Ormerod's Landing (17 page)

'We have three others,' she said. Then, almost apologetically: 'And you.' He could see her eyes in the dark. 'There is some difficulty about one man,' she admitted unhappily. 'He goes to a chess club and then to drink with the other players. So he may not be with us.' He could sense the words clouding with doubt. 'You see if he did not go to the chess club they would notice.'

'Now we're back to me dancing with the Germans,' he pointed out. 'If you don't, then it arouses suspicion. All right. What's the plan?'

He was sitting on the bed and she squatted down in the strange manner she had. 'At midnight there is a goods train arriving at the station in Granville. We blow it up. It is simple.'

'What's it carrying?' he asked.

'Supplies for the Boche,' she said stoutly. 'Of course.'

'Not explosives? We don't want the whole bleeding town going through the sky do we?'

'It is not explosives,' she confirmed. 'But other things. What it carries is not so important, Dodo. It is a
gesture.
It will show them that we do not sleep.'

'Why blow it up in the station? This is the end of the line. It is not even going to block the railway because it stops here.'

'It has to be here,' she said. 'The men are Granville men. And we must wait until the driver of the train and the fireman have got safely away. They are Frenchmen too.'

'Couldn't you start off with something a bit less ambitious,' he suggested, touching her small shoulder. 'Cutting telephone wires or painting some rude words on walls.'

'The telephone wires have already been cut once,' she said reluctantly. 'A month ago. Dubois and Le Fevre did it. And some citizens of Granville complained. They said it was an inconvenience. It interrupted their business. Some people would open a shop in hell.'

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Ormerod sighed. 'Even our friend Le Fevre admits that he's got to earn a living, no matter who's in the driving seat,' he said.

'Are you ready?' she asked, unwilling to talk further with him. 'It is getting towards the time.'

'Ready as I'll ever be,' he said. 'Where's Le Fevre?'

'Paul is down the stairs. The last of the drunken Boche have gone. He will come with us. The others are coming here to rendezvous. Then we will go in pairs to the station. The train is due in fifteen minutes. We will give the driver and the other Frenchman time to go home - then bang, Dodo - bang!'

'Bang, bang,' he repeated, regarding her almost sorrowfully. He strapped the gun under his arm. 'All right, I'm ready. Let's go and get it over with.'

He led the way down the shadowed stairs. The girl followed him lightly, touching his back in her eagerness. Le Fevre was solemnly wiping his glasses behind the bar, his short, ugly form reflected in the ornate mirror at his back. He looked up with hooded eyes. From upstairs they heard his child call out and Ormerod thought the man swore under his breath. He went to the stairs and called up to his wife to keep the girl quiet. His wife answered sharply. There was a lot of tension in the place.

There came a V-sign knock on the street door of the bar and Le Fevre went quickly to it and pulled the bolt. Dubois came in with exaggerated stealth, followed immediately by another, puzzled-looking man and a youth of about seventeen. Ormerod's heart fell further as he saw them.

Dubois, his bruised nose almost black, produced a small suitcase and patted it reassuringly. He looked, Ormerod thought, like a back-street abortionist. The other man and the youth, who were never named, looked at the suitcase with distrust and fascination. 'The explosives,' explained Marie-Thérèse proudly. 'Dubois knows all about explosives.'

'Christ almighty,' thought Ormerod glumly. He wouldn't have trusted Dubois with a firework. Even Marie-Thérèse was looking at the collection of misfits with a late misgiving. She shrugged and said to Ormerod, who had said nothing: 'Armies are not always perfect.'

'In the dark all cats are black,' answered Ormerod dully.

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'Let's hope they can run. What's the lad doing here?'

'He is a brave boy. He wants to kill some Germans.'

'As long as he's back in time for school,' muttered Ormerod. 'As for the other bloke, why does he keep shifting his eyes back and forward? He looks like he's trying to cross the road.'

'Are you ready?' Marie-Thérèse said, annoyed. 'Or are you going to criticize all night. Just make sure, Dodo, that you're not the first to run.'

'I'll wait for the others,' he promised.
Formidable
began scratching himself with a noise like a machine in a corner of the bar room. 'What about the dog?' said Ormerod.

Marie-Thérèse sighed impatiently. 'Leave it here,' she said. 'It's served its purpose.'

'Just as we were becoming friends,' said Ormerod. 'All right. Let's get on with it. Goodbye
Formidable.'
He gave the dog a quiet push with his foot. 'I don't think we'll be coming back this way.'

Two by two, with Le Fevre and the girl leading, at one minute intervals they left the bar and went through the void streets and shadows of the town towards the station.

It turned out to be the most terrible and bloody night of Ormerod's life. At least up to then. When they arrived at the railway embankment, some two hundred yards east of the station, the midnight goods train had arrived and was standing exhaling ghostly steam into the placid gloom. The odd sabotage group waited, lying close to the dampening railway grass. Ormerod tried to control a shiver. In the starlight he could see the eyes of Marie-Thérèse as she lay close to him, and heard her breathing as he had heard it at night in their chaste communal bed.

From up the line, magnified in the dark still air, they heard the calling voices of the train driver and the fireman. Eventually the steam settled like an apparition going to sleep and the men could be seen moving along the line towards the obscure roofs of the station. Everything there quietened. Night noises could be heard from far away. At a signal from Marie-Thérèse the group moved forward.

A hundred yards short of the train they crouched and solidi-

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had dried them with the leaf and now he pulled on his socks and shoes and followed her along the waterbank.

There was still enough light left, when they eventually turned through the trees, to see the details of a shapely house at the end of the avenue of Normandy poplars. It was really a small chateau, with a cone-like turret at one end, a symmetrical line of windows like framed pictures in a gallery and a stylish entrance door on a plinth of steps. In one of the upper windows a yellow light appeared.

'It is a signal,' said Marie-Thérèse pointing at the light. 'He is expecting us.'

'Where's Jerry?' asked Ormerod. 'It's a wonder he hasn't moved into a place like this.'

'The man here says it has a reputation of being haunted,' she smiled. 'Even the conquerors are frightened of ghosts.'

Ormerod's eyebrows lifted. 'I'm not all that keen myself,' he said. 'It looks a bit spooky doesn't it?' The wet evening mist was easing up from the long park in the front of the house. The grass felt spongy under their feet. From the house a dog's bark erupted into a howl.

'It was a beautiful place once,' said Marie-Thérèse untypically. She usually spoke about present things. She was not given to remembering. I came here one day to a wedding. All the tables were here on the grass and there was a man playing an accordion sitting beneath the tree over there. That was the day I saw my husband for the first time. He was a guest also.'

'Ah, I see,' nodded Ormerod, for some reason embarrassed by her nostalgia. 'It has memories.' They still had a hundred and fifty yards to walk to the house. The grass gave way to a paved garden, now well on its way to neglect. The dog barked from the house again.

'Where did you meet your wife, Sarah?' asked Marie-Thérèse suddenly and curiously.

Ormerod was astonished not only by the interest of the question but by the fact that she knew his wife's name. Tn a pawnshop,' he answered, after his hesitation. Tn Wandsworth. I tell her sometimes she's an unredeemed pledge.'

I don't understand what that means,' said Marie-Thérèse. She did not sound as if she wanted to know.

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'I was doing an investigation there,' said Ormerod. 'Breaking and entering. Never did clear that one up. Anyway the next week I took her to the pictures and we started going out a bit. Then we got married.'

'It is a beautiful story,' she sighed flatly. She looked across the garden in the gloomy dusk. 'Yes, the man was playing the accordion under that tree.'

'Funnily enough,' pursued Ormerod, 'the film was called
Ask A Policeman.
Quite strange that, wasn't it?'

'Fascinating,' said the Frenchwoman without a shred of enthusiasm. 'We danced here. On this courtyard. It seems so long ago. When everything seemed to be all right.'

'It did once,' he agreed moodily. 'We thought it was anyway. One minute you're in the one-and-sixes, laughing all the way. The next you're shooting and drowning Germans. It hardly seems possible.'

'It is possible,' she answered quietly. They were almost at the door now. It opened quite suddenly and quietly. A man stood there, holding back one of the largest and most fearsome dogs Ormerod had ever seen. Its eyes blazed in the dimness and its flailing red tongue seemed to glow.

'Come in,' said the man who held the monster's collar. 'He will not hurt you.'

He spoke in English for Ormerod's benefit. He smiled at the girl.
'Bonsoir,
Marie-Thérèse,' he said. 'You have come back to Mesnil-Bocage.'

She took his proffered hand and they kissed cheeks. Ormerod was introduced and he shook hands without taking his eyes off the dog. A growl was rattling in its throat. Ormerod sidled by, getting as close to the door jamb as possible. They walked into a dank, echoing hall, like a vault, the walls rising high to an indistinct ceiling. A wide staircase went up around the walls in a series of galleries. 'They call him Jacques-the-Odd,' whispered Marie-Thérèse. The man had gone ahead to put the howling dog into some confinement. 'He is a little strange.'

I don't wonder, living here,' muttered Ormerod, looking around. 'No wonder the Germans haven't bothered with the place.'

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'It used to be beautiful,' she said sadly, looking around her. They walked into a large room with a carved ceiling. A good fire was gnawing through some logs at the distant end. Jacques appeared silently behind them and turned on a single light. Ormerod felt Marie-Thérèse's nervous jump. His eyes took in the room. It was like a storehouse, crates and cases and piles of books, stacks of pictures, upturned furniture, crockery, garden tools, even a motorcycle leaning against the panelled wall. A collection of stuffed deer-heads was crowded into one corner, staring glassily into the room, curiously like animals in a pen.

'Everything is here, monsieur,' said Jacques, waving his hand at the amazing jumble. I guard it for the family with Honored the dog, and the ghosts.' He laughed. 'I think the German army is afraid of us. You would like some wine?'

He led them towards the great-mouthed fireplace and motioned them into two chairs. It was enjoyable to sit in a chair again. Ormerod felt the comfortable warmth on his face. The cheeks of Marie-Thérèse were shining in the firelight like those of a child. Jacques was a broad-shouldered man, about fifty, hair like a dish rag, and wearing the commonplace
bleu de travail
and large-toed shoes. He shuffled away to get the drink, returning with the glasses and an already opened bottle. 'It is just the
vin du pays,'
he said. 'The ordinary wine of this region, monsieur. There is some fine wine in the cellars here but I am not permitted to touch it. When the war is over some of it will be quite acceptable and some will be ruined.'

'Where is the family?' asked Ormerod.

Jacques shrugged, his shadow heaving on the wall. 'Who knows? They were going to Bordeaux, because they thought like many others that the French Government would go there from Paris and fight the Germans from the west. A lot of hope there was of that.'

'What news from Granville?' asked Marie-Thérèse more urgently.

'It is good,' replied Jacques. He sat down on an upturned flower tub. 'There was a curfew and house searches and notices posted on walls around the town, but no arrests, and so far no hostages or reprisals. It looks as though you got away with it.'

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'Good,' nodded the Frenchwoman. 'If Paul Le Fevre is still free, and the others, that means they are not looking for us. They do not realize we are here. Nobody has noticed Dubois is missing?'

'The Germans have not,' replied Jacques. 'The story is that he has gone to Rennes and has temporarily shut his business. Where did you put him ?'

'In the cemetery. In a vault,' put in Ormerod, understanding the sense.

'A nice touch,' nodded the man. 'The proper place for a dead man.' He rose. 'You are hungry I expect. We shall eat excellently. I have not touched the wines, but the larder is another thing. Also I have some good Normandy tripe.'

'Tripe!' The eyes of Marie-Thérèse lit. 'That's wonderful, Jacques.'

'From Caen only today,' said the man, putting his finger in the side of his nose. I have a friend.'

'It is indeed a friend who brings you tripe from Caen,' she enthused. She laughed at Ormerod. 'The tripe in this region is the best anywhere,' she told him.

'We have tripe in England, you know,' he replied defensively. 'Big thing in the north. With onions.'

She made a face. I have seen it. It is inferior to Normandy tripe.'

'I'm not starting a war over it,' he shrugged. 'I'll surrender. Your tripe is superior to our tripe. Now are you happy?'

'Not happy. Satisfied,' she said. Jacques laughed in the deep shadows as he went from the room. The dog howled plaintively in its confinement.

'How long will we stay here?' asked Ormerod, putting his feet out towards the fire. I could get a liking for this.'

Marie-Thérèse did not reply. She was sitting in a wing-back chair, the shadows of the fire moving across her face. She looked weary and her eyes were closed. He thought, not for the first time, how strange it was they should be doing this thing. She appeared so small and vulnerable. It was difficult to realize that her ambition was to kill. Jacques returned through the thick gloom of the outer room bearing two more glasses of wine. It was a moment or two before Marie-Thérèse opened