Assignment in Brittany (32 page)

“So he doesn’t believe me,” he said, and laughed bitterly. He still couldn’t conceal his disappointment. “Did you tell him what I said about Elise?”

“Yes.”

“And even that didn’t convince him I might have changed even as he has changed?” Strange how an intelligent man could always admit his own change of faith, and feel honest and brave about the admission, and yet could go on distrusting any change professed by another man.

Anne shook her head slowly. She seemed to be fumbling for words. Watching her, Hearne knew that Kerénor’s comment had been bitter. I bet it’s a corker, he thought. It was.

“He—well, he laughed. He said that was the joke of the year. And then he said that it just needed that touch to convince him completely that you were a—a Fascist liar.”

Hearne looked so blankly at her that she rushed on, “You see, he thinks you have always been a bad influence on Elise. And he says that Elise is vain and weak and may be pleasant to the Germans, because that kind of person always is. But it is quite impossible for her to have any power, or to be dangerous except to herself.”

“I see. And I suppose I was only accusing Elise, so that by sacrificing her I could prove how truly I have changed?”

“That was what he thought.”

Hearne looked at the large, serious eyes: in the early morning light they were grey, a soft clear grey.

“And what does Anne think?” he asked gently.

Anne smiled. “I think that Kerénor is being too clever. He always did think too much. He’d find reasons behind reasons, and all he did was to make himself feel clever and unhappy. He really did love Elise once; now I think he despises her for what he calls her ‘weakness.’ But he is still infatuated. She is very beautiful, isn’t she?” There was an anxious look in her eyes as she waited for his answer.

“Yes, she’s beautiful, Anne. But it’s skin-deep. She’ll need something more than that when she is reaching the age of forty.”

Anne smiled again, this time a strange little smile, but didn’t reply. She was looking at the earth once more. She was probably thinking that forty seemed much too far off to be of any consolation to the women Elise was going to hurt before then.

Hearne was making a pretence of studying the rows of vegetables. What, he was asking himself, what are we to do now? Just leave Saint-Déodat to its fate at the hands of the sweet Elise and her gentle friends? Or should he make one more try? Monsieur le Curé...would he listen, or had, he his own distrusts of Corlay? Hearne walked among the rows of round, fat cabbages, and wondered. After all, this wasn’t his job... His
job was to report on the traffic on the roads and railways and canal. His job was to get information liable to form a patch of the jigsaw puzzle which Matthews and these other blokes in their hush-hush rooms could fit together into a pattern of German intentions. His job was to do a microscopic piece of the groundwork for future bombing raids, for the upsetting of carefully laid invasion plans. He halted and looked at the sun’s broadening rays flowing over the hillsides, over the sheltered village and open farms. By God, he thought, anything which hurts the Nazis, anything which helps their enemies, is also part of my job. He could always argue that with Matthews, and he knew that, if his real mission was well done, Matthews would listen and even agree.
If
his real mission was well done. Matthews was a Scot.

His best plan would have to be this: to wait until the time came for him to start his last walk to the coast. Then Madame Corlay, after he had left, could tell Monsieur le Curé everything, and by that time his warning would be believed. If, he thought in sudden gloom as he looked towards the hidden houses of Saint-Déodat, if it were not too late for some of them by that time.

Anne had come up to him. Her hand lightly touched his arm for a moment. “Marie and Albertine are home now,” she said. “They’ve just entered the house. I think I must go back.”

“So she bullies you too?” Hearne said teasingly.

“Albertine? But she’s so old, and she works so hard, and she deserves some kind of—”

“Respect?”

“Well, yes. Why are you smiling? Do I seem so stupid?”

“You seem just the way I like to think of you, Anne.” He paused. “Anne—” He paused again. Hell, he kept saying “Anne, Anne, Anne.” Was it an easy name for his tongue, or what?

“Yes,” she said, and halted with her head slightly tilted to one side. Not coy. No, she wasn’t coy. She was just Anne.

Never mind,” he said abruptly, and began walking quickly down to the house. She was hurrying to keep up with him.

“What shall we do about Kerénor?” she asked.

“I’m still thinking about that. Don’t risk anything, Anne, and don’t worry.” And then, almost as much to change the subject as to solve a problem which had suggested itself to him, he said, “By the way, I’ve been calling you Anne all the time. But you haven’t mentioned my name once today. And you call me
vous,
I notice. What’s wrong? Don’t you trust me, either?”

“I trust you.” Her voice was very low. There was a hint of a smile in her eyes, now more blue than grey. “But, you see, I don’t know your name.”

He checked his pace, and grasped her arm. “What?” he said.

“I don’t know your name.”

He glanced towards the house. They were too near it. He turned, and, still holding her arm, led her back up the hill.

“Now what on earth do you mean by that?” he managed to say with a show of injured innocence. So Madame Corlay
had
told her. Perhaps, as a woman, she had thought it only fair to tell the girl who thought she was betrothed to this man. Women were like that. Not that Madame Corlay need have been wary of him: not much, anyway; not as long as he was worried stiff by the job he had on hand. Then, Anne was Anne. Only swine like Corlay would hurt a girl like Anne. Elise, now—well, that was another cup of tea. She would deserve anything that was coming to her. She was just one of those bitches who went about asking for it.

Anne said again, “But I don’t know your name.”

It was no good evading it. That would only lessen her trust in him, and that was no good either. In one way he was glad she knew. In one way he felt relief. “It still must be Bertrand,” he said slowly.

There was a shadow on her face. “You, perhaps, don’t trust me,” she said.

“I trust you, Anne. It just isn’t safe for you to know me as anyone but Bertrand Corlay.”

“Oh.”

“I mean that. We are all in great danger, Anne. You and Madame Corlay must never know. Then, later, if there’s any questioning, you will be able to say truthfully that you did think of me as Bertrand Corlay.”

“Later?”

“Yes.” Quite baldly he added, “When I have left here.”

“When you have left—” Anne’s voice was low enough to sound like a faint echo.

“You see?”

“Yes, I see.”

“So Madame Corlay told you?” He was almost speaking to himself.

“Only,” said Anne, “after I had guessed. There were little things...things which I had missed in the real Bertrand.” She paused as if she couldn’t go on. “Oh, this is all silly. And she didn’t really tell me: only hinted, so that I was sure my feeling was right. And then this morning, you whistled
Bro Goz Ma Zadou.”

“Didn’t the real Bertrand know that song?”

“Yes. But he
couldn’t whistle.
That was something he was very touchy about. He just sort of blew.” She laughed in spite
of herself. He caught her arm again and swung her round on the path.

“Home, this time,” he said. “Albertine will begin to get her suspicions aroused, too. And two women are enough in one secret. I must say you kept it well, yesterday, when you were arguing with Kerénor.”

Anne’s answer ended his new worry. “I didn’t tell him. I’ll tell him only when you think I should.”

“Two women are enough,” Hearne repeated. “Good girl, Anne,” he added. Something in his voice surprised himself. Anne was smiling again. In the warm sunlight her eyes were quite blue, her cheeks were flushed.

They walked in silence back to the house.

Seven days, Hearne was thinking, seven days—and he might find that not only was it difficult to continue his work: he might find it too dangerous even to continue living on this farm. He looked at the neat fields around him, at the slate roof gleaming blue in the sunshine. Seven days weren’t much...

He was right about the danger. But the time was even shorter than he thought.

22

CAPTAIN RIEDEL TAKES CHARGE

On the next day, while the people of Saint-Déodat prepared to go to church, Hearne paid his official visit to Dol. It would have to take place today he decided that morning, for he had his own extremely unofficial business planned for the rest of the week. He hadn’t forgotten Traube’s parting shot about Agent Number 8 from Dol. “You will be responsible,” Traube had said. Nor had he forgotten the German words which had followed him to the restaurant door. “Set one of Ehrlich’s men, too. Advise Ehrlich.” No doubt the movements of Bruneau from Dol were already being noted. And if the supposed Corlay didn’t appear in Dol, then that would be duly noted, too.

But there was a third remark in that short interview in the restaurant of the Hôtel Perro which Hearne had not forgotten. As he cycled through the small side-roads, through the thick dust of their loose surface, he was repeating to himself, “Kalb, Major Kalb. Kalb of the Schutzstaffel. Kalb, organiser of Dol.
Heil Kalb! Heil Deutschlands teurem Kalb!”
For it was Kalb who had got Hearne into this Sunday suit of Corlay’s with its tight waist and flaring shoulders. It was Kalb who had got Hearne on to Corlay’s decrepit bicycle, patched up yesterday afternoon with old Henri’s help. It was Kalb who was drawing Hearne to the small town of Dol on a hot Sunday morning. Such an opportunity as Traube had given Hearne with that brief reference to Major Kalb was not to be missed. There were plenty of risks attached, but such risks were not only to be taken: they were to be welcomed.

There were but few travellers on the narrow, twisting roads, and they were all Bretons. (The Germans would travel by the large, first-class road where there was less dust or roughness.) Some cycled like himself, their shoulders and heads bowed over the low handlebars, their feet rotating continuously. Others plodded along between the green hedges and scattered orchards, a basket or a bundled cloth over an arm, their best black clothes already coated with the fine dust. They looked as hot as Hearne felt. Even a shimmer of heat was rising from the green grass.

When he at last reached the main road, he found his map calculations had been adequate enough. The towers of Dol’s cathedral welcomed him, pointing towards the blue sky and the hum of planes. It was strange, thought Hearne, how people had come to accept that mechanical drone above their heads, as if it were as natural as the wisps of white cloud. He watched the people walking in the streets under the balconies of the old houses. But no one looked upwards; no one shaded his eyes to see what planes could be seen. In the little square which led to the Grande-Rue, the sun baked the cobblestones, and the heat,
thrown back in Hearne’s face, stifled him. He dismounted and walked at the edge of the narrow slope of pavement, noting the uniforms. There were more uniforms than Breton costumes in the Grande-Rue. Air Force Personnel. Air Force. Transport. Air Force. Air Force Personnel. Transport. The Bretons he saw were either middle-aged men or young boys. The younger men might now be conscripts in the “labour volunteers,” like Picrel’s son at Saint-Déodat. But it wasn’t only Hearne’s age which made him seem conspicuous. Some of the uniformed men who brushed him aside into the flat gutter had looked pointedly at his natty grey suiting. Hearne wondered how long he would have to wheel this bicycle along the street before someone would stop him. It wouldn’t be long, he guessed.

He propped the bicycle against a café wall, and entered the airless room. He brushed the flies away from a ringed table, and ordered beer. He might as well wash out the taste of dust from his mouth before he was picked up by a curious Nazi. He settled himself as comfortably as possible on the narrow chair, ignored the proprietor’s curiosity, and returned the stare of the only other customer. The man went back to his newspaper.

It wouldn’t be long, he had guessed. He was right. The light beer was only half finished when the loud step of solid boots on stone broke the drowsy silence of the bar. Hearne, his back to the door, saw the tension on the proprietor’s face. The man at the corner table, after one look at the doorway, was still more engrossed in his newspaper. Hearne had only time to notice that the paper wasn’t held so steadily as it had been, and then a loud voice said in atrocious French, “Whose bicycle?”

Hearne swung round to face the two men. One was moon-faced, broad-shouldered; what hair was left on his head was
very fair. The other, if he had had a clubfoot, might have been Goebbels’ twin brother. He had the lean and hungry look all right.

“Whose bicycle?” It was the bald-headed man.

Hearne rose. “Mine.”

“Your papers,” the large man demanded. Curlylocks wasn’t wasting any time. Hearne searched quickly in his pocket. He brought out his identification card and Corlay’s list of his fellow traitors’ names. To the top of that list Hearne had pinned a sheet of paper. In square letters he had printed clearly:

T
AKE ME TO
M
AJOR
K
ALB
. D
O
N
OT
S
PEAK
M
Y
N
AME IN
F
RONT OF
F
RENCHMEN
.

The bald-headed man passed over the collection of papers to the thin, dark man. Both faces were quite impassive.

It was the little Cassius who spoke next. “It is against the regulations to leave a bicycle blocking the narrow pavement. You will accompany us. There will be a fine to pay.”

Hearne looked towards the corner table and the bar. The proprietor was busy with some glasses. The other man was reading as if his life depended on it. Perhaps it did.