by Nevil Shute
Charles said: “I am deeply grateful, monsieur, for the warning. These places I am going to — Lorient, Audierne, Douarnenez, and Morgat — are they bad?”
The agent said: “Not Lorient, nor Audierne. Morgat is too small for much to happen there. But in Douarnenez, monsieur, it is most difficult. Those fishing people will not understand the new regime. Each week there is some new trouble, each week there is an execution by the Germans, sometimes several. And it has no effect... But for the fishing industry and for the food that they bring in, the town would have been bombarded by the Germans from the air, and razed down to the ground. I have heard German officers say so.”
“It is as bad as that?”
“It is bad as it could be, monsieur. Life is terrible for people in Douarnenez just now. You must be very, very careful there.”
Charles went that afternoon to Lorient, put up at the Hotel Bellevue, and reported himself next morning to the German commandant. He was coldly received, and was informed that work of great importance was completely stopped. He was questioned sharply about the day that he had spent in Brest; it did not seem to the Germans necessary at all that he should have wasted time in visiting his agent. They gave him a good dressing down, then took him to the harbour in a Renault van.
The cement was stacked in heaps in its sacks in a shed overlooking the estuary. He set to work with one Breton lad to help him, numbering the sacks, making a sample briquette in a little mould from each sack, and leaving it to dry. He worked all day. Once or twice, when nobody was looking, he mingled a little of the sample powder from Corbeil into a briquette.
In the late afternoon he was taken down to see the sacks upon the job. He passed along new quays and under arches of new concrete, stepped over piles of girders and steel reinforcement, walked round great heaps of wooden shuttering. He dared not glance in each direction more than once; that one glance was sufficient, if he could remember. His mind was crowded with the detail he observed. He must, must keep it clear. With each glance he tried to memorize the picture of what lay before him so that he might reconstruct it in the night.
They took him to the ready-use cement store, and he set to work again to make briquettes of the sacks there. As he performed the simple job he indexed in his mind what he had seen. Seven bays each holding two U-boats, held up on columns one metre twenty-five square section, each with two I beams in the centre, each I beam forty-five by fifteen centimetres, wrapped round with twenty-kilogram reinforcement. Each bay a hundred metres long and twenty metres wide, and six columns to each bay. The weight of roof could be deduced from that alone. But keep that detail in his mind, treasure it. God, let him not forget!
His task finished, he was free to go till the next day; it took twenty-four hours for the briquettes to dry. He walked back up the quays. Fifteen-metre girders, each one metre twenty deep — they would be the longitudinal horizontals between columns. Each girder built of webs and angles, each angle twenty centimetres by twenty, each web twenty-two millimetres thick. Mary, Mother of God, help him to remember!
Shuttering for the arches of the twenty-metre bays — radius of arch thirty to thirty-five metres, each arch about one metre eighty wide. He glanced up casually to the half-completed job, and looked down at the quay. Say two tons eighty of forty kilogramme reinforcement to each arch. Fifty by twelve I beams for the purlins between arches, ten or eleven purlins to each arch. Over the purlins, six layers of twenty-kilogramme reinforcement buried in the concrete of the roof, the layers separated by about fifteen centimetres. Jesus, give him a clear head to sort out and disentangle all that he had seen!
He did not dine that night because food dulls the brain. He went up to his room in the hotel and lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling in the hard light of the one unshaded lamp. He would not, must not think of anything except design. This was no amateur erection that he had seen. He knew that at a glance. Whoever had designed it had had much experience in structures of that sort. That made Charles Simon’s job more possible, for everything would have a reason. Each girder and each column would be made sufficient for the loads imposed upon it and no more; the strength of one part would show him the strength of the rest, when he had understood the matter rightly. And all in turn would lead him to the weight and thickness of the roof, as yet unbuilt, if he could keep a clear mind and remember all that he had seen.
He set himself to find the gaps, the links in the chain of the structure that he had not thought to look at. The list of points that he must memorize to-morrow, his last visit to the quays. Then he got up and wrote in pencil on a little ivorine tablet all the dimensions he had noticed, and set to work to learn what he had written off by heart, as he had learnt poetry when he was a boy at Shrewsbury. Finally, at about midnight, he expunged what he had written from the tablet with a wet corner of his towel, and lay down on his bed, still repeating his lesson to himself. Presently, in the middle of his repetition, he dropped off to sleep. When he woke up at dawn, alert and desperately hungry, he was still repeating it.
He went down to the main cement store later in the day and started to break his briquettes with a little shot-weighing machine that he had brought with him. A German officer of Pioneers was there to watch him as he worked. Of about two hundred sacks, seven proved to be defective, with fractures much below the specification strength for the briquette. Charles had the offending sacks sorted out and opened one at the neck. He took a handful of the cement, rubbed it between his fingers, smelt it, and nodded.
He turned to the German officer. “I regret this infinitely, Herr Oberleutnant,” he observed. “But there it is. See for yourself.”
The German rubbed some in his hands and nodded wisely.
“Such things happen in any factory from time to time,” said Charles apologetically. “But all the rest may now be cleared for use.”
Seven sacks of perfectly good cement were sent down to the breakwater to form part of the sea wall, sacks and all. Charles was taken down to the ready-use store again.
Footings for the columns seven metres by seven metres, apparently on sand or gravel bottom. A squad of carpenters knocking up one-metre-eighty shuttering — would that be the depth of the roof? Great boxes full of thirty-millimetre bolts — where did they go, what members did they join? And what were all these tons and tons of angles, all fifteen-centimetre angles? Where did they come in? And all those seven-millimetre strips?
In the ready-use store every briquette passed its test well above specification strength, possibly because Charles had been under close supervision the previous afternoon, down there upon the job. The German officer was very pleased, and genuinely cordial as they walked back along the quay.
One last look round. An indication of something similar in a very early stage of construction upon the other side of the river, exactly in a line between the church of Plouarget and the tall chimney at the gasworks. A boom across the entrance to the river between Plouarget and Creusec, turned back for ships to enter, and with one guard-ship. What seemed to be an oil-tanker beside the quay two hundred metres down-stream from the bridge. Five naval motor-launches. Two large twin-engined float seaplanes moored out to buoys. Two salvage ships...
He left Lorient that afternoon and went to Audierne. He must go through with his trip in all sincerity, for on the coast of Brittany he was under observation the whole time. There was only a matter of five tons or so to test at Audierne. He condemned three sacks, apologized to the commandant on behalf of the S.A.F.C. de Corbeil, and left for Douarnenez two days later.
It was February, and though the days were beginning to get longer, it was still quite dark by six o’clock. From Audierne to Douarnenez is not much more than fifteen miles, but the direct railway line was closed to all civilian traffic, and Charles had to make a long detour through Quimper. Here he had a long, indeterminate wait upon the station platform for a train that was indefinitely late.
He went into the buffet and drank a cup of bitter coffee. The place was ill-ventilate
d, smelly and cheerless; outside the night was mild, even warm. It was fine and starry. He went out on to the platform and began walking up and down.
Presently he fell into conversation with a priest, a man perhaps fifty years of age, in shabby black canonicals.
They talked as they walked up and down. The priest, Charles learned, was travelling to Douarnenez from a seminary at Pontivy; he was on his way to take up a new cure in the great Church of Ste-Hélène in the middle of the town. He told Charles quite simply the reason for the vacancy that he was to fill. His predecessor had been executed by the Germans.
“You understand,” he said ingenuously, “that in my calling one is sometimes in a difficult position, more difficult than I anticipated when as a young man I joined the Order.”
In the dim light of the stars Charles glanced curiously at his companion. Was this just the folly of an unworldly old man, or was it — courage? He could not resist the endeavour to find out.
“A middle course is usually possible,” he said. He was mindful of the warning that he had received in Brest. “The Germans, after all, are men like ourselves. It is not necessary always to be finding means to irritate them.”
The priest said very quietly: “The Germans are not people like ourselves. They are creatures of the Devil, vowed to idolatry, and followers of Mithras. If you deny that, you deceive yourself, my son.”
Charles did not wish to argue; they walked a few paces in silence. Then the priest spoke again.
“I am not one of those who consider matters of the earthly sphere,” he said. “Our life and our hope of things to come lie not in this world. I do not think it matters very much who exercises dominion over these fields of France, whether our race, or the Germans, or even the English, who in bygone times ruled here for a century. The Church does not concern herself with conquests of that sort. We fight against the conquest of the soul.”
Half-heartedly Charles tried to turn the conversation into safer channels. “The Germans have their Lutheran religion,” he said. “The English also, and the Americans, and the Dutch. I do not see much difference.”
The man said: “The English are not members of the true Church. They worship Jesus Christ in a foolish and misguided way, and as a social usage rather than a true belief. Yet they do worship, and they have no other gods. And so it is with all the other countries that you name. But not with Germany.”
“So much the worse for them, father,” said Charles.
“You do not understand, my son,” the priest replied. “To gain their temporal ends the Germans first destroy the souls of men. The Church thinks little of the temporal end. The Church will fight to save the souls of men from everlasting torment, and by the Grace of God she will emerge victorious.”
There was no turning him, Charles thought. There were few people on the platform in the night, and none at all the far end beneath the signal lights, where they were pacing up and down under the stars.
“Lies and deceit in every form,” said the old priest. “Sexual immorality weakening the body, bribery, false witness, selfishness, corruption, sloth, and all the petty minor sins that weaken character. These are the things that Germany has sown in Frenchmen, save in small corners of the country such as we have here. These are the weapons with which Germany fights wars. First they destroy the souls of men and then they occupy the country. Against that we are set; against that we will fight.
“And do not think,” he said, “that these things come from facile cleverness called Propaganda. All in this world, my son, descends from God, or it ascends from Satan in the Pit. These things that I have spoken of, these things that Germany has put into the souls of Frenchmen, do not come from God, whose servant I have been for forty years. They come from Satan and his messenger at Berchtesgaden.”
They walked on in silence for a minute. Charles was deeply impressed, yet with shrewd realism it seemed to him that there might be another vacancy at Douarnenez before so very long.
“These things are bred of sheer idolatry and witchcraft,” the priest said presently. “They have cast out and persecuted their own Lutherans. They make sacrifices of living goats to Satan on their hill-tops in the night; they bow down to the false gods of war, to Mithras and to Moloch. In their unholy Sabbaths they sit down in conference, and from their conference is born the sins and infamies that they now call political warfare. But these are works of Satan; black magic, and the products of the Pit.”
A little wind swept past them in the starry night. Charles said: “But, father, what can simple people do?”
“Pray to Almighty God in all humility,” the old priest said. “Turn to the Faith, and watch that you fall not into the pit that has been digged for you.”
They paced up and down in silence for a few minutes. A cool, fresh wind blew inland from the sea; the stars were very bright and quiet above. “Mother Church,” the old man said at last, “has given us no guidance upon the matter temporal. Yet age by age the wisdom of the Church remains unaltered, my son. There is not one truth in one century, and then another in a later age. Truth and the Laws of God endure through all the ages of the world. That is so, is it not?”
Charles said quietly: “That is true. If it were otherwise we should be lost indeed.”
The old man nodded his agreement. “Each one of us must seek for his own guidance, and at Pontivy in my retreat I have spent many, many days and weeks praying to God for guidance on the road that I must tread. And presently, my son, it was revealed to me that since Truth must endure it is not necessary for guidance to be given more than once. Mother Church speaks once, and that truth then endures through all the ages of the years for those who seek in humbleness to find it.”
They paced on. Charles did not speak.
The priest said: “So humbly, and in long, long hours of prayer I sought for guidance in the matter temporal, where evil men are dominant, perverting the souls of men for their own ends by sorcery and the black arts that they have studied to perform. And presently I saw that this was no new thing, this struggle against heresy arising from the East. Black magic and the foul infamies of Satan have arisen in past ages, and in past ages Holy Church has called up spiritual powers, and weapons temporal, to beat them down. It is all in the old books, for those to whom faith gives the faculty of understanding.”
Charles said: “I have not gained that faith, father, nor that understanding.” He spoke very quietly. “Is there a weapon temporal for me?” As he spoke there came a fleeting image of the man in Brest and of the warnings that he had received. He knew himself to be venturing among great risks, and he dismissed them from his mind.
The old man said: “I do not know, my son. Yet in past centuries the Church wielded one great cleansing weapon against heresy and infamy and all idolatry, a weapon that sweeps all before it, before which Anti-Christ and all the devils of the Pit recoil. That in past ages was the wisdom of the Church, my son. It is the wisdom still.”
“What is this weapon temporal, then, father?”
The priest said: “It is fire.”
He turned and faced Charles Simon. “So in the past the Holy Inquisition fought the battle against heresy, idolatry, and witchcraft, with faith in God and with the weapon temporal of fire. With that faith and that weapon they beat down the devils seeking to destroy the souls of men. Through that faith and that weapon men’s souls may again be saved from all the dangers that beset them now.”
The priest, facing him, laid his hand upon the designer’s arm. “That is the truth of God,” he said. “For the weak in faith there is an evidence.” He dropped his voice and glanced round furtively. “Listen, my son, and I will tell you what I know.”
In the dim light they bent together. “There was a brother of my Order,” said the priest. “He was in Belgium, at Ostend, in September last, four months after the Occupation. For those four months he watched the Germans as they trained their troops to sail in barges for the invasion of England — men and guns and motor-bicycles and cars and tank
s, and men again, all entering and disembarking from the barges. And finally, my son, the day arrived — September the 16th.”
Charles said in a whisper: “What happened then?”
“God in His mercy laid His hand upon the English,” the priest whispered in the dark. “They are not of the true Faith, but the Lord God is generous to all sincere misunderstanding, and He led them to the weapon temporal. The barges were three hours from land when British bombers of the Royal Air Force came upon them and dived on the barges, dropping upon them drums of oil and small incendiary bombs. Wave upon wave of aeroplanes came out from England strong in the power of the Lord, oil and incendiary bombs, oil and bombs. And the drums burst on the barges and the oil flowed into them, and the bombs set all on fire so that they blazed fiercely on the water, and the English dropped more oil into the flames.”
Charles drew in his breath sharply.
The priest drew back a little. “For ten whole days the bodies came ashore upon the beaches,” he said in a low tone. “Choked in the blazing oil, burned, suffocated, and drowned in their vile sins and infamy. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, every day, and the Germans buried them among the sand-hills of the beaches like dead animals, that none might know how they had met their end. Yet it was known all over Belgium and all through the German armies of the Netherlands within a day.”
There was a short silence. “Before that power of fire all powers of heresy, idolatry, and witchcraft must recoil,” the old man said. “It is not given to us to understand the choice of the Lord’s instruments, why He revealed His mercy to the English rather than to us, any more than it is given to us to understand His choice of the Hebrew race in ages past. I only know that by that temporal power the Germans suffered a defeat, the first that they have suffered in this war. Before that power the powers of Mithras were thrown back.”
