William Boyd - The New Confessions

By midafternoon of August 15, St.-Tropez was cleared of Germans, most of whom had either fled or surrendered. I stood in the ruined port with Luc and a rather attractive girl called Nadine wearing a revolver in her belt, and watched the prisoners being assembled ready to be marched off to the beach. In front of us was a large group of about 120 men. They were in Wehrmacht uniforms but they looked more Arabic than German. I asked Nadine who they were.

“From the Ost Legion,” she said. “Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia. They don’t even speak German.”

“We’ve got plenty Poles here too,” Luc said. He offered me a cigarette, a French one. I lit it and the sour tobacco reminded me suddenly of Annecy and the first days of my affair with Doon. All at once I was very happy to be back in France, in Europe. We went to a bar and drank pastis . Luc and Nadine were intrigued to learn I was a film director. We took our drinks and sat outside. The bar was in one of the narrow streets back from the port. We sat in shade but the late-afternoon sun burned strongly on the faded-pink, tiled roofs of the buildings. I took big gulps at the aniseed liquor. Nadine had thick curly hair held back from her face with tortoiseshell clips. She was dark-skinned and wore a blue-and-white print dress with neat canvas shoes on her feet. I wondered if she and Luc were lovers. I felt suddenly very sexually attracted towards her, perhaps because she had a gun. I looked at her hand that held her cigarette. Her nails were short and dirty. The way she was sitting caused her right breast to bulge gently over the butt of the revolver thrust in her belt. I at once saw these images as if they were projected on a cinema screen. Her dark mobile face as she pouted skepticism to some point Luc had raised. The careless way she drew on her cigarette; how she raised her chin and kept her eyes fixed on Luc to blow smoke sideways. The pale-yellow paper of the cigarette. The pale-yellow drink. Her breast. The gun. Just for a second or two — the slightest movement of the camera — so much hinted, so much implicit. I remembered Hamish’s friend Kurt, and what he had said to me. I knew then that The Confessions was not over.

I took a photograph of them both and then left them to return to Loomis at company HQ, which was now established in an old villa on the outskirts of town. My kit was there and my typewriter. Loomis had allowed his frown to relax and passed on new instructions, namely that I was to motor up to a place called Le Muy, some miles inland, to cover the effects of the air- and glider-borne landings.

“Seems there’s some colonel in the Five-oh-ninth from San Diego,” Loomis said. “He’s heard you’re here and wants a lot of local coverage back home.” He looked at me curiously. I continually had to remind myself that I was twenty years older than Loomis.

“Where’re you from, Todd?”

“Edinburgh, Scotland.”

“Yeah? What’s your paper called?”

“The Chula Vista Herald-Post . That’s the biggest one I work for.”

“Good God.” He shook his head. “You got a driver and a jeep outside. Why don’t you check with him about tomorrow?”

I went out into the garden. It was overgrown with mimosa, tamarind and lavender bushes. The night was very warm. Across the bay I could see some fires still burning in Ste.-Maxime. The flames looked pretty on the water.

I found my jeep but there was no sign of the driver. I looked round and saw someone crouched over a lavender bush.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Oh yes, sir.”

He stood up. He was tall and well built. I could not make out his features in the dark. His voice sounded educated. He inhaled ostentatiously.

“Have you smelled the air here, sir?” We inhaled deeply together. “Pines, eucalyptus, lavender … intoxicating.”

He handed me a small bunch of lavender.

“Smell that.”

I did. The scent was so strong it seemed as if I had inhaled a fine powder. I sneezed.

“Excuse me, but are you my driver?”

“If you’re John James Todd of the Chula Vista Herald-Post , I am.”

“I am indeed. What’s your name?”

“Private Brown, sir.”

“What’s your first name? And there’s no need to call me sir. I’m a civilian.”

“It’s Two Dogs Running.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Two Dogs Running. I’m a Cherokee. A Cherokee Indian to you. A redskin, in case you were wondering.” His tone was pleasantly, inoffensively ironic.

I didn’t get a proper look at Two Dogs Running until the next day. We rendezvoused at the company HQ villa after I had written and filed my invasion report for the Dusenberry papers. Two Dogs, as I came to call him, was young — in his early twenties — tall and solid looking. He had a classic hooked nose and thin eyes. His black hair had been shaved to a stubbly crew cut.

“Morning, Mr. Todd,” he said. “Another beautiful day.”

We drove off, overtaking long columns of trucks and marching men that were moving inland from the beachhead. Shortly after lunch we were in Plan-de-la-Tour, where a lieutenant in the 157th RCT assured us that the road to Le Muy was clear. There had been a linkup that morning with patrols from the 509th Airborne.

We motored off. It was a badly paved road with dusty verges. The hills round us were covered in scrub and new plantations of pine trees. On either side we could see huddled dun and orange-pink villages, small farms and olive groves. The blue sky above was scarred with thin salty contrails of the Marauders and Liberators flying in from their bases in Corsica and Sardinia.

“You see that air raid last night?” Two Dogs asked. “Spectacular, wasn’t it?”

There had been an air attack on the ships lying off St.-Tropez. The sky had been hot with searchlights and tracers for a good five minutes. Two Dogs told me a plane had been shot down, but I had seen nothing. We bumped along the road. An old lady in black sat beneath an olive tree tending some goats. She waved as we passed. Everything was tranquil and calm; I reflected on how easy it was for the world to swallow up a war.

“You’d pay a lot for a vacation like this,” Two Dogs said.

“Aren’t we lucky.”

“Where are you from, Mr. Todd?”

“Edinburgh. Edinburgh, Scotland.”

“How come you’re working for the Chula Vista Herald-Post ?”

“It’s an incredibly long story.” I changed the subject. “Where are you from?”

“New Mexico. Little town called Platt.”

“Really? I made a film in New Mexico earlier this year.”

“You’re kidding. What’s it called?”

“ The Equalizer. ”

Two Dogs stopped the jeep. “You made The Equalizer ?”

“Yes.”

“I saw it! Christ. Just before I came overseas. It’s playing everywhere, congratulations.”

“Is it?” I thought for a moment. I had left New York for Casablanca in mid-June. Eddie must have opened it earlier than he had planned. I felt vague alarm. How come I had to find out about this traveling in a jeep in the South of France?

Two Dogs restarted the engine and we set off again. I listened to him recount various episodes in my film. He had a good grasp of its implications.

“What did you do before you enlisted?” I asked.

“Traveling salesman. Perfumes and cosmetics.”

“Hence the lavender.”

We talked some more: about films, about scents, about Two Dogs’ ambitions for his career. He was a college graduate and the unspoken question hedged itself in between us.

“How come you’re—”

“In the motor pool? They don’t give commissions to pesky red varmints, Mr. Todd.”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with being a private. I was one too.”