Assignment in Brittany

  “He is brave,” agreed another, “and he is clever.”

  “He was a good man before the Germans came,” the oldest man went on, “and perhaps—” He stopped and looked at the others.

  “Another drink?” asked the American suddenly. “Open, another bottle.” Out of the side of his mouth he said to Hearne, “These damned appeasers.”

  Hearne was thinking, It’s no good: the older ones will remember big Louis as he was to them; they’ll remember his good points, his leadership his comradeship. They’ll begin to believe that he might be the same again, if only no more refugees come to tempt him. They may even end by blaming it all on the fugitives, and they’ll turn their anger against Jules for disturbing their peace of mind.

  “Yes,” Hearne said, “I could do with another drink myself.”

  The woman was listening to the reminiscences of the other men. She looked at Hearne and shook her head sadly. “You see?” she seemed to be saying. She began to wipe the counter where Jules’s glass had been upset, and then she paused suddenly, her brown eyes looking at Hearne and Myles in dismay.

  “Do you hear that?” she began. “It’s Pierre. He’s running. I told you you would be too late Get back to your room, quick. I’ll think of something else to help you. Quick.”

  Pierre burst into the room, incoherent in his excitement. They understood the reason for it when they at last could make sense of his news. It wasn’t Basdevant or Corbeau who had arrived. It was old Yves, and young Yves, and all the men from their village. They had sailed down as far as the little bay above the jetty; they must have left their boats there, for they had suddenly appeared on the river path. And they were walking towards the Golden Star.

  Even as Pierre finished that last detail, the sound of men’s feet could be heard on the roadway outside.

  “If they want a fight, they can get it,” said the old man, and drew a knife from his pocket. The blade snapped back into readiness. Other knives were coming out.

  Hearne cursed this misplaced bravery under his breath. That old fool appeased when he should fight, and fought when he should reason and explain. “Gentlemen,” Hearne said. “I think this solves your problem. It is Yves and his friends who will take action against big Louis. Obviously, he has escaped and his village knows all about Basdevant. If you defend him, the whole river will judge you were guilty along with him. Your names will stink worse than the mudflats at low tide.” It was his last desperate effort to cut through the dangers with which they were binding themselves.

  And then the door of the bar was flung wide open, and there seemed to be a mass of brown faces and red sailcloth trousers wedging the narrow space. A tall, broad-shouldered man with red hair slipped through the sullen group of fishermen. A thin young man followed him.

  Hearne put his glass slowly down on the counter, and stared.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Myles. The spoken English reached the ears of the thin young man. He turned his head sharply and stared at Myles and Hearne, and then at Hearne.

  “Well,” he said. “Well. Look, Sam, who’s here!” He came forward with a smile on his haggard white face, brushing a lock of hair impatiently back from his forehead. “I must say we do meet in the oddest places, don’t we?”

  Sam came forward unbelievingly. “Can you beat that? It’s his nibs himself,” he said, and his slow Yorkshire voice filled the room.

  It had a remarkably comforting sound.

  17

  FIRST BLOOD

  Hearne looked at Myles, and then grinned. If he had seemed a funny kind of farmer before, God knew what the American was thinking now behind those alert eyes. Alert, but tactful. He was pretending to be interested in the newcomers, and only a shadow of a smile twisted the corner of his mouth. Hearne turned quickly to the two Englishmen and spoke in his own voice: there was no need, now for his Corlay imitation.

  “Better get between them, tactfully. There’s no good in a fight starting now. They’d only knife each other instead of big Louis.”

  “You know him?”

  “We all know him,” Myles said.

  The three Englishmen and the American grouped themselves not too noticeably across the middle of the room. This separated the two parties of Frenchmen. There had been enough interest and surprise over the foreigners who knew each other to ease the initial tension just a fraction. That, and the fact that big Louis was not here, explained the feeling of indecision in the air.

  Hearne seized his advantage. “Jules,” he said, “tell them how you have judged big Louis!” There was a stirring at the mention of the name.

  “Yes, Jules, go on,” the woman said quickly. She was standing beside the young fisherman. Her hand touched his arm for a moment.

  Jules looked at the men in the doorway. “We have learned what big Louis has done. We shall deal with him. It is our business.” The men around him echoed his words: “...our business.”

  “It is also ours.” This time it was the black-bearded man standing in the doorway who had spoken. That must be old Yves. At his shoulder there was a young man with the same high aquiline nose, the same black hair and eyes. Young Yves, obviously.

  There was a silence except for the marked breathing of the men.

  “We shall deal with him,” Jules said with finality.

  Again that ominous silence.

  Hearne spoke, wondering if he’d get a knife in his back for his trouble. “Jules, why not invite them to wait to see how you deal with big Louis?”

  “They are already invited,” Jules said, with unconscious dignity.

  “And we accept the invitation.” The black-bearded man nodded to the men behind him. They entered the room singly. But the knives were no longer visible.

  “Order another bottle, for God’s sake,” Myles said to Hearne. “At this rate, I’ll have no money left to take me to England.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” It was the thin Englishman who spoke. “Old Yves is going to take us, and he will take you too. We sort of helped his son to escape. He says he would take us to South America for that.”

  “England will do this time,” the American said with a smile.

  “It bloody well will,” said Sam.

  “Looks as if they’ll be ready for a fight by the time big Louis arrives,” Myles suggested.

  “Yes,” Hearne agreed, and looked round the room, too. The two groups of men had sat at the farthest separated tables. They sat in silence, their thin cigarettes drooping from their lips, one hand round their glass of crude spirits, the other hidden by the table. The woman served them, quietly, watchfully. It was only when her eyes would turn towards the door and she would listen that Hearne could see how nervous she really was.

  Myles and the three Englishmen moved back to the counter of the bar. They could relax for a moment. The young officer was looking at Hearne once more. He was the first to speak.

  “Well,” he said again, “you do get about, don’t you? By the way, you proved to be a very good doctor. Thanks for that. I’m almost cured.” But Hearne noticed that he didn’t touch the drink in his glass.

  Hearne said quietly, “Why did you come back here after you escaped?”

  “Safest place, at present. The Jerries would think we’d make a bee-line for the coast. And then, Yves had a score to settle, and we felt like that, too. That blighter Louis, or whatever he’s called, can’t be left to run this show. By the way, my name is Townshend, and this is Walls.”

  Sam grinned, and said in a mock-Oxford accent, “Pleased tomeetyou, I’m sure.”

  “I am Myles, and this”—the American nodded towards Hearne—“is—” Hearne’s glass unexpectedly emptied itself over Townshend’s leg.

  “Sorry,” Hearne murmured. “Messy creature.” Myles smiled gently, and changed the subject.

  “I’ve been wondering who is going to take big Louis on,” he said. “Or is it a mass affair?”

  Sam Walls looked at him with amazement spread thick over his good-natured face. “Who’s taki
n’ him on? Who d’you think?” He held out a large doubled fist, and a slow grin widened his mouth still more. Take a couple of pounds of good red meat; shape it roughly over broad, round bones; stick a round lump in the middle for the nose; cut two creases for the eyes, and a wide slit for the mouth; added two twists of flesh for the ears, bending them forward slightly; fringe with thick red hair; forget about the eyebrows; and there you would have made Sam Walls. Not a work of art, thought Hearne, looking at the honest face in front of him: just the salt of the earth, that was all.

  “It won’t be so easy, Sam,” Hearne said. “There’s also a matter of Celtic pride and Celtic blood.”

  “What’s that?” Sam asked bluntly, with fine Yorkshire contempt.

  “These men,” Hearne nodded to Jules and his comrades, sitting so silently and bitterly at their table, “these men feel it’s a family affair. They want to deal, with it in their own way, without any foreigner butting in. Even these men,” he looked towards Yves and his friends, “are counted foreigners, although they’ve lived only two or three miles away from here all their lives. Do you see?”

  “Can’t say I do, lad.”

  “If you interfere first, they may gang up on you, on the four of us. Not because they hate us, although they don’t like any foreigner very much, but just to teach us to keep our noses out of their business.”

  “They would, now?”

  “Yes, they would.”

  Sam brooded over that: “Well, I’ve my own pride, too,” he said at last. “I don’t give a booger for this foreigner stuff. I’m after that Louis. There isn’t a lad here big enough to deal with him.”

  “They are wiry and quick; they can use a knife as well as anyone.”

  “That’s a bloody awful way to fight.”

  “Very bloody,” agreed Hearne with a suspicion of a smile. “But don’t start the fight, Sam. You’ll never get to England without friends.”

  “I’ll get there if I have to swim for it,” Sam said.

  “I think I heard aeroplanes,” Townshend interrupted tactfully. “Hear them?”

  “Third lot in the last two hours,” Myles said.

  “Plenty of them about. Boats, too, and barges. You should have seen them in the water round Saint-Malo.”

  Hearne said quietly, “When you arrive in England, there will be someone to meet you. Remember everything for him.”

  “How will they know we’re coming?”

  “They will. Get Yves to sail his boat towards Penzance. An aeroplane will be scouting for you, and a launch will come to meet you.”

  “Reception committee?” Myles suggested.

  Hearne nodded. “And I’ll give you a package. All of you are responsible for its delivery. You’re to give it over to a man called Matthews: white hair, red cheeks, blue eyes, large straight nose, natty navy suiting sort of person. Scotsman. Matthews. Matthews. Got that?”

  The three men beside him looked suitably impressed. They nodded their agreement.

  “What about you? Aren’t you coming too?” Townshend’s thin face was politely curious.

  Hearne shook his head. “Damn those planes,” he said. They all listened. Even the silent Bretons had emerged from their Celtic gloom. One of them said something. Another added to that. A third contradicted. The tension had broken. All of them were talking, it seemed, as if to make up for lost time; talking quickly, loudly, with much expression and many oaths and even an occasional laugh.

  The four men standing at the bar looked at each other in a mixture of incredulity and relief. The young Yves had left his table and sauntered over towards them. Jules, not to be outdone in politeness, had come forward too. Hearne talked to Yves, while Myles and Townshend listened intently. His father would know Cornwall? Penzance? Good. Could they sail tonight? Still better. Then they could use the darkness to run clear of the French coast, do some fishing, and get near the Cornish coast by tomorrow’s sunset, when an English boat would meet them? And then his father could make a neat exit into the darkness and be fishing off the French coast by next day? Yves nodded his head gravely. Yes, that could be managed. It would be arranged that way. He had his father’s permission to go now: he had to go, now that the Germans were searching for him. They hadn’t found out his right name, or where he lived. But there was always the possibility of being identified by some quick Boche eye: his father had understood that danger, and so he could go to England after all.

  “Excellent,” said Hearne, with so much warmth that Yves’s serious face was suddenly wreathed in smiles.

  Myles was less enthusiastic. Either his feet were starting to trouble him again, or the waiting was getting on his nerves. “Fine and dandy,” he said. “Now all we’ve got to do is to get out of this country. That’s all.”

  “And settle with Louis,” added Townshend.

  “Aye,” Sam said. They could see a thought forming in his mind. He stood in front of the two young Bretons. “Looey!” he said loudly. “Looey!” He held up his clenched hand. Some of the other Bretons had looked towards him. “Looey!” Sam repeated to all the room, jabbed the air viciously with his fist, and pointed vehemently to himself. “Savvy?” he added.

  The Bretons looked at him with polite interest and amusement. One of them shook his head sadly, drew his forefinger along his throat, and clicked his tongue. There was a little wave of laughter.

  Sam stood with his big hands on his hips and glared at them. “Look here, lads,” he said, “you don’t know my lingo. I don’t know yours. But get this straight. I’m going to twist Looey’s neck until it breaks.” He acted his words with a good deal of feeling. The Bretons were watching without any laughter now. The words were unintelligible to them, but the realness of Sam’s emotions had got through to them. The silence was broken by renewed arguments.

  “What d’they say?” Sam asked Hearne anxiously.

  “They see your point, and they are interested in it. But it’s no good, Sam: their minds are made up already. Still, they enjoy discussing your point of view.”

  “Where’s this Louis, anyway?” demanded Myles. He was beginning to show a surprisingly strong temper.

  “I wish I had my gun,” Townshend murmured unhappily.

  Hearne thought, We are all getting a bad attack of jitters just because none of us want to see a man knifed to death. Sam wants to use his fist, Myles is feeling truculent, Townshend wishes he had a gun, and I only wish that the whole thing could have happened in hot blood instead of us all waiting here so coldly for the kill.

  He said, “Sam, what happened to that train?”

  “Eh, lad?”

  “You remember...The train the Pole was going to drive?”

  A slow grin replaced Sam’s glumness. “Oh, that! Well, it was this way. The Pole got the engine movin’ after fiddlin’ with all t’knobs and buttons, and away we went like the hammers o’ hell, and we skidded round t’bends, and we blew through t’stations like a nor’easter. Then train took notion to slow down, just gradual-like, all by herself. There wasn’t nothing we could do about her. We tried, but she was stuck fair and proper, bung in middle of bridge. We—” Sam halted, and listened, his head to one side. A car was passing through the village. It was slowing down. It braked suddenly outside the Golden Star.

  They all looked at each other. They shared one thought: Basdevant would return by boat. Who was this? The windows were too high for the men to see what was happening in the street. Jules and two others moved quickly over to the door. They had just reached the three stone steps which led up to it. The door opened. They were pushed aside by the men who had entered with so much assurance. At least, two of the men were assured; perhaps their field-grey uniforms helped their confidence. But the third man’s swagger was only bravado. Hearne watched the set smile on his face and thought, You didn’t. want it this way: you wanted to sail back quietly in your boat and pretend you were going to help us; you wanted to hand us over to the Nazis in the darkness far away from here, so your friends wouldn’t see your way o
f making a living; you wanted it that way, but the Nazis didn’t, and they are more interested in the catch than in playing the fish; they insisted on coming back with you quickly, by car; and here you are, Louis, with a bigger crowd to damn your treachery than you had expected; you hoped there would only be the women, and a boy or two, at this time of day; how do you like being a Quisling, Louis? Go on, look round, look at the faces, Louis; how do you like it?

  Basdevant’s smile had stiffened as his eyes rested on Sam, and then Townshend, and then young Yves. He had seen old Yves and the men grouped round him, too; you could tell that by the way he wouldn’t look at them. He descended the three steps slowly. The Germans, a non-commissioned officer and a private, had drawn their revolvers. It was obvious that they, too, had not expected to encounter so many men.

  “Where are they?” It was the sergeant, speaking painfully accurate French.

  Big Louis scarcely hesitated. There was a kind of fatalism about the very movement of his arm as he pointed towards Myles and Hearne, and then to Townshend and Walls.

  “You said two,” the German said angrily. “You didn’t tell us there were four of them.”

  “And what about me?” Young Yves’s voice was as contemptuous as his face.

  Basdevant’s eyes flickered towards old Yves, sitting so grimly among his men.

  “What about me, Judas?” Young Yves spat out the words.

  The sergeant was angry. “Why didn’t you tell me there were more than two?” He was not only angry, he was worried. So, thought Hearne, there were only the sergeant and the uncertain-looking soldier, fingering his revolver unnecessarily. He had lost his assurance: he obviously couldn’t understand much French, and these silent, dark faces smouldering round him had their effect. He kept his face rigid, but his eyes, shifted round the room with the same nervousness as his fingers on the revolver betrayed. Even the thickest German hide must have felt the hate which poured towards the two uniforms.

  Hearne suddenly relaxed. This was all going to take care of itself. He needn’t worry any more. He caught Jules’s eye for a moment: Jules and his friend standing strangely motionless and silent behind the two soldiers.