When the killing of the German officer, the sergeant, arid the French policeman took place in the police station at Le Mesnil des Champs, it was thought in Villedieu, the nearest
town of any size, that the bells ceremony would be postponed.
Large numbers of troops were deployed over a wide area of the Normandy countryside but had failed to pick up the assassins. Roads were still being watched and there were systematic searches in the surrounding towns, but it was felt by the French authorities and the Germans themselves that the man and the woman they were hunting had gone in the direction of Paris. In any case, General Groemann had promised the bells to his bishop. He wanted them delivered.
The first Sunday in October was designated as a suitable day
for the ceremony. The great bells would be carried by cart from the foundry, blessed in the square, and then borne in
procession to the Villedieu railway station where they would be
loaded on special wagons for their journey to Germany.
On the Friday before the event, Ormerod and Marie-Thérèse
were brought into Villedieu concealed in a cavity made
under a pile of logs in the back of a cart drawn by two dray horses. The man who had met them on the high forest road
with the call of the dove took them straight to a small house. It
was here for the first time that they met the fanatic, Jean Le Blanc.
During Ormerod's years as a policeman, he had cultivated, as 142
policemen do, a nose for a villain. It was not the size, not the
shape of a man; not what he said, nor, often, what he did. A
man could be a criminal without being a villain. Ormerod al
ways considered that the eyes had something to do with it. And
there was a sort of aura, an atmosphere, a smell about a villain.
In all his life, he had never seen a more natural-born villain than the man who called himself Jean Le Blanc.
He was thick and tall, very powerful, with a big, domed, bald head. His hands were fleshy. The skin on his arms and face and
head was as white as if he had never been out in the fresh air in the whole of his life.
Ormerod and Marie-Thérèse had been taken to a house
near the bell-foundry in the town. At his briefing and instruc
tion at Ash Vale, although Villedieu had been one of the towns detailed, no one had mentioned the bell-foundry. From a guide
book, Ormerod had learned that the town gave its name to
vaudeville, because of a comic actor who once lived there. Or
merod remembered thinking at the time that this information, while not generally useful in war, might turn out to be appropriate in the circumstances. And so it was.
The 'safe' house, where they were to hide, had a loft fitted like a room. They had climbed directly from the log cart up through a trapdoor and into the concealed place.
There were three men and a woman waiting for them. One
of the men was Jean Le Blanc. He was wearing a pair of blue
overalls. On a box in front of him was a German tommy-gun, which he was dismantling, and several detonators and sticks of explosive. Also on the box was a wad of something that Omerod took to be putty. The other men were also in their working blue; the woman was silent and lined with worry. She went off to get some food and drink. Le Blanc picked
up the putty-like material and began to work it around in his
fingers.
'You have met with the plastic explosive, monsieur?' he in
quired, his sleepy eyes making the effort to look up at Ormerod.
'Oh, that's it,' said Ormerod. 'I thought you were making a model of Hitler. To stick a few pins in.'
The joke was not appreciated. 'Well, it just looked like that,'
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he mumbled. 'Should you be rolling it around in your hands?' he asked. 'Explosive?'
Le Blanc smiled dryly. 'It is safe to do this.' He threw the
handful of plastic straight at Ormerod's chest. Ormerod jumped
apprehensively and he caught it. Carefully he returned it to Le
Blanc who dropped it on the table. 'It is like a magic toy,' he
said. 'It can be easy and without harm, it can be fixed into any
space and in any form. But when it explodes it is very, very
big.' He looked around at the four faces in the lamplight. 'This,
my friends, is what the Nazis will come to fear in France. It is our greatest weapon.'
Ormerod half turned to Marie-Thérèse and was not surprised
to see her eyes shining in the half-light. 'If we had this at Granville,' she said, 'there would have been no accident.'
Her expression was not merely for the explosive, however,
Ormerod could see that. Her admiration was also for the man.
Afterwards, when the others had gone and he and Marie-Thérèse
were left alone in the dark loft, she said, as if she felt
compelled to explain: 'This man is from my region in Normandy. He is from the Perche. Jean Le Blanc, the famous Percheron stallion, was also powerful.'
'What does he do for a living?' asked Ormerod grumpily in the dark. 'Bend iron bars with his teeth?'
'Like me, he also was a schoolteacher,' sniffed Marie-Thérèse. 'But he was the head of a big school.'
'I bet the kids loved him,' muttered Ormerod. 'Fancy him swinging a cane.'
'He is what we need now,' she said solemnly. 'He is what France needs. Strength, what you in English call guts. Someone who is not afraid. In this country we have had enough of
our cowards.' He could hear her sneer in the dark. 'They were going to defend Paris to the last corner, to the last lamp-post.
Instead they gave up at the gates.' She shifted alongside him. 'Did you see the poster they have put on this wall?'
He remembered seeing the poster fixed at the other end of the loft but away from the light. 'What was it?' he said.
She switched on her torch and swung it around. 'There,' she
said as its beam settled on the poster. It was a picture of an
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optimistic French soldier. 'The words beneath say: "France will win because she is strong",' recited Marie-Thérèse. She kept the torch steady. 'It is a bad joke,' she said. 'These were put upon the walls in France. How the Germans must have laughed. The people here have brought it inside this place because they believe that one day it will be true again.' Suddenly she turned the torch on his face, making him blink and raise his hand. 'Perhaps it is difficult for you to understand, Dodo,' she said.
'You
have not been disgraced. Not yet.'
Blackness enveloped them as she switched off the beam. They were lying in two sleeping bags on a rough rug laid across the floor. He heard her lie down, disgruntled, beside him. He knew if he put his hand out he would quickly touch her. All through their days in the forest together they had never made love. After that first time in the chateau she had reverted to her former self and Ormerod thought it would be better to wait until she invited him again. But now, in the dark, before the beginning of another adventure, he reached out and touched her. Her hand must have been lying waiting for him because his fingers found hers immediately.
Clumsily he turned towards her. He felt her turn inwards also. Their faces stared at each other in the dark.
'I wish to talk to you, Dodo,' she said solemnly.
'Oh blimey. I thought we might make love.'
'Yes. That also, I need too. I shall come in with you because it will be easier.'
Ormerod, his heart banging in the darkness of his body, made room for her in the sleeping bag. He could hear her taking her shirt over her head and then she slid in beside him, slim as a young animal.
They held each other as if they were the last pair on earth, her mouth against his neck, open and wet, his hands around her buttocks, pulling her thighs against his. When they coupled she eased herself above him, lying like a swimmer on his wide chest. She shuddered as they climaxed and then lay there as if she had gone to sleep. Ormerod had cramp in his leg. He moved it to ease it.
'In Hemingway,' she said, 'in
For Whom the Bell Tolls,
they made love like this in a sleeping sack.'
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'It's not exactly a double bed,' he said.
He felt her smile. 'And was it good enough now, for us?'
'It was all right, as a matter of fact. Was it all right for you, Dove?'
'It was good,' she replied, still smiling.
'For Whom the Bell Tolls
is very right, also, Dodo. For us.'
"Why's that?'
'Tomorrow we are going to hide under the bells. We are going to escape from this region beneath two bells from the foundry.'
'Jesus. Is that so?'
'It is so. We have to move from here. But all around are the Germans. You want to get to Bagnoles and there is something Jean Le Blanc wants to do there also.'
'Don't tell me he's after Albert Smales?'
'No. Something much bigger. But the roads are still being checked around this area. We need to get further east, to Vire, so that we can move more freely. Tomorrow three bells from the foundry are to be taken from here by horse-pulled cart and then by rail. They are going to Germany. The Boche have stolen them. The plan is for you and I, Dodo, to hide under the bells and be taken to the railway and then to Vire, where we will be released by local men. The bells are set upon bases, pallets, and there are round holes in the pallets, so we shall be able to breathe.'
He listened, astounded. 'It sounds clever,' he admitted. 'But I can't say it appeals to me much. Appeals - bells. That's a joke.'
'It is a joke I do not understand,' she said disconcertingly. 'And now is no time for it. There is to be a procession for the bells. Church people and the Germans - hah! That will be the joke. And another joke is that we will be hiding below the bells.'
'We're sure that someone is going to turn up at Vire and get us out from underneath?' said Ormerod. 'I'd hate to be stuck under there for long.'
'In that matter,' she said slowly in the darkness, I think you will have to trust Jean Le Blanc'
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Even then the thought came to Ormerod that trusting Jean Le Blanc would be a difficult thing.
In post-war years the Blessing of the Bells has become a charming attraction in the town of Villedieu-les-Poeles. When the long and precise process of casting and moulding a new bell or a clarion is complete the beautiful bronze workmanship is brought from the foundry and shown by the proud craftsmen to the townspeople. There is a religious service, children's choirs sing in the modest square, and there is a procession through the deep grey streets of the town.
On that first Sunday of October 1940, many of the townspeople were reluctant to take part in the ceremony because of the participation of the Germans and the fact that the bells were bound for Minden. Others felt that it was necessary to behave as though things were as near normal as possible, not to antagonize the occupying forces, and to keep the foundry working. The children, who in the main could not understand politics, were eager for the ceremony because it was always a special day in their little town.
Before dawn Marie-Thérèse and Ormerod were roused, given a cup of thick, bitter coffee, and taken from the loft of the house near the foundry. The two local men who had been in the loft the previous night conducted them across the courtyard and took them by a small door into the foundry building.
They entered. Ormerod stood immediately within the door, surprised and awed. It was as he imagined Hell might look. A wide, high, hot cavern, brimming with brimstone and shadows, grit and ghostly glowing from the furnaces. A scaffold of thick and ancient wooden beams spanned the building and standing below them, silhouetted in the inferno like a trio of misdirected bishops in their robes, were the three great bells.
They were already placed on a long flat cart which two dray horses would pull along the cobbled streets to the railway station. They stood, as Marie-Thérèse had said they would, each on a thick wooden pallet with cup-sized holes drilled through the wood. These pallets were raised on blocks so there was air beneath them. The two local men moved ahead of Or-
147
merod and the girl. They lifted the first bell clear of its base by
means of a suspended chain tackle. Then they motioned Marie-Thérèse
forward and she went, uncertainly at first Ormerod
imagined, then more quickly, towards the first bell clear of its pallet. One of the men nodded
'Voila'
at the woman. She smiled
a thin smile at Ormerod and said: 'See you in Vire, Dodo.'
'With bells on,' he answered grimly.
She crawled below the mouth of the cloche and squatted, like
a pixie, while the casting was lowered over her. One of the men
crouched and looked below the pallet supported on the blocks.
A slim finger appeared through one of the holes, the sign that she was all right.
One of the men now glanced at Ormerod as if sizing him up,
before he moved forward to the second, larger bell. There in the dim half-light he had a strange memory of once, in the course of his duties, being present at an exhumation. Waiting
for them to lift the bell was something like waiting for the tomb to open. Except that this was
his
tomb. If Jean Le Blanc chose,
they need not lift the bell at Vire and the bells might take weeks
to go to Minden and be unloaded. What comment the curled
up body of a London policeman would cause in that town in
Germany!
The men moved the chain tackle along its gallery high over
head and attached the hook to the top of the bell. The chain rattled and the casting eased its way an inch at a time clear of its pallet. When there was a three foot space the men both nodded at Ormerod and he gave them a little salute. Doubtfully looking at the great bronze mouth hung above him he
climbed onto the pallet and crossed his legs, endeavouring to
form himself into a pyramid. He heard the chain creak and
bit by bit even the dim light disappeared. The bell descended
carefully and at last sat properly upon its pallet. Ormerod
pushed his finger through one of the holes to show he had no
serious complaints. But he did not like it in there and the thought of spending several hours like that did not appeal at
all. He looked around the close-walled darkness. 'Fucking ding-
dong,' he muttered.