The Caves of Périgord (21 page)

He clambered up the hill toward his men, the mud easier now with the fine layer of sand to give his boots a grip. The boys were standing in full view, their weapons hanging loosely by their sides, enthralled by the sight of the wrecked train. One threw his arms wide open to embrace Manners and the others began spontaneously to applaud. But there was no time for that. Manners bundled them up the hill, away from what was now an ambush site for François. They had to be well clear before the German patrols arrived from le Buisson. Christ, they’d be angry. This line would be out for days, and a whole freight car of replacement points had fallen into the river. Maybe they could do something to make sure they could not be salvaged. Perhaps if he booby-trapped the door …

Lungs heaving, their hands and faces scratched from the climb through the woods, they got to the ridge in time to see the German trucks coming along the road from le Buisson. God, they were badly trained. They should have been spaced at least two hundred yards apart in this country, and there should have been an armored car to lead them or at least a couple of motorcyclists. Had they no fear of an ambush?

François waited until the trucks slowed to take a sharp bend in the road where it crossed the railway line, still almost a mile from the train crash. And then as the lead truck turned and rumbled across the crossing and down the slope, François had a perfect head-on shot with no deflection and he held his aim as the first short burst hit the road just ahead and the truck rolled into it. A sustained burst and the truck slowed as if it had hit a wall, and careered off the road and into a ditch. The second truck drove into the same burst of fire, drove through it and failed to make the bend and rolled into the river. François paused, switched his aim, and raked the last truck, now stopped just before the level crossing. The two trucks stuck in the middle were trying frantically to turn, soldiers leaping out into the trees. The last truck exploded as the petrol tank blew up and ammunition began to cook off. Long raking
bursts into the trees, and then the sound of single shots as the rifles began firing at the soldiers. François would have to change the machine gun barrel soon. Another two bursts into the two middle trucks. More single shots. Now the Germans were firing back, but firing anywhere, François’s position still unspotted. Time to go. His Frenchmen were capering with joy behind him, the fools. They’d attract bullets. He pushed them down the slope beyond the ridge toward Audrix. His headache had quite disappeared.

Boridot’s farm looked deserted and ramshackle and the small vineyard was thick with weeds. But the vegetable garden was well kept and blooming with early radishes and some of the fattest cabbages Manners had ever seen. There were some chickens pecking in the yard, and two dogs chained to rings in the stone wall. They came barking at Manners until their chains yanked them back as he pushed Berger’s bicycle through the sagging gate. It was held closed by a piece of old rope that looked as if it had come from the same batch that now served Boridot as a belt. The old farmer wore a faded red handkerchief on his head, the four corners tied into tiny knots to keep it in place, and wooden sabots instead of shoes. And his teeth gripped the aged pipe between his teeth with the same determination as his hands kept the gleaming shotgun pointed at Manners’s chest.

“I have come to see the wounded man, the one who was shot in the thigh,” said Manners, suddenly conscious that he did not know the wounded man’s name, that he sounded foreign, and that a German might be asking the same sort of question. The barrel of the shotgun looked very big indeed. He scoured his mind for something reassuring to say. Had not Berger said that old Boridot too was a veteran? “You will remember from the Great War that it is the rule in the British Army that an officer must see to the comfort of his wounded men.”

“It is all right,
Grand-père
. This is the English officer,” said a woman’s voice, and the vet he had seen the previous day appeared in the doorway wiping her hands on a towel. She was wearing a full gray skirt and a white blouse, buttoned neatly to the neck, with her fair hair tied up in a large knot. Even wearing the same sturdy boots, she looked far more fetching than she had dressed in baggy pants as a hiker. “I know him. Berger introduced us.”

“Is he really your grandfather?” Manners asked her as the shotgun was lowered and the craggy old man came forward to shake his hand.

“No, I just call him that. I’ve known him all my life,” she said, coming forward to be kissed on both cheeks. It was a French greeting Manners always enjoyed, although it made him slightly uncomfortable, and he did it clumsily with an abrupt jerk of his head. She carried a scent of faded lavender, like the bowl his mother kept in her sewing room. He remembered her name was Sybille, and there was amusement in her eyes as he stepped back.

“How is your patient?”

“I’ve known worse, but not since the last pregnant cow whose calf was turned in the womb,” she said. “I’m glad to see you, because you must tell London to start sending medical supplies in the parachutes. Not just those field dressings, which will get us all arrested and shot if the Germans find them. We are short of everything, even aspirin. But the new sulfa drugs, can you get London to send some? And plain white bandages? And scalpels and gut for sewing wounds?”

“I’ll try, Sybille. But I think they are more concerned with inflicting wounds than treating them.”

“Well, come and see the old goat. Perhaps you can order him to stop trying to put his hand up my skirt.”

“Shows he’s better,” grunted Boridot. “A little
apéro,
to take the heat from the day?” He led the way inside, which smelled as gamy as a badger’s den. There was a huge cheese made from ewe’s milk on the table, and an earthenware dish containing a fat pâté beside it. On an old
couch, whose broken fourth leg had been replaced by a large stone, lay a middle-aged man with a clean bandage on his thigh and a half-filled glass in his hand.

“My own
pineau,
” gestured Boridot proudly, and took his handkerchief off his head to wipe it around a cloudy glass. He filled it with a reddish-brown liquid from a liter bottle, and handed it to Manners. He poured himself another glass, and Sybille picked up the drink she had been sipping before she came to the door. The ration of four liters a month did not seem to be affecting this farm.

“How goes it?” Manners asked the recumbent man. He looked half-drunk, and sounded even drunker when he said he felt well enough to fight some Germans again. Manners reached into his blouse to give him a packet of English cigarettes. Alongside the Players, he found the dead German’s pay book.
Feldgendarmerie,
Military Police—that told him nothing. He opened the leather wallet and found, to his surprise, a traveling chess set, with flat pieces that fit neatly into slits in the leather. No name or identification on it, so it might be useful to help the boys pass the time. He closed it, slipped it into his breast pocket, and then handed the cigarettes to the wounded man.

“Do you want to get us all killed?” Sybille asked dryly. “The Germans find those, and we’re all dead.”

“The Germans find a wounded man with a bullet hole in his thigh and we’re all dead anyway,” he replied neutrally. “Besides, old Boridot would blow them away.”

She looked at him, just a bare hint of a smile on her face. No makeup hiding that fine skin, good eyes, he thought, the catalog forming in his mind by reflex. But somehow she seemed to want to make herself look plain. Tiredness, perhaps, too many years of war and occupation. With enemy soldiers around, he could understand an attractive woman wanting to look drab.

“I want to thank you for taking care of him,” he told her formally. “I understand the risks you must be taking.”

“I’m the one taking the risk, with that glamorous horse doctor,” belched the man on the couch. He lit a Players, looked at it suspiciously, and then handed the packet around.

“It’s the best care you’re going to get, so treat her with respect. Otherwise, she might saw your leg off next time,” Manners said firmly, lighting Sybille’s cigarette. “May I pay your fee, madame? We are well supplied with currency.”

“This cigarette will more than repay me. Besides, I’ve known this dirty old man since he used to watch us coming out of school to run home to our lunch. There’s not much to buy, anyway. Now if you had some coupons for clothes, or some of that parachute silk…. My husband sometimes smoked these, before the war. We went to London for our honeymoon,” said Sybille, and held up the glowing cigarette to watch the way the smoke curled. “God, I’ve almost forgotten what it tasted like.”

“Buckingham Palace, Tower of London, Houses of Parliament,” chanted the drunk on the couch. “Not very romantic.”

“We’ve all forgotten a lot of things from peacetime,” Manners said. He wondered where her husband was now.

“Is your husband a vet as well, madame?” he asked.

“He was a vet. He was killed in 1940, somewhere near Calais with an artillery regiment which was wiped out holding the town to let the English escape from Dunkirk. Horse-drawn artillery, against panzers.”

“The Germans have horse-drawn artillery too,” he said quietly. “And nearly a hundred thousand Frenchman got out with us at Dunkirk.”

“I’m not blaming the English, monsieur. I blame the Germans, and that rotten government we had, and the whole foul, political mess of the prewar days. Communists, fascists, royalists, socialists, radicals—I spit on all of them.” She smoked her Players. “I think these things are very bad for the health. But not as bad as war.”

“Well, I blame Hitler,” said Manners.

“If not him, the Germans would have thrown up some other arsehole.
They always do. Hitler, the Kaiser, Bismarck,” said Boridot. “We should have finished the job back in 1918. If we’d marched on to Berlin, Jacquot, and stayed there? That would have done it.”

“We were both glad to get home, and you know it,” said Jacquot. “I thought I’d had my share of German bullets, last time.”

“You’re just going to have to remember how to dodge them, Jacquot,” said Manners, relieved to have a name for the man. “I rely on the old soldiers like you to teach the young ones how to do it.” He put his empty glass on the table, thanked Boridot, and turned to go. Sybille rose too, and in automatic courtesy, he asked if he could escort her anywhere.

“You seem determined to get me arrested, monsieur,” she laughed, as he helped her don a thick jacket of black wool. “Yes, I’d be pleased if you rode with me. But if we see any Germans, you have to promise to jump over the hedge.”

“No bloody Germans round here,” called Jacquot as they left. “We killed the bastards.”

They rode in single file up the cart track, her bicycle even older than his, but well cared for, the chain oiled and no rust on the wheel rims. He rode behind her, looking at the neat ankles that disappeared into her boots, the well-shaped rump above the basket that was tied above the rear wheel, filled with the straw to protect the eggs Boridot had given her.

“I can’t give you any parachute silk,” he said as they reached the wider track and he could pedal along beside her. “It’s a firm rule. Security, you understand.” She snorted. “But I promise to buy you a set of the finest silk lingerie in Paris when this war is over.”

“Very well, monsieur, I will accept that as my fee for treating Jacquot and all the others I fear you will be sending me. You must buy them from Lanvin, if you please. And how many Frenchwomen have you promised such a gift?”

“Just you. I’m not sure I could afford the amount of silk that some of
these farmers’ wives might need. A lot of them seem to take very large sizes.”

“That’s an insult to French womanhood,” she replied, and he couldn’t tell if she were joking. She spoke again. “I won’t ask where you are heading, but you’d better wait before we reach the road to le Bugue, and then follow me. There may be a Milice patrol. I presume you have papers—you had better tell me the name on them.”

“I think I should turn off before le Bugue, rather than ride through it,” he said. “The name on my papers is Alain Guyon, but I’d like you to know my real name—Manners, Jack Manners.”

“Jacques. But to be known as Alain,” she said. “Well, Jacques, if you don’t follow me you’d miss the chance of a perfect omelet, and I’d miss the chance of another of your cigarettes.” She grinned at him, and suddenly she did not look plain at all. “I can imagine the kind of food you boys make for yourselves. Come back and eat. Go through the town and past the church to the square where the men play
boules
. Just across the street you’ll see the sign for the vet. Use the surgery entrance. I’ll put up the ‘closed’ sign if there’s any sign of trouble.”

“Now you wait here until I’m out of sight,” she added. “And one more thing, Monsieur Jacques.”

“Yes,” he said, nervously, not sure of himself now that she had suddenly taken charge.

“You might want to hide your gun before you cycle into the town.”

CHAPTER 10
Time: The Present

T
he Château Malrand looked imposing as they first drove up the long gravel drive from the road, but then it seemed curiously to get smaller the closer they approached. It was not at all as grandiose as Lydia had expected of the country residence of the President of France. Her sense of proportion was jolted again as she suddenly realized that the drive was taking them past the formal garden and what she had not realized was the rear of the building, and around the side to deposit them abruptly into the entrance yard. What from the rear had been a reasonably proportioned seventeenth-century building with three stories and a turret with a pointed spire became from the front something shrunken. There was a narrow, almost mean little door on the ground floor into the base of the turret. And then a stone staircase began by
being as wide as their car and then shrank to the width of a single person as it reached the main entrance on the first floor. It was topped incongruously by a small glass portico, an afterthought to keep off the rain while waiting for the door to be answered.