by Lou Cadle
Another long pause, and then the man said, “Agreed. I drive you into town, let you out, and I won’t look at your face. You can sit in the back seat. And your friend.”
“Thank you.” she said. “It’ll take me a few minutes.” She ran back to Claude. “He’s giving us a ride. Do you want to come along?”
“No. I can make it back to town on my own. Best not to risk all three of us. Best that he doesn’t recognize me, as he is likely from town. What if we know each other?”
“I’ll take the radio and my things. If he sees it and says no, I’ll leave them by the road. Take them in that case.”
“This could be a mistake,” he said. “It’s a real risk.”
“I know,” she said. “But it’s Will’s best chance. I’ll try to get him to the place we talked about, though it might take me two or three days with him so hurt.”
“Good luck.”
“Vive la France,” she said, and she hauled out the radio and valise and ran with them to the car, the heavy radio case banging into her thighs.
When she made it back to the man, he said, “What are you carrying?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Is it more explosives? I don’t want my car to explode.”
“No, nothing like that. It’s all I own, clothes and so on.”
“This may be a mistake.”
“It could be one for me. And whichever one of is making the mistake, we’re making a deadly one.”
“Yes,” he said, “or neither of us is.” He shook his head, but it wasn’t a refusal. “Get in the back. Where is the friend you spoke of?”
“Turn around, drive about two hundred yards, and I’ll get him.” That was as close to Will as the road came.
When she shut herself inside the car, she thought she knew a little of what it might be like when a prison door shut. If she was wrong about this man, he could speed along the road, too fast to allow her to jump out, and deliver her straight back to German headquarters. But what better choice did she have? If she helped Will to walk three or four miles before dawn, she’d be lucky. And she might hurt him more in forcing him to walk. “Here,” she said, when the car was at about the right place. She hesitated about leaving the radio in the back seat, but she needed both hands to help Will.
She ran to where she’d left Will, hoping to not hear the car engine rev up and take off with her wireless set. But it didn’t, and she found Will right where she had left him, lying on the ground, eyes closed. She shook his shoulder gently. “Hurry. We have a ride.”
“Oh,” he said. “Yes. I’m up.”
She hauled him to a seated position. “Let’s get you on your feet again.”
“You bet. Or d’accord.”
“And when we get to the car, try not to talk. Your French accent is getting worse, if that is even possible.” She managed to haul him upright and steady him.
“Which way?”
“This way,” she said, keeping her arm around his waist. He staggered at first, but then caught a rhythm, if a slow one, and put one foot in front of the other.
“Did I tell you I didn’t say anything to the Krauts?”
“You’re a hero, Will. Now shush—we’re getting close to the car.”
She helped him into the back seat, and he promptly fell over. She let him lie there and climbed in after him, shutting the door. “Ready,” she said.
“D’accord,” he said again, sleepily.
“Shh,” she said, not a warning, but like a mother might quiet a child. She patted his leg.
They rode in silence for a few minutes, and she marveled at how much more quickly the landscape passed than when she’d been pulling that damned cart.
“You should have warned other people the bridge was out,” their rescuer said.
“Yes,” she said. “That would have been best.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Too little time.”
“I wonder what was in the car in the river.”
“You didn’t want to know, I thought.”
He sighed. “I can’t help but know some things. There’s a German car down there in the stream. Concrete and rocks scattered all around. You blew up the bridge, you either killed the Germans or they died in the wreck, and I assume this fellow in my car was the reason, or he’s a German himself.”
He wasn’t a stupid man, but she said nothing.
“Probably not a German. I’m guessing he might be a downed pilot. English.”
That was a reasonable thing for him to think.
“I’ve heard of the Résistance smuggling them back to England.”
“And what do you think of that?” she said.
“I think it must be dangerous work.”
“It would be dangerous work, if it happens,” she said.
“There is a convention about prisoners of war,” he said sternly, as if lecturing her on the matter.
“Good. I’m glad to hear it. Please tell that to the Nazis.”
He harrumphed at that. “I doubt it’ll come up.” He steered them around a curve. “I have no friendly conversations with the occupiers.” He said, “The south road is coming up. I can drive a half-mile beyond it, but not all the way into town. Will that be good?”
“It is more than most would do, and I thank you for it.”
“I imagine that the fields just to the west of town might be a better place for you to be than the main streets.”
She tensed at that, for it was where she was headed at first. “Why?”
“They are flat. I would think that if an English aeroplane is to land to collect a pilot, it might do it there. Or north is possible. But west is possible too, I think.”
It would be safer for him if he did less thinking and more driving. She didn’t like how much he had been asking, or guessing, and she thought for a moment about taking out her knife and killing him when he stopped. There would be no chance, then, of him reporting their location to the Germans. And she’d have a car.
But she didn’t want to repay a kindness with such a betrayal, no matter that it might be the wisest idea.
He said, “What I think I’ll do is skirt around town here and take you to the west a mile or two, and I’ll leave you there.”
“Whatever you wish. I’m grateful for any help.”
“I’ll do that then. And then I’ll go home, and pour myself a beer, and I’ll forget the half hour of my life happened.”
“That would be best.”
“I understand.”
She hadn’t meant for it to be a threat, but he must have heard it in her voice, for he spoke again.
“I understood it when I offered to drive you.” He took a turn down a lane she was not familiar with. “I would like to go home to my children.”
“You will. We are not enemies. I believe we are both enemies of the same destructive force.”
“I’d rather not be the enemy of anyone. I’d rather live my life in peace. Life brings us troubles enough, yes?”
“It does,” she said.
Just after they crossed the train tracks with a double bump, he took another turn, down a rough dirt road. “This comes out right beyond the old market. Do you know it?”
“No,” she said. She shook Will awake.
“What?” he said.
In French, she said, slowly, “It’s almost time to leave.” She hoped he understood it.
The man pulled over a minute later, and she opened her door. She put her valise and radio out first, and then helped Will out. She stuck her head back in and said, “You probably saved his life. Thank you.”
“He seems hurt.”
“Never doubt that Nazis are the enemy. Not only of France, but of decency,” she said. “Keep safe. Vive la France.” And she shut the door, leaving the man alive, and hoping it was the right decision.
Nevertheless, she wanted to get Will as far away from this spot as she could, and quickly, in case the man thought better of his acts and reported them to the gend
armes. “We have to walk,” she said to Will, “and it has to be fast. You need to save enough of yourself so that you can run into the woods or a ditch if I say. Do you understand?”
“I can’t run. I can barely walk.”
She went over to him and grabbed his arm and squeezed it.
He winced.
She made her voice hard. “If I say to run, you will run. Do you understand me?”
“Jesus, let go,” he said. “They kicked me there too.”
She let go. “I’m sorry, but you need to listen. Do what I say, and we might survive the night.”
“Do you have any water?”
She felt terrible, both about hurting him and because she hadn’t thought to bring water. Or food. “No. I’m sorry. We might pass a pump. We’ll be staying off the road as much as possible for most of the night. For now, though, let’s use this one.” They surely had ten minutes of safety, even if the man drove straight to the government offices and tried to speak to someone in charge. There were probably forms to fill out. They might have as much as a half-hour, and she planned to use it wisely. Shouldering both her bags, she kept a hand lightly on Will’s arm. “Keep up,” she said.
“I would love a real bed,” he said.
“Who knows what the night will bring?” She set a pace that was too slow by far for her needs, but it pushed Will to the limit.
He lasted less than ten minutes until he stopped. “I can’t.”
“You must. Please,” she said.
“Kiss me,” he said.
“What?”
“If they capture me again, I want to have the memory. I found out, you see, that when they torture you, a memory can be a lifeline. You cling to it, and the pain fades. It doesn’t stop, oh no. But the pain is forced to share your attention with something good and fine.”
“I shouldn’t. We shouldn’t.”
“It might be the last decent memory I can make. And I care for you. I feel something for you.”
“I know,” she said, unwilling to lie to him. “And I for you.”
“One kiss,” he said. “My injuries preclude anything more.”
That made her want to laugh, though there was nothing funny about it. It was the way he said it, that mix of directness and the tone that was poking fun at himself, especially when his situation was deadly serious. “One kiss,” she said, and she dropped the bags and pressed her hands to his chest.
He grasped her shoulders—out of a need for balance more than passion, she thought—and bent to her. She lifted her face and their lips met. His were swollen, more damage from his beatings, with a faint taste of blood, and though her inclination was to press into him, to lean into a passion she could feel wanting to explode if only she let go of her control a tiny bit, she held back and kept her touch gentle. It went no farther than that, just lips against lips, but she could feel his soul speaking to hers through that touch.
This was wrong at so many levels. What they felt was because of the situation, the excitement of running from danger, she told herself. Giving into it was wrong because they should focus on the mission, not on such feelings. It was wrong because it made them both more vulnerable to torture and threat. But that was her mind talking. Her heart said something else, and her body. For a moment, Antonia followed her heart.
He pulled back first. “There,” he said, his voice rough. “That should keep me for another few sessions with the Gestapo.”
“We’ll do our best to make sure you don’t have another,” she said. “Can you walk a bit more now?”
“I’ll try,” he said.
They managed to get over a mile, and then there was a patch of trees ahead, visible in the moonlight. They’d lucked out with no cars passing, but that luck might not hold. “I want to go over there, in the trees,” she said. “You need to rest, and we’ll be well hidden there.”
He grunted. He hadn’t said anything in fifteen or twenty minutes, and she had the feeling that he was saving all his energy for putting one foot in front of the other. She could stand putting down the radio for a minute as well and resting from that burden. She’d swear the weight of it was making her arm longer.
They made it to the woods, and she felt around to find a soft spot for him. She helped him lie down and put his head on her valise. “It’s a lumpy pillow, I know,” she said.
“No worse than where I slept. When they let me sleep.”
“Nap if you want. I’ll wake you in a half hour, and we’ll go another mile.”
“Another mile? We just walked at least five.” That was the last he said, and soon his breaths were slow and even. He was asleep.
They had not walked anywhere near five miles. Though the ride from the stranger had helped, they were many miles from her final destination, and it was clear they’d not make that by dawn. Her two options were to let him sleep in some copse of trees like this one all day tomorrow, or to try and make it to a safe place indoors.
The barn might just be reachable, with luck, with work. She hated using it again, and she knew Claude might not approve, but she didn’t know of any other safe space. Outdoors was not as safe. Someone might glimpse them in the woods. Someone might be hunting for spring mushrooms and stumble over them. But could he make it all the way to the barn? It was at least another three miles, probably nearer four, and he would go more slowly and need longer rest periods with each leg of the journey.
The man who had given them a ride seemed not to have turned them in, for no cars passed on the road as they rested. The Nazis surely would be out hunting if they knew. She was doubly grateful she hadn’t killed the driver for his kindness. She was happy about killing the Nazis, and felt no regret for it, but anyone who was a friend of the Résistance, or even a friend of basic human kindness, she did not want to harm.
One day, should she survive this, she hoped she would look back upon the woman who had reveled at clawing a Nazi’s eyes out and see her as something else, an aberration in an otherwise decent life. She hoped she hadn’t crossed some line and changed herself forever.
She caught the thought and what it meant. She had come here expecting to die—to die in a very short time. She had welcomed the idea of death, welcomed an end to her suffering. But now she wanted to live again, to move beyond these months in France, to come out the other end, to have a “forever.” To find, if she was lucky, a normal life again, with perhaps a husband, and children. To love and be loved. To work and to make a home. To putter in the garden, put in young grape vines and pear trees and watch them mature into their bearing years. To paint the vines in oil on canvas, to pick the pears and paint them sitting alongside a blue pitcher in her own home, somewhere safe from war. All of that. She wanted it all.
The wanting was bittersweet. And Will, lying there snoring softly, was bittersweet to her as well. If she cared for him—and she did—she should hide it from him. Because he would leave on a plane in a few days, if she could arrange it, and she would still probably die. Six weeks—that was the average life expectancy Miss Atkins had given her—and she had less than four more weeks of it left to live. When she died, she’d leave Will bereft, as she had been left, hollow with grief. So it was better to let her head rule over her heart, to steel herself against her own desires, her own softness, for his sake. No more kisses. Just keep him alive until he could be rescued.
It was time to wake him and move again. She’d heard no cars pass in the half hour she’d let him sleep.
They made another mile, or nearly so, but it took them nearly twice as long. The full moon passed from behind them to in front of them, lighting their way. It was well past midnight, then, when they stopped again. She waited until he fell asleep, and then she took her radio and walked for twenty minutes away from him, away from the road, stumbling through fields and a brackish area, climbing over a fence, and stopping when she came upon a well with a roof next to a squat tree. There were no farm buildings nearby. This would do.
She climbed up onto the well’s stone edge and kno
cked on the wood, then pushed and pulled at it. It should hold her weight. She climbed back down and opened the radio, unfolding the antenna, then re-folding it so it was in a squared loop that she hung over her shoulder. The top of the well let her reach a tree limb, and she strung the antenna up the well roof and pushed it into the tree, still devoid of leaves. The branches were sturdy and close to one other, and she was able to stretch the antenna up into the air and hook the end on a fork in the tree. She hoped it was high enough to get her signal out clearly.
She lit a candle, for her torch was gone, and used the light to code a quick message: Bernard is ill, was in hospital, but is out now. He is anxious to be home. Wire soon about meeting his 10:00 train.
“In hospital” always meant captured. 10:00 p.m. was not code but when she would listen for directions, and the p.m. was assumed unless she specified otherwise. “Soon” meant two days, while “soonest” meant one day. So in two days, at 10:00 p.m. she’d listen for the extraction plan. If they didn’t send for some reason, she’d listen two days after that, at 11:00, an hour after the first arranged time. If they didn’t send then, she’d wire them with a more urgent message.
She checked her coding again, took out the wireless key, and sent the message twice. It took only a couple of minutes. There is no way the Germans would be able to find a transmission location with a message that short. A fixed listening station might be able to point vaguely at where she was, but it would have no idea if she was one, five, or twenty-five miles distant. In any case, as soon as she was back with Will, she wouldn’t be there any longer.
As she thought of Will and his injuries—they kicked him that much, her rage came back to her.
She tapped out a final message, plain text, in English. “Bugger the Gestapo. And Adolf too.”
She clicked off the radio and felt immediate embarrassment. It was against every protocol. Was she the same age as Genevieve? She would—and should—catch hell for that. But it was done now.
She burned the paper and silk, climbed back up to take down the antenna, and re-packed the radio. Her pulled calf muscle ached more and more, but she compared it to how Will was hurting and ignored it. She hoped Claude was well, that he was making his way back to town, and that his hand would be taken care of.
