Most Secret (29 page)

“The French got some,” I told him. “They seem to have risen and attacked them in the streets.”

“The French did? Oh, that’s fine …” he breathed.

I saw them all on shore and the ship safely in the hands of the base party. Back in the villas I stayed with them while they had a meal; most of them were too tired to eat and took
only a drink of cocoa or of wine before they tumbled into bed to sleep. One or two wanted the assistance of the surgeon and his sedatives; I stayed there till they were all asleep. The young surgeon would stay with them till they woke, sleeping himself upon an empty cot.

It was six o’clock and very nearly dawn before I was ready to go. The Wren was waiting there for me with the truck, looking about all in. She drove me back to Dartmouth in the rain.

This is the story of what happened on their operation, made out from the official report and from what they told me in conversation from time to time:

After they left Dartmouth they set a course to pass ten miles off Ushant, and they held to that all day. It was raining practically the whole time that they were out, with only short intervals; we had chosen those conditions for their trip, of course, but it didn’t make it easier for them. Apart from navigation difficulties, they were all wet after the first few hours, and stayed wet for the remainder of the time.

They saw a German aeroplane towards the evening of the first day, perhaps thirty miles from the north coast of Brittany, flying north-west. It was a Heinkel III; it passed within a mile of them flying low and purposeful just underneath the clouds, and it paid no attention to them. No report it may have made did them any harm.

They were off Ushant at about eight o’clock at night in darkness and wet mist, and altered course down into L’Iroise. From then onwards it was tricky, anxious work for Colvin and Boden. Visibility was practically nil; from time to time they heard the foghorn at Le Jument, but not clearly enough to take a bearing of it. They went ahead, boldly trusting to their tidal calculations and dead reckoning, and stopping every now and then to make a sounding to compare with the depth shown at their estimated position on the chart.

Two hours later they had run their distance. They were making for a little rocky cove that lies between Beuzec and the Saints. The cliffs run straight along that portion of the coast a hundred feet or so in height, but at this cove a sheep-track ran down to a tiny beach, completely covered at high water. They had a good map of the country behind. Simon had studied it till he knew the way from the beach to Le Rouzic farm by heart, but now their trouble was to find the beach.

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:

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.