“So what did Caldwell see?”
He laughed. He was very bad at it. He needed more practice.
“Fascinating, simply fascinating. You’ve said it was a foggy night. So that gives us the starting point if you like.”
“It wasn’t fog. Valerie wasn’t fog.”
“No, no, quite,” he said trying to humour me. “This is a well-recognised syndrome. Remember Macbeth? The ghost of Banquo? What Caldwell saw was his own guilt, if you like. It was clearly eating away at him. You forced him to confront it and it overwhelmed him. He “saw” a manifestation of his guilt, in the form of one of the women he murdered.”
It sounded plausible. If you hadn’t been there.
I fell asleep in the wagon-lit rocked by the steady click-clack and swaying of the train.
Hard light filtered through the blinds and warmed my sheets. I peeped out. The flat landscape of north France had been replaced by green hills and woods.
Vineyards sprawled across the slopes. Rows of short black stubs were already filling out with new leaves, like markers on pauper’s graves. It was such a thrilling contrast to the war-damaged streets of London that if the train had stopped or even slowed down enough I might have run off into the rolling hills and never gone home.
I washed and got dressed in time for the chug into Lyon. Another change of train took me onward into the south and to Avignon. But now, the thought of the reception I might get was beginning to weigh on me. Major Cassells had become wonderfully pally once matters had been cleared up. He’d been in touch with the Resistance fighters in Avignon he said. Telegrams had been flying and the old radio sets had been wheeled back out to give me safe passage. But they were a tough bunch, unforgiving, suspicious, and as likely to fight each other as the Germans. So it was anyone’s guess how I’d be received.
It was mid-afternoon when I stood down from the train and stretched my limbs. My gammy leg was aching and swollen from so little exercise. I looked round the station. It was a different place to the one I left so unceremoniously, so recently. Yet it was hauntingly familiar. I was in fairly bad shape the last time I came through; only one eye working and strung between two German soldiers. The memory was lopsided and splintered, but I remembered the big clock with its gilded cherubim. And back then, it was freezing. Or maybe I was. Today it was so warm that I took off my jacket and slung it over my arm.
“Captain McRae?”
I turned and peered into the sun, using my hat as a shield. The squat little figure was unmistakable especially in silhouette.
“Gregor? Is it you?”
He came closer and moved so the sun was on his side. I made out the huge black moustache that had always seemed too big for his moon face, but compensated for his sparse hair. He was grinning as though a giant wedge of Gouda had got stuck in his mouth.
“Hello, Daniel.”
I dropped my jacket and suitcase and we embraced. As usual, he reeked of tobacco and sweat, but to me, today, it was Chanel No 5.
“You got the telegrams, Gregor?”
“Yes, Daniel. We got them. It settled a lot of things here, I can tell you. I never doubted you.” He held my gaze and I believed him.
“I wouldn’t have blamed you, Gregor. For a while there I even doubted myself.”
He grinned and then he reached out and touched the scar. “Does it hurt?”
I shook my head. “Not any more. Not much.”
“Bastards.” Suddenly he was all action. He grabbed my case with one hand and my arm with the other. “Come, my friend, there are people waiting for you.”
I hoped it wasn’t a firing squad. Outside, in the station courtyard was a familiar sight.
“Still got the truck, Gregor. She looks magnificent!” And she did. The battered old vehicle gleamed in its newly painted coat of green. We hadn’t cared much what she looked like on those midnight runs to collect a weapons drop.
Gregor swelled with pride. He’d coaxed it like a lover to perform even in the harshest conditions, trundling across muddy fields and down farm tracks where trees lashed the windscreen and the sides like flails. It fired first time – always a matter of honour to Gregor – and we revved off into the town.
I recognised the cafй in the centre, but I kept expecting German soldiers to be strolling past flirting with the girls and humbling the men. Instead there were market stalls spilling over with early season greens and people back at their sniffing of vegetables and haggling over prices and quality.
They were waiting for me inside. The sound of Gregor’s truck is recognisable for miles. I counted six of them, before they hit me.
They hit me with hugs and kisses and a fuselage of warm words. I found I could tune in better to their more nasal, earthy French than their Parisian brethren, and once the first passions had died they spoke slowly enough for me to stay with it. The wine seemed to help, or maybe I stopped caring.
We talked long into the evening and drank too much and ate too much. They told me how they’d exploded in rebellion when the Normandy landings had begun, and how at first it had seemed they’d been too soon; the Germans had driven them into the hills. But there had been no reprisals this time, and soon a great Nazi convoy had formed and set off north to join up with their beleaguered battalions defending against the Allies.
That’s when the plans we’d laid came into their own. The Maquis had hit them from every side. They’d blown up bridges and railway lines in front of their advance, eating up precious days. It was a well-known story now, but these men relived it for me over the wine and the cognac as though they’d just walked in from the last raid.
I wish I’d been there to lead them. I waited till the last of them had embraced me and gone off into the now quiet streets before sitting down over a cigarette and a coffee with Gregor. I was drunk but not so drunk that I couldn’t make out the pain and bitterness in his eyes when I asked about Lili.
“She was a fine woman, Daniel.”
“A fine soldier, you mean.”
“That too.”
We toasted her memory and I went to bed.
The morning was still warm but clouds scudded across the blue backcloth heralding rain. Gregor came for me at a decent hour after breakfast. I had him stop once in the market on our way. We drove up to the gates on the edge of town. Long lines of poplars swayed behind the low walls. We pushed the gates open and walked down the gravel path past the great slabs and the stone angels.
It was in a quiet corner of the grounds. The grass was neatly trimmed and a few more stones had been stood next to hers, with newer dates. Gregor left me alone and walked away and lit a cigarette.
I stood, trying to remember her as she was before I found her. Tried to find a way of seeing her smile. Tried to wipe the last image of horror from her young face.
I laid the flowers on her grave. Brave yellow daffodils. I stood and read the inscription.
To “Lili”
A soldier of France
Who died for her country
In memory of
Valerie le Brun
1920 – 1944
Rest in peace, Val. Rest in peace.
