by Hilary Green
‘Why? There’s nothing wrong with the engine.’
‘He said it wasn’t ticking over properly.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘Well, anyway, he’s not anywhere where he could see you. So you don’t need to worry.’
Later, while Christine was preparing the evening meal and Pasquier was steering, Luke and Rollo sat in the bows sipping a pre-prandial pastis.
‘Tell me something,’ Rollo said. ‘Why does your sister dress like a boy?’
Luke looked at him, taken slightly by surprise.
‘Well, those overalls are borrowed from the people who owned the first boat we were on. We had lost all our luggage, and the clothes we were wearing weren’t really suitable for jumping on and off boats – especially for Chris. I mean, a skirt wouldn’t be very practical, would it? So we had to borrow things their son had left behind.’ He paused, then added with a grin, ‘But actually, she’s always preferred boy’s clothes. When she was a kid, she used to read these books by an English author called Enid Blyton. One of the main characters was a girl who really wanted to be a boy. Her name was Georgina but she insisted on being called George. I think Chris has always modelled herself on her.’
Rollo gave him one of the sly, sideways looks that he was beginning to recognize.
‘Pity. She’s got a nice little figure, under those dungarees.’
‘How would you…’ Luke began. Then he understood. ‘You little shit! You watched her, didn’t you? You told me you were going to do something to the engine.’
Rollo shrugged and winked.
‘So I did. But when I finished … well, where’s the harm? I’ve seen it all before….’
It was the wink that did it. Luke felt anger and embarrassment rise up like a hot tide and Rollo’s sentence came to an abrupt end as Luke’s fist made contact with his nose. He staggered back, staring at Luke wide-eyed for a fraction of a second. Then, he launched himself and the two of them crashed to the deck in a whirl of fists and feet. Rollo was solid muscle, but Luke was bigger and heavier, and back in England he had studied judo. By the time Christine came panting up from the galley, demanding ‘What on earth is going on?’, he had Rollo face down on the deck with one arm twisted painfully behind him.
Putting his lips close to his adversary’s ear he muttered, ‘Don’t say a word! Understand?’
Rollo groaned and nodded and Luke let him get up.
‘What was that all about?’ his sister asked.
‘Nothing much,’ he replied, trying to be casual. Then, seeing he couldn’t get away with that as an explanation, he added. ‘He said something insulting.’
Christine met his gaze and his eyes said plainly, ‘Don’t ask!’ So she shrugged and turned away with a muttered, ‘Boys!’
Luke looked around at Rollo and was surprised to be met with a shamefaced grin and a two-handed gesture, which he took to indicate an apology.
Isabelle was in the cellar, about to remove the radio from its hiding place. She could not take it into the house with the two Germans liable to come in at any minute, but they never came near the cellar and all the workers had gone home long ago. She no longer bothered much with the messages personelles, knowing that there was no chance that her children could have found their way back to England in the short time since that letter had been written; but just listening to the BBC bulletin was a comfort. The Germans were in retreat in North Africa, and Allied air forces controlled the skies over the Mediterranean. At last, the war was turning in their favour.
As she reached into the barrel where the set was hidden, she heard someone come into the cellar behind her. She swung around to see a young man she recognized, through a mass of unkempt hair and beard, as the son of the village cobbler. She had heard rumours that he had gone to the Maquis, so she was not surprised at his appearance; but his presence in her cellar set alarm bells ringing.
‘It’s Louis, isn’t it? Louis Beaupaire? What do you want?’
He came down the cellar steps.
‘I’m sorry if I have given you a fright, Madame. But I have been sent with a message.’
‘A message? Who from?’
‘That doesn’t matter. I have to tell you that tomorrow you will receive a delivery of wine casks. Do not ask where they have come from. Just let the men store them safely in here until we need them.’
‘And what is in these casks?’
‘Ammunition, explosives. Stuff we liberated from a Milice post two days ago. We need somewhere to keep it until the time is ripe to use it.’
‘Are you mad?’ Isabelle’s heart was pounding. ‘Don’t you know I’ve got Germans billeted on me?’
‘Why should they suspect anything? You have purchased some new casks to replace old ones.’
‘And suppose the Germans search? They must be looking for the stuff you stole.’
‘Not stole, Madame! We are not thieves. It is the spoils of war, n’est-ce pas? And if they were to search – two or three barrels, among so many? And as you say, you have soldiers living here. It is the last place they would suspect.’ He glanced over his shoulder and edged towards the door. ‘I have to go. The barrels will arrive tomorrow afternoon. You will be doing your duty as a patriot, Madame.’
With that, he slipped outside. Isabelle followed him to the door and watched as he loped away into the darkness. When she turned back to the cellar, her hands were shaking, but it was clear that she had no option but to comply; the casks would arrive, whether she wanted them or not.
That evening, Hoffmann had returned, grey-faced and wheezing.
‘His chest is worse,’ Schulz confided to Isabelle in the kitchen. ‘He should be in hospital but the Colonel thinks he is swinging the lead and refuses to allow him to go sick.’
‘Why would he be so inhuman?’ Isabelle asked.
‘I think it is an old family dispute. I don’t know the origins of it.’
All night, she could hear the young lieutenant coughing and in the morning it was obvious that he could not report for duty. Schulz went to the château with a message and later on, the medical officer came to visit and signed a note to say that Hoffmann was excused from duties for at least a week. Isabelle was torn between contrary emotions; her maternal instinct responded with relief that this poor boy, enemy or not, was no longer at the mercy of a cruel commander. But she could not forget that later that day, the casks containing the ammunition would be delivered and there was no way she could stop them.
To make matters worse, Hoffmann chose to sit by the open window instead of staying in bed.
‘He finds it easier to breathe sitting up,’ Schulz explained.
In the late afternoon, a horse-drawn wagon rumbled into the yard and two young men Isabelle did not know began to off-load several large casks, and roll them into the cellar. She had managed to send her foreman into Clermont on a spurious errand and the other workers were down among the vines well away from the house, so there was no one to question the reasons for the delivery. But Hoffmann was looking out of the window and raised a hand in salute as she went out to greet the men.
Later that day, Schulz returned from the château carrying a basket, which he proudly emptied on the kitchen table. It contained a gigot of lamb and half a kilo of sausages.
‘I told the cook that the lieutenant was too ill to come to the mess, so I persuaded him to send these. I thought perhaps you could cook them, Madame? And then perhaps you and your father would care to share them with us?’
It was a long time since Isabelle had seen a whole leg of lamb. Roasted and accompanied by potatoes from her vegetable patch, and the first broad beans of the season, it made a delicious meal. She set places for herself, her father and Schulz at the table in the kitchen, but when she took a tray into Hoffmann’s room he begged to be allowed to join them.
‘I am feeling so much stronger, and I should appreciate having some company.’
So they all ate together and Isabelle opened a bottle of one of her better wines. She asked
herself why she was doing this for two men who were not there by invitation, but by the orders of an occupying power; but she was finding it increasingly hard to think of them as the enemy – and besides, it would be a shame not to complement such a generous gift with an equally generous wine.
Her comfortable mood was roughly disrupted when Hoffmann said casually, ‘Those casks I saw being delivered. Do they contain wine? I was under the impression that everything you produce came from your own vines.’
Isabelle remembered what the cobbler’s son had said.
‘No, no. They are empty casks. You are quite right. All our wine is grown here. But you have to remember that this vineyard has been going for many years – hundreds of years, in fact. Some of our casks are very old and one or two are beginning to leak. I heard that one of our neighbours had some casks he no longer wanted, so I bought them to replace the leaky ones.’
Hoffmann seemed satisfied with the explanation, but her father, sitting in his wheelchair at the head of the table, gave a sudden grunt and looked as if he was about to query it. She forestalled him by clearing the plates and setting the last of the previous season’s apples on the table.
But later, when Hoffmann had retired to bed and Schulz was outside smoking, the old man demanded, ‘What was all that about leaking casks? You’ve never mentioned a problem before. Who did you buy them from, anyway?’
She hesitated, then decided there was nothing for it but to lie.
‘They came from the Corbusiers. Apparently the old man bought them some time ago and they’ve never been used. He asked if I wanted them, so I took them to help him out. His vines haven’t done well over the last few seasons.’
‘So what was all that about ours leaking?’
She gritted her teeth. Because her father was immobile and his speech was slurred, it was easy to think that he was not taking everything in, but she knew that in reality very little escaped him.
‘Well, some of them are getting very old,’ she temporized.
He reached out a shaky hand and laid it on her wrist.
‘What are you hiding, Isabelle? What have you got yourself into?’
‘Nothing, papa! We’re just … just storing them for some … some friends. It’s only temporary.’
He gave her a long look, then he turned his head away with a grunt and she knew he had guessed who the ‘friends’ were, and decided it was better not to ask any more questions.
Chapter 10
The Madeleine proceeded on her way without further incident. Luke found that Rollo’s attitude of worldly condescension had been replaced with something which might even be interpreted as respect, and in Christine’s presence he became almost bashful. It dawned on him that Rollo was lonely, trailing up and down the canals with only his father for company, and all his bragging had simply been a ploy to impress someone slightly older and, in his eyes, more sophisticated than himself. Now that a pecking order had been established, he really wanted to be friends. Even Georges Pasquier had mellowed, largely due to Christine’s efforts in the galley. They chugged through peaceful countryside, the hills of the Morvan rising to their right and rich farmland to their left, and the sun shone.
Late that afternoon, they were approaching yet another lock.
‘With any luck,’ Pasquier said, ‘we’ll get through before the keeper goes off duty. Then we can cover another five or six kilometres before we moor up for the night.’
The gates were shut, but a barge had recently passed them in the opposite direction, so they knew the lock must be full. Pasquier sounded his horn as they approached, and the lock-keeper appeared. But instead of opening the gates, he shook his head and pantomimed looking at his watch, implying that they were too late.
Pasquier yelled back, ‘Don’t give me that, you lazy bugger! You’ve got another twenty minutes before you can pack up for the night.’
With bad grace, the keeper opened the gates and the Madeleine slipped into the lock. By now well versed in the routine, Luke and Rollo threw lines around the mooring bollards and wound them around the iron bars, which Luke had learned to call ‘bitts’, to hold her steady while it emptied. Rollo greeted the man cheerfully, but he only growled at them and muttered something about hurrying as he headed for the gates astern.
‘Come on,’ Rollo said. ‘We’d better give him a hand to close the gates.’
‘What’s up with him?’ Luke asked. ‘He seems to be in a bad mood.’
‘Probably got a hot date!’ Rollo said, with a characteristic snigger.
As soon as the gates were shut, the keeper hurried to open the sluices ahead of them. Water surged out of the lock and the Madeleine began to sink with it. Suddenly there was a shout from somewhere to their right, and an almost simultaneous crackle of rifle fire.
The lock-keeper yelled, ‘Get down! Get down!’ and Luke and Rollo leapt from the quayside onto the descending deck and threw themselves flat.
The rifle fire was answered by the rattle of a machine gun from the opposite side of the canal, and they heard shouts and screams in French and German. Christine appeared white-faced from the cabin, and Luke shouted to her to stay inside, while Pasquier crouched on the floor of the wheelhouse.
The fire-fight went on over their heads for several minutes, then stopped as suddenly as it had started.
Luke raised his head and looked at Rollo.
‘What was all that?’
‘Must be the bloody Maquis. Why can’t they leave us alone? I suppose they were planning to blow up the lock but the Germans must have known they were coming somehow.’
‘I wonder what’s happened to the lock-keeper.’
‘Bought it, must have, poor bastard,’ Rollo replied.
Cautiously, Luke got to his feet and grasped the slimy rungs of the ladder on the side of the lock. He climbed slowly, until his head was just above the level of the quay and looked around. To his amazement, the lock-keeper was busy at the wheels which operated the sluices. At his side stood a German officer, laughing and lighting a cigarette.
‘The bastard!’ Rollo had climbed a parallel ladder to take in the scene. ‘Look at him! I bet the Maquis warned him what they were planning and he’s betrayed them to the Boche. Swine!’
‘What can we do?’ Luke asked.
Pasquier was standing on the deck.
‘Nothing. We mind our own business, that’s what we do.’
‘Well, come on! Let’s get these gates opened, or are you planning to sit there all night?’ the lock-keeper shouted.
Luke and Rollo climbed out onto the quay and went to help him. Looking around, Luke was shaken to see several bodies lying at the edge of a field of maize, a short distance from the bank. Two German soldiers were dragging one of them towards the lock; on the opposite side, more soldiers were dismantling a machine gun.
The German officer strolled along the quay and looked down at the Madeleine and Luke froze in terror. In the excitement of the moment, he had forgotten that he had no papers and now there was every likelihood that they would all be asked to produce them.
‘What cargo are you carrying?’ the officer enquired.
‘Stone. For your new airfield outside Auxerre,’ Pasquier replied in surly tones.
‘Ah well, then we had better not detain you,’ the officer said. ‘On your way.’
The gates were open. Luke lowered himself back onto the deck, hardly daring to breathe in case he was called back at the last moment. Rollo followed and the barge glided slowly out into the open water. Nobody spoke until they were well away from the lock. Then Christine came out of the cabin and accosted her brother.
‘What were you thinking of, you idiot, standing up there in full view? You should have been down in the secret cabin.’
‘I know,’ he mumbled. ‘I just forgot for a moment.’
She met his eyes and saw that he was as scared as she had been.
‘Idiot!’ she repeated, and left it at that.
Further on, the scenery changed, with chalk
cliffs rising above the canal to the east until they reached the ancient town of Clamecy, with its winding narrow streets. As they passed under a bridge, Christine noticed a statue of an old man in baggy trousers and a peaked cap, carrying a long staff with a hook at the end.
‘Who is that?’ she asked Rollo.
‘Him? He’s a flotteur. In the old days, they used to bring logs out of the forests in the Morvan and float them all the way to Paris in huge rafts. They clogged up the canal so that barges couldn’t move, until it was made illegal. Good thing it was!’
From here, the canal snaked around in a huge curve until they passed below the heights of Mailly-le-Château. Now the banks were bordered by vine-covered slopes, until the canal merged with the waters of the River Yonne, whose course it had followed all the way from Sardy. On the morning of the sixth day since they boarded the Madeleine, Pasquier said, ‘We’ll be in Auxerre by midday. What are your plans?’
Luke and Christine looked at each other and she felt a sudden hollowness in her chest.
‘I’m not sure,’ Luke responded. ‘We need to find a boat going up the Rhône au Rhin, but I suppose we will have to go to Laroche Migennes before we can do that.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s a pity we can’t use the bikes. But I suppose they have to be handed back to the company that lent them.’
Pasquier shrugged. ‘Not necessarily. They were lent for the purpose of helping people to escape, so they would still be being used for that purpose. But don’t be too hasty to make a decision. Once we’ve delivered this load, we shall have to wait and see if the Boche want us to go back for another or if there is anything going in your direction. If we can get a cargo for Dijon, or somewhere along the Doubs, we might be able to take you further.’
‘Would you do that?’ Christine asked in surprise. ‘It would be wonderful if you could, but we don’t expect you to change your plans to suit us.’
‘Oh, we go where the cargo takes us,’ Pasquier said. ‘I wouldn’t mind a change of scene – and I quite like the idea of keeping my resident cook!’
Christine looked at her brother and felt a small flush of pride, which was rapidly displaced by a nagging anxiety; Pasquier had spoken confidently but she found it hard to believe that he would really go out of his way to help them.
