Most Secret (44 page)

Simon passed him a box of matches; the man stooped by him to shield the flame. “They got away,” he said. “One of the boats was missing when dawn came. The fleet has just come into harbour. The Germans are very angry about it.”

He straightened up. A German sailor passed by them in the street going towards the harbour. The man lit another match and flipped it at him scornfully. The German scowled angrily at them. The man spat on the pavement at his feet, and gave the box of matches back to Simon.

Simon said: “That is good news for Douarnenez, and for all France. One day the English will come back, and bring their fire again.” He smiled gently. “Charles Simon says so.”

He went on down the main street past the great church to the small house beside it, and knocked at the door of the
presbytery. It was opened to him by Father Augustine himself; when he saw who it was he pulled Simon inside quickly and shut the door. They stood together in the narrow passage.

Simon said: “Father, all has gone as we had planned. By now my friend will be in England and in hospital in his own country. There is an officer at the British Admiralty who will be looking after him. His little friend, his fiancée, will be with him and he will be happy. All this is due to you, and I want to thank you for it.”

The priest said: “We are all instruments of Almighty God. Give your thanks to Him.”

Simon inclined his head.

“And you, my son?”

“My time is getting short. I want to cleanse my soul, father.”

The priest said gently: “You could have escaped with your friend quite easily. Why did you not go with him?”

There was a little pause. Then Simon said: “I am practically a Frenchman, father, though I have British nationality. But all my life I have thought of myself as English. I wanted to be English, as my father was. Now, for eight months, I have been an officer in the British Army. A proper British officer would not go away and leave these hostages. I do not want women and little girls of seven to be killed so that I may go free.”

He left the presbytery half an hour later, and walked down to the harbour. All his life the sight of boats had fascinated him, the smell of tanned sails and salt water, the lap and shimmer of the waves. He spent an hour down at the waterside in peace, storing up memories. He walked out on the jetty, still black from the fire, and wondered what had happened to his own four-ton yacht at St. Malo. Then he went back into the Café de la République and drank a glass of Pernod.

Presently he left the café and walked up the hill, towards the German headquarters.

Under the great swastika flag he turned in at the door between the sentries, stiff and erect with rifles and steel helmets. There was a desk in the front room; behind it was an
Unterfeldwebel
of the German Army, and a private.

“I have come about the thirty hostages,” Simon said in French. “You can let them go. I am a British officer, the only one who landed in Douarnenez.”

I
T took Rhodes about three-quarters of an hour to tell me what he knew, and he was very weary by the time we had finished. Towards the end the nurse kept looking in every two or three minutes, mutely begging me to pack up and go. I made it as short as I could, and got to my feet.

“You’d better rest now, Rhodes,” I said. I hesitated, and then said: “I shall be in touch with Dartmouth. Would you like to see Miss Wright?”

He said: “She’s just had leave, sir. They wouldn’t let her come down here, would they?”

I laughed. “I’ll certify it as a service journey. You’d like to see her, wouldn’t you?”

He flushed. “I don’t know if you know. We got engaged—just before this show.”

“She told me,” I said. I picked up my cap. “I’ll see about that, Rhodes. Come and see me in London when you’re on your feet again, and we’ll talk about what you are to do next.”

I left the ward, and went back to the surgeon’s office. There I scribbled a message for him to get telephoned to Dartmouth, and left in a hurry for the station. I got the London train by the skin of my teeth, and sat all morning as it wandered on through Cornwall.

The train drew into Newton Abbott station early in the afternoon; Leading Wren Wright was on the platform there to meet me. It was my fate to tell her things on Newton Abbott platform, in the clamour of the trucks and milk-cans, the hissing of steam heat from the carriages, and the bustle of the crowd. I got out quickly and went up to her.

“Look, Miss Wright,” I said. “You got my message?”

She stammered: “He—he’s all right, is he, sir?”

I said: “He’s not a bit all right. He isn’t going to die, but he’s got a very nasty and neglected wound in his left shoulder. He’s in Falmouth Hospital, and he’d very much like to see you down there.”

She said “Would I be able to get leave?”

I had written a note in the train, and now I gave it to her. “Take this to the commander,” I said. “Give him my compliments and tell him that I’m sorry I haven’t been able to telephone him. I’ve asked if he can spare you for a week to be
with Rhodes, in this letter. But it rests with him entirely, you know. I can’t give you leave.”

She said ingenuously: “I’ll get it if you’ve said you want me to have it, sir. He thinks an awful lot of you. They all do.”

“I’ve done nothing in this show,” I said. “Nothing but sit on my backside in an office and watch other people do the work.”

There was a short pause. “Do you know what happened to Captain Simon and Lieutenant Boden, sir?” she asked.

I said: “Simon got on shore all right”—I dropped my voice—“but he’s still over on the other side. Keep your mouth shut about that. I’m afraid it’s very nearly certain that Lieutenant Boden was killed.”

She nodded; she had evidently expected that. “I was sure it must have been him,” she said. “He was the man with the Tommy-gun, when she was floating upside down?”

“I think he was,” I said.

She raised her head. “It was the best thing,” she said. “He’d never have settled down, after the war.”

I did not agree with her. “People get over things.”

She shook her head. “Not Boden. He was hurt too much.”

It was not a matter one could argue, especially on Newton Abbot platform; besides which, she was more his age and knew Boden better than I did. Behind me a porter was shouting out for passengers to take their seats, and slamming doors as he passed down the train. I moved towards my compartment. “Look after yourself and see that doesn’t happen to Rhodes,” I said.

She said: “It might be the other way about.”

Down at the end of the train the guard blew his whistle, waving his green flag. I got into my compartment and leaned out of the window for a few last words to her. “Don’t worry about that,” I said. “He’ll never go to sea again—he never should have gone this time. Rhodes is a Special Branch officer’s—green stripe. He’ll be on shore for the remainder of the war.”

She said: “He’ll hate that, sir.”

The train began to move. I grinned at her. “I know he will,” I said. “But you won’t.”

She laughed at that; it was the first time that I had seen her laugh for weeks. The last thing I saw of her was that she was still laughing on the platform, waving to me with the letter in her hand that was to give her leave. I’m not sure that it’s correct for a Leading Wren to wave like that at a commander.

I saw McNeil that evening in his office in Pall Mall, and told him what I had been doing, and what I had learned from Rhodes. It took about half an hour to tell the story as I then knew it. In the end I said: “Simon is still in France, apparently. We might hear from him before so very long.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. There was a message in to-day about him.” He unlocked a drawer and passed me one of his MOST SECRET flimsies that I was beginning to dislike. It read:

I passed it back to him in silence. “That’s the end of that,” I said heavily at last. “We shan’t see him again till after the war.”

“No,” said the brigadier. He said no more than that. It seemed to me that there was nothing more to say.

I left him and went back to my normal work. Nothing happened after that for the best part of a fortnight; indeed, there was nothing more to happen. That party was all cleaned up, or so I thought. Colvin came out of hospital about the end of November and came up to see me at the Admiralty one afternoon. I made him sit down and smoke, and we chatted for a short time about this and that.

Presently I said: “What’s your position now, Colvin? They’re giving you a decent spell of leave?”

“I wanted to see you about that, sir,” he said. “The surgeon-commander down at Haslar, he’s being mighty particular. I get a month’s leave now. Well, that’s okay, although I don’t know what in heck you do with a month’s leave in this country in December. But after that, he says I’ll be for light duty on shore for six months at least, ’n possibly for longer. That don’t seem reasonable to me.”

“How do you feel yourself?” I asked.

“I must say I get mighty tired with little things,” he confessed. “Walking upstairs, ’n that. And shaving, I keep cutting myself. But that’ll all go off, after a month.”

“How old are you, Colvin?”

“I’m forty-eight.” He hesitated. “I did knock off five years, but the commander at Haslar, he got hold of all my papers when I was in hospital.”

“Bad luck,” I said.

“You see the way it is, sir,” he explained. “I don’t want to get stuck down in one of them places like the Clyde or Liverpool, not knowing anybody in this country, ’n nothing to do but get into trouble. I’d be better off at sea.”

I bent down and opened one of the drawers of my desk. I pulled out a little box. “By the way,” I said. “I got your watch back. I think it’s all right now.”

He was very pleased. He took the box and opened it. The London Chronometer Company had done a good job on it; they had given it a complete new movement and polished it up till it looked like new. They had even sent it back in a little wash-leather bag.

“Say,” he said, “that’s dandy.” He put it to his ear and listened to it ticking. And then, unable to resist, he turned it over and read the inscription that he must have known by heart: “Jack Colvin from Junie, September 17th, 1935.”

“I certainly am grateful, sir,” he said. “How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I got the admiral’s secretary to take it on his petty cash account.”

He said: “That’s mighty nice of the admiral.” He paused. “It worried me more ’n anything else,” he said, “the way I’d used this watch. But now it’s better ’n it ever was before.”

I turned back to the job in hand; I had other things to do that afternoon besides settling up Colvin. “Look,” I said. “There’s a shore job that I think might suit you. It’s the armouring of merchant ships—wheel-houses, gun zarebas, and all that. It wants somebody who knows merchant ships, to go on board each ship and say in each case what has to be done—and then to see the work is done right. It’s not difficult work, but it wants a chap like you to do it. It means rowing in with each skipper, talking it over with him, and then modifying the standard scheme to suit the particular conditions in each ship.”

I paused. “Could you tackle that?”

“I guess so. It sounds the sort of thing I used to do when I was Marine Superintendent over on the coast.”

I nodded. “That’s what I had in mind. And more than that, it seemed to me you might have local contacts that would help
you.” He looked up, puzzled. “These are the Lease-Lend ships I’m talking about,” I said. “This job would be on the west coast of America. Your headquarters would be in San Francisco.”

There was a momentary silence. “Have I got this right?” he asked. “You mean you want me to go out to ’Frisco for this job?”

“If you want to go,” I said. “It’s an opportunity I thought perhaps you might like.”

“Would I like it!” he breathed. “Say …” And then he stopped and said: “Who put you up to this one, sir? Who told you that I wanted to get back to ’Frisco? Was it young Boden?”

“He said something about it. I was very glad to know.”

He stared down at his finger-nails. “He was a mighty fine kid, that,” he said. “They don’t make them any better.”

He raised his head and looked at me. “I do want to get back to ’Frisco,” he said quietly. “I got a personal reason, sir—nothing to do with the Navy.” He was still holding the watch in his hand, “I said I wasn’t married when you asked me, first of all,” he said. “That’s right enough, if you go by the law. I couldn’t have drawn marriage allowance—at least, I reckon not. It wasn’t regular, you see.”

“I understand,” I said. “This is Junie, is it?”

“Aye,” he said, “it’s Junie. Seems to me some folks get married and it takes right off, and they don’t get no more trouble. Young Boden, he was one o’ them, I guess. But others never seem to hit it right.”

I could not comment upon that.

“I been married a lot of times,” he said simply, “and each time it finished up in trouble, up till the time when I paired up with Junie. We got married by a minister as if it was all regular, but it wasn’t regular at all, on account of all the other times.” He paused. “Later on, and when this war came, I’d have give my eyes if it could have been made a proper marriage. But that’s what you can’t do.”

“You lived together for four years, didn’t you?” I asked.

“More like five,” he said. “Close on five, it was. I don’t want any better time than that.”

“Do you think she’ll be there still?” I asked. “Two years is a fair time.” I meant, a fair time to expect a girl to hang around without a letter and without marriage lines, but I didn’t say so much.

“Aye,” he said, “it’s a long, dreary time. I think I’ll find
her hanging on for me in ’Frisco still. If not, well, that’ll be too bad. But any way it breaks, I’m real grateful that you’ve given us the chance to set up house again.”