He took the bicycle from the man and mounted it uneasily. He could feel the rust coming off on his hands. Fortunately it
took his weight and he wobbled off down the grey and vacant
street, the wheels bumping irritably on the cobbles. The man rode a yard ahead, his machine emitting a low rheumy squeak
as he pedalled. The journey was less than a mile. They saw no
movement except a dog scratching itself by the chilly lake.
There were some weary, early lights showing from intermittent
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windows in the hospital buildings all around. Eventually the Frenchman's bicycle trembled as he slowed down and turned into a tight alley behind a building that Ormerod could see was the Grand Hotel. The neglected lettering above the curved doorway showed in the illumination of a central lamp over the yellow brickwork. The rest of the building was oblong and institutional, facing the main road and with its back looking out across the lake upon which the initial glimmer of the October day was feeling its way with exaggerated caution.
The Frenchman muttered
'La',
the only word he ever spoke to Ormerod, as an indication that they had arrived. Ormerod found the brake on his machine reluctant to work and he had to stop it with his feet. They had arrived at a doorway, squares of anaemic yellow light showing through the panes. A man in a white coat was waiting inside and as soon as the bicycles had arrived he came hurriedly but furtively out of the door. He looked at the two men, decided which one was Ormerod and said: 'Please.' He turned and walked back into the building. Ormerod lifted a half wave in the direction of his previous escort but the man was already pedalling away.
Inside the door it was much warmer. The white-coated man gave him a smile like death itself and nodded towards a side door. Ormerod went in. It was a bare room except for three wooden chairs, a cupboard and a pyramid of grim plasma bottles. Deciding it was too early in the day to study them Ormerod turned towards the nervous doctor and said: 'Well?'
The Frenchman had a filed down face, with two little rabbit teeth jutting over the lower lip. His head was a route of ashen skin from forehead to crown. Ormerod had never seen anyone's eyes appear to tremble before but this man's did.
I speak English a little,' he muttered. I am frightened very much. What I have to do I wish to do
toute suite,
you see?'
'Right,' said Ormerod, feeling sympathy for the frightened man. 'Let's get on with it. What do I have to do?'
The doctor rummaged in the cupboard in the corner and brought out a drab dressing gown and a pair of creased flannel pyjamas. "They are unclean,' he said apologetically. 'A little blood. But it is not possible to get clean things. They count
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each one. And it is better that you should be a patient who has been here for some time.'
Ormerod looked disgustedly at the garments. 'What happened to the last bloke?' he said.
'Gone away,' muttered the doctor, holding out the pyjamas impatiently.
Ormerod caught the look in those shaking eyes. 'Dead, eh?' he said.
'He was bad,' shrugged the doctor. 'Please hurry.'
'Looks like he could have died of septic poisoning wearing these,' muttered Ormerod, looking at the dirty garments. The pyjamas made him angry. He took them from the thin anxious fingers, and began to take off his clothes. 'Turn your back please,' he said ill-humouredly to the doctor. The doctor almost spat at him in his hurry. Ormerod rolled his clothes up under his arm. He wanted to have them near when he needed them. The pyjamas stank of disinfectant. He could hardly bear the touch of them on his skin. He took the robe, only marginally less repellent, and put it on. By the time he had done this the Frenchman was already urging him from the door.
'All right, I'm coming,' grumbled the Englishman under his breath. He followed the man down a yellow-brick corridor, then into a noisy lift. To his horror there was a dead man lying on a stretcher in the lift, his face taut with the nastiness of his going. The doctor took no more notice than he would have taken of a bag of laundry. Ormerod grimaced and wondered which army the man had died for. He had a sudden, outlandish feeling that the cadaver might be Smales. That would be poetic. But not even death could diminish the muscles of Smales that much. He decided it was not. They went to the top of the building and the Frenchman opened the gates with increasing nervousness. 'Please,' he kept whispering. 'Please,
s'il vous plait.'
1
They reached what was obviously the door to a ward and the doctor put a cautious hand out to slow him down. He had to look like a casualty. The man's hand shook so violently on the muscle of his arm that Ormerod had to put his other hand on it to steady it. He thought a brief moment of gratefulness appeared in the Frenchman's eyes.
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Now they were at the paned door of the ward. Looking through Ormerod saw the double line of beds, the wan day
light coming through the big windows and lighting the room as
it might light a graveyard. The Frenchman pushed at the doors and attempted to guide Ormerod in. There was a male nurse
at one end of the ward in a yolk of yellow light. He saw them coming and obviously expected them although whether he was
part of the conspiracy or not Ormerod never discovered. He came down between the beds and nodded towards a vacant
iron bedstead where the sheets were already drawn back. Or
merod was relieved to see that they were apparently clean for they were straight and sharp on the mattress.
The doctor pushed him towards the bed and he obligingly
climbed in. He pushed his clothes in the locker at the side. The
two Frenchmen exchanged glances, which may have been
official or not, and the doctor, with the briefest last look at
Ormerod, went back through the double doors. The orderly pulled the bedclothes up around Ormerod's neck. 'Now you sleep,' he said, indicating it was an order. 'For some time.'
The warmth of the bed pressed itself around his weary body.
He looked out, over the horizon of the sheets and along the
ranks of the still, snoring figures of the wounded soldiers. His
body was filled with a swamp of apprehension.
eight
When Ormerod awoke four hours later it was to a sense of
some excitement and expectancy in the ward. Orderlies were
hurrying about sweeping and polishing and one was arranging
a large bowl of rich autumn flowers on the central table. He watched all this activity over the snowline of his sheets, care
fully turning his gaze to take in all the rows of heads in the
line of beds opposite. Over there they looked like an opposing
army deep in the trenches. He turned his look to the left and saw a grey-faced young man returning his glance.
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'There's a Jerry general coming,' said his neighbour. The voice was middle-class English. The young man had only one eye. 'They didn't think he'd come up here to see the enemy, but he wants to. So they're having to rush about to tidy up the place. Quite a joke really, I suppose.'
He paused and surveyed the room with his eye. 'You must have turned up very early this morning,' he said, returning to Ormerod. 'Didn't see them bring you in.'
'Very early,' said Ormerod cautiously. 'Still dark.'
'My name's Bailey,' said the young man. 'Charles. Lost my eye. See.'
'Yes,' nodded Ormerod. 'Nasty.' He thought he had better give a fictitious name, although Ormerod would still be meaningless. 'Steel,' he said. 'George Steel. Feet. Shot feet.'
'Where did you get that lot?'
'Abbeville,' said Ormerod, trying to think where the last battles had been. 'Around there,' he added cautiously.
I was in the St Valery fuck-up,' said Bailey bitterly. 'Tanks - except if you remember, we didn't have any.'
I remember,' lied Ormerod. 'Royal Artillery, me. We didn't have any guns.'
'They always seem to leave you short of essentials. What's your rank by the way?'
'Lieutenant,' said Ormerod, trying to sound like one. He had not expected to be questioned by a fellow countryman. 'Can't see me getting promotion now.'
'Same as me.' Bailey turned his head to take in the whole ward. 'Damned difficult getting used to seeing with one eye,' he said. 'The bloody nose keeps getting in the way. I never realized before now how big my nose is. Where have you been up to now? Which hospital?'
'Caen,' answered Ormerod. He realized his feet should have been bandaged, but it was too late now. He turned around carefully to look at the bed on the other side. The occupant was asleep, a head swathed in dressings, like a pudding, lying on the pillow. Turning back to Bailey he said: 'Brought me down here because they thought the air would be better for my feet.'
He grinned and the young man laughed. 'It's not bad
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really,' he said. 'In fact the Jerry doctors and what-have-you are better than the French. I think the French have got it in for us a bit. They've got the idea that we ran away.'
'I know,' said Ormerod. 'They keep telling me.'
Bailey turned his one eye around. 'Do you think we did? Runaway?'
Ormerod was surprised at the need for reassurance. He sniffed. 'Well... no. We evacuated. That's different altogether.'
This appeared to give Bailey further cause for thought. Eventually he returned to Ormerod. I haven't told my mother I've only got one eye yet,' he said pathetically. 'Or my girl, my fiancee. I'm only twenty you know. I look older don't I? When you halve your eyes I think you double your age.'
He looked almost comically miserable. Ormerod felt quickly sad for him. 'Your mother won't mind. Mothers don't. And if your girl's anything of a girl, she won't either. She ought to be proud of you.'
The younger man grinned uncertainly. 'You think so? You think she'll still marry me? I'm like bloody Cyclops.'
'Of course. I shouldn't worry about it, son.'
Bailey hesitated. 'You're very decent,' he said. 'Very good. Can I ask you a favour?'
'You can ask.'
'I'm finding it difficult to see properly to write. It's getting used to it. You don't realize how awkward it is at first. I keep trying to push this damn great nose thing out of the way.'
'You should have your nose off as well,' joked Ormerod, trying to cheer him.
'Oh God,' smiled Bailey. 'That
would
have done it. No nose as well. That would have been goodbye to my girl. You couldn't expect her to put up with that, even if she puts up with being one eye short. No ... what I wanted to ask was - could you write a letter for me to her? Just telling her. I haven't had the guts to ask anybody up to now. It would only mean a short note, an explanation really. I think I ought to come clean about it. If I don't tell her and spend God-knows-how-long in a Jerry prison camp and then go home and she's
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been waiting and she sees I'm missing an eye, well... it could be a big disappointment.'
Ormerod, engulfed with pity, stared at him. He reached across the space between them and patted the young man's hand. 'I'll do that for you,' he said. 'I'll do it right now. Have you got a pen and some paper?'
Bailey looked at him eagerly. "That's very decent of you,' he said.
At that moment an orderly appeared in the ward and threw a clean pair of pyjamas on Omerod's bed. 'Oh good,' he said. 'I could do with these.'
'You can thank the Jerry general for that,' said Bailey.
Only then did it hit Ormerod.
That's what was happening!
That's why Jean Le Blanc was in Bagnoles, that's why Marie-Thérèse was there. That's why he had been planted in the hospital. His face grew cold. Jesus Christ, they were going to kill the German general right here.
Almost mesmerized by the realization, he put his hands slowly to his pyjamas. He took off the dirty jacket, the smell of it hitting him as he pulled it over his head. Bailey noticed the blood on the front.
'Thought it was your feet,' he said. 'You've got blood down the front of that.'
'Cut myself shaving,' said Ormerod in what he hoped soun
ded like a jovial voice. His inside was ringing. God Almighty,
what were they going to do? They couldn't assassinate a man, not even a German general, in a
hospital.
With a loaded heart he decided they could.
Dumbly he put the pyjamas on, keeping his supposedly wounded feet out of sight. Bailey said: 'There's all British and French officers in here. I hope this Jerry hasn't come to gloat.' He handed a pen and a writing pad across to Ormerod. 'Here it is then,' he said. 'Are you sure you don't mind?'
General Wolfgang Groemann left the front entrance of the mock chateau at Tesse la Madeleine at eleven o'clock that morning, after having coffee with the senior medical staff billetted there. It was a bright day, with the autumn sharp-
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ness gone from the air by that hour, and the lawns and trees around the building bathed with mild but comforting sunshine. There were red squirrels on the lawns and a group of German nurses were sitting by the trees, in the sun, waiting to see him as he went by. He spotted them and walked over to exchange some words with them before returning to his staff car. His aide, Major Hans Einder, was now impatient with the delay. He was happy when the timetable was strict and was just as strictly observed.
The general got into the car. Einder tapped the window and
the driver turned the large grey vehicle down the easy curving
paths towards the Rue de Jolie, which joins the twin resorts of Bagnoles and Tesse. 'It has been arranged that you visit
soldiers of all nationalities, as you wished,' said Einder primly.
He himself did not approve, although he admitted there was a certain one-upmanship in a German general inspecting vanquished enemies. 'The French and the British are in one unit
that was a hotel, by the racecourse, and there are some officers
of those nationalities in a ward at the Grand Hotel. You wish to visit both of these places?'