Charlotte was relieved to be back on the train, heading north, the next morning. There were no seats available and almost no room to stand. Everyone on the train seemed to have at least three large pieces of luggage, and the purpose of most of their journeys, to judge from the smells that came from their suitcases, was to buy and bring home food. Order seemed to have broken down under the burden of numbers; at one of the many halts on the way north she saw young men wriggling on to the train through the windows.
At Uzerche, Charlotte delivered Yves once more to his destination. Here he was in deep cover, according to Mr Jackson, and no longer needed her guiding hand. His further movements were of no concern to Charlotte, and, on the G Section model of minimum information, she was strongly discouraged from enquiring about them. She gained the impression that he would be returning to London, perhaps even on the same flight as her, but did not ask. Until then her only contact with Yves would come as a result of wireless messages from London via the operator in Uzerche; communication between there and the Lavaurette area was unpredictable, though such messages as were received would pass through ‘Octave’.
In Uzerche, the connection was established much more quickly than in Agen: the retired schoolmaster at whose suburban house they arrived had been expecting them for some hours and seemed relaxed about the contact. He introduced himself as Gérard and invited Charlotte to have a drink before she made her way. It was mid-afternoon, and Gérard, a tall, courteous man, took a tray of drinks out on to the terrace at the back of his house where two black dachshunds were sleeping fatly on the gravel. He was a widower, he explained, and the dogs were his chief companions; it seemed clear to Charlotte that they were certainly receiving the better part of his meagre food ration. Gérard spoke of his visits to England in the 1920s and of his particular love of the Lake District; his punctilious and enlightened attitude seemed unperturbed by public events, though this civil equilibrium, it seemed to Charlotte, must have required him to avert his eyes.
Their drinks were finished, refilled and finished once again. Gérard’s remarks to Charlotte took on a valedictory air. Yves looked at his watch. Reluctantly, Charlotte stood up to go, and both men escorted her back into the house. She kissed Yves on either cheek as they stood in the hall and shook Gérard’s hand.
When she heard the door close behind her and began to walk off down the quiet street, she felt for the first time a panic of loneliness.
Meanwhile, on a grey London evening, Cannerley was waiting in Sir Oliver Cresswell’s outer office, twisting the cufflinks in his shirt beneath the scrutiny of an elderly secretary. He assumed there must be something unusually important behind the summons he had received by telephone that morning. This time he had made sure he was early.
‘Come in.’ Sir Oliver appeared briefly at the door, which he left slightly ajar. ‘Sit down.’
Cannerley perched on the single hard chair that faced the desk. Sir Oliver stood with his elbow resting on the mantelpiece. For such a mentally scrupulous man, he kept a remarkably untidy office, with tottering piles of paper and two or three parched plants. The room was panelled, and above a long table against one wall was a reproduction of the Goya portrait of the Duke of Wellington.
Sir Oliver sat down at the desk and looked out of the window. ‘You remember our little chat the other day? Well, I’ve been thinking about it. And a little notion has occurred to me.’
‘Really?’ Cannerley tried not to notice how unpolished his superior’s shoes were.
Sir Oliver coughed. ‘Are you familiar with the pattern of French resistance, such as it is?’
‘Certainly. I wrote a paper on it. It was B-listed, but—’
‘Of course you did. Well, as you know, the Communists have been the only active group so far. But our government’s not worried about them. They have the whole weight of the Occupant and Vichy and the French populace against them. The problem is that there are now a number of Gaullist outfits starting up.’
Cannerley leaned forward. ‘I haven’t heard much about them.’
‘There’s been nothing to hear. Their policy is to wait for the moment to strike. “Long-term action”, I think they call it.’
Cannerley laughed and Sir Oliver wiped the back of his hand swiftly across his own mouth. ‘Meanwhile they’re in the market for arms drops. Their main network was infiltrated from the beginning by Abwehr agents. But although it’s very small beer at the moment, our masters feel the Gaullist movement is something that needs to be watched.’
Sir Oliver had a rolling ‘r’, which made a phrase like ‘arms drops’ problematic; it gave it an inappropriate smack of the nursery. Cannerley found that this childishness made the whole enterprise sound paradoxically more frightening.
He tried to concentrate. ‘I didn’t know anyone took de Gaulle seriously.’
‘They don’t. But if the war continues to run the Allied way . . .’
‘Even so,’ said Cannerley. ‘Old Joan of Arc with his merry men in Carlton Terrace . . . I mean, for a start, he’s been sentenced to death by the French government!’
Sir Oliver sighed. ‘Like the French, we have to think of the likely configuration of Europe after the war. We have to consider all alternatives, however preposterous. We want to be the first country in the new Europe, albeit with some American support.’
‘What about the Russians?’
‘Good God, I can assure you there are plans to shake hands with our Russian friends as far East as possible.’ Sir Oliver gave a shudder. ‘Meanwhile, the spiking of the Gaullist networks would serve a number of purposes. It would be a setback for the Abwehr. It would clear the way for G Section networks and stop de Gaulle getting too big for his boots. It would help keep French resistance under British control. And of course the Service would come out smelling of roses. It’s a happy coincidence of idealism and self-interest.’
Cannerley smiled. ‘Is the word we’re looking for Realpolitik?’
‘I do hope not. Anyway, it seems to me quite feasible that Fowler – or “Mirabel”, as they apparently call him over there – should wish to speak to the Gray girl now she’s in his area. He asks her to run a little errand for him and she passes on the information – if that’s the right word – to the local Gaullists. False times, wrong map references and so on. Gentle havoc ensues. The idea is that the confusion should be as public as possible, to do maximum damage to the General’s reputation.’
‘How will he persuade her?’
‘He’ll have information she wants.’
‘What about?’
‘About what motivates her.’
‘Patriotism?’
‘Yes,’ said Sir Oliver. ‘What else?’
‘Some love of France?’
‘And?’
Cannerley felt sick. He licked his lips. ‘The airman.’
Sir Oliver inclined his head slightly.
‘I see,’ said Cannerley. ‘He’ll tell her where to find him.’
‘Only if she otherwise proves insufficiently . . . ductile.’
‘But suppose he’s dead?’
Sir Oliver opened his hands in a modest shrug. ‘To be honest, I don’t think it terribly matters.’
‘I see. So long as she doesn’t find out, you mean.’ Cannerley drew on a short lifetime’s habit of self-control. He continued to be businesslike. ‘And Fowler’s all right, is he?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Sir Oliver. ‘Most obliging. A small-time rogue, superficially very respectable and thus terrified of having his tax irregularities made public.’ He coughed. ‘A fairly typical G Section appointment.’
Cannerley smiled briefly. ‘And the girl’s up to it?’
‘It’s just a message. Regular FANY work, as you pointed out. And it keeps it all at arm’s length from Fowler. We’ll need him again.’
‘But won’t G Section want to claim responsibility?’
‘I very much doubt it. They’re supposed to be co-ordinating resistance, not misleading other factions. “Setting Europe ablaze” and so forth.’ Sir Oliver subdued another smile. ‘In theory.’
‘And they’d be embarrassed to admit that they’d got this girl banging round like a loose cannon.’
Sir Oliver nodded. ‘And that their local chief’s a crook. Of course, if it does backfire, then G Section are in the soup.’
‘I see.’
‘And you may well think that a consummation even more devoutly to be wished. However, for the time being the discrediting of the Gaullists must remain our first objective. The great thing is that it’s all completely risk-free.’
‘Except for the girl.’
‘Possibly.’ Sir Oliver took a cigarette from a silver box and tapped it briefly on the desk.
‘She’s horribly exposed, isn’t she?’ said Cannerley. He had a sudden picture in his mind of Charlotte’s brown eyes, trusting, slightly bashful, when he had first outlined some possibilities to her at the Ritz. ‘And she’s not even an agent, she’s just running an errand.’
‘They say she speaks very good French.’
Cannerley ran a hand over his smoothly shaved chin. He knew he looked doubtful, but he couldn’t help it. He had an unpleasant feeling in his stomach. It was like the time as a child when he had tried to show off to his friends on the beach at Polzeath. He had swum far out to sea and waved. It was only at that moment he knew that he could not possibly make it back to dry land without help.
‘There’s no gain without risk, Cannerley.’ Sir Oliver peeled off his smudged spectacles and took some papers from the desk, which he held up almost flat against his face to read.
‘Yes, but what would happen if it went wrong?’
‘Well.’ Sir Oliver looked up. ‘Let’s think. What would happen to someone who excited the wrath of a group of French guerrillas and of the German security who had penetrated them . . .’
‘Quite apart from the German military and the French police.’
‘The likely outcome,’ said Sir Oliver, ‘is not something I feel I could predict with any degree of precision.’
Cannerley pursed his lips.
‘But do remember that the nature of this war in France is likely to change. If the Allies are successful in North Africa then the Germans will want to go into Southern France as well. There’ll be no more Free Zone. The more things go against them, the harsher they’ll be on the countries they occupy. And that means that they will eventually provoke real resistance. Even in France.’
‘And we’ll be in the best position to run it,’ said Cannerley.
‘Precisely,’ said Sir Oliver. ‘This is just a little warning shot. Things will get much rougher. Fowler’ll have to get a move on, though, because I think the girl’s due to come back soon. Anyway, I just thought you’d like to know. Since you put the girl their way.’
‘Absolutely. Thank you.’
‘Joan will see you out.’
When Cannerley left the building he went for a walk along the Embankment. The Thames was sluggish and grey as it drifted down from Battersea and Vauxhall. It made him think of fast-flowing French rivers, like the Tarn and the Dordogne, of action and sabotage, and of what Charlotte Gray might be doing.
It was not that he particularly cared about her; that was not the problem. The difficulty was that he was frightened. Everyone he knew had made an accommodation with the War, with the demands on their lives of a national emergency, and it seemed to him that he had been drawn into the wrong compromise.
His father was still living, weakening for consecutive days, then briefly reviving. When he was dead, Cannerley felt that an understanding of the world, a way of dealing that was tactical, discreet, yet based on certain given principles, would die with him. He had believed Sir Oliver and others of an intermediate generation had inherited this unwritten, almost mystical understanding; but now in Sir Oliver he saw only the practical aspect of it: the manoeuvring for position, the promotion of one set of interests over another, regardless of its intrinsic merit and with no thought for the human consequences. When his father died, Cannerley thought, there would be no one in the world whom he could unconditionally admire.
I am a coward, he thought: I’m trapped and I’m too frightened to move.
The nature of his work meant that there was no one with whom he could share his worry. His only choice was to carry on, to act, more than ever, by the book.