Assignment in Brittany (44 page)

Anne had arrived, had seen Le Trapu and talked alone with him in this room. Then she had rested and changed her clothes, for her dress was covered with mud and dirt. She had left that dress here, and Marguerite’s niece had given her a blouse and skirt and wool jacket in exchange, for the dress was good rich cloth, and not the kind of material you could buy nowadays. Then, with some food wrapped inside her shawl, she had insisted on setting out again. It was all right to travel in daylight, she had said, for she had a travel permit and money enough. She had even insisted on leaving money to pay for the food she had had. She wanted to go away at once, it seemed, because otherwise she couldn’t reach the coast in time.

Hearne rose, and walked across to the fire-place. “Just where, at the coast?” he asked. He thought, Saint-Brieuc, no doubt: where else?

“She didn’t tell me that. You can talk with him about it—she discussed a lot of things with him in the hour before he sailed. He always had a soft spot for blue eyes and fair hair.”

“I wonder if your brother will be here before I leave?”

“He told me to keep you here until he came. He thought you would be here.”

Hearne looked up at that. “He did, did he?”

“He did.” She watched him curiously. “Better come and finish your breakfast. Then you can sleep upstairs.”

Hearne came back to the table. There was still one important thing to ask. “Have you had any visits from the Boches?”

Marguerite allowed herself another half-cup of the tasteless coffee. “Patrols look into the bar every now and again to check up on the men they find there, but they haven’t found anyone yet who couldn’t be accounted for. The Boches don’t come as customers, not after the first week. Our drinks didn’t agree with them. The other restaurants are bigger and smarter, and they get good food there. Here they have to eat what we’ve got to eat, and they don’t seem to enjoy it.” She suddenly laughed, and plunged into a long story of what had happened that first week when some soldiers had bought drinks at the bar. She had mixed them herself. The soldiers gulped almost half the drink before they realised how bad it was. Then they swore she was trying to poison them.

“Me!” Marguerite said, and picked up the last crumb of a crust with her wet forefingers. “Me!” She looked so outraged, so indignant, that Hearne grinned.

“What then?” he asked.

“Things looked bad. Yes,” Marguerite admitted thoughtfully, “it was as dangerous as facing a herd of mad pigs in an
orchard. Especially when a sergeant was called in. He took a swill, and then his face puffed up till it looked as ugly as his other end. It was hard to tell the difference: you couldn’t tell whether he was coming or going.” She shook her head slowly, smiling broadly as she enjoyed the memory.

“And then?” prompted Hearne again. This was one story he was going to hear the end of, anyway.

Marguerite shrugged her broad shoulders. “Well, I pick up their glasses, one by one. And I empty them slowly into three clean glasses, see? Then I hand two of them to Jacques Hémar and Yves Andhouard who are standing there at the bar watching everything. And I take the third glass myself. And I say, ‘Jacques and Yves, show them how Bretons can drink!’ And, before their very eyes, the three of us swallowed the stuff down to the last dreg.”

“Yes?”

Marguerite looked at him quizzically. “The Boches went away.”

Hearne’s disappointment was her reward. She loved it. She cracked with laughter, smacking her hands in delight against her thick thighs. When she had quietened, and wiped the tears from her eyes, she said in a casual voice, “But you should have seen Hémar and Andhouard and me standing in the kitchen ten minutes later, spewing our guts out.” She paused, and admired the effect on Hearne. “Sh! Not so loud,” she warned. “But God knows you look as if you needed a good laugh. And sleep, too. Here, get upstairs before these men outside waken and start shouting for something to eat.”

Hearne followed her quietly upstairs. The small square room showed by the grey light from its narrow window a welter of
acquisitiveness and thrift. He picked his way through the empty boxes, bicycle parts, wine bottles, piles of newspapers, and broken ornaments; and looked carefully out of the window. Back yard, he decided.

“If you leave by the window, there’s a vine to help. But don’t go upsetting my hydrangea pots on the ground,” Marguerite said, and opened a panel in the wall, to reveal a concealed bed.

“You should be as safe here as the others,” she said. “Come on, get in. I’ve no time to waste.”

Hearne looked doubtfully at the box bed, in spite of its cleanness, but climbed in obediently. He put out his left arm instinctively as she shut the door.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “You can open it from the inside. You can breathe, too. See?” She pointed to the decorations across the top of the panel, carefully carved to make the ventilation holes look artistic.

Her voice came through the panel. “I’ll lock the room door, and I’ll make a holy row on the staircase if anyone who shouldn’t tries to come up here. All you’ve got to worry about is the fleas the last man left behind him.”

But if there were any, he didn’t notice them. He thought, sleep is impossible here, lying like a sardine in its tin. Yet it seemed only ten minutes later when Marguerite’s large-knuckled hand was shaking him impatiently to rouse him.

“He’s here,” she was whispering. “He’s down at the boat, waiting to sail. The weather’s just right for it. Hurry.” Her words awakened him as thoroughly as a bucket of cold water.

He stumbled cautiously across the room. By the light from the window, he guessed it must be almost night. Probably about nine o’clock. “What—” he began, but she silenced him
with a finger at her lips.

“He’ll explain when you are safely away,” she said.

At the top of the narrow wooden stairs she halted him again. “I’ll go down first and start serving at the bar. Then you just come down quietly and walk out. Don’t stop for a minute.”

Hearne listened to the loud voices coming up from the room beneath. “Won’t it be dangerous for you if someone sees me?”

She shook her head impatiently. “A man coming down these stairs doesn’t surprise them. They’ve come down themselves.” She smiled and patted his shoulder. “Now get to the boat. I’ll have some more stories for you next time you come back. And you can bring me some real coffee.” And then she was moving silently down the staircase, her weight balancing from side to side as she placed one foot carefully in front of the other.

He waited until he heard her voice raised in a shout of laughter and the sound of glasses being clanked heavily down on the bar. A heavy blue haze of smoke filled the little room. But no one turned to watch him slip out of the door, cutting off the warm, thick air and Marguerite’s story-telling as he closed it behind him.

A cold wind ripped the darkness. He paused in the shadows of the overhanging eaves of the last house in that row. Across the narrow cobbled street was the wharf. From the large restaurant farther along the river-bank came the ebb and flow of music. His eyes searched for the outlines of the boat. There she was, pulling gently against the mooring rope. He gauged the distance with his eye. It would take only ten seconds of quick movement. He gathered his confidence and a deep breath, and walked smartly across the quay.

There seemed to be no one on board, but a hand pulled
him down behind a heap of sails and covered him loosely with their folds.

“Half an hour,” Le Trapu whispered, “and it will be dark enough to sail.”

Hearne pushed aside enough of the sail to breathe. He lay and listened to the rise and fall of the violins from the restaurant, the lapping of the tide’s ripples against the boat’s sides. Once he heard marching feet, and held himself ready to slip into the cold water. But the feet marched on, and his tense muscles relaxed again.

Before the moon had risen the boat was moving gently into mid-channel. The dark banks of the river rose steeply on either side. The wind which had cut through his jacket, as he had left Marguerite’s house, now filled the sails. It was only then that Le Trapu left the other man to steer the boat and came forward to talk to him.

He gave Hearne a nod of recognition, and sat down silently beside him.

“Where are we bound?” Hearne asked.

“You
ought to know.”

Hearne looked at the square-set face with its thick growth of hair on the jaw. “Do you?”

Le Trapu raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. “The boy Etienne brought me back an answer to take you to Saint-Lunaire.”

Hearne relaxed. “Brought me back,” Le Trapu said. That meant Anne’s message had got through to Etienne. Hearne asked, “Answer to what?”

“If I should sail you there.”

Hearne was silent, trying to puzzle that one out.

Le Trapu spoke again. “It was the girl’s idea. She said you were hurt, that the Boches had got you for a while. She thought you might come to Dinan, although she hadn’t wanted you to come, because you’d want to make sure of that message. So I asked the boy Etienne what was I to do. And he came back with the message to take you to Saint-Lunaire if I found you.”

“Did the girl say where she was going?”

“To the coast.”

That was as much as he knew already, thought Hearne. He stared moodily at a patch on the sail. After the strain of worrying about these last miles, it was a strange feeling to sit in a boat and feel them floating past. That was like life...you worried and you schemed, you sweated and you suffered, and then something quite different happened; and all your careful plans were just so much sawdust.

“I’m giving you a devil of a trouble,” Hearne said.

“No trouble. It’s quicker this way. Three hours, four hours perhaps in all. It is simple. No trouble.” The Breton was equally awkward. He rose and moved to the stern, as if he were afraid of further thanks.

Hearne lay still, his eyes watching the river-banks, his mind filled with cross-currents of emotion. The wooded gorge gave way to sloping fields and woods, and small, dark, huddling villages. As they passed them stringing along the river-banks, Hearne remembered L’Etoile d’Or. He wondered how Jules was getting on. He’d make a good boss if he married that girl behind the bar: she was the one to give him the confidence he needed. It was strange to think of big Louis’ body anchored in the mud and slime at the bottom of this river. It was strange to think that they might even be sailing over what was left of it—
for the estuary was now broadening, the banks were widening, and there was the hard, square shape of the first big town on the right bank, Hearne, stretching his cramped legs painfully in the bottom of the boat, felt the spray sting his face, and smelled the first real saltiness.

Le Trapu came forward, and pointed to the distant bank.

“Saint-Servan, and then Saint-Malo,” he said. “From now on I’ll be busy. Once I get her out between Saint-Malo and Dinard, I’ll talk to you again.” And then he had gone back to the tiller.

Hearne, remembering the picturesque shapes on his map of this river’s estuary, felt a chill going through his body which didn’t come from the wind. In this darkness, with white clouds chasing each other across the sky, with the slice of moon and scattered stars still struggling to break through the heavy drift of mist, he didn’t feel like talking much. He only half smiled at Le Trapu’s canniness: no chickens being counted here before they were hatched. “Once I get her out, I’ll talk to you again.” Anything they planned before this getting-out business might be just a waste of breath. It might, thought Hearne, as he felt the boat rise and fall and shiver as the strong currents tried to pull their own way. It might, but it wasn’t going to turn out like that. He concentrated on that thought, as if by keeping his mind fixed on arriving at Saint-Lunaire the boat would be bound to get there.

He could see the black shapes of curving, rocky peninsulas, of scattered islands like so many boulders dropped into a pool of racing currents. Once the moon struggled free of its shroud long enough to throw a sickly gleam on the water. Hearne wished it hadn’t, for the
Marguerite
appeared to be
heading straight into a whirlpool, and between them and the cliffs of the shore were needles of rock round which the cross-currents fought and slavered. If he only knew more about sailing a boat, he thought, he wouldn’t need to imagine himself as a steersman. Perhaps he could relax then, and let Le Trapu manage it all by himself. There was only one thing which gave him any pleasure: the little boat’s speed had increased. At this rate they would soon be in the open Channel and then Saint-Lunaire was only three or four miles to the west of them. The salt spray covered him as the
Marguerite
suddenly ploughed across a stretch of broken water. Hearne was relieved that the moon hadn’t tactlessly emerged at that point, to show him just how broken it was. And then the boat plunged forward again: the water against its side stopped jabbing at the planks, and hissed as it streamed smoothly past.

Hearne was startled to hear a voice bellowing in his ear.

“We’re out now,” Le Trapu explained.

“Thank God,” Hearne said, unclenching his hand from the mast and relaxing. “I’m all worn out, steering. I’d rather meet a German patrol, any day.”

That amused Le Trapu. “Each to his own job,” he said politely.

“Didn’t know a boat was so damned noisy,” Hearne said. “All creaks and sighs and groans.”

“Nice little breeze. And nice moon. It was bad for us when it came out for a few moments.”

“When do we reach Saint-Lunaire?”

“Very soon. If the light were better, and thank God it isn’t, you would be seeing the way the rocks stick out between the two bays. I’ll take you to the west bay.”

Hearne nodded. “That’s the one farther away from the town,” he said. “That’s the one.”

“We’ll run in as near the coast as we can. You can wade ashore. Good sand, big dunes, and no houses. You can lie up there quietly all tomorrow.”

“Yes,” said Hearne. That waiting wasn’t going to be much fun. He couldn’t allow himself to sleep. He’d just lie and worry about this job: worry how he could have done more, or could have done better. Not that it mattered now at this stage, but at least it would keep him from thinking about himself. And his personal thoughts were far from pleasant at the moment. It had to be this way. The job came first: it had to. Damn it all; he said to himself, why do you have to keep persuading yourself about that? You know it’s first. You can’t think of Anne or yourself until it’s all over. When you chose this kind of work, you were choosing a moment like this, even if you didn’t know it. He looked at the black streak of coast-line, with the darkness hiding the arcs of sand and pointed by cliffs. Perhaps Anne would follow that shore road to Saint-Brieuc, perhaps she might even think of him as she looked over the waters. Shut up, he told himself savagely, shut up. She had only been kind to him because she
was
kind. She couldn’t help but be sweet and gentle. If she had felt the way he felt, then she would have waited at Marguerite’s house in Dinan. She would at least have said goodbye. Shut up, he said to himself again. He should know it was better that she didn’t wait, that she didn’t say goodbye. Now he could stop sentimentalising, and prepare for a cold swim. That would cool his brain for him.