Ormerod's Landing (18 page)

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her eyes to take hers. She seemed to have been drifting to sleep. She smiled apologetically and took the glass. Ormerod took his and they raised them in silence. The ghostly dog appeared startlingly at Ormerod's elbow. The Englishman and the animal rolled eyes at each other. 'Ah, the Hound of the Baskervilles is back,' said Ormerod, not taking his eyes off the powerful face. The dog's jaw dropped open and its mouth glowed like a furnace.

'This estate had thirty like this once,' said Jacques, giving the hound a friendly push with his foot. 'The finest of the deer-hounds in Northern France. Now they are nothing. All gone except for Honore here.'

The animal, as if knowing what was being said, emitted a a mixture of whine and a yawn and eased itself onto the floor like a leggy pony. Its red eyes ascended to Ormerod but they were now as soft as if it had suddenly fallen in love. The expression was one of abrupt adoration. Ormerod grinned at it. He looked up at Marie-Thérèse. She had gone to sleep. The Englishman closed his eyes also, the domestic well-being of the fire touching him. For almost the first time since he had arrived in France he wondered what his wife was doing.

Jacques prepared a meal of pate, a casserole of tripe, with fruit and local Camembert. They ate almost in silence, enjoying the food and the rough Calvados. Eventually Ormerod asked about Bagnoles de l'Orne.

'The most peaceful place in the world,' said Jacques, wiping the tripe gravy from his mouth. 'And the safest place. If you want to hide from the war go to Bagnoles. It is a Red Cross town you understand, all the hotels and the thermal spa are in the hands of the hospitals. They have wounded from all the armies there, French, British and German, with German and French doctors to care for them. After the battles nobody is an enemy.'

'It is all very sporting, you see,' said Marie-Thérèse, opening her eyes and regarding Ormerod with her rough cynicism. 'AH helping each other.'

I suppose they've got to stop shooting at some time,' said Ormerod. 'And when you're getting short of arms and legs that's a good time to stop.'

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'I have a pacifist as a partner,' Marie-Thérèse shrugged at Jacques.

'In the end he will win,' nodded Jacques. 'Any fool can fire a gun.'

The woman said nothing more, seeming tired of the argument. There was no tension at the table, though, just weariness. Jacques opened a second bottle of wine but was left to drink most of it himself. Before that he showed them where they could sleep, rooms at the extreme ends of the low, ghostly corridor, close as a tunnel. Ormerod called goodnight from his door and his voice travelled strangely under the beams. She called back,
'Bonne nuit,'
and went to her room. Jacques returned to the fire, the hound and the Calvados.

Ormerod's room was large and dusty. The furniture, the enormous wooden bed apart, was draped with white sheets, giving it the appearance of a mortuary. He was too fatigued to care. He climbed into the bed in his shirt and slept quickly.

He was awakened by a movement at the foot of the bed and his hand went, instinctively by now, to the gun beneath the pillow. His eyes moved outwards and he saw a figure in white standing in the dusty gloom. It was Marie-Thérèse wearing a long nightgown. I cannot sleep,' she said quietly. 'The house is strange. It frightens me.'

'You've just put the wind up me,' he said, sitting up. I didn't think
anything
would frighten you.'

I am sorry. I would like to come into that bed with you.'

A wonderful silence filled him. His hand moved from the gun to the sheets and blankets. He opened them. 'Come on in,' he muttered. 'There's room. This bed's like a football pitch.'

He was amazed at her. Gone was the toughness, the cynicism. She hurried gladly in the white nightgown to the side of the bed and jumped in like a frightened child.

Remembering how they had occupied the bed in Granville and believing that it could only be like that again, Ormerod turned clumsily away from her and said gruffly: 'Goodnight.'

'Goodnight, Dodo,' she whispered. But within a minute she had touched him with her fingers. He felt her touch his hipbone and the breath seemed to rush from his body. For a moment he did not move, still thinking it might be a mistake,

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that she had brushed him with her fingers in her drowsiness, but then she moved her hand forward until the small, firm palm cradled his hip. Even then he only spoke.

'Are you all right, Marie-Thérèse?' he asked.

'Yes, I am all right.'

'Good. I just wondered.'

'Please turn to me.'

He turned ponderously. He had never been a sensual man, his passions were slow after a lifetime of witnessing the passions of others. Now he did not know what to do, how to act. She seemed so small, her face like a little cheese, her body fragile in the linen nightdress. Only inches separated them but it was like a chasm. Now they had no contact. Timidly he reached out for her with his clumsy hands and touched her ribs. She murmured something he did not understand and moved to him. The touch of that slender, small body was like a shock through his system. His arms completed the circle and he pulled her with extreme gentleness to his chest. Her hands went to his waist, around his shirt, and she held on to him as he held her.

'It is just that ... I need,' she said, as though she owed him an explanation.

'I thought I didn't,' he said.

His penis came sleepily from beneath his shirt as if wondering what was going on. Its warmth touched her stomach and she gave a dark little gasp. Her hands moved deliberately from his waist and she captured it and held on to it. Her delicate fingers ran along its skin. Ormerod eased his hands, with equal gentleness, down from her ribs to the backs of her knees, then rubbed them softly up the flanks of her thighs and then on to her buttocks.

'I'm a bit out of practice,' he said.

He felt her chuckle. Her face came up from the bedclothes and she worked her way up his chest until it was against his. He kissed her dumbly. He could manage gentleness but not finesse.

He attempted it again and this time it was better. The smell of her short hair got in his nostrils and made him want to sneeze. He took his hands from the tight mounds of her but-

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tocks and made to push them between the arch of her legs. She resisted with sleepy playfulness. 'I have other places, Dodo,' she whispered.

There were three pearly buttons at the neck of the old-fashioned nightdress. He felt her undo them and his hands went to the opening. The white linen slipped softly across the skin of her shoulders. It eased across her left breast and the nipple slid out. He felt sure it was glowing in the dark. He thought he would break his neck trying to reach it. He had to shift down in the bed and she wriggled up until his mouth was next
to it. He kissed it almost politely and then drew it to his mouth.
She groaned and returned her hands to caress him. He put his mouth from her breast to her neck and felt her smile. 'Is there another one?' he said.

'Somewhere,' she murmured. 'You must search.'

He put his rough lips against the outside of the linen nightdress and touched the little covered breast with his tongue. Then he sucked at it through the material. She gave a mouselike sound and rolled on to her back, opening the arch of her slim dark legs and pulling the part of him which she held towards her. She gasped at the contact. I won't hurt you, love,' he said. 'I'll try not to hurt.'

'Hurt me if it is right,' she mumbled. He looked down at her tight face in the dimness. Then to the one exquisite breast shining like a small dome. The veins in her neck were like
wire. Ormerod, conscious of his own natural clumsiness, stag
gered forward on his knees. The flats of his hands went under
her backside again and he encouraged her on to him, a fraction
at a time, before easing her down on to the sheet again. Then
he lay against her and into her and they were entirely together.
The face below him was so taut he thought she might scream.

Gradually, as he moved and she moved minutely with him, the cramped expression cleared and her skin settled. Her eyes
opened fractionally. He was gazing at her face. He moved still
with care, still with the fear of spoiling it.

Practical considerations still worried him. 'I'll take it out,' he said. I can, provided I give myself enough time.'

'Take it out and I'll kill you,' she promised. 'Leave it.'

'But... what if...?'

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'Leave it,' she sighed. 'And stop talking. We are making love.'

She left his bed sometime in the night but he did not know. He slept like a hedgehog, buried beneath the blankets, with the Normandy night wind battering around the chimneys and corners of the house. When he awoke there was no sign of her or that she had ever come to him, and he lay on his back thinking about the occurrence and wondering.

Jacques appeared at nine o'clock accompanied by the athletic deer-hound Honore, which gave a small moan of pleasure when he recognized Ormerod in the bed. Ormerod patted him paternally. Jacques had brought a pot of coffee borne on nothing less than a silver tray. 'The service in this house is the best, monsieur,' he joked. He paused. 'Madame has gone out on business. She will return this afternoon.' Ormerod thanked him and drank his coffee. Later he went downstairs and saw in daylight the amazing store-house commodities that were packed into one large room. Crates and boxes were piled with such density around that it appeared like some unloading quay. There were garden implements standing alongside valuable paintings and tin saucepans stacked against silver jugs and coffee pots. 'How long do you think you'll be sitting on this lot?' asked Ormerod.

Jacques shrugged. 'Until the war is finished and my employers come back. I would like to be able to show them that everything is here and safe. I have made a complete list. Or until the Germans come around and shoot me before they loot the place. That is more likely I suppose. It will be many years before France is free again.'

'You believe that?' said Ormerod. He thought about it and nodded. 'I suppose you're right. If we don't kid ourselves, we ought to believe that.'

'I listen to the radio,' sniffed the Frenchman. 'It is like a game. The French radio and Laval and. Petain and all those comics. Petain. Our old hero.
Travail, famille, patrie
- what a fairy tale. So many politicians - all with stories to tell. Fine words.'

'So you think we're cooked?' said Ormerod.

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'What else is it possible to think? The only people who can defeat the Germans, my friend, are the Germans themselves. They have already made a bad mistake. They should have chased the English when they ran away at Dunkirk. The Germans should not have waited. The terrier does not give the rat time to dig a hole.'

He walked through an old arched door into the garden. It was dismal with neglect. I suppose the estate bailiff should be doing better things,' he said reflectively. 'But I can't find the heart. I am in an ideal position of laziness. The only trouble is I shall have to wait until after the war before I get paid.' He returned to his theme. 'The only way the Germans can lose is by foolishness, by suicide. They still fear Russia. From Russia - from the other band of villains - may come our salvation.'

'What about the underground? The resistance?' asked Ormerod.

The question brought a snort from Jacques. 'A game. Another fairy tale,' he said caustically. 'Madame will discover it. So will you. This is nineteen-forty - the people in this country do not want to fight. They have no fight left. They still have their wounds, monsieur, and the most that is wounded is their pride. But it will have to heal when it can. Maybe later they will resist, but only a fanatic is going to fight for France just now. Or a madman.'

'It all went wrong at Granville,' said Ormerod. 'It needs experience to be a saboteur.' He felt like a tell-tale.

But Jacques knew. 'What do you expect?' he shrugged. 'In French the word
saboteur
also means a blunderer.'

He said he had to be about his duties and left Ormerod wondering what they could possibly be. The Englishman went into the fresh, empty morning. The elegant countryside spread out from the house, which was built on a small plateau where the views were long and green. The loping deerhound, with the strange transfer of faithfulness that animals sometimes develop, followed Ormerod as he walked. It was almost as if the dog were showing him around. They stopped by some vacant stables and again by a large deserted pen. Ormerod guessed that was where they had kept the rest of the pack. His mind was occupied with Marie-Thérèse. He could still feel her slight

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body against his chest and his legs. He wondered what she would say when they next met.

There was a patchy orchard at the bottom of the initial slope of land from the house. Ormerod selected a ready-looking apple and sat on the fence to eat it. The late season sun was pleasant enough on his face. The dog crouched and put its chin to the ground. Behind him he heard a shout from the house and turned to see Jacques calling with his arms.

It had to be about Marie-Thérèse. He threw the apple down and ran heavily up the slope towards the overgrown terrace. Jacques was standing calmly. He waited until Ormerod got there. 'There's trouble,' he said. 'Marie-Thérèse has been picked up.'

'Oh Jesus, where?'

'Le Mesnil. It is a village ten kilometres from here. At the moment it is only the police, the French police you understand, and not the Germans. They are asking about her papers. It is not dangerous now but it will be very soon - when they bring in the Germans.'

'The police? Will they ... ?'

'Tell the Germans? I don't know. But I think so.'

'French
police?'

'This is Occupied France,' pointed out Jacques. 'Which means they are probably working for the Germans. One thing is certain, if you want to get her out it will have to be now -before the Germans get their hands on her. After that, monsieur, it will be difficult, very difficult.'