Charlotte Gray

by Sebastian Faulks

  Gayral nodded.

  ‘Not that great,’ said Julien. ‘The odd isolated incident, but really hardly any—’

  ‘Oh, those wretched Communists,’ said Benech. ‘When will they ever learn? They’re as bad as the RAF with their bombing. The sooner the English face up to the inevitable the better for all of us.’ Benech had only recently started to come to the Café du Centre. He allowed himself only two drinks each evening, yet elicited a certain respect for his vigorous opinions.

  Gayral began to speak. ‘I heard a story about a big factory in Clermont. I’m not going to say which one.’ Two or three heads nodded in approval of his discretion. ‘The chief was visited by some Englishman who told him the RAF were going to bomb his factory because it was making machinery the Germans were taking for their war effort. This Englishman said if the chief gave him a copy of the plans of the factory he’d make sure they dropped their bombs on the right targets, just the vital bits that would be impossible to replace, and no one would get hurt. If he refused, they’d just bomb the whole thing. The factory owner told him to prove he was really in touch with the RAF by getting them to fly over the next night and drop a single bomb in a field outside the town. Well, apparently they did. And the chief gave the man his factory blueprints and two nights later they came over and destroyed the vital machinery, exactly according to plan.’

  ‘How did this Englishman come to be in France?’ said Roudil.

  ‘They come by parachute. There are hundreds of them.’

  ‘It’s that monster Churchill,’ said Benech. ‘He’s the most selfish man in Europe. For the sake of his own glory, he’s prolonging this dreadful war. Why can’t he accept the inevitable? If the Marshal – the Marshal, the victor of Verdun, if you please – accepts that the Boche have won the war, why can’t this foolish man see it? And where were the English when we needed their help in the Great War? They stayed at home.’

  ‘I think some did come over,’ said Roudil.

  ‘I think not, my friend,’ said Benech. ‘Anyway, why should this factory owner help the English? It’s against the law. The Marshal made that clear when we entered into the “way of collaboration” with the Occupier. Those were his actual words, and quite right, too. We have to think about our future and our children’s future. This war’s only going to last a year or so – it’s a drop in the ocean – and when it’s over we’ll be in a position to take our place in the new Europe.’

  Roudil creased his ancient face a little as Benech propounded his clear and trusting view. Benech had a thick, straight moustache and grey, pocked skin; he spoke as a man who feels the flow of history is at last vindicating his long-held beliefs.

  ‘I think it’s a little more complicated than that,’ Roudil said. ‘The Marshal’s playing a double game. He seems to go along with everything they ask, but he’s waiting for his moment. He may be old, but he’s shrewd, that one. Look how he’s kept the sovereignty of France alive. You tell me another country in Europe which has kept its independence after being occupied. Norway? Sweden? Belgium? Oh, no, he’s a canny one, the Marshal, and we’ve not seen the last of his cunning.’

  ‘What exactly is this sovereignty worth?’ said Julien. ‘An old man in a hotel room with powers that no one voted him, doing what he’s told by the Germans. Is that sovereignty? While Paris is occupied and the Republic is dead?’

  ‘Oh, the Republic, the Republic,’ said Benech, sipping at his second glass. ‘The Republic killed itself. I’d have thought anyone could see that after the mess Monsieur Blum and his Jews made of things. If it took the Germans to bring us to our senses, then frankly I’m glad of it. And I’ll tell you another thing – we need another couple of years to put everything straight. If it takes the presence of the Occupier to give the Marshal time to get the country back on course, then so be it.’

  Julien had heard this view so many times before that he was tired of arguing with it. In a way he admired its logic. To believe that being occupied by a well-behaved foreign power enabled you to put in place, peacefully, the conservative internal reforms your country had long needed seemed not only practical but also rather gamely philosophical. Under the influence of this Panglossian strain of thought, you could view the situation as not only convenient but lit up by a sort of providential optimism.

  Instead of quarrelling, Julien said to Gayral, ‘I hear your son’s coming home.’

  Gayral smiled. ‘Yes, at last. It’s taken for ever to get him back from Syria. But I can tell you, there’s one boy who’ll be glad to see the back of that desert! We expect him home next week.’

  ‘He wasn’t tempted to join the winning side, then?’ Julien could not resist teasing him.

  ‘Which side?’

  ‘The Free French. The units that defeated him.’

  ‘Free, my foot! They’re just a few brigands run by the Americans and the English. In my boy’s regiment there were just two men who went over to them. That’s how popular they are!’

  ‘And the rest have come home?’

  ‘Of course they have!’ Benech interrupted enthusiastically. ‘There may be work to do here, you know. You’ve read about the Allied landings, haven’t you? They think the English might try and invade in the north. The Marshal says we’ve got to be ready to see them off. I tell you, it won’t be a pretty sight, especially if the Americans join in.’

  ‘The Americans,’ said Roudil incredulously. ‘What’s it got to do with them?’

  ‘They’ve sent a representative to the Free French,’ said Julien.

  ‘Well,’ said Benech, ‘that shows just how much they know.’ He laughed in rich amusement. ‘Poor old Americans! They really have got the wrong end of the stick.’

  Roudil cackled at the humour of the situation; Gayral gave a grunt. Benech’s amusement was so tearfully rich and his beliefs so apparently guileless that Julien also found himself smiling.

  2

  CHARLOTTE WAS SITTING in a red armchair in a flat in Marylebone, trying to overcome her twists of gastric nervousness sufficiently to concentrate on what Mr Jackson was telling her.

  He was prowling round the room, hitching up his trousers, tucking in his shirt more tightly as he talked. She followed him with her eyes until he disappeared behind a standard lamp, when she had to turn in her seat and strain her head to bring him back into view.

  ‘I know it’s a bit rushed. We’re not really doing it by the book, I’m afraid, but of course there isn’t actually a book, as I’m sure you appreciate.’

  Jackson stopped by a desk in the window and picked up some papers. ‘Your reports are awfully good, I must say. And the French bods said you could pass for a native. They don’t say that about many people, you know.’

  ‘Are those the Free French?’

  ‘Heavens, no, they won’t talk to us. De Gaulle’s running his own little networks and never the twain shall meet. Anyway, my chaps said you were first class.’

  ‘It’s very kind of them. I don’t think it’s quite true.’

  Jackson raised a scholarly eyebrow. ‘Let me put my little proposition to you. Did you bring the letter, by the way?’

  Charlotte handed him the envelope containing a brief instruction to present herself at the flat. Jackson slid it into the pocket of his flannel trousers.

  ‘There’s a relatively new network not far from Limoges which was started by one of our best chaps. It’s called Violinist.’

  As he spoke, Charlotte was calculating: Limoges to Clermont . . . Probably not more than 250 kilometres, all in the Free Zone. A three-day bicycle ride; perhaps four days – it was a long time since she used to ride to the Academy in the mornings with a basket full of books.

  ‘. . . so your task is really very simple. First you’re to accompany Yves. We wanted to call him Hugues, but he has too much trouble pronouncing the “u”. He’s a Lancastrian, and I’m not going to tell you his real name because there’s no need for you to know it. He’s an extremely able man and although he does speak the language, our
tame Frenchman wasn’t too happy with his accent – a little more Burnley than Bourges, if you take my meaning. You will therefore act as his chaperone, keep him from having to talk to anyone, until you’re safely arrived at the house near Uzerche, where he’ll join forces with a very busy little network and you wish him bon voyage. All clear so far?’

  Charlotte nodded. ‘Yes. Quite clear. You’ll give me more details at the time.’

  ‘Of course.’ Jackson gave a froggy smile. ‘Maps, money, addresses, not to mention the jolly old cover story. They’ll be plenty to learn by heart, but they say you’ve got a memory like an elephant, if you’ll forgive the expression.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Jolly good. Now the second part of your job is even simpler. We want you to deliver a set of wireless crystals to one of our operators in the area. These little chaps are very light and easy to carry. The drawbacks are twofold: they’re very fragile, and they can’t be disguised as anything else. The wireless operator you’re going to see has had a little accident – I’m not quite sure how it happened – but anyway, she needs a new set. You’ll be given a suggested meeting place and time, naturally, and the rest is up to you. I suppose it’s possible they’ll ask you to do a drop rather than actually meet the girl. You know: leave them in the ladies’ excuse-me or some such thing.’ Jackson gave a little laugh.

  ‘And then what do I do?’

  ‘Then? Then, my dear Miss Gray, you come home. The return flight.’

  ‘The same place, the same plane?’

  ‘No, I rather doubt that. I think you’re going over in one of the big boys, a Whitley probably. They may want to drop some stores at the same time. You’ll come back in a little Lysander, I imagine, something that can actually land. So. What do you think of all that?’

  Charlotte licked her lips and tried to generate some saliva over her dry tongue. ‘It sounds very straightforward.’

  ‘It is, it is! Now, listen, I don’t suppose I could interest you in a bite of lunch, could I? Got to feed you up, you know, food’s wretched in France. Can’t take you to my club, alas, for obvious reasons, but there’s a jolly good little place round the corner. Do you like fish?’

  Everything began to happen swiftly. Jackson gave responsibility for Charlotte to a woman called Valerie Kay, a stern, academic person of the kind Charlotte imagined to have been among the pioneers of women’s education at the ancient universities. She had wiry brown hair pulled back tightly and a manner which at every turn seemed to emphasise the seriousness of the undertaking. The cover story was the first and most important aspect of preparation. Charlotte was to be called Dominique Guilbert; she was born in Paris in 1917, married to a clerk in Angoulême who was now a prisoner of war in Germany, and was travelling to see her sick father who lived in Limoges. She had been partly educated in Belgium, to allow for any falsity of accent: the French contempt for ‘the little Belgians’, she was told, was such that even the most bizarre non-francophone noises could safely be ascribed to a brief period in Brussels. The details of the cover took them two hours to go through, at the end of which Charlotte was given a day to learn them, and the names and addresses of contacts, by heart before reporting to the flat in Marylebone, where she would be tested. In addition to a cover name, she was given a field name, Danièle: good agents, she was told, could manage under interrogation not even to divulge their cover name, and such double security was helpful to other people in the network. From now on she was to be Danièle in all her dealings with them.

  Charlotte wrote a letter to her mother saying she would be away on official business and would contact her when she could. She told Daisy she would be away for a fortnight and to let anyone else have her room in the meantime if she wanted. Daisy gave her a long, worried look, then let her go. Valerie Kay took her through the cover story, bit by bit, with added cross-examination from an emaciated Frenchman who fired questions through a slowly gathering cloud of cigarette smoke. Charlotte missed Mr Jackson’s cheery presence, but they seemed satisfied by her response.

  ‘Of course, there is one other thing we haven’t mentioned,’ said Miss Kay. ‘Your hair.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘It’s not a very French colour, is it? I’ve booked you an appointment for two o’clock with a French hairdresser in Brook Street. The dye should last for several weeks unless your hair grows very quickly.’

  Charlotte nodded, wishing she did not think that Miss Kay was taking some unkind pleasure in the idea of turning her hair a dull brown.

  At four o’clock, cropped, brunette, Charlotte returned to the flat for the final preparations. The door was opened by a butlerish figure she had not yet met: he stood aside to let her pass, then took her firmly by the elbow and showed her to a bedroom. ‘Wait here, please, Miss. Someone will be in shortly.’

  Charlotte looked about the neat room, which had fitted wardrobes and a watery seascape above the bed; there was a dressing table in the window with a floral frilled skirt, but no make-up or hairbrushes. She sensed it had been a long time since anyone had actually slept here. Charlotte felt both calm and excited: what she was doing was not only right but also somehow inevitable. Her life and her education had led her to this point; she was not frightened to be returning to a country that she loved and which in her mind was associated with a completeness of civilisation. She was confident she could carry out her simple errand, yet the prospect brought an intoxicating feeling of escape. Unlike so many people caught beneath the bombs in London or trapped by the German army and the French bureaucracy, she had the liberating privilege of action.

  The door opened, and Charlotte smiled broadly to see Mr Jackson again. ‘Goodness me, what a splendid job they’ve done. You look as French as Joan of Arc.’ He placed a brown paper parcel on the bed. ‘These are some clothes I want you to put on. They’re of French manufacture or, if not, we’ve sewn French labels into them. The pockets have a few shreds of French tobacco and some dust from the area you’re going to. There’ll be one complete change in your suitcase and two spare sets of underthings. Someone’ll be along for you in a minute.’

  It was with some sadness that Charlotte undid her knee-length, navy-blue skirt and slid it down over the ivory slip. G Section had taken no chances with their idea of what French women wore under the Occupation: woollen knickers, coarse stockings, apparently to be held up with the provided pair of garters, calf-length skirt and poorly knitted pullover. Charlotte laced the clumpy shoes and looked at herself in the mirror of the dressing table. The door opened again. Valerie Kay came into the room to gather up Charlotte’s own clothes.

  ‘We’ll keep these safe for you until your return,’ she said, her expression communicating disapproval as she folded the bundle into a sheet of brown paper. ‘In a minute I’ll want you to go to the bathroom and take off any make-up, but please wait here until you’re called.’

  Charlotte sat on the edge of the bed and waited. She could hear several other voices in the flat and a continual opening and closing of doors. Something was going on. The caution and periphrasis that had so far characterised her dealings with these people had suddenly been replaced by short words and quickening steps. Charlotte had the impression that at least three other people like herself were being briefed and prepared, and also, for reasons of security, kept from seeing one another. She could not help smiling at the thought of the butler going to and fro, of false identities being taken up and trousers being dropped behind different doors; but presumably it would be worth it to be incapable of showing any sign of recognition if ever she should meet one of these people at night, at Bordeaux St Jean, beneath the scrutiny of an SS officer.

  The butler reappeared and took Charlotte down the corridor to another bedroom, which was fitted with what looked like a dentist’s chair. ‘Sit there, please, Miss.’

  A few minutes later, following more footsteps and banging doors, a short, white-haired man came in and introduced himself as Mr Legge.

  ‘And you are . .
. Let me see,’ he said, looking at a clipboard hanging from the side of the chair. ‘Danièle.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Open wide.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘Open wide, please. I’m going to replace your fillings. Let’s have a look. Not too bad. Only six that I can see. You must have had a good dentist when you were young.’

  ‘The Belgians are famous for it.’

  Legge seemed too old and frail to be able to pump the drill mechanism hard enough with his foot for the bit to turn to its full effect; the silvery Scottish fillings were thus chiselled out piece by piece, to be replaced by a heavy, gold, and presumably French mixture. As the old man ground on, Charlotte wondered bitterly whether they had assembled the metals from the very area of her intended drop.

  After two false starts, one of which involved the butler pushing her back against the wall and covering her eyes with his hands, Charlotte was eventually delivered to the sitting room of the flat, where Jackson had first outlined to her the details of her mission.

  ‘Danièle,’ he said. ‘Welcome. Do sit down.’ As she did so, he gave her his froggiest, most reassuring smile. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘I feel all right,’ said Charlotte honestly, calmed by Jackson’s manner. ‘I could have done without the dentistry.’

  ‘I know, I know. Most of our people think I’m mad, but my view is simply that anything we can do to protect our agents is worth doing. That’s all. Now I think we may be in luck. With “Charlotte”, I mean. Does that name mean anything to you?’

  ‘Of course.’ She pointed through the window towards the sky, where a crescent moon gleamed white.

  ‘Nothing else?’ Jackson grinned.

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Jolly good.’ He straightened his face and coughed. ‘Now, once you’ve delivered Yves to Uzerche, you’re to leave him there and make no attempt to contact him. Understood? He’ll be with friends there and he won’t need you. Then you take the crystals to this address, go into the hairdresser’s and repeat the lines written here.’ He pushed a piece of paper across the desk. The hairdresser’s was in a town called Ussel. Charlotte read and memorised the contents. ‘Got that? Good.’ Jackson took the paper back and tore it up. ‘We’re pretty much ready for the off now. Sometimes we have to keep people hanging around for ages, either here or in one of our houses in East Anglia. But the weather forecast’s first class. Bright as a button all the way to Limoges. As far as your return journey’s concerned, you’re to do as instructed by the local Frenchman. It’s just possible you’ll hear from our man there who’s running Violinist. He’s called Mirabel, but he’s very busy and I expect the Frenchman can handle it. I don’t have a name for him, but he’ll tell you at the drop. There’ll be a plane to bring you home in a week or ten days. The local chap’ll have the gen from his wireless operator. All clear?’