by Simon Mawer
And then a voice announcing, ‘Ici Londres!’ a voice from a world away, a sound that never fails to evoke a sting of emotion. ‘Les Français parlent aux Français.’
Sophie watches her, trying to decipher her expression.
The radio voice says, ‘Before we begin, here are some personal messages.’ And then the messages come, the absurd and the poetic, lines solemn and comic delivered with the precise phrasing of a man who wants to be heard despite distance and interference and deliberate jamming: Grandmother has bought the artichokes. The clouds of autumn bring winter rains. All good things come to fruition. And then:
‘Paul s’en va en dix minutes. Nous le disons deux fois: Paul s’en va en dix minutes.’
‘There,’ Alice says with a small stir of happiness, and Sophie smiles at her, knowing that Alice has scored some kind of triumph, that London has spoken, that somehow the end has been brought that little bit nearer.
On the radio the news has started. It’s mainly about Russia, a land that Albert espouses but has never seen and can barely envisage. The announcer talks of tens of thousands killed, whole armies captured, so many people thrown on the waste heap that you cannot imagine such a number can be replaced. And yet the war goes on.
‘Now you need to sleep,’ Sophie says. ‘You’re exhausted.’
II
Le Patron shouts. White-faced and angry, he’s standing in the kitchen of Gabrielle’s house, with the old mother in the corner knitting away, not hearing a word. ‘What the hell were you doing, gallivanting around in Paris? We’ve got work to do round here! I need you to be on call!’
She is no longer afraid of him, that is the difference. When she first came he was a terrifying prospect, more terrifying than the Gestapo. But now she sees him for what he is, a small man in a fearful position, trying to balance forces that may crush him in an instant. And finding comfort in Gabrielle’s small and devoted attentions.
‘I didn’t go for my own amusement,’ she says when the storm has passed. ‘You know that as well as I do.’
He spits something, a shred of tobacco maybe. ‘If they want someone in Paris, why the hell don’t they drop someone into the city? They can land right on the bloody Eiffel Tower for all I care. Have it stuck up their arse.’
‘And I’m afraid I’ve got to go back.’
‘Go back? What the hell do you mean, go back?’
‘I’ve got to organise a pick-up.’
‘I thought it was just those bloody crystals.’
‘It wasn’t. CINÉASTE has been broken up and Marcelle needs to get out.’
‘But there are people in Paris who can arrange that.’
‘She’s in hiding. The place is a nightmare and she’s terrified of being caught. Only I know where she is. Virtually all the Paris circuits have collapsed and there’ve been dozens of arrests.’
‘And you’ve arranged the pick-up already? How did you make contact?’
Why should he know that she was given instructions about contacting Gilbert? Why should he know anything? ‘I used Marcelle’s radio.’
He draws on his cigarette and eyes her suspiciously. ‘Since when were you a pianist?’
‘We all get basic training.’
‘Anyway, we’re due for a drop the next moon. You can’t be away.’
‘Gaillard can do it. He knows exactly what to do.’
‘He’ll bring in Marcel’s lot and they’ll steal half the stuff.’
She doesn’t care. Marcel’s men will do useful things with whatever they have. They’re communists and are therefore both organised and driven. Too many of the others have mixed motives.
‘You’ve barely been here two months and you’re spending most of your time in bloody Paris. I could order you to stay.’
‘You’d better ask London about that.’
‘What the fuck does London know?’ He frowns at her and takes another drag on his cigarette. ‘And you’ve got to go back to Toulouse. Immediately.’
‘What for?’
‘Another idea of London’s. Why don’t they keep their bloody noses out of it? This time it’s an argument with the RAF. We’ve got to prove our value by blowing something up, otherwise they’ll send Bomber Command to flatten half the bloody town. It’s politics. We’ve got enough politics here among the French. The last thing we need is politics at home. But there you are: our bosses believe that targeted destruction is more effective than area bombing, so they want us to do this as a demo. The idea is simple: we risk the life of a few saboteurs rather than a hundred bomber crews, and at the same time they keep in with the French by not obliterating a few hundred civilians. Simple mathematics. Fine, unless you are one of the terms in the equation.’
She thinks of other equations, with values greater than any imagining. Equations solved by Clément and the big jovial Russian Lev Kowarski. Equations measuring life and death. Fifty-eight thousand. Is that the solution?
‘The target is the Ramier factory. César’s got to set something up, work out how to attack it and let me have a plan within the week.’
‘César?’
‘Who else?’
‘It sounds risky.’
‘Of course it’s risky.’ He eyes her suspiciously. ‘Is there anything going on between you two?’
‘César and me? What d’you mean?’
‘There’d better not be. We can’t have that kind of thing in this circuit. You see to it that he keeps his hands out of your knickers.’
She blushes. ‘What on earth are you suggesting?’
‘You know perfectly well what I mean, madam. It’s a bloody nuisance having a girl like you around. The men here can’t keep their eyes off you, and César’s practically gagging for it whenever you’re around.’
She manages to be angry. It’s difficult but she manages it. ‘That’s outrageous! I barely see him. It’s hardly my fault what people think.’ She glares at him, seeing him hideous and thwarted, a man who lives with his nerves exposed like something in a butcher’s shop, hanging from a hook. He’s the first to flinch, to look away from her fury. ‘Anyway, you tell him what I said. The Ramier factory. We need a report immediately. I reckon a commando of a dozen men, something like that, but he’s to make his own mind up.’ He drags on his cigarette and turns pointedly to look out of the window. ‘You’d better leave first. I’ll wait here until you’re well away.’
She opens the door and goes out into the hall. Gabrielle is peering down from the banisters at the top of the stairs. Although it’s nine o’clock in the morning, she’s still wearing her nightdress. ‘Are you going already, Alice?’ she calls. ‘Is Roland still there?’
Looking up, Alice can see her white legs and awkward knees. ‘Don’t worry,’ she calls up. ‘I’m sure he won’t leave without saying goodbye.’
III
She emerges from Toulouse station in the early evening and makes her way to an address she has nearby, a safe house she has used before. The owners are a railwayman and his wife who greet her with enthusiasm, eager to do something, anything to contribute. The flat was intended for their son who was planning to get married, but was sent to Germany under the STO. So now the flat lies empty awaiting his return. ‘César was asking about you,’ the wife says.
Alice finds herself blushing faintly. ‘Tell him I’m here.’
The flat is barely furnished – a bed and chest of drawers in one room, a broken-backed sofa and some upright chairs and a table in another, a kitchen with a sink and some cupboards and an ancient gas cooker that doesn’t have a cylinder attached and so is entirely useless. As she falls asleep on the bare mattress, the thought of Benoît is a comfort. Benoît is normality, Benoît is comprehensible. Is it easier to love something that you understand?
He comes the next day, letting himself into the house as though it belongs to him. It’s not meant to be like this. Meetings are intended to be fleeting, casual, contingent encounters; not the two of them together in an empty apartment with no constraint of time. But this
is what she wants. She’s smarting from le Patron’s words and confused by her three days with Clément. She feels an elevation of mood, as though she has drunk too much, and a depression of spirit, as though she has lost a friend. And Benoît is his usual self – laughing, careless, his clothes awry, his self-confidence complete.
‘I’ve got to go back,’ she tells him when he asks about Paris.
‘Go back, Minou? Why the hell? I’ll bet that makes le Patron happy. He was calling you all manner of names when I last saw him. That bloody Parisienne, he said, and that was only the mildest. A garce, he called you, putting on her airs and graces. Doesn’t she know there’s a war on?’
They laugh together. She no longer dislikes his calling her Minou. In fact she discovers she enjoys the comfort and the familiarity. He has been part of her life ever since that very first encounter in London when she was a young and fearful girl called Marian Sutro, and now he’s a constant when so much is confused and random. And he is not Clément, he doesn’t possess that awful potency of childhood memory. When she delivers le Patron’s message his expression transforms into one of pure delight – ‘The Ramier factory? Wow!’ – like a child given a new toy, his face lighting up with excitement. ‘Don’t you know the Ramier factory? It’s explosives. One of the biggest in the country. Do you want to have a look at the place?’
‘A look at it?’
‘Why not? It’s on an island in the river, upstream from the city centre. Come on, it’ll be fun.’
Fun seems something alien, something that belongs to other people. ‘Why not?’ she agrees.
They take bikes, a boy and a girl together, down through the city to the Garonne. The banks of the river are deserted, almost rural. She thinks of the Thames, and the Seine, and now this river, quiet and empty, strewn with islands and brushed with willows, and Benoît cycling beside her, joking with her, bringing sanity to a life that is essentially insane. They cross the bridge to the Ramier island and stroll hand in hand, pushing their bikes past the main gate of the factory while guards watch them incuriously.
‘Perhaps we should kiss,’ Benoît says. ‘Reinforce our cover.’
‘You’re taking advantage.’
‘Of course I am.’ He laughs and pulls her towards him while the guards cheer. His smile, that smile of insouciance, is quite unlike Clément’s, which is knowing and cynical. ‘I miss you so much, Minou. You don’t understand.’
But she does. She understands many things, and the things she doesn’t understand aren’t here in this southern city with the russet brickwork and soft autumn sunlight. They walk on, smiling at each other and at the guards. She even waves, and receives a mock salute in return. When they return to the flat they’re still laughing, at the brightness of the day, at their absurd conversations, at the fact that they examined the entire perimeter of the factory and all the while were taken as young lovers out for a stroll together. The flat is bare and indifferent, like Mr Potter’s office. Devoid of clues. But there are clues elsewhere, in the way they talk to each other, in the looks she gives and receives. Something new, something shocking and unexpected, is there inside her. It’s to do with Clément, with childhood and adolescence, with fear of the past and the future.
‘Shall I stay?’ Benoît asks. There’s a glimmer of uncertainty in his expression, and a hint of understanding.
She shrugs. ‘There’s nothing to eat.’
‘I know somewhere just round the corner.’ He always knows somewhere or someone just round the corner. That is how he acquired the bikes. This time it’s a small and secretive bistro owned by Basques, where they eat garbure and drink rough wine and she evades Benoît’s questions about what she was doing in Paris and why she has to return. But there’s an easy acceptance of the circumstances. They’ve learned this – to live for the minute, careless of what might happen. ‘Let’s get back,’ she says, calling for the bill.
They let themselves into the flat stealthily, like thieves. In the hallway there’s a moment of awkwardness when he moves to go to the living room with the broken sofa and she stops him, her hand on his arm. For a moment they are like that, as though he is giving her a further chance to reflect. And then they go into the bedroom. ‘You know what’s wrong with this place as a safe house?’ Benoît asks.
‘Of course I do. There’s no second way out. If anyone comes in through the front door, you’re trapped.’
‘Do you feel trapped?’
‘If I do it’s a trap of my own making.’
‘That’s all right, then.’
She doesn’t really know how to do this. The last time was obvious, creeping round her parents’ house in the dark. But now, in this tawdry room with the bare mattress and the naked bulb in the ceiling, things are different. She makes a joke – ‘They didn’t teach us how to do this at Beaulieu’ – and then turns her back on him to undress. It ought to be an outrage, against everything and anything she ever imagined, against even that one time in Oxford which seemed then to have a logic to it, a justifiable part of her preparation for life here in France. But it isn’t an outrage; it’s what she wants to do. The single bulb glows balefully from the ceiling. She’d prefer it if it were dark and there were somewhere she could go to undress. She’d rather creep into the bed in the darkness and pretend that none of this were happening; but then it would be like it was in Oxford, and she’s moved on from there, hasn’t she? She’s moved into different territory, a new world. So she turns and sits on the bed, trying not to cover her breasts, trying not to put one hand in her lap to hide her hair, trying to let him look at her, accepting that the light is on and he’s standing shameless in front of the window and there are awkward shadows cast across his body. She has never seen a man naked like this, not blatant in this way. She wants to laugh at the sight and she wants him to laugh with her. She loves his laughter, which seems to her a kind of communion, something almost sacred – it’s that which makes her desire him, though the idea of laughter as an aphrodisiac seems absurd. Yet she daren’t laugh, in case it would mean something different in this unfamiliar world. The deciphering of what things mean can be so difficult. ‘You were afraid of me the last time,’ he says.
‘I was afraid of everything then.’
‘But not now?’
‘Only some things.’
‘Not me, I hope.’
‘Not you,’ she agrees.
They lie down together on the mattress, with her entwined in his arms, clinging to him for safety as though if she lets go she’ll be swept away. He still has the scent of the day upon him, compounded of sweat and grass, a raw smell that reminds her of the farm at Plasonne: something strange but at the same time comforting. And what happens isn’t furtive and silent and bewildering as it was before, but is composed of different elements – shock and delight, the thrill of physical affection and, for a moment or two, a strange annihilation of self in the furnace of this fused existence.
‘Was that all right?’ he asks when they have finished.
She didn’t understand that you could ask such a question, as though what they have done is something you think about and practise and make good or bad, like playing tennis or learning to swim. ‘Of course it was all right. It was very all right.’
‘And you’re not cross with me any longer?’
‘I wasn’t ever cross with you. It was the circumstances. The wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘And now?’
She lies with her head in the crook of his arm looking up at him. ‘The right place and the right time, I suppose. For the moment, anyway.’
‘What about Paris?’ he asks. ‘What happened in Paris?’
She laughs, a faint laugh that is no more than an exhalation of breath. ‘You know I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you anything.’
Paris
I
This time there is no wandering out of the station to look at the river. This time there is purpose and intent, and a sense of confidence. Paris holds no new fears. And she still fe
els the thrill of transgression, the knowledge of Benoît within her, the startling outrage of it and the comfort. Has he exorcised the ghost of Clément? Is he the man she might love? Perhaps thinking all this is what distracts her, because it is only as she emerges from the métro at Maubert-Mutualité that she realises she is being followed.
Anger trips over fear. Why didn’t she spot him earlier? Where has he come from? Who is he? Who has sent him? More questions than answers.
From the boulevard she climbs the slope towards the rue des Écoles and the great dome of the Panthéon. At a secondhand bookshop she pauses to pick up a photographic album from one of the bins on the pavement. The book shows Parisian scenes from the early part of the century, the days when the city seemed hopeful and gay, something exquisite created out of silver and platinum rather than the base metal of today. In the reflection of the shop window she can see her follower on the other side of the street standing with his back to her, examining something in another window. He’s a slight figure, with his raincoat collar pulled up and his hat pulled down.
She feels the slow churn of nausea. French police? Abwehr? Gestapo? The city is as riddled with spies as a Roquefort cheese with mould.
‘Those were the days, eh, Mam’selle?’ the bookseller remarks as she puts the book down. ‘We won’t see their like again.’
She smiles and agrees that he is probably right, and walks on, trying to stroll, trying to be at ease with herself, a woman alone in the city with a man following. Again she pauses to look in a shop window – some ironmongery, a sewing machine, a step ladder that may or may not be part of the window display – and watches him swim towards her in the reflection, then stop to tie his shoelace. He stays down, apparently having difficulty, while she gazes at things she doesn’t want. Then she moves on, quickly now so that he has to struggle to keep up.
