‘Embarkation begins at four.’ James was looking at his watch, his own suitcase and a duffel bag resting beside him. He’d added to his wardrobe, it had seemed, while in Paris, and although Fen wasn’t sure what he’d bought, he’d managed to fill a whole new case with clothes, and his army-issue kitbag was dwarfed by the new sturdy case.
‘Here we are.’ Fen accepted her case from the driver and nodded a thanks to him. ‘Ready. Though if you offer me anything more exciting than a dry cracker, I might—’
‘I get the picture.’ James laughed while raising a hand to stop her in her tracks. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll eat for the both of us. Something about sea air always makes me ravenous.’ He patted his stomach. ‘The De Grasse better have a decent chef on board, as being that close to the ocean, I’ll be on ten meals a day!’
Fen laughed at him. James was definitely in better spirits than she’d seen him recently. Better really than she’d ever known. He’d been understandably circumspect when they’d first met, not understanding why she had appeared and worried that she’d possibly scupper his own investigations into Arthur’s death.
Then in Paris more recently he’d begun to open up, but he’d been distracted by the allure of a beautiful, if fundamentally treacherous, young woman. Being duped like that had knocked the wind out of him and it was only after they’d booked their passage at the offices of the French Line shipping company that she’d noticed a renewed spring in his step. Perhaps James was happy to be on his way home too, after all?
‘We’ll only be on the ship for a matter of hours, barely enough time to fry a tomato, James, before we’re back in Southampton.’ Fen put her case down, flexing out her fingers as she spoke.
James merely raised his eyebrows at her and then picked up his bags. ‘Even so,’ he said, ‘I’m going to fill up on as much decent French food as I can before we board. Don’t say I can’t tempt you with one last medium-rare entrecôte with some fried potatoes before we’re back to eating the boot-leather of good old English beef?’
Fen smiled at him. Her nausea from the journey had subsided and her stomach was beginning to rumble. All of a sudden, seizing the chance to indulge in one last delicious French meal didn’t seem like such a bad idea. ‘Lead on, MacDuff!’ She picked up her battered old case again. ‘Or should that be Le Duff?’
‘I’d swap you a haggis for a steak haché any time.’ He chuckled at her and led them both away from the bus, towards the sea.
Much to James’s disappointment, there wasn’t much left of Le Havre, let alone a bustling street of shops and cafés. He kicked some rubble down what would have been a road and Fen sighed. What had they expected? They’d been spoiled in Paris as, although it had been bombed, it hadn’t been obliterated like this once beautiful port town had been. All that was left was the odd boulevard of burnt tree trunks, buildings torn apart like dolls’ houses with their fronts wide open and piles of crushed stone around them.
Working parties and their building-site shouts replaced the noises one would have expected to hear in a busy town centre. There was no rattle of a tram or chatter of a marketplace. Only the rhythmic thud of stone being moved and the splintering of wood as any useful pieces were pulled from heaps of yet-to-be-cleared ash. There had been no sign of a proper bus terminal even, it having been obliterated no doubt and now temporarily replaced with a prefab hut.
‘Festung…’ James said as he kicked at a broken brick, barrelling it into a pile of its fellows.
‘What’s festung?’ Fen asked him, as she placed her suitcase down and sat on it while waiting for an answer. Picking over rubble made walking harder, especially while lugging a suitcase, and, after the early start this morning and lack of food, she was quite weary.
‘I knew about it, of course, but I had never imagined…’ James trailed off, but copied Fen’s idea and sat himself down on his own, much newer suitcase. ‘I thought there might be at least one café left.’
‘James? Festung?’
‘It means “fortress” in German. We heard about it via the Resistance listening stations – coded memos that went backwards and forwards between German high command and the last officers left here as the Allies advanced. Le Havre was meant to be defended like a medieval fortress, last man standing and all that. Hence the bombing of it last year. We did this, you know.’ He nodded his head in the general direction of the desolation.
‘Did the townsfolk… I mean, were there many casualties?’ Fen looked at James, hoping the answer wasn’t going to be what she feared. Behind him stood the remains of a smart nineteenth-century apartment building, its spiralling central staircase now exposed to the elements like the spinal cord of a dead animal.
‘Yes. But most of the French had left by the time the German garrisons had taken up their final stand.’
They both sat there on their cases and looked at the flattened town around them. It took a few minutes for either of them to speak, and it was James who broke their contemplative silence after glancing at his watch.
‘Well, we’re not going to get fed sitting here. Ready for the walk to the docks?’
‘I suppose we’d better get going.’ Fen looked down at her own watch. It was bordering on lunchtime, but the sun was creeping down towards the western horizon, hiding itself behind the occasional greyish cloud. It was November now and it wouldn’t be too long before it disappeared altogether over the horizon. Fen looked towards it and realised that due west of where they were sitting were the docks and, beyond them, the wide Atlantic Ocean. Between the docks and the sea itself, she saw
