The Warning Bell Read online

  ‘He gave me the impression he didn’t want to talk about all that.’

  ‘Ah, but then he didn’t realise who you were. He knows all there is to know. He was the mayor until the end of the War. Took over from Gustave Rosen.’

  ‘Really? He told me he was away in the Army.’

  ‘That’s just him giving you the brush-off. He was at the cavalry school at Saumur, but then he was wounded in the battle for the Loire bridges in June 1940, and that was the end of his war. After that he was a prisoner for a while, then he came back here in early ‘42.’

  ‘And became mayor?’

  ‘He didn’t want the job. He’d been friends with Gustave Rosen, and he hated treating with the Germans. Still, he got his own back by helping the Resistance whenever he got the chance. He got the Croix de Guerre at the end. De Gaulle wanted to award it personally after the Liberation, but of course Papa wouldn’t have that.’

  ‘Why of course?’

  ‘We’re old Breton nobility, the Pasquals.’ Felix rocked his head mockingly. ‘Very grand. Very… well connected. Not great de Gaulle fans, us aristos.’

  ‘And he was in the Resistance too? He must be quite a character.’

  ‘He didn’t run round with a Sten gun and a beret. But he helped out where he could.’ Felix gave me a sideways look. ‘Like the night your father escaped. Papa was one of that group. He didn’t lead it, but he was one of them. So you see, if it hadn’t been for my dad, yours might have died in St Cyriac, and you’d never have been born. Makes us brothers in a way, wouldn’t you say?’

  I put my head back and looked up at the shifting trees. ‘Would your father talk to me about all this, Felix? I mean, in detail?’

  ‘I don’t think I could stop him, once he finds out who you are. We’ll go over to my place right now, have a drink, fix a time.’ He got to his feet.

  We went through a gap in the wall and across a gravel driveway to the rectory. Rosemary grew in terracotta pots beside the steps to his front door and made the morning aromatic. Felix unlocked the house, and I followed him along a low corridor. He went into a small bright kitchen, opened the fridge and took out an unlabelled bottle of white wine.

  ‘Go on through,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Make yourself at home.’

  I did as I was told, and walked into the main room. I felt a little dazed, and was glad to have a moment to myself. The room was cool and light, with a slate floor and two shallow steps down into a conservatory which looked onto a walled garden, vivid with spring flowers. Over the far wall was a view out to the port and, between the masts of the yachts, to the wide sea beyond. It was calm and well ordered, with a wall of books, a chair set under the window with a reading lamp on a side table, a modest desk with a computer and a block of white paper squared beside it. A framed photograph on the wall showed a much younger but already bald Felix in a striped rugby jersey, standing in a team line-up.

  He appeared with a jingling tray and saw me examining the photo.

  ‘When I was young and reckless, I played for Rouen. Well, Rouen Reserves. I played fly-half, which means you get trampled by fourteen troglodytes from one team and fifteen from the other. At that stage in my life I was a good deal more concerned with the present than with the future, let alone the past.’ He carried the tray down the stairs into the conservatory and set it on the table, waved me to one of the white wicker chairs and took a seat himself. He poured the wine. ‘To byegone tragedies. And to what they can teach us.’

  I touched my glass to his. I looked out at the boats, but I kept thinking of the chill darkness in the crypt – that utter darkness – day after day, week after week. And the terror. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I saw that my glass was empty, without knowing quite how it had got that way. Felix filled it again. I shook myself, took the plastic sleeve out of my jacket pocket and showed him the sketch my father had drawn on the back of the Senior Service cigarette packet.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘My father brought this back from St Cyriac in 1944. I was hoping you might know where it is.’

  He took the card from me and produced a pair of reading glasses.

  ‘Buildings by a beach, right? And this is a pier, is it, or a dock of some sort?’

  ‘That’s how I read it.’

  ‘And a house here? And a little square inside it…And these numbers?’

  ‘Measurements, maybe. They’re in feet and inches. Do you know the place?’

  ‘Hardly.’ He folded his glasses away. ‘There are half a hundred properties up this stretch of coast with landing stages or piers of one sort or another. In the old days every farm had one – it was easier to get around by sea than by road. You’d have to go and look at them all to get any real idea.’

  ‘So maybe I’ll go and look at them all.’

  He looked doubtfully at me. ‘That’s a tall order, Iain. You don’t know for sure if it’s anywhere near here. Besides, if the map was drawn during the War, this place could have changed out of all recognition. It may not even exist any more.’

  ‘Still, I have to try.’

  ‘You have to?’

  My own earnest tone embarrassed me. ‘It feels like I have to.’

  I took the map back from him and examined it again, the ink mottled by rain or seawater and that odd design in the centre, like a barred window. When I glanced up I caught him watching me.

  ‘This is your very own Grail Quest, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Well, far be it from me to interfere with a man’s search for grace.’ He got to his feet and crossed to the computer desk. He opened a drawer, took out a palm-top and touched the stylus to the screen. ‘There’ll be others who want to meet you, apart from Papa. Between them, all those oldtimers should be able to answer all your questions. How about Henri’s? About eight o’clock?’

  ‘You mean tonight?’

  ‘If we gave them any longer the Commune would organise a civic reception. Bring your mysterious map and we’ll ask Papa about it. He’s got a memory like an elephant.’

  The room was suddenly filled with the swelling sounds of the Hallelujah Chorus.

  Felix said: ‘I’d better get that. One of these days it’ll be God.’ He pulled a slim mobile out of the top pocket of his shirt and snapped it open, listened for a moment and spoke briefly into it. He closed the phone. ‘Duty calls, unfortunately.’

  He began to gather up bottle and glasses, refusing to let me help. But he didn’t move away at once, and when he had finished clearing the table he stood there for a few moments with the tray in his hands.

  ‘Iain, you haven’t come here to St Cyriac looking for some old boat and a story of derring-do. You’ve come looking for your father.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have.’

  ‘Let me put my priest’s hat on for a moment and give you a word of advice. If you truly want to find him, you won’t do it by standing at the top of the cellar steps and shouting into the shadows. You’ll have to go a little way into his world to look for him. Sometimes that requires a leap of faith.’

  I laughed uneasily. ‘Sounds like a leap in the dark.’

  ‘I hope not. The dark’s not always an agreeable place to be.’ He marched away through the house, replaced glasses and bottle in the kitchen, showed me out and trotted up the steps past me. The sun had vanished behind clouds again. He said: ‘Do you think I’ll beat the rain?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘There, you see? That’s why you need faith.’

  He walked the few steps to his car – a canary yellow 2CV with a striped awning, folded back – and swung himself into the driver’s seat. The little engine popped like a lawnmower. He shouted a farewell, rammed the car into gear and roared away, scattering gravel, one hand waving over his shoulder. The rain began to fall, fat drops slapping through the leaves of the garden trees.

  14

  At about six I showered and changed, left my mobile on charge, and went downstairs.

  ‘You will take sherry, M’sieur?’ Madame Didier i
ntoned as I passed the living room door.

  Surprised at this invitation, I stepped into the room. She was lounging with her back to me in her brocade armchair, wreathed in cigarette smoke, her hair wound up in a pale-blue turban. There was a large gilt framed mirror on the wall above the fireplace, in which I realised she followed every movement along the hall and up and down the stairs. She rose and crossed to a fabulously ornate glass and chrome drinks cabinet.

  ‘It is unthinkable for an Englishman of quality not to take a little dry Amontillado as an aperitif before dinner. That rogue Henri may be charming, despite his ambivalence in matters of romance, but you may be sure that he will have nothing like this on his wine list.’ She handed me a cut glass goblet, only slightly cracked, with an inch of straw coloured liquid in it. ‘Given to me personally by Albert Camus, with whom I was – how shall I put it? – on excellent terms.’

  I couldn’t see any way of escaping, so I thanked her and took the glass. The old boxer dog shambled in, saw me and shook his chops lasciviously so that a dumb-bell of drool flew up and hung from the moulding of the mirror.

  ‘Father Felix tells me there is a gathering in your honour tonight,’ Madame Didier said, as if nonchalantly.

  ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘And will you be joining us, Madame?’

  ‘I regret I shall not.’

  ‘It was rather short notice.’

  She eyed me through the smoke. ‘It is not a matter of notice, M’sieur.’

  I sat sipping my awful sherry, perched like a schoolboy on the edge of my chair, waiting for the explanation I knew would come.

  ‘This concerns the War, I imagine?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. Or rather, my father’s time here during the War.’

  ‘People will tell their stories of those years,’ she said. ‘What kind of a place St Cyriac was when your father was here. How he was hidden. How he and his companion escaped. Who was courageous enough to help them. These are the stories you would like to hear, I think?’

  I put my glass down. ‘Yes. I would like to hear about those days.’

  She ground out her cigarette and lit another with a gold lighter, blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling. ‘My uncle owned this house during the War. He was a member of the Lu Brezon. Have you ever heard of the Lu Brezon, M’sieur?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘It was a movement dedicated to Breton independence. Independence from France, that is. Brittany was only incorporated into France at the very end of the 15th century, and that was too soon for most Bretons. The Lu Brezon was all about Breton dress and Breton bagpipes, Breton poetry, the Breton language. All slightly ridiculous, but not so different from your Irish Republican movement, perhaps. Then in 1939 France was at war and suddenly the Lu Brezon, like your IRA, was not so ridiculous any more. Many in the organisation collaborated with the Germans during the Occupation, just as some Irish fought for Hitler. They assumed a German victory, like everyone else, and thought collaboration would help their cause when the War ended. The Lu Brezon refused to recognise the new French Government at Vichy. An extremist Lu Brezon militia was even formed to help fight the Resistance.’ She looked at me. ‘Members of that militia wore Waffen SS uniforms.’

  I couldn’t hide my surprise.

  ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend,’ she said. ‘Do you see? For Bretons to wear French uniforms would have been to identify with the traditional oppressor, which was France, not Germany. That’s how the Lu Brezon saw things.’

  ‘I didn’t realise, Madame.’

  ‘Only a small number of passionate and misguided people went as far as that.’ She leaned across and poured me more sherry. ‘My uncle was not one of them. He was a foolish old dreamer who played Breton songs on an accordion in the café. Everyone here knew he was harmless. Most of them had grown up on his songs and stories of old Brittany. The lost city of Ys, King Gradlon, Merlin and Morgane la Fee and the Forest of Broceliande. Fairy tales. But he had been a member of Lu Brezon, and at the end of the War, he found he had been mixing with the wrong friends...

  ‘I stood at that window and I watched while people waving the tricolour burned his books and smashed his instruments, and made him parade around the square in a German helmet. I watched while village women who had fawned over German officers cut off my aunt’s hair with garden shears. They had to leave St Cyriac, of course, my aunt and uncle. Neither of them lived very long after that.

  ‘I don’t blame the local people, M’sieur. They were merely frail and frightened creatures. No one knew the war was going to end in 1945, nor that the Allies would win it. Collaboration was not then a dirty word. Indeed, the government ordered it. Everyone compromised in one way or another. Afterwards, some wished to pretend they had been true resistants all along, as much for their own self respect as anything else, so they turned on anyone who had collaborated more openly than themselves. I understand these things. But still, it was hard for a child to watch.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone speak up for your aunt and uncle?’

  ‘Dr Pasqual did. He strode into the crowd and put a stop to it. I can still see him, just a young man he was then, even though he was mayor, but he carried such authority about him. He was quite alone, but no one dared face him down. He was outraged. I remember him shouting, “Is this the St Cyriac we suffered for?” For that I thank him, and will always thank him.’ She stubbed out her cigarette in the brass dish. ‘But perhaps you can understand why I do not wish to attend his dinner and talk about the War and our people’s heroism in adversity.’

  15

  I took my time walking through the quiet streets. Madame Didier’s ugly little story darkened my mood. The Occupation was no longer some distant drama, but very real, very close to me, and much more than just a component of my father’s tragedy. I knew I should have seen this before. I knew that if I had been French I would have understood it instinctively, and for a moment I was uncomfortable with myself.

  But quite soon I could hear the party in full swing – laughter, voices raised, the chime of glasses. The evening was fresh but three terrace tables had been nudged together and as I walked along the quayside I saw Gunther, Henri’s blond partner, setting up a space heater under the awning. Felix was in white jeans and a sailing jersey, with redundant sunglasses pushed up onto his brown scalp, looking even less like a priest than when I had first seen him.

  ‘Iain! Iain Madoc!’

  He pushed back his chair and came bounding to meet me amidst a little storm of greetings and good humoured applause. Chairs were scraped back and Henri was summoned and another table dragged up, and in the reorganisation somebody knocked over a wine glass to catcalls and jeers, and several more bottles of wine were ordered to compensate, and people shuffled up to make room for me.

  Felix’s father was sitting not quite opposite me and a little to my left, sporting a linen jacket and yellow bow tie. I could picture him with a straw hat and an easel, Monet-style, trying to capture on canvas the changing light of a summer afternoon. His face lifted as he saw me, and he smiled as his eyes met mine, but before we could speak Felix was in action again, sweeping his arm around the table and delivering quickfire introductions which lost me almost at once. I caught the first few names – Daniel and Marie-Louise Bourgogne, who owned the boatyard; Sylvie Bertrand, head teacher of the local school; Sergeant Freycinet, St Cyriac’s elderly gendarme. I was still trying to memorise these when he started again: Jean Bonnard, the local builder, and his wife Lucille; Jean-Pierre Le Toque, whom Felix described as the only eco-friendly fisherman in Brittany because he hadn’t caught a damned thing for a month; Marc Garnier, owner of St Cyriac’s recycling business – ‘that’s what we used to call the junkyard.’

  The victims of Felix’s jokes heckled him in reply or raised ironic glasses to me. I tried to fix one or two of their faces in my mind, but in those first few moments it was only Marc Garnier who caught my eye. He was a thin old man with sparse hair, and he gave me the instant impression that he didn’t m
uch want to be here. I noticed that he wore a hearing aid and I wondered if noisy gatherings were difficult for him.

  Daniel Bourgogne leaned over to me. He was about my own age, with a tanned outdoor face and short grey hair. ‘I saw you down at the boatyard yesterday,’ he said, ‘looking at your father’s launch. I would have come out, but I thought maybe you wanted some time to yourself – not that Dominic would have left you much of that, the old rascal.’

  ‘He’s not here tonight?’

  ‘Dominic and alcohol don’t mix.’ Bourgogne tapped his temple in a knowing fashion. ‘But everyone loves him. Especially my Marie-Louise.’

  She was about forty, heavily built, with big shoulders and short dark hair. She held out her hand and as she did so I realised that she was the woman I had seen the day before, standing in the window of the cottage by the river, watching me.

  ‘We’ve met,’ I said, taking her hand. ‘Or at least we’ve seen one another.’

  ‘Oh, that was you?’ She grew flustered. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s just that I like to keep an eye on Dominic, you see. I didn’t mean -’

  ‘Old Dominic’s family to us, you understand,’ Bourgogne said, by way of explanation. ‘We get a bit over-protective.’ He smiled and squeezed his wife’s waist and the blush bloomed up her neck and over her broad face and made her look girlish, which sat oddly with her solid build.

  Felix’s father rose to his feet, and the conversation died away.

  ‘You’ll forgive me, my friends,’ he began, ‘but I shan’t stay long tonight. I don’t often accept Henri’s generous hospitality these days, but when Felix told me who it was I had met in the square yesterday, I could hardly stay away. Indeed I feel that somehow I should have recognised our visitor at once, given how closely our histories are intertwined. So let me say a few words about that history. And then, perhaps, we can let it rest in peace and enjoy our dinner.’

  The cafe was quite silent now. I realised that Dr Pasqual was about to make a speech, a few words he had prepared and rehearsed. The formality of it amused me, and the fact that the entire party was prepared sit like schoolchildren and listen to this frail old gentleman. It was the first intimation I had had of the respect and the affection he commanded. Not quite the first: I remembered him walking away up the street the day before, dispensing a greeting here, a compliment there, like some seigneur of earlier days. Old Breton nobility, Felix had said, with a mocking roll of his eyes. I found it endearing.