Ormerod's Landing (42 page)

The company was getting rowdy now, with a song started in one corner progressing across the room and finally engulfing everyone. To Ormerod's own amazement he found himself trying to sing along with his enemies. They did not seem to be a bad bunch of enemies at all. Then
Formidable,
sitting on his lap, began to howl dismally with the tune, delighting friend and foe. Soon, and without realizing, Ormerod was on his feet and co-joined with half a dozen field-grey soldiers, singing 'We March Against England' at the utmost of his voice. Arms about each other, they swayed drunkenly across the bar room, while those on the fringe, including the silent old French couple with whom Ormerod had sat, clapped and joined in. Their faces remained set but they mouthed the words, making the best of a bad job.

At the height of the song and dance, with Ormerod's arms encompassing a tall, blond private and a fat, sweating corporal, Marie-Thérèse came through the back of the bar.

Two hours later, when only the stale smell downstairs remained

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of the evening's conviviality, Marie-Thérèse confronted him in the bedroom with all her pent up anger exploding.

'Fuck!' she shouted at him. She bent close to his contrite face. 'Fuck!' she shouted again.

Ormerod regarded her dizzily. He felt weary after so much cider. It seemed to have drained him. 'What do you mean by that?' he inquired with difficulty. His head was bad too. Her face seemed a long distance away. Then it zoomed close.

'You know what it means,' she almost snarled. 'It is a good English word.'

'Yes, yes,' argued Ormerod with the patience of a drunk. 'I know what it
means.
I was just inquiring why you said it.'

'Because it is the only word. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!'

'Don't go on so,' pleaded Ormerod. 'You'll have everyone awake. And my head's feeling horrible.'

He sat heavily on the bed. 'Are you coming to bed, dear,' he inquired domestically. She stood back and hit him across the head with her hand. Angrily, she did it again and again.

The amazement he felt at the blows was doubled when he looked up and saw she was crying. 'Here, hang on a minute,' he said, catching hold of her hands firmly. They felt like soft branches. 'What's all this caper about?'

She stumbled to her knees on the floor. Her crying was real and angry. 'You ... you
clown
!' she sobbed.
'You
dancing with the fucking Boche. How do you think it was for me to come in and see that? Dancing and singing German songs?'

'What did you expect? "The White Cliffs of Dover"?' he said. He patted her softly. 'Come on, Dove. I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. One of them blokes came up the stairs and found me. I had to go down. And they kept pouring that cider of yours down my throat. I couldn't refuse could I? They might have got difficult.'

'Dancing and singing German songs,' she repeated in a hurt whisper. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She had recovered from her brief emotion. 'One day, monsieur,' she said solemnly, 'you are going to have to kill men like that. Perhaps those same men you are so friendly with. I hope that when the time comes you can do it.'

*

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Twenty-four hours later she came into the darkened room and prodded him, making him jump startled from sleep. 'Oh, it's you/ he said, discontinuing his frantic feel for his gun under the pillow. 'Home late again.' Even in the dimness he could sense there was something eager about her.

'Dodo,' she said, 'we're ready to strike our first blow. Tonight. In one hour.'

Alarmed he sat up. 'What are you going to do?' he inquired suspiciously.

'We have six men,' she whispered. 'AH to be trusted. We have explosives. Dodo, we are going to blow up a train!'

An immediate heavy weight settled on his stomach. He stumbled from the bed. Impulsively, like an excited child, she held his large hand. He tried to pull his trousers on with the other. 'Now you're sure now, aren't you?' he said. 'You don't want the first thing you do to be buggered up.'

'It will not be, as you say, buggered up,' she assured him firmly. She released his hand as though disappointed that she had not communicated her enthusiasm to him. 'Everybody is ready.' She leaned, again eagerly, towards him. 'Do you know what the working man's shoe is called in France?'

Surprised, he shook his head.

'Le sabot,'
she replied. 'And that is where the word
sabotage
came from. It was invented by the French worker.'

'Let's hope they haven't forgotten then,' he said. Then cautiously: 'These men will know what they're up to, won't they? The Germans are not fools you know. Who's the explosives expert for a start?' He stood up and scratched himself violently in the dark.

'The man with the radio,' she said, trying to sound convincing. 'He knows. The man we went to see.'

'Monsieur Dubious?' sighed Ormerod.

'Monsieur Dubois,' she corrected. 'It is
Dubois'

I prefer it my way,' said Ormerod. 'That man knows about explosives?'

'He was an expert in the French army,' she said. 'And he is brave, monsieur. We need bravery as much as we need knowledge.'

He thought it might be a dig at him. He pulled his jersey over

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his face. 'Who else?' he asked when he emerged from die neck. 'Le Fevre?'

'Naturally Le Fevre. He wants to do something for France.'

'If he keeps pouring cider down the Jerries he gets in the bar downstairs, he'll kill them with that,' he said. 'All right. Who else?'

'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.'