Assignment in Brittany (22 page)

At last the woman said, “You’ve thanked me. Now go as you came.”

“In this daylight?”

“It is safer now than at night.”

“But we have a bill to pay,” the American said.

“We don’t want your money.”

“Big Louis will.”

The woman shrugged her shoulders. “Go now,” she insisted.

Myles exchanged a look with Hearne. “You handle this,” he said in English. “The smell of fish is stronger.”

Hearne nodded. He put his elbows on the counter of the bar and leaned forward so that his face was no more than a foot across from the woman’s. She wasn’t so old as he had thought. Her resemblance to the boy Pierre was extraordinary: there was that same thin, high-cheeked shape of face, the same broad brow and deep-set brown eyes. The fine black hair was smoothed into a knot at the nape of her neck. There was colour in her cheeks, and her skin was tanned as deeply as the men’s. She wasn’t so old after all; probably not even thirty. The lines and little wrinkles on her face came from strong sun and sea wind, not from age. The large eyes, fixed on him so intently, were young, and so were her strong arms and hands. It was the severity of her hair, the seriousness of her face, the fine lines on her skin which had made her seem more like Pierre’s mother than his sister. He kept his eyes on hers, and a smile on his lips, as he fumbled in his mind for a beginning. A dull red flush mounted over the colour
in her cheeks and surged down into her neck. She moved a step backwards from the counter, and stood under the vase of paper flowers which had been hooked to the wall. But her eyes were still fixed on his.

“Please go,” she said. Her voice was quieter now.

“Yes, we are going. And we thank you for warning us. But we must find out why you warned us, so that in turn we can warn any others who might come here as we did.”

“You could stop them from coming?” The woman’s face was suddenly animated with relief.

“We could stop many.”

She turned to the boy quickly. “Pierre, go down and wait at the jetty. When you see him coming, let us know.” Pierre left the room obediently. Myles and Hearne exchanged glances. So it was big Louis all right.

“We’ll have a drink,” Hearne said. “We’ll all have a drink.” The silent men behind him were beginning to worry him. “What about a drink?” he said to them. Two of them came forward, the others hesitated and then followed.

The woman uncorked a bottle of white, colourless liquid. She shook her head as she said, “You are in danger by staying.”

“We’ll be all right. We wakened and came down for a drink. If he comes, then we pretend nothing has happened, that you didn’t warn us. And we’ll leave at the first chance we get.” That seemed partly to satisfy her: she was pouring the drinks carefully into the small thick tumblers.

“Tell us one thing,” Hearne said. “Would it be impossible to sail from here tonight?”

The men were amused: he must have said something highly funny.

“Is the tide unfavourable?”

The men were trying to hide their laughs. One of them failed. It was the seaman’s prerogative over the stupid land-lubber.

“Stop that,” the woman said sharply to them. She turned towards Hearne and. Myles politely. “The tides never prevent us from sailing on this part of the river at any . time. There’s a deep channel in the middle.”

“Big Louis said the tide was wrong tonight. That was why we must wait until tomorrow.”

The men were amused no longer. The mention of big Louis had frozen them into silent watchfulness. Again Hearne had. the feeling that he was facing an individual, and not five men and one woman. Myles was pretending to concentrate on his drink, but his eyes were missing nothing.

Hearne went on calmly, “Are there any German-lovers here?”

The effect was electric. The woman’s eyes dilated and then narrowed. Two of the men slipped their hands into their pockets. Myles reached for the bottle casually as if to pour himself another drink but he paused with his fingers round its neck. One of the younger men suddenly cursed, spat into his drink, and pushed it away from him so violently that the glass upset.

“I knew you weren’t,” Hearne said in the same unhurried tone, “but I had to make sure. You do not look like the type of men who would lick the soles of the German’s feet. Some do; and some even like the taste of it.”

“So what?” the young man asked, his cold blue eyes hard with anger. He looked as if Hearne’s words had soured the saliva on his tongue.

“What will the other fishermen on this river begin to say about you when they learn that big Louis sells their allies to
their enemies? And they will learn some day. You can’t hide such things: they come out.”

“That is our business.” It was the oldest fisherman who spoke. The others nodded. Only the woman and the man with the angry eyes looked as if they didn’t agree with that, but they said nothing. Those Celts, thought Hearne irritably: clannish was another word for them. He was the stranger sticking his nose into their business. They could say what they liked to each other about Basdevant, but they would have no foreigner criticising him for them. And a foreigner was anyone who had not been born and brought up in this little village of eight houses.

“That is your business,” Hearne agreed. “You must deal with him yourselves. But what if other men come here for help? Will you stand aside and let the Boches catch them? And what is going to happen to you if Basdevant quarrels with any of you and informs the Germans that you helped men to escape from him?”

“He wouldn’t do that,” the old man said, but his tone lacked conviction.

It was the woman who spoke next. “I’m sick and tired to death of hearing you men talk. Shall we do this, shall we do that? You argue yourselves into your graves. First, let Jules tell what he knows, what we all know. Then these two men will go away, and we alone shall deal with big Louis and that Corbeau he brought here to help him. This man is right: big Louis is on trial. I didn’t lose two brothers and my father in this war for other men to grow fat on the leavings of their murderers. Jules, tell what you know.”

The young man with the angry blue eyes said, “At first, everything was as it should be. When I got back from the war, I helped with the others. We’d sail out to fish, and we’d take any man who had come to big Louis, and we’d meet the English
boats, and sometimes we’d land them in England ourselves. We know places on that coast like the back of our hand. We didn’t ask for money. If they had any, they gave us it. If they didn’t—well, that didn’t matter. We helped nine men to escape. Some were French, some were English, one was a Pole. Five days ago, we no longer had to sail so far. Big Louis said he and the Corbeau could do it by themselves. It was safer that way, he said. And then he seemed to have money, and food. He gave us good reasons. We could say nothing.”

There was a general murmur from the men, and a shuffling of feet.

“But two days ago I was in Saint-Malo, and there I saw something.” Jules paused. He looked gravely from Myles to Hearne as if to warn them to listen well. “Three days ago, two Englishmen were brought here by a man from Dinan. Big Louis sailed with them that night. There was also Corbeau, and young Yves from the next village.”

The woman explained, “Young Yves is the son, the only son left, of Yves who is the head of that village.” She smiled as if to excuse this interruption. Anyway, thought Hearne, she is really anxious we shouldn’t miss a trick. He smiled back and nodded. The only son left...something important was behind that.

“But why did young Yves come here to sail for England? Couldn’t one of the men from his own village have taken him across the Channel?”

“Old Yves had forbidden it. This was his only son, now that the other two had been torpedoed in the war.”

“And young Yves was determined to join the Frenchmen in Britain, even against his father’s will?”

“Yes, and he had come to Basdevant for help.”

Hearne and Myles exchanged quick glances. If Basdevant had betrayed young Yves, then here was the makings of a blood feud between the two communities; if the boy’s father ever learned of the betrayal, that was. And the woman realised this. Hearne could see that in her eyes.

“Go on, Jules,” she said impatiently.

“Well two days ago I was in Saint-Malo. Some prisoners were being marched through the street. We stood in silence and watched them go. There weren’t very many, and all were wearing civilian clothes. Among them I saw the two Englishmen: the young one, and the big one with red hair. And I saw young Yves.”

No one moved. The dark, silent faces of the fishermen stared into emptiness. The woman’s eyes were fixed, unseeing, on the pool of alcohol from Jules’s overturned glass.

At last Hearne said, “You, you must deal with him yourselves. And if any others come here asking for Basdevant, will you help them?”

Jules nodded slowly. “If we see them arriving. We would not have known that you were here if you hadn’t been late this morning, and I saw you by the grey light. We help anyone who hates our enemies.”

Hearne thought, Now there’s the explanation for Basdevant’s haste to get us indoors. He said, And you hate anyone who helps your enemies?”

The men were still silent. At last the oldest one said, “He is a good fisherman, the best on the river. We’ll never find another like him.”

“He is brave,” agreed another, “and he is clever.”

“He was a good man before the Germans came,” the oldest man went on, “and perhaps—” He stopped and looked at the others.

“Another drink?” asked the American suddenly. “Open, another bottle.” Out of the side of his mouth he said to Hearne, “These damned appeasers.”

Hearne was thinking, It’s no good: the older ones will remember big Louis as he was to them; they’ll remember his good points, his leadership his comradeship. They’ll begin to believe that he might be the same again, if only no more refugees come to tempt him. They may even end by blaming it all on the fugitives, and they’ll turn their anger against Jules for disturbing their peace of mind.

“Yes,” Hearne said, “I could do with another drink myself.”

The woman was listening to the reminiscences of the other men. She looked at Hearne and shook her head sadly. “You see?” she seemed to be saying. She began to wipe the counter where Jules’s glass had been upset, and then she paused suddenly, her brown eyes looking at Hearne and Myles in dismay.

“Do you hear that?” she began. “It’s Pierre. He’s running. I told you you would be too late Get back to your room, quick. I’ll think of something else to help you. Quick.”

Pierre burst into the room, incoherent in his excitement. They understood the reason for it when they at last could make sense of his news. It wasn’t Basdevant or Corbeau who had arrived. It was old Yves, and young Yves, and all the men from their village. They had sailed down as far as the little bay above the jetty; they must have left their boats there, for they had suddenly appeared on the river path. And they were walking towards the Golden Star.

Even as Pierre finished that last detail, the sound of men’s feet could be heard on the roadway outside.

“If they want a fight, they can get it,” said the old man, and
drew a knife from his pocket. The blade snapped back into readiness. Other knives were coming out.

Hearne cursed this misplaced bravery under his breath. That old fool appeased when he should fight, and fought when he should reason and explain. “Gentlemen,” Hearne said. “I think this solves your problem. It is Yves and his friends who will take action against big Louis. Obviously, he has escaped and his village knows all about Basdevant. If you defend him, the whole river will judge you were guilty along with him. Your names will stink worse than the mudflats at low tide.” It was his last desperate effort to cut through the dangers with which they were binding themselves.

And then the door of the bar was flung wide open, and there seemed to be a mass of brown faces and red sailcloth trousers wedging the narrow space. A tall, broad-shouldered man with red hair slipped through the sullen group of fishermen. A thin young man followed him.

Hearne put his glass slowly down on the counter, and stared.

“What’s wrong?” asked Myles. The spoken English reached the ears of the thin young man. He turned his head sharply and stared at Myles and Hearne, and then at Hearne.

“Well,” he said. “Well. Look, Sam, who’s here!” He came forward with a smile on his haggard white face, brushing a lock of hair impatiently back from his forehead. “I must say we
do
meet in the oddest places, don’t we?”

Sam came forward unbelievingly. “Can you beat that? It’s his nibs himself,” he said, and his slow Yorkshire voice filled the room.

It had a remarkably comforting sound.

17

FIRST BLOOD

Hearne looked at Myles, and then grinned. If he had seemed a funny kind of farmer before, God knew what the American was thinking now behind those alert eyes. Alert, but tactful. He was pretending to be interested in the newcomers, and only a shadow of a smile twisted the corner of his mouth. Hearne turned quickly to the two Englishmen and spoke in his own voice: there was no need, now for his Corlay imitation.

“Better get between them, tactfully. There’s no good in a fight starting now. They’d only knife each other instead of big Louis.”

“You know him?”

“We all know him,” Myles said.

The three Englishmen and the American grouped themselves not too noticeably across the middle of the room. This separated the two parties of Frenchmen. There had been enough interest and surprise over the foreigners who knew each other to ease the initial tension just a fraction. That, and the fact that big Louis
was not here, explained the feeling of indecision in the air.

Hearne seized his advantage. “Jules,” he said, “tell them how you have judged big Louis!” There was a stirring at the mention of the name.

“Yes, Jules, go on,” the woman said quickly. She was standing beside the young fisherman. Her hand touched his arm for a moment.

Jules looked at the men in the doorway. “We have learned what big Louis has done. We shall deal with him. It is our business.” The men around him echoed his words: “...our business.”