Early One Morning (13 page)

‘I thought you might need some company,’ he shouted over the bobbing heads.

Eve managed a grateful grin she tried to invest with at least a simulacrum of happiness. As she walked up his arm came out and she slid hers through his and wondered what was going to happen now.

JUNE, 1940

Robert came back to the workshops and showroom on Avenue Montaigne to change. It was deserted as he expected. The mechanics had been taken by the
mobilisation generale
, the secretaries to the exodus, and the customers to other countries. In his office he stripped off his Air Force uniform in disgust and threw it into the waste. He had spent days badgering officers to be allowed to fly sorties, to support the troops, but confusion overwhelmed everything. Planes that could be harassing German troops and convoys stood on the Tarmac, idle.

Finally, as the Germans came closer, Robert had asked permission to take the planes back to a safe field to continue the fight. Permission refused. He attempted to take one anyway and was threatened at gunpoint. That was when he realised it was futile. France wasn’t going to fight after all, not as a cohesive force.

Changed into civilian clothes, he locked up the premises and began to walk north towards the Champs Elysées but hesitated. He couldn’t stand to see the great street humbled by the ugly steel barriers strung across it to prevent German gliders landing.

Robert turned and headed south down the Avenue Montaigne, past two gendarmes, rifles slung over their backs, looking nervous and jittery, scanning him for signs of subversion, as if he might have a hammer and sickle tattooed about his person.

The pavements were gritty beneath his feet, the last of the sand that had been dumped outside each apartment, waiting for the concierges to carry it to the roof as protection against bomb blasts. Only someone who didn’t live in Paris could have come up with that plan, he thought. The concierges refused to a woman and a man to undertake such a menial task. The sand was left to be dispersed by the few children left in the city and pissed in by the packs of abandoned cats that now roamed the streets.

Posters everywhere proclaimed the city’s fate; those torn down in disgust stirred lazily in the breeze.

Notice

To Residents of Paris

Paris having been declared an OPEN CITY, the military Governor urges the population to abstain from all hostile acts and counts on it to maintain the composure and dignity required by these circumstances.

The Governor General of Paris

Dentz.

How, wondered Robert, can you maintain dignity and composure when your trousers are round your ankles and your arse is stuck in the air, just waiting for the German army to shaft you? He cut through to the Avenue George V and, round the corner from the Crazy Horse, found a café open. The walnut-faced proprietress glared at him when he asked for a cognac with his coffee and pointed at the sign. No alcohol, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

‘Aren’t you Robert Benoist?’ she asked.

He nodded. It was amazing people still remembered him, two years after his last, twilight victory at Le Mans.

‘Why aren’t you off in England with your rich Jewish friends?’

He paid for the drink without it touching his lips and crossed the river. As he traversed the Alma bridge he could see clumps of black smoke hugging the river and taste the vile chemicals in the air. The sun suddenly became as hazy as the Paris streetlamps in their blackout veils, its light and warmth turned down several notches. It was true, then. Someone had torched the oil tanks at St Cloud.

A lone plane flew overhead and the few people on the bridge ducked under the parapet but Robert could see it was just a 108. A spotter plane.

It banked over the Île de la Cité and headed north. Robert guessed it was flying up the rue Sebastopol against the stream of the second river Paris had suddenly acquired, the one of people, flowing like thick molasses, coming in at the North and East gates, moving down Sebastopol and St Michel, exiting the city at Orleans and Italic Cars, motorbikes, carts, bicycles, horses, all crawling at the same achingly slow speed, driven on by fear and desperation.

As he reached the Left Bank of the river, there were perhaps a dozen others in view, a few strolling, like him, most grim faced, hurrying about their business. A city of five million had suddenly become a semi-ghost town, with perhaps 750,000 people left: those too old, young or, like him, stubborn to move. His wife and children were safe out in one of the Rothschild houses—those rich Jews the café owner talked about had made sure friends were well provided for. Maurice was still here, busier than ever, Eve had decamped to Normandy and her dogs and he still saw Wimille now and then, grumbling about how the war had struck just as he was finding the best form of his life. Which was, he had to admit, tragically true.

Some of the gutters were inky black from the millions of singed fragments of the government papers burned by the ministries on the nearby Quai d’Orsay. Now a light soot began to fall, speckling the pavement and Robert could feel the lining of his lungs burning as noxious chemicals attacked the tissues. The fuel depots were blazing, bleeding their filth into the city’s sky.

He looked around, wondering if the Metro was working then, like an apparition came that rarest of mythical beasts, a cab. He ordered the phlegmatic driver to take him to the Dome, where the sight of Peggy Guggenheim sipping champagne convinced him he could get his cognac. The heavy black-out drapes were pulled back, but the terrace was emptying as the air became more sulphurous. Robert went inside, sat down, gave his order and listened to the radio, where the constant repetitions of the glutinous song ‘J’attendrai’ were interrupted by gloomy pronouncements on travel restrictions and exhortations to stay put.

Maurice, looking flushed and happy, sat down in front of him. With his pastel-coloured jacket and boater he looked like a boulevardier, in strangely gay dress for a city descending into twilight. ‘Brother. I thought I’d find you eventually.’

There was a dark spot on Maurice’s sleeve, Robert rubbed his fingers on it and sniffed. Gasoline. ‘What have you been doing, Maurice?’

His brother looked around and from his pocket produced a handkerchief, which he slowly unwrapped. Robert caught a glimpse of brilliant colours dancing before the treasure was quickly returned to safety. ‘For ten litres of petrol. The things I was offered.’ He smirked. ‘Including a real marquise.’ A decree published in
Le Matin
had forbidden the removal from French soil of gold, platinum, silver and finished jewellery. Those heading for Portugal, Spain and Switzerland were happy to divest themselves of valuables if it meant fuel or food.

Seeing Robert’s look of disapproval he changed tack ‘Who betrayed us, Robert?’

‘We betrayed ourselves.’

The 108 came back, low, the engine noise thrumming percussively down the boulevard. ‘Where are the English fighters?’ asked Maurice.

‘In England,’ said Robert. ‘Along with the British troops.’

‘And precious few French ones.’ Maurice had been assured that the British troops were given loading preference at Dunkirk, an action which simply confirmed his view that their so-called ally cared little for anything but the fate of Albion. The English will fight to the last Frenchman, was the widely held view with which he concurred. ‘I suppose Williams won’t be coming back now.’

Robert shook his head. ‘No, even Will isn’t that big a fool.’

He thought of Eve, alone, out in Normandy and tried to stop his mind wandering any further.

SCOTLAND, OCTOBER 1940

‘WHERE DO YOU
think you are going with that, m’lad?’

The sergeant major loomed over Williams, almost blotting out the entrance to the Bridge End Hotel. He was tired now, and didn’t need any more army games. It had taken two and a half days of riding overcrowded, delayed and misrouted trains to get up here to Kinross, and his temper was fraying dangerously.

He had been in the army for eight months, and he had hoped that Scotland would be a change for the better after the grinding, depressing uncertainty of London. They had acted as if he were an octogenarian when he had volunteered his services. After weekly, daily, then hourly appearances at the Strand recruiting office, they had found him a position in the RASC, running errands, ferrying officers, not what he had in mind at all. He was driving, at least. It kept his mind off Eve, kept away those cramping pains in his stomach, the feeling of nausea, the hideous realisation of what he had done now France had fallen.

He welcomed the transfer to the clean air and promised good, simple food of rural Scotland, and tried not to dwell on the fact it was taking him further than ever away from his wife.

‘With what, Sergeant Major?’

‘That.’

Williams didn’t have to look. He had already received ribbing and reprimands about the fact he preferred his Vuitton trunk to the standard kit bag. If he’d been shipping overseas, then maybe he’d have acquiesced, but shuttling around the British Isles, the trunk-on-wheels served just as well. He didn’t see what the fuss was about.

‘It’s my case.’

‘Is it? And what do you think this is?’ He nodded at the large, grey stone building behind him. ‘The Ritz?’

It isn’t the Ritz, he wanted to say, I know the Ritz. This is just some large dull provincial hotel taken over by 4th Liaison RASC and where he would be billeted in the basement while the general he was to ferry around would no doubt be swanning around in the Chairman’s suite. He knew he was already two sentences beyond where Robert would have hit the uppity bastard. His snapping point was always a little further on, but it was coming up fast. He was tired. He wanted a drink. Not this idiot.

Both opened their mouths to speak at once and nothing came out but a honking sound. They both turned to stare at the source of the horn, a sleek Humber staff car that drew up a few yards away. Out stepped a brunette, in a uniform Williams didn’t recognise right off, with an RAF flying jacket over the top. She walked slowly round the car, looked over at the pair of them, waiting for the salute they gave and she returned.

‘Trouble, Sergeant Major?’

‘This man has non-regulation kit, ma’am.’

He felt the eyes rake him. ‘The sergeant major’s right, you know. I don’t think it’s going to be a Louis Vuitton kind of war.’

‘What sort of war did you have in mind, ma’am?’

‘Corporal Williams?’

The question threw him and he could see the sergeant major frowning. How did she know who he was? Mind you, the phrase, ‘can’t miss him, only man fool enough to wheel around a LV trunk’ might explain it. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘That’s what I’d like to talk to you about.’

‘Mind if I get rid of this first, ma’am?’

She inclined her head at the bolshie sergeant major who sighed and stepped aside. ‘There’s a pub down by the river. Four hundred yards. Shall we say half an hour?’

The warm beer tasted suspiciously thin, but Williams drank a whole pint of it before she arrived at his table in the small garden out the back with the fast-flowing river gurgling by at the end of the slope. The northern sun soon heated him up in his thick, coarse woollen uniform, and he was relaxing, almost forgetting the summons, when she slipped into the seat unheralded, gin and tonic in hand.

‘Don’t get up, Williams,’ she said quickly. ‘We won’t be disturbed. I’ve requisitioned the garden for the war effort.’

‘I didn’t catch your name, ma’am.’

‘No you didn’t, did you?’ She smiled and it transformed her face into something altogether more soft and friendly. Then it went, flicked off. What was she? Twenty-five? Six? Yet there was a hardness about her, possibly just a defensive carapace, although all of them were in the process of developing that. Her accent was top drawer, arrogant, yes, snobbish, certainly, used to being obeyed and served, but there was something else, too. The Sergeant Major, he knew, had felt it as well. An extra dose of self confidence, the assurance that comes with knowing you have absolute power on your side. ‘Captain Rose Miller.’

Which outfit? He wanted to ask, but something told him he shouldn’t.

Eventually she said, ‘I’m with the Inter-services Research Bureau. Tell me, have you been out of France long?’

‘Nine … no, close to eleven months.’

‘Miss it?’

He nodded, thinking of the difference between London and Paris. ‘Not too bad. Only every day’

‘I have had a word with your General. He was rather looking forward to having a race driver as his chauffeur.’

‘Was? Or is?’

‘I suggested to him you were rather overqualified.’

Williams didn’t like this. Didn’t like people who suddenly seemed to know an awful lot about him. Like the chap in Ireland all those years ago, he’d had the same air of authority. He began to feel uneasy, and as if reading his mind she said, ‘Why didn’t you contact your old friends in SIS when you got to London?’

‘I don’t have any old friends in SIS.’

‘You helped them in Dublin.’

He laughed at this. ‘Is that what they told you? They tried to get me to play piggy-in-the-middle. I didn’t fancy my chances.’ Then he realised she must have had access to some file about the whole affair. ‘Is that who you are with? SIS?’

She shook her head but didn’t answer directly. ‘I am afraid we are rather making this up as we go along. We need some people who know France, who speak French like natives. We are not sure what for yet. Maybe translation, perhaps writing propaganda leaflets.’ A long pause while Rose drank. ‘What do you think?’

She pulled a rather crumpled envelope from her pocket and smoothed it out. ‘Initially, returning to London for an informal chat. At the Victoria Hotel. Whitehall. Do you know it?’

Williams shook his head and tried to keep the exasperation from his voice. ‘I’ve just come from London.’

She smiled again, but this time he was disappointed to see her face didn’t transform, but remained cold and impossible to read. ‘As I said, we are flying by the seat of our pants. If it is any consolation, the chat is in two weeks’ time, so no rush.’