Martin Walker: The Caves of Perigord

“I hear you, Keeper.” To himself, he said: I hear you, father of Little Moon.

“It is not just a company of workers that you join, a group of skills and talents. It is a group of men, with their own weaknesses and pride. And one thing to remember is that old men whose limbs are no longer sure as they climb the poles can be too proud to say that, and lash out at a young or nimbler person nearby. Men hate to blame themselves for their feebleness and faults, just as I see you not wanting to take the blame for your own impetuous pride. Do you hear this?”

“I hear you, Keeper. And I thank you for the lesson.”

“You will be humble before the Keepers. You will admit your fault to the old man. You will take the blame upon yourself. You will keep your head down and your voice silent, and if you trust in me and are guided by me, you will be a Keeper before the festival of the longest day.”

“Why do you do me this kindness, Keeper?” he asked, hoping that the man would say it was because Little Moon had asked him.

“Because of your swimming beasts,” said the Keeper, turning Deer toward him, gripping him by both shoulders to stare him in the face. “And perhaps because one day when I have gone and you see a young fool who has the gift but seems doomed to waste it, perhaps you can do the same for him.” He grinned at the youth, liking him for his clear gaze and the respect he showed. “Just as someone did for me, a long time ago.”

Arisaig, Scotland, 1943

Captain Jack Manners was exhausted; sweating so much in the chill Highland rain that he thought the desert fever had come back. His pack was full of rocks. The absurd little Sten gun with its narrow strap was cutting into the side of his neck, and his feet were sopping wet inside the heavy boots. At least in North Africa they had worn comfortable desert boots of light suede. It never ceased to amaze him-the only part of the British Army actually fighting the Germans dressed like a bunch of holidaymakers, in beards and shorts and corduroy slacks, cravats around their necks to keep the dust out. Some chaps even swore by their silk shirts, cool in the heat of the sun, warm as the chill of the desert night made the hard ground as cold as the stern metal of their tanks. Yet back here in Britain they were playing at soldiers, demanding glossy boots and pressed uniforms and close shaves even though there were never any razor blades. And they weren’t even fighting! When the reinforcements came out to Egypt from England, it took them weeks to get ready to fight Jerry. Still, he thought with a fairness that had been bred into him so hard it had become instinctive, it had taken him and his Hussars at least a year, and some decent tanks and a decent general, to learn how to fight Jerry. And given the right ground and enough time to dig in against our air power, Jerry could still dish it out.

“You need some hate in a war such as this, Jacques,” panted the man beside him. “When the body fades, and the will fades, then must come the hate.”

Jack Manners did not respond. He slogged on to the top of the hill, bracing against the wind that whipped off the Irish Sea like a volley of cold knives, and plodded grimly down the next slope until the loom of a rock promised some relief from the weather. He nudged the Frenchman beside him, edging him across to the rock. Then Jack took out his compass, and checked the bearing again.

“Remember what they told us,” he said, speaking in French. “Five minutes rest every hour.” He knelt down, shuffled off his pack, and began kneading the calves and thighs of his partner, who had ducked his head inside his parka to light a cigarette. Jack had long ago given up trying to stop Francois from smoking on duty. Last thing at night, he stubbed one out, half-smoked, and woke in the morning to relight it. The Frenchman’s legs were trembling with the strain of the climb.

“I have never understood your English masochism. In all the war I have seen, in all the battles I have endured, I never once had to march. I took aircraft and stole cars, borrowed motorbikes and even a bicycle. But never marched,” said Francois. “You only make us do this to keep us busy, like you make your conscripts paint the coal white in the barracks and pick up all the matches from the parade ground.”

“Remember what we learned from Rommel-train hard, and fight easy,” said the Englishman, slapping Francois’s calf to signal the brief massage was over. “Your turn.”

Francois knelt and began rubbing warmth into the Englishman’s legs. It felt blissful, feeling his blood flow again. He wanted to close his eyes and savor it, but this was an exercise. He had to keep his eyes open. Christ knows when an instructor would jump out from behind a rock, stage a mock ambush, haul them in for another of the mock interrogations.

“Don’t talk to me about your bloody Rommel,” said Francois. “That’s the trouble with you English. You admire your enemies. The more they beat you, the more you worship them as honorary English gentlemen.”

“We beat Rommel,” Jack said calmly. “We beat the living daylights out of Rommel and his panzers. You know that, Francois, you were there. But first we had to learn his lesson.”

“I know. Train hard, fight easy. Train together, never fight apart. I learned it, too, even before you. We had Rommel and his 7th Division coming at us and through us in 1940.” The last words were torn out of his mouth by the wind’s rising howl. Francois stood up, slapping his hands together, spitting out his cigarette, shouldering the pack, and preparing to move off. “And we held him off for a week at Bir Hakeim, even with those silly little antitank guns you gave us.”

“You’re forgetting something,” said the Englishman. Francois shrugged and knelt to pick up the glowing ember of the cigarette, squeezing out the glow with his hardened fingers, then shredding the tobacco into the wind, screwing up the tiny shred of paper and stuffing it into a pocket. No traces. They marched on down the hill toward the loch, the ground getting steadily wetter, both men scanning the shore and the dead ground for signs of ambush. There would be one, somewhere before the end of the exercise.

Jack Manners needed no reminding. That was when they had met, in that dreadful summer of 1942 when Rommel’s Afrika Korps had broken through the British lines south of Tobruk, and destroyed the Free French at Bir Hakeim with day after day of tank and Stuka bombardment. Jerry had picked off the undergunned and underarmored British tanks in his usual style and rolled them all the way back to El Alamein. Jack, on leave in Cairo, had suddenly been called in as a French-speaker to help organize a reception for the pitiful remnants of General Koenig’s Free French garrison. Francois had got out on a German motorbike, a BMW he had taken from a dispatch rider in an ambush, and ridden north to join the British and keep on fighting. That was the meeting, Jack supposed, that made this partnership and this posting and this blisteringly bloody training course in Argylle inevitable. But if he were honest with himself, he’d have volunteered for SOE anyway.

Special Operations Executive, fulfilling Churchill’s orders to “set Europe ablaze,” was how the lecturers told it. They hadn’t done much in the past three years. A few escape lines to get downed RAF pilots out of Occupied France and into Spain, a few sabotage operations, some intelligence tapped out on wireless by frightened operators waiting for the German direction-finding trucks to track them down. He would never have volunteered for that. But this new operation of the Jedburgh teams was going to be different. Training the French Resistance, bringing in the arms that could let them fight, and then leading them into battle behind the German lines to destroy the bridges and the communications that would otherwise bring the panzer divisions that would throw the Allied invasion force into the sea. No spying, no skulking about the French countryside in some shabby civilian clothes. He would wear his uniform and fight as a soldier. That was a mission worth training for. Suddenly he felt Francois’s hand close tightly on his arm.