Nancy was having a shitty night. A brilliant, victorious, glorious, but still epically shitty night. The landing site on the flank of the plateau was perfect for a drop, and she’d managed to shriek and bully Fournier and his men until they got the signal fires built and lit. The exchange of torch code with the aircraft had gone fine, and the moonlit sky had filled with a gratifyingly large number of parachutes. Tardivat would be able to sew his wife a ball gown or seven out of this lot. Fournier was impressed. Surprised, impressed, if not a bit shaken up by the success, which was exactly what Nancy wanted. So of course he had to prove he was top dog, even while his men were still staring up at the sky like shepherds watching the angels announce the holy birth.
Nancy was coordinating the men, removing the parachutes and carrying the heavy containers to the two waiting carts. Fournier strolled into the middle of the landing site as the last parachute was deflating and opened the container right out in the open. He fished out a carton of cigarettes, waving them over his head, then tore out a pack, fished out a fag and lit it, all in the time it took Nancy to cross the pasture behind him. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the other men—no way to hold them back now, splitting open containers and handing round the contents. Damn it. Some of them had found bottles of brandy and were already working out the corks.
“You’re dead, Fournier,” Nancy said. He turned and found himself looking into the barrel of her revolver.
Another Maquis, one of the former members of the Spanish freedom brigade now fighting alongside Fournier, wandered over to see the fun, and handed Fournier the bottle of brandy. He took it and swallowed a good pull then took another drag on his cigarette. A long inhale and exhale.
“Then at least I die happy.”
Nancy’s trigger finger itched. “You think the Germans don’t notice our planes coming over? They aren’t as thick as you. We’ve got an hour, maybe two, to get all of this stuff out of here and cover the fire sites or we’re blown. And you’re having a cigarette out in the middle of a sodding field.”
He inhaled again and blew the smoke right in her face, then yawned. “Just enjoying our new friendship, Captain.” Then he turned away again. “Right then, lads. Let’s get this shit home.”
And that was that—they were taking orders from him again now. Nancy remembered what one of her instructors in Beaulieu had told her. Never pull your gun unless you are going to use your gun. Shit. She holstered the weapon and got her hands under the container, great metal tubes six foot long and heavy as all hell. The Spaniard looked confused: a well-brought-up lad wouldn’t want to see a woman struggle with something heavy on her own, but he couldn’t work out the power play. Fournier gave him a nod and he took the other end. Nancy raged in herself. These men. At least she looked better carrying the gear rather than just watching while Fournier ordered the men around, but he’d won this round. And so easily, while she had to be perfect every moment not to slither back down in their opinion.
Denden brought her the care package while she was sulking over a fire on the edge of the encampment just before dawn. He approached with exaggerated care, which would have made her laugh normally, but not today. Fournier’s men were gathered under the edge of the tree line, working their way through the brandy and fags. At least the guns, explosives and ammo were safely stowed and Tardivat had commandeered the parachute silk. As the men drank, a few of them glanced toward her. She could tell by the muddled, schoolboy laughter that they were talking about her. Denden caught her eye as she looked up, her face warm with the firelight, and dropped the pantomime creep.
“Present from Baker Street for you,” he said.
She took it, a square package wrapped in thick hessian and string, with her code name, Hélène, on a rectangular postcard. He sat down on the ground next to her and pulled a bottle of brandy from under his coat, took a long pull then offered it to her. It was good brandy, but it burned her throat and seemed to chill rather than warm her.
“Open your present, then let’s get smashed,” he said.
She didn’t bother smiling, but cut away the string and undid the wrapping. The note she shoved into her pocket; it was too dark to read it anyway, but the gift made her smile. Cold cream, a Parisian make, very expensive, just what she would use to remove her makeup after a night out with Henri in the clubs of Marseille. She unscrewed the lid and held it to her nose. Just a subtle suggestion of rose and lavender. She was there for a moment, in their bedroom, her silk dressing gown whispering around her as she left her dressing table and walked toward Henri in bed, in their warm soft bed, looking at her with love, with hunger. Her throat closed and for a moment she was afraid she was going to cry.
“I’m beginning to think,” Denden said, his words slurring just a tiny amount, “that Buckmaster might have been a bit off sending a woman and a queer to beat these horrible boys into shape.” He hiccupped. “Not that I’m unwilling to give it a go.”
“How come they get to laugh with each other, get pissed and fight together, they can even cry together, damn them,” she said, “but me, no. If I slip for one second…”
She took the bottle again and drowned the curl of self-pity in her belly.
“Give that back, you witch,” Denden said and grabbed it out of her hand.
“They can’t decide if they want to murder me, sleep with me, protect me or worship me, Denden.”
“Isn’t that always the way between boys and girls? They want your body, but they are scared of it too.” He passed back the bottle. “You’re going to have to be their sister, somehow. None of the other roles available to you will work.”
“Roles?”
“Darling, I’ve been in theater all my life. Everything’s a role, a mask. Just remember we are so busy hiding behind our own masks that we are generally crap at noticing everyone else is just a bad actor in their own story too.”
Nancy stood up, hating everyone. “I’m going for a swim.”
“That’s the spirit,” Denden said, his voice growing sleepy. “I think I’m drunk enough to pass out now.” He pulled his jacket around himself and settled onto the ground. “Thank you, Buckmaster, for one night’s rest at least.”
Fournier’s camp was cold, wet and, until tonight at least, poorly equipped, but camping up here did have one big advantage. At the base of a slope ten minutes downhill was a pool, fed by one of the hot springs that gave Chaudes-Aigues its name. Dawn was just creeping up the valley as Nancy pulled off her loose combat trousers and unbuttoned her shirt. Then she stepped out of her knickers and unhooked her brassiere. Every stitch made in France, and any English laundry marks cut out by the staff at Baker Street. She stepped cautiously into the water. The surface was cold, but just below it she found a warm current.
It worked its way around her muscles, those new sinewy muscles she’d developed in the weeks of physical training. For a moment she laughed. When war was declared in September 1939, Nancy had been staying at the Savoy in London, on her way to a health resort in Hampshire to lose those extra pounds she’d accrued eating lobster in butter sauce and drinking champagne with Henri.
Would he recognize her now? He might like this new figure, she thought. Still a good pair of tits, but her hips were narrower, the soft pillow of her belly had gone, leaving it flat and hard to the touch, and her arms were sharply defined. Dressed as a French housewife, she looked like a young woman who’d been living on short rations for four years; naked, she looked like an Amazon.
She dived down into the water, let it take her weight and felt the tension ease slowly out of her bones. She considered her conversation with Denden. What did she need to be in these men’s eyes to lead them? A sister to tease and protect, a lover to defend or a goddess to worship? Goddess wouldn’t work. Too remote. She needed to trust and be trusted. A lover? What if she did take one of the lads off into the woods? Perhaps she could find a potential lion among Fournier’s men and seduce him into becoming her champion. She dived again, testing herself to see how long she could hold her breath. No. She might gain one ally that way, but she’d lose the rest. And the idea of any man other than Henri touching her… No.
She broke the surface and filled her lungs with the morning air. The dawn was upon her now and she looked around at the steep wooded slopes of the mountains, the clearing sky and the shivering leaves with wonder. She swam lazily over to the rock where she had left her clothes, then she saw a shiver in the undergrowth where no breezes reached. An animal? There were wild boar in the forests, but she hadn’t seen any of their trails near here and nothing else living in the forest was big enough to shake the bushes that much. Except men. Could a German patrol have come this far into the woods? A villager? But there wasn’t a farm or hamlet for a mile.
Still in the water, she snatched her revolver out from under the towel and pointed it toward the movement, her free hand gripping on to the high rocks around the pool.
“Show yourselves!” The bushes stayed still. Had she imagined it? A couple of nights of bad sleep and she had started seeing things. Then she remembered that schoolboy laughter around the camp fire and suddenly she understood. “Now, you little shits, unless you want to risk a bullet!”
She let off one round, aiming high. It thwacked into the bark of a young oak with a satisfying punch.
From the bushes, three men emerged. The Spaniards—three of the men who had actually had fighting experience. She had thought better of them. They held their hands above their heads.
“Rodrigo, Mateo and Juan,” she said, enunciating their names very clearly. “You stupid bastards. Let me get this straight. You boys survived a civil war in Spain, came all the way here to fight the fascists, and I could’ve shot you dead—for what?”
She stepped out of the water, still keeping her gun on them and moving slowly. No way was she going to slip. They flushed, stared, their eyes fluttering all over her flesh, those muscled arms, the swell of her breasts, the dark brown fur between her legs. She let them look, felt them suck in the sight of her. Then, as she remained there, still silent and with a revolver pointing right at them, she felt them growing confused. Their eyes finally returned to hers and their shame flared in their faces.
“Yes, I have a cunt. You think that makes me weak? That I’m a little girl who will run away at the sight of blood? Juan!” She shifted her aim to the oldest of the men. “Is that what you think, Juan?”
“No, señora.”
She kept her aim, her hand steady as a rock. “Mateo, hand me my towel.”
He ran past her to grab it and put it into her free hand, trying very hard not to look at her at all, then returned to his place between his two compatriots and lifted his hands again. Nancy managed to suppress a smile.
“No, señora,” she said. “That’s right. Because I’m a grown woman, aren’t I, Rodrigo?”
Rodrigo was staring fixedly at a point six inches above her head.
“Yes, señora.”
“And do you know what that means, Mateo?”
He shook his head.
“It means, you idiots, I’ve been bleeding half my goddam life.” She studied them, one after the other, all of them looking into the clouds.
She uncocked the pistol and let her hand fall to her side, then started to dry her hair, still not making any attempt to cover herself. They still kept their arms raised.
“Now, when you address me, you address me by rank. I am Captain Wake to you, got it?”
“Yes, Captain,” they chorused. She didn’t even bother looking at them.
“Good, now sod off.”
They ran for it, back up the slope toward camp and, shivering in the chill, Nancy dressed.
She climbed the path slowly after them. Most of the men had snatched some sleep where they lay, others were finishing the last of the brandy even as they started boiling water for their breakfast mash of oats. Nancy saw the three Spanish men, away from the others, looking sullen and guilty. Fournier was still swilling the last of the brandy from his bottle by the embers of his fire. He saw her and leered, his eyes traveling from head to toe.
“Did you give our boys a good show?” he said.
She didn’t plan it. Didn’t think. She went straight at him, covering the ground between them at a run, then smacked him across the side of his face with the back of her hand, knocking the cigarette from between his lips and making him drop the bottle into the embers. He scrambled to his feet, a good six inches taller than her, and raised his fist. Then hesitated. She spat into his face. He struck, knocking her sideways to the ground and started to turn away. She struck out with her boot, catching him square on the shin and making him yell. He fell on her then, punching into her sides, while she held her arms up to defend her head. She didn’t make a sound.
With a roar of rage, Fournier got to his feet and started to walk away. Nancy could feel the blood on her lips, but she couldn’t feel the pain yet. She rolled onto her feet and grabbed his smoldering fag from the ground and launched herself at him again, landing her full weight on his back so he fell forward onto the earth, the breath coming out of him in a sudden grunt, and she drove the smoldering butt into the side of his cheek, then got her arm around his neck in a choke hold. He grabbed at her wrist but he couldn’t get purchase, thrashing and trying to throw off her weight. She could feel him beginning to weaken.
“Captain…” said one of the French fighters, keeping a careful distance, softly. Pleading even.
She dropped her hold and stood up, then walked away toward the high path. Behind her she could hear Fournier choking and cursing and the murmurs of the men helping him up.
Well, they weren’t fucking laughing now.