Assignment in Brittany

by Helen Macinnes

  It was warm in the room. Albertine had closed the windows again. He sat up in bed, swinging his legs on to the chest. He rubbed the back of his head, stretching himself, and gave a long satisfied yawn. And then he smothered a laugh. Not one of his better moments, he decided, looking at the dangling legs under the short shirt. He crossed to a mirror, framed in carved wood, which hung against the white wall. The view there pleased him just as little. The tired lines under his eyes had faded but not departed, and he had never admired Corlay’s haircut anyway. Still, he did look less like himself and more like the Frenchman. He gave a wide grin to himself and saw the gap at the side of his teeth. Another of Matthews’ bright ideas. “If,” he had said, “if you were to smile broadly or to laugh, the gap would be seen. You must have a gap.” So he now had a gap. He felt the still tender gum with his tongue. Yes, he had a gap all right. But what Matthews expected him to laugh at on this trip was beyond him.

  He opened the window. Now the fields and trees were bathed in the amber light of early evening. All the smells of grass and leaves and hay and clover and ripening wheat, distilled by the day’s warmth into one sweetness, hung in the air around him. Time seemed suspended in the silence of these fields. “Why should they stay here?” Albertine had asked in answer to his question about any visiting Germans. Living here, one could become as simple as that: one could believe the delusion that peace was self-perpetuating.

  There were footsteps in the room below. They were climbing the staircase, slowly and heavily. He closed the window quickly, and moved silently back to the bed. He was seemingly asleep when the door opened and Albertine entered. There were footsteps following her: heavy, decided footsteps. Hearne stiffened.

  “He has been like that since yesterday morning,” Albertine was saying. Not this morning, then; yesterday morning.

  The man grunted in reply, and Hearne heard something being set down heavily on the wooden chest beside him. For a moment he felt danger. Albertine had seen through the deception. He was caught not only helpless in bed, but ludicrously in a nightshirt. If he could get the man off-guard, if he could reach the gun on the table...and then four cold fingers were laid gently on his wrist and stopped the wild plans. Albertine had only brought a doctor. He wondered where she had found him, for there was no doctor in Saint-Déodat. Doctors practised by districts, not by villages, in this part of the world. It would be just as well to stop feigning sleep. Doctors were doctors. He groaned slightly and twisted his body as his eyes opened. The doctor was shaking his white head and saying, “Very fast.” Considering the emotions he had caused, it would have been difficult to have found a normal pulse, Hearne thought.

  “He is awake,” Albertine said, announcing the obvious.

  The doctor grunted again. “How do you feel?”

  “Tired.” Hearne’s voice was low.

  “He’s been ill,” Albertine said.

  “Wounded?” The doctor was looking at him fixedly.

  “I forget things sometimes... It was the guns...”

  The old man nodded his head sagely. “Ah!” he said.

  “Shell-shock. And do you remember things now?”

  “Sometimes. And sometimes I forget.” He let his voice trail away in dejection:

  “He needs rest, rest and quiet. No one is to worry him. If he has any more attacks, then he must rest here until he recovers. Just rest and quiet.” The doctor was examining his chest, feeling his brow, looking at his tongue. Hearne wondered what all this had to do with loss of memory, and then he noticed Albertine. She was watching every movement intently. She seemed satisfied when the doctor had gone through all the motions: without them, she would have felt cheated, and the old man had known that. For good measure, he produced a box of pills. Albertine nodded sagely as he gave her full directions.

  His last words were, “Don’t worry if you find it sometimes hard to remember. Don’t worry, and you’ll be completely cured. Just rest and quiet.” He shook his head sadly, lifted the heavy bag from the chest, and followed Albertine out of the room. He was still talking of rest and quiet as they went slowly downstairs.

  When she returned, Albertine found him staring at the window.

  “I’d like it open,” he said.

  “But you will catch a cold.”

  “I’d like it open. I am far too warm. I haven’t slept indoors for almost two months.”

  Albertine stared unbelievingly, and then the doctor’s advice must have prompted her. The advice had cost money: it must be good. Humour him when he seems strange. Rest and quiet. Her thin lips closed disapprovingly, she shrugged her shoulders impatiently, but she crossed the room and’ opened the window.

  “Where are my clothes, Albertine?”

  “You are to stay in bed.” She might give in to this madness in opening a window, but as for clothes— Her lips formed a straight line. Her voice was harsh as if she were tired of all this nonsense. And then she was probably angry because he was ill. He didn’t blame her: she had work enough to do without a sick man to add to it.

  “But I am not ill, Albertine.” He was reasoning gently as with a child. “My body is well. It is only my mind that is sick. I have slept enough. I need to stretch my legs before I can sleep again.”

  Albertine seemed incapable of grasping the fact that the sickness of body and mind could be different. They were all one to her.

  “You are to stay in bed.” She was quite decided. Her tone nettled him, unexpectedly. So he was to stay in bed in a short nightshirt, day after day, with a bowl of soup grudgingly but loyally brought upstairs to him. Perhaps you don’t know it, he thought as he stared back at her, but I’ve work to do, and a hell of a lot of it too, my sweet Albertine.

  He sat up in bed and swung his bare legs over its tall side. Most women would have retreated, but Albertine stood her ground.

  “You’ll catch cold,” she said, with her masterly grasp of the obvious. Hearne looked at her incredulously and then he began to laugh, softly at first and then gradually more loudly until he was rocking on the edge of the bed. He suddenly remembered the gap in his teeth, and checked himself in the middle of a laugh. Blast Matthews: that man was always right.

  Albertine’s eyes were round circles. “He’s mad,” she said, backing to the door. “He’s mad.”

  “I’m not mad.” His voice rose. He got off the bed and advanced towards her. “I only want my trousers. Steal a man’s trousers, would you?”

  Then the door opened. A white-haired woman stood there, watching him silently.

  “He’s mad, Madame. He’s mad.”

  “She’s taken my trousers,” Hearne said angrily. He was suddenly aware that his voice was loud, too loud. “She’s taken my clothes. I’m not a child,” he ended lamely.

  Madame Corlay, leaning on her stick, looked at him dispassionately. “So you’re back,” she said coldly. And then to Albertine, “Give him his clothes.” And then she was gone, leaving them staring at each other. So that was his mother, Hearne was. thinking. Well, it certainly had been the strangest of meetings; hardly what he had been steeling himself against. Once more he had the feeling of anticlimax. That coldness, that hardly concealed look of bitterness... What kind of mother was this, anyway? What kind of son was he supposed to be? So you’re back. Not, so you’re home. So you’re back, with the implication that because there had been a scene, then he must be back. Yet, there was a lot to that little word so... Corlay had talked willingly, almost diffusely, about his everyday life: about his education, about the farm, about the village and the people who lived and worked there. It seemed as if he were eager to identify himself. He had said, “So you want to know about me? Why? Do you think I am not Bertrand Corlay of Saint-Déodat?” They had both laughed at that, and certainly Corlay had proved his identity by the completeness of his descriptions. But about his personal life and emotions he had been vague, even bored. He had given a very good impression of a life which was so simple that it was dull and uninteresting. Corlay had been far from cheery:
he had been unhappy and moody. But Hearne had thought that could be attributed to the obvious boredom of his past life, to the constant depression about the future of his country. It was enough to depress any man. Staring at the door which Madame Corlay had closed so definitely behind her. Hearne felt the first twinges of a new worry.

  Albertine was watching him. He suddenly realised that it wasn’t the fact that his voice had been raised in anger which had seemed so strange to her. It was the fact that he wanted open windows, that he wanted to dress when he should stay in bed. It wasn’t the loud voice which had been mad: the loud voice was something which she thought normal. He sat down on the bed again, but his emotions were less calm than his words.

  “Albertine, you know what the doctor said. You know what my mother said. All I want is to be left in peace, and to have my clothes. There is nothing mad about that. You needn’t worry— I’m not going away. I’m going to stay here. Now, where are my trousers?”

  “They are washed.”

  “Well, what about other ones?”

  “I’ve got them all packed away with your things.” She looked towards the door which he had meant to investigate, before the three mattresses had seduced him.

  “Good. Shall I get them, or will you?”

  She moved so quickly towards the store-room that he was surprised. Her polite grumbling echoed back into his room.

  “...you’ll just make a mess of everything,” she was saying.

  He waited patiently, reflecting on the charms of home life, as Albertine made her silent journeys between the two rooms bringing with her each time a newspaper bundle smelling of some strange herb. She had obviously decided to be the complete martyr and unpack everything at once. It was just as well, Hearne thought. That made it easier for him to, find his way about another man’s strange wardrobe. He snapped the thin string on the parcels of yellowed paper, and began to shake out the clothes, and then paused as, his eyes read the heavy black print. The clothes must have been packed away in September. French Successfully Attack Siegfried Line. English Allies Arrive with Full Equipment. Miracle of the Machine in Modern Warfare. His eyes travelled down the columns of close print. There was a glowing report on the miracle of the Maginot Line, on the modern conveniences which made life so much more pleasant for the troops. As a sour joke, someone had printed a photograph in the very next column showing the English digging in. Or perhaps he never realised it would be sour, or a joke. Only our very best crack troops, thought Hearne, standing waist-deep in mud, digging and draining a French field into a prepared line. No, it was much more pleasant to read of electric light and red wine, of underground movies and chapels, of hot and cold water and heating systems. So much more pleasant, more comfortable—so impregnable.

  Albertine had finished and was standing silently watching him. He kicked the papers aside, and turned to the clothes which were laid on. the bed. They weren’t country clothes. They had been bought in some town. Perhaps in Rennes...yes, that was what the labels said. Corlay must have had quite a taste for suits—not that it had been particularly good taste. But there were certainly more clothes than Hearne had expected. The chief thing was they looked as if they might fit him. He groaned at the thought of having to put on such underwear. Yards and yards of the stuff, he thought despairingly. But if he didn’t wear any of it, then Albertine would really think he was mad, and he couldn’t afford to have her become permanently worried about him. The doctor had prepared her for a certain mild strangeness, but there must be nothing beyond that really to alarm her.

  She was down on her knees now, smoothing out the newspapers, folding them neatly. She wound up each little piece of string separately and slipped the knotted rolls into her pocket, one by one. Nothing escaped her careful, thrifty fingers. And then she solved the problem of what clothes he would wear. She left them on the bed, while she hung up the others inside the wardrobe or folded them neatly into the chest in front of the bed. But it was the inside of the wardrobe which interested Hearne. More than half of it was filled with books and papers. He stopped Albertine as she lifted the first armload of these, with the same look of resignation on her face which had haunted it for the last fifteen minutes.

  “Don’t worry about that stuff, Albertine,” he said. “I can arrange it myself, later. You know you’ve plenty to do as it is.”

  She softened unexpectedly, but her eyes also held surprise. It was the same look which he had noticed, this—no, yesterday morning, when he had had no objections about her going to early Mass and leaving him unattended at breakfast.

  He pretended to be shaking out the trousers and pullover he was going to wear. “Tell me, Albertine, why is my mother so annoyed with me? She has seen me angry before now. What is wrong?”

  It was now Albertine’s turn to pretend to arrange her apron. “Your mother is upset about the war.”

  “Yes, I know. But she wasn’t even pleased to see me home safe.”

  Albertine’s voice was gentler. “You must remember your father died in 1917. And your grandfather died in the siege of Paris. So Madame is very upset about this war. Myself, I think we should thank the good God Who has looked after, us and let us keep what we have.”

  “So my mother is angry because we lost this time, because I am home safe?”

  “She is angry with all the young men She says that if a German comes near this farm she will kill him with our ham-knife. She says—” Albertine stopped and shrugged her shoulders. “Myself, I think we should thank the good God Who has left Saint-Déodat in peace.”

  “What else does my mother say?”

  “She says that now the young men, who talked too much, have done too little that they have sold France by all their politics.”

  “And what of the old men?”

  “They will be punished by dying in unhappiness, for they will never live to see France free again. But they will soon be out of this life, while the young men will have to live in misery. They will suffer more than if they had died in war. Yes, she is very upset.”

  “Seemingly.” Hearne was thinking quickly. There had been still more to Madame Corlay’s bitterness than even that: as if there had been a deep conflict between herself and her son, as if what had happened to Madame Corlay’s France was only the culmination of such a conflict

  “And what did my mother say about me?” he added.

  Albertine looked restless. She was now smoothing the stiff white cap, tucking away imaginary stray wisps of hair. But when her answer did come, it was as direct as it was harsh.

  “She did not want to see you again.”

  There was a pause. Hearne swallowed, and said. “Well, now...” He couldn’t think of anything to add. There was something too final about Madame Corlay’s words. He picked up his clothes.

  “I’ll dress now, Albertine, or else I will catch that cold of yours. And then I’ll walk in the fields for half an hour. And then I’ll come in for supper. And then I’ll go back to bed.”

  Albertine seemed to find this reasonable if unnecessary. She seemed relieved by the quietness of his voice. It seemed to restore her confidence. As she left the room, she walked over to the window and closed it.

  Hearne waited until the heavy footsteps on the wooden stairs had faded into the kitchen, and then opened the window. He was thinking about that strange meeting with Madame Corlay. He saw her once more framed in the darkness of the doorway, dressed in black with the long gold chain gathered tightly into the small round brooch at her throat. The white hair was carefully combed, the white face with its faded colour in the lips and cheeks was set in a proud, disdainful mould. It was the face of a woman of character, who had been continuously disappointed in life. She was not the negative personality he had expected. She was a self-effacing invalid only in the sense that she no longer interested herself in the management of the house and farm. But upstairs in her room, Madame Corlay was indeed a very definite personality.

  It was good for his purpose, in one way, that she should have been so un
natural in her welcome. A gentle mother, full of sympathy and tears, would have worried him. And yet, in another way, Madame Corlay’s attitude made things more strange and difficult. For there was the hint of dark currents in Bertrand Corlay’s life, which weren’t covered by the data he had learned by heart. He had studied Corlay, questioned him skilfully, memorised all the details which he and Matthews and that French Intelligence man, Fournier, had gathered. Not that he had expected Bertrand Corlay to be so simple as a string of dates and facts. Human beings weren’t like that. He had only learned to know the skeleton, as it were. Now he must fill in the flesh. It might be a stranger job than he had imagined. This evening, after supper, he would unpack the books and papers from the wardrobe and place them back in the empty bookcase. He would find out a lot about Corlay that way: books were half a man.

  He went downstairs, passing through the kitchen where Albertine was working in front of the fire. The air was cool, the fields were empty. The cows had no doubt been safely locked in for the night by Henri. He walked slowly up the hill to the west side of the farm until he had reached the last field and the beginnings of the castle’s woods. He halted and looked down towards the farm, towards the apple trees outside the window of his room.

  It wasn’t a big farm at all. It consisted of this large field divided into three for various crops, of scattered groupings of trees, of the orchard which stretched from the house up this western hill, of the meadow and hayfield edging the path to the Pinot farm. If only there had been a man to manage and work it, instead of poor old Albertine and one of her relatives, the farm might have produced more than mere subsistence. For it was good soil, and centuries of careful nursing had left the grass smooth, the branches heavy with ripening fruit. The wheat in one part of the field was standing strong and upright. The breeze whipped over its yellowing greenness and the whiskered heads of grain rustled gently like silk skirts in a ballroom.