A Gathering Storm

by Rachel Hore

  ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ Buckmaster began. ‘As you might have guessed, we have another mission for you. We’ve talked at some length amongst ourselves about who would be right, and your name came up. But it’s something more dangerous than anything you’ve done before, and you’d need to be sure you think you can do it.’

  He went on to explain that, as part of future plans to invade France – about which he spoke only in the vaguest terms – it was important for the Allies to prevent German Panzer division reinforcements coming up from the south. Hence certain SOE circuits were working with the grassroots resistance in the south-west to stop the tanks.

  ‘They’re a hot-headed lot, the Maquis,’ he explained. ‘They’re brave, no doubt about that, but they’re difficult to control. There’s some nasty rivalry between groups and some of them are frankly Communists.’

  ‘What is it you’d like me to do?’ Beatrice asked.

  ‘There’s a circuit that needs a courier – someone we can rely on. But I must stress that you don’t have to go if you don’t want to. You’ve already done your bit.’

  ‘More than your bit,’ Miss Atkins murmured.

  ‘Do you worry that I might not be good enough?’ she asked them.

  ‘No, it’s not that at all,’ Buckmaster said. ‘It’s . . . well, we’ve lost some good people. I need to tell you this.’

  ‘You must think about it carefully,’ Miss Atkins reiterated, ‘before giving an answer.’

  Beatrice considered. Your name came up. ‘I’m not seeking compliments, but may I enquire why you thought of me? Are there particular skills that you’re seeking?’

  Buckmaster glanced down at the paper on his desk but Miss Atkins continued to look at her steadily.

  ‘Mademoiselle.’ Chrétien spoke for the first time, in a deep, smoky voice. ‘Savez-vous la région Limousin?’ When she answered, ‘Non, Monsieur Chrétien’, he chatted with her for a while in French about her experience and training. But they already have all this information, she thought.

  Finally, he said to the others, ‘Her accent.’ He blew through pursed lips. ‘It’s just about good enough,’ and she understood that he had been testing her French.

  Chrétien stubbed out his latest cigarette, stood up, gave her a little bow and left the room.

  ‘Who is he?’ she asked the others.

  ‘He was out there till last week. We had to pull him out,’ was all Buckmaster said. ‘And he knows Florian.’

  ‘Florian?’ She was instantly alert. St Florian.

  ‘He would be your organizer.’

  ‘That’s . . . not his real name.’

  ‘Of course not. It is, however, believed that you might know him.’

  ‘I think I do,’ she breathed. She felt strangely dizzy.

  ‘That could be useful in this particular case. You’d be living at close quarters.’

  She knew for certain now. It was Rafe.

  She would have said yes anyway, before she’d learned about Rafe. But knowing made her sure.

  ‘You must think about it overnight,’ Buckmaster said.

  ‘I don’t need to,’ she replied. ‘I’ll go.’

  Beatrice had never been more certain of anything in her life.

  Victor pushed the crate to the edge of the hatch and tipped it out into empty air. Together they watched its parachute open, far below. Beatrice readied herself to follow.

  ‘Now!’

  And closing her eyes, Beatrice let herself drop. Felt terror as the air rushed past, then, after her silk cradle ballooned out and she was floating down, exhilaration. She opened her eyes. Spread beneath her in the moonlight was a wide plain patterned with fields and hamlets. Snaking across this vista was a river, glistening silver. The sound of the plane’s engine had died away now. All she could hear was the wind. And now the ground rushed up, slamming into her legs, knocking the breath from her as she rolled. She sat up and, unbuckling her harness, looked about; was relieved to see Victor, his parachute collapsing as he landed, a hundred yards away. There came a cry; she stood up quickly as two figures separated themselves from a dark line of hedge. She tensed, then relaxed as Victor called, ‘Salut!’ and each man echoed his greeting.

  The older man made his way across the muddy wheatfield to help her. Victor and the other man hunted for the crate, which they located and loaded onto a waiting handcart.

  The moon had begun to sink in the sky by the time they reached a farmhouse several miles away. Once inside, a smoothly rehearsed operation saw the contents of the crate unpacked and whisked outside somewhere. A sturdy woman, the wife of the older man, set out bread and bowls of vegetable soup. When they’d eaten, she beckoned Beatrice upstairs and showed her into their bedroom to change. On the wall above the bed a wooden Christ hung in agony.

  ‘Dépêchez-vous!’ Victor called up the stairs. They were to move on at once to another farm where they would be able to sleep for a few hours. Then Beatrice was to go on alone.

  ‘J’arrive!’ she called back. She breathed an entreaty to the crucifix, glanced at her face in the mirror, seeing it small and pale and set, and went forth.

  Nobody found anything odd about seeing a strange face on market-day, which is not to say she wasn’t noticed, especially by the men, despite her plain dress and black cardigan and the fact that she was dusty from riding in the haycart. Beatrice ignored them, instead wandering amongst the stalls, testing the fruit, haggling for some strawberries, which she bought to appear normal. Even here, in this small town, there were German soldiers loitering, or passing down the line of stalls, stopping occasionally to buy a trinket. Beatrice saw how most people moved out of their path, refusing to look at them.

  It was getting towards late morning now; the heat was building and some of the stalls were packing up. Beatrice slipped away, heading for a street on the far side of the square. She was looking for a certain small café. There it was, with the picture of the cockerel over the door and a couple of kitchen chairs lined up outside. She parted the bead curtain and stepped inside.

  It wasn’t much of a place, being poky and dark, but at least it was cool. Two old men were playing cards at a table. A thin dog lying beside them got up, stretched, and came over to sniff at her, in a rather bored fashion, before returning to its place. She went over to the bar where a woman of forty with a big round face and heavy black hair in a net was polishing glasses. She looked Beatrice up and down with an impassive expression.

  ‘Bonjour, madame,’ Beatrice said. ‘Je voudrais parler avec Madame Girand, s’il vous plait.’

  ‘Attendez, mademoiselle.’ The woman’s face was still stony, but she laid the glass on a shelf and went off readily enough through a doorway behind. As she waited, Beatrice glanced around the café. It was then she noticed someone sitting in the darker recesses of the room. He was a youngish man, clean-shaven with cropped hair, and wearing an office suit. A small leather briefcase was propped against his chair. His glance rested briefly on her then slid away again. Its effect was disturbing and she wondered what he was doing in a shabby place like this, rather than the smarter café on the square.

  The dour-faced woman returned, and behind her came another, this one wiry and friendlier, her greying hair tied up in a bun. She came straight round the bar and embraced Beatrice as though she were a long-lost cousin. ‘Paulette, ma petite!’ she cried. ‘Comment vas-tu, mon ange? Et ta mère – elle va bien?’ She hustled Beatrice, or rather Paulette, through a small kitchen, along a hallway, and through the back door into a shaded yard with a couple of dustbins.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ she whispered, leading Beatrice out into a dusty lane that ran along between two lines of buildings. She knocked on the back door of the house opposite and they waited for what seemed a long time.

  Finally the door was unbolted and opened to reveal an old man in shirtsleeves and braces, whose sad jowly face reminded Beatrice of the French General she’d once driven in London. ‘Entrez, entrez, mesdames,’ he murmured, and
once they were inside, pumping Beatrice’s hand, he added ‘You are very welcome. My name is Gaston. Brigitte, some coffee for our guests, perhaps?’

  Mme Girand, Brigitte, took Beatrice’s small bag, whilst her husband, who limped slightly, showed Beatrice down the hall and knocked on a door at the front of the house. ‘Elle est arrivée,’ he called. Then he opened the door and stood back to let Beatrice go in.

  She walked into a small sitting room. A man was rising from his seat at a desk. When he saw her he froze, his face a mask of shock.

  ‘Hello, Rafe,’ she said, in English.

  ‘Bea,’ he said finally, his voice full of horror. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to help you,’ she said. ‘You don’t seem very pleased to see me.’

  With a sudden cry, he crossed the floor and took her in his arms. They clung to each other as though to life itself. She closed her eyes and breathed in the familiar smell of him.

  After a few moments he gripped her shoulders to stare into her face. ‘I am pleased to see you, of course I am, but I’m horrified, too. I can’t believe that they sent you.’ His voice was rough, passionate. ‘You must go back. We’ll tell them it’s too dangerous. How did they put you up to this?’

  ‘They didn’t. There was no pressure. They explained that it was a courier job and I told them I wanted to come. When I heard it would be with you . . . there was no other possibility. I had to, Rafe.’

  He dropped his hold of her and said harshly, ‘You must go back.’

  ‘Why? I can’t, anyway.’

  ‘Charles will be here soon. He can send a message.’

  At that moment there came a tap on the door, and Brigitte entered carrying a tray of coffee. ‘I will show you your room when you’re ready, Paulette, and perhaps you’d like to sleep.’

  ‘Thank you, madame, but I’m not at all tired. It is so kind of you to have me here.’

  The woman smiled, but Beatrice saw the tension in her face. ‘You must call me Brigitte.’ She poured milky coffee for them and withdrew.

  Rafe took his cup and went to stand at the window, which looked out onto fields, apparently deep in thought. He looked sad, she thought, sad and worried. His gold hair was lustreless, and his face had a greyish tinge as though he didn’t see enough sun.

  He turned back to her and tried to smile. ‘How are you anyway? And the boy? I still can’t believe you’re here . . . it’s a miracle.’

  ‘He’s well, thank you. Shouldn’t we speak French? Are we . . . are we safe here?’

  ‘Is anyone listening? I shouldn’t think so, but who knows these days. It’s been awful – I can’t tell you, Bea. It’s difficult to know whom to trust. Oh God, you shouldn’t be here. I’ll feel so responsible . . . if anything happens.’ He covered his face with his hand.

  ‘You’d feel responsible no matter who I was,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he muttered.

  ‘Rafe,’ she said, touching his arm. ‘Listen to me. It was my own decision to come here. Your circuit needs me and I shall help you. It’s as simple as that. Do you think I can’t do the job, is that it? It’s not my first mission, you know.’

  ‘No, it’s not that, Bea. Damn it – Paulette. I can’t imagine how you got yourself into the show in the first place. It’s all too bloody dangerous, I tell you. You’ve no idea what they’ll do to you if you’re caught.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she replied. ‘Those little pills they gave us aren’t sweets, you know.’

  ‘God in heaven,’ he breathed. ‘Don’t even think about that.’

  ‘Of course I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought and I’ve thought and I’ve thought. If they catch us – well, it would hardly be a tea-party, would it? They’d want to know everything we could tell them. That’s what the pills are for, in case we found we couldn’t stop ourselves telling. But I don’t think I would take mine. I’d want to stay alive. For the boy.’

  ‘But you know their methods?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said, her voice faltering.

  ‘Well, you’re a fool to come, then. You’d have done your best for your son by staying at home.’

  ‘That’s a cruel thing to say. Don’t speak like that!’ she cried. ‘I can’t bear it. You mustn’t even mention his name to me. I won’t have him connected with anything to do with what’s happening here.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, looking startled.

  ‘At bottom I’m here for the same reason you are. To win this war. And I can be as good as you are here. Better, in fact. They won’t question a girl. That’s something I noticed immediately – there are so few young Frenchmen here that if you see one, he stands out.’

  ‘True. They’ve sent them all off east, to work in the factories. You’re right – I’d be stopped if I go out, so I don’t. But, Bea, surely you know what happened to your predecessor?’

  ‘They didn’t say.’

  ‘They should have told you. Well, listen . . . I sent Genny down to Périgueux with a message for a Resistance cell there.’

  ‘Genny,’ she echoed. ‘Geneviève?’

  ‘Yes. A tallish, well-built girl with heavy eyebrows, quite a self-possessed type.’

  ‘I knew her, Rafe. Oh, you’d better tell me, I suppose it’s awful.’

  ‘The Gestapo walked in on their meeting. One of the Frenchmen went crazy and started shooting. That’s all our informant could tell us. But she’s dead. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Poor Geneviève,’ Beatrice whispered. ‘How did they find out? The Gestapo, I mean.’

  ‘That, of course, is the question, and I wish I could answer it.’

  ‘They don’t know about you – us, I mean.’

  Rafe shrugged and turned his attention to the view, his breath misting the window as he said, ‘We told London, naturally, but they don’t seem to think there’s a problem. At any rate, they’ve gone ahead and sent you.’

  ‘Oh. I’m hurt that they didn’t tell me. About Geneviève.’

  ‘I’m not surprised they didn’t,’ was all he said.

  Chapter 30

  June 1943

  One evening, Beatrice stood at the back door, watching the bats flit amongst the trees. She felt as though she’d lived on the edge of this little French town for a long time, with its houses of shabby grey stone that were shuttered into silence in the midday heat, and its marketplace where the old men played boules between the rows of pollarded trees in the late afternoon. Once or twice she’d stepped out with Brigitte to buy food, to make her presence seem ordinary. Her cover was that she was the daughter of Brigitte’s cousin from nearby Nexon, come to help Brigitte and the other woman, Marie, in the café, now that Gaston was finding it too much.

  She’d met some of the others in the cell, too. Charles, the wireless operator, lived in one of the tiny rooms over the café and, like her, was half-English. Stefan, whose ugly scowling face hid a shrewd mind, owned the garage. He brought to the operation an extensive knowledge of the area, a rich vocabulary of profanities and an ability to strip down a gun and clean it with remarkable speed. She’d been introduced, too, to a couple of men from surrounding villages, and the local doctor, who would get into long, time-wasting arguments with Stefan about who in the wider group could and couldn’t be trusted. The two men hated one another for some reason that Beatrice had never got to the bottom of, but that Rafe thought concerned Stefan’s wife. The two Frenchmen were bound into loyalty to one another in their loathing of the occupying forces, but Rafe found it very difficult to manage them. Beatrice, whom they called Paulette, was the only woman. She sat silently in the long candle-lit sessions, listening to their plans, for the moment lacking the knowledge to comment. Yet they treated her with a rough respect for they needed her, needed her badly, to take out messages across the surrounding region.

  She’d only been on one such mission so far, on Brigitte’s bicycle one morning, with two baguettes sticking up out of the basket, to take instructions to the farmhouse where
Victor was hiding out. It was about the onward movement of the cache of weapons they’d brought with them on the plane. The journey there had been entirely uneventful; on the way back two young Germans on motorbikes had made catcalls to her as they passed, but she’d ignored them and they sped off without bothering her further.

  In general, it was seen as quite natural that Brigitte Girand’s young cousin should be seen out on errands. She played the part of a shy young thing, which excused her from saying much. At some point it would be natural that she’d want to take the train to visit her family back in Nexon, perhaps, or even her great-grandmother, Brigitte’s aunt, in Limoges. Even someone with a suspicious mind was unlikely to make much of the matter.

  In the daytime it was a useful cover to be seen working behind the bar in the café, bringing carafes of wine for the old men and listening to the gossip.

  Café le Coq wasn’t a place the Germans cared to frequent; it was too homely, and too tucked-away. They preferred the more stylish place opposite the tiny town hall in the square, where they could see and be seen. Mostly it was the same old locals who frequented the Coq, but still, Beatrice’s nerves were always as taut as piano strings.

  This particular June evening, watching the sun dipping over fields, and little dots of glowworms beginning to shine in the grass, Beatrice’s mind began to wander. She started to think of home, and she knew she mustn’t, for the rush of longing was overwhelming. She hastily went back inside to her room. It depressed her, with its bare floorboards, the narrow bed with its lumpy mattress, the cracked bowl and ewer on the chest of drawers and the wooden chair that wobbled noisily if she sat on it. Worse, it was lit by a dim ceiling bulb that flickered maniacally. Sometimes the electricity supply would cut out altogether, leaving her with a candle that smoked horribly and made her head ache, so that it was almost preferable to go to bed in the dark.