Madeleine's War

by Peter Watson

  At the junction of the road and the track there was a patch of flat ground where we could park without blocking the road. Here we all got out.

  Duncan had with him two men: one from the Cypriot section, the other I didn’t recognize. Ivan had the Glaswegian cook with him, and I had Madeleine and Katrine—that made eight of us in all.

  I looked about me. “This is where he was dropped?”

  “Yes,” said Duncan.

  “Well,” I said. “The land slopes away here, towards South Andvart. I’m sure he would have gone that way; it’s much easier than turning inland and climbing. Do you agree, Duncan?”

  Duncan was a local. He knew the area better than I did.

  “Aye.” He was handing round ropes and torches and bottles of water, taking what looked like flares out of his pocket. “I suggest we split up into three groups. If anyone finds him, light one of these flares—the others will then come looking for you.” He handed one each to Ivan and to me.

  “I’ll stay in the middle,” he said. Nodding to me, he went on, “You keep to the north, sir—depending on how long it takes, you’ll eventually get to Loch Hourn.”

  I nodded.

  To Ivan, he said, “You keep on the southern edge, and you’ll come to Loch Morar eventually. It will be daylight before any of us reaches the sea, and if we don’t find him…” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “Leave the headlights on in the Land Rovers,” I said. “That will help guide us back.”

  Without any more preamble, we set off. If Erich had fallen and broken his leg, say, hypothermia would be an issue, so speed on our part was important.

  My group started out. I was in the middle, Katrine on my right and Madeleine on my left. We were about twenty yards apart but we fanned out—so that we were soon separated from the other groups. The area we had to cover was large.

  We had our torches, ropes around our waists, and bottles of water in our pockets. Every so often we called out, “Erich!,” “Hello?,” or “Can you hear me?”

  The night closed in around us. Soon we were out of sight of the cars. The wind—more than a breeze—was cold. Occasionally we disturbed rabbits or hares, grouse and small deer. We always stopped and examined these locations, just in case Erich had fallen there. But he hadn’t.

  After an hour we came to some pines. We worked our way through those, shouting, with torches ablaze.

  Nothing.

  After that I suggested we spread out even more; we were now a hundred yards apart. There was no sign of the other groups.

  The ground here was heather, broken by occasional trees, where we disturbed a range of birds. And the ground was steeper, and getting more so. I thought I heard running water in the distance.

  We had been on the go for nearly two hours now. The moon was up—and visibility could have been worse. It would be midnight soon.

  I saw a shape ahead of me. A cow? A deer? Erich? It suddenly lurched off into the darkness—a magnificent stag. Why on earth had it allowed us to get so close?

  The sound of running water was definitely louder now, and the land was falling away quite sharply. I stopped briefly for a water break.

  “Matt! Matt! Over here! Katrine, here, quick, I think I’ve found something!”

  Screwing the top on my bottle, I hurried towards Madeleine, playing my torch ahead of me.

  As I approached her, I noticed that she was coming towards me.

  “What is it?” I said. “What have you found?”

  “Stop here,” she said urgently. “Let’s wait for Katrine. The land falls away here quite quickly—it’s dangerous.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Here’s Katrine.”

  Katrine arrived, out of breath. “What is it?”

  “Just stand here for a moment, and turn and look at where I shine my torch.”

  Madeleine turned and shone her torch in a slow sweep along the ground beyond where we stood.

  “See, there’s a cliff here, a vertical drop of about a hundred feet. It must be the lip of a quarry wall—I nearly fell into it myself. There’s no warning.” She held Katrine’s elbow with her hand. “Now, inch forward, till you are standing on the very edge of the lip. Careful, Matt!”

  We inched forward.

  “Follow the beam of my torch as I shine it downwards. Try to move as little as possible…Do you see what I see?”

  We looked down.

  “A mass of rubble,” said Katrine softly.

  “Is that fresh earth?” I said.

  “Yes!” said Madeleine. “That’s what I thought too. I think Erich came this way, at night like we are doing, and slipped over the edge of the quarry. Say he fell down the quarry wall and started a small avalanche, a landslide. Maybe it covered him. Maybe he’s buried underneath all that rubble.”

  “If he is,” murmured Katrine, “is he still alive?”

  “That depends,” I said. “His head may be near the surface, but his legs may be trapped. He could have enough oxygen but not be able to move. We’ve got to go and see. But he may not be there at all.”

  I gripped both their arms. “Right,” I said. “Let’s all step back carefully from the edge. We don’t want any more landslides.”

  “Shall we set off a flare?”

  “No, not yet, Madeleine. We don’t know for sure that he’s here. No point in stopping the others searching until we are sure.”

  “We need other men to go down into the quarry,” Katrine protested.

  “We need them to bring him up,” I replied. “Especially if he’s injured. But at the moment we don’t know if he’s down there.”

  “So what do you—?”

  “Look about you,” I interjected. “There are no trees or rocks to fix a rope to. But I am a big man—biggish anyway. Katrine, you and I can hold the rope while Madeleine goes down, over the edge—she’s the lightest.”

  I looked at Madeleine. “Think you can manage it?”

  She hesitated, but then nodded.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. I’ll thread the rope under my thigh, which will take the strain. I was a nurse, remember—we do rudimentary physics, pulleys and all that, for patients who are badly hurt. Don’t worry about me.”

  “Good. We won’t descend here. If Erich is down there, we don’t want another landslide.”

  We moved about thirty yards along the cliff. I unwound the ropes from around my waist, and from around Katrine’s, and tied them together. Then I roped Katrine to me and we sat on the ground some ten yards back from the lip of the quarry, both of us gripping the heather groundcover.

  Madeleine slipped the end of the rope under her belt, yanked it once or twice, to test how firm we were, and began to gently lower herself over the lip of the cliff.

  “If he’s there and alive, yank the rope twice,” I said. “If he’s dead, once, and if he’s not there at all three times, and I won’t set off any flares. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  The moonlight was still quite strong. I could see Madeleine clearly.

  Then she disappeared and the tension on the rope increased. I dug my heels into the peat.

  Katrine did the same.

  The wind gusted. Clouds floated past the moon.

  After three or four minutes, the line went slack. Madeleine had reached the floor of the quarry.

  I looked at Katrine and she looked at me.

  We waited.

  We heard scrabbling in the landslide earth. From where we had stood it had been difficult to gauge the size of the slip.

  The wind was getting up, larger gusts now, sending swooping sounds through the heather.

  Then Madeleine’s voice broke into the night air as she shouted.

  “What did she say?” I asked Katrine.

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t hear either.”

  “What did you say?” I shouted across the quarry but my words too were caught up in the wind that was rushing in from the Atlantic.

  Madeleine did
n’t reply.

  Then the rope jerked, hard. Twice.

  —

  THE SMELL OF FRIED BACON LEAKED into the dining room. Duncan looked at me and grinned.

  “I think we need an emergency more often.”

  I grinned back, and nodded.

  We both looked across to the sideboard, where Craigie, the cook, had brought out a big tray with a mound of bacon rashers heaped on it.

  All of us in the canteen rose, as one.

  Bacon breakfasts were few and far between at Ardlossan, generally kept for bank holidays and other celebrations. Erich’s rescue certainly counted as a celebration.

  Where the bacon actually came from was a well-kept secret, by Craigie, but, as a line formed next to the tray, I said, to no one in particular, “Leave some for Erich. He’s the man who’s been through it.”

  “Where is Erich?” asked someone in the queue.

  “Having a hot bath, with a whisky,” replied Duncan. “He’ll be down directly.”

  “What exactly happened to him?” said Ivan. “How come he was in a landslide, and how come he survived?”

  Duncan answered.

  “As far as we can make out, in the depths of the night Erich came across an old truck. It was cold and he climbed into the cab for warmth. But the truck was on the lip of a quarry—it had been left there after a landslide had broken away part of the quarry cliff, and was too dangerous to move. The truck had been rusting there for years, abandoned, and the quarry was disused because its walls were unstable. There were warning signs all around, but in the dark Erich didn’t see them. It would only have been a matter of time before the truck fell into the quarry all by itself.”

  Duncan reached for a plate on a side table. “Anyway, Erich’s weight shifted the truck’s balance.”

  The queue moved. We were a little nearer the bacon.

  “As I say, there were signs all around the quarry, indicating the danger, but in the dark Erich simply didn’t see them. Once installed in the cab of the truck, his weight shifted the balance—it tipped over into the quarry, falling down the cliff and causing a landslide.”

  “Nasty,” said someone.

  “Yes,” said Duncan, “but although it was the truck that tipped Erich into the quarry in the first place, it was also the truck that saved his life.”

  “How come?”

  “The windows of the cab were left closed when the truck was abandoned. When it fell, the landslide covered the cab with a mass of stones and rubble and soil but, being metal, the truck withstood the weight, prevented Erich from being crushed and ensured that he had plenty of oxygen—for a number of hours anyway. Madeleine saw the back of the truck sticking out of the rubble and heard him shouting.”

  “Where is the heroine of the hour?”

  “She’s having a bath, too.”

  “With Erich? She should have some reward,” said someone, and the rest of the queue laughed.

  It was more than three hours since Madeleine had yanked on the rope to indicate that she had found Erich and that he was still alive. I had set off a flare and then circumnavigated the quarry, with Katrine, using her torch and mine, until we found a section where there was a track down to the quarry floor.

  After joining Madeleine, all three of us had shovelled the rubble away with our hands as best we could. In the cold night air we were soon sweating, but, after about an hour, the others had found us. It had taken all eight of us another hour and more to clear away the stones and soil and rubble. Some of the boulders were the size of two or three deer’s heads.

  Just as we were getting close to the cab of the truck, a sound filled the night air and Madeleine shouted, “Watch out!”

  She turned, grabbed Katrine by the arms, and pulled her away. The smell of soil and dust filled my nostrils—another landslide had followed the first.

  The night was dark but the moon was high. I rolled away from the noise just in time and stones and soil fell against my legs but no higher.

  The rushing sound died as quickly as it had arisen.

  I looked around. All the others were safe.

  “Let’s get a move on,” I said. “Before there’s a third.”

  We got Erich out and made it back to the Land Rovers without any further mishap. Since Madeleine and Katrine and I were particularly filthy after our exertions, and since Erich needed to be given plenty of space after his ordeal, my “team” climbed into the back of the vehicle, along with all the ropes and tools, where there were wooden benches over the wheels.

  It wasn’t exactly comfortable as the Land Rover began to buck on the winding road and, instinctively, I put my arm around Madeleine.

  She responded by resting her head on my shoulder.

  Almost without thinking, I turned and buried my lips in her hair.

  It smelled of mud.

  Back at the manse, Erich, Madeleine, and I had gone straight into the bathrooms. Craigie had gone off, muttering about it being “time for a treat”—and so here we were, in the queue for a bacon breakfast.

  “There she is!” shouted someone, as Madeleine entered the dining room, her wild hair still wet from the bath.

  Everyone clapped. A few whistled.

  “Well done!”

  “You can rescue me any time, miss.”

  “Let her through. Come on, miss. You first. Craigie’s done us proud.”

  Madeleine smiled and worked her way through the gap in the line that had opened up.

  She took some bacon and what looked like artificial scrambled egg, and went to sit at a table near the fire. I didn’t wait in line but went and sat with her. I was hungry but she needed company after the night she’d had.

  As I was sitting down, however, Erich entered the room. He looked spick and span, in a clean white shirt and slacks, as though he’d had a good night’s sleep in his bed. You would never guess what he’d been through. He came directly across to Madeleine and me at the table and sat down next to Madeleine.

  He held a packet in one hand. With the other, he reached for Madeleine’s fingers and raised them to his lips.

  As everyone in the room watched, he kissed the skin on her wrist.

  “You saved my life,” he said softly. “This is for you. None of us is allowed much, in the way of personal possessions, but it is silver.”

  He placed the packet he was holding on the table in front of Madeleine.

  “No, Erich—” she began but he interrupted her.

  “Take it,” he said, softly but urgently. “Take it, please. A few hours ago I thought I was going to die. You must let me thank you—it’s only right. In the next few weeks either of us, or both of us, could be killed. I have to thank you now.

  “I can’t tell you what went through my mind in that truck. I once got locked in the crypt of the cathedral where I worked in Belgium. It was an accident, when some workmen cleared up for the day. Later that night it poured with rain and the cellar where I was filled with several feet of water, rising all the time. Until I was rescued, I didn’t know what was going to happen—the cellar was underground and the whole crypt could have filled with water. I was rescued after more than twenty-four hours but…small, underground, enclosed prisons are not…They are not my favourite places.”

  He gestured to the packet.

  “Please open it.”

  Madeleine took back her hand and opened the package.

  Inside was Erich’s cigarette case, a small, elegant silver box that caught the sun shining in through the high windows.

  “Erich,” breathed Madeleine. “I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can,” he said quickly. “I want you to have it. It’s Belgian, so you can take it to France—it won’t give you away. We’ll all need cigarettes when we are in the field, and this will give you confidence, remind you of what you did here in Scotland, how you…Well, you know what you did. Whose life you saved.”

  All the others were watching.

  I could sense that Madeleine thought the gift too much, the cigaret
te case too valuable for what she had done. But she also knew that to refuse it would not…would not suit the mood of the moment with everyone watching.

  So she smiled, raised it to her lips, kissed it, and then kissed Erich on the cheek.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I shall treasure it, always.”

  · 6 ·

  WE WERE BACK IN THE STABLES on the far side of the manse yard. Once again, Duncan was leading the show that morning, while I looked on. The four recruits sat on wooden benches or leaned against the stall walls. The smell of horse was as strong as ever.

  Between Duncan and the recruits was a metal frame with clothing on hangers, all the clothing the same shade of grey.

  “No prizes for guessing what these are,” Duncan began. He took one hanger off the rail and held it up for everyone to see. “Wehrmacht uniforms, the genuine article captured by our people at some point in the recent past.”

  He took the uniform jacket off the hanger. “Uniform recognition is a routine but nonetheless vital part of your training. We’ve found that firsthand contact with the material itself is the most efficient and vivid way to rub in this part of the course.”

  He straightened his arms and shook the jacket. “Come on, Katrine; you try it on first. This is a Standartenführer’s uniform, a colonel to you.” He grinned. “See what it feels like to be promoted, Captain Howard.”

  Katrine stepped forward and slipped her arms into the sleeves of the jacket. It was, inevitably, far too big—her fingers just poked out at the end of the cuffs, and the two sides overlapped comically.

  The others were laughing.

  “Who’s your tailor?” said Ivan. “So I can avoid him.”

  “You next,” said Duncan to Erich.

  He took another uniform from the rail. “This one is a Rittmeister, a company commander, with braid on its epaulettes—see? Erich, you try this one.”

  Erich got to his feet and put his arms into the jacket. He saluted Madeleine. Everyone laughed again.

  Yes, Duncan was right. There was something between those two. “Ivan, come on,” said Duncan. Holding out another jacket he said, “This one has double plaiting of the braids on the epaulettes…It’s a field commander’s uniform, a Stabsoffizier.”