by Nevil Shute
They were surrounded by a wet, clammy mist; it was pitch-dark and they could see nothing. Soundings supported their dead-reckoning position, more or less, but that meant little over a sea bottom that was generally flat. They stopped their engine and lay for a minute or two listening. They heard nothing.
They put the engine on again and went ahead dead slow, peering into the darkness, ready to go hard astern before they struck. They went on for ten minutes, stopped again to listen, and went on. Then they stopped again, and this time they heard the wash of waves upon rocks and sea-birds crying in the darkness. Immediately Colvin anchored, and they had a consultation in the tiny chart-room.
“This is the coast all right,” the navigator said. “But where your beach is I’m darned if I know. It might be three miles either way of us.”
Simon said: “Three miles only? Not more than that?”
Colvin shook his head. “We should be within that much.” They had confidence in him.
Simon folded up the map and put it in the inside pocket of his blue civilian suit. “I will go and see if I can climb the cliff,” he said. “To-morrow night I will be at the beach at midnight. If it is clear, you steam along the coast if you cannot find the beach, and I will flash the torch. If it is thick, like this, then Boden lands and comes to meet me at Le Rouzic farm; the boat waiting on the rocks. That is quite clear?”
“Okay.”
“If you do not find me, you must not stay here after three o’clock. You must go back to England; I will get back in another way.”
They turned out the little oil lamp over the chart-table, pulled back the hatch, and went on deck. The Bretons had put the light punt that they carried over the side; it lay against the topsides in the running tide. Two of the Bretons dropped down into it and Simon followed them; Boden came last of all.
From the deck Colvin said softly: “All the best,” and Rhodes said: “Good luck.” The painter was dropped down into the bows and the punt slid astern; she vanished from their sight before the oars were shipped.
Presently, pulling straight inshore, they came to rocks on which the sea was breaking. They skirted them eastwards till they found a possible landing in a cleft, and Simon clambered out in the dim light, slipping and stumbling as he went. From the boat Boden watched him venturing towards the shore for ten yards; then he was lost to sight.
It was arranged that he should flash a series of dots with the torch from the cliff-top if he were safely up; a series of dots and dashes was a call for help. They lay off in the punt a little distance from the rocks where he had landed, straining their eyes into the darkness. A quarter of an hour later came a series of dots well up above their heads. They turned the punt and rowed out to sea, heading a little bit up-tide and steering with a dim light over the boat compass. They found the vessel, with some difficulty and got the punt on board. Then they weighed, turned to the north-west to give a wide berth to the Saints, and put to sea.
Simon had little difficulty with the climb. He found a spur of rock and went straight up the ridge; it grew steeper, but presently he felt grass roots and earth beneath his hands. He went on up a steep, grassy slope, scrambling upwards with hands, feet, and knees. The darkness and the mist prevented him from seeing what he was doing, which was perhaps as well; it struck him presently that the sea noise was very nearly straight below him. Then the slope eased, and presently he could stand up. He turned, and with his torch shaded by his open coat, made his series of dots in the direction that he judged he had come from. Then he faced inland and went on.
He had a little luminous compass, and by this he made his way inland. He came to a stone wall, crossed it, and went on over what appeared to be a pasture, stumbling among gorse-bushes. Then came a field of stubble and another pasture, and then there was a wood before him.
He shaded the torch carefully and looked at his watch. It was ten minutes past twelve; he had been on shore about an hour. Counting the time that he had taken to climb up the cliff, he judged that he had come about a mile inland; half a mile farther on there should be a road running parallel to the coast.
He skirted round the wood and found the road immediately.
He stood behind the hedge with the road before him; if there were German patrols they would very likely be upon it, and he did not dare to risk a meeting. No French civilian would be innocently wandering the roads beside the coast at midnight on a night like that; an encounter with the Germans would mean certain arrest. He was uncertain which way he should go. The road ran roughly east and west; it was marked on his map, but he might be anywhere along the length of it.
He stood there, sniffing at the wind and rain. Presently it came into his mind that he was too far to the east; he turned west and began to follow the road, skirting along behind the stone walls that bordered it, following the field. His eyes were well accustomed to the darkness by that time; he could see about ten yards through the driving rain. He was soaked to the skin.
He went about half a mile, and came to a cart-track leading into the road and a ruinous barn beside it. He gave the barn a very wide berth; it might well be a German strong-point full of enemy troops. Two hundred yards farther on he huddled down into a thicket of brambles, pulled out his map, and very cautiously examined it in a faint glow from his torch. He was all wrong. The wood and the barn and the track were shown approximately in the relationship that he had discovered, but he was a good two miles too far west. He must go back and go the other way.
At about half-past two the buildings of Le Rouzic farm loomed up before him. In London, in the office in Pall Mall, warm, well lit, comfortable, and secure, he had been told what he must do. The lad in the French uniform had told him in great detail. He must not go through the yard because the dog was there. He must be very careful in case Germans were billeted there, as sometimes happened. He must go through the orchard; in the darkness and the rain he found his way. He must leave the pond upon his left and he would come to the laiterie; counting from the door, the first two windows must be passed by. The third window was the one.
Simon stood there, drenched in the rain and wind, tapping in the rhythm that he had been taught.
Presently the window stirred and opened a chink. The voice of an old man whispered in the Breton dialect: “Is anybody there?”
Simon said: “I have a letter for you from your son.”
The old man whispered: “There is a door along this way. Go there and I will let you in.”
Ten minutes later he was sitting by the fire, newly revived with wood, stripping the wet clothes off him. A candle stood upon the table. The old man, in night-shirt and a jacket over it, was reading the letter aloud, slowly and carefully. His wife stood by him, bare feet showing under her black dress, hastily put on; the grey hair hung down on her shoulders. Hovering in the background there were other women, partly dressed, keeping out of sight, and listening.
The letter came to an end:
I send my most devoted love to chère mama, and to you, cher papa, and to my sisters and to Aunt Marie. I am well and I have been to the dentist for my teeth and I may be sent to Syria before long, which will be better because here everything is very dear and there is no wine. Help the man who brings this letter if you safely can. I am your most devoted and loving son,
PIERRE.
The old man came to the end and there was silence in the room, broken only by the crackle of the wood upon the fire. There was a long pause. Then the old woman passed her hands down her dress, evidently in habitual gesture. “Is he hungry?” she enquired. “There are eggs—and milk.”
Simon turned to her: “I have eaten recently,” he said in French. “I would like to sleep till dawn.”
“There is a box bed.” She pointed to a recess in the wall of the kitchen.”
The old man said: “In the morning what will you do?”
Simon said: “I want to go into Douarnenez for the day. I have the proper papers. In the evening I will come back here, if it is safe. At night I will
go back—where I have come from.”
The old man said: “All the world goes into Douarnenez on Sunday. There is the bed. Leave your clothes out for them to dry before the fire. In the morning we will devise your journey; one does not start before nine o’clock. Perhaps I will come in with you myself. Perhaps we will all go, as if it is a party.”
Shortly before eleven the next morning Simon reached Douarnenez.
He got there by train, in a slow train that ran along the line from Audierne, that they had joined at Pont Croix. To reach the station they had driven through the rain in a very old victoria once painted brown, drawn by one of the farm horses. They were a mixed party. There were Le Rouzic and his wife, dressed in their Sunday black. There was a Madame Jeanne with them, a formidable old lady with the makings of a beard whose status Simon did not understand. There was a little girl about ten years old called Julie, who seemed to be a great-niece of Le Rouzic, and there was a fat bouncing girl of twenty-two or so called Marie, who seemed to be a daughter of the house. She had a baby called Mimi about six months old.
Simon carried the baby. It was explained to him, and he readily understood, that it was correct in Brittany on Sunday for a father to carry his baby. He knew that very well, and he knew also that a baby was as good a cover as any spy could wish to have. He explained to them at the farm that he had never been a father and did not know a great deal about the matter, so before they started they showed him how to change its napkin.
He walked stiffly because of a strip of hoop-iron from a barrel in the farm-yard bound behind his right knee; it would not do to seem too able-bodied. So he passed through the station wicket into Douarnenez, carrying the baby, leading little Julie by the hand, and arguing with Le Rouzic about brands of cement—one of the few subjects that they could maintain an argument upon. Le Rouzic put up all his own farm buildings. So they passed the German sentry and the Gestapo official, showing their passes and continuing the argument in a slightly lower tone while their papers were glanced over. Pressed by the crowd behind they were urged forward into the street.
The rain had stopped for the moment, but it was still windy and wet. By arrangement they separated in the town. The old people went off to mass, taking Julie with them; Simon, still carrying the baby, went with the daughter down towards the harbour.
As they went he said: “Madame, in spite of everything, it would be better if you went to church with the others. There is danger for you and the little one in being seen with me.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “There is danger everywhere in these times. Besides, you will spend more money for our refreshments than my father, and that will be a change for me, and interesting.”
He said quietly: “Madame, I will do that very willingly.”
They went down the narrow, cobbled streets towards the harbour. There were a few Germans in the streets, strolling around awkardly in pairs or little bands. They did not seem to mix with the people or even to use the same cafés; there was an air of sullen uncertainty about them.
“Bad things have happened in this place,” the girl said by his side. “There have been very many murders.”
Simon shifted the baby on his shoulder and said nothing.
The harbour opened out before them, and he paused to look around, flogging his keen, retentive memory. There were two Raumboote moored at the stone jetty which formed the north arm of the harbour; there were no other warships in sight, though the anchorage was crammed with fishing vessels lying close-packed at the moorings, jostling each other. On the jetty there were two guns opposite the Raumboote pointing to seaward over the stone wall, with steel shields and concrete emplacements open to the harbour side. There was a searchlight post at the extreme seaward end of the jetty, put there, no doubt, to pick up vessels coming into port. There were no other guns or armament in sight.
He did not linger to look at the harbour; that was not in the part of a farmer from the country. Carrying the baby and with the young woman at his side, he turned into the Café de la République; it was nearly empty, with only a few fishermen in Sunday black discussing at the tables. Simon and Marie picked a table near the back of the room by the wall, set down and unpacked the basket that she carried, and commenced the domestic operation of changing the baby’s napkin.
From behind the bar mademoiselle, the daughter of the house, came to them for their order and to view the operation. It had begun to rain again. She said something about the weather, and Simon replied in the French of Seine-et-Oise.
She glanced at him in curiosity. “Monsieur is from the east?”
Simon nodded carelessly. “She”—indicating Marie—“is Breton. Myself, I worked in a factory near Paris till the English came and bombed it flat—no higher than one metre, mademoiselle, no part of it. Now I am to work upon the farm.”
The girl nodded; it was not an uncommon story. She took his order for a coffee for Marie and for a Pernod. Simon said: “Does Monsieur Bozallec come here on Sundays?”
She said: “In the afternoon. In one hour or one hour and a half. If monsieur wants to see him, he lives in the Rue de Locranon, just round the corner.”
“I have a message for him from my father-in-law,” said Simon. He took directions from her how to find the house and ordered déjeuner for them when it was ready.
Ten minutes later he was knocking at the door of a rickety fisherman’s stone cottage in the narrow street, having left Marie with the baby in the café. The old fisherman opened the door to him, dressed in the usual suit of Sunday black with no collar. Simon said: “Good morning, monsieur. Have you yet tied the Germans up in bundles and set fire to them?”
The old man stared at him. “It is the traveller in cement. I remember. What do you want with me?” He stared suspiciously at Simon.
Simon said: “If we may talk in your house, monsieur.” Rather unwillingly the fisherman let him in; they stood together in the tiny, littered kitchen.
Simon said: “I was a traveller in cement when I came here last time, but that is not true now. Now I come as one who has been bombed in the east, and works upon a farm out by Pont Croix. I am a wandering man, monsieur, and not quite what I seem, but I serve Brittany in my own way.”
The old man said: “What way is that?”
Simon hesitated for an instant, and then took the plunge. He said: “I carry information to the English.”
The fisherman glanced at him shrewdly. “To the English or to the Germans?”
“To the English, Monsieur Bozallec.”
There was a silence. “I will believe what you say,” the old man said at last. “But I will tell you this. If you are lying, if you serve the Gestapo, you will not escape. You come from the east; I know that by your talk. In this place we do not have Quislings. They do not live long. Remember that.”
Charles Simon said: “Those who carry information to the English sometimes do not live so long.”
There was a short silence. Bozallec asked: “What have you come here for? What is it that you want?”
Simon faced him. “I want information,” he replied. “News for the English, so that they might fight the Germans better. I have come to you because I think you are an honest man and a brave one, and one who can find out the things I want to know. You can betray me now to the Gestapo; you can have me killed. That is a matter that lies wholly in your hands.”
The fisherman said: “What is it that you want to know?”
Simon bent towards him. “There was a ship destroyed by fire,” he said, “three weeks ago.” The other nodded. “A German Raumboot. Did any of the Germans escape from the fire? Were any of them picked up?”
Bozallec said: “Three were picked up, all dead and burnt and floating in their life-belts in the water. One was a Leutnant; I think he was the captain. He once had a beard. I was out myself that night in my boat, fishing, and I saw the body. Then there was a Seekadett and a seaman. All were dead and floating in the water, burnt.”
“There were no living survivors
?”
“None at all.”
“How do the people say the fire began?”
The old man stared at him. “It was an explosion of the fuel-tanks on board the Raumboot. Perhaps some idiot fired a flare into a tank, or possibly the engine went on fire.”
“Is that what the Germans think?”
The old man shrugged his shoulders. “I do not keep in company with swine like that.”
Charles Simon said: “Listen, monsieur. I have my duty to perform, the information that I have to find. I do not always understand the reason why the English want to know these things, hardly ever. But now I have to find out what the Germans think about that accident. Do they accept it as a simple accident? Or do they think that it was sabotage? Or else perhaps some English aeroplane had dropped a bomb? What do the Germans think?”
Bozallec stared at him keenly. “Did the English do it?”
Simon shrugged expressively. “I do not know. Only I am to find out what the Germans think. If you can help me, do so; if not, I will go elsewhere.
“And find yourself betrayed.” There was a silence. “How long are you here in Douarnenez?”
“Till four o’clock this afternoon only. Then I go out by the train. I will come back again if it is necessary, but that is dangerous.”
The fisherman said: “It is very short, the time. But the Lemaigne woman who cleans the offices hears much of what the German officers are saying. And also the girl in the Café Raeder …”
Simon left the cottage shortly after that and walked down to the quay. The Raumboote had not stirred; evidently they were in for Sunday with the fishing fleet, having their day off. They lay along the quay, bows in towards the shore, the nearest fishing-boots lay at their moorings a hundred yards or so from their beam. Yet there were fishing-boats at sea.