Assignment in Brittany

by Helen Macinnes

  “It’s a long way for the boy to walk,” Hearne said at last, looking at the island of Mont Saint-Michel still three miles distant.

  “He is used to it.” The woman wasn’t being callous: it was the calm statement of an economic fact. She had to make this journey to sell the oysters; and either there was no one with whom to leave the boy, or she preferred to have him beside her.

  “We come twice a week,” the hoarse little voice announced from behind Hearne’s ear.

  “You’re a clever boy,” Hearne said.

  “I can walk more than that.”

  “Then you’re a very clever boy. What’s your name?”

  “Michel.”

  “That’s a good name.” Hearne turned to the woman, who was now listening with a half-smile. “How is the price of oysters today?”

  “Bad. But it keeps us alive.” And then, as if to explain why she had to provide for herself and the boy, she added quickly. “My husband is in a prison camp. It will be easier when he comes home. He was coming home, and they caught him. My brother was with him, but he got away then.” She was silent for a moment. “Do you think they’ll let them come home soon?”

  “I hope so.” Hearne tried to make his voice confident.

  “The war’s over,” the woman said, as if that were reason enough. “The war’s over.”

  “So they say,” Hearne said bitterly.

  She halted and put down the basket to rest. Michel slipped unwillingly from Hearne’s back. “So they say,” she echoed dully, and looked across the flat fields on their right. Hearne followed the direction of her eyes.

  “Big guns,” Michel said. “Big guns. They will go boom, boom. My uncle works there.”

  The woman hushed the boy sharply, and then, as if afraid that this stranger would think she was related to a German, said quickly, “That’s my brother. He had no job, and they took him away to work for them. Him and the others who had just got back from the war. First, they took away his boat. Then they said he had no job. Then they took him to work for them.”

  “And he’s there, digging?”

  The woman didn’t answer, as if she were afraid of her information. She spoke angrily to the child. “Stop kicking up that dust, Michel. Stop it at once, do you hear?”

  Michel heard.

  “I suppose we are to be blind to what is going on around us,” Hearne said. At regular intervals along the flat fields, about a mile or so from this shore road, were clumps of what seemed bushes or thick trees. He tried out his idea. “What do they take us for, anyway? As if we didn’t know camouflage when we saw it!”

  The woman nodded, but said nothing, and bent to pick up the basket again.

  “I can take it this time,” Hearne said. “Just for the last mile. I won’t bruise the oysters.”

  His attempt at a joke was rewarded with a smile, and Michel laughed so much at the silly man that he forgot his disappointment at losing his horse, until it was too late to complain. His mother and the man had already walked on.

  Hearne looked again towards the concealed gun emplacements. The row of scattered shrubbery stretched back for miles. “Can’t see any men working,” he remarked.

  “They are there all right. They are all screened from the road. Can you think of it? Such madness.”

  Skilful madness, thought Hearne, and thanked heaven that he had had sense enough to stick to the road. Cross-country would be impossible in this district. But in one way the woman was right: it was incredible to what lengths of ingenuity the Germans would go. Like that batch of specially circumcised, long-nosed Nazis which had been dumped across the Dutch borders as pitiful refugees, in the days before their comrades came over with flame-throwers and parachuting nuns. The gift to see ourselves as others see us was definitely one which God had not included in the make-up of Nordic Aryans.

  They had passed other Bretons, walking on this road which skirted the bay of Mont Saint-Michel. But now they heard, and then saw a long column of motor-cyclists. They stood in the ditch until the speeding unit had swept contemptuously by. And then came half a dozen lorries, each filled with soldiers sitting proudly erect. Or perhaps they enjoyed that attitude, as they pretended not to notice the French who plodded on foot or were driven into the ditches, who were smothered by the clouds of white dust which rose from the conquering chariot-wheels.

  The woman’s face was tight-lipped. Hearne spat the dust out of his mouth; and her eyes, as she watched the expression on his face, were suddenly friendly. They went on in silence. There was no need of words. The heart should have no witness but itself.

  The road, as it neared the island in the bay, swerved farther inland. They left it, as it curved round to the right, and cut across the salt meadows instead, following a well-worn track which was obviously used by the fisher-people or those who looked after the sheep which scattered over these strange fields along the shore. The feeling of unreality grew as they neared the Mont Saint-Michel. There it was, rising, like a mystic mountain of medieval fantasy and delicacy, from the strength of the granite rocks which held it secure in the surrounding miles of golden quicksand. Now the tide was out, and the long, narrow causeway, which was the only connecting link between the continent of Europe and this island of tiered turrets and pinnacles, looked forlorn and purposeless. Hearne looked over his shoulder to reassure himself: he always felt the beauty of the island had to be diluted, to be swallowed with any conviction. Behind him lay the seemingly unending road, with the flat grasslands mixed with bog; and the hum of bees; and the scattered sheep; and the occasional estaminet advising the passer-by, with a rain-swept girl’s smile on its gable-end, to drink more Cinzano; and the few indigent houses huddling together in stray groups, This part of the land was “new,” and there were none of the solid, and yet romantic, old villages which covered the rest of the Breton coast. Here, it was as if the shrinking houses knew how fragile their foundations were. For to the north of the road lay the sea and the flat shore of long green-grey grass, its colour sapped by the seeping of the tide as it surged hungrily towards the stolen land. Without the grey Germans, and their hidden guns and serf-labour toiling behind camouflaged screens, this would seem a fantastic place enough. With them, it was incredible.

  The track through the salt meadows turned away from the shore-line now, in its turn; but it was only to pass over a canal and through a small collection of houses commanding a long, straight avenue of trees which led directly on to the long, straight causeway. The woman halted, expecting Hearne to put down the basket.

  “This is my way and that is yours,” she said.

  Hearne hadn’t paused. He turned to the left into the straight avenue of trees, keeping to the left of the tramway-lines which had appeared with the canal. The woman and the child followed.

  “I can carry it more quickly,” he said. “Are you walking back home this afternoon?”

  The woman nodded. “It will be easy with the basket empty.”

  “Don’t you find a better market in Saint-Malo?”

  She shot a quick glance at him. “You know the reason,” she said. “You know what happened to the fish market there.”

  “Yes,” said Hearne, and wished he did. Too many Germans, probably, with the usual story of forced sales at their price, and payment in occupation marks.

  “Aren’t there Germans here?” he asked, remembering the three soldiers in the village square which they had just left.

  “They have a garrison. And there are tourists. I sell these oysters to a restaurant: the owner’s wife is the cousin of my godson’s uncle.”

  Hearne tried to calculate, but gave it up. “And they pay you a good price?” he asked sympathetically.

  “Fair.”

  “They must make a lot of money from the tourists.”

  The woman gave a short laugh. “Bad money. Tell me, how is it going to end? They pay money, these Germans: they don’t steal. But the money will mean nothing when they are gone. Why don’t they steal? It would be just the same.” />
  “But then they couldn’t say they were being ‘correct.’” The Teutonic genius for self-justification was obviously unappreciated by this woman’s simple, direct mind.

  “It would be just the same,” she repeated, stubbornly.

  And then, as they stepped on to the causeway, Michel pointed to the sand stretching on either side of them.

  “My uncle got drowned there,” he said proudly.

  “Quicksand?” said Hearne. Even men who knew their way about these sands made grim mistakes.

  “Tide,” the woman answered placidly. “It’s coming in now. Do you hear?”

  Hearne listened. His eyes followed her arm. He had seen the phenomenon before, but it still made him hold his breath. From the distance came a low, continuous rumble, at first scarcely noticeable; and then surprisingly clear. The rumble became a growl, growing in intensity as the sea moved in over the flat six miles of empty sand. The growl became a tattoo of drums, a fanfare of trumpets, and then the moving mass of water at last swept into sight. Its long line rushed smoothly towards the island ahead of them. It formed one stretch of wave, always about to break, and then rolling over to let another powerful sweep of water take its place, so that the line never seemed to halt.

  “There are two men on the sand now!” Hearne exclaimed.

  “German soldiers,” the woman said calmly, shading her eyes. “Tourists. They see the priests and the fisherwomen on the sands, and they will have their try, too.”

  “I wonder if they’ll make it?”

  “Some don’t,” the woman said, almost hopefully. “The path from the causeway to the front gate will be covered. We must hurry, too.” They quickened their pace.

  The two men were running hard, but the tide was moving still more quickly. Hearne watched the greedy surge of rapidly moving water gaining so inexorably, so triumphantly.

  “They are too near the walls. They’ll escape,” said the woman. She didn’t sound as if she were rejoicing. “Unless they walk on the quicksand,” she added. “Their boots are heavy for quicksand.” Both she and Michel were staring at the running figures. Hearne averted his eyes: he looked at the maze of towers and turrets in front of them. From the highest spire soaring on the pinnacle of the rock which formed this island, the lacework of chapels and abbeys swirled down to the pointed roof-tops of the crowding houses, to the thick, turreted wall which encircled them all. There were soldiers on the wall, all looking towards the running men. Otherwise, it seemed an uninhabited medieval fortress.

  “While I am here I may as well visit my mother’s late cousin’s husband,” Hearne said. “We haven’t heard from him for the last two months.”

  The woman was scarcely listening. Her eyes were still on the two running men, as she pulled Michel quickly along the paved causeway. “They will reach the wall. A boat will be sent round to get them off the rocks,” she said resignedly. And then, unexpectedly, “What’s his name?”

  “Pléhec.”

  “He kept the restaurant next to my godson’s uncle’s cousin’s husband. It is a small restaurant.” Her pride in even remote family connexions asserted itself.

  “Yes, I know. He is a poor business-man.”

  “But it is good enough for him now. He doesn’t have so many of the Germans as customers. They like the bigger places.”

  They had reached the rampart and followed a wooden foot-path branching off the causeway. It led to a first gate, and then to a second. The two sentries stationed in the small courtyard between the two gates let them enter with no more than a cursory glance. That wasn’t so surprising, thought Hearne. With his face streaked with sweat and dust, his clothes muddied and crumpled and torn, he would have passed for an oyster-gatherer. And the guards must know the woman and child by sight. It wasn’t so surprising—but even at this stage in his experience it amazed him to find how unexpectedly simple it could all be. And the simplest things were often the most successful. He never could stop being amazed at that. It was too impudent, somehow.

  He bent his back lower as he climbed the steep cobbled street. It was only broad enough for four men to walk abreast. The shops and overhanging houses closed in on either side. Curios for sale, mementoes of St Michel, outmoded intimations of good things to eat, postcards, painted shells, religious relics, good-luck charms—all pathetic reminders of the Mont’s one-time summer trade. Behind him the tide had reached the walls, and the sea had become a cauldron of boiling water.

  The child trotted ahead. Perhaps he knew he would get some scraps to eat in that genealogical restaurant. Hearne was content to follow. Up the street they went, then suddenly they turned to the left, along a twisting alley which led them to the back courtyard.

  Hearne let the basket slide off his shoulders and straightened himself, painfully. Houses all around them, two- and three-storeyed houses, so that they seemed to be in a maze of man-built canyons. He hesitated. Which side was Pléhec’s back entrance? Last time he could walk in at the front, but that had been almost two years ago. An army of doors and windows faced him. He wondered again just how many people could be crowded into this half of the small island. Certainly the inhabitants of Mont Saint-Michel had tried their best.

  “They seem empty,” he said, pointing to the windows.

  “Many people have gone. Only a few remain.”

  “To feed and entertain the Germans?”

  “Yes, these were allowed to stay. Pléhec is there.” She pointed to a narrow door in a corner of the alley.

  “Thank you.”

  “It is I who should thank you.”

  “It was nothing.”

  She bowed and smiled gravely, with that dignity of the Celt which is so unexpected and yet so natural that you are surprised at your own surprise. She pulled the basket over the worn threshold, and smiled goodbye as she pulled. Michel was already inside.

  Hearne turned towards Pléhec’s doorway. He entered quickly. Behind him the alley and the street outside were silent. The turbulent waves and jostling currents beyond the ramparts had suddenly eased into smooth noiselessness.

  A man was sleeping beside the open hearth in the kitchen. At each side of the fireplace there was a stone oven with a heavy iron door. From either oven-wall an iron-rack stretched over the flames. Two brown earthenware pots had been placed in its centre to catch what heat there was in the low fire. Hearne advanced quietly over the stone-flagged floor, and passed the large white-scrubbed table with its few bowls of half-prepared vegetables. From here he could see through the half-open doorway into the front room. Checked tablecloths on small round tables, spindle-legged cane chairs. This was the place all right. He didn’t need to see the screened shop window with crudely spaced on the glass. This was the same place.

  The small, round man in the high-backed wooden chair stirred; and said, without opening his eyes, “Closed until six o’clock.”

  Hearne suddenly realised by his relief that he had been more worried than he had been willing to admit. He still felt sick, though, but that was probably hunger, after all. He wondered if Pléhec’s skill with omelettes was still as unchanged as his slight lisp, and those two deep furrows between his heavy eyebrows. There was grey beginning to show now in the thick black hair growing in the peculiarly straight edge round the sallow face. Hearne remembered he used to wonder if Pléhec shaved that hair-line. Then he noticed that the man’s right hand was resting inside his loose shirt. Hearne said quickly and softly in English, “Even for friends?”

  Pléhec raised one eyelid slowly. The eye, small in the heavy folds of his face, seemed reassured, for his right arm relaxed and the other eye flickered open, too. Hearne waited patiently while Pléhec identified him. Each minute was sixty hours. Either lack of food, or too little sleep, or the fact that he had been living in tension ever since he had left Saint-Déodat, was beginning to tell. I can’t have changed as much as all this, he thought dully, and pulled a wooden chair in front of him. He sat down heavily, straddling it, with his arms and chin resting on the high b
ack.

  “It just needed that,” Pléhec said as if to himself in his thin, light voice. When he was excited the lisp was more noticeable as he hurried his words. “It just needed that...the archæologist who told stories.”

  “Not archæologist,” Hearne found himself saying. “Ethnologist.” But what the hell did that matter now? Stories... had he ever told stories? They seemed as dim a memory as the ethnologist.

  Pléhec nodded his head with surprising energy. “Yes, you always made that distinction. July, wasn’t it?”

  Hearne repressed a smile. The Frenchman knew quite well when he had last visited Mont, Saint-Michel.

  “October,” Hearne said gently. “October 1938.”

  “And are you to be with us for another week this time?”

  “I leave tonight.”

  “So?”

  “So.”

  “No archæology this time?”

  “In a way... How is Duclos?”

  The Frenchman looked at the large nickel watch tucked into a pocket at the waist of his tight black trousers. He had lost weight already, Hearne noticed: he could slip the watch out easily now. Once Hearne had been amazed that anyone so solidly constructed round the waist-line should choose to keep a watch just there. Pléhec was speaking. “It is now almost five o’clock. He will be sitting at the table in the corner, as usual, in just one hour and twenty minutes.”

  “I must see him. You are sure he will be here?”

  “Unless he has been arrested. And then it wouldn’t do you any good to see him.” Pléhec was laughing. He noticed the look on Hearne’s face and he became serious. “Yes, I know; it’s a bad joke. But we must laugh at something these days.”

  “What I really need is something to eat,” Hearne said. “That always improves my sense of humour.”

  “Of course. Of course. You must forgive my thoughtlessness.”

  Pléhec rose, a short, round figure in tight black trousers and an open-necked white shirt. He picked up an apron from the chair, on which his black jacket and ready-made bow tie were neatly lying. “Once,” he said, “I should have thought it impossible to make an omelette with two eggs. Now I can even do it with one, and I can see the day coming very quickly when I won’t be able to make any omelette, because there will be no eggs. You would think the hens knew that there’s no use in laying, for a Boche will be there to catch the egg as it falls.”