by Kurt Magenta
And Lieutenant Vauthier looking on.
Lucien heard Chenard shout something behind him as he zigzagged through the maze of bedding towards the scene – the group gathered in the eerie twilight like figures in a Flemish painting. The Belgian man’s wife pressed their little girl’s face into her side, rigid with shock but no tears yet.
An orderly stopped him with a hand on his chest before he could get any closer. ‘Whoa, there, lad. Better give them some room. Know the gentleman, do you?’
‘Oui, il était sur le bateau…’ The orderly’s confused expression told him that he’d blurted the line in French. ‘I mean, yes…no, not exactly – we were on a boat together.’
He wasn’t making any sense. Over the orderly’s shoulder he saw Vauthier watching him coldly. As their eyes met he started forward, but the orderly’s splayed fingers on his chest pinned him in place.
Vauthier turned and walked away. What was it about the man that made Lucien’s flesh crawl?
‘He’s looked peaky all day,’ said the orderly, referring to the Belgian. ‘Heart condition, I shouldn’t wonder.’
They stood on the margins of the scene as two ambulance men brought a stretcher. The Belgian’s body was lifted onto it, covered by a draped blanket. The wife and daughter followed the stretcher towards the exit, the mother with her arm around the girl’s shoulders. Lucien never saw them again.
Soon Olympia Hall was dark – but matches rasped and lighters were lit, and here and there flames began to flicker, as if in a church. Conversations were hushed.
The spell was broken by a low rasping moan that crested into a vibrato wail before deepening again. ‘Get those lights out!’
The air raid warning siren.
Chapter 6
Act of Engagement
The young man caught a glimpse of himself in a shop window and – with a brief wince of shame at his vanity – paused to admire his reflection. He was dressed for battle in a khaki blouson and trousers, a wide matching belt, gaiters and thick-soled boots with reinforced toecaps. On his head, a black military beret. A tricolour insignia blazed at the top of his left sleeve.
The gas mask he carried in a reinforced canvas box slightly spoiled the effect; but other than that, Lucien Cortel felt that he looked quite splendid.
Things had moved fast since his night at Olympia Hall. The air raid warning had been a drill: he had heard neither the rumble of aircraft nor the thunder of falling bombs. But when the all-clear sounded, the conversation centred on one subject only – the inevitable invasion of England by the Nazis.
In the meantime, all they could do was survive. Lucien was doing better than some. Better, far better, than the Belgian he’d shared a train carriage with.
After the man’s death, he had come to a decision. No matter what Maddox wanted of him, he had to keep moving forward. Staying in the soul-crushing refugee camp was not an option, either as spy or civilian. So despite his atavistic dislike of the high-and-mighty Lieutenant Vauthier, he would listen to what his heart was now telling him. He would join the Free French.
The next morning, Chenard arrived clutching the necessary paperwork and escorted him – blinking in the sunshine – beyond the entry barrier to a waiting taxi. The driver was ordered to take them to ‘Saint Stephen’s ‘Ouse’.
St. Stephen’s House turned out to be an imposing red-brick Victorian building set back from the river on the strip Londoners knew as the Embankment. The tricolour fluttered at half mast from a pole on its rooftop. Below, cars and trolleybuses scuttled indifferently past. Pedestrians hurried along the wide pavement in dappled light that fell through the leaves of handsome plane trees. Lucien noticed that the tree-trunks had been splashed with three wide bands of white paint, to prevent motorists from hitting them during the blackout.
As they got out of the taxi, Chenard warned him, ‘These are temporary headquarters and they look it – don’t know where we’ll be in a week, let alone a month.’
He gestured towards the river, where an ugly steel snout peeked from a nest of sandbags rising above the parapet. ‘But at least we’ve got protection, of sorts. They’ve installed a battery of anti-aircraft guns. Nineteen fourteen vintage, dragged out of a museum. Sans blague.’
No joke. But Chenard was already pushing briskly through the building’s double glass doors. They paused for a moment to show their papers to the sentry.
‘Afraid I’ll have to leave you here,’ said Chenard. ‘Work to do and all that. The office you want is on the third floor, if they haven’t moved it again. Corporal Fournier, our one-man welcome committee. He’ll sign you in and tell you where to go next. Look for me later and I’ll see if I can get you a spot in my digs. Otherwise you’ll end up in an army hostel – and I guarantee the food won’t be as good.’
They shook hands and Chenard marched off down a long corridor, leaving Lucien to contemplate the antediluvian cage elevator. He pressed the button and waited long moments before it became clear that the thing was either blocked at another floor or not working at all. He took the stairs. The wood was scuffed and unvarnished, just as the dirty café-au-lait paint on the walls was fissured and scaling.
As he searched for Fournier’s office, he saw what Chenard meant about the temporary nature of the facilities. The building felt like a haunted mansion whose original inhabitants had long since fled, replaced only days ago by oblivious newcomers who were still unpacking. Through half-open doorways he caught glimpses of rooms filled with heavy antique furniture, the pale afterimages of missing pictures on the walls. Small groups of men – three or four – stood at the long windows talking in low voices amid silvery swirls of cigarette smoke.
One room looked promising. A fresh-faced young man, perhaps in his early thirties, sat behind a monstrous varnished walnut desk that seemed to cast a pall over its surroundings. He was reading an open buff folder – many more waited in a pile at his elbow. He wore a khaki uniform and a beige tie. His boyish features were complemented by fine blond hair. Lucien tapped politely on the door. Instantly he realised he had made a mistake.
The man looked up and fixed him with an Arctic stare that was both mature and aggressive.
‘Yes? What do you want?’
‘Looking for Corporal F-Fournier?’ Lucien stammered.
‘Well you won’t find him here.’ The young man gestured at his insignia. ‘I’m a Colonel, as you can see. But then of course you’re a civilian – what would you know of such matters?’ He shrugged, his gaze warming a fraction of a degree. ‘Try the second floor.’
Then he returned to his reading, not bothering to acknowledge Lucien’s ‘merci mon Colonel’. On his way out, Lucien glanced at the discreet handwritten sign tacked to the door. It read: ‘PASSY’. Which meant nothing to Lucien, apart from the fact that it was the name of a wealthy district of Paris. It would be some time before he found out who Colonel Passy really was.
‘You’re fortunate that Chenard is one of our most ambitious recruiters,’ said Corporal Fournier, looking once again at the form Lucien had signed. ‘This acte d’engagement was created for men who wish to continue the fight against the enemy. I emphasise the word “continue”. You’re barely twenty years old and you have no military experience whatsoever.’
Fournier didn’t look so much older than Lucien, who was beginning to think the Free French had a rather inflated opinion of themselves.
‘That’s true,’ he replied. ‘But it also says you’ll accept civilian volunteers who are judged fit to serve. Not only am I fit, I cycled across half of France. I was shot at by the German air force and threatened by Polish sailors. I’m healthy, I’m not overly stupid and I speak fluent English. So how are you going to tell me I don’t qualify?’
Fournier sighed, although he was trying to disguise the beginnings of a smirk. ‘Very well. Perhaps we’ll even teach you how to hold your tongue. But the fact is we desperately need
volunteers. And we’re going to need a great deal more of them, which is why you’ll be reporting to Lieutenant Vauthier in recruitment first thing tomorrow morning.’
Lucien had seen this coming. For once he didn’t argue – at least he would be working with the amiable Chenard. Besides, they were at war: the situation could change overnight.
Fournier picked up a fountain pen and scratched some details into a passport-like document that turned out to be a Soldier’s Service and Pay Book, entitling the bearer to five pounds per week. He handed it to Lucien. ‘Welcome to the Free French Forces, Private Cortel. Now take this to the fourth floor and get yourself issued with a uniform.’ He smiled unreservedly now. ‘Don’t get excited – we won’t be giving you a gun.’
Lucien thought he detected a look of triumph on Vauthier’s face when he walked into the Lieutenant’s office the next day, dressed in his warm and somewhat itchy new uniform. He attempted a salute, realising at the same time that he had only the vaguest notions of military etiquette. He noted that the ground floor office was tucked away at the back of the building, keeping it shaded and cool.
Vauthier waved him into the spare seat in front of his desk. ‘At ease, young man, at ease. I know you’ve only been here ten minutes. But I’m glad to see you’ve decided to take us more seriously than you did on the ship the other day.’ He held up a warning hand. ‘No point in protesting: I saw how you reacted to General de Gaulle’s call to arms. Now – do you know why you’re here?’
‘Recruitment, I was told. Rallying men to the cause.’
‘In part, that is correct. Since Dunkirk, barracks all over the country have been full of French troops, many of them sleeping under canvas. I can only imagine the state of their morale. No doubt some of them would like to fight – but I’m certain the majority wish only to return home. Wherever possible, we must change their minds.’
‘And how are we to do that, exactly?’
‘Convince them that the future of France lies here, with de Gaulle. Make sure they’ve seen his call. Plaster copies of it all over their camps. Organise meetings. Write a text of your own, if you like. Inspire them. Naturally, I’m not asking you to do this alone: Chenard will be going with you.’
For an instant Lucien wondered if he was simply jealous of Vauthier: the man’s looks, his assurance, his easy authority. His black hair was neatly trimmed and parted, his brown eyes hard and crystalline. Even his uniform looked cool and neatly pressed. Lucien felt like a skinny scarecrow in comparison. Still, he wasn’t going to allow himself to be intimidated.
He said, ‘With respect, I didn’t come all the way from France to wage a war of words.’
‘Which brings us to the second part of why you’re here. You’re a young man and I understand you want to fight. But we don’t have time to train you – you’d probably end up shooting one of your own side, or yourself in the foot. What you can do is write and talk. For the time being, Cortel, propaganda is all you’re good for.’
Vauthier gave them three days to get organised. ‘We could do with a few more,’ said Chenard in the pub that evening. ‘How are we supposed to make hundreds of copies of de Gaulle’s appeal when we don’t have a printing press? I’m not even sure we’ll be able to find our way to the camps. In case you haven’t heard, road maps have been taken out of circulation in case Nazi spies get hold of one. All the signposts have been uprooted too.’
It was their second night on the town since Lucien had moved into Chenard’s ‘digs’. These were in a stucco-fronted boarding house in Bayswater, an area of wide, languidly crumbling streets between Paddington Station and Hyde Park. The proprietor was a Mrs Shaughnessy, an energetic widow in her late thirties. Her merchant seaman husband had died ‘in the tropics’ some years ago. She was pale and sharp-featured, with a jutting nose, but her hair was a mass of rich dark curls, her blue eyes were bright and she had a cheerful manner that endeared her to her boarders: a mixture of elderly widowers and foreign intellectuals. A couple of her younger ‘gentlemen’ had given up their rooms because they expected to spend long periods in army barracks.
Even so, Lucien was surprised to find himself being shown into what was clearly a young boy’s room: model aeroplanes dangled from the ceiling; a globe sat on the chest of drawers; pirate ships sailed across the curtains. When he had time to take a closer look at the bookshelf beside the narrow bed, he found The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo in a long row of adventure stories, along with stacks of comics called Magnet and The Beano.
‘My boy Matthew,’ Mrs Shaughnessy explained apologetically. ‘He’s been evacuated to the country. What with all you foreign gentlemen arriving all at once, it’s the only room I’ve got left. I wouldn’t have let it out were it not for Mister Chenard being such a polite young man. There’s a bathroom on the landing and hot water in the mornings if you’re quick about it. What else…? Oh yes – we’ve some mattresses in the cellar if there’s a raid.’
‘I’m sure I’ll be very comfortable, Mrs Shaughnessy,’ said Lucien, lowering his case. ‘I’m extremely grateful to you – and to young Matthew. Perhaps I’ll get to meet him one day.’
‘Oh, he’s a grand lad. Only ten years old and already so grown up.’ Her eyes looked even brighter for a second, but she blinked the moisture away. ‘Anyway, you get settled in and then if you like I’ll bring you up a cup of tea.’
At seven o’clock, he took the creaking carpeted staircase one flight down and knocked on Chenard’s white-painted door. Before they headed out into the wilds of the English countryside, he wanted to experience London nightlife.
Like many of the young Frenchmen who arrived in London in the summer of 1940, Lucien was astonished by the sympathetic attitude of the general public. Waitresses and barmen asked him how he’d come to England, and inquired after his family. On one occasion, a bus conductor caught sight of his tricolour shoulder flash and said, ‘That’s all right, son – Frenchies ride for free on my crate.’ The penniless Free French had already received several donations, as well as a barrel of red wine that now sat in the foyer of St Stephen’s House, rapidly emptying.
For the time being, food and drink were relatively plentiful. There were a number of cheap Italian restaurants in Soho – the disreputable nest of streets behind Leicester Square – and Chenard had his ‘habitudes’, as he put it, at a place on Frith Street called Fraioli’s. They ate an acceptable spaghetti Bolognese with a dessert of custard tart.
After that, a tour of Soho’s pubs was in order.
This cosmopolitan quarter had been welcoming foreigners, artists, thinkers and drinkers – which often amounted to the same thing – for as long as anybody could remember. The burgeoning French community had adopted as its social club a tiny establishment called The York Minister, on Dean Street. As well as sketches and watercolours donated by regular patrons, its walls were crammed with signed but faded sepia photographs of music hall artistes, acrobats, wrestlers and boxers. Examining them more closely tonight, on his second visit, Lucien found a picture of the great French light-heavyweight Georges Carpentier.
The pub landlord was a jovial, extravagantly moustached man named Victor – apparently French, though Chenard claimed he was Belgian. No matter: he stocked a fine selection of wines and he was willing to let French customers put drinks ‘on the slate’. A pastis machine took pride of place on his bar. This curious device resembled a large carriage lamp with three small taps sprouting from its base. Glasses of neat pastis were placed beneath them to receive water that had been filtered through ice.
Lucien sipped one of these concoctions as he tuned out Chenard’s litany of complaints and peered through the fug of cigarette smoke at his fellow drinkers. Or more specifically, at a stunning girl with honey-blonde hair, cut almost as short as a man’s. The tomboyish effect was enhanced by her smart navy blue uniform: she wore the close-fitting trousers and high laced boots of a despatch rider.
> Chenard saw him staring. ‘Jolie fille, non? They call them Wrens: Women’s Royal Naval Service. Better get a move on if you want to make her acquaintance – we’ll be gone for at least a fortnight, and you’ve got competition.’
The girl was talking to an older man with salt-and-pepper hair and round tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles. He did not look rich, but he carried himself with the sort of careless ease that appealed to young women. The girl was laughing at some joke he’d made. Even after a pastis, Lucien couldn’t imagine barging into their conversation.
He drained his glass. ‘Feel like another? Or shall we try the place we missed yesterday?’
Chenard shook his head. ‘I need another twenty minutes. There are people here who could be useful to us.’
By the time they left he had secured a promise of a pre-war Automobile Association road map from one customer, and obtained the address of French-owned printing firm in Clerkenwell from another. It dawned on Lucien that Chenard had not been complaining about their assignment after all: he had been relishing the challenge.
Suddenly it was the day before they were due to leave. Late that afternoon Lucien walked slowly home from St Stephen’s House, soaking up the noise and spectacle of the city. Which was how he came to pause before a shop window in Oxford Street, contemplating his uniformed reflection. He had come a long way in a short time: less than a month had passed since he boarded a train in Paris.
His focus shifted as he realised he was standing in front of a record store. He gazed for a moment at the Shellac discs in their brown paper sleeves (Count Basie! Duke Ellington!) before admitting to himself that he couldn’t afford any of them. He stepped back to admire the store’s façade. Its name was the same as the one on the record labels: His Master’s Voice, with the famous logo of a little dog tilting its ear to the trumpet of a gramophone player. Lucien vowed to return when the Free French had paid him.
