Waiting For the Day

by Leslie Thomas

  He was not kept waiting long. She came through a draped entrance at the extreme end of the room. She was elderly and wore ancient clothes but her eyes were bright and she approached him in a sprightly manner as though genuinely pleased to see him.

  ‘Monsieur,’ she said in a chesty voice. ‘How nice of you to come. I am sure you would like a glass of champagne.’

  Paget said he would. The dusty servant, almost at once, brought a tray with two flutes and a bottle of Bollinger with a touch of froth at the neck. Nothing was said while he poured the glasses with a shaky hand. Then he went from the room, backing across the frayed carpet, and Madame Dupard, speaking in English, said: ‘I’m afraid I do not know your name. But perhaps it is better that I don’t.’

  ‘I am afraid so,’ said Paget. It was difficult to believe he was standing there lifting a champagne glass when an hour before he had been a fugitive hiding for his life in a smelly tomb. He grinned at her. ‘We are trained never to give our names.’

  She cackled drily. ‘Hah, that is always the first rule to go under interrogation, you know. But I will call you Eric. I like the English actor Eric Portman.’

  Paget bowed briefly. ‘I’m Eric,’ he acknowledged and said: ‘I know you are Madame Dupard.’

  ‘Celestine Dupard,’ she said. ‘A sad widow. My husband Clovis was well known in the former Unoccupied Zone, in Vichy itself. He knew everything and everybody from Marshal Pétain down to the most confused resistance fighter. The Gestapo, everyone. He died from strain.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Paget inadequately.

  ‘He had a young, active and demanding mistress,’ she shrugged, waving her glass slightly. ‘A mere enemy occupation does not stop such liaisons. But the pace was too much for poor Clovis.’

  The servant paddled into the room and refilled their glasses. ‘Please, Eric,’ she said, ‘sit comfortably and tell me your adventures, as much as you can allow. Nothing surprises me in this war and I am very trustworthy. Bruno will bring us some food. I expect you are hungry.’

  It was as though he were telling her a tall story, something he made up as he went along. He could scarcely believe it himself. Only forty-eight hours before he had been in Bournemouth with Penelope listening to a J. B. Priestley play. ‘You must rest too before you continue your journey,’ Madame Dupard said. ‘There is no difficulty. The Germans call here only by appointment.’

  ‘You seem to have everything arranged very nicely,’ he commented.

  ‘We have had some practice. The occupation has been for almost four years. We know the Hun and he knows us. It is a temporary but almost workable arrangement. Now tell me.’

  Cautiously Paget said: ‘I was sent to contact a circuit, a resistance group, in Rennes.’

  ‘Bookbinder, I think,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. Bookbinder. You know.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘The Germans stopped the train and took me with a group, a random check I imagine, into a station. It was all very loose, very haphazard.’

  ‘No one is more haphazard than the ordinary occupation soldier,’ said Madame Dupard. ‘Their minds are elsewhere.’

  ‘This was amazingly easy. I managed to slip out while they were checking papers and I jumped on a train that was just leaving. They came after me. Someone might even have told them.’

  ‘One learns quickly,’ she shrugged. ‘There is a lot of treachery. All it needs sometimes is the reward of extra rations.’

  ‘Anyway, I jumped from the train and ended up in a churchyard where the priest and two men, one with a gun, caught me. I thought I was done for. But now I am here.’

  ‘The Diderot brothers,’ she sighed. ‘They play games like little boys. Spies and agents, Gestapo and resistance. They are fools. They shot a man dead once and he was only an innocent employee of the bus company.’

  ‘They go around playing these games? Guns and all?’

  She laughed. ‘Monsieur, you should have seen people like them before, in the Unoccupied Zone, in Vichy, when there was more opportunity for these sorts of activities. There were agents and double agents and others who were not anything but believed they were. Old scores to be settled, you know, private crimes to be committed, bribery and fraud, businesses to be obtained at bargain prices once the local Jews had been sent off to Germany. It was a confused scene. People indulged in their fantasies. Once two of these fools arrested, well kidnapped, a man … What do you call it…? Shanghaied? And the man turned out to be a Nazi agent. There was some trouble over that.’

  ‘Do they always bring wanted men to your door?’ asked Paget.

  She smiled reflectively. ‘Ah, now that is something I cannot tell you. We must both keep our secrets. Sometimes the most unsuitable people have arrived, vagabonds, burglars, all manner. One man went off with a set of my towels.’

  The silent servant Bruno reappeared and pulled two chairs out from a graceful table which had been laid for two with shining cutlery, shapely glasses and white napkins. ‘We should eat,’ said Madame Dupard. ‘I’m sure you are hungry. Then you must rest and while you do so I will discover where to send you.’

  Le Coq Noir was in the centre of Rennes. ‘It is a good place,’ Paget was told by the taxi-driver who had brought him from the station. The taxi was fuelled by gas from a balloon on its roof. ‘Nice clean women and the wine’s not too bad. The Boche like it.’

  It was eleven at night. He paid two francs at the door and went through the nightclub dimness towards a diffuse light over the bar. There was a band playing ‘Moonlight Serenade’, trying and failing to sound like the Glenn Miller Orchestra. A dozen people were dancing, others were at tables, and there was conversation and some laughter. He saw the girl at the bar. Black hair, short as a bathing cap, red home-made dress, large eyes and crucifix. Just as Madame Dupard had described her. As instructed, he asked her if she would like a Hermann Goering frappé and she said yes.

  ‘You would like to meet Gilbert,’ she said, answering him in English.

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘Anyone who buys me that stupid cocktail needs to see Gilbert,’ she said. ‘Somebody told you. Come with me.’

  She made for the dance floor and held out her pale arms. Once more he wondered what was happening to him. He began to dance with her, a foxtrot, and she eased him closer to her body. ‘It is better to go to see Gilbert by dancing,’ she said in a not particularly confidential voice. ‘Walking straight to the office could create suspicion.’

  ‘Are there Germans in?’ he whispered.

  ‘Not yet. They come later. It is the French I worry about, monsieur. We have a black-market war at the moment and there has been enough trouble.’

  They reached the far side of the room. The band hiding behind garish lights played indomitably. She guided him off the floor and led him without hurry to a padded door in the shadows. She knocked and went in immediately. ‘For you,’ she said to a perspiring fat man in a sagging dinner jacket. He was standing to one side of the desk upon which was an anti-tank rocket launcher.

  ‘A beauty, eh?’ he said as he glanced up at Paget. ‘Made in Czechoslovakia. They always make the best’

  He was unsurprised to see Paget. ‘I thought you would have been here before this,’ he said.

  ‘I had trouble,’ replied Paget. He nodded to the menacing weapon on the desk. ‘Should you be displaying that?’

  Gilbert laughed. He had a moustache which he seemed to be trying to sniff up his nose. ‘It is okay, monsieur,’ he assured. ‘The Germans will not be in yet. Last night, after business, we had an expert who came in and gave a dozen of us a lecture on how to use the weapon.’ He tapped a box with his foot. ‘We have twelve rocket shells also. Each one would pierce a tank. And we hope for another launcher. Please, monsieur, take a seat.’

  Staring at the lean launcher at eye-level, Paget felt his way to a chair by the desk. Gilbert leaned over, picked up the weapon with heavy forearms and eased it on to the floor. ‘I must not leave it there,’ he s
aid. ‘You will think I’m showing off.’

  Without asking, he poured two glasses of brandy from a bottle on a side-table. ‘You seem to have the Germans all worked out,’ said Paget. ‘Everybody does.’

  ‘We think so. Then sometimes they turn nasty and execute someone, often the wrong person. But they are weary, monsieur, they want to go home. If they have a home when they get there. They have no spirit. They will fight,’ he patted his heart, ‘but not with this.’

  Paget said: ‘The way things go on here, as far as I can see, the German intelligence service must be pretty thick.’

  ‘Services,’ corrected Gilbert. ‘Intelligence services. There’s the Abwehr, the GFP, the SD and three more at least. They all work against each other. Piggledy-higgledy. They do more damage to each other than we could ever do to them. Each one knows something but will not tell the others. Jealousies, betrayals, impotence … I mean, of course, incompetence. It is worse even than the French resistance.’

  ‘Don’t you want to check my identity?’ suggested Paget.

  Gilbert flapped a hand. ‘If you like. It makes no difference. Many people come through here without papers. I know who is who. Why did you come?’

  Paget was dismayed. ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I knew you were due, but I forgot why. I am very busy. Apart from the espionage, I have this nightclub to run.’

  ‘The RAF are to bomb the prison,’ Paget said, looking for astonishment in Gilbert’s face but finding none. ‘They believe they can hit the outer wall and facilitate the escape of the French resistance members who are under sentence of death there. Seventy, I believe.’

  ‘Sixty-eight,’ sniffed Gilbert. ‘The odd two were in the sickbay when it happened. Imagine being in the sickbay when you are under a death sentence.’

  Paget was stunned. ‘It’s already happened?’

  Gilbert nodded. ‘Excellent bombing, too. Everyone escaped through the hole in the wall.’

  ‘But … but … I was supposed to come here to coordinate the escapees.’ Gilbert pulled his moustache from his nostrils and smiled wryly. Paget went on: ‘To … well, sort them out. To make sure they were dispersed and not recaptured.’

  Gilbert laughed as though he had been told a genuine joke. His shoulders continued to shake as he poured two more brandies. ‘Well, it was all done without your help, monsieur. Everyone is now tuckered away, as you say. I’m afraid your people in London are sometimes out of touch with what is happening. Maybe even with real life. It’s like one of the games they play at your noble schools … public schools, is it?’

  ‘So I came for nothing.’ Paget’s voice was a whisper.

  Gilbert appeared sorry for him. ‘Monsieur,’ he said, leaning on the table. ‘Everything in this war is one grand fuck-up. Well, most things. Both sides. The side that has the fewest fuck-ups will win, with the help of superior forces, of course.’

  He sighed. ‘This whole resistance business is raddled with it. Many French people want nothing to do with the resistance. They want a quiet life. Then someone who likes to make a name assassinates some Nazi and what happens? Twenty-five perfectly good Frenchmen are taken and shot. You have to weigh up the consequences.’

  He finished his brandy with a gulp. ‘Sometimes the resistance fights itself,’ he continued, spreading his large hands. ‘Communists, who didn’t even join in until Hitler invaded Russia, Republicans, Gaullists, Corsicans, Spaniards, Fascists even. Believe me, monsieur, the liberation of France may only be the beginning of a civil war.’

  He took in Paget’s downcast expression. ‘All the sabotage we have been able to arrange, sometimes at great risk, has been little beyond an annoyance to the Boche.’ His voice became suddenly encouraging: ‘The real action will be when the invasion happens. Then the resistance will come into its glory. Every rail track, every junction, every signal-box on the French railways will be disabled. The Germans will be attacked from the backside at every opportunity.’ He leaned over and patted the rocket launcher.

  ‘I think I’ll have to come back later,’ said Paget caustically.

  ‘Once the signal is given,’ agreed Gilbert. ‘When we hear on your BBC that terrible poetry from Verlaine.’

  Slowly Paget said: ‘You know about Verlaine?’

  ‘The sobbing of violins in the autumn,’ recited Gilbert. ‘Everybody knows it. The Germans also, I expect. It is difficult to keep any secret in France these days.’

  The Englishman, still taking it in, said: ‘I wasn’t aware of the exact words. It could be a trick. Maybe it will be replaced by something else nearer the invasion.’

  Gilbert smiled thinly. ‘Sur le pont d’Avignon,’ he suggested.

  ‘Ding dong dell, pussy down the well,’ sighed Paget.

  ‘Anything will do,’ said Gilbert. ‘Three blonde mice is a good one.’ He stood up and patted Paget on the shoulder. ‘I am sorry it has been such a disappointment. We must make arrangements to get you back to England.’

  Paget’s eye was caught by a wall calendar. It said: ‘Avril 1.’

  ‘I came here once before,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, sure. You were in the Lysander that hit the sheep and caught fire. We pulled you out.’

  ‘No, I got out myself. You pulled out the pilot and he was dead.’

  ‘That’s correct, now I remember. The sheep suffered too. Everyone in the area had mutton that night.’

  ‘Is Antoinette still in this region?’

  Gilbert appeared puzzled but then said: ‘Antoinette Barre. Beautiful, eh? She was the one who sheltered you afterwards.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She has gone to Bordeaux, I think. Yes, Bordeaux. She is doing good work for us. She is very well informed.’

  ‘Good contacts?’

  ‘The best. She has married a German officer.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘I ’ate these bleedin’ guns,’ sniffed Blackie as they were cleaning the twenty-five-pounders.

  ‘Bloody things,’ grunted Hinchcliffe. ‘Lugging them around.’ Chaffey and Rayley nodded.

  ‘Wiping their noses,’ said Warren. He polished the already shining muzzle and, bending, looked at the contorted reflection of his already unlovely face.

  ‘Wipin’ their arses,’ said Blackie, flicking the breach. He gave it some spit.

  ‘I hope they ackle when they’re supposed to,’ said Treadwell, standing back to survey the gun which he was buffing. ‘We going to be right in the shit if they don’t.’

  ‘Fuckin’ things,’ added Blackie. He polished off the spit.

  Sergeant Harris, who had been standing at the door, walked with his measured pace into the shed. The men’s profanity had echoed against the corrugated-iron roof. He stopped and revolved on his heel at a right angle. ‘You won’t have to do it much longer,’ he announced. ‘Take that pipe out of your mouth, Gannick.’

  ‘It’s empty, sarge,’ said Gannick.

  Every man had stopped his cleaning. ‘Why not, sarge?’ asked Warren cautiously. ‘Why won’t we have to do it?’ Changes in the army were rarely for the better.

  ‘Ceremonial duties,’ guessed Gordon unconvincingly. ‘Firing the salute for the King’s birthday.’

  ‘You won’t be firing them at all,’ said Harris. His face creased grimly. ‘You’re all being transferred. Me as well. So the rumour has it.’

  ‘Not the commandos is it?’ said the scrawny Blackie. ‘Oi bloody ’ope not.’

  ‘They’re not that hard up,’ sniffed Harris. ‘It’s the infantry. The foot sloggers. Hampshire Regiment.’

  Their rough faces became blank. Nobody spoke until Treadwell said: ‘I wrote in for the pay corps.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t get in,’ said Harris. ‘You can’t count, for a start.’ He surveyed them standing wretchedly beside the guns they had served for three years: Gannick, May and Forster, the older men, Rayley, Bond and the others. ‘The adjutant will come and comfort you when he’s got a minute.’

  ‘You’ve been posted as
well, sarge?’

  ‘Me, too. You’d be lost without me. We’re going to be charging up those beaches, fixed bayonets, in the face of the enemy, instead of getting the guns ashore in good order and firing from a respectable distance. Personally, I’m very pissed off, but don’t mention that to General Montgomery.’ He surveyed their miffed faces. ‘All right, get fell in. And try and march smartly. You’re infantry now.’

  As they marched away Blackie and some of the others looked back at the twenty-five-pounders. ‘I was fond of that gun,’ muttered Blackie.

  *

  They waited in the hut, squatting disconsolately on the iron ends of their beds or gathered around the dead stove. ‘I don’t ken this “over the top” mentality,’ said Gordon sternly. ‘Charging the Jerry trenches and getting buggered.’

  ‘And early in the morning,’ ventured the young Peters. ‘Getting you up at four on a cold morning to go and get killed.’

  ‘You’d reckon they ought to let you have a lie-in,’ said Warren. ‘’Ave the attack later.’

  ‘It’s not too much to ask. If it’s the last morning you’re alive.’

  Blackie said: ‘Anyhow, now we don’t have the guns to worry about. No more bullshit.’

  Harris came in. He had pressed his uniform, and burnished his brasses and his Royal Artillery badge with its cannon. Blackie said: ‘What about the guns, sarge? Where’re they going?’

  ‘Scrap,’ suggested May. Only Forster laughed.

  ‘God knows, I don’t. Maybe they’ll give them to a museum or the army cadets, for something to play with. The adjutant is coming in to have a word.’

  They waited a further ten minutes before Captain Moon appeared. They came to attention. It was not often they saw him and he seemed to have trouble in remembering them. ‘Pulled the damned rug from under our feet, I’m afraid, soldiers,’ he said in his pompous way. ‘No warning, not an inkling. One day gunners and the next cannon fodder.’ He paused with something like embarrassment. ‘As for me, I’m being transferred to the depot at Woolwich.’