The Warning Bell Read online

  ‘There was lots and lots of shooting,’ Dominic went on happily. ‘Bang-bang-bang! Then the next day they towed her in here.’

  ‘What happened to the crew, Dominic?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said almost negligently, ‘they died.’

  ‘Died? What - all of them?’

  He screwed up his face and counted on his fingers. ‘Six, no….’ He held up seven fingers. ‘That many. They’re asleep now, in the churchyard in the village.’

  ‘Seven of them? Seven of them were killed in the shooting?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he frowned, anxious to get this right, not to mislead me. ‘Some of them drowned. They were washed up later, and the crabs had tried to eat them.’ He made a face. ‘Can’t blame the crabs. They were only having lunch. Afterwards the people in the village put the dead men in holes in the ground. Very deep, they were, the holes. They put them into boxes, and then into the holes, and filled the holes in. Very sad. Even the German soldiers were sad.’

  I knew Dominic had sensed my shock but I couldn’t hide it. Seven men. Seven young men. The very same lads I had stared at with such envy all through my childhood in the photograph on the bookcase, raffish and cocky, clowning for the camera in their rollneck sweaters and caps, the two in the front showing their stripes. I knew each of those faces so well that I felt a little as if I had lost relatives.

  I said: ‘Dominic, would you tell me about those times?’

  ‘Tell you what about them?’

  ‘What happened to this boat, for example. What happened after she was towed in? What happened to the people on board who didn’t die?’

  He sat gazing placidly at me. I wondered if somehow he hadn’t heard me, so I tried again.

  ‘I’d really like to know. Can we have a talk about it all?’

  He gave me his sunniest smile. ‘No.’

  ‘We can’t?’ I blinked at him. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Father Thomas told me never to talk about all that.’

  ‘Father Thomas?’

  ‘He’s at the church. Haven’t you heard about Father Thomas? He knows everything. And he says I can keep secrets better than anyone.’

  ‘What kind of secrets?’

  ‘If I told you, they wouldn’t be secrets, would they? Even I know that!’ He laughed. ‘Of course, if Father Thomas says it’s all right, then I could talk to you. Only he always says no.’

  I considered all this for a moment. ‘I’ll tell you what, Dominic. If I go along to the church, maybe I can ask Father Thomas myself. Would that do?’

  ‘Oh, yes! Anyone can talk to Father Thomas.’ He smiled, delighted that between us we had found a way through this moral maze. He opened his eyes very wide. ‘Shall we have another sausage?’

  I walked back along the towpath, turning the scene over and over in my mind. I was so absorbed that only when I reached the boatyard did I notice that the lights were still on in the house among the trees. Standing in the front window was a tall woman with short, no-nonsense hair. Her arms were crossed over her breast and she was quite obviously watching me.

  I raised a hand to her, but she neither responded nor made any attempt to take her eyes off me. When I had crossed the Vasse and started back down the other side I looked back and could still see her dark silhouette in the yellow rectangle of the window.

  12

  It was early evening by the time I got back to the square, and the rain had started to fall again. I stopped at the iron gate of the churchyard and looked up through the dripping trees at the headstones and mounds, half-hidden in the grass.

  I had intended to go in immediately and find the graves of my father’s crew, and then to seek out this Father Thomas. But the graveyard was gloomy and the church looked cold and empty. Standing there in the wet evening, tired and a little overloaded, I lacked the spirit to tackle all this right now. Tomorrow would do fine.

  I went back to the guesthouse and crept back up to the Camellia Suite, hoping to escape detection by Gaston, Madame Didier or the amorous Jasper. I made it. I locked the door behind me.

  It was still early, not six o’clock. I was pleased with my day’s work, especially after such an unpromising start. I supposed at some stage I would have to go and find something to eat, but I wasn’t hungry yet. I kicked off my shoes and stretched out on the bed. It was surprisingly soft.

  I wasn’t sure what had awakened me; perhaps the unfamiliar shadows of the angled ceiling, or the small knocking of the open window against its fastening. The wind had risen and the net curtain billowed into the room, filling like a parachute.

  I rolled over to sit on the edge of the bed and checked my watch. It was three in the morning. I got up to tie back the curtain and close the window, but stopped there, looking out at the night sea. Way, way out, I could see a long flicker of white which shivered, faded, and then grew luminous again. The Shoals, exposed now as the tide dropped. I stared out, fascinated, imagining acre upon acre of white water and bursting surf, mill race currents roaring through hidden channels as the tide drained. If I listened hard I could hear the dull booming of the sea breaking on those dark sands in the night.

  And then something else. Carried on the wind, from a great distance, I could just hear the peal of a bell. A warning bell.

  The tiny sound seemed both awful and thrilling – I thought of a great bell-buoy, lurching on black water, groaning against its chains. I wondered if there had been a bell-buoy like this one out on the Shoals sixty and more years before, and if my father had heard it back then, riding the black waters in his sharp-prowed launch, butting the suck and rush of the tide, struggling to reach a man called Lucien while the guns fired from the cliffs and the tracer came in search of him.

  All for nothing.

  The guns found their range, seven young men died, and my father’s life was dislocated forever.

  I stood there listening for a very long time before I closed the window and shut out the night. But I could not shut out the wild sensation that this bell tolling in the night was a signal just for me.

  13

  At eight-thirty the next morning I opened the iron gate into the churchyard. The air was damp and herbal and gulls chimed in a white sky as I climbed the path between yew and beech trees.

  I saw the graves almost at once, seven Commonwealth War Graves Commission pale limestone headstones under the yew tree by the wall, the neatly clipped grass over the mounds speckled with snowdrops and daisies. They lay in two rows. Each headstone was sculpted with the RAF crown and eagle, and under it a name. Aircraftman 1st Class S. D. Allen, 38; Aircraftman H. Underwood, 26; Flight Sergeant P. E. MacDonald (First Cox’n), RAAF, 22; Aircraftman D.R. Evans, 17. I recited each one to myself in a whisper. K. T. Tucker, F. O. Pisani, L. T. Sheldrake. And under each one: Died 20 April 1944. I had never known their names before, and it saddened me to read them now, and to see their youth set out so starkly before me.

  I could match some of them readily enough with faces in the photograph on my parents’ bookcase. The pipe smoker in the picture would be Allen, at thirty-eight the old man of the crew. What had his role been? Father confessor, counsellor, the voice of wisdom? Beside him lay seventeen year-old Aircraftman Evans – he must be the slight, dark haired boy in the second row of the photo, his arm hooked defensively around the radio mast, as though afraid he might fall overboard. And the sergeant in the front row, that would be MacDonald – an Australian, I saw from the headstone; I wondered what cascade of petty circumstances had drawn him from the warm south to die on the windy coast of France.

  Seven graves. There had been eight men in that photograph and my father would have been behind the camera. Just one other man had cheated death that night, the crewman my father had brought back with him to England. Ironically, the only member of the crew to survive was now the only one whose name I didn’t know.

  I stood up slowly, then walked around to the west porch of the church and pushed on the double doors. They swung open at my touch. The space inside was cavernous, lit
by the morning sun streaming through stained glass.

  I could see nothing at first against the glare, but as my eyes adjusted I made out a figure near the altar, setting out hymn books on the front row of pews. He looked up as I approached, and stood waiting for me, a small and energetic man of about my own age, with a polished pate, brown from the sun, and dark, merry eyes. He wore a blue denim shirt, jeans and white trainers with reflective patches which blazed in the light. A pair of fashionable sunglasses hung on a cord around his neck.

  ‘Father Thomas?’ I asked, tentatively. He didn’t look like any priest I’d ever seen.

  ‘I’m afraid not. But I can take you to Father Thomas if you want.’

  He set down his hymn books and led me around the back of the altar. There was a small chapel to the Virgin off to the right – three ranks of pews, twinkling candles, a vase of lilies – and beyond that a heavy door set into the wall. He reached up for a large iron key, inserted it in the lock, pushed the door wide and stepped inside.

  It was a plain stone cell with eight hardback wooden chairs in it, and it smelled of stale air. The light was dim, filtering in through a diamond-paned casement deeply overshadowed by the trees outside. The little man walked in and lit a candle, one of a line of votive stubs set in a sand tray. By the flare of it I saw, set into a niche in the wall, the bronze bust of a man; a hard face with a hawk-like nose. Under the bust was a brass plaque, and on it the words: ‘Fr Thomas Montignac, ne 12 Decembre 1900, fusillé par les allemands 14 Juin 1944.’

  The candlelight flickered over the crags of dark metal, so that the face seemed to frown and sneer in quick succession. I looked sharply around at the little man.

  ‘Meet Father Thomas,’ he said, and gave me a wry smile. ‘I’m afraid I have the advantage of you. Your name is Madoc, right? Your father was the captain of that wreck in the river, and you’ve been down there talking to old Dominic.’

  ‘You’re very well informed.’

  ‘This is St Cyriac, M’sieur Madoc. By now everyone in the village knows your blood group, your passport number, and the e-mail address of your uncle’s mistress. What I don’t know is your first name.’

  ‘It’s Iain.’

  ‘And I’m Felix. OK? Like the cat. I’m the priest here these days.’

  ‘So this was Dominic’s idea of a joke, was it, sending me up here to talk to a man who’s been dead for sixty years?’ I felt foolish and I couldn’t keep the resentment out of my voice.

  ‘No, no,’ he said gently. ‘Dominic was just sending you to speak the cleverest person he knows. See it as a compliment.’

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘Dominic’s family abandoned him when he was a kid. Dumped the boy in the church porch and vanished. In those days people weren’t as enlightened about simple souls like him. But Thomas used to feed him, find him jobs to do, protect him. As far as Dominic’s concerned Father Thomas never went away.’ Felix saw that his explanation had silenced me. He touched my arm lightly. ‘Now let’s get out of here.’

  He steered me out of the chamber, and then bustled back to lock the door behind us, so that iron clashed in the stillness. I walked ahead for a few steps and stopped, waiting for him. The church lay silent and still around me. The soles of the little priest’s trainers hissed on the stone as he came up to me.

  ‘Henri says you don’t know what happened to your father here in St Cyriac. Can that be true?’

  ‘It’s true.’

  He shook his head then led me to the west door and out into the bright day. I began to feel as if I’d wandered into someone else’s play and didn’t know the script.

  ‘Thomas was shot by the Germans in front of the altar,’ he said, as we walked between the yew trees, ‘so he’s something of a saint around here. St Cyriac library treats his diaries like fragments of the True Cross. We used to keep the old boy’s statue in the gardens, but the inscription upset some of our European partners, so we moved him inside.’

  We rounded the corner of the church and Felix stepped off the path and pushed through a screen of laurel bushes whose dry leaves crackled underfoot. Concealed behind the foliage a flight of stone steps led down to an arched wooden door. He shoved it open and ducked inside.

  ‘Come on in,’ he called from the darkness.

  I followed him, sensing cold air against my face and the taint of decay. Half-a-dozen ancient strip lights flickered into life in the vaulting. I saw a forest of squat stone columns with square plinths and sarcophagi along the walls. A cushion of white fungus bulged from the foot of the pillar beside me. On the ground next to my foot lay a mummified toad. Felix walked briskly down the length of the crypt’s central aisle. Halfway along he stopped and faced me.

  ‘Father Thomas used to hide people down here, Iain. Men dodging the work battalions, escaped POWs, deserters. But finally in June ’44 his luck ran out, and the Germans caught up with him. There were two men in hiding here when the soldiers came. Father Thomas refused to give them away.’ He paused. ‘One of those two men was your father.’

  I realised I had been holding my breath and forced myself to release it. I put out my hand and rested it on a pillar, grateful for the cold kiss of stone.

  ‘Thomas Montignac had been hiding your father and his friend here for nearly eight weeks,’ Felix went on, keeping his eyes on mine. ‘There was no light. Very little air. The tombs were still in use, and it could be pretty gruesome. That entrance was kept locked in those days, so when they replaced the flagstones in the chapel, whoever was down here was sealed in. There was no question of getting out, not even at night, not even for an hour or two.’

  ‘So how did they escape?’

  ‘While the Germans were interrogating Father Thomas, a bunch of local lads broke that door open and got them out. Bundled them down to the boatyard and into a dinghy. That’s how I heard it.’

  I looked around me. Eight weeks. The chill, the darkness, the scrape of every shoe on the flagstones above. The dread every time the trap was heaved open and light spiked into the gloom. Felix came back up the aisle to me.

  ‘Iain, let me take a priestly guess. You’re confused that your father didn’t confide in you about all this, right? Confused and maybe resentful.’

  ‘I suppose I am.’

  ‘But think about it. Locked up in here for two months, in constant fear? I don’t think that’s something a man would want to share with his innocent young son. I think a man might prefer to leave his child untainted by an experience like that.’

  I said nothing.

  Felix took my arm. ‘Let’s go out in the sunshine.’

  He locked the crypt door behind us and we walked back up to the bench overlooking the graves. It was a brilliant cool morning, and I was glad of the space and the free air.

  I said: ‘You’re saying this priest died for them?’

  ‘Thomas died for his beliefs, not just for your father and his pal. Thomas would’ve have seen it as his duty, a chance to balance the books a bit.’

  ‘His duty?’

  Felix tore off a grass stem and chewed it. ‘Your Dad and his crew had risked their lives to bring over a Free French agent. A few weeks later they risked their lives all over again to come back and fetch him. Only this time they didn’t get away with it, and seven of them lost their lives in the attempt. Thomas sacrifice was pay-back time. That’s my guess, anyway.’

  I grappled with the idea of a man who would give his own life to settle such a debt. That train of thought triggered a new question in my mind.

  ‘What happened to the agent? This Lucien?’

  ‘The Free French guy? I suppose he died with the rest of your father’s crew when the launch was hit.’

  ‘He’s buried here?’

  Felix shook his head. ‘His body was never found. That’s not unusual on this coast. It’s a bit unusual they found all the rest of them. Awful waste, huh? Your Dad brings him over, and he spends a month here dodging the Germans and organising the resistance. But in the end
there isn’t any resistance because the Landings happen in Normandy instead of here. And on top of that he gets himself killed - and seven young men who try to get him out. There’s not many positives in that.’

  I sat gazing out over the neat rows of graves. I thought about Lucien and his ultimately meaningless mission, and of the men who had died trying to save him. I thought again of Father Thomas and of his own sacrifice. Perhaps I could understand after all something of why he had done it - to try to make sense of the loss of all these young lives.

  Over the years Chantal had brought back similar stories from her war zones, stories of ordinary people and their capacity for heroism and sacrifice. These tales used to move her in the telling, often to tears, but lately I’d noticed a weariness in her. It was testosterone and lack of imagination that drove men to heroism, she’d said bitterly after a recent assignment to Iraq. Nothing more. She was tired and depressed after that trip, so I didn’t argue. I wanted her to resign and was glad she was growing tired of it all. But just the same I thought she was wrong about this, and sitting here in the quiet churchyard, I was sure of it. For there was no escaping the truth. This wasn’t done in hot blood: the priest had a choice, but he had still given his life for my father and his companion.

  Felix took the grass stem out of his mouth and slung it away.

  ‘Talking of fathers,’ he said, ‘I gather you met mine yesterday.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Down at the Rosens’ memorial. Nice old boy in a beret? White moustache? He told me he’d met a wandering Englishman asking about the past. I put two and two together.’

  ‘That was your father?’

  ‘He’s the guy you need to talk to if you really want to know how things were back then. He’s been here since the Flood.’