Assignment in Brittany (21 page)

Hearne came back to the fire-place. “Cold away from the fire,” he said. The Breton had found the plates he was looking for. As he came over to the cooking fish, he smiled at Hearne and nodded as if to say, “You see. I’m your man all right.” Hearne smiled back. He was as amazed as he always was whenever he saw someone so big and powerful as this being so incredibly naive. It amazed and pleased him. But that was the natural reaction, he reflected, of someone who only measured five feet ten.

“Now we can eat,” Basdevant said. “And drink. And then we can talk, if you’re still awake.”

“Which reminds me,” Hearne said, “have you a room we can rent?”

“And have you some clothes?” It was Myles who spoke, rising slowly from the wooden bench. He said in English to Hearne, “It’s no fun being a nudist. I just about left half of my skin on that chair.”

“What did he say?” Basdevant was looking with interest at Myles. Hearne translated freely. The Breton threw back his head and laughed. With a pair of gold ear-rings skewered through his ears, he would have made a fine corsair.

“Of course,” he said. “I forgot.” Now did you really, thought Hearne, and looked at Basdevant’s broad back reflectively as he carried the fish to the table. “Take a blanket from the bed. Hurry, or the fish will be spoiled,” the Breton called over his shoulder.

“And so,” he continued, as they held a dark grey blanket round them with one hand and ate the fish with the other, “and so you are English?”

“American,” Myles said quickly.

“We haven’t sailed anyone as far as that yet,” Basdevant laughed again. There was a gold tooth in the back of his mouth. That was what had started thoughts of ear-rings, Hearne realised. He saw one of Myles’s eyebrows raised. This unexpected mention of sailing had probably interested him. It certainly interested Hearne: everything was being made very easy for them. It must be pleasant working in the Deuxième Bureau.

Basdevant was talking volubly, with smiles and quick gestures and a general air of comradeship. They might have known him for years. Myles and Hearne found themselves smiling and nodding at the right places as they listened. “It’s
strange,” Basdevant was saying, “very strange. Once we used to fish over towards the English coast. But did the fishermen in Cornwall welcome us? Not they. You’d have thought we had been fishing right within their waters! Well, that didn’t worry us. Who’s to say where one bit of sea ends and the other begins? It all flows together, doesn’t it? So when we were right close to the shore, we’d pay a little visit to these Cornishmen. Just to show there were no hard feelings on our part. And we’d get some food, or a sail patched up, or a net mended when we were there. I remember a place called St. Ives... Ever been there?” Myles and Hearne shook their head. But for Hearne there was a tingle of pleasure as he heard the name, even pronounced as it was. “Well, in St. Ives there was an inn just down by the harbour where they used to sell their catches of fish. We used to go there for a drink, perhaps two, perhaps three. And as we were very sorry for those poor fishermen in Cornwall, we’d tell them how to catch fish. Well, then there might be a fight. These Englishmen used to lose their tempers very quickly. But they didn’t fight as well as we did. They used their fists, or perhaps, when they got very angry, a bottle. But that’s no way to fight.”

“Knives?” suggested Hearne with a suspicion of a smile. He remembered some of the scenes in St. Ives when the foreign poachers (every Cornish fisherman swore they poached) started drinking in the local pubs. First, wary silence; then boasts; then arguments and loud oaths; then blows, and knives, and broken bottles. It was always the same pattern. It ended with the Bretons slashing their way to their boats, cursing the English vividly as they ran; with the Cornishmen shaking bruised knuckles after their visitors, yelling to them to bloody well stick to their own bloody side of the bloody fishing grounds. And then three weeks
later the Bretons would be back, smiling their way towards a bar, talking loudly of the good catches they had had, in their perfectly understandable form of English. The strangest thing of all to Hearne was to know that the Bretons were more closely related to the Cornishmen than they were to other Frenchmen, or than the Cornishmen were related to other Englishmen.

“Why didn’t the Englishmen stave in your boats?” asked the practical Myles. Hearne watched Basdevant’s face in amusement.

“Stave in our boats?” he shouted incredulously. It was obvious that the idea had never occurred to him. Fishermen didn’t take away each other’s life that way. Poach? Yes...but not destroy.

“You were saying something was very strange,” suggested Myles.

“Ah, yes.” Basdevant relaxed again. He would be an ugly customer in a fight. Whoever had given him that bottle scar was a brave man, if he still lived.

“Yes, it’s strange. For now, when we go, we are given a fine welcome fit for a prince. You should see the way they welcome the lobsters we bring over now.” He paused, as if to let his words sink into his guests’ minds. “When do you want to sail?” he asked suddenly.

“Tonight,” Myles said.

Basdevant thought for some moments. His heavy eyebrows were bushed over his brown eyes. He said at last. “The tide will be difficult. What about tomorrow night?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Fine,” he said. “Tomorrow night.”

Myles looked quickly at Hearne, but he was picking the last bones carefully out of his piece of fish

It was excellent fish.

16

TRIAL FOR A TRAITOR

It was cold in the room upstairs in the Golden Star, and it seemed all the colder because of the bareness of the place. Three narrow beds, a mattress on the floor, a rain-spotted window overlooking the river, a chair. That was all.

“Why did you bring the clothes up here?” asked Myles.

“They were dry.” They damned well weren’t dry, thought Myles, and Hearne knew it as well as he did. He spread his trousers and shirt flap on the wooden floor thoughtfully.

“We’ll sleep well,” Hearne said very clearly in French, and sat down heavily on the nearest bed. It creaked satisfactorily. “There are enough blankets, anyway. We have thirty-six hours for sleep. That should be enough.” He yawned loudly.

Myles finished arranging his clothes and his boots. He looked towards the door and pointed silently. One eyebrow was up.

Hearne nodded. The American sat noisily down on the bed next to Hearne’s and yawned in turn. The two men rolled the
blankets tightly, round themselves, and then lay still. The rain had stopped. There was morning sunshine outside the window, and a smooth stretch of blue sky.

When they at last heard the sound of Basdevant’s large feet moving about in the room below, Hearne raised himself on an elbow. He whispered, “We’ll sleep in relays.”

“You can begin. I got some shut-eye yesterday. It is only my feet which worry me. What’s wrong, anyway?”

Hearne considered for a moment. He owed the American a warning. He couldn’t expect any intelligent co-operation if he kept Myles completely in the dark.

“What do you think of all this?” he asked Myles.

“I liked the fire and the food.”

“And Basdevant?”

“He’s a big fellow, very big.”

“That’s just about what I thought.”

The two men looked at each other and grinned.

Hearne said, “To be quite frank, I don’t like it.”

“Strong smell of fish,” agreed Myles. And then he was suddenly serious. “Isn’t that buzzard all right? You should know.”

“I thought I did. He’s certainly the man I was looking for. I got his name from someone reliable.” Or was Fournier reliable? God, nowadays you had even doubts of your own grandmother, Hearne thought. Or was he being too jittery, worrying over trifles, finding suspicions where there should be none? Lack of sleep, probably: perhaps if he got some sleep he would stop seeing mysteries.

The sky outside the window was a pale, ruthless blue.

“Well?” the American asked. “I’m old enough to know.”

The footsteps still moved about downstairs.

Hearne spoke quickly. “This is the place, and that is the man. He’s probably just careless, or simple, or goodnatured. I’m probably dizzy with sleep and cursed with a doubting mind. But, first of all, he let us into the house without proper identification. He seemed eager to get us inside. He was eager to identify himself. He was eager to get down to business. He made all the moves. And then he didn’t like our idea of bringing our clothes up here. It was he who suggested we should dry them at the fire, but he didn’t rush to offer us any others, although he was a good host in every other way. Last of all, he said the tide wouldn’t be right: that was an excuse for a couple of land-lubbers. We seemed that all right, by suggesting something about a hole being knocked in someone’s boat.”

“That explains a lot,” Myles said. “Now I’ll add my nickel’s worth. He lives too damned well. Did you notice the oil he wasted when he fried that fish? I’m telling you there hasn’t been a farm-house in my travels which slopped the oil about that way: And there was butter, even if it did taste like a goat. And cheese, a big one at that. And brandy, and red wine, and good coffee, and cigarettes. It’s what I would call pre-armistice standard. Look, you’ve a farm and the Germans have only started to penetrate your district, but you live more carefully than he does. He’s slap bang beside Saint-Malo, and the Germans have settled nicely into the place by this time: I bet every inch of bread, every spoonful of oil, in the district is noted down in their little black note-books.”

“We are making a nice case out of very little,” Hearne said. “He may smuggle a lot of things in here, by his boat. He seems to enjoy poaching. He may even—” He paused. The room below was silent. There might have been a movement at the foot of the stairs.

Myles had noted it too. “ Sleep,” he whispered.

Hearne added a few snores to that advice. He felt warm and comfortable. The food and wine and brandy were doing their work. Another five minutes of pretending, and he would act himself into sleep. He heard the door open slightly. Myles stirred, turning in the way which light sleepers do at the suspicion of a noise. Then the door was closed again; careful footsteps descended the steep wooden stairs.

“You sleep,” Myles whispered again. “I’ll keep watch.”

“Half an hour. Wake me then. We may have to be ready to move on.”

Myles nodded his agreement.

The blue of the sky was bolder.

Myles was wakening him, shaking him lightly but determinedly.

“Sorry,” the American was saying, “but I thought I’d better let you in on this. I can’t get the hang of the accent.”

Hearne sat up in bed, shaking his head to waken himself fully. The room was now warm with the sunlight which streamed through the window. Later than I meant to be, he thought. The clothes stretched out on the floor were crumpled but dry enough.

He looked at Myles and grinned. “That’s better,” he said. “I feel much better.”

“I thought you needed more than a half-hour. You’ll be able to run all the faster if we have to. But look!” He pointed to the half-open door. Standing in the shadows was a thin boy in Breton fishing clothes. “I’ve been struggling with his language for five minutes. He’s nearly bawling because he can’t understand me.”

The boy spoke, his dark, anxious face looking at Hearne expectantly.

“The gentleman speaks French?” His accent was pure Breton. “Yes. What is it?”

“My sister sent me.”

“Well?”

“She says you are to hurry.”

“Where?”

“You must go away.”

“Now?”

The boy nodded.

“Why?”

The boy looked anxiously over his shoulder.

“Please,” he said.

“Where’s your sister?”

“Downstairs in the bar.”

“Where’s Basdevant?”

“Big Louis has gone to Saint-Malo. He will be back in an hour, perhaps more, perhaps less. My sister is in the bar.”

A sudden light dawned on Hearne. “You mean she’s in charge?”

“Yes.”

“Who else is there?”

“The others.”

“What others?”

“The men who live here: all except big Louis and Corbeau.”

“Who’s Corbeau?”

“Big Louis takes him on his boat now. He’s his cousin.”

“And your sister sent you up here...Did the others know she sent you up?”

“Yes.”

Hearne bit his lip. Myles, watching the boy’s face intently, said in English, “He’s scared stiff at what he’s doing.”

Hearne suddenly got out of bed. “We’ll dress and go down and see this sister. Better hurry. How are the feet?”

“Could be worse.”

They dressed quickly and simply. The boy’s face relaxed. His brown eyes were smiling now.

He led the way down the rickety stairs. In Basdevant’s living-room, he halted and pointed to the door by which they had entered this dawn.

“No, thank you,” Hearne said, “we want to see your sister first.” He moved towards the door which lay opposite the window in the room. His guess last night had been that it led to the bar. He had probably been right: even now, with his hand on its latch, he could hear voices arguing.

The boy tried to catch his arm. “Not that way. This way.” He pointed again.

“It’s all right, sonny. We’re friends,” Myles was saying. “We only want to thank your sister.” As the boy turned his head to answer the American, Hearne opened the door.

The noise inside the little room with its four marbletopped tables, its dark wood counter, its brightly coloured calendars and paper flowers on the walls, ceased abruptly. Five men, their faces bronzed and lined from sea and wind; three boys, large-eyed and alert; a dark-haired woman leaning over the counter. That was all. They seemed to be one person as they turned and looked at Hearne and Myles. However divided had been the opinions which had caused their violent discussion, they were now united in thought and reaction as they faced the strangers.

“Pierre,” the woman said angrily, “I told you—”

“We insisted on coming to thank you,” Hearne cut in. “This isn’t Pierre’s fault.”

Someone cleared his throat, feet shuffled, but no one spoke.