In at the Kill Page 5

  He’d also said – on the subject of Caen – ‘Then we’ll have them on the run…’

  So there might be rapid progress now?

  Another thing he’d said, though, in reference to her own plans, had been that they might be ‘overtaken by events’.

  Meaning she might still be stuck here, an invalid, while Paris was being liberated and André Marchéval contrived to disappear. In which circumstances – Paris overrun, and the occupiers of 11, Rue des Saussaies either arrested or in flight – would he show up at the parental home or business, knowing it was the one place where SOE or anyone else with a score to settle would be likely to look first?

  So you’d lose him. SOE would lose him. That bastard out from under: new identity, sound cover story and forged papers. He’d know enough from his training and experience in SOE to manage all of that.

  Unless they shipped him off to Struthof-Natzweiler – having bled him dry?

  She’d started on the stew. Delicious… ‘Thérèse, you’ve surpassed yourself!’

  ‘Lots of it, eat all you can.’

  ‘Doesn’t it worry you that Michel hasn’t come?’

  A wag of the straw-coloured head. ‘I’ll be glad when I see his gazo drive into the yard, certainly. As long as he steps out of it – he and Luc, preferably. But they don’t run to a time-table, you know. Big area – I don’t know exactly from where to where, but it’s a lot of territory and there must be hordes of Maquis in it. Their numbers have been greatly swollen lately – did you know?’

  ‘Yes.’ A nod. ‘Same all over France.’

  ‘What Michel’s coping with is the problem of so many groups widely separated, all wanting this, that and the other – and straining at the leash, he said, he and his colleagues having to restrain them from poking their heads up too soon.’

  ‘I suppose if the big breakthrough is coming now—’

  ‘They’ll still have to lie low, and wait. Paris will be a primary objective, obviously, but he anticipates an encircling movement to the south of it, north across the Seine then and east to the Rhine – and through these parts, therefore. That’s how he sees it.’ She’d picked up her glass of wine. (Rosie drinking milk. Being good. Diet prescribed by Lotte.) Thérèse’s blue eyes on her thoughtfully. Light-blue eyes and full, round cheeks, rounded chin, skin roughened by wind and weather but with no lines or creases in it yet. With her pink-and-white colouring and the mop of blonde hair she could easily have passed as German.

  She’d put her glass down. ‘You’re on edge, Rosalie.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes, you are. And – well, good heavens… After all you’ve been through… Rosalie – no matter what news Michel brings you – put your health first, don’t try – think of doing anything. It’ll be over soon – and you’ve done your share already, God knows. Even from the little I know—’

  ‘I’m sure it’s good advice—’

  ‘But you’re going to ignore it.’

  ‘No. Thérèse, I appreciate your concern—’

  ‘I’m concerned that you should simply relax, accept the fact you’ve been badly injured and you’re now a convalescent!’

  ‘Well – exactly. I am – thanks to you. The other business – it’ll be London’s decision, not mine. They’ll recall me, I might be able to set something moving first, that’s all. There are things I know – an individual I know – and recent experience makes it – in my opinion rather clearly my personal business.’

  ‘To do with whatever Michel was finding out for you, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes. His own idea.’ She’d nodded. ‘You were with us, you heard him.’

  ‘Yes. I did.’ Glancing away – distracted… ‘Just a minute.’ Moving to the window: Rosie hearing it then too – aircraft of some kind, low and already close.

  ‘It’s a Storch.’ She had it in sight. ‘Spotter plane.’ She’d drawn back a bit. ‘Coming right over us. The sort Michel was looking out for. They use them a lot round here.’

  Her words were lost as the hammering racket peaked, then fell away; the machine could only have been a hundred metres or so up. Rosie wasn’t getting any view of the outside world meanwhile – or much light either – with Thérèse’s bulk across the window.

  The plane had passed out of her sight too now. Turning back… ‘Flying northwest – Lunéville, Nancy direction.’

  The sound was nearly gone: a fading summer sound, as innocuous as a mower on a distant cricket-field. Thérèse sat down to finish her lunch. ‘But listen – whatever this is you’re contemplating or Michel’s suggested – when you’re fit, you’d be stupid to show yourself in public – anywhere, in the open. You’re known to them, identifiable – they may still actively be searching for you. Not to mention that here in Alsace the language would give you away. And – surely, with the war on its last legs now—’

  ‘But it isn’t, is it? We aren’t out of Normandy yet – let alone anywhere near Paris. People like me and the others I was with are still being shipped east to the camps. They want to brush us under the carpet – last thing they want around is us, to tell our stories!’

  ‘Surely all the more reason to lie low?’

  ‘Are you lying low?’

  ‘Yes – I am—’

  ‘By sheltering me, Thérèse?’

  A spread hand on her chest: ‘I haven’t been imprisoned, tortured, darn near killed. And like as not they’re looking to have another go at you! Rosalie – I know you’re not married, I remember Lotte asked you – but isn’t there anyone special in your life – worth staying alive for?’

  She’d put her spoon down in the empty plate. Acknowledging to herself that it was a good question, really the question, and maybe not a bad thing to be reminded of it. She nodded: ‘There is, yes. Man called Ben. Australian, as it happens. And you see, Michel isn’t only looking into this other thing for me, when I’m fit and he’s back he’ll be putting me in touch with London – my bosses – via some person I think you know, or know of—’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I’ll get picked up, flown out.’

  * * *

  July 18th: Tuesday. Evening. Not in the attic, but on the first floor, in Thérèse’s bedroom. She’d been down in the kitchen earlier, but Thérèse had left her when she’d heard the clatter of her nephew’s bicycle, gone out quickly to forestall his bursting into the house; she’d pulled on an old jacket that might once have been her husband’s and blundered out, muttering, ‘See you later.’ Rosie had come up here, as they’d agreed she would, to be out of the way in case they came back in together or the boy did on his own.

  She leant back in the shiny horsehair-stuffed armchair, closed her eyes. She’d been sewing, for about the past hour and a half, needed to rest them for a minute. Oil lamps weren’t the best things for needlework. Relaxing, listening to the silence of the house and night. Last night there’d been a lot of bombers over – heading into Germany, evidently on a different flight-path from their usual route or routes. It was the first time she’d heard air activity here on anything like that scale: there must have been hundreds of them streaming over, squadron after squadron, a drone of engines that had gone on seemingly for ages before the tail end of it faded eastward; she’d lain there picturing the night sky full of them, visualizing as she fell asleep the helmeted and masked crews in individual aircraft, thundering on into the Boche heartland.

  And some Boche city in flames. As English cities had been often enough, in recent years.

  Hadn’t heard them returning. Either she’d slept through it or they’d taken a different route homeward. Direct route, one might guess, shortest distance between two points; but fewer returning than had gone out eastward, you could be sure.

  She’d made her recent transition from attic to the lower floors in two stages. First, four or five days ago she’d decided there was no longer any reason to stay in bed, and with this Thérèse hadn’t argued, in fact had found some old clothes that more or less fitted. Rosie had then spent t
wo days just sitting around or prowling up and down under that low ceiling, or squatting at the window watching the slow drift of high cloud from the west and listening for the arrival of a gazo – which still hadn’t come. By the end of the second day she’d rebelled again: despite a day and a night of drizzle and lower temperatures, the attic felt increasingly hot and airless, altogether too confining: and she’d had enough confinement. Thérèse had commented sarcastically, ‘Next thing, you’ll be trotting down to the village, calling on the mayor!’

  ‘Would he be glad to see me?’

  ‘Oh, charmed, I’d guess. Offer you a glass of Gewürztraminer, probably. Especially as there are Boche officers billeted in his house!’

  ‘Might give him a miss, then. But seriously, Thérèse…’

  Finally they’d settled for her coming down in the evenings only, after curfew, when at least there wouldn’t be any neighbours dropping in. And for any other less welcome visitors, Bruno would give tongue and she’d take cover.

  Negotiating the ladder hadn’t been difficult at all; although Thérèse had then to climb up it to shut the trap-door, then lift the ladder down. Any searcher who meant business would of course have seen it lying there, gone on up and perhaps found clues to the fact that the attic had been occupied, but a perfunctory look round such as Thérèse said was the usual thing in a routine police check-up wasn’t much to be scared of – as long as they weren’t looking for a particular individual, i.e. hadn’t been tipped off. The local police, when not under German supervision, tended not to be looking very hard for people to arrest. If they had Boches with them, of course, it could be a different matter.

  Thérèse must have found it a relief not to be clambering up and down with a chamber-pot two or three times a day. Although the deal was only to stay downstairs in the evenings, having found she could use the ladder safely she could also make briefer visits at other times as well. And for meals: she was only too glad to lend a hand at the stove – one hand, in theory, but on her own she’d been furtively using the other one too – with care, naturally, and still having the sling’s support. Jobs like roasting and grinding wheat at night for the morning’s porridge. For sewing too – mending and altering, fixing up old clothes which Thérèse routed out from somewhere or other; none of them could ever have fitted her. But – had to start somewhere, getting back to normal.

  She fully intended getting herself out for air and exercise before much longer, too. Nights, she thought, would be safe enough – around the farm, at least, at weekends, when Charles came during the day and not at night. She was thinking about this – how and when to broach the subject – when she heard the outside door open and then slam shut, and Thérèse call, ‘All clear, Rosalie!’ So she’d have finished the evening chores and sent the boy home. Rosie went down, found her in the kitchen discarding the rather foul old jacket; chicken feathers drifting around, in a strengthening of the now familiar farmyard fragrance.

  ‘Sorry – such a long time. Lot to do though, and I can’t leave it all to the kid… Now, however – what we were talking about –’ kicking off wooden-soled canvas shoes – ‘heavens, hours ago… Oh, I’ll get us some coffee, in a minute—’

  ‘I’ll do that—’

  ‘No – sit down… Please. Much easier with two hands. Besides, Rosalie – what I was saying – what we were talking about when Charles came – you’d mentioned – unless I misheard completely – you’re a war widow, too?’

  Rosie frowning: ‘Didn’t I mention it before?’

  ‘No – you did not. You’ve been here – what, eighteen days – and kept such a thing to yourself?’

  She smiled, shrugged. Right shoulder, movement of the right hand…

  ‘Subject just never came up, then. But – if you’re interested – he was a fighter pilot. Royal Air Force. Battle of Britain, all that. In fact he was in the RAF before the war – we married in ’39, a few months before it started, and he was killed – shot down – in February ’42.’

  Thérèse gazing at her. Slight shaking of the fair head. ‘My turn to commiserate. But really – so secretive!’

  ‘Well – not consciously—’

  ‘I mean – when we’ve talked about my man being killed—’

  ‘What I meant was, not secretive deliberately. To be frank, it wasn’t what you’d call a marriage made in heaven. Could be why I don’t talk about it. Think about it much, even.’

  ‘That’s sad, Rosalie.’

  ‘Yes. Started happily – terrifically – but—’

  ‘Not a good husband, uh?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not.’

  Johnny Ewing: Squadron Leader. Who’d thought he was God’s gift to women, and believed in spreading it around. In retrospect all she felt for him was a mild contempt. And to talk about it – about a man with whom she’d once been passionately in love, and who’d died a war hero, of sorts – it was easier not to.

  ‘You must have been very young.’

  ‘I was twenty, when we married.’

  ‘And you haven’t been tempted to re-marry?’

  ‘I have, as it happens. Have been tempted, I mean. The man I told you about, when you asked me?’

  ‘A short name, I remember. Bim, Bam—’

  ‘Ben.’ She smiled. ‘Short for Benjamin.’

  ‘Ah, yes. But – not for marriage, huh?’

  ‘It’s this job of mine. That’s – really all…’

  ‘Ah. I understand.’

  ‘His job too, really. He’s in what they call Coastal Forces – motor gunboats and torpedo-boats. He’s been wounded twice, quite badly. Any luck, they’ll keep him ashore now. But primarily it’s this. He hates me doing it.’

  ‘Could one blame him?’

  ‘No. In fact I promised him this would be the last time.’

  ‘So in terms of what we were discussing the other day—’

  ‘I’m longing to be back with him.’

  ‘Would he have any way of knowing you were arrested?’

  ‘Nobody would. Probably not even my SOE bosses. Beyond the fact I’ve disappeared from where I was.’

  ‘They’d know something bad happened.’

  ‘But as for marrying – I hope – when the war’s over, if we’re both still around, and feel the same… Or even before that – if they recall me – and if I can get to look a bit more like a human being than I do now—’

  ‘Rosalie, such nonsense!’

  ‘I don’t know. I do know I’m an appalling sight now. But – until the time comes—’

  ‘If you love each other—’

  ‘I love him, and he loved me as I was – so yes, maybe, with luck—’

  ‘Apart from your hair, Rosalie, which has to grow a little—’

  ‘Looks as if goats have been at it, doesn’t it? It wasn’t a prison haircut, although you might think so, they hacked it off in a hospital at Morlaix. Shaved this part. With the best of intentions, obviously… But that’s the least of it – what about being scarred from head to foot? All right, head to waist – and knees, Gestapo did that too – but –’ touching her forehead, and that cheekbone – ‘these mostly. OK, my hair’ll cover this, eventually—’

  ‘You’re still a most attractive—’

  ‘Like something the cat brought in!’

  ‘No – you really are. And those scars will disappear quite soon, you’ll see. With your hair grown – it’s lovely hair, and that colour, the coppery lights in it – incidentally the scars aren’t so disfiguring, you know. You think they are, when you look in the mirror that’s what you focus on – uh?’

  ‘You’re very kind, Thérèse. But I try not to look in the mirror, frankly.’ Glancing across the room at a yellowish one in a dark, heavy frame. ‘I’ve been giving that a wide berth.’ She added, touching the pad of dressing on the inside hollow of her left shoulder, ‘One thing I really do thank God for is that this wasn’t any lower. Not talking about being plugged through the heart, either—’

  ‘Your breast
. Yes. Lotte said that too.’

  ‘Very, very lucky.’

  ‘Bim-Bam can thank God too, I think!’

  Both laughing: Rosie thinking that the name might stick… Thérèse shaking her head: ‘Actually – no joke, is it? Definitely would not have been. But it’s truly amazing, such luck – effectively, no lasting damage. And you have lovely eyes—’

  She’d checked abruptly. Her eyes on the door. Quick glance at Rosie then, but Rosie already moving, on her way. Hearing from halfway up the stairs a double rap on the door – and a metallic clash as the dog’s weight came up hard against its chain. Not barking, though – whining: at someone it was glad to see? Thérèse then – in Alsatian, but the obvious question: ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Me, Aunt. Down, Bruno…’ A boy’s voice, switching into French that was accented exactly like Thérèse’s: ‘Bike’s got a puncture – wondered could I borrow yours – since it’s late, and curfew—’

  * * *

  Friday, July 2ist. There’d been rumbles of bombing and/or gunfire the night before last – half asleep she’d wondered, the war couldn’t be this close so soon, could it? – and this last night one single, very loud explosion that had woken her. She hadn’t known what time it was – having no watch she only knew the time of day when Thérèse was with her or she was downstairs within sight and sound of the clock in the kitchen; its ticking was audible all over the little house. But the explosion had woken Thérèse as well, at about three o’clock, she said, and she thought it might have been a plane crashing. If so, it would have been a bomber, presumably, and couldn’t have been far away; in these mountains somewhere, she guessed. There had been aircraft passing over earlier, apparently – which Rosie hadn’t heard. Another item of breakfast-time interest had been a statement in a Swiss news bulletin an hour ago to the effect that there’d been an attempt by senior German staff officers to kill Hitler. He’d been hurt only slightly, had spoken bitterly and defiantly on German radio last night; it seemed a bomb had exploded under the table at some military conference at which he’d been presiding.