Return to the Field

by Alexander Fullerton

  ‘Hold on.’

  A car – petrol-engined. In a hurry, shifting gear noisily as it swung into this road about fifty metres away – coming this way and picking up speed. Going somewhere – touch wood – not patrolling, or searching for – people like us… Rosie was on the inner edge of the narrow pavement, her back against the stone house-frontage with the bike close up against her, Élise had side-stepped into a doorway, was more or less invisible: and the car coming so fast it was almost on top of them already – still picking up speed…

  Gone. Petrol stink lingering in the cold, dark air.

  ‘Weren’t looking for us.’

  ‘Let’s hope no one is. Listen, though – did “Hector” set up your flight reception?’

  ‘Yes. He should have been there, and wasn’t. And the man who did meet me had no idea why. You heard of the arrest this morning, you say?’

  ‘Resistance friends saw him arrested. They’d gone there to meet him in the station café – a meeting he’d requested – and it was outside the café that they grabbed him. One of them came to warn us before it was even daylight.’

  ‘Couldn’t they – he – have let you know yesterday by telephone?’

  ‘Not sensibly. As far as they know, it’s not immediately our concern. But also – as he explained – suppose the Boches had counted on someone doing exactly that, and put taps on the lines out of Le Mans?’

  ‘Thought of that, did they? Because of the arrest being made so publicly. That’s interesting. I wondered, myself – but for a different reason—’

  ‘Suzanne – to the left, here. Let’s save the rest of it till we’re home. Nearly there – and I want Alain in on it, naturally.’

  They were turning into a much busier road. She put a hand on Rosie’s arm again: ‘Have to cross here, then right at that corner, and – fifty metres, no more…’

  * * *

  Alain Noally shook his head at Élise – Lise, he called her – across a massive old fruitwood table. All three with cigarettes going: he’d had one stuck to his lower lip when he’d met them downstairs. He’d just reached over to light Rosie’s and then Lise’s. Growling as he slid back on to his chair, ‘May have cooked our goose – you realize?’

  ‘I’ve brought her. That was the urgent thing, wasn’t it?’

  Sending smoke pluming across the table. Shrugging slightly, glancing at Rosie as if for support. Rosie had gathered from earlier grumbling and Lise’s brief explanations that he hadn’t wanted her to go to the Café Dinard, had urged her to use the telephone, just tell her how to get here. Lise had tried once – she’d been on her own then, Noally not back from wherever it was he’d been – but the number had been engaged, and she hadn’t persevered because she’d had doubts of it anyway, visions of the unknown ‘Zoé’ getting lost, wandering distractedly through the town, an easy mark for police or Wehrmacht patrols. Then he’d got back just as she was about to leave: he’d questioned her going but hadn’t known enough about the situation to insist she stayed home and tried the phone again.

  He was calming down now, but he’d obviously been kicking himself for not having stopped her.

  Turning to Rosie now. A big man – seemingly all bone, no surplus flesh. A wide head of grey hair and a big nose, fringe of grey beard streaked with white. At least twice Lise’s age: getting towards sixty, Rosie guessed. He’d been downstairs to meet them, looming huge in the doorway in the moment that Lise had got it open, grabbing the bike and urging her and Lise to come in quickly… ‘Shut it.’ He’d obviously been waiting down there for some time. He’d dumped the bike somewhere and gone back to check the door was locked and bolted, then followed them upstairs. The ground floor was his working area, they had this middle floor for eating and daytime living – and the bathroom and his bedroom – while Lise had the upper part as her studio and sleeping quarters. She’d told Rosie that much while leading her up into this large, rather bare room with the magnificent table in the middle of it – where they were sitting now.

  Noally asked her, ‘Zoé’s your code-name, what’s the other?’

  ‘Field name is Suzanne. Lise knows my background. We knew each other in Paris when I was a student nurse and she was – art student, right?’

  ‘Where I first knew her, too.’

  A private smile between the two of them. Rosie wondered again about their relationship. It was guessable, she thought. Noally asked her, ‘She’s told you about “Hector” being arrested, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes.’ A lungful of smoke trickled out as she spoke. ‘Arrested very publicly…’ He’d started with some other question; she’d checked and nodded. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I was going to ask was your landing reception set up by him?’

  Lise cut in, ‘The answer’s yes, and he should have been there but wasn’t.’

  ‘But he would have known who it was coming in?’

  ‘That an agent was coming in. But there’s more to it than that. The Lysander that brought me was supposed to be taking him back to England. Baker Street had invited him and he’d accepted.’

  ‘Had he…’

  ‘By the way – I’ve got your half-million francs in this bag.’

  ‘I’m very glad to hear it. Thank you.’

  Lise urged her, ‘About “Hector”, though – why was he to have been flown out?’

  ‘Different question first – changing the subject back for just a moment—’ Noally had his hands flat on the table, palms down, seemed to be studying their backs – ‘the Café Dinard would have been full of people, eh?’

  Rosie nodded. ‘It was, by that time.’

  ‘Boches amongst them?’

  ‘There were some, certainly. One pair, anyway – in plain clothes. One of them tried to engage me in conversation.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And nothing. Chancing his arm, I suppose – no reason it should be more than that.’

  Looking down again at his hands. A craftsman’s hands: strong, blunt fingers. He shrugged, then. ‘Not that it makes much difference. There are plenty of informers around, God knows. D’you know what is the Gestapo staff in Marseille?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘One thousand and fifty. Fifty Boches, the rest French.’

  ‘Crikey.’

  Lise stared at him: ‘If that’s true, it’s an affront.’

  ‘Of course it’s an affront.’ He was lighting a new cigarette. Eyes on her again. ‘I still wish you hadn’t gone there. The more I think about it. You may have blown us sky-high. This is fact, not just me beefing, we’ve got to face it. They’ve had him – what, one day. So if he’s up to it, keeps his mouth shut—’

  ‘We’ve been into this, Alain.’

  ‘On our own we have, she hasn’t. I’m saying – one more day, if we’re lucky we’ll have that long before the word goes out.’ Pausing, looking at Rosie. ‘What else would he know about you?’

  ‘That I was coming to Rennes. He had to know that much because he was supposed to provide me with the return halves of railway tickets from – well, via Angers to Rennes. One of his own people must have been travelling from here to Le Mans, and I think “Hector” himself would have come directly to Le Mans from Paris, met this other person and then gone on down to Angers.’

  A sigh; a gesture of vague helplessness.

  ‘So there we are, Lise.’

  ‘He might not tell them anything at all.’

  ‘Might not – that’s true. But it’s safer to expect the worst: and if he holds out for another day he’s done his duty, eh?’

  The imperative – SOE’s expectation of its agents – was to resist interrogation for forty-eight hours, time for other members of a réseau to go to ground. But they’d have to know of the arrest in the first place, obviously; and the Gestapo knowing all about the forty-eight-hour rule wouldn’t normally make an arrest more publicly than they could help.

  Rosie asked Noally, ‘Do you know “Hector” personally?’

  ‘No. We’ve had dealings with him
– through Baker Street – but never met. Oh, I had a courier here for whom he arranged a lift to England. No direct contact with “Hector” though. It was a Frenchman I’d recruited and Baker Street agreed to accept for training. They set it up and gave us a contact address, that was all.’ Nodding towards Lise: ‘She replaced that fellow and also my former pianist, but she didn’t come by air.’

  ‘I know she didn’t.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We met six months ago on a beach. In pitch darkness, incidentally, and I still recognized her.’

  ‘You did, eh. Yeah, well…’

  His eyes were on Lise: his brown eyes and her greenish ones shifting a little as if tracing the contours of each others’ faces. Rosie thought, Sleeping on different floors, the hell they are…

  ‘So when she walked into that café—’

  ‘It did take a moment, before I realized.’ She changed the subject: ‘About “Hector” – there are some who have the idea he’s a vendu.’

  Vendu meaning one who’s sold out.

  The smiles had faded. Lise echoed, ‘Some who have the idea he is?’

  She nodded. ‘But I’ve also been told – yesterday morning, in London, although it feels more like a month ago – I was assured by a senior officer in Baker Street that he definitely is not. This man’s known “Hector” a long time, also knows he seduced the girlfriend of the one who’s denounced him. Despite which, since there has been this denunciation, they have to look into it. Hence the trip to London for de-briefing.’

  ‘A trip he isn’t going to make, now.’

  ‘Maybe decided not to make.’

  ‘It would hold water, wouldn’t it,’ Rosie agreed. ‘Getting himself arrested instead – in front of witnesses he’s asked to be there – to have us and Baker Street believe he would have gone if he could have?’

  Lise stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Air Movements Officer for the whole of “F” Section. Can’t be a lot he doesn’t know.’

  Noally blew his cheeks out. ‘If it’s true, it’s a disaster. And we certainly can’t count on another twenty-four hours’ grace. If they don’t know it all already, we have to assume they damn soon will. The one obvious thing, meanwhile—’ he was looking at Rosie – ‘is to get you on your way as soon as possible.’

  ‘First thing in the morning?’ She saw his nod, and added, ‘What time does curfew end?’

  ‘Five o’clock. Breakfast at four, eh?’

  ‘You’re very kind.’

  ‘Oh, my assistant here will see to it.’ He’d winked at Lise. ‘She’ll give us some soup for a nightcap too, by and by. You’ve had something already, I imagine?’

  ‘Something, yes… What’ll you two do?’

  ‘We’ll sit tight. Nothing else we can do. Maybe keep our heads down for a while. Except for one job – the business I was seeing to this evening… But “Hector” doesn’t know us – or of us, please God. The one thing that might drop us in it is Lise’s appearance in that damn café.’ He reached to pat her hand. ‘You aren’t exactly inconspicuous, you know. This one knew you from a glimpse in the dark six months ago – huh? You’re known around here, too. The bit of stuff I’m passing off as my assistant.’ He nodded to Rosie. ‘That’s what they say. I’m tolerated because I’m an artist. But there’s my little pigeon dashing in to meet her old buddy whom maybe they’re watching because they know she arrived by Lysander the night before and they want to know who her contacts are in this town – eh?’

  * * *

  They fascinated her. She was still thinking about them when she was on her way, leaving just after five a.m., taking the Rue de Fougères to start with – northeastward out of the town centre but then turning down right-handed to cross the river and work her way down south and westward to the Nantes road, the one she’d come in by yesterday. Pictures of them in her mind: of Noally as contained as he was physically impressive, often silent for long intervals and then swiftly, fluently, even savagely to the point. In love with Lise, obviously – as she was with him. Whether they had been before her arrival here as his pianist-cum-courier six months ago hadn’t emerged or even been hinted at; Rosie thought it might have been so with him, at any rate. With her at that stage it might have been more – her word, awe, more than love, until she’d come here. Now, she was obsessed with him. He was old enough to be her father, but the difference in their ages might actually be part of the mutual attraction: and not only from his angle – grey-headed lecher obsessed with what he’d called his bit of stuff: half a dozen times in the course of the evening his enthralment by her on an entirely different level was so plain that she – Rosie – could have hugged him. Well – hugged them both. Lise intrigued her just as much: had done, she realized now, from that minute or two six months earlier when she’d been only a dark cut-out, remote and uncommunicative on that surf-swept beach.

  She’d mentioned her to Ben, in fact. It had been pillow-talk and she’d been trying to explain to him – also to herself, to some extent – the dichotomy of a compulsion to return to the field and a numbing fear of it: a state of mind which for her had been epitomized in the tall stranger’s need for solitude, in those few minutes. She’d told Ben, ‘That girl’s me…’

  Half a foot taller and different in just about every way, but – sisters under the skin. An extraordinary affinity, literally at first sight. Despite which she’d misled her – and Noally – into believing that she was heading for Fougères. Same impression that she’d left in the minds of the couple at Soucelles. Although she couldn’t easily imagine either Lise or Noally cracking under torture, it was a simple fact that what people didn’t know they couldn’t divulge.

  They’d have approved her caution, too. There was comfort in that thought. Recalling the scene last night, Noally leaning over the map, one blunt forefinger tracing the route to Fougères. His murmur: ‘Won’t take you long. If that’s as far as you’re going.’ Not wanting any answer: dropping the subject, telling Lise, ‘Better make her up a bed, if she’s starting that early. I’m off to mine.’ Pushing his chair back. ‘See you both at cock-crow.’

  ‘You will be up?’

  ‘Of course. Think I’d miss breakfast?’

  * * *

  She’d let him think she believed the stuff about him and Lise sleeping on different floors; appreciating that he wouldn’t want Baker Street to know he and Lise were anything but chef de réseau and pianist. Or embarrass her over it. They’d better not appear together at Baker Street, she thought, if they wanted to keep it dark. Anyone who wasn’t blind or exceptionally dim could hardly have a doubt that they were in love and revelling in it.

  She was on the Nantes road, the one she’d come in on, within about thirty minutes of leaving them, and would turn off westward a few miles south. It was going to be something like two hundred kilometres today, to St Michel-du-Faou. But no rain so far: mentally she crossed fingers that it might stay dry. The big thing anyway was having Rennes behind her now – more or less – with the cash delivered and no trail left anywhere. Except – possibly, but please God not – in the Café Dinard: remembering Noally’s misgivings, which were the reason she was leaving town by this route instead of directly westward on the road for Carhaix.

  Silly, really. First because there could hardly be a tail now, and second because if there was, a slight diversion like this would hardly guarantee throwing it off. Habit and training, was all: taking nothing for granted, and no risks that were avoidable. Plugging on – damp-skinned inside her clothes in cold dawn air and the lingering dark, telling herself grimly that she couldn’t very well have done much better, this far. Having covered about half the total distance, and left no trail or clues anywhere that she knew of. Those were the facts – irrespective of how one might happen to feel, from moment to moment. Overall, it really was not so bad. Suzanne Tanguy, on her way to a job in the peace and quiet of the Breton countryside – with proof of it, and papers in good order…

  Not as perfect as Alain Noally’s and Lise’s, admit
tedly. (Temporary mood of depression due to feeling lonely, having enjoyed being in their company, she realized, and missing them now.) But their papers were the real thing, their own genuine papers in their own real names. Lise’s name was there for anyone to check on in the Sorbonne’s class-lists – with no indication of a period of nearly a year which she’d spent in England. She’d fixed that, somehow. And Noally’s showed that he’d worked from a studio in Pont Aven until 1940 when he’d moved to Paris, and later shifted back to his beloved Brittany – to Rennes, almost to where he’d started from. Nowhere in his documentation either was there any indication of time spent outside France.

  Lise had asked Rosie last night – on the top floor, when they’d been preparing for bed – about the boyfriend she’d told her she had. ‘You said he paints?’

  ‘You said you didn’t want to know about him.’

  ‘So I did. Yes. Well…’

  ‘Dead right, too. Far better not.’

  Not to know, or spill beans unnecessarily. For one thing, personal background details could be used by a Boche radiooperator to convince SOE analysts in Baker Street that he was ‘Zoè’ – using her transceiver after she’d been caught. Knowing a name, a home address, date of birth, name of a husband or boyfriend.

  ‘But it’s good, is it? That’s all I’m asking, really.’ Lise had gestured downward, to the floor where Alain was doubtless cursing… ‘The real thing – like I have? Don’t tell him I said this, but—’

  ‘You don’t have to say it. I’ve got eyes…’

  ‘I’ll tell you anyway. It’s so marvellous it scares me, it’s too good. I don’t mean scares me because we might come to grief – the obvious way, Gestapo, so forth – I mean how it might be when one day there’s no war. I feel it’s – like the air we breathe, the scene we’re real in – you know?’