She’s alone. She’s sitting in a corner of a compartment with two other passengers but she’s alone. She tries to keep awake by watching the countryside pass by, the alluvial flats of the Cher, the vasty fields of France; but tiredness creeps up on her like a thief and steals away her waking. She sleeps, hearing the roar of an aero engine in her ears, then comes to with a start. Her fellow passengers have turned to reading. She watches the trees and fields pass. There are clusters of mistletoe among the bare branches. There was mistletoe in the cemetery, mistletoe overhead when she met Yvette. The Druids’ plant. The plant that killed the Norse god Baldur. Kisses at Christmas time, a kiss stolen from Clément. She dozes, dreams, sees herself running in the darkness, feels Clément’s body against her.
What will all that mean in the future? How much do such things last? Will they meet again as mere friends, or will there still be this breathless desire? The future seems an uncertain thing, compromised by the present, by the war, by her own strange life here in the dull and battered country that France has become. The future is irrelevant. What is relevant is this train jogging through the French countryside and the creep of exhaustion.
Clément will be in England by now. How will they deal with him? The man called Fawley with the owl glasses. Kowarski the Russian bear. And Ned, who will presumably be called on to debrief him as he debriefed Kowarski in 1940; Ned whose role in this whole thing is as enigmatic as the physics they all study, a world of uncertainty that yet yields certainty—a bomb that will blow the world to pieces.
Meanwhile the others—Gilbert, and the man called David and the other agent who looked like a bandit—will be on the train from Tours to Paris, to the Gare d’Austerlitz, where there are posters giving her description, and a reward for her capture. Five hundred thousand francs.
What would her father say to that? Or her mother? She can imagine the shriek of horror—their dear little Squirrel, with a price on her head and half the Paris police looking for her!—as though it were a disgrace to be wanted as a criminal whatever the circumstances. Should she have taken the extra seat and flown back to England? She would have found safety, real safety. Where would the disgrace have been in that? No more glancing over the shoulder, no more living with the flutter of fear trapped there in the pit of the stomach. And sleep, she’d have been able to sleep. Instead she’s here, somewhere in France. But that is why she came in the first place, ever since the man called Potter quizzed her in that bare room off Northumberland Avenue: not for Clément, not for Benoît, but for France, that strange abstraction that means so many different things to different people.
The train rattles on, stopping at every station, passengers getting on and off, whistles blowing, the ordinary currency of travel in the heartland of France. Vierzon comes with a clattering of points, the carriage jolting sideways, acres of sidings and rows and rows of goods trains waiting to move and a voice on the public-address system announcing “Vierzon Ville.” Where Julius Miessen got on the train that time. Julius Miessen who followed her through Paris. Her nemesis. She pulls her suitcase down from the rack and edges along the corridor behind the other passengers. Someone helps her down onto the platform and wishes her “Bon voyage, Mam’selle,” and she smiles in acknowledgement. The Toulouse train will be arriving at Platform 2.
Toulouse means Benoît. He’ll be wondering where she is, what she is doing. She’ll appear out of the blue like the last time, perhaps meet with him as she did before in the railwayman’s flat. Passion is a crude, physical thing. It makes her feel uncomfortable, walking along the platform with strangers, remembering. Can they smell the passion on her? Does it transmit through the air?
Clément and Benoît. How can she have come to this, the convent girl who had kept her virginity until she was twenty years old, the girl whose sexual longings were always clouded with guilt? Two men within days of each other. The kind of thing that once horrified her. Promiscuity, prurience, sin—a whole thesaurus of immorality. Perhaps it’s the unnatural life she is leading, her personality split between Alice and Marian, the one doing what the other can ignore. Create yourself a cover for every eventuality. Be real to yourself. Live the person you are pretending to be.
Laurence Follette, a student, returning to the southwest from Paris where she has been for the last week visiting friends. Laurence Follette, weighed down with tiredness, humping her suitcase over to Platform 2, thinking of Clément, of a bomb that might blow cities to dust, of Benoît standing before her naked as though nudity is the most natural thing in the world.
She could be in England. Now, at this moment, in England. But she’s here in France, which is where she is meant to be, where she wanted to be, where her mission lies. She dozes, awkwardly, on a bench, trying to stay awake for the train announcements, her head falling towards her chest and then jolting upright.
Yvette. Did Yvette really give her away? Yvette, the mother whom she mothered. Yvette who slept with Emile. Once that would have been impossible to imagine, yet now everything seems possible, even a voice calling her out of sleep saying, “Marian? Marian Sutro?”
“Yes?”
It’s the oldest trick in the book. It’s the pitfall of bilingualism, the moment when the wrong switch is thrown, the wrong response given, the wrong word uttered.
Yes.
She’s not Marian Sutro, she’s Laurence Follette, student, living near Toulouse.
Yes.
She looks round and they’re standing there, two men in dark blue suits and heavy overcoats, and between them, smiling faintly, the Alsatian woman.
It’s like the bullet that hits you—you never hear the shot being fired. She moves to rise from the bench but it’s too late, far too late. Someone has already grabbed her by the upper arms to hold her down. There’s a brief struggle to handcuff her while passengers look on indifferently. A girl being taken into custody. It happens all the time. Who knows why? Who cares?