Return to the Field

by Alexander Fullerton

  * * *

  Ten o’clock had passed. Still no François. Rosie was outside, refuelling the gazo. There was a shaving of moon up there now, giving enough light to work by. Enough for le Guen to find his way by, you’d have thought.

  Or to be seen by, and stopped, and questioned. If he was stopped now he’d be infringing curfew, would stand to be arrested.

  Or – funked it?

  Suppose he didn’t turn up at all? Facing this as a possibility, and putting one’s mind to it calmly, logically… When Lannuzel and his team got here – with Marie-Claude, touch wood – it would be primarily her loss, absence of Papa. It would make things more difficult – if she was anything like her father – and then it would become the Scrignac gamekeeper’s problem. No father to look after her, only this young, frightened girl to be found a refuge somewhere or other. Vannier would work it somehow: he knew them all, he’d take her to some group that already included women. Or – conceivably, Rosie thought – Sara de Seyssons might over-rule her husband’s veto and take her in. Suggest this to Vannier, maybe: as a request directly from herself – Suzanne Tanguy – to Sara. The annoying thing, though – if le Guen had let one down – although she didn’t see how he could have or would have, at any rate not of his own volition – was that this Kerongués end of the business had been set up solely for his benefit.

  Needn’t have bothered. As in fact Lannuzel had proposed. Use le Guen, then forget him – and his daughter. A proposal which she’d instantly rejected. Folding the tarpaulin back into the gazo’s boot, and pushing the lid down quietly: could slam it shut properly later, she thought, when getting the thing fired up, making a noise in any case. At say ten minutes to midnight. Open the barn doors then too. With le Guen here by that time – please God. There was a far bigger issue involved than just the problem of the girl being on her own: she hadn’t yet squared up to it – to the total disaster she was foreseeing at this moment – if he wasn’t coming.

  A fox screamed, not more than fifty metres away. Eerie, nerve-tautening sound…

  Time – the watch-face by moonlight – ten twenty-five. She went back to the kitchen door, picking her way over and around cowpats. Pausing at that end of the little house then, straining her ears for the sound of an approaching bicycle, tyre-noise and the rattle of the frame, an unfit cyclist’s hard pumping breaths as he forced the thing along. As if by listening for it she might conjure it into being. Needing to – because it definitely was not just a matter of the peace of mind of Marie-Claude, it was the near-certainty – which one had previously envisaged – that if le Guen were arrested and tortured he’d tell them everything. The only way he might not would be if he died of fright before it started. Which regrettably one could hardly count on. There’d be a lot they’d want to know, and one of the things he would be able to tell them about was ‘Zoé’.

  So – if he didn’t show up…

  She sat at Jacques Perrot’s stained and scarred kitchen table, put the pistol down in front of her, lit about her fifteenth cigarette and tried to think up any way that she might avoid having to run for it. Solid, immovable facts being one, he would be arrested and tortured, and two, he wouldn’t find it possible to hold out for any length of time at all. He’d tell them everything he knew about her: and about 21B Place Saint-Matthieu, and those old people – who’d try not to tell the bastards anything, but – well, if their hearts didn’t pack up quickly enough there’d be a straight line from them in their agony to Henri Peucat and his assistant Suzanne Tanguy – whom they’d inevitably recognize as ‘Zoé’.

  Incontrovertible – if François didn’t show.

  If he didn’t, therefore – what?

  See Marie-Claude on her way, would be the first thing. Maybe travel with her and Vannier up to Scrignac. That was in the right direction, anyway. Make for the coast, then, contact one of the réseaux who handled the Dartmouth motor-gunboats’ secret landing and embarkation places. From this part of the country those were the obvious ways out: and with Peucat’s house by then obviously unapproachable there’d be no way of getting to her radio to ask Baker Street for a Lysander pick-up – then hanging around somewhere or other waiting for an answer.

  She rested her forehead on the gun’s cold steel on the table. Thinking – well, the unthinkable, this nightmare scenario. If they had him already: had had him for an hour or two, say, had already broken him down, had the information gushing out of him – jerking out, spasms between screams – one tried not to visualize it… But he knew about Trevarez – at least that there was some unspecified action planned – and certainly about Kerongués. So Lannuzel and his friends – who at this moment would still be congregating on the broken-down farm near Laz…

  She shut it out. Praying into the silent, odorous night: François – get a bloody move on, please?

  * * *

  Some time before eleven a truck of some kind passed. Something heavy and petrol-driven, more likely to be military than civilian. Hearing its approach she’d got up, moved to the door: the hinge side, where she’d be hidden if it was opened: waiting with her hand on the pistol in her pocket. It might stop, turn in here – if they’d been working on le Guen already?

  The pistol was a comfort anyway. Its main solace was as a guarantee that they would not get to work on her.

  The truck had seemed to be slowing, but as it turned out she’d been mistaken, it was actually picking up speed as it approached and – now – thundered past.

  She checked the time, slanting her watch again to the haze of moonlight in the doorway. Four minutes to eleven. About an hour now, was all le Guen had. Hour and a quarter maximum – by Lannuzel’s projection. Lannuzel would be sending the Trevarez force on its way about now: then setting out himself, in company with le Faisan and the others… But le Guen could still be coming – was still only an hour late, against the deadline she’d given him of ten o’clock; he could have been held up by – well, trouble with his bike, say. If it had buckled a wheel, for instance. Or been stolen: just not there when he’d gone for it, so he’d have had to set out on foot. It was entirely possible. Poor maligned François limping along, doing his best, still coming…

  Otherwise – get out there just before midnight, stop them at the bridge?

  It was warm in the kitchen and she was damp inside her clothes. Struggling to come to terms with the irrefutable logic in regard to her own position if he was not coming. Having to pull out with the job barely started but people already used to her, relying on her. Not least, old Henri…

  She went out into the yard again. The remnant of a moon had drifted some distance across the sky since her last sight of it. Shadows had lengthened here, shortened there. She went over to the gazo, leant against it. An owl hooted: and another, further away. The sound took her back to Passenham in Buckinghamshire, her uncle’s place: it was supposed to be haunted by a cavalier who on one night of the year was allegedly dragged screaming from the stirrup of a horse galloping along the river-bank and through a brick wall into the next-door rectory. When Rosie had been younger she’d wanted to sit up for it, but her stupid mother had never let her.

  Car.

  To the south – coming from the main road. She edged round into the space between the gazo and the wall of the house, in the shadow and shelter of the gazo’s bulk. She heard a gear-change: petrol engine revving-up then, another change of gear…

  They used this lane because of the bridge up there, she reminded herself. That was all. It would pass as the others had – in a matter of seconds, now.

  It was slowing, though. No mistake this time, definitely slowing. She crouched, with the gun in her right hand, left hand on the gazo’s right rear mudguard. The car was close now, and by the sound of it down to a crawl. Its driver – she felt certain – looking for the farm entrance. Coming from that direction the screen of poplars hid the opening until you were right on it: so anyone who didn’t know the place would have to approach it slowly.

  Might drive in, look around
and drive out again. People did make mistakes…

  Don’t do anything damn silly, Rosie.

  She wasn’t going to be arrested, though. On no account was going to be arrested. Hearing it arrive – and now turn in – tyres scrunching in mud, stones, cowshit: low weakish beam of light from one masked headlamp, the flush of it brightening that corner of the barn, lighting the end of the house too… Then both headlamps in sight as it rounded the corner and weak light flooded the whole yard.

  She’d left the kitchen door ajar. Damn. Door half open and the gazo standing here. They weren’t likely to decide No one at home…

  Not they. He.

  Getting out. Bulky in a belted coat and wide-brimmed hat tilted slightly forward. Standard plain-clothes Gestapo outfit. Her brain took note of it, while her skin crawled and her heart began to pound as if it was trying to break out. She noted also as he rounded the bonnet of his car – he’d parked it slanting across the entrance to the yard – that it was a Citroën Light 15 saloon, probably just pre-war, front-wheel drive, top speed about 120 kph, paintwork dark grey or black. A Gestapo vehicle, beyond question.

  He was clear of it, moving towards the half-open door, placing his feet carefully.

  Look around inside, decide the bird’s flown, climb back in, then beat it?

  But he was bound to take a close look at this gazo, when he came out of there.

  Get under? Might not look under it? Get down in the muck in preference to getting dead?

  Although – thinking more positively – in the short term, one had the advantage here. Had him on toast: if the right tactic was to kill him. Not difficult: she was more than competent with this gun – and with him in the open, approaching the gazo as he would after he’d satisfied himself the house was empty… The question was, what might follow… Take his car, take off?

  But then if le Guen turned up: or Lannuzel with the girl…

  Le Guen wouldn’t, though. They’d got le Guen. No other way this man would have known to come here.

  He was at the kitchen door, had pushed it further open with his foot. A big man, Trilby-type hat, belted coat or raincoat. A torch flared in his hand, probing into the kitchen. He’d have a pistol in the other.

  ‘Zoé?’

  It was a shock – to hear her name called. But then puzzling, too. He’d spoken quietly – which was right out of character, for his kind. Either he had reason not to attract more attention than he had to, or – this didn’t make sense, but – imagining he could con her into thinking he’d no hostile intentions?

  Because he was on his own? They usually worked in pairs. One on his own wasn’t normal: no more so than that quiet call had been. He was inside now: she saw flashes of the torch as he poked its beam around.

  Her valise was on the floor beside the table.

  She’d brought it in in order to get two chicken sandwiches and the spare clip of 9-millimetre out of it. Had been careful with cigarette stubs, and forgotten that. Now he’d know for certain. Confirmation of her identity, even, if they knew anything much about her. And there was only one other downstairs room and a wash-room-scullery to look in. A sort of stepladder led to two rooms upstairs which he might check.

  ‘Zoé?’ A pause, then again, louder: ‘Zoé? If you’re here, Zoé—’

  In the doorway again: a dark swelling and the brim of the hat, and the torch-beam: the doorway itself partially hid him. It was the torch-beam she saw mostly: at this moment it was directed across the yard at the closed barn door. Swinging her way now – as he emerged – to spotlight the gazo. She was crouching, with her head down: not only not to be seen – in the dark or near-dark, eyes and facial skin reflected light – but also not to be blinded by the torch. He’d moved well out into the yard: the beam moving around a bit but coming back to her now. She rose – very slowly, and edging to her right – keeping the chimney of the burner between herself and him, stooping in its cover and with the gun up: she was aware of the importance of hitting and killing with her first shot. He’d stopped, half turned, the torch-beam swinging back to light the open kitchen door: hadn’t looked into the loft, she guessed, had suddenly guessed she – someone – might have come down from there, behind him. In that second or two she’d have had him cold, but the light was back on her now – on the gazo…

  ‘Zoé – hear me? It’s Michel Prigent. Listen – we’ve got – probably only minutes. The whole thing’s blown – I phoned Peucat, asked him to contact your – associates. Le Guen told me this was where he had to meet you – the SD have him now, had him since Thursday – you know what that means – Zoé?’ She had the pistol in both hands, steady on the smudge of face below the hat brim. Safety-catch off… Actually on the point of killing him, brain as if in shock then, major effort to accept he could be who he said he was. Le Guen must have been arrested – so this was the disaster scenario – but the dentist might have been taken too. Although the voice was right – as she recalled it. She’d taken up the slack on the trigger…

  ‘Don’t move. Don’t.’ He’d visibly reacted – couldn’t have known for sure she was here. Her voice croaked at him, ‘Arms away from your sides. That pistol – drop it. Drop it! Now – shine the torch on your own face – push your hat back with it—’

  Chapter 16

  ‘So where—?’

  ‘Short of Plouescat.’ He’d swung the car out in reverse, accelerated fast down to the T-junction on the main road and turned right – towards Quimper… Answering the question she hadn’t finished: ‘Plouescat’s too near the coast. If by some miracle we make it that far we’ll leave this car – well, it’s a safe-house—’

  ‘What if we’re stopped?’

  ‘You’re my prisoner, I’m taking you to Morlaix. Anyway until we’re a few miles short of the place. But – worst comes to the worst – we’re both armed, make the best of it. Separate maybe – play it as it comes. D’you have a contact in Plouescat – if you were on your own?’

  Crossfire of questions and answers: getting his answers and giving him hers, but still only scratching the surface, dozens more to come. Conclusions too – mostly sickening. That there’d be no admirals in the château when the RAF hit it, for instance: they’d have gone in the cars that had departed after dark last night – if they’d come at all, which they might well not have: le Guen had been in the SD’s hands since Thursday, Prigent had told her. He – Prigent – had a profile like a Roman emperor’s – high-bridged nose, heavy jowls. The most trivial question she’d asked him had been about this car – before they’d even got into it, when he’d been opening up the barn so she could drive the gazo in out of sight. He’d snapped, ‘Tell you later – let’s get away from here?’

  Panicking a bit: but under the skin, who wasn’t… Telling her then disjointedly later that it did belong to the Gestapo: ‘No, not SD, Gestapo…’ A French Gestapo driver who was – or had been – his own agent… Then about the call to Peucat, about which he’d begun to tell her and she’d interrupted with, ‘Why Quimper, heaven’s sake?’

  ‘Because there’s a lot going eastward, very little into town. As I say – unless your friend Peucat did have some way to get on to them… I tried, but if he doesn’t – well, Christ—’

  ‘One way he might.’

  ‘Would have, then – wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’ Brigitte, she was thinking of. Peucat could have phoned her: in fact she thought he would have. She wasn’t likely to have the telephone number of the farm near Laz – Lannuzel in his obstinacy wouldn’t have let her have it – but she had known the farm and that it was the rendezvous he’d been making for when he’d left; she’d mentioned it this evening when they’d been on their own. Rosie repeated – feeling sure that if Peucat had phoned Brigitte she’d have got there somehow – ‘Yes. And I think he would.’ Traffic flaring past: even some masked headlights could be dazzling. High vehicles, she supposed, the downward-slanting beams caught you just for a second. ‘Which road out of Quimper?’

  ‘Over the r
iver and on to the Briec road. Once we’re out and heading north—’

  ‘Yes.’ Might be less like Russian roulette, then. Slightly less… They’d be on the road on which a couple of hours ago she’d been unwilling to travel for even one kilometre. A risk that looked daunting in normal circumstances became quite acceptable when the stakes were suddenly jacked sky-high like this. But they’d also be on a route which the SD might not think it unlikely that he, Prigent, would take: if they knew he’d made a bolt for it. She didn’t mention this: no point, really. In fact she was coming to see it his way now – after only minutes, and numerous changes of subject – with such a lot of ground to cover. And seconds counted: you couldn’t sit around conferring. There might already be Boches at the Perrot place. Prigent’s guess was they’d set up an ambush at the fork in Kerongués where there was that sign in French and German. They’d want to bag the lot or certainly all the leaders, and they’d do it quietly – lining hedgerows and ditches, showing no lights and leaving no transport visible.

  So if Lannuzel had not had the tip-off from Henri…

  Thinking of Henri’s ‘See you at breakfast.’ Just a few hours ago. Breakfast, then Mass. ‘We’ll go together.’ Christ…

  ‘You said you phoned Peucat from the Berthomets. But how did you…’ She tapped her own forehead: ‘Oh. Le Guen, he—’

  ‘Told me, yes. Well – the address, that’s all.’

  ‘All he knew. On Wednesday, you said that was?’

  Three Wehrmacht troop-transports – head on, thundering past, out of the darkness and back into it: whoosh – whoosh – whoosh…

  Gone. Faint glow of tail-lights already faded.

  ‘Scraped up some more from somewhere. Out of the bars and brothels, maybe. Those’ll turn up to the left at Coray, I suppose. Couldn’t doubt le Guen’s spilled it all now, could you?’

  ‘They’ve had him since Thursday, you said.’

  A grunt… ‘Only heard last night.’