Scott was beginning to get worried. Since they had established themselves and their alibi, he and Lily had more or less drawn a blank with the people they had been designated to contact. From experience he knew that he could not pursue the two men with whom he had so far talked, albeit only briefly, about the purpose of their visit, but he also knew that he was running out of time fast. As predicted by their amiable landlady, German troops had arrived in their thousands over the past few days, convoys of lorries packed with infantry and gunners, followed by heavy vehicles drawing artillery, stores and supplies.
The little village in which they were staying had up until then escaped direct occupation since the army seemed more intent on heading directly for the coastline of the Somme from St-Valery west to le Tréport, a part of France that still showed horrifying signs of devastation from the previous war. None the less, a small platoon of surly German foot soldiers had been garrisoned in each of a long line of neighbouring villages, and so inevitably a small troop arrived in the nearby square, bringing with them their own particular whiff of arrogance and churlishness. Fortunately the soldiers were unaware of Madame Daumier’s pension, and they chose to billet themselves on the luckless proprietor of the village café.
Naturally the presence of the enemy in the village added a further sense of urgency to Scott and Lily’s mission. Whatever else was going to happen, the Germans had obviously been ordered to turn their attention to examining the population of the towns and villages they were set on occupying. Scott quickly realised that he and Lily had to consolidate their local contacts and literally take to the hills, or, preferably, the caves they had already earmarked for their project. Just as they were beginning to realise they were out of luck, and that they would have to abort their mission, help came from an unexpected source.
‘I have a visitor for you, monsieur,’ Madame Daumier informed Scott one night when he and Lily returned ahead of the curfew that was now being strictly enforced. ‘He’s waiting for you in the kitchen.’
Leading the way through, their landlady opened the door of the kitchen at the back of the house: a small room lit by a well-trimmed oil lamp and shrouded in the heavy pungent smoke of Gitanes cigarettes. At the scrubbed wooden table drinking coffee and brandy sat a thickset man, with a head of hair that looked as if it were made of compacted wire and the sort of rough and weather-beaten countenance that can only be earned from a life spent permanently out of doors.
Everything about their visitor was big – his hands, his forearms, his thighs, his chest and his massive shoulders. He was also immensely ugly, with a large broken nose, one half-closed eye and a deep scar that ran from the bottom of his left cheek in a cut right across his mouth, ending in what appeared to be a hastily stitched lump on the right-hand side of his chin.
Scott observed all this as he shook hands with the man and sat down opposite him, Lily seating herself beside him. The man said nothing other than grunting an all but incomprehensible return to Scott and Lily’s salutations, barely even sparing them more than a glance. As Scott and Lily settled at the table he remained silent, lighting another Gitanes from the end of his current smoke and casually dropping the latter on the stone kitchen floor having first extinguished it on his thumb.
‘Some coffee, monsieur? Madame?’ Madame Daumier asked. ‘And some armagnac? It’s the last of our home-made.’
Scott accepted with thanks, Lily declining the armagnac while lighting up one of her own cigarettes. Through the heavy fug that surrounded him, the man wrinkled his nose in distaste at the smell of her tobacco and waved it away from his face with one enormous hand.
‘You object to my smoking, monsieur?’ Lily asked, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice.
‘No. To your smoke, madame. It smells so sickly.’
He continued to wave his hand in front of his face in the manner of a demented dowager with a fan, even though Lily by now was making sure to hold and to smoke her cigarette in the opposite direction.
‘This is Rolande,’ Madame Daumier said, putting her hands on the man’s shoulders as she stood behind him. ‘He is a very close friend – not only of my family and myself, but of France. And because he is such a friend of France, he is therefore your friend – monsieur.’
Scott knew by the little gap Madame had left before pronouncing monsieur that she knew, just as he had always suspected. His hackles rose. His immediate worry, however, was that she might not be Free French but a woman alone who, because of her precarious situation, might feel obliged to report to the occupying forces the presence of people in her little community whom she obviously deemed suspect.
As if reading his thoughts, Madame Daumier threw back her head and gave a shout of humourless laughter, slapping Rolande on the back before making her way to lift the coffee pot from the top of the black range of ovens that lined one wall.
‘I can see that Monsieur here is worried that I have rumbled him – and that I will inform on him.’ Her expression changed. ‘Me? Who has lost her son? I think not, enfin.’
Rolande turned his attention to Scott, fixing him with a pair of eyes that from where Scott was sitting looked completely black, saying nothing but just staring until he finally shook his head in despair and spat on the floor.
‘Is that a mark of contempt, monsieur?’ Scott wondered. ‘Or simply a lifelong habit?’
Again Rolande fixed him with a look. Suddenly he banged one of his great fists on the table, making cups and glasses leap in the air, and he too gave a great roar of laughter.
‘It is habitual, my friend!’ he cried. ‘It is nothing personal! Suspicion, since the Occupation is habitual.’
Leaning across the table he grabbed one of Scott’s hands and shook it, Scott’s long-fingered, elegant hand disappearing entirely into the centre of the bone-crushing grasp as he did so.
‘You are very brave coming here, monsieur,’ he continued, with a smile of appreciation in Lily’s direction. ‘Very brave and foolish – like all your countrymen.’
Scott nodded, realising that the time to stop pretending to be entirely French had undoubtedly arrived. ‘I think you probably mean foolhardy.’ He smiled. ‘At least I hope you do.’
‘You do not consider it foolish to come here? To occupied France? And try to work for their defeat? This is not your fight – this is ours, monsieur. We too shall defeat them. We shall drive the pigs from our land. They do not know what they have done, invading la France.’ He shook his head slowly and menacingly. ‘They can have no idea at all, monsieur. None whatsoever.’
‘I don’t think they can, monsieur.’
Scott smiled politely, still feeling wary, for he knew nothing of this man, and less of his allegiances.
‘We are a race of fools. We should have blown up the bridges – we should have blown them in the Nazis’ faces.’
‘I don’t think you are a race of fools, monsieur. Misguided, perhaps, but fools – never!’
Rolande eyed him then grinned, his disfigured mouth twisting into an affecting and infectious smile.
‘Nor do I think this is your fight alone, either, much as you would want it to be – and rightly so.’ Scott held up one hand in appeasement, although Monsieur Rolande had given no indication that he was going to take offence. ‘Had it not been for some fools in England – as well as some fools in France – you would not be in this terrible position. We have a duty to dig you out of this hole.’
‘And so say all of us,’ Lily agreed, putting out her cigarette in her saucer. ‘And for the sake of entente, Rolande, I shall even take to smoking your sort of cigarette.’
‘Good.’
Rolande solemnly offered her a Gitanes, but one so loosely packed that the black tobacco spilt out of it as he handed it to her.
‘How kind,’ Lily said sweetly. ‘But might I save it till later, perhaps? I’m not really a very heavy smoker.’
With a small shrug Rolande laid the fat cigarette by her cup. ‘For when you have your next cup of coffee,’ he said.
Lily did her best to avoid having any more coffee, but since there was so much to be discussed and Madame Daumier’s coffee was so good, finally she could hold out no longer. As soon as her cup was full, and despite Rolande’s being now deep in conversation with Scott about the logistics of what was henceforward their mutual enterprise, Lily found a lighted match being waved under her nose.
She tried to ignore it, but her new friend was having none of it. To emphasise the point he now picked up the Gitanes and offered it to Lily in such a pointed fashion that she knew she could do nothing to get out of smoking the loathsome-looking offering. As she started to draw on the foul-smelling smoke, neither Rolande nor Scott paid her the least attention, continuing their earnest conversation, while Madame Daumier sat down by Lily to enjoy the last of her armagnac with her coffee and to talk to her guest in her usual animated way.
‘Something the matter, my little one?’ she finally enquired with concern as she saw Lily slowly turning very pale.
‘No, no,’ Lily muttered, swallowing hard. ‘At least . . . yes. Would you excuse me just for a moment please?’
Lily made it just in time to the back door that mercifully opened directly on to a patch of garden.
‘A little armagnac now, my dear,’ Madame insisted as Lily took her place again. ‘It is a very fine digestif after such discomfort.’
As for Rolande, he merely continued talking to Scott as if he had noticed nothing.
The following morning, just as the cock in Madame Daumier’s chicken coop began to crow, Scott and Lily crept out of the house to meet Rolande, who was waiting for them a mile up the lane that led to his farm. As soon as they caught up with him he hurried them into a nearby outbuilding where there was a change of clothes set out, and so it was that in a matter of minutes Scott and Lily had changed from neatly dressed honeymooners to working peasants. Scott wore a loose blue canvas jacket and trousers, a rough white undershirt, traditional Norman footwear and an equally traditional beret, while Lily had tucked her hair under a dull red headscarf and donned a plain blue crew-necked jersey, canvas skirt and sandals. Following Rolande’s example, they took the bicycles that stood propped up against the stone wall and fell in line behind the huge man, who was now sitting astride an old but tremendously sturdy tricycle that he somehow managed to ride with great élan.
‘Hard to believe, eh?’ he called to them. ‘But I could never master the two-wheeler! I can swim like a porpoise! I play football like a lightweight! I can even walk a tightrope! But bah! The bicycle she defeats me! One day, perhaps – one day!’
They cycled through a whole stretch of green and verdant countryside, bathed in sunlight, the air seemingly full of birdsong. Alongside the road a small clear river dashed and rushed over rock and stone, sparkling in the bright sunshine until it disappeared in a torrent over a huge dark slab of granite, eventually to run away from them into deep woodlands that stretched as far as the eye could see. There was no sight of the war and no sound of it, just the natural music of the countryside.
‘I feel as though I’m going on a picnic,’ Lily laughed as she cycled alongside Scott. ‘I could even start worrying about whether or not I packed a bottle opener.’
‘Don’t mention bottles,’ Scott called back. ‘I could murder the contents of a dozen of ’em.’
And of course a bottle was the last thing a Frenchman would forget on such a day as this, even though far from being out on a picnic the trio were intent on sabotage. Nevertheless, at the appropriate moment Rolande steered his tricycle over to a gateway that led into acres of perfect pasture. The three of them were careful to keep both their varied conveyances and themselves out of sight of the road, by sitting with their backs to the inside of the hedgerow to enjoy a simple and traditional repast of baguette and cheese washed down with rough local wine.
‘When the war’s over, Scott,’ Lily announced, lying back to enjoy a cigarette, ‘let’s all come back here for a holiday.’
‘After the war you can do as you please, Lily,’ Scott replied, also lighting up a smoke.
‘You know what I mean,’ Lily replied casually, seemingly unperturbed by his put-down. ‘It was actually meant as a fantasy, if you like. Something to aim for, rather than a proposition.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude – and I know exactly what you mean. It’s rather why we’re here. What we’re fighting for.’
‘Put out your cigarettes!’ Rolande commanded suddenly. ‘And don’t move!’
Happily he had heard the convoy seconds before them, because unlike them he had been listening out. By the time the cigarettes were extinguished and bodies flattened against the hedgerow the noise and rumble of the passing vehicles, not to mention the feeling that the earth beneath them was shaking, all suggested that the Germans had to be passing within inches of them.
Scott found himself closing his eyes and praying that there were no foot soldiers following, that the convoy was all vehicular and there were no stragglers who might be tempted into the field for any reason, the most likely being to answer the call of nature. But as the lorries and smaller vehicles rumbled off into the distance, silence fell once more, unbroken by the sound of any footfalls.
‘There’s certainly a lot of activity round here,’ Scott murmured to Rolande as the noise eventually faded away. ‘It doesn’t bode well if they’re building up reserves along the coast here. The sooner we get some transmitters in place, the better we’ll all feel.’
‘We already have some detailed information about the placement of the heavy artillery, the troop movements and the new defences that are being constructed. My cousin waits for us ahead. When we get there you will learn all this – and perhaps more.’
If we get there, Scott thought as he made ready to take to the road again, checking the inside pocket of his jacket to make sure his forged papers were still in place. With the amount of German activity in the region he felt sure that they were bound to be stopped at some checkpoint, and frankly he was dreading it, for the one thing that he and Lily lacked between them was a plausible reason for their travels. According to their papers their current work was many miles inland, and even their honeymoon destination was a long cycle ride from the Somme coastline that was their final objective.
However, it seemed that Rolande had already foreseen that exigency, guiding his charges away from even the minor roads on which they were travelling and up a series of unmade paths that grew more nearly impassable the further into the hills they went. Finally, the way became so rough that even pushing their bicycles became too much of an effort, but apparently Rolande had already thought of that as well, for just as Lily was convinced that her legs were beginning to give way, their guide diverted them to a track that finally led to a small stone barn where they concealed their priceless transport under the rubble and rubbish of the obviously deserted shelter.
From there they made their way by foot along the side of a cliff line, keeping a good fifty yards inland and well away from the ridge itself, where they could have easily been spotted by any guard or casual lookout, until at last they found themselves a couple of hundred feet above a tiny fishing village which they could see outlined below them.
Rolande nodded to another stone shelter where they waited until darkness had fallen. As soon as it was safe Rolande disappeared, leaving Scott and Lily behind as had been agreed. Rolande had deemed it both wiser and safer for him to make his contact alone, rather than risk all three being stopped and cross-examined.
‘At least if they stop me, my friends,’ he argued, ‘I have genuine relations in the village who will vouch for me. As well as a woman who is prepared to swear that my reason for such a long journey is because we are enjoying a little liaison.’
He grinned mischievously at them both and winked before disappearing into the twilight, leaving Scott and Lily to wonder at his aplomb. Only a Frenchman it seemed would come up with such a wonderful and totally plausible alibi. The French were so justifiably famous for their love of amours that no one – not even the most suspicious – would doubt that Rolande was intent on the pursuit of Cupid.
‘I’m cold,’ Lily complained, after the first hour alone.
‘It’s spring. You can’t be cold,’ Scott replied. ‘For God’s sake it’s been the warmest day of the year so far.’
‘It may have been a warm day, but we’re a lot of feet above sea level, it’s night, and I happen to be cold.’
‘Here.’ Scott had taken off his jacket and was now offering it to her. Lily stared at it.
‘You’ll get cold now.’
‘I’ll survive. I don’t feel the cold.’
Lily shrugged her shoulders and wrapped the canvas jacket round them, tucking her legs up under her as she sat in one corner of the shelter, while Scott stood opposite her, his back to the wall, smoking a cigarette and looking up at the ceiling, if at anything at all.
‘Why don’t you come and sit down? You’ll get tired standing there. Rolande is going to be gone some time.’
‘You know that for a fact?’
‘Look how far he has to descend,’ Lily retorted with a nod of her pretty head. ‘That’s one hour gone before he even reaches the village. Then another hour if not more while he makes contact without arousing suspicions, then another hour at least to climb back up here. If you insist on remaining standing all that time, you’re not going to be of much use when it comes to us getting going.’
Scott gave her a brief look then nodded.
‘After I finish my cigarette,’ he said, ‘I’ll take a pew – but only after.’
His smoke finished, he seated himself opposite Lily rather than beside her. Lily sighed loudly.
‘We’d both be not only more comfortable if you came and sat beside me,’ she said, ‘but also a whole lot warmer.’
Scott said nothing, refusing to admit that by now even he was feeling not just foolish, but chilled in the night air, high up as they were above the sea. Finally, after a brief struggle with his pride, he went over, and sat down beside Lily in the darkness.
‘It’s OK, Scott,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t bite.’
Scott sat stiffly with his back to the wall, leaving about a foot of space between him and the woman who he was sure was smiling to herself in the darkness. Next thing he knew Lily had shuffled herself up close to him, so close that he could feel the immediate warmth from her body.
‘Huh,’ she whispered, breathing warm breath straight on to him as she took one of his hands. ‘You’re half frozen. You loony.’
She breathed on his hand again, holding it up to her mouth and warming it the way Scott remembered his mother warming his hands in winter-time. All at once he was back by the family fireside, fresh in from tobogganing on a tin tray down the steep lawns outside the house, sitting on his beloved mother’s knees while she blew warmth back into his hands, before settling him down between their two sleeping red setters in front of a blazing fire. He swallowed hard, and was trying to remember when he had last been as suddenly homesick as he was now, when right out of the blue he found himself longing for a fireside back in another house, a small house up in the woods in Eden Park where he imagined Poppy might even now be sitting in front of a log fire with her little dog, asleep in the warmth of the glow. He closed his eyes and tried to banish the desperate longing, knowing that it would only weaken him, diminish his sense of dedication, but the sickness in his throat would not subside. It was just as if he was a small boy again, sent away for the first time to school, alone in a darkened dormitory full of strange boys all as miserable as he was, his heart and mind awash with unhappiness and despair as he lay in the dark longing for the love of his home and family.
He was so engrossed with his memories he was hardly aware of Lily’s head on his shoulder, or of her arm round his waist as she cuddled him to her, until it was too late.
‘It’s OK,’ she whispered, trying to reassure him. ‘I’m only keeping us warm. It’s OK.’
Scott sat as still as a mouse, not daring even to take a breath for fear of inhaling one of his favourite scents, the warmth of a woman’s hair, let alone another, the sweetness of a woman’s skin under her clothes. Yet even though he was still holding his breath, the delicate fragrance of Lily’s body was already in his being, and the warmth of her was in his arms. He closed his eyes again and thought of cold, and rain, pain, discomfort and unhappiness, but the warmth was still there. Alone and in danger, there was nothing he wanted more than affection. But he refused to respond.
He stayed as still as the rock he was trying so hard to be, thinking only of the person who waited for him on the other side of the narrow channel of sea that lay between them. At long last, Lily fell asleep, her breath rising and falling in a gentle steady rhythm, and her head sliding forward off his shoulder. Instinctively Scott put up an arm to prevent her from jolting herself awake, and the next thing he knew she was folded up in his arms, her head on his chest, the warmth of their bodies fused into one.
Rolande did not return until morning. When he arrived he was accompanied by a younger man, not much shorter than he but of an entirely different physique. Where Rolande was big this man was slender, where Rolande was hefty, he was nimble, and where Rolande was heavy-featured, his face was almost classical – almost but not quite, since both Scott and Lily could see at once that there was too much of the agricultural in him to be classically framed. His mouth was a little too full, his eyebrows slightly too thick, and his chin a touch too square. It was his eyes that were compelling – and it was to his eyes that both Scott and Lily were immediately drawn, so much so that the first impression they got of the stranger was that he was in fact immensely good-looking, mesmerised as they were by the pair of brilliant green eyes that examined them so intently. For his part Scott thought he had never seen a pair of eyes more full of mischief, while Lily thought she had never met a gaze so hypnotic. They were both fascinated at his arrival, failing initially to take in the formal introduction Rolande was busy making as he established his cousin’s credentials. Scott asked his forgiveness at once, pretending he was still dozy from sleep when in fact he had been fully awake for at least two hours, while Lily just smiled.
‘My cousin Yves,’ Rolande repeated gruffly, as if to show his irritation at the seeming indifference of his companions in arms to his all important cousin, when in fact he was simply reliving the experience that befell him practically every time he introduced the mesmerising Yves into company. What infuriated Rolande even more was that his cousin seemed to be totally unaware of both his good looks and the immediate and often catastrophic effect his appearance had on people. Most famous of all had been the time when Rolande had taken the reluctant Yves to the wedding of an old flame of his own, only for the bride to desert her husband-to-be at the altar and run off with Yves for a passionate affair which, although it only lasted a little under two months, left the community astounded and the runaways exhausted, if finally apart.
‘We are late back here,’ Rolande was explaining, ‘because we were stopped – rather I was stopped, as we thought I might be. I spent a couple of hours in the company of the Boche, who were only dissuaded from putting me up against a wall and shooting me by the arrival – thank the Lord—’
‘Oh yes,’ Yves chipped in, raising his startling eyes heavenwards, crossing himself as he did so. ‘Thank the Lord indeed.’
‘By the arrival of my supposed mistress, who talked the pigs out of shooting me.’
‘Tut-tut,’ Yves sighed, making an over-innocent face. ‘Cousin, that is not why you are so late. You must tell our friends why we are this late – and why we are now late for our work.’
Rolande glowered at his cousin in return, furrowing his huge black eyebrows until they met in the middle and narrowing his dark eyes to their most fierce.
‘Rolande,’ Yves scolded lightly. ‘You must tell our friends – or would you rather I did?’
‘You can go to hell, cousin!’ Rolande retorted, turning on his heel and striding out of the shelter. ‘You can go straight to hell!’
Yves winked at Scott and Lily. ‘He became partial to the lady who says she is his mistress,’ he said, keeping his face straight while raising his eyebrows quickly just once. ‘They fell into deep conversation – which lasted most of the night. My cousin is very interested in philosophy, you understand?’
‘Yves!’ came a mighty roar from outside the barn. ‘If you do not shut up this moment I shall break your head in two!’
Yves shrugged, raised his eyebrows again and took the pack off his back, crouching down on his haunches to unpack a quantity of food and drink.
‘The success my cousin has with women is phenomenal,’ he said quietly, with a conspiratorial grin. ‘I think they suppose if they kiss him he will turn into a prince.’
Rolande had returned just in time to pick up the last part of this comment, an aside that was rewarded with a smack on the back of Yves’s head.
‘While when they kiss you they find out just what a toad you are, cousin!’ he roared. ‘Now give our copains their petit déjeuner, because we all have work to do.’
By late morning they had climbed down to the village and Scott and Lily had been introduced to the local grocer, who took them into the back of his store, locked the door behind them, and produced three small but fully assembled radio transmitters from the bottom of three sacks of corn. It appeared he had made and fitted them out himself, radio being not just a pastime but a complete obsession. Yves further assured them that although they had not dared run a full test yet for fear of discovery, the sets would work because Monsieur l’Epicier was a genius, and once the transmitters were installed in the caves they were about to visit the war would be over in no time, and they could all return to a full and proper contemplation of the serious things in life, wine, pétanque, and the fair sex, strictly in that order.
‘Aerials,’ Scott said. ‘We shall need aerials. We can’t transmit without aerials.’
Yves looked at Rolande, who in return shrugged and pulled a non-committal face.
‘So?’ Yves said. ‘We rig up aerials once we have the transmitters in place, yes?’
‘Where?’ Scott wondered. ‘We shall have to see where we’re transmitting from first.’
Again Yves looked to his cousin, who nodded agreement that they were about to enter the next phase of their activities, and possibly so far the most dangerous one. Now they had to hide the priceless transmitters away somehow in some form of transport and ferry them to the chosen destination under the noses of the Germans, who it seemed were now everywhere.
It was finally agreed that the transmitters should be hidden once again in their bags of corn and loaded on to the grocer’s delivery cart, which Yves volunteered to drive as far as he could into the surrounding countryside before meeting up with the others in order to carry their precious equipment into the caves that lay deep in the high cliffs.
‘No. I don’t think so. I think I should drive the cart.’
The three men stared at Lily, as if unable to believe their ears.
‘You do not know the way, for a start,’ Rolande growled, after a small pause. ‘And you’re hardly going to be able to stop and ask a friendly German.’
‘One of you, Yves I imagine, can hide in the back and direct me,’ Lily replied. ‘It’s better that I drive. If I get stopped, I can – as a last resort – flirt my way out, perhaps.’
‘She’s right there, boys,’ Scott interrupted with a smile. ‘If anyone can flirt her way out of danger, Lily’s the number one choice.’
‘Hmmm,’ Rolande said, eyeing the pretty young woman as he lit another Gitanes. ‘Hmmm.’
‘And if she doesn’t succeed,’ Yves added, ‘which I have to say I greatly doubt, then I shall kill the offending Kraut.’
‘Krauts,’ Scott said, pluralising the noun. ‘If it’s a patrol, two at the very least – possibly more. If it’s a squad, the best of British to you is all I can say.’
‘Pardon?’ Yves frowned. ‘The best of British . . .?’
‘Luck, chum. Particularly since our arms at the moment run to a couple of knives between us.’
‘I don’t see the alternative,’ Rolande said finally. ‘We have to go by daylight because at night we are even more certain to be stopped – after curfew.’
‘And the corn has to be delivered, as always,’ Yves added. ‘So naturally it must be delivered during the day.’
The grocer had volunteered to deliver it himself, but since he was elderly and more than a little infirm no one considered it fair that he should be put at risk, Rolande assuring him that he had done more than enough by assembling and hiding the transmitters. Finally it was agreed that Lily should drive the cart with Yves well hidden below all the bags of grain and feedstuffs and Rolande and Scott following on foot at a more than discreet distance. The directions were in fact much simpler than Rolande had at first indicated, since there was only one road out of the village. After three kilometres it forked into two, at which juncture Lily was directed to take the right fork and drive the cart as far up into the hills as she could, a matter of another kilometre and a half before she finally came to a point of no return, the farm to which she was meant to be delivering the feedstuff.
After only three hundred or so yards, she saw two Germans, rifles slung over their shoulders, patrolling the road. They had their backs to her but as soon as they heard the sound of the cart they turned to look.
‘Good day, boys!’ Lily smiled at them as she approached, gesturing with one hand to the blue sky above. ‘Some day for April, yes? Bet you’d rather be out of those uniforms and on the beach, yes?’
One soldier stared at her, not understanding a word of her French, and seemed about to challenge her. But his companion put an arm on his to stop him, stepping forward to take control and smiling up at the beautiful peasant girl sitting smiling back down at him from her driving seat.
‘Slowly, mademoiselle, if you would,’ he requested in schoolboy French. ‘My French is not so good.’
Lily bent over towards him, allowing him a good view of her breasts through the open neck of her shirt as she did so. Repeating what she had just said carefully and slowly, she remained in that position until a more than visible blush had begun to rise from the young soldier’s throat to suffuse his face.
‘It is certainly warm today, mademoiselle,’ he said in halting French, running a finger round the back of the collar of his heavy shirt. ‘I said just now to my friend here that we would like to swim.’
‘I’m going to swim as soon as I have delivered this wretched corn,’ Lily replied, broadening her smile. ‘When are you boys off duty? I know a lovely part of the beach.’
The two soldiers looked at each other, the French-speaking one translating for his friend, who immediately opened his eyes wide to stare with wonder at Lily.
‘We have some time this afternoon, late, mademoiselle,’ the first soldier finally replied. ‘We were thinking of going to the – what is the word?’
‘Beach? Well, if you are, let me show you the best place. It’s very private too.’ Lily let the implication hang in the air as she continued to smile at the young men.
‘First I have to ask you where you are headed,’ the French-speaker said, trying to hide his own smile. ‘We have to ask everyone their business.’
Lily explained what she described as her boring task for the day, a job that was keeping her from the beach, which was why she was so anxious to get it done as quickly as possible. As she kept the soldiers so well occupied, Scott and Rolande slipped unnoticed into adjacent fields and took to the woods, headed fast now for their objective.
‘So, boys,’ Lily smiled, picking her reins back up. ‘Maybe we’ll see each other later on the beach? I’ll look out for you and take you to my little cove. OK?’
She left the two soldiers grinning like the schoolboys they had been only a handful of months before, smacking the rump of the old pony between the shafts of the cart with a limp whip and smiling to herself at her sangfroid. She had known no fear whatsoever during the exchange, only a sense of purpose and confidence, which she knew would give Miss Lavington twin fits. Unlike herself, Cissie Lavington felt that agents should not be fearless, that to be fearless was actually to play the most dangerous game anyone could perhaps play, but according to the way Lily saw things their work had to be viewed in terms of game-playing. As long as it was, and reality was kept at bay, then she could indulge herself to the full.
When the two German soldiers had stopped her in the road she had assumed the role of the character she had decided to play with zest. She was a peasant girl delivering a load of animal feed to a farm, and she was already bored by the task, having previously determined to spend a lazy day on the beach. She was also a flirtatious miss, and one not averse to toying with the emotions of the enemy as much as she did with the local boys, although the character Lily had created for herself was already bored with the local lads, and excited by the thought of fresh young and energetic blood being infused into her dull little fishing village.
That was why she had succeeded so convincingly, she told herself, as she drove the cart up the long incline towards the farm at the top. She had succeeded in convincing the Germans she was bona fide because that was what she believed – and therefore to survive that was all she had to do: continue to believe in whatever fantasy she created.
The rest of the initial part of the mission went according to plan. The four of them rendezvoused at the end of the track, at a holding owned by another Resistance worker who led them to an entrance concealed in the rocks behind his family farm, which in turn led them down to the warren of caves that had been chosen as ideal hiding places for the transmitters and their operators.
The caves were a genuine labyrinth, smaller and more tortuous than those that Lily had grown to know so well at Eden Park, although fortunately well marked with white chalked-up directional signs for the benefit of the newcomers, ending in three large caves approximately fifty feet above sea level, each with tiny apertures in their sea walls, allowing a restricted view of both the Channel and the beach below.
They had already been equipped with plain tables and chairs, as well as two camp beds in case anyone had to spend any length of time in hiding there and a simple camping stove on which the operators could make a hot drink or heat a can of beans or stew. Heavy batteries had been put in place ready to power the transmitters once they were set up, which they were within two hours of the party’s arrival underground. Each set worked to perfection, other than the fact that they were unable as yet to transmit because of the lack of vital aerial wires.
Scott pronounced the caves perfect as far as security went but not so the set-up, considering the rock walls to be too thick for successful transmission even if they did manage somehow to rig up the necessary aerials. He further considered that in order to maximise the power of the homemade transmitters, whose signals had to be picked up by receivers at Beachy Head, they needed to be higher or they would never finally reach HQ.
‘You’ve all done a wonderful job so far,’ he declared as they sat down at the table to drink some wine and smoke cigarettes. ‘But the problem is these transmitters are weaker than one had hoped for. No fault of your grocer friend, who has made a great job of assembling them – but from here we have a good fifty or sixty miles to carry across, and unless we erect a socking great aerial we’re not going to reach our destination.’
A long discussion then followed concerning how best to erect an aerial tall enough to do the job, but not tall enough to be noticed by curious German eyes. The farm owner suggested they transmit from his house instead, erecting some sort of aerial on the roof, which seemed to be a sensible idea until Scott pointed out that it could only be a short-term solution as the Germans were known to have sophisticated monitoring devices that could readily pick up radio signals within their vicinity. It was why the caves had been suggested in the first place; they were rumoured to be impenetrable to enemy listening devices.
‘It doesn’t have to go up in the air, does it?’ Lily suddenly enquired, looking up from her nails, which she had been carefully cleaning with a sharpened match. ‘This aerial. It doesn’t have to go straight up in the air, does it? Or does it?’
‘That’s what aerials usually do, Lily,’ Scott replied, using a deliberately over-patient voice. ‘Remember seeing them? They’re like little beacons – and sometimes rather larger beacons.’
‘Yes, yes, mein Führer,’ Lily interrupted, getting to her feet and carefully brushing herself down as if she was in her best party clothes rather than borrowed peasant garments. ‘I know what they look like – but that wasn’t my question. Is that the only way aerials work is my question. Vertically?’
All the men looked at her as they realised a little late that it was a question they had not really considered before. They also all, to a man, remained silent, as if finally reluctant to take up the challenge.
‘Let me put it another way,’ Lily continued ruthlessly, realising at once that none of them had ever thought of using aerials any way except straight up. ‘Could an aerial work horizontally? If it was off the ground, and long enough?’
Scott frowned. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said at last, reluctantly. ‘But then I don’t actually see why either.’
‘No, no!’ Yves exclaimed, jumping to his feet. ‘Lily is perhaps right! There is no reason, so long as the aerial wire is long enough and is raised sufficiently, why it should not work! No – I see no reason why it should not! Why? What are you suggesting, my little one?’
‘I take it that’s a compliment in your language, Yves? To be called a little one?’
‘But of course! Of course! So? Then?’
Lily looked round at them, mischievous as always, before finally beginning to expound her idea. It was so simple it was astounding, and of course, always provided it remained undiscovered, there was no reason why it should not work.
‘You are married, monsieur?’ Lily asked the farmer, to reassure herself.
‘But yes, mademoiselle. I have a wife and four children, three of them under the age of conscription, thank God.’
‘So you will have plenty of washing?’
‘There is always plenty of washing in our household, m’moiselle. My wife – even with the restrictions, she is a very strict housekeeper.’
‘Then all we have to make sure is that your new washing line is always well hung.’
It seemed it was as simple as that. Monsieur Rochard, the farmer, acquired a brand new washing line behind his farmstead, along the top line of the cliff but not particularly noticeable from below. To be sure it was a little longer than the normal domestic line and made of an entirely different material, but that would only become apparent to anyone standing beside it, and since it was determined that he should keep as much washing hanging out to dry on the line as possible, whatever the weather, given the remoteness of the farm, and the fact that visitors were few and far between, there was only the remotest of chances that any foot soldiers would bother to come and inspect the Rochard family’s line. Nor would the transmitters give their positions away, left as they were far below ground and wired securely up to the washing line above them. The only difficulty facing the Resistance now, given the sizeable German presence in the area, would be gaining regular access to the caves without being spotted by the enemy patrols.
‘Perhaps not for much longer,’ Rolande remarked, as they sat drinking marc in the farmhouse late that night, their day’s work finally done. ‘We hear only the other day that Herr Hitler is turning serious attention to Russia. And if this proves to be the case, my friends, I think we may see many of these troops being withdrawn. After all, they were sent here to invade England, not Russia.’
‘Let’s hope,’ said Scott, raising his glass. ‘It would certainly make life a lot easier for you.’
‘Not for us?’ Yves enquired. ‘You are leaving us?’
‘Not yet, comrade,’ Scott replied. ‘We’re going to make sure all this is up and running first and that we get the first all important bulletins back home. Tomorrow we shall transmit all the information you, my comrades, have gleaned about the fortifications being built along this stretch, as well as all troop movements so far and any new ones – just in case the forecast about Russia is wrong. No, no, we’re not going to ship out just yet – though we are ordered to return by the end of the month provided everything is running smoothly by then.’
Yves nodded his understanding, all the time looking at Lily, who, although she was perfectly well aware of his attention, chose to ignore it.
‘I’m out of cigarettes,’ she announced. ‘Has anyone got a cigarette that isn’t made out of sheep droppings?’
The three Frenchmen shrugged and sighed their regrets.
‘Here,’ said Scott, offering her a Players.
‘It’s your last one,’ Lily said with feeling, looking up at him.
‘Then I shall have to learn to smoke sheep droppings.’ He nodded to her to take it.
‘Thank you,’ she said finally. ‘Ta very much.’
‘Ta to you too, Lily,’ he said. ‘That was actually quite a bright idea about the aerial.’
‘Shucks,’ Lily returned in mock American.
‘I mean it,’ Scott insisted. ‘But in future if I were you I’d forgo the manicures. If you’re stopped, some bright-eyed Kraut might wonder what a peasant girl like you is doing with such dainty manicured mitts.’
So attractive was her laugh and so gay her smile that Scott felt like kissing her instantly. Instead he cadged a Gitanes from Rolande and poured himself another glass of marc. They were nowhere near safe yet. In fact they were only just beginning the business of their mission, and now that the transmitters were ready to work, the danger they were in was all the greater. Any false sense of celebration must be put aside.
‘God,’ Lily suddenly thought aloud. ‘Listen – do you think they’ll have reported the cart? The Germans who stopped me this morning. If they’ve put the cart down in their reports—’
‘Which they well might do,’ Scott agreed.
‘Then whoever takes over their duty might notice my non-return. Mightn’t they?’
They just managed to hide everything away in time. While Madame Rochard cleared the kitchen of all traces of the visitors, emptying cigarette ends into the stove and washing and drying the brandy glasses and coffee cups, Monsieur Rochard pulled his bewildered seventeen-year-old son out of bed and dragged him over to the hay barn where he was introduced to an already half undressed Lily, who got up from in between the hay bales to greet him.
‘Now you behave yourself, young man,’ Monsieur Rochard warned his still utterly bewildered son. ‘This is for France, understand? You are not to think of anything other than la belle France! You do and I will see to you myself!’
‘It’s all right, monsieur,’ Lily whispered to the distracted farmer. ‘I’ll take good care of him.’
‘You had better not, m’moiselle,’ Rochard growled back. ‘He is barely seventeen!’
‘I meant I will make sure he comes to no harm. We shall only be pretending. Please don’t worry.’
Monsieur Rochard regarded her with deep suspicion, smacked his son lightly about the head with one hand as an advance warning of what might befall him should he get carried away, then hurried back to bed in his house. Two minutes later, when Scott, Yves and Rolande were all safely on their way down to the labyrinth, the Germans arrived.
They turned the place over, much to the well-acted consternation of the Rochards whom they yelled at to get out of their beds, along with two of their children.
‘There is another child!’ one of the soldiers barked in half-acceptable French. ‘There is an empty bed in this room! Where is this one? Well?’
Monsieur Rochard frowned deeply and shrugged, turning to his wife, who simply raised her eyebrows to the heavens.
‘Should this child be in bed, madame?’
‘But of course, sir. It is very late, and even though he is the oldest—’
The German captain cut her off with a nod of his head to the men behind him and a barked order. The four soldiers who had followed him up the rickety staircase swung themselves back down with a great heavy clatter of boots and clank of equipment as they left the farmhouse to instigate a further search.
It didn’t take them long. The door of the hay barn was swinging open and within minutes two of the soldiers, aided by their powerful spotlights, had found the so-called lovers in their bed of hay. At once Lily grabbed the short top she had discarded to make herself decent, holding it over her breasts, while the unfortunate young Rochard tried to hide himself under the hay, mortified with embarrassment and shaking with terror.
The two German soldiers stood looking at them, the younger one smiling helplessly while the older one looked at Lily in a quite different way. Seeing the look, for once Lily put all ideas of flirtation out of her head and began to cough as deeply and unpleasantly as she could, before seemingly trying to control the fit.
‘Forgive me, sir,’ she muttered, wiping one hand slowly across her mouth while biting hard at the inside of her lip at the same time, successfully drawing blood which she carefully made evident on her hand as she stopped coughing. ‘Forgive me, please – it’s my chest.’
At once the older soldier’s expression changed from one of patent lust to one of equally obvious fear and revulsion.
‘Come!’ he ordered them, with a wave of his rifle. ‘Move!’
Grabbing their clothes, the two fake lovers covered themselves and hurried as best they could down the ladder. At the bottom the young German captain waited with his other two men, tapping his leg with his baton. He looked from Lily to the young Rochard boy and shook his head, laughing. Then he clicked his tongue at the boy.
‘You’re a bad boy,’ he said. ‘I wonder what your father is going to say.’
‘No, no! Please, sir, no!’ young Rochard pleaded, as he had been instructed by Lily. ‘No, please, sir – do anything but tell Papa! Please!’
The captain regarded him, as if uncertain whether to take him in and punish him himself or to hand him over to be reprimanded by his father. When he saw how violently the boy’s knees were knocking he smiled broadly and indicated the house.
‘Go on,’ he ordered. ‘Off with you! Take him inside, Corporal! And tell Papa what his little boy has been up to! And now, mademoiselle – to you.’ The captain had that same look in his eyes as he moved towards the beautiful half-dressed young woman who stood before him, hair entangled with hay, only her canvas shirt held tight to her breasts protecting her decency.
‘You may go, men,’ he ordered in German. ‘I wish to have words with this young lady here.’
‘Excuse me, sir,’ the older soldier said, stepping forward. ‘If I may make so bold, Captain . . .’ He dropped his voice before continuing, having given a sideways glance to Lily.
Lily knew what he was whispering from the expression on the captain’s face, a look that also turned from lust to loathing.
‘Filth,’ he said, slapping her hard round the face. ‘Filth. Disgusting disease.’
Then turning on his heel he stalked out of the barn, leaving his men temporarily behind him. The younger two smiled shyly at Lily, and left ahead of their older companion, who stared at her before spitting his contempt on the floor.
After he too had gone, and despite the fact that the aftermath of the slap was hurting her more than she could believe, Lily managed to smile. She had, after all, convinced them. At that moment, like many an actress, she felt the pain was nothing compared to the triumph of her performance.