Close Quarters

by Thomas Wood

  The more that I thought of the young boy’s face, the more dread began to creep into my mind. I had seen good fortune and bad in equal measure so far tonight. I only hoped that extended to the bombs that had fallen around Jules’ home.

  I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Georges’ lifeless body, in amongst all the rubble and debris of a wayward bomb that had fallen directly on the house. To cap it all I just knew that Christopher would have somehow survived.

  The thought made my legs fly fanatically, overtaking Mike like a horse in the final straight of the Grand National. He called out to me, but there was nothing I could do about it, my mind was totally focused on getting back.

  But, within seconds, I realised that the village had been fortunate. No one stirred around here. In fact, not much was stirring anywhere now.

  The roar of aircraft engines was now some way off in the distance, as the bombers changed course and took a different path home. The sounds of the roaring flames weren’t quite audible, but there was a rumbling undercurrent of continuous noise that told me the inferno was still raging down in Clerval.

  As I calmed myself down, my legs slowed, as the humanness re-entered them once more. Mike caught up with me.

  “What’s got into you, old fruit?” he puffed, clapping me on the back.

  “I—”

  There was a sudden bellow, followed by a beast-like growl and, as I turned around to face the noise, I was filled with wonder and fear in equal measure.

  A tall plume of fire and rage erupted over Sochaux and illuminated all of its surroundings, as if it was the middle of the day. The light was so bright that I could make out the silhouettes of people, some who had stopped to marvel at what was going on, others far too focused to be distracted.

  The orange pillar continued to climb for about two seconds, until it was engulfed by a black cloud that seemed darker than the night air.

  Mike began to laugh, a small whoop as he dismounted his bicycle and allowed it to clatter to the ground.

  There was a spring in his step and, as much as I hated myself for it, there was one in mine too.

  Looking around me, seeing that the place was completely deserted, I too dismounted my bike and joined in with Mike’s jubilations. We embraced, slapping one another so hard on the back that I thought the food that I had consumed was about to make a reappearance.

  “We did it, old fruit! We’ve done it!”

  I couldn’t help but think of Diehl, his remains somewhere in amongst the black cloud that now lingered over the entire town. I almost hated myself for it, but I could not help but feel sorry for him. He wasn’t to know that his own greed would be the direct downfall of his death.

  If only he hadn’t been searching through those pockets.

  The emotions that soared through my body were almost as varied as the colours that now permeated the sky; a rich orange of burning flames, a blackness of smoke and dust and a slight hint that the sky would soon be giving way to the morning.

  A glimmer of hope.

  I couldn’t quite believe that we had managed it, with nothing more than a scratch on my cheek as a reminder. Mike too could not comprehend what we had managed to pull off, as he continually told me as he wrapped his arms around me time and time again.

  “Come on, let’s go,” he said eventually, as we took our time in getting back to the house now instead of racing. There was no need for us to. If we were suddenly caught or killed now, we had done what we had come to. We had succeeded.

  There was an air of overwhelming triumph as we made it back to the house, Andrew and Jules getting back before us. We shook hands and embraced, even raising a toast to everyone from Cluzet to the King. A party atmosphere was hard to avoid.

  “Just one thing,” Christopher muttered in the midst of our celebrations, his face stony cold and serious. He lifted his glasses back to his face, his pointed nose sharper than ever before. “Now is the time to be more vigilant than ever. Now is when we simply cannot let our guard down. We have to be more careful than we ever have been before.”

  There was a moment of contempt for the short, stubby man that had seemed so incompetent. But we all knew that he was right. Sombrely, we took our seats in the chairs dotted around the room and reflected on what we had done.

  Yes, we had been successful. But if we could carry on in the fight, then that could be measured as an even bigger triumph. There was no sense in being caught now.

  “Jean, your face. We should stitch that up.” Jules was quick to produce a kit that seemed to have everything in it that he would need, enough to set up his own small hospital. I flinched as he leant in towards me, but not because of the pain.

  “In a minute,” I muttered leaving the room and using my aching legs once more as I climbed the stairs.

  I pushed the door to Georges’ room gently, allowing it to softly swing open just enough so that I could poke my head in through it.

  I smiled gently as I stared at his face, asleep so soon after the biggest night of his father’s life. He was perspiring gently, in only the way that a child can as they engage in a vibrant dream.

  His small body was angelic as I stared, and I couldn’t help but allow the tears to fall as I thought about what could have been for my own child.

  My heart was full as I watched him, the bedsheets gently rising and falling with his shallow breaths, but at the same time aching. I needed to look away, but I was finding it difficult.

  Eventually, after about five minutes of staring, I shut the door, but not before I had whispered one last thing to him, in the hope of it filtering through into his dream.

  “You’re safe now. Never again.”

  29

  Our plan had been to lie low for as long as possible, until the dust had settled, and the Germans had lost hope in finding the saboteurs. We had made such a mess of one of their most prized occupied possessions, that they were certain to be incandescent that we had managed to get to it.

  I had, in the few minutes of sleep that I had managed to steal in amongst all my excitement, dreamt of the rage that the Führer himself had flown into at the receipt of such news; glass tumblers and maps thrown into walls and at junior officers who stood nearby.

  It was a wonderful dream, made even better by the thought that it was likely to be true.

  We had hoped that by keeping our heads down we would evade capture for as long as possible. There had been far too many stories of agents being caught the night after a successful operation, just when the Germans were at their most vigilant, but also baying for blood.

  Staying in Jules’ house had allowed us some much-needed rest, and we quickly set to work entertaining ourselves by coming up with new cover stories, and why it was that we were travelling to the places that we were going.

  New identities would be conjured up in the coming weeks, as the network of safehouses that we knew existed quickly swallowed us up and protected us until we were completely lost in the thickets of the resistance.

  Only then would I be able to relax, and hopefully get more than twenty minutes sleep per night.

  As much as coming up with new stories kept us entertained, it was also painfully difficult to sit there as if nothing had happened. It was like being a child on the twenty-sixth of December, Christmas having passed by in a flurry of excitement and happiness. But now, Boxing Day, and nothing stirred, nothing gave off any inkling of the elation that we had recently basked in.

  We were all like a coiled spring, a striker ready to slam down on a percussion cap and set off a chain of explosions, and the tension in the house certainly felt like something was brewing.

  Nerves were frayed and highly irritable, to the point where areas were reserved for people to withdraw to in the event of an explosion. We could not risk an argument at this stage of the operation. We needed to stay friends for as long as possible.

  Jules had been the only one allowed out, on account of the fact that his papers were genuine, and would stand up to the level of scrutiny tha
t the Germans were now no doubt carrying out.

  He also had a watertight cover story; his mother lived in Sochaux, and he wished to check on her after the previous night’s air raid.

  But, as he stood before us, he was the object of pure jealousy of all those who sat in his house. He had been able to see all the destruction and confusion that we had caused, but also prod around for any information that might have been of use to us.

  The look on his face was ridden with anxiety and paranoia, as the glances over his shoulder, even when stood in his own front room, could testify.

  “I have information,” he stated as he looked around him.

  “Good,” I said. “Are you going to tell us?”

  He wiped his nose exuberantly with the palm of his hand, almost dislocating it completely in the process. A layer of perspiration had already enveloped over his skin, but his dry, cracked lips spoke of the dehydration that was gripping his body.

  “It is from Philippe.”

  “The police officer?” Mike asked, choking slightly in his desperation to be heard.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think you can trust him?”

  I hadn’t been expecting Jules to smile but, when he did, it was as if the apprehension had been blown up with the machines in the factory.

  “There are two opposing sides down there in Clerval and Sochaux. Those who are happy that the factory is gone, and those who are not. Those who are happy have smiles on their faces, a spring in their step. Philippe had perhaps the biggest smile of them all. I am confident which side he is on, my friend.”

  “Good,” Mike said without hesitation. “Then what was his information?”

  Jules’ face suddenly dropped, the anxiety rising up within him quicker than an express train.

  “Down there,” he said, motioning to Sochaux, “the situation…it is very…volatile. Very dangerous.”

  “I could have saved you a trip out, Jules. We know it’s dangerous. We can feel it from all the way up here.”

  “Of course,” Jules mumbled diligently. He sat down in his chair, his feet rubbing on the floorboards below as if he just had to be moving in some way. Perhaps it made him feel safer.

  His hands rubbed one another, massaging the heels of his hands that I could now see were ever so slightly burnt. As I went to ask him how he had incurred such an injury, he began to speak once more, and my desire to hear more from him superseded the want of curing my curiosity.

  “The Germans, Philippe supposes Gestapo, have already been to see people. They went to Peintre’s house first thing this morning. The second that they suspected sabotage. They’re trying to do things alone, no assistance from the police, but they could hardly keep something like this under wraps. The entire town is out on the streets in one way or another.”

  A worried look descended on every face in the room.

  “Were you able to get to Peintre?”

  “No. Too many soldiers around. Philippe said that he does not think that they would have got anything from him. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Not yet?” Andrew asked.

  “The Gestapo took him away this morning. Hasn’t been seen since.”

  There was a silence as we tried not to reminisce of the resistance to interrogation training that we had been put through in Scotland. Peintre wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  “Then we should suppose that Peintre has already given us up. Worst case scenario and all that.”

  There was yet another period of reflection as we each wracked our brains, trying to think of anything that had given ourselves away in our limited contact with the factory owner. There was nothing that I could conjure up, but that did not mean that he did not have anything to give to the Germans. He had seen our faces, and, with the right description, our likeness could soon be painted on every street corner in the whole of France.

  “Had the Germans been to see anyone else? Any other suspects?” I asked, trying to keep the fear from fumbling its way into my speech.

  Jules had sucked in his lower lip and was biting down on it, hard. It was a bright red colour when it re-emerged. He nodded silently, before taking a few seconds to compose himself. He was doing well, I thought, the way that he was continuing to talk steadily and confidently, despite the fact that what he had gleaned was clearly affecting him tremendously.

  “I am worried,” he said calmly, but in a matter of fact sense. “For you, you can each disappear. Start new lives and hide. I cannot do that. I have Georges. It will be incredibly difficult for me if they start asking questions.”

  I had neither the patience nor the desire to see Jules suddenly begin to think of anything other than the matter at hand, even if he was trying to think of what was best for his son.

  “Who were the others, Jules? The other suspects. Do you know who they are?”

  “A group of workers who did not appear for duty today. They are suspected of the sabotage. There were around thirty of them who did not show today.”

  “Thirty? Well, I say that number can only be a good thing for us. By the time that they have rounded all them up, I daresay that we will be long gone.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” Jules interrupted, clearly put out by Mike’s buoyancy in the matter. “Some of that number could possibly have been killed in the raid. The others were probably on orders of Cluzet. However, I am not sure how long they could hold out.”

  “Why not?”

  “The Germans suppose the workers who committed the sabotage are not in Sochaux. So, the authorities cannot get to them quickly. But the people they can get to quickly are still in the town.”

  “Their families,” Christopher muttered, his voice crackled and weak and as if speaking through his nose.

  “Exactly. Wives, children, parents, anyone really who might mean anything to them.”

  Mike muttered something under his breath which wasn’t exactly an upbeat endorsement of the Germans’ methods.

  Christopher began to drum his fingers on the arm of his chair, his breathing laboured and quivering.

  “Then we shall have to do something. We simply must. We cannot let these people, these innocent people, suffer while we sit here and watch.”

  Mike threw a deadly glare his way, “We will sit here, Christopher. And watch if we have to. We are far too valuable to the Germans to compromise our position. If you want to hand yourself over to them, then be my guest. But we’re going to be making the best of our situation.”

  We all wanted to help; it was the natural inhibition of a normal human being to do so. But we each knew that in reality there was no way of doing so. It was going to be awful, but we had to sit tight. There was nothing else we could do, or so I thought.

  “There must be something else that we can do to help them,” Christopher urged, the fire in his belly clearly stoked at the prospect of rescuing the defenceless. It was unusual to see him so roused, but his vigour and determination seemed to be nothing more than warm air. A desire to do something, but no idea what.

  “What on earth can we possibly do?” I asked, a genuine desire to help the people, but no more of an idea than anyone else on how to go about it. “We simply cannot risk leaving this place. Not now.”

  “Not now,” Christopher repeated, as he coolly rose from his chair, an element of peace washing over him. The clammy skin that had come to characterise his moments of frustration was all but gone, something of a normal pigment returning as the blood began to flow just as much as his ideas did.

  He walked around the room, every pair of eyes upon him as his mind whirred. To me, he had always seemed like such a short, stubby little man, with not much of a physical presence that seemed particularly threatening. But, as he strutted about, he seemed to gain at least four inches taller, his chest uncharacteristically puffing out and a confidence that I had not yet seen.

  “Not now,” he repeated again, wagging his finger. “But at night. We can still move around at night. Am I right in assuming that?”

  “To a
degree, yes. We will leave this town at night when it comes to it.”

  “I have an idea. But I am not all that sure how it will work or whether you lot will even agree to it. Would you like to hear it?”

  His eyes were ablaze now, his heart almost thumping through the underside of his shirt as he ferociously began to demand our response through a determined glare. This was what this man was good at, finding a solution to a dire situation faced by other people. It was why I was suddenly glad that he was still with us.

  “I don’t think we have too many other options right now, Christopher. Besides, it’s killing us sitting here knowing what’s going on.”

  30

  “Blimey,” Mike retorted, pleased but equally disgusted. “And I thought you were meant to be a pacifist.”

  “I still am,” Christopher defended, ever so slightly hurt that Mike would call his convictions into question. He looked to me for some kind of support, but I was completely on the same side as Mike. I was quite dumbstruck at the suggestion that had just come out of Christopher’s mouth.

  What was more, there had been an element of pride to it all, a slight enjoyment over the whole thing, and it was that that was beginning to worry me. Christopher shuffled around on his feet for a moment or two, as we each struggled to come to terms with the change in his character.

  He stood impatiently, like a man waiting to hear from a bank manager about his application for a loan. Christopher’s was a business proposal like no other.

  “When was it, Christopher?” Mike asked, playfully.

  “When was what?”

  “When was it that you had a brain transplant?”

  Mike chuckled heartily, pushing himself back into his chair in disbelief. For some reason, Christopher could not see why we were all so confused at his proposal, not one of us could quite believe it.

  We all enjoyed a slight giggle at the remark including, surprisingly, Christopher, who until that very moment had been a man who was content at not taking any entertainment in anything. He had refrained from enjoying the thought of killing the Germans, but he had also abstained from everything else that anyone else could take happiness from; drinking, music, even talking to people at times. He was a complete recluse. But one who had now appeared from his shell, in the most explosive manner possible.