Return to the Field

by Alexander Fullerton

  He’d assured her this morning over breakfast, ‘That’s all they’d have on me. And whatever they’re holding him for, it wouldn’t be that.’

  But St Brieuc was bad news too; the Gestapo chief there, known as ‘Shad’, was notorious for his brutality.

  Rosie hadn’t told the Lannuzels about those arrests yet. Hadn’t had time, for one thing, for another he mightn’t even have known the Achards, and in any case tonight’s parachutage was enough to concentrate on, for now.

  Brigitte broke into her thoughts: ‘How was our countess?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Sara de Seyssons – you were there on Thursday?’

  ‘Oh – yes… Well – much the same. There are some new pills that are helping, but – you know.’

  ‘Not much, eh? Poor Sara…’

  Sara would have taken Marie-Claude le Guen into the household as a secretary and/or companion, at least for a trial period, but her husband had refused to hear of it. For the same reason that he hadn’t wanted her there, had preferred to pass her along to Peucat. What it came down to was that he was determined to keep his nose clean in Boche eyes, remain in their view effectively Vertrauen. The manoir and its lands were to become a major Resistance base, once the balloon went up, and meanwhile he was determined not to arouse Boche suspicions of any kind or in any way at all. Under pressure from Sara then he’d agreed only that Marie-Claude and her father could use the place briefly as a staging-post – for an hour or two, being either collected there by Jaillon or taken on to Guerlesquin or thereabouts by the gamekeeper, Vannier: and on second thoughts, then, that they should use Vannier’s cottage, not come to the manoir itself.

  It would help, anyway. But he’d also expressed concern at the risks involved in the Kerongués plan, and surprise that Lannuzel was giving it his support.

  Rosie had argued, ‘But he was surprised to hear you were in favour of “Mincemeat”.’

  ‘There were aspects he didn’t know about, I believe.’

  ‘Any case—’ she’d shrugged – ‘he’s keen on this now. Plans to take charge of it himself, in fact. He was hesitant when we talked on – oh, Tuesday – but yesterday I came back from Quimper by way of Châteauneuf, he’d been discussing it with his friends in the hills and they’d agreed on it.’

  ‘He must have some plan I can’t immediately envisage.’

  ‘An idea of wearing Wehrmacht uniforms?’

  ‘Oh. Those Georgians…’

  ‘And he wants to borrow some transport from Jaillon. Some particular vehicle Jaillon has. He’ll have been in touch with him by now. But from my angle, you see – if le Guen were to back out—’

  ‘You’d have to drop “Mincemeat”.’ Count Jules had opened the door to the dining-room, waved her in ahead of him. ‘Wouldn’t exactly signal the end of the world – perhaps?’

  ‘My brief’s to set it up, that’s all. And wasn’t it your idea in the first place?’

  ‘I put it forward – yes. It seemed worthwhile – as you say. Especially the derivative benefits. Conciliating a major section of our Resistance colleagues – primarily in order to keep them with us, which at the present time is really quite essential both militarily and politically.’

  It had sounded a bit pompous. She’d capped it more succinctly, ‘With the added attraction – with luck – of killing Doenitz.’

  ‘As you say. Killing him, and others… But my point is – should have been – that those were the considerations then, nothing madcap like this Kerongués idea.’

  ‘So you’d drop it? Cancel “Mincemeat”?’

  He’d frowned.

  ‘If I said “yes” to that question?’

  ‘I’d tell London, and ask for a decision.’

  ‘I see.’ Stroking his jaw… ‘But you say Guy Lannuzel’s in favour – to the extent of taking personal command. While from my own point of view the major factor – as I said, the Trevarez action as a general rallying point. Which is – well, very important.’

  ‘So you agree: I can tell Guy?’

  ‘If he’s sure of what he’s doing…’

  * * *

  Lannuzel was back before six. The evenings were drawing out now, and it was still quite light. He told her – as if his sister wasn’t in the room – ‘All set. Next broadcast’s at nine – right?’ She’d nodded. ‘Before that we’ll have something to eat, and the lorry will be here at ten. Assuming we get the second broadcast, of course. Are drops ever cancelled at such short notice?’

  ‘It has been known. Not often – but some emergency situation, or the aircraft suddenly not available.’

  ‘Not this time, please!’ He threw his donkey-jacket across a chair. Asking Brigitte then, ‘You’ll be off at – about eight-thirty, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’ She grimaced, at Rosie’s querying glance. ‘A hen-party, you might call it. Appropriate, eh? No distance, though, I go across the fields.’ Nodding towards her brother: ‘He’ll be in the house when I leave. But I don’t know he’s going out, do I? And when I get back, if he’s not here I’d only think Oh, he’s off with that slut again – huh?’

  ‘Not referring to me, I hope?’

  ‘No.’ She laughed. ‘Definitely not. We do have a local slut, though, and she’s part of the cast, so to speak, in this fantasy of his.’ Looking at Guy again. ‘He means well – but could anyone else believe it would fool the Gestapo?’

  ‘It could.’ He appealed to Rosie. ‘Listen, now. If I’d set out to fool her. If I didn’t want her to know I was involved in such things. Using her farm as a base for it too – there are people around here who’d confirm that she’d strongly disapprove. And I’m out a great deal on business – legitimate poultry business – how can she know what I’m doing from one hour to another? You can see that, can’t you?’

  She could. But she could also see Timo Achard. Might have anticipated – both she and Peucat might have – that having arrested him those bastards would take his wife and put her through it too.

  Nodding to Brigitte. ‘Looking at it that way – maybe…’

  * * *

  The ‘personal message’ came in again soon after nine. Lannuzel looked relieved as he switched the set off. ‘One hour to go. They’ll all have heard it this time. Those trousers OK?’

  She shrugged, looking down at them. They were Brigitte’s working trousers: turned up at the ankles and belted in with string. She’d brought her own thick sweater, scarf and heavier shoes in the valise – which she’d be taking with her, in order to change back again when it was all over.

  Guy had told her she wouldn’t find the lorry very comfortable: even riding with him and its driver in the cab.

  ‘Your bike’ll go in the back, of course.’

  ‘What’s the story if we get stopped at a roadblock, or by a patrol?’

  “The way we go – very small lanes, then a forest track – well…’

  ‘Not likely to meet a patrol, you mean.’

  ‘But if we were stopped – out of curfew, all that—’

  ‘As a chicken-farmer do you qualify for an Ausweis, to work in curfew hours?’

  ‘No. But I’m well known around here, also I’ve good reason to be using by-ways and out late. It’s called disposal of waste products.’

  ‘Manure?’

  ‘That’s the nice word. Anyway, I wouldn’t dream of using my own pickup for it. There’s manure and manure, you know – and pig and chicken are both rather special. Borrowed lorry, therefore – I get to use it at night, no other time – owner’s a pig-farmer, I help with his and he helps with mine. Local gendarmes know all about it – curfew or not, they’re not worried.’

  ‘Are we carrying pig tonight, or chicken?’

  ‘Pig. It’s more often pig. They produce more – you can imagine… Tonight’s load goes to a farm near Roudouallec. Not a big load, enough for camouflage, that’s all – surface dressing, you might say. Roudouallec happens to be where – well, never mind. I’m talking too much… Like some coffee?’
/>   ‘Good idea. I’ll do it.’

  ‘I’ll show you where.’

  ‘That’ll be a help.’ She went through to the kitchen, and he followed; she told him, ‘I saw Count Jules – day before yesterday. He’s worried about the Kerongués plan, thinks it’s dangerous.’

  ‘Well – he’s right. But—’

  ‘He wonders if you’re sure of what you’re doing.’ She’d filled the kettle, put it on the stove. ‘It’s not insanely risky, is it?’

  ‘It’s risky. But – put it this way – we’ll have casualties around Trevarez that night – unless we’re very lucky – and that risk’s acceptable – for the reasons you explained. And without getting the girl out of Kerongués it can’t be done, so it’s – effectively, all one operation.’

  ‘The Kerongués part though, he thinks is more so than the other. He has a great respect for you, incidentally.’

  ‘He’ll have more, when we’ve done it. Have to do it right, that’s all. And there’ll be a lot of satisfaction – good for Maquis morale, morale in general even. All over France, they’ll hear about it.’

  ‘It doesn’t frighten you?’

  ‘Here – want sweetener? Frighten me… Suzanne – if I said no, it doesn’t, in the long run I’m lying. Also stupid. To be frightened or not frightened – what the hell. But here and now the prospect doesn’t frighten me – if that’s the question?’

  ‘Yes. I suppose—’

  ‘Doesn’t mean I deny the risk. I said, we have to do it right.’

  * * *

  The lorry lurched in at the farm gate a few minutes before ten, and by the time it was turning in the yard they were out there, Lannuzel lifting Rosie’s bike to pass it up. Two men on this rear side of the gazo burner were peeling a tarpaulin back – no light work, even with only a comparatively light scattering of muck on top of it. One of them leant over to take the bike from Lannuzel then, and slide it under the tarpaulin: two others had joined him and Rosie now, jumping down from the cab. Lannuzel calling, ‘Cą va, les gars?’

  ‘Va bien, Guy…’

  The driver, leaning out… Lannuzel introduced Rosie to them all: ‘This one set it up for us.’ A mutter, his head down close to hers: ‘What should we call you?’

  ‘Béatrice?’

  Because ‘Suzanne’ would lead to Henri Peucat’s nurse, and ‘Zoé’ could be on transcripts or recordings of at least one phone call. Lannuzel had told them: mutters of ‘Béa’ accompanied quick handshakes, then they were climbing back up – all four of them, leaving the passenger space in the cab for her and Lannuzel. Ducking down out of sight – going under the tarpaulin: three had anyway, the other was using a rake to spread the muck back over it. Maybe the nose would influence the eye: to a Boche peering over the tailboard for instance, trying not to breathe too deeply – the contents as seen by torchlight should seem to be random heaps of pigshit.

  ‘Up with you – Béa.’

  Into the middle of the seat: jammed against the driver, her left knee against the gear-lever. The driver offered her his hand: ‘I’m Raoul.’

  Mucky hand. She took hers out of it.

  ‘And you raise pigs.’

  ‘How’d you guess?’

  Laughing, banging the wheel with his palms… Lannuzel meanwhile squeezing in, crowding her as he dragged the door shut.

  ‘What’s this?’

  Solid object, in the right-hand pocket of her coat. She tugged at the cloth to free it, pull it up on her lap. ‘Llama – nine-millimetre.’

  ‘You don’t say.’ He’d managed to give her a bit more room. Speaking over her head to the driver then: ‘OK, Raoul.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Shoving the gear-lever up into first… Lannuzel murmured, close to her ear, ‘Must say, you’re a real one.’

  * * *

  One didn’t travel fast, by gazo. Not this kind, anyway. Engine noise rather like that of some old motorboat: thumping, jolting, lurching on hard springs. The driver, she thought, must have loaded all that shit in: possibly by hand. Probably spent his whole life in this aroma.

  What did his wife put behind her ears, she wondered?

  If he had one. What a fate…

  Knew his way, though – and without the aid of lights. Masked headlights had been burning when he’d arrived at the farm, but he’d switched them off then and left them off.

  ‘Guy – mightn’t it be better another time to send this lorry up in daylight, the rest of us going separately on bikes?’

  ‘Not possible. Because – well, to take it up in the daytime and leave it several hours, that way we’d be drawing more attention to ourselves, not less.’

  ‘Lot of eggs in one basket, I was thinking.’

  If they were stopped by a patrol: either by ordinary bad luck or through information being laid. She’d been thinking that something like a hundred people had to know of this drop tonight.

  Forest on the left now, and a slope of pasture on the right. The half-moon floated behind black treetops, lit the road only where the distance between it and the trees widened to fifty metres or more. On those light stretches one felt dangerously exposed: then a sense of relief, plunging back into darkness.

  ‘Not much farther.’

  The driver-pigman – name of Raoul – wore a wool cap and a chequered jacket, the kind they called a ‘Canadien’. The Maquis tended to wear them too – so Peucat had told her when she’d asked him how they lived in the forests: having some notion of describing it to le Guen, forgetting for that moment that she wouldn’t be seeing him again until it would be too late to matter – for him to change his mind.

  Touch wood…

  * * *

  Forget him. Worrying about a change of mind on his part was only a way to lose sleep. Count Jules had pointed this out, on Thursday, when she’d confessed to having less than total confidence in his staying the course she’d set him on. The count had put his hands on her shoulders, lowered himself almost to her level and quoted, ‘Les jeux sont faits: rien ne va plus, Suzanne!’

  In other words, she’d made her play, had now to wait and see how the dice rolled, meanwhile keep her nerve. He’d then kissed her lightly but lingeringly on the lips.

  This one beside her, and then him… Despite knowing from Sara about Ben – she’d referred to him as ‘Suzanne’s fiancé’ – which effectively he was, even if he didn’t know it. But Jules couldn’t really have been trying it on, she thought. Although if she hadn’t pulled away – as she had, with the thought in mind: What about Léonie de Mauvernay?

  She’d asked him the question she’d put to Peucat. ‘Tell me – if you would. It worries me, to think I could be a danger to you.’

  ‘Danger?’

  ‘If I were arrested—’

  ‘Heaven forbid!’

  ‘Well – yes. But if – say during the Kerongués action—’

  ‘You don’t surely intend to take part yourself?’

  ‘Only to look after the girl.’

  ‘But if her father’s also on hand?’

  ‘He’s liable to be having hysterics too. No – I mean he’s – the nervous type. I may bring them here, in fact – to your man’s cottage. Anyway for the girl’s sake I should be – around. What I’m asking, though, is any time if I were arrested – they’d find out I’ve been working for Doctor Peucat, and I suppose that you’d referred me to him. He’d tell them, I imagine – it’s the truth, and other people know it, why not… So then maybe they come to you.’

  ‘I’d also tell the truth. I was asked by Madame de Mauvernay to find a place for you – and I knew old Henri had thought of taking on a bit of help – eh?’

  ‘They’d go to Madame de Mauvernay, then.’

  ‘Well, they might.’ He’d shrugged. ‘But she might not be too easy to locate, you know, by that time.’

  ‘Oh.’ Gazing at him. ‘You mean she’d have skipped?’ The same shrug, again… ‘You’d have tipped her off, and—’

  ‘D’you think you need answers to all these questions, Suza
nne?’

  ‘No – certainly not. Sorry… Only wanted to know I wouldn’t be dropping all the rest of you in the soup.’

  ‘Stay out of the soup yourself – that’s my advice.’

  ‘And my ambition.’

  It still was. Touch wood.

  * * *

  ‘Hold tight, Béa!’

  Warning from the pig-man, as an opening showed in the forest ahead of them, on the left. He was watching it come, his fists and forearms like legs of mutton on the wheel as the lorry pounded into moonlight again… Dragging the wheel over then, turning into that gap: it was the beginning of a steepish climb, mostly in darkness again, with branches whipping the sides and the track winding as well as climbing. Splashes of moonlight occasionally, but never for more than a few seconds. Shifting gear: even slower then, grinding up the uneven, rutted track. Terrific vibration, in this gear…

  Levelling out now: in a long curve to the left. The deep ruts would have been left by foresters’ tractors, she supposed. There was to be one up here, Lannuzel had mentioned, tractor plus trailer, and some other vehicle as well – three separate loads for the three caches that had been prepared. She didn’t want to know the locations: only that the stuff should all have disappeared from sight by the time the Boches came searching for it.

  Probably would. Word seemed to get out when there’d been a drop. Not where, or who’d received it – necessarily – but a kind of whisper, not much more. A message written on villagers’ faces, even – perhaps generated by reports of an aircraft having passed over at low altitude, or – potentially more of a give-away – having circled at low altitude.

  It might be either one or two aircraft making the drops tonight. Most likely a Halifax, or Halifaxes. They’d been fairly extensive shopping-lists, she guessed more than one plane-load.

  Lannuzel broke into her thoughts: ‘Here we are now – Béa.’ His arm round her shoulders tightened as Raoul wrenched the wheel over again – reaching at the same time to flick the lights on – up off the track and into a clearing. The lights were needed to avoid the few trees that had been left along that bank, and then some stacks of cut timber further in. Swinging hard right: lights off again as he braked and stopped. Gear into reverse: she’d moved her legs in time to avoid a cracked kneecap. Now he was backing up, with the wheel over the other way.