by John Harris
Urquhart’s face was expressionless. ‘It’s no good, lad,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ll not get her any more than Dring will. He’s too impulsive; you’re not impulsive enough.’
Neville glared at him and for a moment it was on the tip of his tongue to blurt out what had happened between himself and Marie-Claude on the night when they’d saved the Rolandpoint weapons. But Urquhart was watching him with his usual cynical expression, and for a moment he even had the horrified feeling that he knew anyway.
The excitement went on into the next day. Young Dréo went over to Bourg on his Spitfire and brought back the information that the partisans of both Right and Left were opening headquarters there. There had been a parade with tricolours and red flags and a band of bugles and drums, and the place had gone mad at the sight of disciplined Frenchmen.
He could hardly speak for excitement. ‘Communist execution squads are shooting Miliciens,’ he said, ‘and beating up shopkeepers, and the policemen who harried them in 1940. They’ve got the Vicomtesse de la Chattel and her boy friend in the jail, as well as all the black marketeers and members of the Croix de Feu.’
That night, to everyone’s surprise, the Germans in Néry also disappeared. It was an incredible, unexpected thing, but it happened. Neville was the first to be aware of the growl of engines down the street, and together he and Urquhart and Marie-Claude pressed their faces to the gap in the shutters on the landing. Down the dusty drive to the farm and between the empty gateposts, they could see lights flashing beyond the trees and hear the grind of lorries.
The next morning, Reinach came hurtling into the kitchen. ‘They’ve gone!’ he yelled. ‘North-east towards Mary-les-Rivières and Germany!‘
Immediately, tricolours appeared from windows; and a few unexpected bottles appeared from the cellars. People who’d been careful to keep out of the way during the hard days conveniently forgot that they’d always previously referred to the Maquis hiding in the forest as ‘terrorists’ and ‘woodlice’, and begged to be allowed to join them so they could say they weren’t collaborationists. Even old Balmaceda arrived in Mere Ledoux’s bar, very drunk, with his wig over one ear and clutching an ancient dusty flask.
‘Glasses, patronne,’ he yelled in a cracked boozy voice. ‘It’s absinthe! The real stuff! It only needs a drop of pump water to make it perfect!’
A few boys, already wearing berets, scarves and illicit armbands proclaiming them members of the Gaullist Forces Francaises de l’lntérieur, were carrying carbines and had festooned their chests with belts of ammunition. Sergeant Dréo caught Neville in the stackyard and began to bellow indignantly at him. They’ve gone!’ he yelled. ‘Without a scratch! All we have to show for our war is four years of humiliation!’
As they argued, Elsie began to bark, and the old man’s grandson came tearing down the hill on his Spitfire, his head down over the handlebars, his hair wild, his eyes bulging with horror.
‘They’re coming back!’ he was shrieking. The Germans are coming back! ‘
As if by magic, flags, weapons, berets and armbands vanished back to their hiding places, and bottles were hurriedly stuffed out of sight. At the chateau, Patrice de Frager, who’d insisted on all the rooms the Germans had occupied being disinfected, hastily changed his mind. The discarded items of German equipment which had been tossed indignantly on to the lawn were quickly collected and returned to where they’d been found.
The first two Germans to appear were motor-cyclists, wearing helmets and sweating in the heat. They were grey with dust and looked tired.
‘Back again!’ Reinach said with strained cheerfulness from the door of Mere Ledoux’s bar.
The soldiers eyed each other and one of them grinned.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’re the vanguard of an SS division, and we’ve arrived complete with Gestapo hangmen and torture chamber.’
He was only joking, but nobody else asked questions.
Within an hour, the whole lot of them were back, and this time the village could see the SS among them. By evening they’d learned what had happened. The Germans had circled to the north and arrived in Bourg-la-Chattel to find the place celebrating. The Vicomtesse had been released along with her collaborator lover and the members of the Croix de Feu; and the town was now short of thirty of its senior citizens, shot by Milicien survivors, together with one or two drunks and defiant youths who’d dared to shout ‘Vive la France!’
It seemed that Néry wasn’t intended to take part in great events, and the best they could do was fall back on working out what humiliation they could wreak on the Germans when they got the chance.
‘How much bloody humiliation do they want?’ Neville asked bitterly, conscious that Reinach, Dréo and the others had taken to watching him carefully, as though expecting his ideas would suddenly light up in little balloons above his head as they did in comic papers.
Urquhart was pitiless. ‘Complete humiliation,’ he said. ‘As complete as theirs has been.’
The prospect of being responsible for the deaths of men -friends as well as enemies - was too much for Neville. Organizing a battle and overseeing it at close quarters was very different from the impersonal business of dropping bombs from an aeroplane. ‘Wouldn’t it be sufficient if the Germans surrendered?’ he asked.
Urquhart shook his head. ‘They want an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and, anyway, the Germans would never surrender to the Maquis in case they were shot out of hand.’
Neville shifted uneasily in his clothes. He was an easygoing young man and his whole life had been one of avoiding decisions. Money had smoothed the way for him. You didn’t make decisions when you had enough money to pay other people to make them for you. Even his service in the RAF had been short because he’d been allowed to finish his university course before being pulled into uniform.
‘I don’t like it,’ he said uncomfortably.
Urquhart grinned. ‘I was always told,’ he said, ‘that it was from your class that leaders came. Born to leadership, they always told us in the Regulars. In the habit of giving orders.
Ingrained ability for command. Didn’t they ever tell you that you were all budding Montgomerys? Or perhaps they’ve begun to realize at last that an army’s run by its sergeants and its colonels, and everybody in between doesn’t count.’
‘For Christ’s sake, stop needling me,’ Neville snapped. I’m doing what I can.’
‘But not fast enough, old son.’ Urquhart was infuriatingly calm. ‘For a bloke who knows all about the war, you’re singularly slow in showing much appreciation of it.’
‘What the hell do they expect of me?’ The words burst out despairingly and Urquhart laughed.
‘The plan for a battle, old son,’ he said. ‘Drawn up like the wiring chart for a wireless set. A moves to the left in threes. B marks time while C advances at the double. Lots of little red arrows. That sort of thing.’
‘You don’t fight battles that way.1
Urquhart’s grin died abruptly. ‘I know bloody well you don’t,’ he snapped. ‘I’ve been in one or two. But you’ve either got to prove that you don’t or back out of it’
‘I wouldn’t be able to look ‘em in the eye if I did back out.’
‘Who? Marie-Claude?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Come off it. You paw her like a farm boy.’
Neville glared. Urquhart had eyes in the back of his head. ‘I don’t think she even looks at me,’ he said.
‘Just goes to show, doesn’t it?’ Urquhart said mildly. ‘People are sometimes as bloody as they seem to be.’ His smile returned. ‘Still, love’s a bit like war, isn’t it? You might pull it off yet, if you can only produce a plan.’ He gestured. ‘The plan, the masterpiece that’s going to win the war, clear the Germans out of Néry. and leave her breathless with admiration.’
Neville writhed. ‘I’m not arranging a bloody massacre,’ he growled.
Urquhart shrugged. ‘You’re a fool if you think they’ll settle
for less,’ he said.
As Neville tied the billhook to the handlebars of Madame Lamy’s cycle again next morning, Marie-Claude appeared, her eyes entreating, longing to be of assistance, ‘Perhaps I could help you,’ she said. ‘I know this land as I know my own flesh.’
Neville looked at her, his face expressionless. Then he nodded. ‘All right,’ he said.
This time, he took the Fond St Amarin, the third of the three roads leading from Néry to the east. As it left the village, it dipped for a while, then rose steeply between the trees where Guardian Moch’s house stood in a field at the top of a steep lane, surrounded by the crates and boxes and barrels which had once held his black market discoveries. He halted to examine one of the tunnels made through the undergrowth by wild boar, then pedalled away again to stop near the ridge and stare round him once more.
Marie-Claude caught up with him, panting. He was sitting in the saddle, his feet on the ground, looking back at the valley. Without speaking, he took out his cigarettes and lit one. Then he seemed to remember her and, offering the packet, went on staring fixedly at the road.
She watched him without speaking, not wishing to break his train of thought. He made no attempt to enlighten her, but rode higher up the slope to stop again just below the cutting where the road crossed the ridge. At this point the land to the left rose abruptly to a sheer chalk cliff called the Escarpment St Amarin. which was topped by undergrowth and trees. Beneath it, there was a narrow strip of land, then the river rattling in shallow pools over its stones in a four-foot gully that had been cut by the passage of the water. Alongside the river the road ran along a stony ridge higher than the land on either side. Beyond the road the fields fell away into a shallow hollow, made muddy by the seepage of the river under the road and full of lush green grass, then rose to a green meadow that lifted in folds as if it had been ridged by deep dykes - up and up to where the Crête St Amarin swept round in a semi-circle above the escarpment. Just below the crest at the top of the meadow there was another ditch, covered by a deep belt of undergrowth, cutting off the ridge from wandering cattle as effectively as barbed wire.
‘The dam,’ Neville said unexpectedly. The dam above the village I’ve heard about. Where is it?’
Marie-Claude pointed to the trees. ‘Up there. Dring’s supposed to look after it.’
‘What about the pump in the square? Does the water come from there?’
There was a new urgency in his manner. He seemed to have thrown off his gloom at last and was peering intently at the slopes.
‘Is it the plan?’ she said, drawn to him again by her warm heart and the wish to see him succeed. ‘You have thought of something?’
His eyes were still following the curves of the land. ‘Come on -’ he sounded impatient and her heart leapt at his enthusiasm ‘ - the pump in the village. Does the water come from the dam?’
‘No, it’s fed by a spring on the other side of the hill. It’s a good spring. It never fails. The dam was built by the army in 1917 when they thought the front line might be pushed down as far as here.’
‘How much does it hold?’
‘Not enough to drown the Germans. It sprang a leak once but all it did was turn the ground in the dip there into deep mud. Some of it came on to the road.’
‘What if the spring dried up?’
She stared at him, puzzled. ‘It won’t. It never has.’
He shrugged. ‘It might this year. What about the Baronne? Could she tell a lie? Some people can’t.’
Marie-Claude gestured. ‘Her whole life’s been a lie. On his death-bed her husband told Father Pol she’d been the best wife in the world.’ She looked puzzled. This is also to do with the plan?’
Neville ignored the question and, .propping the bicycle against a. tree, sat down and lit another cigarette. He suddenly seemed depressed and uncertain again, overwhelmed by the responsibility that had been handed to him. ‘I wonder if Urquhart isn’t right,’ he said after a while, ‘and you wouldn’t be a lot wiser just to let them go.’
‘No!’ She was indignant. ‘Surely you of all people understand! You’ve lived in France before the war.’
‘Nice. Promenade des Anglais. That’s not France.’
She paused. She knew what she wanted out of life as much as Reinach and Father Pol and the others. For months now she’d been working for it. Soon France would be free - with true Gallic arrogance, she couldn’t believe that the German occupation of a nation as cultured, noble and intelligent as the French could go on for ever - and, though she was far from being a peasant, she still had a peasant’s straight-thinking contempt for vacillation.
‘Would you live in France again, Neville?’ she asked.
Neville looked round, startled by the question. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Any time.’
‘Although you are English?’
‘France’s every man’s country,’ Neville said, and he could see she was pleased.
She paused and she seemed unexpectedly shy. ‘Would you do it for someone else?’ she asked. ‘Not because of France? Not for yourself alone?’ She lifted her head, her eyes shining. For a girl, for instance?’
‘If she were the right girl.’
‘Permanently?’
‘No.’ Marie-Claude’s face fell and Neville went on easily. ‘My family’s wealthy, Marie-Claude. We don’t stay anywhere permanently. We go to the south of France for the season. To Salzburg for the festival. To Switzerland for the skiing.’
‘Would you take your wife with you on these trips? When you had a wife, of course.’
‘Certainly.’
She hesitated. ‘What if she were lacking in culture?’ she asked quietly. ‘Lacking in poise?’
Neville glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, then he leaned across and kissed her. ‘There’s no better teacher than money,’ he said.
Two evenings later, Marie-Claude invited Reinach to the farm for coffee.
Neville’s idea had grown so suddenly he was almost afraid of it, and he had first tried it out on Urquhart. Urquhart had listened carefully, for once without a trace of cynicism in his expression, asking a lot of searching questions and even supplying a few answers to things that had worried Neville. And when Neville had finished, he’d sat back and looked at him with an odd, awed look on his face.
‘You’re all right, lad,’ he said.
Neville frowned, uncertain what he meant and suspecting sarcasm. ‘Thanks,’ he said sourly.
Urquhart was unperturbed. ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,’ he said. ‘I’m not in the habit of telling many people - especially officers - that they’re all right.’
Then Neville realized he’d, meant what he’d said, and Urquhart grinned.
‘It’s a good plan,’ he said. ‘If we can only get these buggers to hold their water until the right moment, I think it’ll work,’
For the first time in months, Neville felt a real warmth for Urquhart. The distance between them had closed, and he now saw some meaning in what they’d been through together, some understanding of the comradeship Urquhart had felt in the regular army.
‘Thanks,’ he said again, and this time he was smiling too.
When Reinach arrived, Dréo and de Frager were already in the kitchen with Father Pol who was sucking down coffee with his vacuum cleaner noise. Neville was staring at a map, and Reinach was immediately aware that he seemed cheerful.
‘You have a plan?’ he asked.
‘It depends,’ Neville said warily, ‘on what you wish to inflict on them.’
Reinach looked quickly at Marie-Claude. ‘As much as possible, of course,’ he admitted.
Neville gestured. ‘Suppose they surrendered? Several hundred Germans throwing down their arms to a few Frenchmen ought to be enough humiliation even for you.’
Reinach’s gaze switched to Dréo who frowned, ‘We wish to destroy them as Napoleon destroyed the Austrians at Austerlitz,’ the old man said.
‘I’m not arranging a massacre.’
‘At Bourg they shot the Miliciens when they were wounded,’ Neville said. ‘I’m not having any part of that. I’m aiming at surrender.’
‘We want dead.’ Reinach glanced again at Dréo, then at Father Pol, then back at Neville. ‘You aren’t losing your nerve, are you?’ he asked.
Neville said nothing because Reinach had put his finger on the very thing that was worrying him. He had begun to see that a general, whose responsibility was immeasurably greater than that of a factory manager because he was operating with human lives, had to take this hardest of all courses unflinchingly. He wasn’t sure he could. I’m not a general,’ he said.
Reinach paused. ‘Very well. I’ll hold everyone in check.’
‘Can you?’
‘I can punch them in the jaw.’
‘What about the Rolandpoint men and the St Seigneur men.’
‘We shall need them?’
‘Yes.’
Reinach’s eyes narrowed as he accepted his responsibility as leader in a way that Neville knew he never could. ‘I’m not having our people set against the Rolandpoint and St Seigneur lot,’ he said bluntly. ‘Our enemies are the Germans. Tell us the plan. There are only three roads out of Néry. Which one do we use?’
Neville refused to be rushed. ‘However we do it,’ he said, ‘wherever we do it, we need men. How many have you got?’
Reinach looked round. ‘Me and Ernouf and Sergeant Dréo.’
‘Me,’ de Frager added.
‘And me.’ Father Pol put down his coffee cup. ‘I can pray to God for the gift of courage.’
‘That’s five.’ Urquhart spoke for the first time. ‘You’ve produced five.’
‘I’ll help,’ Marie-Claude said.
She’d half hoped he’d say No, she mustn’t, or that it would be too dangerous; but all he said was, ‘Six,’ and she frowned at his matter-of-factness.
Théyras,’ Dréo said. ‘Dring and Lionel Dring. Perhaps Gaston Dring too. He’s fifteen.’
Ten,’ Urquhart said. ‘Six of them getting on in years.’
