The Sea Garden (28 page)

Iris lived here with Suzanne and a young mother's help called Jane, who had lost her family and all her possessions in the Luftwaffe's firestorms over the capital. Nancy and Phil, who had married as soon as Phil came home from the Far East, had the lower maisonette. When Nancy and Phil's first child was born ten months after the wedding, Jane worked for them all. She came to be treated as part of the extended family, and the arrangement proved a boon all round.

8

Never Give Up

Provence, May 1948

A
fter the war, Xavier was sometimes mentioned in the many books about SOE that began to appear. But a man who is no longer there cannot defend his reputation. He was a convenient scapegoat. Many years later, when more authoritative histories were written with the benefit of newly opened archive material, there were still more questions than answers about Xavier Descours.

Those who knew him and worked with him always expressed surprise that he was the one who had betrayed them. He was a good man, a moral man, they said. If he had been in cahoots with the Germans, he must have been doing so for the greater good. How had so many of his people escaped capture? How had his flights never been intercepted? During the moon periods, the Luftwaffe was active all along the north coast of France, and although other flights had been intercepted or shot down, the Descours flights had achieved an astonishing record of success. Had he been blamed for others' failures? Did he take German money? Many claimed he did. But the truth was harder to call.

It transpired that he had indeed been to the avenue Foch, on more than one occasion. The first time he was called in to be interviewed by the Gestapo's Kieffer, but he walked free afterwards. Had Xavier managed to persuade the Germans that he should be allowed to go about his business, while keeping them informed? Did he, like the German officer's dentist, intend to get more out of the arrangement than the Nazis did?

His fury when he realized how inept London had been in handling messages from the captured radios was real enough. The Germans had everything, from the codes to the timetables when the signals were due. Some ventured that he was so angry, he didn't care anymore, because to him it was clear that he had been working for idiots. Others remained convinced that the setback had spurred him to work ever harder, but more independently from the British, away from his dangerous game with the Gestapo in Paris.

Was he dead—or had he begun a new life far away from all the complexities of his wartime tightrope?
“Heureux sont ceux qui ont beaucoup peché, il leur sera beaucoup pardonné”
—Happy are those who have sinned greatly, for a great deal will be forgiven them—he had once told her. For years she had pulled that aphorism apart, wondering if it held an answer.

As the years went by, it was not hope of finding Xavier alive that drove Iris, but the desire to know what to tell Suzanne about her father.

 

T
ime and again, Iris came back to the last known sighting of him.

On the night of August 10, 1944, Xavier Descours was the flight liaison officer for a joint British-American operation in Provence. The RAF flew a Dakota in from Cecina in northern Italy to a secret landing strip known as Spitfire, close to Saint-Christol in the Sault lavender area. The mission that night was not a complete success. On board were fifteen men, including returning French politicians and agents, and seven hundred and fifty kilos of freight. The disembarking French and the freight—mainly weapons and explosives—vanished into the night without incident. But the turnabout and takeoff with a total of thirty men, most of whom were escaping US Fortress aircrew, was more problematic. The Dakota—the largest aircraft to set down at Spitfire—ran out of runway at the end of the field, snagging on a band of lavender growing across the strip to disguise its length from the Germans. The only solution was to let down eight of the US escapees to lighten the load, with promises to return for them the next night. Even then, the plane struggled to get airborne again, though it eventually lifted off at the very limit of its capacity thanks to the skill and nerve of the pilot.

But by then the repeated bursts of aircraft noise had alerted a German patrol—or had the Germans been expecting the operation? As the reception committee and their charges scattered, shots were fired. Reprisals were swift and cruel.

After that, nothing. Had Xavier been killed, or captured, then executed? Or had he melted away into a night and fog of his own devising, having played a double game all along, as some were convinced?

 

T
hrough the Libre Résistance, a society formed by what was left of the old networks, Iris was put in touch with some of the old
maquisards
in the south. They exchanged letters, and she used her fortnight's leave in the late spring of 1948 to go to France. She crossed the Channel and travelled by train to Paris, on to Avignon and then Sault. She was met at the railway station by Gaston Durand and his young wife Emilie.

Gaston took her suitcase and led her to a van that looked like corrugated cardboard on wheels. “We'll go to Saint-Christol, but before I show you the field, we'll all have lunch,” he said.

The van lurched through a rocky landscape of twisty roads and fields. In the village of Saint-Christol they parked in a narrow street of cracked houses. A cold wind gusted, and a clock struck twelve with a thin tinny sound. Chickens scurried across their path as M. and Mme Durand led her into a café that was surprisingly full, and over to a table where a man was already seated.

“May I introduce Thierry LeChêne? He was there at Spitfire that night.”

He rose to shake her hand.

“So you want to know about the last Spitfire operation?” he opened directly. He had a broad Provençal accent that took a moment or two to understand.

“Yes—and one participant in particular,” said Iris.

“We will do what we can to help you, but as I'm sure you know, these things were complicated.”

“I realize that. I'm very grateful—”

Gaston Durand waved that away. “We are the ones who are grateful. We won't forget what was done here by the RAF.”

Iris smiled. “That's . . . rather refreshing to hear. General de Gaulle has not been so generous-spirited since the end of the war.”

It was undoubtedly for the best that any further discussion of the president's aggressive nationalism was interrupted by the arrival of a waitress bringing plates of pâté and salad.

“The centre for our cell was Céreste,” said Thierry. “Each person in the group knew only the participants closest to themselves, and everyone else by a pseudonym only. A knock at the wrong door might be a death sentence. You were never sure of other people's loyalties, even those you had known all your life.”

“We knew of Xavier Descours, but only by his first name. More often he was referred to as the Engineer,” explained Gaston.

“And he was . . . well respected?”

“Very well respected. He was one of the best.”

“What do you think happened to him?”

They exchanged glances and shrugged expressively. “You have to understand. Xavier was not a local. He came in like the British and Americans came in, and then he left. We never saw him afterwards, and he didn't turn up for any of the honours ceremonies, but there could be many reasons for that.”

“Do you have any reason to think that . . . he didn't make it to the end?”

He shook his head. “We have been putting the word out, as you asked. But no one has come up with any new information.”

“What about a young woman code-named Rose, his wireless operator? Was she there that night?”

Again, they looked blankly at each other.

“You never came across her at all?”

“No. But that was as it should be. There had been problems keeping our wireless operators safe. The first one was shot. Maybe too many people knew what he was doing. If the Engineer was doing his job right, he would have kept his operator well out of it.”

As they ate, Thierry showed her photographs: grainy pictures of men in peasant clothes, posing in groups in the fields. Some carried a gun with a rose at the end like a garden hose.

“Dropped by parachute by the RAF, those,” said Thierry.

“Designed by the Czechs,” added Iris acerbically.

Afterwards, at the field they called Spitfire, they stood in contemplation.

“Is that the strip of lavender that proved such a hazard to the plane?” she asked Thierry.

“More has been planted since then. There wasn't that much during the war, but we had to disguise the length of the fields somehow.”

“The people living on the farms out here must have heard the engines,” said Iris.

“They knew,” said Emilie.

“They say now,” said Gaston, “that five percent of the French population actively collaborated with the Germans, five percent were active in the Resistance, and ninety percent did nothing. But here, one has to revise that to take account of all the small acts of resistance. The farmers who gave their land to allow the planes to come down and the drops of equipment to be made, which meant that at a time of hunger they couldn't use it to grow crops, and also implicated themselves and their families. They had to count on the loyalty of villages close to the landing fields—all the people who closed their eyes and ears to what was going on. It was a complicity of the many.”

They looked out at the lavender field, its neat corduroy rows, and the plants still in the process of waking from grey to purple. Hills rose on three sides.

“Hell of a place to land a plane as big as a Dakota,” said Thierry.

“How did you get here that night?” Iris asked him. She was trying to picture it, the full moon, the night noises, shadows moving.

“I came in the lavender van with the man they called the Philosopher—Victor Musset. He ran a soap and scent factory at Manosque. My cousin Auguste was a committed resistant, but in his other life he was a lavender farmer, a big supplier to Musset's. That was how the connection was made.”

The bottle of scent.

“Musset . . . is he still alive?”

“Certainly.”

“Might it be possible for me to meet him?”

 

T
he Durands put her up on their farmstead in the hills above the town of Apt. Emilie told her how she had been the network's courier, usually on her bicycle.

Two days later Iris was shown into a bar in the medieval heart of the town by the cathedral. It was a dark and undistinguished room with a vaulted ceiling, made to seem lower by Victor Musset's height. He was a large man; judging by his girth, he enjoyed his food. He did not generally talk about the war, he told her. Too many bad memories.

M. Musset had a small glass of cloudy pastis in front of him, from which he hardly drank.

“It is a long time past,” he said, in a kind voice, sadness in his spaniel eyes. “People change their stories. Sometimes they don't even know they are doing it. They hear more of the background in later years and assume they knew those facts at the time. But they did not. None of us could see the whole picture, or foresee the outcome. All I know is what I saw, but even then I cannot be certain I am not overlaying that with knowledge acquired subsequently.

“What you must never forget is that the Resistance was diverse, made up of all kinds of people with all kinds of allegiances. We wanted to emerge from the war into a different country from before, a different political landscape. By August 1944 an active member of the Resistance had a life expectancy of three months, yet many young men felt it was worth the risk.”

“According to the RAF records,” said Iris, “the Dakota did return the next night for the Americans stranded near Spitfire, but there were no lights on the ground at the coordinates.”

“The reception committee decided it was too dangerous to try again.”

“Were the Germans watching the field?”

“They might well have been. The morning after the Dakota landed, they shot an elderly couple who worked the nearest farm, no doubt after torturing them for whatever information they had, and burned the farmhouse to the ground. Terrible, simply terrible—and so pointless, you know? The war was nearly over—why did they have to do that?”

Iris shook her head.

“That was the first time one of Xavier's operations had gone wrong,” he said. “They used to say he was the best of the best.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Who can say? Many people grabbed what they could at the end of the war, especially those who had been striving for a new France, a better France. It was a time when scores were settled, and sometimes not everything was as it seemed. He may be someone else now, or he may be the person he was before the war that we never knew. From what we know now, it was not just the south of France that he covered, but right up to Paris. He was a wealthy man, we knew that. He could have come from anywhere, and returned anywhere. Or his body might be in a mass grave.”

“He was a successful businessman, I can tell you that. Before the war, and during it, he ran an electronics company. We made inquiries all over France, but he is not involved now in any similar business,” said Iris.

“He was usually known to our cells as the Engineer. That makes sense.”

“What do you think happened to him, monsieur?”

“In the absence of any further information, if you ask me what I believe, then I have to tell you that he is probably dead.”

“But there is no evidence of that?”

“None that I know of.”

Iris nodded slowly, not willing to speak.

“I have made some inquiries,” Musset went on, “but no one here knows what happened to him after the night the Dakota landed. I remember there was an incident at the time because not even his wireless operator knew where he'd gone. I've even asked the Poet.”

“The Poet?”

“The leader of our cell. A man who would never have been passed fit for any army—too shambling, too apparently disorganised. He had two safe houses in Céreste, each with two exits, just like the fields we used. It was quiet in this region, but strategically important, between Lyon—a hotbed of intrigue, denunciations, and Gestapo terror—and the coast.

“Tough decisions had to be made. When we heard that a woman who worked at the pharmacy here in Apt where messages were dropped had threatened to denounce the network, one of us had to take action. Our man was on a bicycle. He shot her while she was outside the station, did it very quietly, and cycled back to Céreste.”