The bus had taken damage as they fled. It sighed, groaned and near the camp at the base of the upper slopes, it gave up completely. They shoved it off the road and cut brush to camouflage it, then hiked the rest of the way back to camp. The storm had passed and the men were waiting up under their dripping tarpaulin shelters like anxious parents.
“We’re home, you fuckers!” Fournier said. “All of us!”
They cheered. His excitement drove the damp and fear out of the place. Denden flung his arms around Nancy, nearly squeezing the life out of her. Handshakes, back slaps, punching the Spanish guys on the arm and mussing their hair. They looked happy. Then Fournier produced a crate of wine from some secret stock of his own, and under the dripping covers on the edge of the wood he told and retold the story of the raid, and the others sat goggle-eyed with excitement as they listened.
Nancy drank and watched Fournier, his surging delight. He was a bloody good storyteller.
“I saw her through my sights, boys. But too many trees, too much movement not a thing I could do about it.” He mimed peering through the dark, wiping the rain out of his eyes. “I’m there thinking, shit, she’s going to get throttled. Just when I thought I might be getting to like her, that fat kraut’s going to choke her to death.” Pause for laughter. “Then BOOM, right behind her the generator blows. Kraut’s a bit surprised, and BOOM. She strikes like a fucking cobra, I’m telling you. Right hand to his neck and he is DONE!” The men cheered. “She killed that big German bastard with one blow. I thought his head was going to pop off and just bounce along the ground… boing, boing… boing…”
More laughter. Fournier put out his arms, bottle in one hand, and looked right to left. They all leaned forward and he lowered his voice.
“I thought this was rough.” He pointed to the burn scar on his cheek, then lifted his voice to a roar like a music hall comedian. “Turns out it’s just her version of a little kiss!”
The men hollered now, started twisting round toward Nancy.
Fournier lifted his bottle toward her.
“So do your homework, boys! Captain Wake!”
They all raised their mugs and mess tins and Nancy lifted her half-empty bottle in acknowledgment.
“Hey, Denden. Think we’ll be able to get Radio Londres a bit more clearly now?” she asked.
“Oh, I should think so!”
He switched on the set. Crystal clear. And God bless ’em, they were playing the new anthem of the Maquis. Half of the lads sprang to their feet linking arms and spinning each other around. Nancy couldn’t tell if they were dancing or wrestling. They probably couldn’t either.
She watched for a minute or two, then ducked out from under the tarpaulin back into the peace outside. The thunderstorm had left the air cool and fresh and the moon hung above them, a thickening crescent. She looked down at her hands.
“That was your first kill, no?” It was Tardivat, like her, pulling away from the crowd.
No point in lying to him. And she owed him. He brought her here after all, lied to Gaspard to save her neck, volunteered for the mission.
“Yes, it was. You know, when I was in Marseille my husband used to take me to get my nails done every Monday. He wouldn’t even recognize these hands.”
Tardi blew a cloud of smoke into the pale moonlight.
“Were you afraid?”
She had to think about it. “No. Not even when I thought I was going to die. I was glad somehow… to be actually fighting. It all happened so fast, and I was angry at myself. Angry for dropping the knife, for hesitating with the first guard. But not scared. Thrilled.” Yes, that was the right word. Jesus. “It was thrilling. That’s not normal, is it, Tardi?”
Another of those shrugs. “We are at war. Nothing is normal. Normal will get you killed. Normal will make a man a collaborator. Normal is no use to anyone.” He seemed to catch himself and took a long breath. “Your plan was good. Setting the charges on the blocks like that so they would draw the guards out of the building, then the last charge dropping the tower across the road. A good plan. We should all be grateful you enjoy your work.”
She wanted to protest. Yes, planning and executing the mission was… great, no doubt, but the killing… she wanted to tell him she did not like the killing at all. She was glad to survive, yes, and it had been exciting, but what sort of person takes pleasure in killing? Only the sort of person she wanted to wipe off the face of the earth. Her head spun.
“NanCYYY!” Denden stumbled out into the darkness, a bottle in his hand, and Tardivat melted off into the forest before Nancy had a chance to say anything at all. “NanCYYYY!!”
She stepped forward. “I’m here, you idiot. No need to bring the whole bloody German army down on us.”
He came toward her stumbling a bit and giggling.
“A total victory, darling.” He put his arm around her. “Want to do something foolish?”
She had to trust him, but up on the promontory west of the camp, with a length of rope wrapped around her forearms, the other end tied around a chestnut tree twenty feet back from the edge, the idea looked not just foolish but completely insane.
“You want us to lean out over the edge of the cliff?” Nancy said.
Denden was tugging at his own rope. “Darling, I swear by all that’s holy, you want to lean out over the edge too, you just don’t know it yet.”
Satisfied with his knot, he took her hand and led her to the very edge of the drop. The rope behind her still seemed pretty slack. Even in the almost moonless dark he must have caught her expression.
“Nancy Wake, I have set up the ropes for a thousand trapeze acts and tightrope walkers while you were swigging cheap champagne in cheap bars. Trust me. Just walk until your toes are on the very edge, then lean backward as far as you can. It’s utterly delicious.”
He demonstrated, his whole body hovering above the deep dark, just his hands on the rope, his boots resting on the cliff edge.
Oh, why not? Nancy turned, set her feet apart and leaned back. And felt it. The pull of gravity on her back, on her head, the comfortable tug on her arms as the rope tightened and held. This did feel good. She let a little more of the rope out, leaning farther back and bending her back—then laughed, a great burbling laugh that came from the soles of her feet and shook loose her whole body. Behind them the void pulled at them and the breeze whipped her hair across her face, but the void could go fuck itself. Captain Nancy Wake commanded gravity.
“I never drank cheap champagne, you horror,” she said. “But you were right, Denden, I needed this.”
Beside her, Denden let go with one hand and took one foot off the edge, swinging from side to side.
“Best trick I learned in the circus. Whenever I hated my sinful self, which was every time I got hot for another boy, which was every goddamn day, well, I’d hang off the trapeze. No net. Made me feel alive again, being on the edge.”
“It’s a ‘sod you’ to the universe, isn’t it!” Nancy said, then whooped, hearing her voice echo and bounce into the darkness below, and giggled.
“It is! Don’t feel bad about destroying those bastards, Nancy. Even if you have to do it with your own hands. Use it! Use that feeling of being out over the edge to live. Sure I like shagging boys and people tell me I shouldn’t, and people tell you you should sit at home and let the men get their blood rage on. Well, screw them. Use your rage and never let them shame you for it.”
“Thank you, Denden.” He got it. He got how it was to be her. She released one hand too, felt the lurch, re-found her balance and felt a surge of pleasure. “But you know you sound a bit like Dr. Timmons when you talk like that, don’t you?”
He howled. “You monstrous witch! I’ve never been so insulted in my life.”
Their laughter echoed down into the silence.