Assignment in Brittany

by Helen Macinnes

  “She couldn’t have had them made, if I hadn’t talked so damn’ much,” Hearne said savagely. “She got me into the state of thinking aloud yesterday. I never guessed...she seemed so simple...so...I’ve been thinking of her as a—well, look at her! She fitted into the background of Saint-Déodat so well that I never guessed she would do anything mad like this.”

  “She seemed to me to be very sane.”

  “But she doesn’t know what she’s up against. What the devil was that message for me again?”

  Kerénor repeated it slowly. “She was going to see this ‘him’ and give ‘him’ the message, and perhaps shelter with ‘his’ sister before continuing the journey.”

  “Shelter with his sister...” Hearne exploded: he cursed fluently and vividly until he had to pause for breath. “Shelter with his sister!” he repeated. “I’ve never been there. For all I know, the sister may run a brothel.”

  “You are worrying too much,” advised Kerénor. “Anne is no fool. She knows Dinan and has friends there. That is where she went to school. And she has her permit with her. She thought of everything, including leaving Jean’s permit for you.”

  “Jean?”

  “Yes, the old man who worked on her farm. Both he and Marie had permits, too; but when you were arrested and Anne came here to nurse you, Anne sent them up to the Laënnec farm to stay out of the way for a while. They will be useful there, too: Laënnec is dead. The news has just come to his wife. Anne gave the old couple’s permits to Monsieur le Curé for safe-keeping. Last night she told me that perhaps you could use Jean’s permit, if we could change the age in it from eighty-two to thirty-two. I think I can do that all right.”

  Hearne sat down at last. “And I thought Anne needed protection,” he said with a wry smile.

  “That’s one of her greatest charms, and it is completely natural, too. It appeals to our masculine vanity. Do you know Latin? Remember what the Censor Metellus said in the Senate? ‘Nature has arranged that we can live neither with women nor without them. If we could live without them, then we should not have all this trouble.’”

  “You forget to add that the Censor Metellus was happily married.”

  “I suppose satisfied men can afford to be critical: it adds to their feeling of superiority to know that what they criticise doesn’t really apply to them.” Kerénor was bitter once more. He didn’t mention the name of Elise, nor did Hearne; but the name was there between them all the same.

  Kerénor rose suddenly. “Must get the food before it is too late. Then after that I’ll have to leave you. I am to appear before some Nazi committee for instruction on what I may teach in the village school.”

  “How are things up there?”

  “According to plan. Trucks have visited the farms, and the shops, and the houses even. We might have had a plague of locusts. We never knew we had so much until we saw the truck-loads driving away. What is left can only be bought and sold at fixed prices, fixed for every one except the Boches. They are scattering worthless marks about like confetti. And there are some among us—not many, but still some—who are selling to the Boches. They know the marks mean nothing, but they think Nazi good-will means a lot. We’ve got a little list starting. These false Bretons will get paid in full when we start marching towards Berlin. Even Picrel’s son agrees that there can be no pardon for his father. He’s first on the list. We are deeply ashamed of him.”

  “Picrel, the man who owns so much?”

  “That’s why, I suppose. Strange, isn’t it? He’s a great Christian by his way of it, and I have never professed to be one. Yet the one aim in his life is to hang on to the possessions he has got. Worldly possessions. If I remember my New Testament correctly, worldly possessions weren’t held in great esteem. In fact, if a man gives up honour or humanity for the sake of what he owns, then he is betraying the principles of Christianity. When I watch the Picrels scrabbling at German feet for the sake of their property, do you know what I believe? I believe that if Christ came back today and preached to the people, the Picrels among them would have Him shot against a stone wall as a revolutionary.”

  There was a pause, and then Hearne said, “Yes, I think you are right. And now, having disposed of Picrel, what about the others in the village?”

  “Standing fast. Before, there were two types of people in the world. People from Saint-Déodat, and foreigners. Now there are people from Saint-Déodat, foreigners, and filthy Boches. You can rest about your escape, by the way. The Boches are now convinced that you called the guard in on some pretext, throttled him, and made your escape. They don’t think you could go far, and they keep searching all the neighbouring farms. All they’ve discovered so far were two escaped prisoners of war, poor devils. The Boches have offered a stupendous reward for you. They describe you as an Englishman under the assumed name of Bertrand Corlay.”

  Then the Germans had found Lassarre at Bordeaux and questioned him, Hearne thought. He said, “What do the people of Saint-Déodat believe about me?”

  “They still think you are Bertrand Corlay, and you have become a sort of village hero. Those who have seen you swear that you are Corlay, and that the Boches are lying so that someone might be tempted to betray you, for the Boches know that Bretons don’t betray a Breton. Anne suggested that we should just let the people go on thinking that you are Corlay, because that would make up to Madame Corlay for what she had to suffer before. Monsieur le Curé agreed to that, and so there we are. To Saint-Déodat you are still Bertrand Corlay, the reformed. They’ll probably carve a memorial to you in the church, when the peace comes. I’ve always wondered who chose national heroes: it’s interesting to find out.”

  “If Corlay comes back after peace—”

  “Then he will reform with great sincerity to live up to the character you have left for him, as soon as he finds it gives him enough esteem and power. That’s all he wanted, anyway. He backed the wrong horse, that was all.”

  The idea of Corlay returning vindicated, accepted, conforming, depressed Hearne still more. Once it would have amused him as Kerénor was amused. But now he thought of Anne, of Madame Corlay and the two farms which she would like to see as one.

  Hearne rose and walked round the cave. Eleven paces by thirty-six paces: eleven by thirty-six.

  Kerénor paused at the entrance. “Don’t walk so much,” he advised.

  “I’m all right.” And then as Kerénor still halted, watching him, “I am just getting ready. I am leaving tonight.”

  Kerénor said, “Anne thought you would leave tomorrow.”

  “I’m leaving tonight.”

  Kerénor was smiling again. “If you hurry, you may even catch up with Anne at Dinan.”

  Hearne halted. “Who said I was going to Dinan?”

  “There’s got to be some limit to your sense of duty. Even an Englishman must be human sometimes.” Kerénor started to limp away.

  “One moment,” Hearne called after him. “That’s what I meant to ask you two days ago. How did you and Anne learn I was English?” He watched Kerénor’s face half turned over his shoulder. I wish to heaven, Hearne was thinking, I didn’t always seem to amuse him so much.

  “You were unconscious, weren’t you, for over two days?”

  “I talked?”

  “You did.”

  “In English?”

  “Mostly.”

  “What about?”

  “Partly nonsense, partly sense.”

  “What about?”

  “Yourself. Don’t look so worried, even if Anne sounds the same in both languages. She knows only schoolgirl English. She couldn’t understand everything.”

  Kerénor enjoyed his exit. He was a last-word man.

  They stepped out into the shadows of Monsieur le Curé’s sheltered garden, and felt the real air with its cold sharpness encircle them again. Kerénor, who had led Hearne through the caves and passages up into the ground floor of the tower, through the silent church, out through the Curé’s private door leading to the
shrubbery and his house, now grasped the Englishman’s arm. They halted. They listened, and when they were satisfied moved quietly on under the shadows of the trees beyond the house. Then the garden ended.

  Ahead were fields. West of them, to their right, lay the road and the last houses in the village and the stone bridge and the path to the Corlay farm. On their left were the meadows and trees under the east spire of the church, and the rows of neat huts filled with sleeping soldiers. The last quarter of the moon was in the sky, with clouds and the feeling of rain to come. They saw the shape of a patrolling sentry, and then he was hidden by the corner of a hut. High above them was the intermittent drone of planes.

  “Many of them in the last week,” whispered Kerénor, pointing upwards. “We hope they may be British, because they fly to the north-west and don’t come back.”

  Hearne said nothing. They weren’t returning British planes. Their engines hadn’t the right sound. They were Junkers 88’s. He thought of the aerodrome he had found on that last journey towards Dol. The planes were no doubt flying to its well-camouflaged fields, while the former French airport had its quota of dummy planes and visible hangars. He smiled in spite of himself. This war had its childish aspects...If the results weren’t so grim, you would laugh at them. He looked at the darkened village over his right shoulder. You would laugh, if the results weren’t so grim.

  He followed Kerénor, who was moving with surprising speed and silence on the smooth grass. They had crossed the stream flowing to the pond down in the meadows. Kerénor, using the scattered groups of trees for cover, was circling at some distance round the Germans’ camp, to enter the wood beyond the pond. From that point, he had explained with the help of the map in the cave, he would leave Hearne to strike northward until it was safe to turn west to Dinan. This was how Anne had gone last night. It had been, and ought to be, simple.

  Hearne felt in the pocket of the worn French army jacket, with all its markings ripped off: watch, map, matches, gun, silencer, knife, some small money forced on him by an embarrassed Kerénor, and the sheets of neat notes. He pulled the old cap still farther down over his eyes. He was glad now that he had rejected the offer of Jean’s permit and the fancy-dress of an old peasant. If he were caught, Jean’s permit would only lead the suspicious Boches to Anne. It was better this way. It meant he would have to keep hidden in the daylight, and move only during darkness. But that was something he could do. And ahead of him were only two night journeys. Dinan was roughly ten or twelve miles away to the west. From there, northward to the English Channel, was slightly more than that distance. He could manage it. His legs were strong again, and all that was left of the Gestapo’s attentions was a stiffness in his back, a carefully bandaged right shoulder, some bruises, and a tenderness in the stretch of the skin forming over the cuts. He could manage it, not exactly comfortably, but sufficiently capably if he didn’t meet downright bad luck.

  “How are you feeling?” Kerénor whispered.

  “Unbelievable.” It was true. The strange freshness of the air made him feel as though he could walk thirty miles before sunrise.

  They were at the wood. The trees were neatly spaced, and there were winding paths beneath the branches. Here and there they passed a stone bench. It was the kind of place in which lovers walked in every country, escaped from the hard eyes of their parents and the ridicule of their friends.

  It was Hearne who gripped Kerénor’s arm this time. His quick ear had heard the light crack of some twigs. They halted behind the tangle of a thorn-bush, with its vague sweet scent encircling them. At first Hearne thought the man on the path ahead, with his arm coupling a girl, was some young Breton who had risked the Nazis’ anger to walk with her here. And then, as the two figures crossed the patch of faint moonlight on the path, he saw the man’s uniform and the girl’s gleaming hair. He knew by the sudden intake in Kerénor’s breath that he had recognised them, too. It was Elise, with the man Ehrlich. But Hearne no longer saw Elise. He was staring at Ehrlich. The expression on the German’s face was very different now, very different from that he had worn in a cellar of the town hall. Hearne’s hand tightened on his gun: he fitted the silencer carefully over it, his eyes still on the German’s face.

  And they, as they passed a stone bench, Ehrlich pulled the smiling girl down on to it. Her head was thrown back and the hair was loose and soft, its thickness catching the stray beams of light through the leaves overheard. She was laughing now.

  Kerénor stiffened. His lame foot slipped, and a twig snapped. Ehrlich looked quickly towards the bush behind which they were hidden. His hand left Elise and went to his holster as he rose, peering into the darkness.

  Kerénor stepped silently out of cover. Perhaps he felt discovery was inevitable and had decided to give Hearne the chance to get away. He limped slowly forward. Ehrlich’s gun was out. Elise had risen, turning as she started to her feet. Hearne, still standing behind the thorn-bush, saw the loose coat swing open as she turned, saw the whiteness of her body. Kerénor had seen, too. He halted, and his low voice lashed her dispassionately. The German smiled, and pointed his gun; but Kerénor’s savage words didn’t halt.

  Hearne moved slightly to one side, so that his aim might be completely accurate. The pang at his shoulder as he raised his forearm was an unnecessary reminder of the cellar, of the torch which had lighted him as the three other men had held him down, of the amused face of Ehrlich behind the torch. There wouldn’t be any more cellars for Mr. Ehrlich to preside over. There wouldn’t be much more of anything for Mr. Ehrlich. His love-making was as practised as his torture, but there wouldn’t be any more of either for him.

  The German was still grinning. He motioned impatiently to Elise to stand away from him as he raised the revolver.

  His voice was as low as Kerénor’s. “Trouble-seekers find trouble,” he began, and the girl laughed softly, her head thrown back, the white curve of throat outlined against the loose, thick hair.

  There was a thick hiss, a stiffening of the German’s shoulder. He was a marionette whose strings had been cut. He sagged, slipped slowly to the ground. He lay as he had fallen.

  Elise’s soft mocking laughter had halted. The parted lips stiffened to scream as terror gripped her throat, but the limping footsteps had already reached her, and hands stronger than terror strangled her cry. Even after the last vague attempt to free herself from the death grip, even after the frenzy of her struggles had given way to limpness, Kerénor still held her crushed in his hands. The coat slipped from her bare shoulders. He dropped her suddenly, stood motionless, looking down at the red gold spilling over his feet.

  Hearne came forward from the thorn-bush. He touched Kerénor’s arm gently. Kerénor did not move.

  “Hurry,” Hearne said. But Kerénor didn’t hear.

  “Listen,” Hearne whispered urgently. “How near are we to the north edge of the wood?”

  Kerénor looked at him dully. All emotion had left his face. “Another five minutes.” His voice had all the feeling cut out of it.

  “You get towards that side of the wood. When you hear a pistol-shot, start running, keeping to the shadows, using the trees. Get back to the north end of the Saint-Déodat road and reach your house. Now hurry. If you don’t, there will be hell to pay in Saint-Déodat.”

  The last sentence roused Kerénor. “No. It will be simpler than that,” he said. “I killed them both.”

  Hearne’s patience was wearing thin. “Don’t be a bloody fool. We don’t need martyrs, we need live men to fight.”

  “What else is there to do?”

  “You’ll hear. Hurry. Make for the end of the wood. Keep on the grass. Don’t step on any earth. I’ll see you, some day, when I can get back here. Go on. I can’t get started until you are at the edge of the wood. I’ll time you.

  Kerénor moved hesitatingly.

  “If you don’t,” Hearne said, “we’re all lost. You, and I, and Anne, and all of us. Go on!”

  Kerénor disappeared into the shado
ws of the trees. Thank God he had enough sense left to move quickly, Hearne thought. He waited for five minutes, his back to a tree whose branches shaded him. He was probably as big a fool as Kerénor, with his noble offer to take the blame and the punishment. As if, thought Hearne, one victim would satisfy vengeance for the death of one German: ten for one was nearer it. Yet he himself was probably as big a fool. It would be easy to walk away through the night and leave Saint-Déodat with hell to pay: it would be easy, if you could think that way. But you’d have to be one of the new super-race to be able to do it.

  The five minutes were up. The wood was silent. Hearne moved quickly from the shadow of the tree. He bent over the German and lifted the gun still gripped in the stiffening hand. It was the usual ugly, hole-tearing Lüger. He twisted the Nazi’s arm and aimed the revolver at the neat puncture ringed with a dark, wet stain on the Nazi tunic. This time the report seemed like a crack of thunder in the quiet woods. Its echo hit the fields. Hearne only paused to note that the Lüger had lived up to its reputation, and then he was running swiftly, silently, along the path which Kerénor had taken. He could see the fields once again. In the half-shadows of the clouded moon they seemed empty. Kerénor must have got away. Thank God for that, anyhow.