In at the Kill

by Alexander Fullerton

  Thérèse’s comment was, ‘The devil looks after his own. But they can see the writing on the wall. Some of them wanting to get their coals out of the fire before they’re caught in it themselves.’

  Not unlike all the French who were rushing to join the Resistance, Rosie thought. She didn’t say it – having no wish to hurt Thérèse’s feelings. It would be a comment for her to make: she and her like, who’d been résistants since 1940 or thereabouts, and knew the truth of it. Les résistants de ’44, old hands like her were calling the new converts, former fence-sitters or even collaborationists. It would still hurt, though, to have it commented on by an outsider; and in the past few days there’d been a certain wariness in their relationship, due to Rosie’s insistence on ‘going walkabout’ in the dark – starting tomorrow, Saturday, when nephew Charles wouldn’t be around in the evening, or even possibly tonight after he’d gone home. This would be the last night of the old moon, easier therefore for Thérèse to show her the layout of the farm than it would be tomorrow.

  ‘Thérèse – just thinking – when I push off, leave you in peace—’

  ‘God. She’s off again…’

  ‘Well – it’s three weeks now, I’ve been cluttering up your house. And I am pretty well fit. Of course, if Michel doesn’t come—’

  ‘When you push off, you were saying – what?’

  ‘To be ready to, really. Thinking of disguise, of sorts.’ She touched her short, dark hair. ‘OK, I can wear your scarf over this, but some of it may still show, and I was thinking – if I could dye it grey, d’you think?’

  ‘Could.’ A nod. ‘We’d bleach it first, then dye it.’ Snort of humour: ‘What else – two sticks to hobble along on?’

  ‘Uh-huh. But seriously – must not look as if I’d been injured. Look old, different, but—’

  ‘I suppose…’

  ‘Have to do without a sling too. Could you help with the hair?’

  ‘Want more bread?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Go on, help yourself. Yes, I’ll bleach and dye it for you. You’d be silly to stop wearing a sling, though.’

  ‘Well – I’ll try not to use the arm more than I have to, and – look, hook the thumb into my blouse or jacket – like this? A sling would really mark me – wouldn’t it?’

  ‘If they know where and how you were hit. Maybe you should assume they would. Yes, I suppose… Want more of this?’

  Chicory mixture. She shook her head. ‘No – thanks. But if we could do my hair rather soon now – so that when Michel does turn up—’

  ‘Oh, Lord, what’s this…’

  Gazo engine: and the dog barking its head off…

  A gazo truck: a load of horse manure, courtesy of a neighbour. Thérèse had been expecting it – for her vegetables, apparently, but it would be left to rot for at least half a year before application, she’d said. There was plenty of it about, as most farms hereabouts used horses for ploughing and carting; and she didn’t like using the pig variety so close to the house. She went out to assist in the unloading, and Rosie took the breakfast things to the sink.

  She couldn’t help being on edge: needed to be ready to make a move. First and foremost, to get into a position from which to contact London. Having been here three whole weeks – long, slow weeks, at that – and thinking a great deal off and on about Ben still not knowing she was alive. Not knowing anything at all, please God: but it was conceivable that if SOE finally decided she must have come to grief, they might start breaking it to him gently.

  For ‘they’ read Marilyn Stuart, who’d been Rosie’s ‘Conducting Officer’ or guiding light when she’d been a trainee, and was still her closest chum and sometime colleague on the staff in Baker Street; Rosie had introduced Ben to her, the three of them had had a meal together, and it was bound to be Marilyn he’d call on when the silence became unbearable.

  Marilyn would try to play it by the book – not tell him anything at all.

  Another source of anxiety, though – stashing cups and saucers in the drying rack now, Thérèse still out there unloading horse-shit – a major cause of the restlessness that worried Thérèse so much was ‘Hector’ and what might be happening in the Allied drive on Paris, or around it. If an advance was in progress, which from BBC broadcasts it seemed to be. In particular there’d been mention of a new offensive and extremely hard fighting east of Caen, which might match up with what Thérèse had said, quoting Michel, about an encircling movement to the south of Paris and in this direction. Although there again – in terms of her own needs and priorities – with Michel’s non-appearance, and the fact that he was the only way she knew of to contact London, via some local SOE réseau, in his continuing absence it was beginning to look like pie in the sky. Thérèse hadn’t any solution to offer, either; one had to assume that her own Resistance connections were solely with the escape-line to which this farm was available as a safe-house. It was frustrating, especially as Rosie was beginning to feel she could think about making a move now – that physically she’d be up to it. The sulphur powder was crumbling off her various wounds in brownish scabs and flakes, and seemed to have done the job. Her back was to all intents and purposes healed, only striped in two shades of white. The head wound was no more than a recessed roughness with new hair thickening around and through it, and the shoulder wounds, front and back, were bruise-coloured, still slightly crusted, indentations. Effectively they were bruises, the shoulder felt bruised and nothing more; she thought – hoped – that by now the fractured bone might have joined itself up again.

  Her heart hadn’t played any tricks, since that one night. It had alarmed her at the time, but she’d more or less convinced herself she could forget it.

  Thérèse pushed the door shut behind her, slid the bolt across. ‘That’s that. Oh, you’ve cleared up.’ She sat down – buttocks overflowing the stool – leant with her forearms on the table. She was distinctly odorous. ‘What were we talking about?’

  ‘My hair – dyeing it?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ A sigh, wag of the head. ‘So we were.’

  ‘But if it’s difficult—’

  ‘No.’ Tired smile. ‘I was just telling myself – no peace for the wicked… But – not difficult, no. I could do the bleaching right away – I’ve got that – and get grey dye in the village. I’ve a friend there who’s used it in similar circumstances, as it happens. Have to go into the village anyway. Stay upstairs, will you, while I’m out?’

  ‘Of course, but – Thérèse, I am taking such advantage of your kindness. I’m sorry—’

  ‘You needn’t be. If you weren’t here there’d be other things keeping me just as busy. Maybe more so. And I’m enjoying your company – that’s the truth… Anyway, I’ll do the bleaching when I’ve milked Clotilde.’

  ‘Thank you. You’re – extremely kind… Going to the market, are you?’

  A nod. ‘Taking the chicks I killed last evening.’

  ‘And tonight – here I go again – will you show me round out there – after Charles has gone?’

  ‘Because of the damn moon, eh?’

  Silence, looking at each other. Rosie anxiously – aware that she was being a bloody nuisance, also, in Thérèse’s view, pig-headed, but in the circumstances hardly knowing how not to be. And Thérèse simply looking at her: a look saying something like All right, if you’re so keen to piss off…

  She was lonely. Would have been unnatural if she hadn’t been. Heart of a lioness or not. Even a lioness would get lonely, sometimes.

  ‘Thérèse – I admit, I’m a cat on hot bricks. But you can understand it, can’t you? I mean – I’d hate you to think I was ungrateful, didn’t appreciate—’

  ‘– like to slow you down, that’s all. To start with the odds as heavily against you as they must be—’

  ‘I doubt the Boches would be looking for me now. Even if they were three weeks ago, by now with any luck they’ll think I’m dead.’

  ‘You’ll take Michel’s advice, when he
turns up?’

  ‘Of course. I want his advice – help… He’s an exceptional man, isn’t he?’

  ‘You noticed.’

  ‘Must be a worry for you too now – that he might not turn up?’

  ‘Oh. So many if this, if thats. But –’ movement of the heavy shoulders, shake of the blonde head. ‘How often that sort of doubt’s in one’s mind. In the air we breathe, isn’t it?’ She pushed herself up. ‘Keep saying our prayers, Rosalie. For the time being there’s nothing else.’

  Chapter 4

  She was near the top end of the smaller cornfield, the northern apex of Thérèse’s land, when she heard a gazo grinding up the hill, from the direction of the village. Hardly the time for traffic on the mountain road – getting near 10 p.m., curfew hour.

  Coming here?

  Suppressing the hope: at least, trying to. For three weeks now every time she’d heard one – this same hope, that this might be Michel, at last – had been closely followed by the same let-down. Deepening the frustration of being stuck here while elsewhere things were moving fast.

  Humiliating, really. Man saves your life, you find yourself relying on him totally, and he disappears. In fact she’d more or less decided that if he hadn’t turned up by the end of this week she’d take off on her own. Find a résistant somewhere, somehow, play it off the cuff. What she’d suggested to Lise, in fact: both of them well aware of the danger involved in approaching résistants or for that matter SOE agents or escape-line people without introduction or quickly provable identification, to convince them you were not an infiltrator. Anyway – no option, no more than Lise would have had. You couldn’t wait for ever: irrespective of what else was going on. In fact a lot was – as one might have hoped – and not so very far away, quite possibly involving Michel and his team. On Sunday Thérèse had attended Mass in the village, and had come back with the rumour – credible enough – that the Boche 15th Army was currently being moved west to reinforce the 7th, moving by road and rail but over the Seine only by a limited number of small ferries, since every single bridge had been destroyed either by sabotage or bombing. Definitely good news – that the reinforcement had become necessary, as well as the bit about the bridges – but also might explain Michel’s continuing absence.

  There was about a hectare of corn at this top end of the farm, in two fields separated by a stream which rose somewhere up there among the balloon-like summits but at present didn’t have much water in it. It was bridged in three places, bridges of tree-trunks overlaid with planks, and she’d just come over the westernmost of them. No problem: the new moon was only a sliver, but it was a lot better than none at all; this was Tuesday, and since Thérèse had shown her around the farm on Friday, last night of the old moon, Rosie had done the circuit on her own on each of the three nights in near-total darkness.

  Marvellous to get out. Cool night air, and space, starlight…

  That gazo had changed gear pretty well exactly where it would have to if it was going to turn into the yard.

  A mesh wire fence divided the cornfield from a long strip of cow and sheep pasture. No sheep in it at present, only Clotilde; the ewes and a couple of half-grown lambs which Thérèse was keeping were down at the bottom. Rosie steadied herself with a hand on the top wire and swung her right leg over it: then the other one. She was wearing a culotte cotton skirt, provided by Thérèse and altered by herself, and over her blouse a loose-fitting ex-army sweater that had seen much better days. Vintage ’14–‘18, probably. She’d patched the worn-through elbows and re-knitted the neck, and rather liked its loose, floppy comfort. Standing close to the fence, watching downhill – towards the back of the house and the cowshed. Vegetable beds surrounded the house on three sides, and the cowshed was to the right – open on this side, to this pasture, and with a small door and ventilation slots in the side facing on to the yard. On the other side of the house – the left, looking down at it from this direction – between it and the straggle of roadside hedge and trees was a gap through which, if the gazo did turn in, she’d expect to see it on its way into the yard. If it had its lights on, anyway. The house faced on to the yard, of course, with the barn opposite it and sundry other outbuildings off to the right – including a long stone building, now used for storage of farm equipment, which in the days when they’d made wine here had been the chais – bottling, storage, et cetera.

  There were no lights on the gazo, but she did see it – briefly – emerging from the shadow of a clump of firs, then passing out of sight behind the house.

  She started down along the line of the fence. Legs stinging from encounters with nettles: and not letting herself believe in this being Michel, or Luc. The most likely thing was neighbours from up the road – Destiniers or a family by name of Roesch, for instance, which were the names one heard most. Destinier was an old man, with a haggard unmarried daughter who looked after him, must have done most of the work if not all of it, and was a close friend of Thérèse. They’d been mentioned by Michel, she remembered, as people he’d planned to use if he’d had to explain his visit here that night. Marie Destinier must be a résistante, she guessed, probably involved in the escape line with Thérèse, but that didn’t apply to the Roesch lot, as far as one knew. This could be one or more of either lot dropping by – within only a few minutes of home, therefore safe enough in regard to the curfew.

  She’d stopped again: it wouldn’t have been a good idea to burst in, especially if the visitors happened to be the Roesch family – or more distant neighbours, for that matter. Squatting on her heels, breathing the cool, earth-smelling night air, hearing Bruno barking his head off down there. His sole purpose in life, poor thing. Oddly, she remembered Michel saying that or something like it to Luc on the night they’d brought her here. Waiting, listening, exerting patience: it still could be Michel but she wasn’t taking chances, i.e. rushing in: thinking of which – that line Fools rush in – title of a song to which countless times she and Ben had danced. His voice in memory crooning in her ear, So open up your heart and let/This fool rush in… If this was Michel, and everything worked out the way he’d said it might, that self-styled ‘fool’ might soon receive news that would put a song back in his heart. Please God. And please God let him still be receptive to it. Well, damn it, he would. Scars or no scars. Otherwise – Christ, scar him…

  The barking had ceased but the gazo’s engine was still running. Only Thérèse could have silenced Bruno, so she must have come outside. Rosie got up and moved on again, down the slope of field; envisaging Michel and Luc down there backing the gazo into the barn as they’d done that other night when she’d been in it, not knowing where she was or in whose hands or effectively whether it was Christmas or Easter. She could see Thérèse’s cow – Clotilde – lying out in the middle of the pasture – which was about the width and twice the length of a football field, with an even slope down towards the house and yard. The farm as a whole sloped down eastward, with the house and outbuildings, and farther – farther from the road – the chicken-sheds and runs and then the pig area, on that more or less level central part. And below, from there right down to the bottom, were hayfields, one of which had been cut and currently had the sheep in it.

  Gazo’s engine still pounding. Would have switched off by now, she thought, if they’d been staying. Thérèse’s voice then, for the first time: words indistinguishable but pitched high as if calling to someone at a distance – or over the noise of that engine’s sudden revving – which it was.

  Moving out. Like a shadow across that gap again.

  She heard it thump over the rise: then down into the road. Then a shift of gear, and turning uphill, the way it had been going. Marie Destinier on her way home from some visit was as likely as anything. Goodbye to wishful thinking about Michel and Luc, anyway. Coming up close now: second gear-shift. The road abreast of where she was now crouching again – natural caution, not wanting to attract neighbourly gossip, such as who the hell’s wandering around Thérèse Michon’s fi
elds at night – the roadside was only about fifty metres away. And whoever that was, they weren’t showing lights.

  Odd. If it was Marie. Unless her lights weren’t working. Smelling it now – charcoal fumes, on the westerly breeze. For the moment the moon-sliver was covered. Owls hooting: there were a lot of them around here. If it had been the Destinier woman she’d be taking the left fork a few hundred metres up the road; if a Roesch, a right-hand turn just after it. Rosie continued on down, now and again in contact with the fence and on smooth, well-grazed turf. Cowpats were the only hazard. Old, sun-baked ones were no problem, but she wanted to avoid stepping in the other kind, having only the wooden-soled, cloth-uppered pair of shoes she’d been wearing on the night of the car smash. She’d managed to hang on to them in Fresnes, even: maybe because the thieving, butch wardresses hadn’t thought them worth stealing.

  Car? Another?

  Stopping, listening again. Confirming to herself that it was not only a car, but petrol-engined, not gazo.

  Squatting down. Right shoulder against the wire. Pale wash of moonlight, Clotilde a black hump in it, as motionless as a rock in sand. Petrol-powered vehicles usually meant Boches: especially after curfew. It was on its way up from the village, so if the gazo had dropped someone off here… She caught her breath: it wasn’t on its way up, they – more than one car – were on their way up. Which would mean some kind of raid. Thérèse wouldn’t be hearing them yet either – if she was inside the house with the door shut: which by now she would be. Rosie up again and running – diagonally across, aiming for the west side of the house, the way through the vegetable garden into the entrance track where it dipped into the yard. But – bloody hell, the cars were coming too damn fast for this, she’d about meet them head-on, at that point – if they were coming here. She swerved right, aiming now for the milking shed: straight through it and please God be banging on the kitchen door – or better, inside it – before the cars’ lights lit the place up. Even a few seconds’ warning – get the ladder down, tonight of all nights Thérèse having left it up. Would you believe it… The moon was almost behind her now; and Clotilde was lumbering to her feet – disturbed by Rosie, not by the cars, although they were now quite close and – coming too fast to be intending to turn in? Go on by, please… Running clumsily, out of practice and unfit, and having one arm pinned upset one’s balance. First time she’d run since—