'I'd have nowhere to go home to then would I?' he sniffed. 'I wouldn't even be able to take friend Smales back.'

  'Back! You're not thinking of taking him back, are you?' She looked astounded.

  'Well, that was my general idea. Yes. He has to be charged and appear in court and everything. The proper way. Other

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  than getting him back I don't see how justice will be done. It's not going to be easy, I'll grant you that.'

  Marie-Thérèse lay back on the spiky grass and laughed. Her face was bright in the sun and her breasts moved below the wool. 'My God!' she giggled. 'They all think I'm mad, but you're madder than me!'

  As the evening thickened into night they sat in the old barrack cell, a low oil lamp projecting their crouching shadows on to the wall like the forms of some ancient cave dwellers. They had talked little in an hour. Two men had come from the houses with some food and a bottle of cider for them. Now it was finished. They sat in idleness yet with a tautness about them that made them start at every quiet scurry of a mouse or a moth in the enclosed air. They had both cleaned their pistols. Now there was nothing else.

  'One thing we forgot,' mentioned Ormerod. 'We should have brought some cards. We might be here days.'

  'We cannot leave the island yet,' agreed the girl sullenly. 'The Germans are bound to send a boat out to see what has happened to the two soldiers we drowned.' Ormerod momentarily reacted to the word 'we' but she did not seem to notice and continued: 'If we try to get to the mainland too soon they will certainly see us in the sea and that would be the end of the matter. We will wait until they have come and gone away again.'

  Ormerod sniffed like a dog in the shadows. 'I can't see our friends here being all that keen on landing us on the mainland,' he observed. 'So far they haven't shown the sort of bulldog spirit to say the least. The only one who's gone out of the way to be friendly is the village idiot. And he thinks we're the British invasion. He's asked me three times when the rest of the troops are arriving.'

  The girl laughed, a dry laugh that made for a sharp echo in the confined place. 'Perhaps all fools should stay together,' she said. 'We are the only ones who seem to understand. They must take us to the mainland. If I have to make them at the end of a gun they will take us.' She stood up and walked the

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  length of the old cell, her shadow thin like an insect on the wall. 'In truth, Dodo, I don't like the way we are here.'

  'In this hole?' he said. 'Well, I'll second that.'

  'I think that it would be better if we were with the islanders. Here they tell us we are hiding, but we have very conveniently made ourselves prisoners. We are in a souriciere - a mousetrap. When the Boche arrive these men could quite easily lead them to us.'

  Ormerod looked at her in surprise. 'But they're still French,' he said. 'They wouldn't do that.'

  She shook her head. 'I would like to think that also. But I think it is foolish to be here, shut up like this. Perhaps the Germans may search the island and it would not take them long to find us in this place.' Her eyes regarded him brightly in the dimness. 'No, I think we are sitting like chickens in this mousetrap. Come, we will go and join my countrymen.'

  They went out into the early night. It was balmy, with fresh stars looking down on the island and the scent of the sea coming clearly to them. The lighthouse sent its beam over the dark channel. Ormerod nodded that way. 'They'll have a radio there,' he said. 'Do you think they will have sneaked on us?'

  Marie-Thérèse was trudging beside him down the stony path that led to the village houses. She shook her head vigorously. 'I don't think they would betray us by sending a message,' she said firmly. 'They would never do that. But if the Germans were here, on Chausey, and the people here considered it was dangerous for them to conceal us, I think then we would soon be discovered.'

  The houses had observed only nondescript blackout, and cracks of light could be seen in windows as they appeared. For the first time Ormerod noticed a larger building almost on The Sund from which two men came. They opened a door and warm light and a whirr of voices came out. Marie-Thérèse touched Ormerod's shoulder and they sank into some bushes, a painful interlude for Ormerod because his bush was one of the many blackberry thorns. They waited until the men disappeared, talking deeply, in the direction of the landing place, and then, rising cautiously and in Ormerod's case gratefully, they moved towards the building and spied through the cracks

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  in the ill-fitting blinds. It was obviously the island inn. There were rough tables and benches, with oil lamps burning, and with perhaps fifteen men sitting around holding mugs of cider. Two women moved about replenishing the glasses. The youth who was the island idiot was in a corner plucking haphazardly at a ukelele. Marie-Thérèse moved to the door, touched the latch and pushed it open with her foot.

  They walked in together. Ormerod saw that the girl had her pistol in her small, pale hand. If the Gestapo had entered the effect could not have been heightened. The men stared at them in the lamplight and one of the young girls dropped a flagon of cider onto the floor and ran weeping to get a cloth to wipe it up. The simple boy produced a dramatic strumming chord on the ukelele.

  'Bonsoir, mes amis,' smiled Marie-Thérèse, closing the door behind her.

  'Evening all,' said Ormerod, nodding around.

  'We were lonely,' the girl said, sitting down on a bench. She eyed Ormerod and he sat on another at the other side of the room. It would not do to be too close together. A mangy mongrel came and sniffed around his boots as if it smelled a foreigner. 'Do you offer your guests a drink?' asked Marie-Thérèse.

  The older man who had been with them in the morning on the outer rocks nodded and called to the second girl, who was standing stupefied, and she brought a flagon and two glasses. Ormerod was glad of the drink. The cider was dark and powerful. Drunk in England it had never failed to give him a bad stomach, but he needed a drink. The girl raised her glass and looked through the dark liquid. 'To France,' she said to the islanders, 'our country.'

  With an astonishing sullenness they raised their glasses and repeated the toast. She added another. 'To victory.' They answered this with a mumble.

  She drank once and then fixed them with her hard gaze. 'Don't you want victory? Don't you love France?'

  They looked shamefaced into their glasses. It was the old man who replied. 'Here,' he said, 'on this little island, we want only peace. We want no trouble. The Germans have left us

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  alone. They come here sometimes to buy lobster - and they pay a fair price. Sometimes they come to take some wine from the chateau in the north of the island. We do not care. There is no one in the chateau now. The wine is not ours. In any case if they want to take the wine there is nothing we can do. They have guns. You must understand that the only trouble we have experienced here so far has occurred today - you, madame. And your English friend.'

  Ormerod hardly understood a word. But the apologetic tone was obvious. 'They've had someone signalling aircraft,' he reminded Marie-Thérèse. She put it to the old man. He shrugged and pointed to the youth with the ukelele. 'It was the fool in the corner,' he shrugged. The youth, who was trying to fit his fingers over the strings, looked up and acknowledged the reference as if it were a compliment. 'We have taken the torch from him now. He is a poor idiot but we still want him to live.'

  Marie-Thérèse said: 'Well, you may not like us here, but we are here. So that is that. The quicker we get to the mainland -and that means that you must get us there - the better it will be for us all.' She looked at them scornfully. I have no wish to stay in this place with you.'

  The mangy mongrel, having smelled Ormerod's feet in detail, lifted its scrawny leg and urinated down his trousers. Ormerod felt the warm wetness soak through. He pushed the dog away violently. Nobody smiled. The old man drank a glass of cider with one lift. 'The Germans will be coming very soon,' he said quietly when he had put the empty glass on the table. 'They will be looking for the two men you ... er ... killed today. If we try to get to the mainland and they are coming across in their boats they will stop us. Then we will all be shot. You will have to wait until they come here.'

  'Then we must wait with you,' said Marie-Thérèse pointedly. Her pistol was only an inch from her hand on the table. Some of the men could hardly take their gaze from it. 'We are not holing up in that place you call a fort. They will find us easily there. We must be part of this island.'

  'You will never be that,' said one of the men suddenly. 'Here we keep peace."

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  'While your country is in slavery!' she replied angrily. 'Have you no guts, no fight?'

  'The time for guts and fighting is over,' said the man facing her with solid fatalism. 'You have come too late.'

  That night, at the insistence of Marie-Thérèse, Ormerod went to sleep at the house of the island idiot. She went to the home of the older man. If the Germans came in the middle of the night it would appear better that way.

  The idiot, whose name was Clement, was patently delighted that Ormerod was to stay at his mother's cottage and they went home across the sand, under a bursting moon, with the young man playing wildly and tunelessly on his ukelele and Ormerod blithely joining in the ragged song. As they went an aero-engine sound came from the north and a solitary RAF Blenheim flew across the island at about two hundred feet. Clement, now relieved of his torch, gesticulated excitedly and Ormerod, feeling he had to do something, performed a forlorn wave. 'One of ours,' he nodded knowingly at the boy. The plane crossed against the stars. It made him feel homesick for Putney.

  Clement's mother was sane but insanitary and she welcomed him to their cottage, sitting him down and giving him a large lump of bread like a stone and some cold fish followed by some of the foulest coffee he had ever consumed. She was glad to have him to stay, she assured him, for there were many little jobs about the house he could do. She was a fat, wobbling woman with hair that had defended itself against any comb for the past thirty years. She kept smiling at Ormerod and jabbering at the boy who eventually wished Ormerod a mad goodnight and went up the short flight of stairs to his bed.

  Ormerod fell to wondering how many bedrooms there were in the cottage. He had an uneasy feeling there could hardly be more than two. The suspicion increased when the woman began making pointing movements towards the staircase, and he eventually mounted it, bending his head as he reached the low landing.

  To his relief the steamy woman remained downstairs, looking at herself in a stained mirror. In the room a wide and

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  lumpy double bed took up most of the available space, covered by a patchwork quilt that gave it the appearance of undulating countryside. There was an oil lamp on a table jammed in one corner. Ormerod felt excessively weary. He reached down his back and pulled the bulky jersey over his head. Then he took off his trousers and got into the bed.

  Three minutes later Clement's awful mother clumped up the stairs, came into the room and unceremoniously got into the bed on the other side.

  'Wait a minute! Hang on!' protested Ormerod, waking and sitting abruptly upright. 'What are you doing, madame?'

  'Mon lit,' the lady said gummily. She had taken her teeth out and donned a voluminous flannel nightdress. Her eyes glittered blackly. She let off a great soft grin. Ormerod glared at her, horrified.

  'Mon lit,' she insisted. 'Mon grand lit.' She leaned over and punched his pillow. 'Pour vous, monsieur.' Then she repeated the punch on her own side of the bed. 'Pour moi.' With that she flung herself under the quilt and discharged a tremendous rush of wind. Ormerod, further horrified, remained sitting and staring.

  But Clement's mother went quickly to sleep, snoring profusely and scratching herself frenetically at intervals. Ormerod felt the tiredness gripping him throughout his body. His head lolled and he dropped back against the brass headrail. His own weight made him descend into the bed and eventually he too pulled the quilt around him and slept dreamlessly.

  In the morning the sun came like fire into the room. He stirred and realized where he was. To his relief his bed partner had gone and eventually the idiot son appeared balancing a cup of coffee which he promptly dropped just inside the door and had to go back for replenishment. Ormerod drank the coffee, washed in a bowl of water on the dressing table and went down the tight, crooked stairs.

  On the lowest step he was confronted by the old woman brandishing a chopper. She appeared belligerent but she merely thrust it into his hand and pointed irrevocably to the back of the cottage. Ormerod walked, obedient but puzzled, opened the door and was faced by an eight-foot pile of logs. He turned

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  and looked askance at the woman. She uttered a shriek like an old raven and made a chopping movement. Clement appeared and pointed clownishly at the logs. Ormerod began chopping.

  He could hardly have foreseen that his first full day as a secret agent would begin with a session of chopping wood. He sweated in the early sunshine and wondered where Marie-Thérèse was. Even as he thought of her she appeared at the small gate at the end of the back garden of the house. Seeing him she stopped and, for the first time since they had been together, he saw her laugh without restraint. She laughed like a young girl, her hands trying to cover her mouth. 'Oh my God, Dodo,' she mocked. 'You are a wood-chopper!'

  'Go on, enjoy yourself,' he said bitterly. 'This is not the worst of it. I had to sleep in the same bed as that old hag last night. I'm having a bloody marvellous time, believe me. I think I'll surrender to the Germans.'

  The very mention of the word seemed enough to bring her seriousness back. She advanced up the path. She looked fresh and pink, her hair just curling over the blue jersey. 'It is good that you look like one of the islanders,' she said. 'We must be part of the landscape.'

  'Any sign of the Boche?' he said. He realized that he had used her word. She noticed it.

  'They have radioed to the lighthouse asking if the two soldiers have been seen,' she shrugged. 'But it seems their fishing trip was not official. Their officers did not know.'

  'Taken French leave, eh?' he said. 'That's if Germans can take French leave.'

  'Their comrades are trying to find them - also unofficially,' she went on. 'They do not want to make too much stir because they will make trouble with their own officers. The men are not permitted to come this far out to sea.'

  Ormerod put the chopper down. He bawled towards the house: 'Is this enough missus?' The woman came to the door, saw Marie-Thérèse and with no change of expression went into the shadows again. Clement came out and, seeing the girl, beamed like a child and went forward to shake her hand.

  'Can we expect them out here with a boat soon?' asked Ormerod. "They won't leave it too long.'

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  'By tonight,' she said. 'They can ask their questions and once they have gone we can go to the mainland and begin work.'

  'They'll have to report their pals missing - officially - sooner or later,' pointed out Ormerod. 'Then they'll be back to search for the boat. I hope to God the bodies don't float to the surface.'

  She shook her head. 'The rocks in the net weighed them down. Also there is a lot of weed in the place where we drowned them. The weather is changing too. They may find the boat but they won't find the men. They will think they have just gone missing on a fishing trip. Many people have.'

  He split a log with a single blow of the chopper. Clement was impressed and clapped. Marie-Thérèse said: 'I think it would be a good thing if we walked right around this island. It will give us some idea of how the land is. Just in case we need to move at night. In case they start looking for their friends. Has madame given you some breakfast?'

  'No, but I think I'll skip it. She's more dangerous than the Jerries. If it's anything like the coffee, I'll never finish this assignment on two feet. I'll come with you now.' He handed the chopper to Clement. 'Here son,' he said. 'You have a bash.'

  Doubtfully the youth took the implement and Ormerod quietly went towards the back gate with Marie-Thérèse. They let themselves out and began to walk over the filmy morning grass towards the north of Chausey. Behind them they heard the blows of the chopper as Clement attacked the wood.

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  They walked, at first unhurriedly, to the top of as much of a hill as the island could boast. The grass was springy beneath their feet and the undergrowth gave off a ferny smell. Once Marie-Thérèse slipped and Ormerod put out his hand to assist her, but she waved it away as if ashamed that she had lost her footing.

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  From the top of the hill, which was not much more than a knoll, they could see the entire island and all the satin sea around them. The tide was running away and the off-shore islands and rocks were humped like cattle. The autumn morning sun was increasing in strength and the sky was without clouds. Below them they could view the everyday domestic life of the settlement going on like a ritual dance. Some of the men were loading an obese boat with lobster kreels, two women did their washing in tin tubs outside their cottages and carried the cleansed clothes to hang on long poles in the breeze. Dogs sat and watched and cats slouched on walls. From the school-house the sound of high reciting voices drifted to them.

  At every inlet and cape of the island the sea eased itself against sand and rocks without hurry, in the manner of a besieging army that knows it will never break a fortress. The small fields of the island were easy green and cattle moved as if every step were carefully considered. To the south the lighthouse stood in its daytime doze and to the north the house called the chateau stood on the end cliff like a solitary man looking hopefully towards England. And France, a low but distant horseshoe of land, curved around the eastern horizon. Ormerod sat down heavily and took it all in.

  'Bit peaceful for a war, isn't it?' he observed to Marie-Thérèse.

  She stood beside him for a moment, as if she were guarding him, then she dropped with a sigh to the turf and sat down a yard away. 'Everything is too peaceful,' she said unhappily. 'Nobody seems to realize that there is a war.'

 

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