The Parrot Cage, page 27
‘Oh, good,’ Ming answered and relaxed against the hardness of the rock.
Together they waited in careful silence, Ming beginning to wonder whether something had gone wrong with their instructions; Jean, what had happened to the mysterious Roland. Jean was just looking at his watch, murmuring, ‘But we did not make such good time,’ when he heard the sibilant, utterly sinister sound of dogs snuffing through the year’s accretion of dead leaves.
Ming heard it too, and the tramp of booted feet that accompanied it. Controlling her instinctive terror, she turned towards Jean, who gripped her wrist hard.
‘Roland.’
‘Ah good,’ she said in a voice that felt artificial. ‘Are you certain?’
‘No, but it’s likely. There’s only one man.… Listen. The Boches are always more than one. Sit still.’
Ming’s training had included sessions on what to do to elude tracking dogs, how to jam a muffled arm down the throat of a charging dog, but nothing on how to sit quite still and without fear as panting dogs came straight for you. Two enormous, dark-brown bloodhounds burst out of the trees, baying.
If it had not been for Jean’s hand, cruelly tight on her wrist, Ming thought she might have run. As it was she pulled herself up off the ground into a half-crouch just as the first hound reached the path.
Just as the dogs were about to reach her, a voice from the edge of the trees opposite her halted them and silenced their howls. They sat, eyes fixed on Ming’s, panting. A man, dressed in clothes identical to Jean’s, followed them. Ming’s wrist was released and she straightened up to watch the two men meet in the middle of the path and kiss each other on both stubbly cheeks.
‘Roland, here is Mademoiselle Lachine. You have frightened her with those stupid animals of yours.’
The other man, stockier than Jean, grinned up at Ming, still standing by the rock.
‘Apologies, m’selle. They’re my excuse for roaming the woods – searching for food for my family. The sales Boches believe that they’re truffle hounds – not so successful, alas, but so long as I give the commandant at least one truffle each month, he is happy for me to keep them.’
‘I see,’ answered Ming, annoyed to hear her voice shake with reaction. ‘I’m glad that you are here.’
‘Yes. So now we go. ‘Voir Jean.’
‘A bientôt,’ he replied and then shook Ming’s hand formally and brushed away her thanks for his help.
Chapter Twenty
As they walked behind the truffling dogs, Roland told Ming that it was too dangerous for her to go down into the town that night. A new detachment of Germans had been posted to the large barracks nearby and were milling about Laville in search of relaxation and amusement. They were only in transit and would be gone by noon the following day, and so it had been arranged that Ming would spend the night in a cave not far away. The Germans had been told of its existence soon after they had first come to the town and periodically searched it for escaping airmen or caches of Resistance weapons, but having never found anyone or anything there, appeared to have lost interest.
‘I leave you there tonight with food and a light, and tomorrow I or Annette will come for you as early as is safe. OK?’
A little amused at the Americanism, Ming smiled and nodded.
‘Yes. That is OK.’
When they reached the cave he pulled aside the shrubs that half concealed its mouth. Bending double, Ming followed him in, stumbling in the sudden darkness. Roland switched on a pocket torch and in that inadequate light they walked, hunched beneath the low, damp roof of the passageway, for some thirty yards. Then he straightened upright and held up the torch for her to see.
They were in a kind of hall that stretched upwards way beyond the reach of the timid light. The walls consisted of tier after tier of stalactites, some as thin as a hedgehog’s spines, others looking as thick and muscled as a navvy’s forearm. Where the torchlight caught the stone, it gleamed in curious tones of greeny-grey, gold and rust.
Ming looked around her, the strange grandeur of the place banishing every other thought. At her feet was a shallow pool. The constant dripping from three stalactites overhead pushed delicate ripples across its transparent golden surface in an easy rhythm. Roland’s voice broke into her silent admiration of the extraordinary place.
‘I must go back before the dogs explode. They hate this place.’
Ming looked down at them and noticed for the first time that both were making a thin, high, whining sound that was almost inaudible. She thought of how much better she liked them when they were afraid than when they were hunting.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Here is food, and the water in the pool is safe to drink. I leave you the torch, but it won’t last too long, so do not use it unless you have to. OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Annette has left you a bedding roll somewhere. It may be damp, but better than nothing, hein?’
‘Yes, thank you for all your help.’
‘We are in this together – to finish the war and get the Boches out of my country. So, good night. Sleep well.’
Ming just smiled and watched him go. She found the sleeping bag without trouble and unrolled it. The underside was a little damp, but compared to the prospect of sleeping on the hard limestone of the cave’s floor, it offered immense comfort.
She drank from the pool, took off her shoes, retrieved a second heavy jersey out of her suitcase, put it on and levered herself into the sleeping bag. Unwrapping the inevitable baguette that Roland had given her, she switched off the precious torch and proceeded to munch her way through the tough bread in the dark.
Sleep overcame her before she had finished more than half of it and when she awoke in pitch blackness she found it still in her left hand. She lay for a moment, letting her mind slot back into gear, before she felt around on the floor at her side for the torch. In its light she saw from her watch that it was only five o’clock.
There were at least seven hours to wait before she could possibly be released from the cave and it might be considerably longer.
The sensible thing to do would be to eat a little more, turn over and go back to sleep. Her training officers at Etchingham had endlessly reiterated the importance of ensuring adequate amounts of sleep whenever possible. She did her best and slept for, perhaps, two and a half of the nine hours that she waited. Boredom had banished all the fear from her mind by the time she heard the footsteps, lighter than those of Roland and unaccompanied by any whining or snuffling of his dogs. The steps must belong to Annette, daughter of the baker. Quite soon Ming made out a faint glow from the direction of the entrance passageway, then a distinct circle of light, and a moment later the figure of a young woman.
‘Marie?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ answered Ming, finding her voice hoarse and rusty as though it were a piece of machinery long disused. ‘And you are Annette?’
‘Yes. The Germans have gone now. I can take you down to the bakery.’ She came to stand close to Ming, who was disentangling herself from the sleeping bag and beginning to roll it up tidily.
‘We will leave that here – I can collect it later, and there is no need to alert anyone by carrying suspicious bundles.’
‘But what about my suitcase?’ asked Ming, glad to be able to ask questions again and to know that she was in capable hands.
‘No, that will be all right. Come, I must be back for this afternoon’s opening.’
‘Of course,’ said Ming, displaying the knowledge she bad worked so hard to acquire. ‘The bakery opens at two-thirty each afternoon except Monday.’
‘Well done,’ said Annette, with a laugh. ‘And today I shall teach you to make bread and brioches with me. Perhaps you will become so proficient that when you are back at home you can take a job in a Boulangerie française.’
Of all the things Ming had imagined about her mission to the centre of Nazi-occupied France, nothing had led her to invent such warmth of teasing from a girl no older than Flixe. She clicked the locks on her suitcase, lifted it and smiled at Annette.
‘En avant,’ she said almost gaily.
They reached the main square of the little town without mishap. It was precisely as Ming’s briefings had led her to expect: one side was almost completely taken up by the pale-grey stone church; the other three made up of a mixture of pretty old houses and shops, their windows shuttered now and only the swinging signs above the doors displaying their commercial purposes. There was a small café on the left side of the square with a few tables standing under a tattered awning made of red-and-white striped canvas. Shabbily dressed old men were sitting at most of the tables, and as the two girls walked past, one man took his half-smoked cigarette out of his mouth and spat at their feet.
Surprised, but determined not to court danger by showing it, Ming said nothing until they reached the comparative haven of the bakery, just round the corner in one of the streets that led into the square. There, Annette unlocked the door and ushered Ming into the main shop. A counter ran along the centre of the room, bearing a large pair of brass scales. Behind the counter were ranged shelves that held only a fraction of the loaves they could have carried. There was the wonderful warm scent of fermenting yeast from somewhere in the back of the house. Ming opened her mouth to ask about the man in the café, but before she could speak, a quavery, plangent voice called:
‘Annette? Is that you? Where have you been? Who is there?’
‘Yes, Papa, it is I. And I have Marie Lachine with me. You remember, I told you all about her. She is from Bordeaux.’ Annette’s voice carried a note of firm reassurance as she called her answers through to the back of the house. Then her voice dropped and she said quietly to Ming: ‘He is not well, does not remember anything. But he is all the time afraid, because he does not remember. Come, I will introduce you. Call him Oncle Jean, and say something gentle, won’t you?’
Ming nodded, surprised that her briefing had not included this piece of information, and followed Annette through to the family’s kitchen. Seated in a rocking chair by the cold stove was a man, not as old as Ming would have expected from the voice; one thing she had been told about him in London was that he was sixty-four or five. His eyes had the restless, frightened searching of one who knows that his mind is no longer in his own control.
‘Papa, here is Marie.’
‘Oncle Jean, it is good to see you,’ said Ming, in as gentle a voice as she could manage.
‘Who are you? Why are you here?’ The old man’s voice was sharp, but his attention seemed to wander before Ming could even begin to answer.
‘I’ve told you, Papa,’ said Annette in the same determinedly cheerful voice that she had used before. ‘She is Maman’s brother-in-law’s niece, Marie Lachine, from Bordeaux. She has come to help me in the bakery for a week or two while we are so busy. Now, I take her upstairs to unpack and then I’ll bring you your déjeuner.’
The old man sat, with his chin sunk into his chest, mumbling soundlessly, his eyes continuing their restless moving as he sat. Annette’s lips tightened as she gestured to Ming to precede her up the stairs. When they reached the small bedroom they were to share, Annette sat down on the bed nearest the window and covered her face with her hands for a moment.
‘They didn’t tell me about your father: was it the Germans?’ asked Ming quietly, her mind full of horrific pictures of some Gestapo brutality.
Annette took her hands away from her eyes and smiled sadly.
‘No. He is just getting old; it had started even before Maman died, the year before the war, but it gets worse.’
‘It must make your life so hard,’ said Ming, her ready imagination showing her just what Annette would have to do to keep the old man calm.
‘Most of the time I can manage,’ Annette said. ‘I just sometimes feel that it is all too much. He is still so physically strong, you see. Sometimes he helps me with the baking – or in the shop – but usually he just sits like that. And sometimes I get impatient with him and say things that must make him so unhappy.’
‘Don’t punish yourself,’ said Ming, laying one of her hands on Annette’s. ‘Surely, he can’t remember them if he can’t even remember the things you tell him.’
‘I hope you’re right. But we just don’t know what he understands or remembers. Never mind. It is so long since I had a friend to talk to, that it all came out. I’m sorry.’
Touched that this brave, burdened girl should look on her as a friend so instantly, Ming tried to distract her.
‘Tell me about the man in the square.’
‘The one who spat you mean?’
Ming nodded.
‘Oh, he’s just like all the rest of them, too lazy or scared to help the Resistance, but making himself feel nice and brave by spitting at me.’
‘I don’t understand,’ protested Ming. ‘Don’t they know that you work for the Resistance – and us?’
‘God forbid! I wouldn’t trust any of them one inch. No. They see that I am friendly with the Boches, make them special breads, croissants, brioches and so on, and they pretend to think that I am a German whore.’
‘But can’t you somehow let them know you’re not? It’s terrible that you have to put up with that as well as everything else,’ said Ming, quite horrified.
‘No. It’s good cover. The Germans know that I do not sleep with any of their officers or men, but they think I am well disposed – I have to be to collect information and to hide from them that I supply bread for the Maquis when I can. Don’t worry about it, Marie.’
Ming turned away to begin unpacking her meagre luggage, ashamed of her own self-pity and the fears that she had allowed to rule her just after Annie’s death.
‘I’ll go down to Papa. Come when you are ready,’ said Annette, sounding cheerfully competent once again.
Over the days that followed, Ming felt that she was living inside some bizarre Surrealist painting. There was everything her training had taught her to fear; there was the terror that she could never suppress when the grey-uniformed Germans stalked and swaggered into the bakery to chat to Annette and give her the scarce ingredients for the delicacies they wanted her to make; there was her horrified pity for Annette and her father, locked together in mutual disunity and hurt; and there was the hostility of the townspeople, which spilled over from Annette on to Ming herself.
Then, in contrast to all that, was the warmth that seemed to grow each day between herself and Annette. Since the bomb had killed Annie, Ming had found herself unable to reach out to anyone. Something in her seemed to have been destroyed by Annie’s death. Suvarov had come nearest to breaking it down, and she loved him, but even with him she felt as though there were an invisible wall holding her back. Now, in the strange and terrifying circumstances of her mission for him, she had found a friend. Once, as she lay sleepless in bed thinking about it, she wondered whether she had so instantly trusted and liked Annette because of the similarity between her name and Annie’s. But then Ming dismissed the idea as far too simple. There was more to it than that; perhaps the fact that both she and Annette lived almost entirely alone had something to do with their immediate friendship. Each was surrounded by plenty of other people, but they were – or seemed to be – hostile. Ming had lost Annie, in whom she had had absolute trust; Annette had lost her mother.
After a few days, Ming ceased to try to analyse her feelings and simply did whatever she could to lighten the burdens Annette carried. Helping the old man feed himself or keep himself clean were among the tasks she liked least, but she did them until it became clear that her unfamiliar presence fretted him. Then Annette resumed all responsibility for him and Ming did what she could in the bakery itself.
That, too, provided unexpected pleasures, which were sensuous and distracting. There were the warm, comforting scents of yeast and flour and crispy baking bread; the sumptuous sensation of digging her hands into the proving dough to knock it back and knead it into shape; and the tremendous satisfaction of plunging the flat shovels into the bread oven to retrieve a batch of perfect, golden, fragrant baguettes.
Life in the bakery had a rhythm to it, and a simplicity that appealed to Ming. Slowly some of her terrors began to recede as she understood that Annette’s cover was apparently impregnable and the German officers held no suspicions of her at all. So far did they trust her that Ming was accepted, too, without a hint of surprise. When she understood that, Ming even began to enjoy her days, assured that she was equal to this part, at least, of her mission. She even began to look forward with a certain strange regret to the day when the message would come.
Annette seemed to enjoy her presence, and that also gave Ming a satisfaction and comfort she had long lacked. They talked whenever it was safe during the day and often for an hour or more as they lay side by side in the two narrow beds upstairs. Ming heard about ‘Maman’, who had been so greatly beloved and whose death four years earlier had caused the eighteen-year-old Annette her first real anguish. She told, too, of her difficulties with the other children of Laville, who had always spurned and excluded her as though she were some kind of leper.
‘But why should they have done that?’ asked Ming, one late evening, saddened to hear of yet another burden carried by the tall, dark girl who waited with such lonely courage for the war to end.
‘Maman and Papa moved here soon after I was born. They were strangers, and this town is so closed in and parochial that they were never allowed to think of themselves as natives … and I suppose the children just wanted to make sure the same thing happened to me.’
‘Where did they come from?’ asked Ming, unable to comment.
‘Somewhere near Switzerland, I think. In the Alps anyway. They inherited some money; I was born; they decided to move away and buy a business. Here we are.’
‘Yes, I see. And now you do all the work and look after your father as well, and work for the Allies. It is too much, Annette. You drive yourself too hard.’ At that the French girl laughed softly.
