Most Secret (9 page)

They paced on. Charles did not speak.

The priest said: “So humbly, and in long, long hours of prayer I sought for guidance in the matter temporal, where evil men are dominant, perverting the souls of men for their own ends by sorcery and the black arts that they have studied to perform. And presently I saw that this was no new thing, this struggle against heresy arising from the East. Black magic and the foul infamies of Satan have arisen in past ages, and in past ages Holy Church has called up spiritual powers, and weapons temporal, to beat them down. It is all in the old books, for those to whom faith gives the faculty of understanding.”

Charles said: “I have not gained that faith, father, nor that understanding.” He spoke very quietly. “Is there a weapon temporal for me?” As he spoke there came a fleeting image of the man in Brest and of the warnings that he had received. He knew himself to be venturing among great risks, and he dismissed them from his mind.

The old man said: “I do not know, my son. Yet in past centuries the Church wielded one great cleansing weapon against heresy and infamy and all idolatry, a weapon that sweeps all before it, before which Anti-Christ and all the devils of the Pit recoil. That in past ages was the wisdom of the Church, my son. It is the wisdom still.”

“What is this weapon temporal, then, father?”

The priest said: “It is fire.”

He turned and faced Charles Simon. “So in the past the Holy Inquisition fought the battle against heresy, idolatry, and witchcraft, with faith in God and with the weapon temporal of fire. With that faith and that weapon they beat down the devils seeking to destroy the souls of men. Through that faith and that weapon men’s souls may again be saved from all the dangers that beset them now.”

The priest, facing him, laid his hand upon the designer’s arm. “That is the truth of God,” he said. “For the weak in faith there is an evidence.” He dropped his voice and glanced round furtively. “Listen, my son, and I will tell you what I know.”

In the dim light they bent together. “There was a brother of my Order,” said the priest. “He was in Belgium, at Ostend, in September last, four months after the Occupation. For those four months he watched the Germans as they trained their troops to sail in barges for the invasion of England—men and guns and motor-bicycles and cars and tanks, and men again, all entering and disembarking from the barges. And finally, my son, the day arrived—September the 16th.”

Charles said in a whisper: “What happened then?”

“God in His mercy laid His hand upon the English,” the priest whispered in the dark. “They are not of the true Faith, but the Lord God is generous to all sincere misunderstanding, and He led them to the weapon temporal. The barges were three hours from land when British bombers of the Royal Air Force came upon them and dived on the barges, dropping upon them drums of oil and small incendiary bombs. Wave upon wave of aeroplanes came out from England strong in the power of the Lord, oil and incendiary bombs, oil and bombs. And the drums burst on the barges and the oil flowed into them, and the bombs set all on fire so that they blazed fiercely on the water, and the English dropped more oil into the flames.”

Charles drew in his breath sharply.

The priest drew back a little. “For ten whole days the bodies came ashore upon the beaches,” he said in a low tone. “Choked in the blazing oil, burned, suffocated, and drowned in their vile sins and infamy. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, every day, and the Germans buried them among the sand-hills of the beaches like dead animals, that none might know how they had met their end. Yet it was known all over Belgium and all through the German armies of the Netherlands within a day.”

There was a short silence. “Before that power of fire all powers of heresy, idolatry, and witchcraft must recoil,” the old
man said. “It is not given to us to understand the choice of the Lord’s instruments, why He revealed His mercy to the English rather than to us, any more than it is given to us to understand His choice of the Hebrew race in ages past. I only know that by that temporal power the Germans suffered a defeat, the first that they have suffered in this war. Before that power the powers of Mithras were thrown back.”

He bent close again. “There was a mutiny,” he said in a low tone. “A mutiny in the German Army, because the Nazis ordered that the troops should sail again for England. And there was mutiny … it is true what I say. A hundred officers and men were shot in Antwerp at the rifle-range on September the 29th. And after that, and gradually, the troops were moved away.”

They turned and resumed their pacing up and down. “The lesson of the ages has been taught again,” the priest said quietly. “No other weapon purges evil from the earth and rids men from their bondage to the powers of darkness. Only the simple elementals can avail against the elemental foe—faith in the Power of God and in the cleansing power of fire.”

The train came shortly after that. They got into a crowded third-class carriage and travelled together to Douarnenez. At the station their ways diverged; before turning into the Hôtel du Commerce Charles stopped his companion.

“What is your name, father?” he enquired.

“Augustine,” said the old man. “Augustine of the Church of Ste-Hélène.”

In the hotel Charles went up to his room, washed, and went down to the dining-room for a late meal of tunny fish, garnished with onions and potatoes. As he was eating a steam hooter from a factory near-by blew a long blast, taken up all over the town by other sirens. A number of people came hurriedly into the hotel from the street.

Charles asked the waitress: “Is that the air-raid warning?”

She said: “It is the same hooter. But that is for the curfew.”

It was half-past eight. “One has a curfew here?” he enquired.

She nodded. “You must not go outside now, in the street. Or, if you have to go, go very carefully in rope-soled shoes and be prepared to run for it. They shoot if they see you, but they do not shoot well.”

Charles said that he was tired and thought that he would stay at home.

He went down to the café after dinner, bought a bock, and
settled down to read his paper. The
patron
and his family were there and a few travellers; presently they turned on the radio and tuned it to the British news in French. They heard of fresh advances by the Greeks into Albania and the news of the British entry into Benghazi. That was before we got chased out again.

Presently the
patron
came over to the table at which Charles was sitting. He was a heavy man of about forty-five, but still vigorous. He said: “Monsieur is not from these parts?”

Charles shook his head. “This is the first time I have visited Douarnenez. I come from Corbeil, in Seine et Oise.”

The man said: “Then, possibly, monsieur would drink a glass upon the house to celebrate his first visit to Douarnenez?”

Charles was very pleased, and they settled down together with the Pernod. Presently he told the innkeeper that he had travelled from Quimper with a priest called Father Augustine.

The man said: “So, he has arrived?” His face grew black. “The father told monsieur, perhaps, the reason for the vacancy?”

Charles said gently: “Not in detail. I know that you have had great trouble here, monsieur.”

“And there will be more,” There was a short, grim pause.

“I will tell you about that,” the man said presently. “In Seine et Oise, from all I hear, you are great friends with the Germans, but it is not so here. In August thirty people of this town were shot—thirty, in two batches, in one day. Two cousins of my own and my wife’s brother. What do you think of that?” He bent towards Charles, trembling with anger.

The designer said: “It is terrible.”

“One day, presently, when they are weak and beaten, we shall get at them with axes and with billhooks,” the innkeeper said.

He drew back. “I was telling you. Our children are not very well in hand,” he said. “It is understandable, that. There was a boy of nine—a little boy, monsieur—a bad boy whose father is at Toulon with the fleet. A bad boy, monsieur—but a child still, you will understand. It was his way to go out in the dark night in the curfew and pick up the horse droppings in the street. Then he would creep up in the darkness to a sentry and fling what he had collected in the German’s face and run. Many times he did that.”

Charles nodded. It was not a very edifying tale.

The man said: “One night, as he ran, there was another
sentry in the way with a fixed bayonet. He lunged at little Jules as he came running past, monsieur, and he ran him through the chest beneath the left shoulder. Then the two sentries together had to pull his little body off the bayonet. Then, one took each arm and they walked him between them towards German headquarters in the market-place. All the way, monsieur, he was coughing up his blood. We found it on the
pavé
in the morning. But he was not dead.”

Charles did not speak.

“Father Zacharias was our
curé
then,” the innkeeper went on. “He also was out that night, but that was allowed, for he had taken the last Sacrament to a sick woman. There was a moon that night, and in the Rue Jean Marat he met the German soldiers as they dragged the little one along between them, and he stopped them and upbraided them, ordering them to take him into the first house and go to fetch a doctor. All this was heard, monsieur, by Marie Lechanel outside whose house they stopped. There was a great pool of blood there in the morning to prove her story, where they stopped and argued.”

He paused. “They would not listen. The father grew angry, and he said: ‘If you do not release that little one and fetch a doctor for him, the Fire of Heaven shall come down and strike you, and you will perish unshrived in your sin.’ But they would not listen. They said: ‘We are taking him to the officer. He will make an example of this one.’

“And Father Zacharias said: ‘I shall come with you, and if that boy dies you both shall be denounced as murderers.’ So he went with them to headquarters of the Gestapo, monsieur. And in the night, there in a prison, the little boy Jules died, monsieur. And they took Father Zacharias away to Rennes in a motor-car, and three days later he was shot for treason, and for inciting the people to revolt. That was the reason that they gave, and there was not one word of truth in it—at least, not that the Germans knew.”

Charles Simon said gently: “I am desolated, monsieur. This is very, very bad.”

“Aye,” said the man heavily. “It is bad indeed here in Douarnenez.”

A quarter of an hour later, after another glass of Pernod, the innkeeper said: “I was in Brest, monsieur, when the English left. It was incredible to us, you understand—unreal. I had stopped for a glass down in the Port du Commerce at the Abri de la Tempête. There were still English ships in the harbour,
and two officers of the Royal Navy came in also to drink a glass. And I went and asked them, monsieur, if it was true that the English were going away and leaving us.

“And one of them said: ‘It is true indeed. It is now three days since you have signed an armistice with the Germans and we must go, for we are going on with this war even if you are not.’ And three women in the café began sobbing, monsieur … That was the start of our bad time.”

Next day Charles reported to the German commandant, and was taken to the cement store, where he worked all morning taking samples from about fifteen tons of cement in stock. He discovered that there was no cement at Morgat, since all distribution took place through Douarnenez; this meant that when he left the fishing port he would be able to go back to Corbeil.

He returned to the hotel for
déjeuner
and was free for the rest of the day; his samples took twenty-four hours to set hard. He wandered down to the harbour in the afternoon; it was a warm, sunny day of early spring. He was very fond of ships and shipping, and deeply interested in fishing-boats. For a time he stood and watched the sardine-boats and tunnymen from the quay. Presently, with a chance word and a cigarette, he was down in one of the sardine-boats helping a deft-fingered, gruff old man called Bozellec to find the holes in a blue gossamer net.

He stayed there for two hours, and in that time he learned the whole operation of the sardine fleet. A German
Raumboot
came in from the sea, turned the end of the sea wall, and came alongside, just astern of them; Charles studied her with all the interest of an amateur yachtsman. The old fisherman looked at her for a moment, saw that a German officer was noticing him, and spat ostentatiously into the sea before resuming his work. The sun beat down upon them on the boat, pleasantly warm. As they worked on, Charles learned the tactics of the
Raumboot
. Presently he awoke to the value of what was being told to him and set to work to memorise the facts, and to fill in the gaps in his information by direct questions.

The job finished, they strung their net up to the mast-head to dry and air. “A little glass, perhaps?” Charles said.

A little glass, the old man thought, would be a very good idea. They got up on to the quay and walked to the Café de la République overlooking the harbour.

They went in and sat down, and Charles ordered Pernod for them both. He told his companion a little of himself, and
of the defects of the batches of cement. And presently he said casually:

“Do you have much trouble with the Germans here?”

“No more than any other lice,” the old man said.

There was a short silence. “Lice,” the old man said again, “and as lice we treat them. I have told them so.”

Charles said: “Is it … wise to say things of that sort to them?”

The fisherman shrugged his shoulders. “The other night,” he said, “in the boat we had a
Bootsmannsmaat
, a German, as a guard, and so we had the shade over our lamp. And this man said to me, what would I do when the war ended? Would I go on fishing? So I told him what I would do, in memory of my dead brother who was murdered. I said that I would put on my best clothes and go to watch the young men tie the Germans up in bundles and pour petrol over them and light the petrol. That is the way to deal with lice, I said. With a blow-lamp.”