Martin Walker - The Caves of Perigord

“That’s amazing, Lydia. You have done well.”

“No. It’s all in the published record, in the official history and Malrand’s irritatingly oblique memoirs. And the bad news is that it is only context, more than the kind of detail we need. Apart from the names of Starr, Malrand, and his brother Christophe, and a few radio operators who are all dead, I have found absolutely nothing that will tell us more about your father’s time in Perigord. The American member of their Jedburgh team is a dead end. His name was McPhee, but he didn’t survive the war.”

The fish in beurre blanc arrived and with it a bottle of Chateau de la Jaubertie, of which Lydia had never heard, but which was so glorious that she asked Manners how he had known to order it.

“I didn’t,” he confessed. “I just asked the people here to serve what they thought best. They said it was a dry Bergerac, where they come from, which also happens to be the area we are heading toward, so it seemed the right thing. Seems to go with the fish all right.”

Lydia cocked a skeptical eye at him. She was learning that Manners was seldom so deviously formidable as when he pretended to be just a bluff English simpleton. This was Bordeaux, heart of the proudest wine region of France. A decent restaurant in this city would no more offer a wine from a little-known appellation like Bergerac than they would recommend Coca-Cola.

She opened her mouth to say: “Bullshit, Manners-you ordered this and you knew what you were doing.” But she paused and wondered what Clothilde might have done in such a situation. She would have accepted what he said and stored up the useful knowledge for the future, and appreciated a man who had obviously taken some care to provide her with a memorable lunch. Thank you, Clothilde. Now all I have to do is ask you what on earth I wear to lunch with your President.

“You did choose well, Manners, coming to this restaurant,” she said, calculating that he must have reconnoitered the place, and the street, and discussed the meal and planned his parking in advance. Very flattering that he was going to such pains.

“Picked it out of the guidebook,” he mumbled. “Lucky, really.”

Manners gasped with pleasure as they climbed the steps into the Jean Moulin building, and found a small exhibition spread before them. He pounced at once upon a tiny motorcycle that looked like a child’s toy. The label said that it was a type developed to be dropped by parachute to help the Resistance leaders get around.

“I learned to drive on one of those,” he said fondly. “My father brought one back from the war. It’s still in one of the outbuildings somewhere. Made a fearful racket, and pumped out tons of gray smoke.” He squatted down to peer more closely, occasionally glancing up at her with enthusiastic delight. Lydia found herself smiling back in what felt like genuine affection. Friendliness, perhaps, she told herself. He was very appealing in this boyish mood.

“The old man never said it was a Resistance bike,” he said, rising. “I remember when the tires rotted, and I tried to fit an old set of scooter tires. No good-too fat.”

Lydia steered him toward the reception desk before some other military antique drew his attention. She had made an appointment with the curator of the museum library, an elderly man with a small red ribbon in his lapel. He came down to greet them, casting an appreciative glance at her before clasping Manners’s hand in both of his. Once in his small office upstairs he poured three small glasses of a golden wine, insisting that they drink to the honor of the late capitaine .

“He was always the capitaine to us,” said the old Frenchman, speaking serviceable English. “Whatever rank he reached later. We all liked him, because he was always cheerful, and could make us laugh. He was a very good leader, the kind who led without your noticing that he was in charge. He taught me how to strip a Sten gun. That was in Toulouse, when we liberated the city.”

“I had no idea you knew my father,” said Manners. “That makes our job a lot easier. He never spoke much about the war, so I’m really trying to find out more about what he did, the people he knew, and whether any of them could still be found. I’m very pleased indeed to meet an old comrade-in-arms-and hope to meet some more.”

“We are very few, those who remain,” said the old man. He looked at Manners neutrally, then at Lydia-the look of someone who had learned caution in a hard school. “Not everyone wants to remember. The war was a long time ago. So long, we even get Germans coming here now. There was a time we would have kicked them out, but you cannot blame the young ones. And half of the people in Wehrmacht uniform weren’t Germans at all. There were Russians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Poles-all hauled into the German Army. Some of them even joined us. And some of our worst enemies were other Frenchmen.”

“You mean the Milice?” asked Lydia, thinking he might need some gentle prodding. She had read about the pro-Nazi militia who supported the Vichy regime.

“Not just them. But they were bad. They and the Gestapo were the worst. We had political problems too, in those weeks around the Liberation. The Communists, mainly, and some black market people. A long time ago.” He shrugged and pushed across the desk toward them a small pile of books in French, and a folder containing some microfiche.

“I prepared this for you, after Mademoiselle telephoned me,” he went on. “I knew your father from late June of 1944, when he came south to help train us in the Maquis and take us into Toulouse. But he was in Perigord and the Massif for months before that, so I have put some books and memoirs together about the Perigord networks, not just the Berger network that he worked with, but le Reseau Soleil as well, a separate network. And then in the microfiche, there are transcripts. We did a lot of oral interviews with old Resistance members, making sure we have their memories before they died. We have them on cassette, and these are the transcripts. There are three who knew your father, including Berger himself, God rest his soul. I still don’t have on tape the one I want most, but it takes a lot of time, being President of France.” He grinned. “Malrand has promised to do an oral interview once he retires after the next election. But you’ll find a copy of Malrand’s final report to the FFI in the folder.”

“Excuse me,” interrupted Lydia. “You mentioned le Reseau Soleil -were they attached to the Berger group? I thought Soleil was more of an independent.”

“Some might call him a gangster, or a black Marketeer, mademoiselle,” shrugged the old man. “I think of Soleil as a good resistant because he killed Germans, and he fought for France. You are right to call him independent. He didn’t take many orders, neither from us in the FFI nor from the Reds in FTP, nor from London. But gangster-not really, except that we were all gangsters part of the time. I did a few armed robberies, but only of the bureaux de tabac . You can imagine how desperate we were for tobacco and cigarettes in the Maquis. It was always tightly rationed, and London never sent us enough, so we used to raid the shops. Except that time when Malrand and your father stole the German cigarette ration from the stores at Brive. We had a lot of smokes then.”

He poured another glass for each of them, took out one of the old-fashioned Gauloises packs, a flash of bright blue, lit it, coughed, and sat down. “At my age, you need a little vice,” he wheezed. “Those books-I kept them for you, although there are people here who want them. You’ll find one of them in the library. An American, I think, but speaks good French. He’s looking at Perigord, as well, at what we have on the Jedburgh teams. I told him the material was reserved for a special project, and he’d have to wait. You’ll find the microfiche reader in the library-I presume you know how to work it, mademoiselle? I know your French is more than good enough to read the instructions.”