by Nevil Shute
The truth of what he had been told in Brest was evident to Charles. This town continued to exist simply and solely because the Germans could not do without the food that it produced. But for that fact the Germans would have wiped out every house. The people of the town knew this quite well. They played their cards up to the limit, venting their scorn and hate upon the Germans in a thousand ways and purchasing immunity with the loads of tunny and sardines that they brought in.
At curfew Charles went back to his hotel. He slept little that night; once or twice he heard the sound of shots that echoed down the streets. There was an atmosphere of brooding evil over all the place that left him utterly appalled: in his experience of France after the occupation he had come on nothing similar to this in any way.
Next day he broke his samples of cement and condemned four sacks, made his report and the apologies of the firm to the commandant, and left for Paris on the midday train. He got there very late at night, turned into a small hotel, and slept heavily and well.
On the following morning he went for coffee to the Café de l’Arcade in the Boulevard de Sévigné. The head waiter served him, an elderly man with a drooping grey moustache. He wore a faded green dress suit.
Charles said: “That is a handsome suit that you have on to-day. It only needs one thing to set it off. If I wore that I should want to have red buttons on the coat.”
The man shot a quick glance around the room. Then he said quietly:
“Monsieur Simon, I presume.”
* * * * *
Charles Simon landed in England forty-eight hours later. He had spent part of the intervening time in the cellar of the Café de l’Arcade, and he had spent part of it beside the driver of a German ammunition lorry, going north. In the dark night he had commenced his flight and had landed shortly before dawn at an aerodrome in Berkshire, a very frightened man.
A subaltern was there to meet him with a car. He was given a light meal of sandwiches and coffee in the mess, and in the early light of dawn they started on the road. It was February, and a wet, windy dawn; the air was cold and raw. They spoke very little in the car. Once the subaltern passed him a silver hunting-flask of whisky and they both took a long drink; the neat spirit heartened him, and he felt better for it.
At about ten o’clock they drove up to the same dilapidated old country house that he had been taken to before, full of the same soldiers. It seemed to him that he had hardly been away a day, though it was a full two months since he had been there. He was taken into the same mess and given breakfast. Then he was shown into the same bare little office, and interviewed by the same major and the same capitaine of the Free French.
The major rose and shook his hand; the capitaine rose and bowed stiffly from the waist. The major said: “Did you get to Lorient?”
The designer nodded. “I was there on Thursday of last week.”
“And did you see the shelters?”
He said: “I saw the shelters.” Very briefly he outlined to them an account of his journey through Brittany. “I think I saw all that you want to know,” he said.
The major passed a sheet of paper across to him, with a pencil. “You’d better sit there quietly, and put down the details of the structure.”
The designer demurred. “I cannot think like that,” he said, “Even if I could, that way would not be useful to your engineers. Get me a drawing-board and a T-square, and a good roll of tracing-paper. In twenty-four hours you shall have proper working drawings of the thing that any engineer can understand.”
They got him these things in an hour or two, and gave him a table in a quiet office. He took the tools of his profession eagerly; they made him feel at home. He spread the backing-paper with a light heart and pinned it down, spread the thin tracing-paper, and began to work.
He worked on till he was called for lunch, snatched a quick meal, and went back to the board. He was happy as he worked that afternoon, unburdening his memory and putting it all down on paper. As the lines of the structure grew before him the pieces of the puzzle fell together; it was quite clear now to him what the fifteen-centimetre angles did and where the seven-millimetre strips came in. They filled the missing links of structure, evident now that it was down in hard, neat pencil lines, in black and white.
From time to time the officers came in and stood behind him, watching the drawings growing under his neat fingers. They brought him tea and pieces of cake to the drawing-board; he would not stop again to eat. In the early evening Brigadier McNeil came in and Simon had to stand up at the board to answer a few questions and expound the drawing; it irked him to interrupt the currents of his thought, but he did not dare to offend the man who had promised to secure him a commission as a British officer.
The brigadier looked critically at what he had done. “The Air Ministry must have a print of this immediately …” He paused, running his eye over the unfinished details. “You make a beautiful drawing, Mr. Simon.”
The designer smiled faintly. “Is it good enough,” he asked anxiously, “to get me a commission in the Royal Engineers?”
The hard, china-blue eyes of the brigadier looked at him, noting the lean, intelligent face, the straight black hair, the quick, rather nervous movements of the artist hands. “I think it is,” he said. “I’ll get a paper going about that to-morrow, Mr. Simon.”
“Thank you, sir.” He hesitated. “I really do know a good bit about coastal fortifications that might be useful to you.” He turned again to the drawing and became immersed in it; the officers watched him for a time and then left him to his work.
He worked on far into the night. At about two in the morning he finished the third and last sheet of details, drew a border round the edge, and handed in the lot to the British major. Together they put them in an envelope and gave them to the despatch rider; then Charles was taken to a bedroom. In a quarter of an hour he was deeply asleep, exhausted and relieved of the burden of his work.
They left him to sleep late. At about ten o’clock in the morning he awoke and lay for a few minutes staring round the darkened room, till he remembered where he was. Then he got up and went down to the mess, and managed to secure a cup of coffee. It embarrassed him to find that he had no money whatsoever, barring unnegotiable francs, as he discovered on asking for a packet of cigarettes. He went to find the major in his office.
An hour later they had him in for another interview, the major and Brigadier McNeil. This time they wanted a complete account of everything that he had seen and done in France since he had made his parachute descent. He told them everything that he could remember.
At the end the brigadier said thoughtfully: “Douarnenez seems to be in a queer state.”
Charles said: “It is a town that is going mad.”
The major said: “What do you mean by that?”
The designer shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “I don’t know that that’s the right word to use. But they don’t seem like ordinary people there, at all. They don’t seem to think in the same way, even.” He paused, noticing that neither of the soldiers really understood what he was driving at. “I mean, like when that old man said you had to deal with lice with a blow-lamp.…” His voice tailed off into silence.
The brigadier said: “Their minds seem to run on fire. The priest at the railway station, and your fisherman both talked of fire.”
“And the little waxen image of the commandant,” said the major. “That had its feet melted away—by fire.”
There was a little silence. The brigadier said: “Can you imagine anything behind this talk of fire?”
Charles shook his head. “I think it’s simply hate,” he said. “Burning and scorching are the most painful, the most horrible things that they could do to Germans, so their minds are running in that way. And in the background of their minds that thought of fire, subconscious, colours everything they do or say. I tell you, sir, they aren’t like ordinary chaps.”
The brigadier nodded. “That’s probably the truth of it. We�
�ll just have to leave it at that.”
I do not know a great deal about the next three months of Charles Simon’s life. He was commissioned almost immediately into the Royal Engineers as a first lieutenant, and shortly afterwards he was promoted to captain. He worked for a time at Chatham upon coast-defence projects, but the next thing I really know about his movements is that he was sent down to Dartmouth, at the beginning of May.
He had a job of work to supervise there on the foreshore, just outside the mouth of the harbour. What it was I do not know. It kept him down there for about a month, and for that time he lived in a billet half-way up the hill towards St. Petrox.
He was still slightly uneasy in his uniform, though desperately proud of it. He knew that he was foreign in his ways and he sought out the company of other officers to study them. Dartmouth at that time was stiff with officers, mostly young naval officers who came into town each evening from trawlers and M.L.s. The Royal Sovereign on the quay was the hotel they favoured most, and Simon was usually to be found in a remote corner of the bar, sipping a pint of heavy English beer, watching, and learning. He did not very often talk to anybody.
He was there after dinner one warm summer night, sitting in his usual corner. The bar was nearly empty and a little group of R.N.V.R. officers near him were chatting about their work. One of them came from a destroyer, fresh from a sweep over to the other side.
“Never saw a Jerry plane the whole time,” he said. “I don’t know what’s become of them.”
“Got them all over in the East,” somebody said. “He’s going to go for Russia.”
“Wouldn’t be such a fool.”
The first speaker said: “We went right close in shore, east of the Ile Vierge. You could see the people working in the fields and everything. Broad daylight, it was.”
“See any Jerries?”
“Not a sausage.”
Somebody said: “Did the people you saw look downtrodden and oppressed beneath the Nazi heel, like it says in the Times?”
The first speaker took a drink of beer. “They looked just like any other people in the fields. I don’t believe the occupation means a thing to them. Not to the ordinary run of people in France.”
The Army captain in the corner stirred a little, but he did not speak.
“I don’t suppose it does,” another said. “I don’t suppose they know there’s a war on—any more than our farm labourers over here do.”
“Ours know it all right,” said another. “And how! Three quid a week I see they’re going to get.”
Somebody said: “It’ll be just the same over on the other side. Farm labourers always do well in a war. Win, lose, or draw—they get their cut all right.”
“So does everybody else. Look at the chaps in the aeroplane factories. They’re the ones that make this shortage of beer.”
The barmaid pushed half a dozen brimming tankards to them across the bar. One of the naval officers threw down a ten-shilling note, and harked back to the subject.
“I wish one knew what it was really like over there,” he said thoughtfully. “Tantalising, just seeing it and coming away.”
Probably it was the beer; he had already had two pints. Charles Simon stood up suddenly. “I’ll tell you what it’s like upon the other side,” he said vehemently. “It is terrible, and horrible. You cannot know how terrible it is.”
They all turned to stare at him, a little startled at the queer choice of words and at the foreign accent, always more noticeable in moments of excitement.
One said: “I suppose it must be pretty bloody for them.” He thought the Army chap had had quite sufficient beer, and wanted to conciliate him.
Simon said: “Even so, you fellows do not understand. It it … simply foul. I will tell you.” He stood there before them, the dark hair falling down over his forehead, deadly serious and rather embarrassing to them. “In Douarnenez, in January of this year, only four months ago. Only just across the sea from here—a hundred and thirty miles, no more. There was a little boy of nine called Jules that used to pick up—what you call it? Droppings of the horse, and throw them at the German sentry in the night.” There were faint smiles all round, and somebody said: “Red hot!” Simon went on: “And they ran him through the body with a bayonet, but he did not die, and the priest who came by told them to fetch a doctor, but they would not. And in the night, in prison, the little boy, he died. And three days later they shot the priest also, because he would not keep quiet.”
In the bar, dim with cigarette smoke, the impact of this story left a silence. Somebody said: “Who told you that?”
“It is true,” said Charles. “I tell you—cross my heart. I was there only a month after. I heard everything.”
Another said curiously: “Are you French, sir?”
Charles said: “I am a British subject. But I have worked in France for many, many years—oh, the hell of a time. I was at school at Shrewsbury. And I tell you chaps, if you think that things go easily there, over on the other side in Brittany, you are making the hell of a mistake. It is not Vichy, that.”
They clustered round him. “Will you have a drink, sir?”
“Did you say that you were over there in February?”
He said: “Oh, thank you. Half a pint of beer.”
“Did you mean, February of this year?”
Charles, said: “My French tongue slipped away with me. What I said was true, you chaps, but we will now forget it. Excuse me, please.…”
He stayed with them for half an hour, but resolutely refused to talk about the other side. He talked to them about the war in France, and about the French Army and the French Fleet, and enjoyed their evident pleasure in him as a mystery man. And then, feeling that he had drunk as much beer as he could carry satisfactorily, he left them and went out on to the quay.
There was still an hour and a half before dark, in the long daylight hours of war-time England. He strolled on idly beside the river, and presently turned to a step behind him. It was a lieutenant in the R.N.V.R., one of the officers who had listened to him in the bar.
This was a tall young man, not more than twenty-four or twenty-five years old, with red hair and the pale skin that goes with it, and a strained, puckered look about his face.
He said: “Look, sir. I want to have a word with you. I was in the pub just now, and I heard what you said about the other side. Do you mind if we have a chat some time?”
There was an urgency in his manner that compelled attention. Charles said: “Right-oh. I do not think that I can talk very much myself, you understand. But if you wish to talk to me, I am entirely at your service.”
They turned, and strolled along together. “I want to say first that I know what you said is true,” said the young man. “The Germans do that sort of thing. They do it for a policy, because they think it makes people afraid. And if we mean to win this war we must do horrible, beastly things to them. Torturing things, like they have done to us.”
Charles glanced at the strained face of the young man beside him, interested. He had not heard that sort of talk since he had come from France.
“So …” he said quietly.
“There’s a thing going on down here,” the young man said in a low tone, “that one or two of us are trying to work up. But we’ve never been able to find anyone who could tell us what things are like on the other side. If we let you in on what we want to do, will you keep it under your hat?”
“Of course. And I will give what help I can. But there are matters that I cannot talk about, you understand.”
The naval officer hesitated. “Look,” he said. “It won’t take more than half an hour. I want you to come across the river with me and see a boat. Would you do that? And then we can talk over there, where it’s quiet.”
They went down to the ferry close at hand. As they were crossing the young man said: “My name is Boden, sir—Oliver Boden. I’m in a trawler here.”
3
OLIVER BODEN was the son of a wool-spinne
r in Bradford. George Boden, his father, was well known in the West Riding as a very warm man and the firm that he founded in his youth, Boden and Chalmers, as a very warm firm. Henry Chalmers was, of course, the young man’s godfather.
The two partners, in fact, exchanged the function of godfather fairly frequently; George Boden having two girls and three boys and Henry Chalmers having three girls and one boy. The Chalmers lived in a large greystone house in Ilkley and the Bodens lived in a large greystone house in Burley-in-Wharfedale. The Chalmers, having mostly girls, had a hard tennis-court and the Bodens, having mostly boys, had a river running through their garden. Each of the partners took five thousand a year out of the business as a matter of course, and each lamented the disastrous state of the wool trade.
They were very happy people.
The partners used to stop on the way home sometimes, and drink a couple of pints of beer at a roadside pub, while their expensive motor-cars grew cold outside. It was at these times of relaxation that they swapped stories about newly-married couples, did their football pools, and talked about the education of their children. They were quite agreed about the boys. Boys had to work, there must be no nonsense about educating them. None of the Eton and Harrow stuff for the young Bodens or the young Chalmers. The boys would have to work in Bradford all their lives; it would only unsettle them to put ideas into their heads. Chalmers favoured Leeds High School for his sons and Boden favoured Bradford Grammar School, but they agreed that there was not much in it.
