Martin Walker - The Caves of Perigord

What he called “Bismarck’s disaster” of a united Germany must be broken up into the smaller provinces of Bavaria, Prussia, Saxony and Hanover, and Rhineland, which could after a suitable period of probation take their place in the Anglo-French system of a united Europe. Only then, he claimed, could Europe stand proudly with the otherwise dominant Americans and Russians. Only then could Europe recover from what he called its suicide of the 1914-18 war. Pipe dreams, thought Manners, but let him ramble on. Nobody in England was going to see France as an equal after the collapse of 1940, whatever pinpricks the Resistance might deliver to recover some of France’s trampled honor as the British and American armies mounted the great invasion.

Manners stopped short of the top of the ridge, leaned his bike against a pile of logs, and moved stealthily forward to look down the road ahead. He always checked when he was carrying something that was certain to get him arrested. He had a haversack full of a dozen Mills bombs and their fuses, an offering for Soleil, and some spare magazines for his Sten. It seemed quiet enough, with a long stretch of woodland and then only a small parkland of open ground before the chateau where Soleil had asked to meet. He looked back down the hill, walked into the middle of the road, and waved his arms to summon Francois. They always kept a hundred yards apart, to give the second man the chance to escape a trap.

“It looks quiet.”

“I don’t trust that little Marseilles maquereau one inch,” said Francois.

Manners grinned. The word meant mackerel, slang for pimp. “I’ve heard a lot of bad things about Soleil, but that’s a new one.”

“It might even be true,” laughed Francois. “But he looks like a maquereau, with his pencil mustache and gangster talk. I find that even more offensive than his half-baked ideas about Marxism. He steals arms from other groups. Sometimes I think the only sensible thing the Communists did was to condemn him to death. Pity they rescinded it. This war makes for some unsavory bedfellows.”

“Well, he kills Germans. That’s what counts. Let’s go on.”

It was surreal, a comic variant of his occasional delusions of peace, thought Manners, as he sat in the place of honor beside Soleil and looked at the impeccably handwritten menu for their banquet, with a small sun to symbolize the Soleil network drawn at its top. They were to start with tourain, the local garlic soup, and then foie gras followed by fresh trout, confit de canard, some Cantal cheese, and three different wines, all of them prewar. The champagne he was now sipping was a Dom Perignon ’33. He had never eaten a feast like this in peacetime, let alone in war. The long baronial table stretched a full ten meters before him, the old wood glowing in the candlelight, and each place set with the requisite number of knives and forks. He toyed with one. Solid silver. The glasses were heavy old lead crystal, and a butler stood attentively at Soleil’s elbow, waiting for the Resistance chief’s approval of the Puligny-Montrachet.

“Excellent, excellent, my dear Chamberlain,” laughed Soleil. It amused Soleil and his men to dub the servants with English names. Inevitably, they used the handful of politicians’ names they knew. The joke was wearing thin, though not for the thirty members of Soleil’s group. And the local farmers and shopkeepers who had been required to attend dropped their embarrassment to join in the laughs.

Manners learned that the owner of the ch‰teau had been a prisoner of war in Germany since the surrender. His wife stayed in Paris. So how did Soleil come to have use of it?

“Easy, I just turned up yesterday, told the butler and housekeeper that I wanted to stage a classic dinner, just like prewar, and left two of my men to ensure there would be no surprises. These chateaux always have lots of food tucked away, and the cellars are stocked with wine. And I am sure the owner would be only too proud to entertain the fighters for freedom. Is that not true, lads?” he roared, slugging the wine in a toast to the table, as the butler directed two elderly maids in black dresses and white aprons to serve the soup.

Just as well the maids were not young and pretty, with this bunch, Manners thought. It felt like a pirate feast. In front of Soleil’s plate, two of Manners’s Mills bombs lay wickedly on their sides, the fuses already in. A Sten gun lay beneath his chair, and he had a revolver strapped to his leather belt. Slim and dapper, and looking about twenty-one, he reminded Manners of the young RAF fighter pilots and the dashing, romantic air they cultivated. His nails, Manners noticed, had been manicured, and he was smoking Sieg cigarettes, the German Army brand. Across the table, Francois sat stone-faced, just the merest quiver of an eyelid as he saw Manners looking at him. He had not said a word since they had sat down.

“Are you another one who’s going to try to have me killed?” Soleil asked him. “I’m losing count of the people after me. The Germans, the Milice, the Communists, that aristocratic SOE agent of yours, Edgar. They all decide Soleil is too uncomfortable and try to have me bumped off. I warn you, it doesn’t work.”

“You haven’t tried to steal any of my guns yet, Soleil,” Manners said, joking to cover his surprise. “I’ve heard the stories about you, but as long as you keep killing Germans you’re too useful to me alive.”

“So why doesn’t SOE send me any parachutages? I want more guns, hundreds of guns. I’ll have a thousand men by July,” Soleil boasted.

“You can’t keep a thousand men round here, let alone feed them. And a thousand men would need twenty parachute drops just for the guns. We can’t do it, Soleil. We have other groups to help, our own sabotage operations,” said Manners. “I’ll ask London to lay on as many drops as they can, but you’ll have to find the sites and landing grounds. And I’ll have to know where your men will be, what targets they are going for, and when the operations will be.”

“Targets, Englishman? The targets are every bloody German for miles around, and those Milice pigs. I’ll take care of the targets. You just get me the guns.”

“We have been through this often before,” interrupted Marat, his round spectacles glinting in the candlelight. “We cannot afford independent actions without central direction. We have a command structure, and the party insists that you are part of it, Soleil.”

“You can stuff your party up your arse,” belched Soleil. “Where was your command structure when I was killing Milice from here to Villefranche? Passing a death sentence on me, that’s what your command structure tried to do.”

He splashed some red wine into the tourain that remained in his soup bowl, brought the bowl to his mouth with both hands, and slurped it down. Manners noticed that the wine was a Leoville ’38.

“We call that faire chabrol, finishing the soup the way the peasants do it. Try it, Englishman!” He pulled out his pistol, and hammered the butt on the table. “Hey, boys,” he shouted. “I’m teaching Winston Churchill’s man to faire chabrol . When we’ve killed all the Boches, we’ll go over to London and teach Churchill himself, eh?”

“We’re going to Spain first,” shouted a swarthy-looking desperado in a heavy Spanish accent. “First we settle Hitler, then we settle Franco. We’ll faire chabrol with Franco’s blood.”

Manners had heard a lot of this. Many of the Maquis were Spaniards who had fled from Franco’s victory, most of them Communists, and somehow were quite convinced that Churchill and Roosevelt would turn their armies south across the Pyrenees as soon as the war in Europe was over. Manners did not have the heart to disabuse them. Just by refusing to let German troops through Spain to take Gibraltar, Franco had earned himself the gratitude of the Allies.