Commander Amanda Nightingale

by George Revelli

  She turned to her new friend, Margaret Gregson. "I left some postcards in my uniform that I have written to my children," she said. "They think I am in Wales. Could you have them mailed at irregular intervals?"

  "Leave it to me," said the girl.

  "I don't suppose postmarks matter to children. I mean to say, postmarks don't seem to mean anything any more, what with censorship and all that. My husband is serving in Italy, but his letters are all postmarked from the War Office."

  "I'll see that the postcards are mailed from Wales," said Gregson.

  O'Donovan asked Fawcett, "Will you be picking up anybody when you drop us?"

  "I might if there's a crisis," said Fawcett. "But I have no instructions. I boot you out and zoom!" His hand snaked upward. What an extremely dislikable young man, Amanda thought, contemplating his huge moustaches and distressing teeth.

  "Supposing there are no landing lights?" Mazursky asked.

  "Then we come back."

  "Oh, I should hate that," said Amanda. "After screwing up my courage it would be too much of a letdown. But if the lights are not on, will not that mean that Lucien is in trouble?"

  O'Donovan looked at her again. The Baker Street civilian said, "Possibly, but not necessarily. We have the whole of northern France interlocked with field operators, and we would probably have heard something by now if anything had gone wrong with Lucien's operations. Looking at it positively, let us presume the lights are on, and we have no reason to doubt that they will be, it means that Lucien's operations are going according to plan. Don't forget that he landed alone, at midnight, by parachute. If the lights are on, it will be according to his instructions, his personal instructions."

  "He's quite a guy," said Mazursky.

  The commanding officer looked at his watch, and imitated the portentousness of an English pub manager. "Drink up, ladies and gentlemen. Time to get off the premises. Time, gentlemen, please." Glasses were put down with a finality that seemed to Amanda to have a touch of the apocalyptic about it. The small group left the mess and walked across the moon-splashed field, to the waiting Lysander. O'Donovan and Amanda sat in the back seats, Mazursky in front of them, as they had in the car. Amanda suddenly wondered about the driver: if he had had his tea and sausage and mash, and had now dossed down, uncaring, his duty done. Fawcett moved into the pilot's seat, but they did not go at once. The navigator passed thick fleece-lined flying jackets and heavy woollen rugs. "I'm afraid it will be rather cold aloft," he said. "Take them off as soon as we land." In the confined space they struggled into their jackets and wrapped the rugs around them. To Amanda they looked like three polar bears.

  The propeller whirred and howled; they slid gently down the airstrip while instructions from the control tower crackled indecipherably into the earphone of the pilot. And then, with a roar, they were airborne.

  Amanda settled back to watch the dwindling, peaceful panorama of southern England. She was breathing quickly, nervously, and her breath clouded in the cold. In a few minutes, they were over the Channel, and she saw with surprise that Mazursky was asleep, snoring.

  "He's extremely relaxed," she said.

  "It's not relaxation," said O'Donovan. "It's nervous reaction. Most soldiers sleep before a big action. I have slept under an artillery bombardment and close mortar fire. Soundly too."

  He looked at her in the darkness. "Kiss me," he said. It seemed to Amanda a perfectly reasonable request. She strained awkwardly toward him through the thickness of their padding and her lips touched his. His mouth opened and she obediently stuck her tongue into it. They kissed until their lips were wet. O'Donovan struggled to find a way with his hand through the coverings that encumbered her body, and although she did nothing to stop him, he abandoned the task as hopeless. Amanda was scarcely aware of O'Donovan as a man or even a person. She felt only her heart beating. It was the nervousness and fear of what lay ahead that was sending erotic ripples of impersonal sensuality through her. She could sense O'Donovan's excitement. His hand was ludicrously splayed over what would have been her breast were it not encased in inches of wool, fleece, leather, and tweed. Their mouths were still sliding in salivarious exploration when Mazursky stirred from his sleep, peered from the window and said, "France."

  Amanda and O'Donovan disengaged their lips, their reflexive disembodied passion as instantly forgotten as it had been nothing but a dream of the senses. She saw the dark coastline of France, which seemed to be coming out to embrace her, to absorb them all, a land full of Germans and guns, and the spiked, horned paraphernalia of war. Far, far in the distance there was a sinuously swaying glow, indicating searchlights. The beaches and the coastline passing beneath made her stomach contract, as though she were on a roller coaster. Below there was nothing but blackness, only here and there a field or coppice lit by the waning moon. She wondered how Lucien could ever have had the courage to leap alone into that blackness. At the thought of Lucien, she felt a pang of conscience. Should she tell him that O'Donovan had kissed her? It was nothing. It hadn't happened.

  Fawcett's voice came over the intercom. "Landing lights spot on." O'Donovan and Mazursky gave each other tense grins and raised their thumbs. Amanda's breath was shuddering. Below them, their friends were waiting. But there was no feeling of descent. Fawcett was making wide circles around the landing field. Then his voice crackled through once more. "I'm going down now. Don't forget the diver, sir. Every penny makes the water warmer," a line from the Tommy Handley radio show on the B. B. C.

  His imitation of the B. B. C. made the other three laugh breathlessly. They could feel the little plane losing height, falling down out of the night sky. The landing lights meant that Lucien was safe. As long as Lucien was safe, she was safe too.

  Shadows darkened the silver wings as the height lessened, and the tail turned to such moon as remained. Soon the plane was out of the moonlight altogether, skimming at tree level, and then below, into the well of successive darkness, as tall elms spun past them, reeling backward into the night. Followed by a bump, and more bumps, the springs honking in protest, a hammering or smoking rubber into rough, rutted earth, the engine uttering shrill pang-pangs of discomfort, like a disconcerted cat until, after an eternity, it stopped.

  "All out quickly," Fawcett called with authority, not rising from his seat. "Leave all R.A.F. property back in the kite."

  The engine had not ceased roaring, and the propeller continued to turn. Amanda, unable to swallow from the dryness of her throat, threw aside her rugs and struggled out of the flying jacket. The navigator was holding the door open, and first Mazursky, then O'Donovan sprang lightly to the ground. Mazursky lifted Amanda down while O'Donovan took the suitcases that were handed to him. Amanda could feel the soil of France under her feet, but before she could so much as turn, the plane door had slammed and the Lysander was off again, rolling drunkenly down the potholed field. Amanda felt a sudden panic as she saw it leaving her. She wanted to run after it, climb back and return to the safety of England and the wise authority of her father. At the end of the field it turned, stopped, shuddering, and then with a roar swept ungratefully off the ground, up into the night sky, toward England and home. "Good show," Fawcett would say in the mess. Cup of cocoa and then a doss down for the night, and what Amanda did was her own business. Fawcett had done his. She hated him, and his navigator too, for their callousness.

  The three of them were alone in the world, in a long fallow field, high elms surrounding them on all sides, motionless, indifferent, neutral. The night air was warm and sweet. There was no wind.

  "They must be watching us," said Mazursky in a whisper.

  France even felt different, dung-like, primitive, and, after the neat patchwork farmlands of England, uncultivated and unkempt.

  "We had better stay here," O'Donovan whispered back.

  Still there was no sign of humanity, not even a night animal.

  "They laid on the landing lights for Fawcett," said Mazursky. "They must be around here somewhere, for Chr
issake."

  "If they aren't," said O'Donovan, and hesitated. "If they aren't. I really don't know what to do. I suppose I could find the rendezvous with my compass, but I'd rather not."

  "Don't you think it would be wiser for us to speak in French?" Amanda asked nervously.

  "All right, merde," said Mazursky.

  "What will happen if there is no one to collect my transmitters?" Amanda asked. "Then we will really be in a jam."

  The moon had gone completely now, and the night was somberly silent. Amanda found herself hating Fawcett again. He would be over the Channel already, composing his report in his ridiculous R.A.F. slang. A wizard show, he would tell the CO., bang on the target. Everything according to plan. The only trouble was that there was no greetings committee, no Maquisards.

  "I'd give anything," said Mazursky, "to know if it was safe to light a cigarette. Even a French cigarette."

  "Not now," said O'Donovan. "Not now."

  For minute after minute the three stood in the syrupy darkness in the centre of the field. Amanda was frankly terrified, but was applying all her concentration to hide it.

  "Well, you're the boss," said Mazursky to O'Donovan, with a touch of petulance that seemed to verge on hysteria. "What do we do now?"

  "I don't know. I simply don't know."

  "We can't stand here, waiting to be picked up by the Militia or the Gestapo."

  "We'll give them another half hour," said O'Donovan, "and then we'll make for the trees, and make ourselves comfortable until dawn."

  Half an hour, Amanda thought to herself. If we stand here for half an hour, I shall go stark, staring mad. I'll go right around the bend. I'll scream or something. "Please talk in French," was all she said. "I do think it would be safer."

  "Oh, go to hell with your French," said Mazursky, and Amanda stared at his shadowy form. She was not used to rudeness, and even in the present macabre circumstances it sounded strange to her. Mazursky said, "I'm going to light a cigarette. I can't go without one for another second."

  "Look," said O'Donovan, suddenly very quiet. "There's someone coming."

  He pointed to the woods. They could see, vaguely, a lone figure break cover. He walked without haste or caution, casually. It was impossible to see whether he was uniformed or not, but there was about his walk a jauntiness that could not be German.

  "Let's hope he's friendly," Mazursky said with a nervous laugh. The fact that Mazursky was obviously frightened and at the end of his nerves somehow gave Amanda courage.

  "If he isn't," said O'Donovan grimly, "he is walking right into a .38 bullet. I've got him covered through my pocket."

  Amanda silently reached into her handbag and brought out her automatic.

  He was close enough now for his features to be distinguished. He was French, young and strong looking. Somehow his aspect was surprising. The English mind was not prepared to expect that kind of male virility in a country occupied by the Germans, with almost its entire army prisoners of war in Germany. If he were not a prisoner of war himself, he should have been picked up for forced labour in the Todt organization. Perhaps he had escaped. At any rate there was no reason to presume he was unfriendly.

  He stopped some ten metres distant, a propitiating distance, as though he suspected that guns were being trained on him; but there was no evidence of nervousness or tenseness about him.

  When he spoke, he spoke confidently, not bothering to keep his voice low. "Maman est en has," he said.

  Amanda felt O'Donovan give a sigh of relief. "Elle fait du chocolat," he replied.

  "Papa est en haul," said the stranger.

  "Il fait do-do."

  Relief suffused them all. The young man strode forward, his hand outstretched. "Claude?" he said interrogatively to O'Donovan. O'Donovan nodded.

  "André," he said, shaking hands with Mazursky. "Yvette." Amanda felt her hand caught in a huge hard paw prickly with callouses.

  "Everything is in order. My name is Riri."

  "Marie, Mère de Dieu, merci!" Mazursky breathed thickly in a heavy Canadian accent. Amanda was aware of Riri's eyes on her admiringly.

  "Is it all right to smoke?" Mazursky asked.

  "Mais oui." The Frenchman's tone had a slightly offended quality, as though Mazursky were casting aspersions at the security organization of the Resistance. Three packets of cigarettes came out at once, and Amanda bent forward to accept a light from the young Frenchman, whose lighter ejected a sheet of flame like an Olympic torch.

  "Why are you alone?" O'Donovan said. "And why did you keep us waiting for so long?"

  "A Boche military convoy, perhaps three kilometres from here. We had to watch it. It is minding its own business. We would have blown it to bits, but the orders from London are to hold our hands until the invasion. It's boring. We like blowing the Boche to bits. We like hearing them yell."

  "Of course," said O'Donovan with the authority of his rank. "The orders are quite correct. The invasion will come at any time now, and we want to hit with the maximum impact. No use frittering our strength away."

  "I hope you are being honest about it," said Riri. "Some of the boys think it is an imperialist plot by Churchill against the Soviet Army."

  Amanda stared at him. She had never met a Communist and the words sent a chill through her. Surely Frenchmen could never believe such a thing. She resolved to mention this in her communication to London. Riri was staring back at her frankly, his eyes examining her up and down.

  Amanda spoke. "Where is Lucien?"

  Riri laughed conspiratorially, as though he knew secrets which he did not intend to share. "Ah!" he said mysteriously. "Le sacré Lucien."

  And then a strange thing happened. His smiling mouth filled with blood. It spouted out in a great, flat gout, curling upward at the ends in the shape of his smile and spreading in a brilliantly red, wide arc to the ground. He went forward slowly, rigidly, and hit the ground with a thump. The bang came later, loud and echoing, making the crows start from their sleep and flap skyward, squawking with outrage. The three Britons gazed stricken at the man lying dead at their feet.

  Chapter Six

  Come, Guy, come. Let her put these terrible thoughts out of her mind. The quicker you come the quicker she can lose it all in a sleep of sorts. There was the bang in her ear that made her scream and bite the taste of cordite. It was followed by her first sight of blood in great quantities; how it welled up, frothed, and bubbled, and shone even in the darkness; human faces, green as vomit, detached, like disembodied shields, bobbing up and down, this way and that. A heart, bursting with fear, and then, the dawn.

  Amanda found herself in the dawn lying on an army cot, one of four placed in line, and she was alone. At first she dared not move at all, neither her head nor her body. Her eyes looked upward at a high flaking ceiling, mottled with the moss of damp rot. Then very cautiously, like a soldier treading a mined field, she felt herself, her hips, her breasts, and finally her face. She was fully dressed, in tweeds. Even her shoes were on her feet. That was the limit of her exploration for a full ten minutes. She felt her wrist, but her watch was gone. Slowly she turned her head. At one end of the long, narrow room there was a blackboard and traces of chalked diagrams obviously made long ago. The room must at some time have been a schoolroom. But apart from the four cots and the blackboard there was nothing. An empty, dark schoolroom, painted a dirty green. But where?

  Filled with a sense of dread she sat up on the cot. Her hair was loose and she tied it carelessly in a bun. She rose, swayed a little on the balls of her feet and gazed out of the tall, barred window. Green fields stretched into the distance in the pale mauve light of early morning. Rows of poplars and cedars, crisscrossed with high hedgerows made geometric patterns of the green earth, and somewhere out of sight, a brook bubbled and swished. But there was no sign of life. Even the birds in the trees slept.

  Amanda was fully awake now, but her memory was gone. She appeared to be in the centre of a mental lacuna. The shocks had been too great, th
e difference between life and death too utter, all climaxed by that one terrible shot, and then the weaving green terrified faces.

  She looked about her in the silent schoolroom, her ears alert for any sound beyond the sound of the brook outside. There were two doors. She recalled one of the favourite stories of her youth, of the prisoner who tunnelled for ten years to escape from his cell and only when the tunnel was complete did he try the door of the cell, and found it unlocked. She tried both doors. One was locked. The other gave way at her touch and opened into a small lavatory, the rustic French kind on which one has to squat on one's haunches. It was clogged up and smelled abominably, and Amanda closed the door hastily. She sat on the bed and tried to remember. The shot seemed to have severed some cord in her mind. All she could recall was the shot, and the bright blood, and then a young man, dead at her feet.

  She had to pull herself together and think with clarity. Quite obviously she was in France. The lavatory, the hedgerows, even the light of dawn spoke French. But was she among friends or enemies? She had no idea, only a feeling of dread within her. The only thing to do was to convince herself that she was among friends, that O'Donovan and Mazursky had linked up with the agents of the Maquis. It was of the utmost importance that she should get to her transmitter as quickly as possible, and then wait for the link with Lucien. If only she could remember and put aside her feeling of dread. She held her head in her hands. She longed for three things, for a cigarette, a mirror, and a watch to tell the time. She tried to suppress the thought but she was certain that an overwhelming calamity had overtaken her.