The Warning Bell Read online

  ‘Are you English, M’sieur?’ he asked after a moment. ‘I thought I detected the slightest of accents.’

  I told him he was right.

  ‘And yet your French is excellent.’

  ‘My wife’s French. She’s a fearsome teacher.’

  ‘Now I understand.’ He rose to his feet and peeled off his glove and extended his hand. ‘Pasqual. Dr Yves Pasqual. Welcome to St Cyriac.’

  I fumbled to take his hand, which was thin and delicate. His old world courtesy took me by surprise, and in my confusion I failed to introduce myself in return. I was about to put this right, but by then he was already speaking again.

  ‘Tell me, M’sieur, do you English also erect monuments to the least glorious moments in your history?’

  ‘It’s a national pastime.’

  He moved past me, closer to the sculpture. Leaning on his stick he stretched out his hand and with great tenderness he touched the raised stone figures.

  ‘An old man’s sentiment. I knew the Rosens rather well. They were a fine family.’

  I stepped back to allow him his moment of contemplation, and, as I moved, the bulk of my wallet and the relics it contained weighed in my pocket. It struck me suddenly that meeting this old man might be an extravagant piece of good fortune.

  I said: ‘I expect you know everything there is to know, M’sieur, about St Cyriac during the War years.’

  He glanced at me shrewdly. ‘Less than you might think. I was away for much of the War. In the Army, you know.’

  ‘It’s just that -’

  But before I could continue he straightened, drew on his gloves, and lifted the peak of his cap to me. ‘Please enjoy your stay in our village, M’sieur.’

  He walked out into the wet grey afternoon and made his way, frail but erect, up the hill and past the church. There were a few people on the streets now – a taxi-driver parked by the kerb, a woman with a baby in a pushchair, a man carrying shopping bags. I noticed that all three of them greeted the old man respectfully as he passed, and he exchanged a friendly word with each of them. I watched his thin back until he was out of sight, and then I sat for some time in the cool gloom, obscurely ashamed of my clumsy approach to him.

  After a while I got up and walked down to the little harbour. Just as it had been yesterday, Henri’s café appeared to be the centre of things in St Cyriac. It was lunchtime, and the long bar was packed with men drinking coffee or beer. I made my way to the same table I had taken yesterday. Henri appeared almost at once, cracking his napkin.

  ‘Grand crème again, M’sieur? Or something more stimulating? You look as if you could use some stimulation.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a rosė.’

  ‘Excellent choice! Coming right up! And you’ll be eating?’

  ‘Maybe. Why not.’

  He beamed and vanished between the tables. Some instinct prompted me and I took the magazine article out of my wallet and spread it out in front of me. Henri was back almost at once with my drink and a menu. Before setting them down he bent to polish the table once more, unnecessarily, then stopped, arrested by the sight of the article with its photo.

  ‘My father commanded it,’ I said, watching his face. ‘This boat. During the War. That’s why I want to find it.’

  Henri stood back with his hands on his hips, eyes wide. ‘Your father?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘This isn’t a joke?’

  ‘No. I don’t think it was a joke back then, either.’

  He held my gaze for a long moment.

  I sipped my wine, put the glass down. I said: ‘What?’

  He shook his head in wonder. ‘Well, now, M’sieur, personally I don’t care much for all that wartime nonsense, you understand. But you really mean to say the commander of that boat was your father?’

  ‘You know about this story, then?’

  ‘I know that if your Dad was the skipper of that old tub he was about the most exciting thing that ever happened in St Cyriac. He’s not still alive, is he?’

  ‘As a matter of fact he is.’

  ‘And has he come with you? Is he here?’

  ‘No, but –’

  ‘Pity, pity. Still, you’re here.’ He stood staring at me, still shaking his head. ‘Your father! Imagine that.’

  I let him go through these theatricals for a while, then I said: ‘Henri, can you handle a stupid question?’

  ‘Try me, M’sieur. I’ve had quite a lot of practice.’

  ‘What did my father do here?’

  He frowned. ‘You don’t know?’

  But at that moment someone called for him from across the café.

  ‘All right!’ he bawled over his shoulder. And then, swinging back to me: ‘Impatient rabble. No, look, M’sieur, I didn’t grow up here. There are half a hundred people in St Cyriac who know more about this than I do. I’ll put out the word that you’re in town, if you like. Meanwhile at least I can tell you where the boat is.’

  ‘I thought you’d never seen it before.’

  ‘That’s before I realised you were the son of our local hero. The boat’s near Daniel Bourgogne’s yard.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘A few hundred metres upriver. Though if you’ll take my advice, you’ll forget this old wreck and get Daniel to make you something with a bit of style. He’s just rebuilt The Gay Dog for us. Gunther’s putting the finishing touches to her himself. Did you happen to notice her?’

  ‘I believe I did. She’s beautiful. But –’

  ‘But of course, it’s this old boat or nothing for you, M’sieur, I understand.’ He sighed. ‘Take the path the far side of the square. Just walk down the alleyway past the photo shop, you’ll see it. Follow the track up the river. The old boat’s up against the opposite bank. You can get across at the boatyard.’

  Someone shouted for him again.

  ‘Coming!’ Henri roared. ‘Good God, can’t you ignorant bastards do anything for yourselves?’

  And he was gone, cruising off between the tables, slapping his napkin left and right.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said to his retreating back, but I don’t think he heard me.

  11

  This was progress at last, and my spirits lifted. I contained my impatience and treated myself to lunch and a second glass of rose. It was after two before I left the café.

  The sky began to clear before I had even crossed the square.

  I followed Henri’s instructions, emerging on the riverbank a little above the spot where I had stood yesterday, and this time quickly saw the path. The Vasse flowed dark and smooth in its steep little valley under the trees. I could see that the current ran fast here as it swept out into the sea.

  I turned right - upstream - and within a few metres the path became a muddy track, perhaps originally a towpath. The houses of the village were lost to view behind banks of wet hawthorn and alder. I walked on for a few minutes, picking my way between the puddles. It was very quiet, and I was startled when a family of coots burst out of the reeds almost at my feet, ploughing the water into furrows. The birds sat in midstream, riding the current, watching me, two adults and three sooty chicks. Their sharp indignant cries echoed under the dripping trees.

  I saw the launch before I realised that I was even looking at her. She lay tilted to one side against the far bank of the river, drowned in the shadows, the fronds of waterside willows screening her. On the bow the phantom numerals 2548 still showed, and beside them the RAF roundel.

  I stood there for some time, looking at her. When I was ready I followed the path a little further, looking for a way across the water. After a few metres I could see round the bend of the river. Bourgogne’s boatyard lay just ahead, a cluster of modern buildings, a boatshed built out over a concrete dock, a parked Nissan four-wheel drive with a boat trailer. Beside the boatshed stood a rack of plastic kayaks in red and yellow and some sailing catamarans. A sign advertised them for hire. The yard was deserted. Half hidden among the trees
on the opposite side stood a small cottage built of the local stone, with a fenced garden and lights on in the front windows.

  At the boatyard itself pontoons connected by gangplanks spanned the Vasse. I crossed the concrete dock and stepped gingerly down, feeling the timber sag in the dark water under my weight. Upstream I saw a patchwork of cress beds with low concrete walls and I heard the rushing of the stream through iron sluices.

  I quickly climbed the muddy steps onto the far bank and walked down the path. For a moment I could see nothing through the screen of reeds and willows except the flicker of light on the river. I stopped. I swept aside the trailing branches and the launch was suddenly there, just an arm’s length away, leaning slightly towards me.

  There seemed to be no metalwork left on the hull, no railings or fittings. The wheelhouse and all the upper works had vanished, but someone had built a makeshift sliding roof of marine ply over the main cockpit and had stretched a green tarpaulin over the forward hatch. Where the original decking was visible beneath the patches it was sun-bleached to silver. The varnish had peeled from the hull and I could see the diagonal lines of the strakes.

  I took a couple of steps forward to the edge of the bank, letting the wet willow trail across my shoulders, soaking my jacket. The launch was no longer a blur of speed and drama from long ago, captured on a murky photograph. She was a presence, and a far more emphatic presence than I had imagined, heavy and solid and much bigger than I could have guessed, a real thing that I could touch, if only I stretched out my hand. I stretched out my hand.

  The hatch slid back with a bang and a man’s head loomed from the dark of the hull. I leaped back, slipped on the mud and had to clutch a branch to stay on my feet.

  ‘Hello,’ the man said, blinking guilelessly at me.

  He was elderly, certainly over seventy, but somehow he didn’t look it. His sun-browned face was unlined and framed in a halo of soft white hair, and there was a curiously childlike quality about his blue eyes. He was wearing old-fashioned working dungarees, the sort the French used to call bleus, and I saw now that he was standing on a short ladder leading up from the waist of the vessel. He came up a couple more steps, pushed the hatch cover fully open and stepped out onto the deck.

  ‘I heard someone,’ he said. ‘I thought it was Daniel. He’s my friend. But you’re not Daniel.’

  ‘No, I’m sorry but I’m not Daniel.’ I let go of the tree and dusted lichen from my hands, trying to regain some aplomb.

  ‘And then I thought maybe it was M’sieur Heron. He’s my friend, too.’

  I looked at him.

  ‘He comes quite often,’ he went on. ‘We go fishing together. He’s very clever. He catches fish in his beak.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not M’sieur Heron either,’ I said, carefully. ‘I’m Iain.’

  ‘That’s a funny name.’

  ‘Yes, it is. It’s English. Sort of.’

  ‘I’m Dominic.’

  ‘Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Dominic.’

  I slithered down to the edge of the bank and held out my hand. He looked at it with something like awe. I got the impression people didn’t often shake hands with Dominic, and with my paw stuck out in front of me I began to feel stupid. Despite his years he seemed not quite old enough for such formality. All at once he seized my hand and pumped it and beamed at me, and his eyes filled with the sunniest pleasure.

  ‘Iain, would you like a sausage?’

  I retrieved my hand. ‘A sausage?’

  ‘I cook them on my little stove down below. Daniel says I shouldn’t but I’m very careful.’ He said this again, making his face solemn. ‘I’m always very careful.’

  I glanced past Dominic through the hatchway and down into the hull of the launch. I caught a glimpse of gloomy space of curved frames and planking.

  ‘Actually, I’ve already eaten,’ I said.

  ‘Not my sausages, you haven’t. Come along!’

  He scampered down his ladder so that I momentarily lost sight of him. It evidently didn’t occur to him that I might not follow.

  I put one foot on the top strake and checked that the hull was thoroughly grounded. It was low tide. The mud around the old launch was printed with bird tracks, and a dirty white mooring buoy and a couple of barnacled tractor tyres lay stranded on it. The flowing water was several reassuring metres away.

  I swallowed hard, and stepped onto the deck. My footfalls echoed through the hollow hull as if through the soundbox of some huge musical instrument. I got onto the ladder and perched uneasily there, my hands clamped on the edge of the hatch. I could see Dominic working busily below me, lighting his stove, turning sausages in a pan, still talking – about his friends in the village, about the visitors who came to see him. He didn’t seem to need me to answer immediately, so I let him rattle on while I stood on the ladder and let my courage build up again.

  The deck curved away from me at chest height, the river shining like enamel beyond the tapering bow. Further downstream, through the leaning trees, I could see the houses of the village clustered on the left bank of the river, and the wide steel sea beyond. For a second the trembling light on the water gave me the illusion of movement, and I had to close my eyes and hope the feeling would pass. It did pass, more or less, but not before I found myself wondering how often my father had stood on this very spot, scanning the grey seas and the grey skies. I wondered what that must have felt like for him, with his hands on the quivering wheel and the engines thundering through the soles of his sea-boots, and the lads of his crew squinting into the murk, gripping the hatch edges as the launch heeled, baring their teeth at the rush of it.

  Dominic popped his head up beside me and looked directly into my face, smiling his innocent smile. ‘You’re frightened,’ he said.

  ‘It’s boats.’

  ‘It’s not boats,’ he replied easily. ‘It’s the sea. It’s the deep, dark sea.’

  I opened my mouth and closed it again.

  ‘Don’t be frightened, Iain.’ With great gentleness he touched the back of my hand where it gripped the side of the ladder. And he added, as if this were somehow relevant: ‘Your sausage is ready.’

  He moved away and I took the last couple of steps down. It was a low shadowy space but surprisingly roomy. There were some plywood partitions up forward, where light washed down from the circular forepeak hatch, and some rudimentary benches which might originally have been the bases for bunks. I could feel the damp in the air and, beneath the savour of Dominic’s sausages, the place smelled dankly of mud.

  I saw that he had arranged the central area into a den. There was an old wicker chair, a makeshift table, and a lopsided bookcase with a stack of Tintin comics on it and half-a-dozen packets of biscuits. His small camping Gaz stove was set up inside a tin box directly under the hatch so that the fumes and smoke rose into the open air. I had the impression of a child’s camp or tree house, a place of private refuge, filled with bric-a-brac discarded by the grown-ups. On the table I noticed a large sky-blue china elephant and a tube of glue.

  ‘They’d broken jumbo’s trunk off,’ Dominic said, and pulled a sad face. ‘I had to make him better.’

  I looked closely at the china elephant. It had evidently been in a hundred pieces, and must have taken enormous patience to repair.

  ‘You’ve certainly fixed him up, Dominic.’

  He smiled broadly. ‘You can have the chair.’

  It seemed that this might be my reward for saying the right thing. I sat down. Dominic crouched over his cooker, humming to himself while the fat sizzled and the scent of herbs and garlic rose around me and filled the belly of the launch.

  I said: ‘Do you live here, Dominic? On the boat?’

  ‘Oh, no! Daniel would never allow that.’ He turned off the gas and took the pan away from the heat, and in the sudden quiet I could hear the silky run of the river. ‘I have a little flat in the Old Mill. It’s nice there. There’s a television and everything and Madame Duquesne keeps an eye on
me. That’s because I’m not quite right in the head.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, startled. ‘I see.’

  ‘But I come here most days because I like the river and the fish and the birds.’

  He forked a fat sausage onto a tin plate and passed it to me, and stood crouched under the low deck, pleased with himself, waiting for me to eat. I speared the sausage with the fork and nibbled a piece off one end. It was very hot and very good and I told him so. Pleased, he served his own sausage and settled down on the floor to eat.

  ‘I like the boat, too,’ he said. ‘I look after her.’

  ‘I can see you do. My father would be happy about that.’

  He stopped chewing as this registered with him.

  ‘Long ago,’ I said, ‘this used to be my father’s boat. Back in the War.’

  Dominic’s mouth fell open and he gazed at me with his wide blue eyes.

  I said: ‘That’s why I’ve come to see her.’

  He swallowed hastily. ‘Your father was a great patriot, then. A very great patriot.’

  I meant to say something funny, the way I might have answered a child, but I found that I could not. A great patriot. I had never thought of my father that way. I did a rapid mental calculation of Dominic’s age: I guessed he would have been twelve or fourteen at the end of the War. I put my plate down on the deck.

  ‘You were here in those days, Dominic? In St Cyriac?’

  ‘Me? I’ve always been here.’

  ‘Maybe you know what happened to my father when he was here. Maybe you even saw him?’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t say,’ he answered brightly.

  I suppose he could have meant merely that he was unable to recall but, oddly, I didn’t think so.

  ‘Well, what about this boat?’ I said, changing tack. ‘Did you see her back then?’

  He thought about this question for a minute. ‘I saw her the day the Germans pulled her off the Shoals,’ he said. ‘The day after all the shooting.’

  ‘There was shooting?’

  ‘Lots! I heard it. The Germans had a big gun up on the cliff top. They were very good shots.’

  For some reason I had not imagined real gunfire, with real danger. I had assumed the launch must have been captured at sea. I had pictured a dignified surrender to some serious warship out in the Channel. Some courtly nonsense out of Ealing Studios: For you, chentlemen, ze war is over. Now in my mind I saw tracer crawling out from a dark shore and I tasted the fear of the men as they watched it probe towards them.