by Lou Cadle
But no Will. She lay down in the straw where they’d made love, breathing deeply, trying to catch any of his scent, but there was none. Just old straw, and her, needing a bath again, and the lonely night.
At least it would be a short one.
* * *
The old woman woke her up when she came to collect eggs. “Your friend, he is gone?”
“Yes.”
“Safely back to England, I suppose.”
Antonia did not answer. “I’ll be going in a few minutes.”
“You could stay. In the house, if you wish.”
“Claude would not like it.”
“He is not the boss of me. It is more the other way.”
“But, Madame Formoy, it is safer for you if I am out here and you can deny ever having seen me. I’m nothing to you, an egg thief, as far as you know, and you’re happy to see the Germans take me away for it.”
“No Germans would make me happy.”
“But you can pretend, no? To save your life? To save Claude’s?”
“Why would they appear here, out of the blue?”
“An English plane landed last night. They may know of that. We should be cautious today.”
“I’ll bring you some water and breakfast. Porridge again.”
“You are too kind.”
She made a sound dismissing that. “You are to wait for Claude, do you not remember? He will be here soon. And I will bring you some hot water. You look quite awful.”
“Thank you,” Antonia said. “For the water, I mean. Not for the comment on my appearance.”
“You’re a pretty girl under that dirt. I was too when I was young, though you might not believe it.”
“I do believe it,” Antonia said. “Life wears on us.”
“Of course it does,” she said, and she took her fresh eggs and left.
After breakfast and a sponge bath—with hot water, a luxury—she rearranged the straw in the stall so it no longer appeared someone had been sleeping there.
Her calf muscle was much improved. She hoped Will would heal too, though his injuries were serious and hers had been nothing, and it would take him much more time to recover.
In a month, perhaps, he would be his old self again. She realized he was probably in hospital already at this hour, with clean sheets and warm sponge baths, with doctors overseeing his treatment. Imagining him cared for, even pampered, was a soothing thought.
Claude came late, at midday, bringing a plate of food with him as well as a string bag packed with supplies.
“Beans,” he said, handing her the plate. “With onions, from the smell.”
“Sit.”
“I can’t stay,” he said. “Did Will get safely off?”
Her heart lurched. “Didn’t Genevieve report to you?”
“Yes. I was just being polite.”
“Thank God. I thought maybe the Germans had caught her.” She sat. “Mind if I eat?” She was ravenous.
“Go ahead.”
She forked warm beans and onions—maybe a sliced apple too?—into her mouth and told him briefly about the German car and then about where she had hid the guns. “I don’t know if it’ll be safe to retrieve them today, if the Germans now understand that’s the field we used, or if tomorrow it will be safe. At least you have most of the money.”
“We won’t use the field again.”
“Is that a problem for you?”
“It’s a good site—trees on three sides, far enough from a main road that voices won’t carry so far, but near enough to town that it’s easy to access. But with the news of the invasion, I think I will be able to convince some farmers who were reluctant before this to allow drops in their fallow fields.”
“When do they plant here?”
“Soon, if they have the seed. Turnips are already in the ground.”
“It feels warmer again today.”
“Yes, it is. My—the old lady who lives here says it will get warmer still tomorrow.”
“The weather sense of an experienced farmer,” she said.
“Yes. A secret weapon.”
“We need all of those we can get.” She finished eating the beans.
He went to study the chickens. “I don’t know why she doesn’t stew this one.”
“Is she old?”
“Four or five, I think. A pre-occupation chicken.”
“Wouldn’t it be nice to be a chicken and not know what is happening in the world?” She said, “Tell the old woman the beans were good, please. She’s a fine cook, and with such limited ingredients.”
“I have a job for you when you return. I would like you to push that up to five days from today. Walk out to the other place today, but then five days from now, return here.”
“Good. I didn’t want to sit there alone, doing nothing to help.”
“It’s dangerous, I think, your being on the street at this point. I don’t trust that your false identity papers will hold up to much scrutiny, and they’re still on high alert because of our liberating Will. So you need to be careful.”
“I won’t get caught. Or I’ll try my best not to,” she said. “What is the job?”
“The courier is coming from Marseilles on that day.”
“I don’t know her. She doesn’t know me.”
“No, but there are signals you can use to identify yourself. I cannot always meet her in the daytime. So you wear a white scarf and you carry a newspaper under your arm, like so.” He demonstrated. “She will approach you when she thinks it is safe and say, ‘My feet are tired.’ You say, ‘It is a long walk,’ and she’ll know it is you.”
“Where is this meeting?”
“Outside a café by the train station,” he said, and named it. “She will deliver the message as you walk around the block together, and then you will wave goodbye and she will get back on the train before it departs.”
“All right,” she said.
“Are you ready to work? You’re sure?”
She was confused. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because of your lover,” he said.
She tried to push it aside. “Not much lovemaking going on with his injuries.”
“But you care, I think.”
“I do care. But I am not distracted by his leaving. Quite the opposite. I’m freed from that worry.”
“And not distracted with regret or longing?”
“I’m not fifteen years old and experiencing my first love,” she said. “I am ready to work. Anxious to. I want to help end this war. The sooner France is liberated, the better for everyone.”
“Except for the Germans.”
She flashed on the sight of Will’s naked body as she washed it, bruised and bloodied. “Fuck the Germans,” she said, then, “Pardon my language.”
“No need to ask my pardon.”
“Do you need any messages radioed in?”
“They can wait until you are back.”
“Where do you want me when I return to town?”
“The place where you were in the basement, I think. It was not compromised.”
“All right. The man who lives there is not getting nervous?”
“No. He seemed relieved to know this would soon be over.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Very little, in fact. Only that. He said a person could hide with him until the end. He even said you could use his shower while he is at work, if you are cautious when you do and leave the curtains drawn.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“And it’s safer than the bakery, if less comfortable, perhaps. Less public.”
“Comfort isn’t important,” she said. “I want Madame Charlevoix to be safe as well.”
“At dawn in six days, someone will come to pick you up here.”
“In an auto?”
“Yes, if I can arrange it, and I think I can.”
“Such luxury,” she said.
“It is safer, I think, than your carrying the radio down the road for
an hour or two.” Then his eyes unfocused.
He seemed distracted. Probably by plans in his head. She had seen firsthand why the SOE trusted him running a circuit they relied on, when they usually wanted one of their own doing it. He only told details on a need-to-know basis, he kept his people safe, and he was good at stretching resources to do more than seemed possible.
If Fate was kind, he’d survive the war and become a leader here, one who could help rebuild the country and make it even better than it had been before the war.
“What are you smiling about?” he said.
“I was thinking how certain I am that the Nazis will lose this war.”
“It will cost many lives.”
“Yes, tens of thousands, I would think.” That sobered her. “But I believe in my heart we’ll win.”
“I hope so.” He sounded weary.
“Give me the details about meeting the courier in case I don’t see you again before that.”
“The train is due at ten in the morning. It will be Wednesday, and that is the normal schedule for that day. They are often delayed, but you can hear the whistle from the café across the street from the station as it approaches. Wait there.”
“I need to do some shopping first. Soap, candles, and so on. Having a shopping bag along would make me look more like a woman doing her errands.”
“Yes.” Again his eyes drifted away.
“Is there anything I can help you with? Even if you want to talk out an idea, I’ll listen.”
“No, that is not necessary,” he said, coming back to himself. “That day, I’ll arrive mid-evening and come to the basement and get whatever information the courier gave you. And in the meantime, I’ll find a new place for you to transmit from. I’m already working on that, and it may well be a place you can use for several weeks.” And he left, taking the empty plate with him.
The chickens were making contented noises as she left. She’d miss their noises, strangely enough. If she survived all this, maybe she’d get hens herself one day. Though she wouldn’t invite them indoors to sleep, she could always visit them in the evening to hear their sleepy sounds.
She took her bags and the bag of food and walked along the road to the house in the hills. She hid every time she heard a car or the wheels of a bicycle, and she made it to her destination around sundown without incident. For five days she stayed there, cold at night, missing Will, hoping everything was going well in town. She hoped no one was caught, that the searches had cooled, and that the people she cared for in France were all safe.
Five days later, three hours before dawn, under the light of a waning moon, she walked back to the barn. She sat inside, waiting, and was heartened by the sound of a car engine approaching and then stopping outside the barn. She peered outside. There was thin fog and a hint of daylight. A dark car was visible, but she waited to make sure it wasn’t a German car before she moved toward it.
After a moment, Edgard appeared, lighting a cigarette and looking around.
“Goodbye, girls,” she said to the hens, who were just stirring.
She picked up her bags and left. Coming around the corner of the barn, she said, “It’s Beatriz,” so Edgard would not be startled.
“Beatriz, good morning. Are you ready? Do you have more bags?”
“Just these,” she said, and waited for him to open the boot of the car to put them in. Then she shook his hand. “How nice to see you again.”
“Is it true?”
That confused her. That it was nice to see him again? “Is what true?”
“They are coming, the English and the Americans. To liberate France.”
“Oh, that. Yes, it is true.”
“Will they give you more information?” He motioned for her to get in the car.
She did so, and waited until he was settled in his seat to continue. “As much as they can. As much as they need us to know.”
“Yes, I suppose they don’t want to give away the secrets, like the landing site.”
“Or the exact date. For now, we know it’s soon, within weeks, but even that estimate is information we shouldn’t share.”
“Claude did not tell me that.”
“Then I shouldn’t have either. But as it approaches, I’m sure he will discuss it. Or you will be able to guess by the increase in sabotage of roads and bridges and train tracks.”
“I like that. Give me something to do to wreck the Germans’ day, and I’m a very happy man.”
“Me too,” she said. “Except a happy woman.”
“Talk is, you have a lover now.”
“For people who are so good at keeping secrets, why do you gossip so?”
“It’s not malicious. Maybe we hunt for hope in such grim times.” He swerved to avoid a bicyclist, invisible in the fog until that last moment. “People are saying you have changed. And I think it is true. I think it was true that terrible evening that he was captured. Was it awful, what they did to him?”
“Very. Do you want to hear about that?”
He was silent for a time, and did nothing but drive along the road, too fast in her opinion, considering the fog, but she didn’t say that to him. “I suppose no. It might make me less brave.”
“All right.”
“Or maybe what I imagine is worse than what they did.”
“Probably not,” she said.
“Ah, well,” he said. “But he is safe now?”
“Yes, he is safely away.”
“You did well, to get him away from the Germans.”
“Claude is a good leader.”
“Yes,” he said, “though he says the same of you.”
“Me?” She didn’t think of herself as a leader at all. She was the radio operator, moonlighting as an operative. She was a minor player in a vast drama.
“He said the action out on the south road was all you. You set the charges. You killed the Germans. You flagged down a stranger and ordered him to take you and Bernard away.”
“That last part might not have been so smart. We are all lucky it worked out.”
“Good instincts are part of being a good leader.”
“Hmm,” she said.
“He said you dragged the Englishman a hundred yards in no time at all.”
“He was walking. I didn’t have to drag him.” She wondered why Claude had overestimated her role to Edgard. Perhaps the others had questioned her use to the group, and he had defended her. “Also, Claude killed one of the Germans. I just blinded him first.”
“Really?” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Love makes some women soft and moony. It seems it turns you into a mama bear.”
“But have you ever seen a bear?”
“Actually, I have. About ten years ago, in Finland.”
“Why were you in Finland?”
“It’s a long story, and not all that interesting. And besides, we are there.” He made a final turn and they were there, at the house with the green door, where in the cellar she’d first gotten to know Will.
“Thank you for giving me the ride. It was easier than walking.”
“And safer. We need you in these coming weeks, if we are to have the right materiel.”
“Or some radio operator. This is so.”
He unlocked the trunk, carrying the radio to the door for her. “I will see you again, no doubt.”
“Yes. Be careful.”
He nodded, and then he was gone.
Chapter 33
She went straight downstairs again. A little over an hour later, there came a tap at the basement door. She had heard the homeowner making himself breakfast and moving around up there. “Yes?” she called up.
He opened the door halfway but did not come down. “Did our friend tell you that it is fine with me if you use the shower today?”
“Yes, and I thank you for that.”
“I left a fresh towel in the bathroom. You’ll find it.” He explained how to get the hot water working. “And I left a key on the table. Keep it until you are
gone.”
“That is very kind of you.”
“It is nothing,” he said, and then he left the house.
She waited ten minutes to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything he might return for, and then opened her valise and took out the blouse the old woman had given her. It smelled musty and she wanted to rinse that smell away. The material was thin and should dry quickly. It would be better if she could press it, but she’d keep her jacket on, and no one would notice the wrinkles.
She washed the blouse first in cold water, while the water for her shower was heating. She jumped in to the shower, washed herself and her hair, and then stood there in the hot spray for a few self-indulgent minutes. The water felt wonderful after many grubby days in the abandoned house. She left her blouse hanging over a rod in the bathroom for now.
Then she put on her skirt and her jumper, and went out onto the streets to find herself food. There were some raw fish and river eels at a market, but she passed those by, not wanting anything that needed to be cooked. She found a vendor selling boiled eggs from a cart on a side street. The price was steep without a rationing coupon, but the man took her money, and she left with four boiled eggs, enough for the morning.
She came back to the safe house, ate her eggs, and checked her blouse. Damp, but it would be dry in time. It would be a warm day. Spring had arrived today. And by summer, the Allies would be here. By Christmastime, if all went well, she would be back in England and the war would be over.
If all went well. She felt a chill at the thought. So much could go wrong between today and the end of the year.
A half-hour later, she was dressed as the secretary and standing at a pharmacy that had just opened, buying aspirin and a few more items to fill her first-aid kit. She asked the pharmacist who might have candles for sale, as he had none, and he directed her to a small store off the main road. When she had paid for her supplies, she walked to the other store. There she found a white scarf to wear instead of the bit of her old, torn-up shirt she had planned to use to signal the courier. There were beeswax candles, and she saw an inexpensive enamel pin of a bird that she bought on a whim. “Could you wrap it? It’s a gift,” she said. She planned to give it to the courier. More cover, as if two old girlfriends or cousins were meeting, one with a small gift for the other, very normal, lowering the level of suspicion of anyone watching.