Return to the Field Page 14

  He had the garage door open. The racket of that vehicle fading southward… Rosie murmured as she wheeled her bike into the garage, ‘Where’d those swine be off to, I wonder…’

  ‘Not to church, for sure.’

  ‘No…’ Emerging… ‘But they do, don’t they. Always puzzled me. How could they believe in a God of love?’

  ‘Or in a God that could love them.’ Peucat paused, thinking about it… ‘Well – if the truth’s all in men’s minds – as I suspect, at times – there’s no limit, is there. You might have a patron saint of the concentration camps… Did you see my young friends at Châteauneuf?’

  ‘Yes. That’s all fine.’

  ‘And Quimper?’

  ‘That too. But there’s something I’d like your help with – I don’t know if you have friends there?’

  ‘Lots. Well – a few, anyway.’

  Entering the house, now. Door shut: Peucat crouching to shoot the lower bolt. Sanctuary, of a kind – at least, it felt like it. She hung her coat up: a working girl, back from the day’s hard grind. Turning to him, then: ‘How was your day?’

  ‘Satisfactory. As far as your Ausweis and driving permit are concerned, it looks like plain sailing. And we’re expected to lunch at Scrignac tomorrow. Count Jules is back – I spoke with him. He’s hoping to have Jaillon there in the afternoon, to talk business with you… Anyway let’s have our supper now – and you can tell me what you want with my friends in Quimper, what that’s about.’

  ‘Yes. Right. I’ll get it as soon as I’ve cleaned up a bit. Why don’t you have your drink, meanwhile?’

  Then homework, she thought – the Lannuzel shopping-list to encode. With a second one tomorrow, no doubt. Jaillon was Lannuzel’s counterpart in the Montagnes d’Arrées.

  * * *

  She got the first one off the next morning, from a ridge on the edge of the Forêt St Ambroise. Peucat drove the converted Ford off the road into partial cover in a growth of still leafless beeches, Rosie connected the transceiver’s leads to the gazo’s battery terminals, strung the seventy feet of thin aerial wire over low branches, and crouched amongst nettles to tap out her message. Peucat meanwhile leant against the car, smoking a pipe and keeping lookout. They’d been to the police together earlier, first thing after breakfast, to sign forms for her permit to drive the gazo. The gendarmerie was at the western end of the village, facing on to a cobbled market square, with a garage on one side of it and what seemed to be a rubbish-dump on the other, and it was open at that time on Sunday mornings. The young policeman on weekend duty – Peucat called him Gervais, and they were obviously on good terms – told her that by tomorrow noon, with luck, she’d be able to collect the permit from the Kommandantur, where it would be going first thing in the morning to be approved and rubber-stamped with the Nazi eagle and swastika. An Ausweis allowing her to be out after curfew might also have been issued by then. She should make sure of taking all her other papers with her, he warned.

  ‘Do they talk French, there?’

  ‘French employees do most of it. All it takes then is the Boche stamp on everything.’

  Peucat had nodded. ‘Probably rubber-stamp the employees too.’

  The gendarme had glanced at him quickly, then at Rosie; the doctor had shrugged. ‘Sorry. Better be off. Many thanks, Gervais. Your mother’s well, I hope?’

  He’d told her outside, ‘He’s one of us. A thoroughly good fellow. Any way he can help, he can be counted on.’

  ‘Are there many like that?’

  ‘More than you might expect.’

  The cook/housekeeper, Melisse Loussouarn, was there when they got back to the house. She’d called in not to work, but to meet Rosie. En route to Mass, judging by her attire. She was a cheerful, pretty woman of about forty; it could only have been by her own choice, Rosie guessed, that she hadn’t re-married. Except there weren’t many men around, of course – only the very young or the old. Rosie assured her that she’d look after her own room, make the bed and so on, also mentioned that the rabbit stew and last night’s fish pie had been delicious. And there were leftovers enough for tonight’s supper. Mme Loussouarn’s hand on her arm, then: had Suzanne yet encountered the sister of Monsieur le Docteur? She hadn’t? Well… The brown eyes rolled… ‘But to be fair, under her crust the old girl’s not so bad. As long as one’s a little careful…’

  They’d set out in the gazo in mid-morning: up Rue St Nicolas and to the left around Timo Achard’s bar, then immediately right, and from there bumbling along a narrow, twisting lane for about four kilometres to a village called Lannédern, where they turned right again on to a better road. The sky was clearing, with streaks of blue between patches of wind-driven grey cloud, but it had rained heavily in the night and the pot-holed lanes were still flooded. Rosie did her best to memorize every corner and landmark, while Peucat provided a running commentary on who lived here or there, whose farm that was, and so on. At a place called Loqueffret – only about three kilometres from Lannédern, but it had been slow going – might have been faster by bike, in fact – he waved his left hand northward: ‘That fork would take us through the villages of Brennilis and Kerberou, and on to link with the main route up to Morlaix. I have patients in both those villages: and by Kerberou one’s well into the Montagnes d’Arrées. As you can see…’

  Dark heights, up there. Wilder and steeper country than the Montagnes Noires. Fine Maquis territory, obviously. They were still heading eastward at this stage: after about two more kilometres trundling through a hamlet which the doctor named as St Herbot, then grinding on slowly for about another five towards the larger rural centre of Huelgoat.

  ‘Where I have a dozen or more patients. If time permits, on our way back we might stop so you can meet some of them. I have a rival there, but he’s been in practice only a few years, and the country people are loyal for the most part. They don’t chop and change… By the way, my sister—’

  ‘Wants me to visit her, you said last evening.’

  ‘She does, yes. I’ll take you along, when there’s an hour or two to spare. Incidentally, I was thinking that your own invented past – the fiancé who was killed in Brest?’

  ‘Daniel Miossec.’

  ‘It might appeal to her. She suffered a similarly tragic loss. I never met the fellow; she and our mother were playing the cards close to their chests – as always… But he was a fisherman, had his own what d’you call it – trawler – up at Roscoff, several were wrecked in one dreadful storm, and he drowned. After which she could never give her affection to any other man.’ He shrugged. ‘You’re thinking, that old classic!’

  ‘No – why—’

  ‘Look here, now. Up ahead here… That wilderness is what we call Mare aux Sangliers. We can drive on as we’re going – straight through Huelgoat and up to Berrien, where this road joins the main one that comes up from Carhaix-Plouguer and continues northward to Morlaix – alternatively as we enter Huelgoat we can turn right, join that same road further south and follow it up between Mare aux Sangliers and the forest of St Ambroise. The road climbs there, into the hills – might be suitable for your purpose?’

  ‘We’ve time to make the diversion, have we?’

  ‘Not so much of a diversion, really…’

  They found this place after about half an hour’s slow climb in low gear – a fairly level section where the gazo could be driven off the road and Rosie would be in cover, out of sight of any passing traffic while Peucat could seem to be a motorist who’d just stopped for a smoke, or to admire the view; and within a few minutes she had it all set up. Red light glowing over the word ‘send’: power on, and ready to transmit. She shifted her position in the damp undergrowth, moved the set on to her lap – it weighed only five and a half pounds – and put on the headset – headphones – tight on her ears. Glancing round, with her fingers ready on the key, seeing over the tops of docks, nettles and brambles the gazo’s roof and above it a haze of smoke from the gazo’s burner. To the left, Peucat’s head a
nd the jut of his pipe. All clear, therefore: starting with a fast ripple of morse identifying herself and seeking contact, then with the switch at ‘receive’, getting it – a ‘go ahead’ from the operator in Sevenoaks, Kent. Her own operator – Zoe’s – with whom she’d connected directly through having her own individual crystals in the set. She’d inserted them before leaving St Michel this morning. This would have made the operator’s day for her, Rosie guessed: knowing all about it because it was a job she’d done herself – at Sevenoaks, up to the time her husband Johnny had been killed and she’d been accepted by SOE for training as an agent. A whisper – her own – among the nettles: ‘Good girl!’ With the two-way switch back at ‘send’ and the morse key beginning its fast chatter, groups of letters and numbers which when decoded would be read in Baker Street as

  First recipient code-name Guido repeat G-U-I-D-O requests paradrop soonest to previously used field coordinates as follows…

  Lannuzel’s list of requirements, then. Followed by her own request for a spare Mark III transceiver and an ‘S’ phone to be included in the drop, the container to be marked with a Z for Zoe, and that the message personnel to be broadcast should be ‘the first signs of spring are always welcome’. Then: Operation Mincemeat in hand, date will be signalled when supplied by Micky, and – finally – that a second paradrop request would probably be transmitted later today, and that she, Zoe, would be listening-out from midnight to 0100 tonight and alternate nights thereafter.

  Finishing, she gave the Sevenoaks operator a chance to send anything she might have for her. But there was nothing. She switched off.

  Gazo still there. No sounds of any other traffic: seemed they still had this hillside to themselves. Except perhaps for Maquis – whom one wouldn’t expect to see but might well be seen by. She felt better for having got her first signal away. Sevenoaks now had the Montagnes Noires requirements, Baker Street would have the signal by dispatch rider within the hour, and the drop would be made even if she, Rosie, were to be arrested or shot dead between now and then. That was a good part of the reason she’d have liked to have got it away last night: a feeling she’d always had, when there was anything important to be sent – to get it away, have that much accomplished. The other side of the coin meanwhile was that the Boche long-range radio-detection experts might now be alert to the fact that a new pianist had started work somewhere in western Brittany. New pianist, unless they were able to identify her ‘fist’ – as an individual operator’s morse-sending technique was called – from any tape-recording they might have on record from her previous performances. It was a possibility; and the worst possible consequence could be that if any such recording had been made during her last stint, the Rouen episode, they’d as likely as not be able to match this one to a photograph taken while she’d been in the hands of the Gestapo there. Which wouldn’t be so hot.

  Anyway – if they had picked any of it up, they’d have their ears cocked from now on for repeat performances. And they’d get one this evening, probably. After which, chances were they’d send out detector vans to get cross-bearings on subsequent transmissions from much closer range.

  Might send vans out from Rennes, perhaps.

  If they had any there. And if they had picked up that transmission.

  If… She shrugged mentally, told herself Just get on with it… The odds were stacked against the visiting pianist, there was nothing new in that. You just had to keep it in mind, and be bloody careful. Such as – amongst other precautions – only being on the air a few minutes at a time. Which she had.

  She called, ‘Doctor – disconnect, please?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She unplugged the aerial wire, and moved through the trees parallel to the road, coiling it. It snagged here and there: being so thin – and black, difficult to see except close up. Returning to pick up the set, and then to the car, she had blood on one hand from a bramble scratch. Licking it off… Peucat asked her, completing his neat coil of the electric lead, ‘Successful?’

  ‘Should have been.’ She eased the transceiver into the old valise – or Gladstone bag – which he’d found for her. The Mark III, measuring only ten inches by seven by five, easily fitted in at the bottom of the case, together with its bits and pieces – headphones, aerial and long leads, battery too when she had to have it with her. On top went a sheet of cardboard, then an assortment of bandages, cotton-wool and other medical bric-a-brac. She shovelled it all in, snapped the case shut and dumped it in on the back seat. No good hiding it: if you were stopped and they wanted to search, they’d search, and a bag that looked as if it might deliberately have been put out of sight would be the one they’d pick on.

  Peucat had climbed in, was sitting with his hands on the wheel, ready to start off. Brown-spotted hands: and spaniel’s eyes surveying her as she slid in and pulled the door shut.

  ‘I want to tell you, Suzanne. I admire you tremendously.’ He shrugged. ‘For what that’s worth – eh?’

  She leant over, kissed his sallow, slightly bristly cheek.

  ‘For what that’s worth. Thank you.’

  ‘As well my sister didn’t see it.’

  She’d asked him about his children – having meant to ever since he’d mentioned having some – and he’d told her there were three daughters, all in distant areas of France, one son who’d died of TB as a medical student before the war, and another currently working in Paris.

  ‘Calls himself a publisher. Some rag of a magazine I wouldn’t wipe my boots on.’

  ‘Pro-Nazi?’

  A grimace: ‘It’s not my favourite subject, Suzanne.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It was the wrong one who died.’ A glance sideways, then. ‘Wicked thing to say, you’re thinking?’

  ‘No. But I’m truly sorry.’

  He was going to Quimper for her next day – Monday – to visit some old friends by name of Berthomet. Paul Berthomet was a retired surgeon, in his middle seventies, and Peucat had thought of him immediately when she’d explained last night what she needed – a message-drop for François le Guen to use. That way, there’d be no need to use the telephone: when there was news of the troop deployment he’d push a note through or under these people’s door, and they’d ring Peucat with a message about when some granddaughter’s baby was due. Rosie hadn’t mentioned le Guen’s name and Peucat hadn’t wanted to know it, but he’d said he was sure ‘old Paul’ would help.

  * * *

  Heading for Berrien now, after getting the signal off. Peucat telling her as the gazo lurched back on to the road, ‘About two kilometres. The views are spectacular – you’ll see. We turn off to the right there, pass through a little place called Lestrézec – another two, roughly – and then to Scrignac about five.’ He shifted gear again. ‘Count Jules’ ancestors knew what they were doing, when they built their manor. It’s a beautiful house in the most magnificent position. Fine pastures too, for Jules’ bloodstock. He’s selling horses to Germans these days. How d’you like that?’

  ‘Not much at all.’

  ‘He could hardly refuse.’ Glancing at her. ‘Even if he wanted to. And why should he?’

  ‘Well. I don’t know…’

  ‘He’s a very astute fellow, believe me. He was a diplomat at one time, he’s fluent in their language. Also has influence, and allows them to believe he wields it on their behalf. On the surface, that’s almost true, in that he does his best to restrain the wilder elements of the Maquis from acts of sabotage and so forth.’

  ‘Communist elements. Lannuzel was talking about it too.’

  ‘It makes sense – as long as there’s to be an invasion soon. Count Jules is no admirer of de Gaulle – he regards him as an upstart – but he’s of one mind with him on his attentiste policy – to wait for the day, not waste lives and material to no purpose.’ The doctor shrugged. ‘I tell him he’ll end up a staunch Gaullist, he pretends to be insulted.’

  ‘Have you known each other long?’

  ‘
You might say so. I became the family’s doctor because Jules’ father hounded the fellow who was their doctor clear out of Brittany. He’d made advances to one of the girls – a sister of Jules – and the old boy took a whip to him. Then of course he had to look farther afield. Found me.’

  ‘So Count Jules is quite young?’

  ‘From where I’m sitting – yes. Fifty?’

  ‘Oh… And has his wife been an invalid for long?’

  ‘For some years. Chronic rheumatoid arthritis. She endures agonies.’

  ‘Can you do much to help her?’

  ‘Regrettably, very little. Except for pain-killers, for when it’s at its worst. I can only prescribe them because Count Jules has connections in Paris and brings them back with him.’

  ‘Is that what takes him there so often?’

  ‘Who says he goes “so often”?’

  ‘Guy Lannuzel mentioned it. He was explaining that he and Count Jules hadn’t had a chance to discuss – well, one particular matter.’

  ‘I see.’ Peucat took a hand from the wheel, rubbed his jaw. Then: ‘I’m about to indulge in idle gossip. But you might as well know. It’s almost your business. In Paris there also resides the lady who found you your employment with me.’

  ‘Léonie de Mauvernay.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s of very long standing.’ He pointed ahead: ‘Coming to Berrien now. We turn east here.’

  * * *

  The house was lovely; a sprawl of light-coloured stone and old timber, in a wonderful setting. Dramatic countryside, sheer and heavily wooded; the manor’s own pasturage was probably the only level or near-level terrain for miles. The approach from the village of Scrignac was a dead-straight lane that seemed to lead nowhere else; a crumbly old wall about ten feet high ran along its verge for the best part of a kilometre, with a stable-yard entrance which they passed first, then stone pillars, iron gates standing open, a drive that circled three or four acres of parkland with oaks in it and the house standing well back – five or six hundred metres back, with an apron of gravelled forecourt.