The Warning Bell Read online

  ‘Kate’s short-changed you on the croissants, Serge,’ I said.

  ‘This is Dad being funny.’ She tried to look haughty, but she shone at the boy’s side.

  Serge smiled uncertainly at me and leaned over to shake my hand. He took off his helmet and goggles, and rocked the bike up onto its stand, sitting astride it with an old canvas satchel resting on the seat in front of him. The bike was a very old BMW, heavy and angular, nothing at all like the sleek rockets on which I saw kids of Serge’s age blaring around London.

  I poked at the stuffing escaping from the pillion seat. ‘Where did you get this thing?’

  ‘They don’t make them like this any more.’ He pulled a wry face, clipped his helmet to the handlebars and lifted the canvas bag. ‘I brought a few extra tools.’

  I stepped away from the bike. ‘Stay for dinner tonight, Serge.’

  ‘Dad,’ Kate said, pink with embarrassment. ‘Serge stays for dinner nearly every night.’

  ‘He may do,’ I said. ‘But I’ve never asked him before.’

  I walked around the corner of the house, my coffee steaming in the cool morning. Jean Bonnard was standing in the front yard, peering up at the roofline, making notes on a clipboard.

  ‘Needs a bit of work, that roof,’ he said.

  ‘Something told me you’d say that.’

  He chuckled; we understood one another. He was in his fifties and solidly built, his face nut-brown from the weather and creased with smile wrinkles.

  ‘Ah, but you can’t go wrong with these old places, M’sieur,’ he said. ‘Especially not this one. My grandfather built it.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘My grandfather on my mother’s side, that is. He built a lot of the places around here during the War.’

  ‘He could find work here then?’

  ‘It was the War that made him. There were lots of opportunities for a smart builder during the Occupation. New barracks over at Lannion. Prison compound down near St Brieuc. He did all that. He even built that old blockhouse on the point across the estuary. The Germans used forced labour for most of this stuff, but you still needed someone to manage things.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  He glanced at me. ‘There wasn’t much future in refusing, M’sieur. Every company in France worked for the Germans, and the Government encouraged it. How else were they to pay their workers, keep everyone fed? Mr Churchill wasn’t going to do that.’ He took hold of a drainpipe running down the wall and shook it experimentally. ‘Lots of people did well in those days. Especially the shipyards and the munitions works. Now my other grandfather, Paul-Louis, he was a different animal altogether. Well, you know he was in the Resistance. He helped your father.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘A bit of a lad, was Paul-Louis. It suited him, the War. He and Mathieu Garnier got in with a group who used to blow up the power lines. Mathieu was the brains, of course. That’s what really did for the Germans in the end; they couldn’t get power to run their factories and such. Mind you, it was risky stuff. You’d get shot for that kind of thing, and get other people shot too.’ Bonnard pointed at the house. ‘Now this granddad, the builder, he did his bit without ever touching a gun. He nearly bankrupted the Third Reich all on his own.’

  We walked on a few steps, around the corner of the building, Bonnard poking the clapboard planking here and there and clicking his tongue in disapproval.

  I said: ‘I suppose the Germans kept a pretty close eye on this coast?’

  ‘Oh, Christ, yes! They had every bay and inlet guarded in case the Allies landed here. All the locals were praying they wouldn’t, or so my dad used to say. Anything to keep the War away. Luckily for us it was Normandy that copped it. Once the British and the Yanks had broken out of the bridgehead in August ’44 things eased off a bit here, but up until then the coast was stiff with Boches, all of them getting jumpier by the minute.’

  Something began to spark in my mind, some connection not quite made. I gazed past Bonnard’s bulky shoulder to the sea. I could just see the corner of the old blockhouse. I said: ‘And yet in June my father managed to sail out of the Vasse estuary, right under their noses.’

  ‘Fortune favours the brave, M’sieur.’ Bonnard wagged his head. ‘But I must say I’ve often wondered how they got away with it. Your dad and his pal must have sailed so close to that blockhouse that the Krauts could have thrown frankfurters into the boat.’

  35

  About midday I parcelled up Dominic’s present and walked into the village. As I approached the bank of the river I spotted him sitting at one of the wooden picnic tables overlooking the water. There was a children’s playground here, with plastic swings and slides. A few early tourists sat at the nearby tables, nursing takeaway coffees they’d bought at the kiosk while their children squealed in the sandpit. Dominic was alone, contentedly eating a lurid ice-cream from a cone. He was enjoying himself, laughing at a group of kayakers who were trying unsuccessfully to paddle against the in-streaming tide.

  He saw me and jumped up. ‘Hello, Iain!’

  ‘Dominic. I was just coming to see you.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, as if he had known this all along. He finished his ice-cream and dropped the wrapper neatly in the bin.

  I put my backpack on the table.

  ‘What have you got there?’ he asked artlessly. ‘Is it a present for someone?’

  ‘It’s for you. From England.’

  He looked at me wide-eyed. ‘For me?’

  I held out the parcel.

  He rubbed the palms of his hands a couple of times down the seams of his overalls, took the box gingerly, and began to unpeel the wrapping.

  ‘Go on, rip it,’ I urged him. ‘It’s more fun if you rip it.’

  He glanced at me with shy pleasure, but folded the wrapping paper into a careful square and set it aside before he eased off the lid. He lifted out the bottle and held it with both hands and gazed at it with rapture, turning it with infinite care to look at it first from one direction and then another. It was a ship in a bottle with calico sails and a blue wooden hull. His enchantment was so intense that it attracted the attention of the families sitting nearby. I could see them nudging one another and smiling the way strangers will smile at the delight of a child.

  ‘You told me you liked models,’ I said.

  He put the bottle back in the box with infinite care and cradled it in his arms.

  ‘I’m glad you’re pleased,’ I told him. ‘It was made by an English sailor a long time ago.’

  ‘Perhaps your papa made it,’ he suggested, ‘when he was here in St Cyriac?’

  ‘It was probably made by somebody a bit like my dad.’

  He rocked his gift for a few seconds longer, smiling his gentle smile. At length he picked up the folded square of wrapping paper and tucked it inside his overalls.

  ‘Come along,’ he said brightly.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  He was already striding away down the riverside track, and hurriedly I got up to follow. This time he didn’t turn left across the pontoons at Bourgogne’s yard, but kept along the path for a few hundred metres. I felt like a kid on a surprise outing. The track followed the river between poplars and ash trees. The cottages at the edge of the village gave way to patches of open ground, smallholdings and vegetable gardens, and I could see the mill beyond them.

  Dominic turned down a narrow path to a gate in a chain link fence, and let me in through it. We crossed a car park and walked through a brick archway into a courtyard surrounded by balconies on three levels. Groups of elderly people and their younger relatives chatted around tables and a giant chess board was set out on the paving in one corner. A plump woman in a blue housecoat appeared carrying a thermos of coffee.

  ‘You’re back early today, Dominic. Fish not biting?’

  The woman put the thermos down with a thump and bustled over to us. She gave me a look of frank appraisal.

  ‘This is my friend Iain, Ma
dame Duquesne,’ Dominic told her, in the voice a nervous schoolboy might use to a headmistress. ‘I’m going to show him my models.’

  ‘Well, isn’t he the lucky one?’ Whatever she saw in my face seemed to satisfy her and she held out her hand. ‘I’m the caretaker here. I like to keep an eye on my old folks.’

  We shook hands.

  ‘You have to watch them,’ she went on. ‘Watch ’em like a hawk, I do. Not that this one’s any trouble – are you, young Dominic? Your visitors are always most pleasant and respectable.’

  He beamed at her.

  ‘You run along and play with your boats, then,’ she told him, and as he started to lead me away she gave me a wink.

  The doors and the balcony rails were painted in primary colours. Dominic’s bright blue door was on the second floor. There was a lift but we climbed the concrete steps. Dominic trotted spryly ahead of me, chatting as he went.

  ‘There,’ he said proudly, pushing the door open for me.

  I walked into a short passage with coats hung on a rack and a bag of carpenters’ tools stowed behind the door. It opened into a pleasant room with double windows looking out at the branches of a lime tree. Under the window was a large wooden desk with butcher’s paper spread over it. Dominic’s blue china elephant sat in an alcove above it. On the desk itself, brushes, chisels, and pencils were neatly arranged around a half completed model of a sailing ship. There were thirty or so completed models arranged on fruit boxes, on trestles and stands and on the floor, models of everything from ships of the line to tea clippers in full sail to humble fishing boats.

  The detail was astonishing. Dominic had reproduced every cleat and block and every thread of rigging. Through the ports of the warships, miniature gun crews polished their cannon; on a quarterdeck a blue-coated officer gestured up at the maintop. On the deck of a merchant ship I could see livestock in cages and hessian bales stacked in the waist, each of them intricately lettered, though it would have taken a magnifying glass to read the words.

  Dominic reached past me to place the gift I had given him on the desk.

  ‘You like my boats, Iain?’ he asked, his voice full of innocent pride.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like them. They’re wonderful.’

  He gave a little grunt of pleasure and moved away, and when I turned, he was standing in his little kitchen area, smiling at me. Just behind him was a small two-ring cooker with a pan placed ready for use, and on the surface beside the cooker was a plate with four plump sausages on it under a transparent cover. One of the kitchen drawers was open, and I glimpsed bank notes in it, large denomination euro notes in bundles. A lot of them.

  I said: ‘Dominic, you shouldn’t leave that stuff lying about.’

  ‘It’s OK. I only just took them out of the fridge.’

  ‘Not the sausages. The money.’

  ‘Oh, that! Madame Duquesne tells me the same thing. But the cheques keep coming from the Government, and she tells me I have to cash them.’ He slid the drawer closed, as if that closed the subject, too.

  He came back to stand beside me at the desk and made a play of admiring the ship in its bottle. Beside his own work it now looked clumsy to me, yet he seemed to love it just the same, and as far as I could see his delight was genuine.

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ I said. ‘But I think I’d better be going.’

  ‘Oh, you can’t go!’ He looked shocked at the idea. ‘I’ve got something for you. That’s why I brought you up here.’

  He ducked down behind one of the tables and lifted out a varnished wooden box. It was about a metre long with a rope handle and a lid with brass catches and hinges. He manoeuvred it out and set it on the table in front of me, next to his ship in its bottle. He snicked the catches and folded back the lid. The model was, as far as I could see, perfect in every detail: radio masts, Oerlikon cannon above the stern hatchway. And the number 2548 in yellow on her hull.

  ‘This is for you,’ he said.

  A crewman in oilskins manned the gun – a figure no more than a couple of centimetres tall – and another crouched in the forepeak hatch with binoculars raised. Through the wheelhouse windows I glimpsed the bearded skipper in his white sweater, his feet apart and hands on the wheel.

  ‘I can’t possibly accept this.’

  ‘Oh, yes you can! Besides, it’s not for you, really. It’s for your papa.’

  I stroked the smooth curve of the hull with a fingertip. ‘I don’t know when I’ll see my father again, Dominic. Perhaps never.’

  ‘You’ll see him again,’ he told me with complete confidence. ‘You just keep this for him until he comes.’ He leaned across me, closed the box and clicked the brass catches into place. And then, as if the question were connected to what he had just said, he asked: ‘Have you finished reading Father Thomas’ diaries?’

  ‘Not quite, no.’

  ‘So Father Thomas hasn’t spoken to you about your papa yet?’

  ‘I’m not sure he’s going to be able to do that, Dominic. The diaries finish before my father got here.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘That’s true.’

  I looked at him narrowly. ‘Dominic –’

  He smiled up at me. ‘Fancy a sausage?’

  I left him an hour or so later, lugging the mahogany box back down the track. It was heavy and awkward, so I stopped for a couple of minutes at a bench near the mouth of the river. The remains of the old German pillbox on the opposite point were just visible in the undergrowth. I could see black gun slits and rusting strands of reinforcing steel where the side wall had begun to crumble.

  The kayakers I had seen earlier had been replaced by a group of kids in wetsuits learning how to sail catamarans. The bright craft had green-and-white hulls and bottle green sails and reminded me of dragonflies. Every now and then one would tack a couple of hundred metres to seaward and edge quite close to where I sat, and an instructor in an aluminium dinghy would call it back. But his caution was unnecessary. The in-rushing tide was beginning to slacken, but even so none of these fleet little craft looked as if it could come close to crossing the bar and breaking out to sea.

  36

  Serge arrived while we were finishing breakfast, and Bonnard and his crew came bouncing up the drive in their truck a minute or two later. I felt bad about leaving now, just as the working day was starting, but I knew I had to. I walked through to the bedroom to fetch a jacket. Chantal leaned against the doorframe and gave me a quizzical look.

  I said: ‘I’ll start pulling my weight this afternoon. Promise.’

  ‘That’s fine.’ She plucked at a loose thread on her shirt, but kept her eyes on mine as she did so.

  ‘There are just a couple of things I want to get out of the way first.’ I checked my wallet and slipped it into my pocket.

  ‘Iain, I do understand how important it is.’

  ‘I know you do.’ I leaned forward and kissed her.

  Christine Tremblay looked up from her monitor.

  ‘Welcome back.’ She got up, smiling, and shook my hand. ‘I’d never have imagined the good Father’s diaries were quite so interesting.’

  ‘Oh, real page-turners. You’ve no idea.’

  She laughed, and led the way, her heels tapping on the parquet. ‘And you’ve become a real St Cyriac resident, I understand? Now that shows devotion!’

  ‘You know how it is. We liked the village so much, we bought a bit of it.’

  ‘Well, now you’re one of us, perhaps I can stop calling you Monsieur Madoc.’

  ‘Please do. My name’s Iain.’

  ‘I know it is. And mine’s Christine, although perhaps you hadn’t picked that up. You must come over for dinner one night, Iain. I have a little place in Lannion.’ She made innocent eyes. ‘And your wife, of course, if she’s free.’

  I sat at the desk and watched her speculatively as she tapped away to the archive room. In a moment she came back with the journals. I avoided her eyes and opened the one for 1941.

  5 June


  I was in the vestry after Mass, believing myself alone in the church, when I was disturbed by the sound of weeping. I emerged to find Madame Rosen in a state of considerable distress. In my presence the lady had always previously been high spirited to the point of disrespect, but despite the coolness between us I conceived it my duty to approach her and offer solace. To my astonishment she fell to the floor and threw her arms about my knees in a most undignified manner.

  She insists that her family are in terrible danger. Apparently a second Statut des Juifs was passed a few days ago by the Government in Vichy, barring Jews from practising at all in a wide range of professions and excluding them from most public office. Her husband must give up his work as notaire, which his family has practised for generations.

  Madame Rosen says she has heard dreadful stories from the east, stories of purges and extermination. I urged her to stand, afraid that someone might come. I told her she must be mistaken, for France was the first nation in the world to emancipate Jews. The Vichy Government might wish to clarify the place of Jews in society, but it would never visit actual persecution on them. I reassured her that France had much to be proud of in her treatment of alien peoples.

  At this she stood shouting at me in the aisle, quite hysterical. “Aliens?” she cried. “Are we not as good a French family as any in this village?”

  I told her this was the House of God, and no place for such unrestrained emotion. She controlled herself with an effort and left with some dignity.

  I have now seen the second Statut des Juifs, passed on 2nd of June, and its restrictions are certainly harsh. I have spoken to Mayor Pasqual about these matters. Despite his youth he has wider experience of the world than I, and a wise head on his shoulders. In his opinion these Statuts are mere political posturing, and their full stipulations could never be put into effect.