‘Blowed it up,’ said the man. ‘Just for practice.’
Penelope said lamely: ‘I’m so sorry,’ before driving on and winding up the window.
The sun shone as they went across the south of Devon, diverted by barbed wire and skull-and-crossbone signs warning: ‘Training Area. Beware Live Ammunition.’
They reached the main road, moving with military traffic, and more than an hour later they were entering Plymouth. Much of the naval city had been levelled by bombing. From a mile inland there was an uninterrupted view of the sea and the masts of warships. Daffodils were growing yellow about the ordered ruins and two battle cruisers were lying off Plymouth Hoe. All was peaceful and sunlit there now, the upper structures of other vessels could be seen across the scarred land. Some boys were kicking a football on a cleared bomb-site, goalposts painted on what had once been a cellar wall.
Penelope knew her way. They were admitted through three successive barriers guarded by sailor sentries with fixed bayonets and pulled up outside a building hidden behind a pyramid of sandbags.
Before Paget got out of the car she said quietly: ‘I may not be taking you any further. Sometimes I’m required to carry on to the embarkation point in Cornwall, but sometimes not. They will tell me here.’
‘I see. Are you driving back to London?’
‘By tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’ll stop in Exeter tonight. I … I have a dinner date.’
He got out of the car at an entrance like a cave buried in the sandbags. ‘The sooner they get rid of these old things the better,’ said the naval lieutenant who greeted him. ‘They really whiff when it’s raining.’
He was shown into a waiting-room with a tall, buttercup-yellow pile of American National Geographic magazines on a central table. There was no one else there. He picked up the top magazine and was surveying photographs of a village in the Andes when a sharp young woman in the uniform of the Women’s Royal Naval Service appeared, treated him to an official smile and invited him through the door. ‘Interesting, those National Geographics,’ she said as he followed her along the corridor. ‘The naval types enjoy them because it shows them the places they’d like to go to but probably won’t.’
She indicated for him to enter a long panelled room, too elaborate for an office despite the single desk at the extreme end. A naval commander rose and came almost the length of the room, hand extended. ‘Squadron Leader Paget,’ he said. ‘Glad you could come.’
‘They said I had to,’ said Paget. They walked back and he took the offered chair. The man’s name was Hawksworth. He sighed. ‘I wouldn’t care to do what you do,’ he confessed. ‘It’s bloody dull here but it’s safe and roomy. I was in submarines before. Hopefully before long none of us will have to play these games.’ He took out a file after unlocking a steel drawer in the desk. ‘Anyway, briefly you’ll be embarking at about eight this evening with another chap, who is on a different mission, from Helford Passage in Cornwall.’ He looked up. ‘But you’ve been before.’
‘Not this way,’ Paget said. ‘Last time I was supposed to go in by sea but it was aborted. The time before I went by air.’
‘Lysander pranged, didn’t it? According to this.’ He patted the file. ‘Unpleasant.’
‘Yes, caught fire. The pilot died but two of us got out.’
Hawksworth said: ‘Well, good. You got off. The sea passage is generally less risky. You’ll be going on what’s called the VAD route, although I can’t for the life of me remember why. There are a number of places on the Brest peninsula used for landings. The Hun hasn’t got eyes everywhere. You have your civvy clothes and we have your dummy papers here. Don’t, for Christ’s sake, forget who you’re supposed to be. One bright spark did. With great difficulty we managed to get him out. He’s up in Scotland now, at that place they stick the failures.’
‘With the people who don’t get through the training,’ nodded Paget.
Hawksworth said: ‘The misfits. Inver … somewhere. One of the Invers. Miles from anywhere.’
‘I’ve wondered what they do,’ said Paget.
‘There’s a workshop. They sit at benches and make things. God knows what. Fluffy toys perhaps.’
He shuffled the papers. ‘Your contact from the Bookbinder Circuit – where do they get these names? – will be on the beach. You’ll get a decent hot meal at Helford. We’ve got a mess down there. Dry, I’m afraid, no booze. We can’t have anybody singing and shouting as they approach a secret landing.’
‘I imagine not,’ said Paget.
They were only occupied for fifteen minutes. As they reached the door Hawksworth said: ‘We have a driver to take you on. Your Fanny can go back to wherever she came from.’
Paget went out. Penelope was waiting in the central area, small in her uniform. ‘They are sending me on with another driver,’ he said.
‘Yes, so I understand. I’ve handed over your civvies and your overnight bag. Somebody is taking care of that.’
They stood without speaking for a moment. Then her face tautened and she came to attention and saluted him. His face reddened. He returned the salute.
‘Goodbye, sir.’
‘Goodbye. And thank you.’
She turned and clipped briskly towards the door. It swung and she was gone. They never saw each other again.
Chapter Fourteen
There was an easy rolling of the sea which, even though the night was dark, gave it a visible sheen. They were five miles off the coast of Brittany. The man who was on a separate mission but was to be landed with Paget, and whose name was Clegg, came on to the deck and stood alongside him. They were both drinking coffee. There were no lights on the boat.
‘In half an hour there’ll be no talking,’ said Clegg. ‘It’s a bit like being at boarding-school, really. Have you been in this way before?’
‘No. I’ve only been in once. By plane.’
‘That used to be a bugger, but it’s easier now. When they moved into the Unoccupied Zone the Germans gave themselves a bigger chunk of France to watch. The last air drop I did there were two hundred people waiting on the ground. Flares, everything. Like a fairground. Not a Jerry in sight.’
‘Let’s hope they’re absent tonight.’
‘This bit of the coast isn’t too bad. As long as you remember to scrape your footprints from the sand. Jerry has become half-hearted. He’ll fight like he always did, like hell, once we invade but he knows he’s done for. The last time I landed I went by submarine.’
‘That’s a bit extravagant, isn’t it?’ said Paget.
‘In the Med. Sometimes it’s one of those felucca things, fishing boats from Gib, bloody uncomfortable, but they’ve also got this French submarine which is otherwise useless. It’s got some fault in the torpedo tubes and its torpedoes tend to go around in circles.’
Paget laughed quietly. ‘Another part of the pantomime.’
‘It is a pantomime,’ agreed Clegg. ‘But you tend to stop laughing if the Gestapo get hold of you. They are not funny people.’
They drank their coffee. A naval lieutenant came from the wheel-house and said: ‘Nice night for a landing. I’ll have to ask you to come below now, gents. We’re getting closer. And you’d better say your good-lucks because from here on we must keep dead silence.’
‘Good luck,’ said Clegg.
‘And you,’ said Paget. ‘Good luck.’
The strangers shook hands.
The clumsy boat moved towards the shore. Everyone on board, the two passengers and the four crew, eyed the darkness, the lieutenant through night binoculars. They had slowed to three knots. Eventually a black line rose ahead even darker than the sky. Then there was a single pinprick of light followed by another a minute later. They were there.
The boat moved close in and Clegg and Paget, first hanging their shoes around their necks by the knotted laces and rolling up their trousers like schoolboys going shrimping, climbed into a rubber dinghy with a rating who paddled easily and silently to the shore. From the beach came
another blip of light.
At a nod from the sailor they eased themselves over the side. Paget found himself in a foot of cold water. Four dark cut-outs on the shore made towards them. He heard a soft precautionary click as the sailor in the dinghy cocked a gun. Paget and Clegg had no weapons. No words were spoken but they were led in from the beach to where the black cliffs stood above it. A man with a rake appeared and began to erase their footprints from the sand.
There was a hooded person leading the group who, without speaking but with an odd formality, shook hands with the two arrivals. They realised it was a woman by the size of her hands. She pointed ahead and they made their way up a firm cliff path to a road where a Renault van was parked. It was blatantly white, smudgy in the darkness. The driver was waiting and without noise he opened the rear doors. Clegg and Paget clambered in and the woman climbed in after them. It smelt of fish. She pushed back her hood. She was dark and middle-aged. She smiled. ‘Welcome to France,’ she said quietly.
The train for Rennes left at seven in the morning. Paget stood with a group of early workers as they waited with everyday indifference, most of them smoking, one drinking from a bottle, while the train steamed in. There was a dozy German sentry at the end of the platform.
Paget felt his heart tighten but the bleak normality of the scene reassured him. He got into a compartment and sat on a wooden seat with a line of unspeaking men carrying their lunch-boxes and their newspapers. It was getting light and two men, one each side of the compartment, released the blackout blinds to let in the drab daylight. One man smoked a pipe, two sucked at cigarette stubs. They opened their newspapers. Paget wished he had bought one.
For twenty minutes the train chuffed without speed through the flat landscape. He began to look out of the window, but then realised it might mark him as a stranger and instead pretended to read the back of the newspaper of the man sitting opposite. It was the sports page and there was a report of a boxing match with a picture. Then, at a minor station, the engine hissed and stopped.
The occupants of the compartment looked up with annoyance. One checked his watch. ‘Des Boches,’ said another and the rest grunted or nodded and went back to their reading. Paget felt fear running through him. It was too late to do anything but sit, wait, and try to look like the others. The Germans were moving through the train; he could hear them opening the doors of each compartment and demanding identity documents. He hoped his forgeries were good forgeries. Men were being taken from the train on to the platform and he could see them standing unconcerned, apparently unguarded; a random check.
The door of the next compartment opened loudly and he heard a subdued commotion there. Without a word the Frenchman opposite took the outside pages from his newspaper and handed them to Paget. They heard the next door close and a thin and bespectacled young German officer appeared outside their compartment, opened their door and took a step inside. He seemed bored, as indifferent as the Frenchmen who scarcely looked up at him. Wordlessly, each produced an identity document and held it up. Paget was the last to produce his. The German barely glanced at it but retreated to the door and crooked a finger, calling him to follow.
He made himself cease trembling. As he tried to get to his feet from between the other men he almost handed the man opposite the page of his newspaper but stopped himself. He went between the pairs of rough trousered knees and into the corridor. With a little relief he saw that other passengers were being ordered to leave the train. There were twenty, all men, on the platform when he joined them.
The passengers all seemed indifferent to the interruption of their journey. The short-sighted German officer and two soldiers with rifles shuffled them around two corners and into the wooden station building. Mentally, Paget began rehearsing his French accent.
In single file they were shepherded into the waiting-room of the station. Some sat on the benches and the Germans told them to stub out their brown cigarettes. There was a corridor which led through the station building with a closed door at the platform end; off this was another room where there was evidently a senior officer. He called something from the inner room and the two soldiers organised the men into a single file. Five of them were moved along the corridor and turned left into the room where the officer was waiting. One German soldier went into the room with them and the other, with little enthusiasm or alertness, chivvied them from behind. Paget sat down on a bench, eyeing the door at the platform end of the corridor. The five who had been taken into the inner room emerged after a few minutes and with Gallic shrugs turned left and went down the corridor, through the far door and, Paget could see, out on to the platform. Another five were moved into the inner room and Paget positioned himself to be part of the next section. In a few minutes the second batch of men came out and turned left along the passage and out through the door.
He steeled himself. The soldier indicated that the next five, with Paget one from the end, should go in for examination. His comrade had remained in the inner room and the lieutenant was also in there. Only the one dull German soldier ushered the men forward. He went to the front of the line as they shuffled in and for a few moments he was out of sight. Paget firmly but quietly walked straight along the passage, opened the door, and let himself out on to the platform.
Standing there was a grubby local train of three carriages. It was just moving away. He looked over his shoulder, then went at a stiff-legged hurry along the platform and, opening the final door, jumped aboard.
He looked back a second time at the platform but there was no commotion. His group of men had been released from the interrogation and they were slouching through the door. Amazed that it should have been so easy, he turned into the compartment and sat on the wooden seat opposite the only other occupants. There was a gross-faced fat man, enfolded in jerseys and grasping a heavy white stick; he had one blank eye and the nondescript dog that took up the seat beside him was also missing an eye.
Paget muttered something under his breath and his fellow passenger responded by banging his stick on the floor twice. Paget wondered where they were going.
They passed a station whose name meant nothing to him. The sun had come from behind the miserly morning clouds and they were travelling roughly west. Then the train slowed and hesitatingly halted. Voices came from the corridor. The blind man pointed with his stick to the outside carriage door and muttered a single word: ‘Partez.’
Paget went. He slipped open the door and jumped down on to the embankment, toppling with the force of his descent and rolling through soaked bushes and rough grass until he came to rest against a wall. He lay still, moving only his eyes to see if he could fix what was happening in the train. Nothing was apparent and after a few minutes it began to move again.
He lay against the wall, trying to calm the sound of his breathing. He was cut and wet. Carefully he got to his knees and then to his feet. His head came inch by inch over the wall and he found he was looking into a churchyard, full of old and cockeyed graves with a grim church and some meagre trees. He could see there was a road beyond, a red bus making its slow way to some unknown destination. He needed to avoid the railway now.
Apart from the bus there was no discernible movement anywhere. He climbed over the wall, feeling the old bricks shudder, and landed on the other side directly on top of an abandoned angel, its wings broken, leaning against the wall among other cemetery detritus.
Dodging sharply between the tombs and vaults he made his way towards the church. He was only yards short, one gravestone away, when a priest came from the porch accompanied by two unpleasant-looking men who were in civilian clothes but one of whom was carrying a gun. The other saw him immediately, shouted and pointed. He ran, zigzagging between the masonry, expecting a shot and a fragment of flying angel. Abruptly he was confronted with a vault like a small house, stained, dark and dripping. The door was hanging open and he almost fell down the ragged steps and into the deathly and smelly gloom. He could hear the men searching, calling in French to each othe
r. At least they weren’t the Gestapo. From where he crouched he could see the edges of two mouldy coffins lying on shelves. He wanted to go home.
They found him quite easily. There was nowhere he could run. The two men, with the priest hovering like a crow behind them, appeared at the top of the broken steps and the one with the gun pointed it directly at him. He came out with his hands above his head.
It was a close, wooden-panelled room containing nothing but the upright chair on which he sat. The men had left him and locked him in although he suspected that one remained outside the door. During the journey in a clanking Citroën, which once broke down and had to be coaxed into restarting, the man holding the gun had kept nudging his ribs with the muzzle, but there was an amateurish air about them that gave him hope; they did not tie his wrists and although they had discussed blindfolding him they had no blindfold and instead, rather shamefacedly, they instructed him to keep his eyes closed.
Through his eyelashes he perceived that they leaned forward to check him at intervals; he barely saw that the car was entering a heavy stone gate and going up a long drive with regular trees at its sides. They took him out with clumsy roughness and, with further warnings about shutting his eyes, pushed him up a flight of stone steps. A rusty but resounding bell was rung and a creaking door opened. The man who responded greeted them civilly and asked no questions. Paget was then led into the panelled room and the door closed behind him.
After half an hour it opened and he quickly closed his eyes. But a grave voice told him that the precaution was unnecessary and he opened them to see a seedy-looking man wearing a servant’s coat, old-fashioned and dusty, who said: ‘Madame Dupard will receive you in a few moments.’
By now nothing surprised Paget and, at the man’s invitation, he went into a baronial hall where every floorboard sighed as he trod towards an ornate door. The servant followed him and, once he was in an old, dim and overfurnished room, suggested that he took a chair and waited for Madame Dupard.
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