchen was becoming increasingly tense, as they berated me for being part of the bomber force, as if I had ordered the attack myself, and I grew to become almost furious with them at their lack of foresight and selfishness.
We all stared at one another, almost sneering as we willed each other to break the silence, to lift the match to the air that would ignite like the Hindenburg airship and engulf us all.
In the end, it was me who broke the silence, trying to speak as softly as I possibly could to try and relieve some of the pressure, gently.
“I’d like to speak to Joseph Baudouin, he is a friend of mine. You know him?”
They had all spun round on their heel, as if they were ready to lynch me and parade me up and down the streets for high treason.
“Yes, we know him.” One of them eventually answered, with a healthy dose of fear residing in the back of his throat.
“Tell him I’d like to speak to him about his Geraniums. He’ll know what I mean.”
I hoped he’d know what that all meant. Because I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was chuntering on about.
7
The three men at first looked utterly bemused at my request, the expressions on their faces made it seem as though I had asked to see Charles De Gaulle himself. But after a few minutes of the silent debating that they seemed to be so good at, one of the men hurried from the room and left me with the other two.
Average Man had calmed down considerably now and was sitting at the table opposite me, nursing one of Louis’ famous glasses of milk. My own glass had been refilled again, which I drank much more slowly this time, more to give myself something to do than anything else.
We sat there in a total silence for some time, the only noises that graced my ears being the occasional murmur as the group of men next door continued to chat. I wasn’t feeling particularly comfortable at the thought that there was a large group of fighters next door, all of them looking like they were baying for blood when I walked in. Maybe all of their wives had been killed by Allied bombs. No matter what their circumstance, they had been yearning for some sort of violence when I walked through that living room, specifically violence towards me, and I just hoped that Joseph would be here sooner rather than later to diffuse the whole situation.
I hadn’t wanted to have played the Geranium card so early in my operation, but I wasn’t going to get anywhere with these lads, especially as they seemed so blinded by the apparent barbarity of the British and their bombing campaign against the local factories.
I risked a look at my watch, it was now seventeen minutes past eight in the morning, the crisp sunshine of the late January sky just beginning to creep through the shuttered windows and into the kitchen.
I almost leapt out of my skin when I heard the front door smash into its frame, with such an aggression I imagined that the men standing in the living room had been told that a bullet wouldn’t be put in between my eyes this morning. I heard them all as they began to speak more confidently in the early morning air, as they sauntered past the windows to continue with their lives.
My mind began to wander and question how these people operated. Did they just hole up in someone’s house every night, waiting for the opportunity to ‘rescue’ a downed airman or blow up a rail line? Or had last night been some sort of anomaly? Had they been warned that a figure had parachuted in the night before and had suddenly appeared a day later?
Whatever had happened, they had left the house now and I allowed myself to feel a little bit more at ease with my situation. I wasn’t dead yet, they hadn’t mugged me or stolen my belongings and the interrogation had consisted of nothing more than questioning the Royal Air Force’s morals, when it came to bombing a country it was supposedly helping. I began to feel quite buoyant.
But then I realised that I was sitting by a now open window, in some random Frenchman’s house in the early morning, dressed head to toe in a British uniform, one that would be unmistakeable if a German soldier happened to catch a flash of royal blue as he sped past on his bicycle. At the thought, I began tucking my chair in tighter to the table, and hunched myself forward to avoid being seen.
I folded my arms on the table and rested my head on them, my nose almost touching the surface of the old oak dining table. I suddenly became incensed at what was taking so long, furious that these people thought that they could just hold their power over me in this way. I shot up, pacing the length of the kitchen before shouting, throwing my arms in the air as I did so.
“What’s taking so long? Why are we just sitting here, I’m a sitting duck!” They all continued to look at me blankly, as if I hadn’t said anything at all, before I spent the following five minutes trying to explain to them what I had meant by a ‘sitting duck.’
The lack of common sense and understanding that they possessed infuriated me more. How could they not have understood what a ‘sitting duck’ was?
The mood significantly changed as I continued to pace around the floor, they were concerned themselves now, I couldn’t work out why, but the confidence that they had exuded by standing tall above me, was now wiped away as the animated figure continued to patrol the kitchen.
Maybe it was because I had a point, they knew that all it would take would be a curious soldier, or someone suspicious at the ten or so men that had left moments before, and the Germans would be knocking at the door, demanding to search the premises.
Or it could have been that, now I was up and about, they believed I would try and overthrow them in some way, make an escape somehow and they didn’t much fancy explaining that one to Joseph when he showed up, if he showed up at all.
Softly, the kitchen door opened, and a figure was shown in by Louis, who I caught almost bowing at the man as he was ushered in. I wondered if he had been in the building the whole time, as I had not heard the front door open or close, and that he was just wanting to ruffle my feathers slightly before making himself known.
He took the chair on the opposite side of the table to me, with Average Man, the tall man and the silent one, crowding round him as if he was some wise old prophet who would speak in riddles but give them the meaning of life.
When he spoke, it was obviously not what they were hoping for, as their faces dropped as they were instructed to leave us in the room alone.
“Oh Louis,” he called, just as the milkman left the room, “Show them out of the house as well, would you?” Louis acknowledged with a slight bow of the head, which I found odd as I deduced this must have been his own house, which was used by these men for their various operations. Louis’ whole character had seemed to have changed from when I first met him. To begin with, he was fiery and courageous, but now he seemed submissive and quiet, which is where his son must have got his personality from after all.
I wanted to speak first, to try and assert an authority and dominance over the situation as best as I could, so that I could begin to feel in control of the situation.
“I’d like to talk to you about your geraniums.” I phrased it as a statement, rather than a question, so that I came across as cold and unwilling to compromise in talking about anything else.
The man simply stared at me, his tired eyes begging for the rest that he appeared to have been craving for years, something was eating away at him. He chewed on the inside of his lip as he held my gaze, debating whether or not it was the right thing to do in trusting me, but there was something far deeper about his hesitation to ta
lk, something that was attacking at the very core of his heart.
He was a distinguished looking gentleman, the kind that should have come in with his shoulders pushed back, chest puffed outwards and gleaming medals pinned proudly on his clothes. But he came in with none of that, he had shuffled in quietly, his eyes watching the ground as if he expected something to trip him up at any moment.
I began to ponder as to why the three men that had brought me in for an interrogation had been struck with a fear in their eyes at the mere mention of this man’s name when, as far as I was concerned, this man posed no more of a threat than an eleven year old school girl. I doubted very much that he was a commander of some sort in the local resistance.
I didn’t quite know how to deal with this man, I didn’t know whether I should be feeling sorry for him for the life that he had lived, the secrets that were eating away at him, or if I should fear or revere him as the others had done.
It occurred to me that it looked like this man had just been woken up and that maybe he hadn’t lived in the nearby locality as Jimmy had said. It was quite possible that he had been woken as soon as I had requested to see him, some ninety minutes before, and that he had travelled as quickly as he possibly could to see me. I gave him a small amount of respect at the thought, but wondered how Jimmy’s intelligence could have been so far off the pace.
“So, Jimmy sent you,” his voice was gruff, not the kind as a result of smoking for decades, but a natural roughness to it, accentuated by the heavily accented English that he had chosen to speak in.
“Yes,” I replied obligingly, opting too for the English that we would continue the conversation with, “I didn’t want to have to call you so early.”
“You weren’t in the bomber last night?” I was slightly taken aback by his curtness, but decided that if he knew who Jimmy was, he would know who I was, and why I was there; honesty would be the best policy with this man.
“No, I came in the night before. It was my plan to get taken in by your people but they were twitchy, aggressive. They were going to get me captured.”
He got up like a shot and, for a moment, I thought he too was about to launch into a tirade about how the British had been bombing his city. I regretted what I had said almost immediately and began to tell myself off for coming across so accusingly with this man so soon. He was only trying to help me, and he seemed to have nothing more than the leftovers of the good men who had been sent to fight the Germans many months ago, some even seemed old enough to have fought in the last war. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief as he set about making himself a cup of coffee with the old battered utensils that lay around the kitchen. It seemed that Louis wasn’t overly keen on doing the washing up.
“I suppose you are wondering who I am,” he said as he let the kettle settle on the stove for a few minutes. “I try to coordinate the different groups here, each of them fighting against the Germans, but each one with a different erm…agenda.” He looked at me for approval for the final word that he had used, which he seemed content with, before he turned and poured some water from the half-boiled kettle into a nearby mug. He still hadn’t offered me one.
“You have questions for me,” he said, not looking up from his mug as he blew on it to cool down what could have only been a lukewarm mug of coffee.
I had thousands, starting with when could I get rid of this uniform and into something a little bit more incognito, but I found myself asking the one that had seemed the most trivial to me.
“Why geraniums?” I had expected his answer to be because of a mutual interest in the flower that Jimmy had told me to request of him, but I sensed that there was something far deeper than a love for blossoming flowers. Placing his mug on the table before him, he looked into my eyes, finally acknowledging my existence with a prolonged, searching stare.
“A few years ago, I was in the French military. There was an Operation Geranium once. I liked the name, so it stuck with me for a while.”
He looked at me, clearly hiding something and not opening up the whole truth for my benefit. It was as if he was staring at me to work out if I had bought his story or not, and I was immediately struck by the understanding of why the three men earlier on had panicked at the mere mention of his name. I wanted to ask him more about the operation, but I sensed that this man could quite as easily get me killed as he could get me out of France, and so I moved the topic on rapidly.
“Did you fight on the Maginot Line?” I asked of him, supposing that, at around the age of thirty, he did not seem like he would have avoided the vicious fighting of last spring. His eyes began darting around all over the place, as if he was scanning the room for someone who had stepped in invisibly.
“No…” he eventually muttered, as if it was a source of great embarrassment to him, “I was not involved in that fighting.”
My mind whirred as I tried to piece together what he was saying to me. Somehow, he had avoided the fighting and I was immediately encompassed with thought of cowardice and desertion but, for some reason, he didn’t strike me as the sort to abandon his post.
Something didn’t quite add up with this bloke. There was something niggling at his insides, and he wasn’t doing a particularly good job at hiding it. I furrowed my brow at him slightly, trying to press him for more of an answer, but was instead met with an uneasy silence.
I wasn’t going to be blindly trusting this bloke as Jimmy had asked, until he had done something to prove he was on my side.
8
I knew that I couldn’t really trust Joseph Baudouin in the same way that Jimmy had done, but I decided to try and show him as much respect as I possibly could, more out of a regard for Jimmy than for Joseph.
I also didn’t want to rile him, I wanted him to help me as much as possible and to do that, I would need to be as submissive as possible, and act as if I accepted his story that he had told me.
As we sat in that kitchen chatting to one another, I suddenly became aware that another figure had entered the room to join us. I spun around, alarmed, only to be met with the soft, submissive face of Louis, who was almost standing to attention now, looking for permission to carry on.
“Come in Louis, my dear friend,” Joseph said, offering out an arm of embrace to his host. I found it odd when they hugged one another, Louis locking his eyes onto mine and glaring at me for its entirety. I wondered whether he was trying to tell me something, or if he was simply uncomfortable at having me in his house still.
I decided that Louis was a far more trustworthy individual than Joseph, even if he was inadvertently giving away his true feelings of the situation. Louis began slowly moving around the room, cleaning and tidying but never really seeming to get anywhere with it all. It looked as though it hadn’t had a decent clean in a number of months and that the constant meetings here would keep it looking that way indefinitely.
“So, why exactly has Captain Tempsford sent you?” He queried, now looking down at his very empty coffee mug.
“Major Tempsford now,” I corrected. “Well, he believes that I am able to be of some assistance to you and to your friends.” I tried to remain as vague as possible, eyeing Louis up as he carried on making himself look busy. Although I thought I could trust him, I still wasn’t entirely convinced that I should be pouring out all of my objectives in his presence.
“Louis is alright, my friend. Please, speak freely.”
I decided that it would be best to try and butter him and his boys up a little bit, before I shot them down with my intentions of being there.
“We are, as an entire nation, incredibly grateful to you, and to all of your boys that work with you,” I said, looking through the closed door towards the now vacant sitting room, “for getting so many of our boys out of this country when we had our backs to the sea. You know that it will help massively when we, alongside your Free French forces, try to liberate you and your country again in the future.”
He sat back in his chair, suitably impressed it appeared but still expe
cting my speech to be countered with a ‘but.’
“Unfortunately, Major Tempsford and his department believe that your attempts at trying to get our boys out could be improved somewhat. We don’t believe you are reaching your full potential.”
He almost rolled his eyes at me, as a child does as they are scolded for their repeated misdemeanours.
“How many times do I need to tell Jimmy this?!” He exploded, smashing his fists into the table with such a ferocity that I thought someone had fired a gun. Louis managed to continue on as normal, as if this sort of eruption of violence and aggression was totally normal.
“There is nothing wrong with the way that we do things here! We are trying to help, and all your intelligence departments can say is that we are doing it badly! There is nothing wrong here, nothing!”
“But Monsieur Baudouin, there is something wrong here. We simply aren’t getting the numbers of servicemen back that we—”
“We are doing just fine without you lot giving us help! We certainly do not require to have a jumped up, know-it-all watching and observing what we do! We do not, do not, need you Mr Lambert!”
He had gone bright red in the face, his breathing so loud that it was far more audible than my own. His eyes were wide, and I imagined the fire burning behind them, waiting for me to speak again so that he could shoot me down once more. I noticed that Louis had slipped from the room during the shouting match.
We sat for a few moments more, me staring out of the window that I no longer perceived as a threat, and him staring eternally at the bottom of his coffee mug. I allowed his breathing to return to normal, as well as the colour of his skin, before I tried to speak again, forcefully but calmly.
“Our intelligence suggests that half of your escape attempts have been foiled in the last few months. That’s a fifty-fifty chance of our boys getting out of this country. That’s not good enough. We are on the same side, we need those numbers to be higher. In the next few months there will be more planes over France, hopefully as they go to Germany. Many of them will be shot down and we need to have a higher number getting back. I’m not saying it will be easy.”