Those in Peril

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘No.’

  ‘It doesn’t shock me. Not a bit. Those of us in the theatrical profession are quite used to that sort of thing.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure you are.’

  She wagged a finger under his nose. ‘You’re in love with her yourself, aren’t you?’

  He stepped back one pace. ‘I’d prefer not to discuss Mrs Hillyard at all, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Ah, but I know you are. I can tell. She doesn’t realize, though. Hasn’t a clue. All she can see is him. Frenchmen know exactly how to treat women, that’s the thing.’

  ‘I expect they do.’ It was the last thing he wanted to hear.

  The finger wagged again. ‘Mind you, Englishmen have their good points as well. Only they’re not so obvious. I think the most attractive man I ever met was Gerald du Maurier. Did you ever see him on the stage?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘You should have seen him as Raffles. He was simply wonderful. And, of course, he played Bulldog Drummond to perfection . . .’

  For the next fifteen minutes he endured more theatrical reminiscences until, at last, he heard the front door opening. He went out into the hall, deserting Mrs Lamprey. Barbara had come in, carrying a full shopping basket.

  She looked at him hopefully. ‘Is there any news – about Freddie?’

  He shook his head, wishing so much that there were. ‘I’m afraid not. I just came by to see how you were.’ Mrs Lamprey, he knew, would be listening avidly to every word.

  ‘How kind of you, Alan. I’m quite all right, thank you. How are you?’

  ‘Fine . . . just fine.’ He stared at her, remembering exactly how it had felt to hold her close in his arms. How his uniform had been wet from her tears. How he had dried them for her with his handkerchief. ‘Well, I’d better be getting along, then.’

  ‘Thank you so much for coming.’

  He went to the front door and opened it. ‘Just let me know if there’s anything I can ever do for you.’

  It was ironical, Duval thought, that, for the first time, his story of going to London was perfectly true. The prospect of meeting the general intrigued him. He was rumoured to be aloof and arrogant; a cold man and humourless. Before the war he had had a reputation as a fine soldier and clever strategist, and when France had been attacked he had acquitted himself with courage and honour. Then he had fled to London and the Free French had made him their leader. To the Vichy government, to remain in France was proof of honour and patriotism, and de Gaulle was a traitor, sentenced to death in his absence.

  He took a taxi from Paddington station to the address he had been given in Westminster. On the journey he saw the destruction everywhere by the German bombers, but he also saw a very different city from Paris. London made him think of an indomitable old lady who had been set upon by thugs but had picked herself up, dusted down her skirts and was carrying on regardless, bearing her scars and bruises with pride; Paris had been like a beautiful woman, outwardly still beautiful but mortally wounded in her heart.

  St Stephen’s House was a rather dingy redbrick building – a disappointing place for the headquarters of Free France. A man in some kind of blue uniform took him up to the third floor in a shaky lift to join a queue of other French civilians and servicemen. Over an hour passed before a lieutenant conducted him into a room overlooking the Thames. The general, a very tall man, rose from behind a desk and shook his hand. Duval was invited to sit, offered a cigarette; the ashtray on the desk, he noticed, was overflowing with stubs. He listened to a short, clipped speech of congratulation on his efforts in France.

  ‘I understand that you are working with the English?’

  ‘I am working with the English, mon Général, but I am fighting for France.’

  The general nodded. ‘We French in exile must never forget that. France has lost a battle, but she has not lost a war. We fight on. One accepts England as an ally and partner, but we must never be her servant. Nor should we ever be her bosom friend. The destinies of our two countries are not the same and never have been.’ A cigarette was put out, another lit. ‘I have requested the British that you report to me in person what you have seen and learned each time you return from France. Other than that, I have no objection to your continuing to work with them, if you so wish.’

  He said, ‘I feel a certain sense of obligation to do so. Of honour, perhaps.’

  Another curt nod. ‘Very well. But before you leave, I should like to present you with the emblem of the Free French – the Cross of Lorraine – to wear with pride.’

  Duval rose while the general pinned a small metal brooch to his lapel. They shook hands once more and the lieutenant showed him to the door. As he went out he glanced back to see that de Gaulle had moved to the window and was standing looking out at the river. The tall, imperious figure, caught in beaky profile against the light, was unforgettable. He had the odd feeling that he was looking at France herself.

  He took another taxi to the railway station, and as he gave the destination, Waterloo, to the driver, reflected wryly on the English habit of annoying the French at every opportunity. Naming the station after a French defeat was on a par with deliberately mispronouncing French words: beauchamp, belvoir, beaulieu – all anglicized beyond recognition. The train carried him out into the countryside and yet another taxi – an ancient vehicle more like a hearse – took him up a long gravel drive to one of those pleasant, ivy-covered English country houses built at the turn of the century, complete with dripping shrubbery, croquet lawn, tennis court, lake – all in the middle of nowhere.

  There, in the company of others far younger than himself, he spent the next weeks learning about the workings of a radio transmitter, about sending and receiving, coding and decoding. As Commander Chilcot had promised, he also learned various other things – some of which struck him as childish games, like writing invisible messages and wearing disguises. Others, such as self-defence and how to kill a German quickly and silently with bare hands, seemed highly practical.

  He also discovered how woefully unfit he was: overweight, flabby, short of breath, incapable of any prolonged or extreme physical exertion. The doctor who examined him advised him to give up smoking, which, naturally, he declined. He also politely turned down the suggestion of giving up drinking and going on a diet. All that was really required, he decided, was to carry on doing much as he had already been doing in France without it being noticed by the Germans. There was no necessity for him to be able to run five miles without collapsing. In the evenings he escaped from his prison and the terrible canteen food and walked to the nearest village, where the landlord of the Horse and Groom still had some bottles of French wine in his cellar, and the landlord’s wife took pity on his offended stomach and cooked him an excellent supper.

  On the phone, Harry sounded satisfied. ‘He seems to have done reasonably well, Alan. Pretty hopeless on the PT front, I gather, but then he’s a lot older than the rest. One wouldn’t expect much there. Kept scampering off to the local pub.’

  ‘I can’t say I blame him.’

  ‘Nor I. Those places are hell. No booze and school food. Not his sort of thing at all. He’s not bad with the unarmed combat and perfectly all right so far as the R/T procedure is concerned, which is the main thing. We’re not the SOE, asking him to rush around France blowing things up, thank God.’

  ‘So, how soon do you think he can go back?’

  ‘We’ll wait till we can send him over by the MTB. There’ll be two other agents with him, as well. Another week or two, I’d say. You’ll have to go for a moonless night, obviously. Leave in the dark and be back in the dark. As I said, it’ll have to be a landing somewhere on the northern coast, unfortunately.’

  Powell said, ‘We’ll need a first-class navigator with pinpoint accuracy. That stretch can be treacherous – absolutely murderous in winter. I’d like to be on board for the trip, Harry. Make sure everything goes smoothly.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Alan. Y
our place is on shore, doing your job at HQ.’

  He said stubbornly, ‘I’d still like to go.’

  ‘Hmm.’ A long pause. ‘All right, then.’

  Christmas had passed quietly. The butcher had miraculously conjured up a joint of beef and Barbara had made a pudding from saved-up dried fruit and carrots and stale breadcrumbs that had worked quite well. The rear admiral had presented a bottle of wine, which Mrs Lamprey had drunk most of, and Miss Tindall had scoured the hedgerows for holly and ivy. Mrs Lamprey had contributed a bunch of mistletoe from the greengrocer’s – largely, Barbara suspected, in the hope that Monsieur Duval would be back. Esme’s father had sent a long letter and a present for her: a beautiful foreign doll dressed in Chinese clothes.

  On Christmas Day, she took Esme to church and Miss Tindall and the rear admiral accompanied them, leaving Mrs Lamprey treating a chill with her patent remedy of hot ginger wine. Alan Powell was in the next pew and afterwards she stopped to talk to him by the lychgate. She didn’t ask about Louis Duval or when he might be back. Nobody asked such questions in wartime. Instead, they talked about the church service and the cold weather and he enquired after the kittens. Then Mrs Shapleigh had come up and started to talk about the WVS canteen.

  New Year’s Eve came and 1941 began. The kittens grew and grew. Fifi had brought them down from the airing cupboard, carrying each one in her mouth by the scruff of its neck, and they now lived in a cardboard box in a corner of the kitchen. Before long they had started to jump out and Esme spent hours playing with them.

  Late one afternoon the doorbell rang. When she opened the door Louis was standing there.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I forgot to take my key away with me.’

  At dinner that evening, Mrs Lamprey wanted to hear all about General de Gaulle.

  ‘Est-il beau?’

  ‘One could not say that he was handsome, but he’s very remarkable. Once seen, one would not forget him.’

  Her sharp eyes noticed the little brooch. ‘C’est une médaille, monsieur?’

  ‘Non, madame. It’s the badge of the Free French. The Cross of Lorraine.’

  That night, lying beside him with his arm about her, she asked when he would have to go away again.

  ‘Not for a while, I think. But next time it may be for much longer.’

  She watched the glow of his cigarette. ‘It’s dangerous, isn’t it? Very dangerous.’

  ‘What is dangerous?’

  ‘Whatever you do when you go away. I’m so afraid for you.’

  ‘There is no need to be.’

  There was every need, she thought.

  Out of the darkness Louis said, ‘When this war is over and France is free again, will you come and live with me there? In France?’

  ‘If you want me to.’

  ‘I want you to very much. Will you live with me, Barbara? For always?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You understand that we could not be married? Simone, my wife, would never divorce me because of the Catholic religion.’

  ‘I understand. And I don’t care.’ She curled closer to him. ‘Where would we go?’

  ‘Wherever you like.’ The cigarette glowed again. ‘To the south, perhaps, where the weather is good. Somewhere in Provence, maybe – St Paul or Vallauris. We could find a nice old house. One that pleases you. Make it good for us. A good home. Fifi could come too. She’d like that, so long as the Germans had gone.’

  He went away less than two weeks afterwards. She was in the kitchen, talking to a woman who had come to see the kittens. The woman couldn’t make up her mind whether to have a black one, or a tabby. She kept picking each one up and then putting it down again.

  ‘Oh, dear, they’re all so sweet. I just can’t decide.’

  He spoke to her urgently from the doorway. ‘I have to leave now, madame.’ It was always madame in front of others. ‘They have sent a car for me.’

  The woman was still undecided. ‘Which one do you think has the best temperament, Mrs Hillyard? They say in all the books that that’s the most important thing. Now, this little black one seems a bit nervous . . .’

  ‘Would you excuse me a moment?’ She went over to him. ‘Can you wait?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I must go at once.’ He took her hand, kissed it quickly and pressed something into her palm. ‘Keep this safe for me.’ She listened to the front door closing and the sound of the car driving away down the hill. He had given her the Cross of Lorraine brooch, the emblem of the Free French.

  Behind her the woman said, ‘Of course, I really would prefer the ginger one, you know.’

  Fourteen

  The motor torpedo boat slipped away from her moorings at twenty hundred hours on a cold and moonless January night. She made her way slowly and quietly downstream towards the open sea. The captain, first lieutenant and the crew of eighteen were all considerably younger than Powell himself and he felt like an old man among them. The destination was Bonaparte beach, to the west of St Malo. As Powell well knew, the north Breton coast was a notoriously unforgiving place for mariners. Even the names were sinister: the Channel of Great Fear, the Bay of the Dead, the Hell of Plogoff. The tide sweeping into the St Malo Bay could reach a height of forty feet, and when the wind blew hard the battering-ram effect of the sea was tremendous. Bonaparte beach had been selected as seeming the best out of a poor choice, but there was still plenty to worry about: currents, rocks, cliffs, German patrols, permanent and occasional sentry posts, possible new gun emplacements.

  Louis Duval and the two other agents kept out of sight below decks but Powell stayed on the bridge, revelling in the experience of being back at sea again. The pitching and rolling that began as soon as they had left the lee of the land was natural to him. His sea legs had never deserted him and the deskbound years slid away, as though they had never been.

  He had taken the briefing before departure, covering the expected weather, the state of the tide, all the hazards of the low-lying rocky coastline, the need for absolute blackout and silence off the French shores. He had indicated the exact spot on the chart to which the navigator was expected, without the aid of lighthouses, light-buoys, land-based navigation or radar, to find his way precisely. The young sub lieutenant specially assigned to this daunting task had seemed unfazed. The MTB was to anchor off the beach while a boat was lowered with two men to row the landing party ashore. The boat would then return, be hauled back on board and the MTB would return to England. It sounded straightforward enough but was very unlikely to be any such thing. An accurate landfall was crucial, for a start.

  Powell went down the ladder to take a look in the cramped chart room under the ship’s bridge. If the young sub lieutenant, wedged firmly against his table in order to stay on his feet, got things even slightly wrong they could spend valuable time hunting along the coast for the right beach – hampered by the fact that they would have to reduce speed and engine noise drastically, so close to France. The sub lieutenant was working away under his red-painted light bulb, the chart table spattered with the rusty salt water, the colour of weak Bovril, that kept cascading down from the bridge voice-pipe overhead.

  After a time he left him to it and went back to the bridge. The MTB was wet, cold and uncomfortable and once out of port the entire ship’s company, with the old-fashioned exception of himself, had put on a variety of clothing to combat the elements – seaboots, heavy jerseys, scarves, and the like. The clandestine voyage across the Channel to the enemy French coast in the darkness of night had a touch of the Scarlet Pimpernel about it.

  The weather worsened. The gunboat’s flared bow lifted high with each wave to slam down hard into the troughs and roll heavily to port, before the next wave lifted it up again. Speed had to be reduced to twelve knots. They pressed on until the swell was on their beam, the motion eased and they could increase to fifteen knots.

  After six hours, they were ten miles off the coast of France and reduced speed to eight knots, to cut the sou
nd and the boat’s wash and the telltale phosphorescence. Through night glasses Powell could just make out the black shadow of the land, lying low and almost indistinguishable from the sea. He climbed down again to the wheelhouse. The navigator had the large-scale chart out now and was plotting with his stopwatch and checking each bearing he was given. He glanced up once briefly, smiled and nodded.

  Back on the bridge, Powell watched the coast coming closer. There were no enemy lights showing. No gun flashes, or sounds from the shore. The sub lieutenant brought them in exactly off Bonaparte beach and they dropped anchor three-quarters of a mile away, using a silent coirgrass rope instead of a normal anchor chain. The surf boat, roped at each end, was rolled over the side and lowered quietly into the sea, and two seamen climbed down to take the muffled oars. Nobody spoke; it had all been rehearsed many times before. The three agents had come on deck. As Duval passed him, carrying the small suitcase that contained the radio transmitter, Powell shook his hand firmly.

  He watched the surf boat through his binoculars as it headed for the beach, until it was lost to sight against the darkness of the land.

  By the time they reached the shore they were well drenched by the waves breaking over the boat, and the process of disembarking from boat to beach involved another wetting. Without the need for silence, Duval would have been cursing aloud and furiously. As the surf boat left on its journey back to the MTB, the three of them – himself, another Frenchman, Pierre Galliou, and an Englishman, Charles Hunter – made their way across the beach, keeping a safe distance from the nearest German watch post up on the cliffs to the east. The hamlet of Keruzeau was less than a kilometre inland and they walked to the cottage there belonging to the sister of Galliou and her husband. Duval and the Englishman waited outside while Galliou roused his sister and brother-in-law from their beds. Presently he came back. His sister was willing to shelter them, his brother-in-law less so, but they could take refuge in the cottage attic for the rest of the night until the following day. After that they must leave. The whole area, apparently, was thick with German troops.