by Simon Mawer
‘Keep your eyes open!’
‘They’re coming back!’
And here it is again roaring overhead, dispensing its bounty to the worshippers down on the ground, the whole world vibrating with its power as it climbs away from them and, tilting its wings in salute, turns and recedes over the countryside, a presence that has for a few minutes occupied their minds and their bodies but is now suddenly detached, a remote thing leaving their collective consciousness for ever. And in the darkness, as the men run around collecting the containers and lugging them towards the waiting ox cart, Alice weeps for her moment of ecstasy and her apprehension of loss.
II
There’s a meeting with le Patron, at Gabrielle’s house in Lussac. She doesn’t like this way of meeting – she’d prefer cut-outs and dead letter drops and all that stuff that they taught her at Beaulieu, but this is le Patron’s manner. ‘They don’t know their bloody arses from their elbows,’ he said when she objected right at the beginning. ‘You need someone who’s been in the field to teach you, not some pimp from Whitehall.’
They meet in the same back room that she has stayed in from time to time, the one with the view over the back roofs and the little alleyway, the room she occupied after her drop. It seems like part of her history now, part of the memory of Anne-Marie Laroche – that morning of excitement and anxiety, the sensation of being safe in one place only, this small, sequestered space with the floral quilt on the bed and the picture of la Vierge Marie on the wall. She’s waiting at the window, looking out on the back garden when she hears his footsteps on the stairs, and the rasping of his breath as he flings open the door.
‘Come in,’ she says but he seems not to notice her sarcasm.
‘The parachutage went well, then?’
‘As well as could be hoped.’
‘I hear they used Marcel’s men?’
‘That was Gaillard’s decision.’
‘Gaillard is a blithering idiot at times. We won’t be able to trust them when the balloon goes up.’
‘They’re all right.’
‘What the hell do you know about it? They’re bloody commies.’
‘Their hearts are in the right place.’
‘You don’t fight with your heart. You fight with your head. All they want is the chaos when the landings come and then they’ll be shooting everyone in the back. Including us.’
‘Is that what you came to see me about?’
‘As a matter of fact it’s not.’ He lights a cigarette and looks her up and down speculatively, like a farmer trying to assess how much he might get for her at market. That’s not the way Gaillard looks at her. Gaillard looks at her with the eager eye of a prospective purchaser. ‘You’ll have to go to Paris,’ he says.
‘Paris?’
‘Yes, Paris. You heard.’
‘What for?’
Le Patron coughs at some smoke, then clears his throat. The sound of sandpaper. ‘It came through on Georgette’s last sked. They’ve lost touch with one of the circuits. CINÉASTE. They think …’ his mouth turns down in disgust, as though he knows that thought is the one thing they are incapable of ‘… they think that it may be a simple thing. Broken crystals or a duff valve, or something. They want you to take some replacements. My guess is they don’t know their arse from their elbow. My guess is that CINÉASTE has gone down with the general mess in Paris. You know about PROSPER, don’t you?’
‘I’ve heard of it.’
‘Well, PROSPER’s coming to pieces. That’s what I gather, anyway. The whole damn circuit.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘The grapevine.’
‘And I’ve got to go to Paris when all that is happening? What for, exactly?’ But she knows. Fawley’s there in her mind and he’s talking about Clément. We thought you might be more persuasive than a mere letter.
Le Patron shrugs. ‘Apparently you know the pianist, that’s the point. So you can recognise her. Her name’s Yvette. Yvette Coombes.’
‘Yvette!’
‘So the name means something to you? You know the damned woman?’
‘Yes, I do. We were together at A School. They posted her away before she’d completed the course. Someone said she went to Thame.’
‘That’s it then. Apparently her field name’s Marcelle. There’s an address which she was meant to be using, but nothing else. You’re to try and make contact and take her the spares. That’s the idea. They included them in that last drop.’ He takes a final drag on his cigarette and stubs the thing out, then takes a waxed paper packet from his pocket and hands it to her. ‘Of course you can break it up. Two valves and two crystals. The crystals are the dangerous ones. You might pass the valves off but the crystals would give you away. So you’ll just have to be careful.’
She opens the packet and there they are, part of the mystery of electronics: two valves like small light bulbs and two wireless crystals, squares of Bakelite the size of postage stamps with two metal contacts poking out of one end. She never really understood what they did. Ned would understand, of course, but for her there is nothing more than the memory of a lecture at Meoble, talk of diodes and triodes, of crystals and megacycles and ‘skip’. What is skip, that sounds so childlike and happy? Ned would know. She picks up one of the crystals and examines it.
‘Quite easy to conceal against a spot check, I suppose.’ Le Patron laughs. ‘Tuck them down the front of your knickers, or something. But if they really search you, you’re stuffed.’ He hands her a scrap of paper, rice paper that can be swallowed in a moment. ‘There’s an address of a safe house you can use. A staff nurse at the Salpêtrière. She’s called Béatrice. You were sent by Ricard. She’ll know Ricard. And remember, Paris is not like here. Here things are safe enough if you know what you’re doing. But in Paris …’ He shrugs and smokes, and looks at her with something like concern. ‘It’s the usual pile of shit, I’m afraid.’
III
After le Patron has gone she stands looking out of the window at the small back garden, thinking of Clément. And the smooth man in the pinstripe suit called Fawley. Excitement is close to fear: there is the same pulsing heart, the same dry mouth, the same thin rime of sweat beneath the arms. So which of the two does she feel, knowing she must go to Paris? Excitement or fear? Or is it both?
And then she thinks of Yvette, that child in a woman’s body, the little girl lost in widowhood and motherhood and the chaos of war, who wept on her cheek and whispered that she was no good, that they would never send her to France. What, she wonders, is Yvette’s part in this little rigmarole?
She cycles to Plasonne to collect her things and warn Sophie that she will be away for a few days. Paris, she adds, and then regrets it when she sees Sophie’s expression of fear. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be back in a few days. I’ve got to go and see a friend.’
Back in Lussac, Gabrielle Mercey thinks differently. ‘You’re going to Paris!’ she exclaims, clapping her hands in delight. ‘Let me come with you!’ And then, when it is made clear that they cannot make the journey together, she says, ‘Wait a second,’ and disappears for a moment to come back with a slip of paper with an address written on it. ‘These are my friends. If you need help you can always contact them. I’m sure they’d give you a place to stay if you need …’
Alice packs a suitcase. She will be able to wear the suit that she arrived in and has never worn since because it is too parisien and the shoes that were bought in a little shop off the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré shortly before they left Paris for London, Maman and Papa and she, in the spring of 1940. Gabrielle watches her preparations devotedly, an acolyte at the altar. She is always doing things to help – sewing on buttons, darning stockings, turning the collar of Alice’s blouses – that kind of thing. Her treadle-driven sewing machine is constantly whirring away in the back room of the little house, making and mending in the days of privation. ‘You’ll look so lovely dressed up for Paris,’ she says. ‘I can imagine you strolling in the Luxembourg, sit
ting at a café on the Champs-Élysées, attracting the men.’
‘I don’t imagine I’ll have time for that.’
‘Maybe after the war. Maybe we can go to Paris then.’
‘Perhaps.’ After the war seems like a fiction, in the way that paradise is a fiction, a time and place of unlimited plenty, of peace and harmony and eternal light. An antidote to the theology of terror.
Alice looks down at her packed suitcase and considers the two wireless valves that she has to carry. The trouble with attempting to hide things is that if they are found then you really are in the shit. That was how one of the Beaulieu instructors put it. If you can get away with it, better use wide-eyed innocence rather than a hiding place. So she wraps them in a face flannel and packs them among her clothes. If there is a barrage and they are found, then she will have to bluff her way out. But she can’t bluff with the crystals. There is no getting away with them. People listen to radios in all innocence, but no one transmits in innocence.
For the moment she leaves the crystals on the chest of drawers and follows Gabrielle down to the kitchen. They eat supper together, sitting opposite each other with Gabrielle’s mother at the head of the table. The old woman’s jaws work methodically although she doesn’t seem to eat much. It looks as though she is chewing over the past. ‘So how is Mathilde keeping?’ she asks Alice.
‘Don’t be silly, Maman. This is Alice. You know it’s Alice.’ Gabrielle has already explained: Mathilde was her mother’s younger sister. She died of TB during the Great War.
The old woman looks angry. ‘Of course I know it is Alice. But she seems like Mathilde.’
They all go to bed early. ‘Alice has to get up early tomorrow,’ Gabrielle explains. ‘She has to take the train at Toulouse.’
The old lady laughs. ‘Toulouse!’ she exclaims, but quite what amuses her is not clear.
IV
Alice sleeps fitfully, her waking haunted by fear, her sleep punctuated by dreams. In her dreams she is in Paris, with Ned, with Yvette, with Madeleine and Clément. Clément smiles at her, and reaches out his hand to touch her. Sometimes Paris is London. Once, Benoît is there and they are in bed together, but this seems to be a public thing, with Clément and her own mother watching; and then Benoît becomes Ned and then Clément, with that weird facility that dream figures have, to be different persons at the same time. And then she awakes, soiled with guilt, with the luminous hands of the clock on her bedside table pointing to five-thirty.
She creeps downstairs to boil some water. Back in the bathroom, using the hard, unyielding bar of soap that is all she can find, she shaves her legs. For the first time in months, she applies make-up – a pale foundation, prominent red lips, eye shadow and mascara – and then she has to deal with her hair, combing it out and tying it up in a chignon. Finally she files her nails to even them up, then applies a blood-red nail polish. From being a country girl she is transformed into a city woman: sharp, raffinée and older.
Wrapped in her bath towel, clutching it to her with her elbows but holding her fingers out to let her nails dry, she tiptoes back to her bedroom where she hesitates for a moment, looking at the wireless crystals that have lain on the chest of drawers like an unspoken threat since the previous evening.
What were the words of Marguerite, the woman she trained with at Beaulieu? ‘We girls have an advantage over the men.’ That prim little smile. ‘We can always carry items – messages and the like – where no gentleman will ever see them. You might call it inside information.’
Alice blows on her nails to hurry their drying, then carefully picks up the crystals, places them head to tail and wraps them tightly in a square of lint. From an inner pocket in her suitcase she takes out a condom. She puts the crystals in the condom, tosses her towel aside and sits on the bed with her knees up and her legs spread open. She looks down at herself. What did the nuns used to say? You should not be overfamiliar with your own body. It is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and it is not yours to do with as you please. Rather, you must honour God with it.
She moves her finger up and down until she is moist, then takes the package of crystals and eases it up into her vagina. When she stands the thing feels uncomfortable, something violating her, an ugly presence thrusting against the neck of her womb. Perhaps it will make her sore, but it’ll have to do.
After that, she dresses – a crêpe de Chine blouse and her smart, Parisian suit – and takes her L pill from the drawer where it has lain hidden ever since she came here. She glances at it for a moment before slipping it into the pocket of her jacket. Then she picks up her suitcase in one hand and her shoes in the other so as not to make any noise, and opens the door. But when she emerges from her room she finds Gabrielle waiting at the head of the stairs in her flannel nightdress.
‘You were trying to sneak out!’
‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’
‘I wasn’t going to let you go without saying goodbye.’ Gabrielle looks her up and down. ‘You’re beautiful.’
‘I’m nervous. I hope it doesn’t show.’
‘Of course it doesn’t show. You look like queen of all you survey.’ She throws her arms round Alice and hugs her tight. ‘Be careful,’ she whispers against her cheek. ‘Promise me that. I won’t wish you good luck.’
‘Merde alors,’ says Alice, and Gabrielle giggles. ‘Merde,’ she echoes as Alice goes downstairs carrying her suitcase and her shoes, pausing in the hall to stand awkwardly on each leg in turn to put the shoes on before opening the front door and stepping out into the cold, dark, morning street. ‘Merde alors!’
V
She is out of place among the passengers on the bus, but she doesn’t care. She is travelling to Paris. A woman going to Auch for the market makes a bit of extra room for her to sit, as though mere contact with ordinary work clothes might sully Alice’s outfit. The gendarme who checks documents nods appreciatively as he hands her documents back. The bus, as overcrowded as ever, lurches out of the town square, past the church and the mairie, down over the bridge and onto the main road. She is going to Paris, away from the drudgery of the countryside and the sheer labour that she has expended over the last weeks, away from farmers and their families, who are the salt of the earth but like salt have one flavour only. Paris has many flavours. It is a place of possibilities.
From Auch she takes the regional train to Toulouse, and from Toulouse the overnight train to the capital. There are no sleeping compartments these days, no couchettes, only bare wooden seats or the faded plush of first class. She travels first class. Money is no object. She is raffinée and wealthy: money descends on her like a gift from heaven. In her purse she carries thousands of francs. In her vagina she carries two wireless crystals.
VI
The journey is one of those wartime treks that she recognises from Britain, a voyage of fitful movement and inconsequential stops magnified by the size of the country, as though perceived through a distorting lens of space and time, something Ned and Clément might have talked about in one of their mad discourses about the dimensions of the universe. The space–time continuum or some such nonsense – didn’t they try and explain that to her by talking about people on a train? Relative speeds and time dilation. Sharing this experiment in time with her are two middle-aged men who look like government officials of some kind, and an ancient woman who wears elaborate jewellery and views the world through rheumy and disapproving eyes. ‘I can’t think why they don’t have wagons-lits,’ she complains. ‘What can they be using the things for these days? Carrying soldiers? Of course not. So it is pure inefficiency. Or jealousy. Perhaps it is jealousy, denying us our comforts.’
The men grunt and look out of the window, trying to ignore her. Being party to a conversation that criticises the system is dangerous. People listen and report and lever themselves up the tortuous ladder of preferment by denouncing others. But the woman doesn’t seem to care. The train jolts and sways and she continues to complain: ‘It’s the fault of the Jews, this
mess we’re in. That fellow Blum. A Jew and a communist. What can you expect?’
Alice takes out her book and reads. More passengers get on at Montauban and Brive until the compartment is almost full. Time dilates and space contracts. She is squeezed against the window by a large man wearing a heavy overcoat and carrying a massive suitcase. With great effort he lifts the case onto the luggage rack overhead.
‘Is it safe?’ she asks.
‘Of course it’s safe. Why wouldn’t it be safe?’
‘Because it might fall.’
‘It’s safe.’
The train clatters on through the night, stopping and starting, going slowly when there seems no good reason, pausing for long, indeterminate periods in the middle of the countryside. With the blinds down the compartment is illuminated by a feeble blue light, barely sufficient to read by. When they halt they turn out the light and put the blinds up and wipe condensation from the windows. But there is nothing to see in the darkness outside.
Alice sleeps fitfully, her head lurching sideways with the sway of the carriage. Once she awakens to find that she is resting her cheek on her neighbour’s shoulder. He has been too considerate to disturb her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, embarrassed. ‘I’m awfully sorry.’ Then she falls silent. That is what France is reduced to: silence between strangers because conversations would be compromised one way or the other. Better to keep quiet.
In the early morning the train rumbles across a bridge and grinds to a halt in a blacked-out station in a great sigh of steam. ‘Vierzon,’ someone says, peering through the glass. Doors slam. There is German spoken on the platform and the sound of movement in the corridor. Soldiers clump on board. Doors can be heard sliding open, and people shouting. In the compartment her fellow passengers look at one another more directly than throughout the whole journey, a look entirely without sympathy. Who is going to be caught doing what? Beside Alice the fat man sweats and fidgets, his fingers fluttering like sea creatures caught in some wayward ocean current. Alice feels the crystals inside her, accusing fingers pointing towards her womb.
