The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

Gouffre. The Germans had found that one, but I knew a place to hide before I tried to get back to the lads.”
    “Do you know where they took the guns that night?”
    “No, there was a big argument about it, young François and that Commie bloke Marat, shouting at each other in whispers when I got that cart down to the dip. Marat wanted to take the guns and divide them among his Spaniards and scatter to get away from the Germans. I call them Germans, but they were Russians mostly, Russians and some other lot, swarthy blokes. Anyway, young François wasn’t having that, and Berger was trying to sort it out when he sent me back up the hill. It was daft. I could hear that big twenty-millimeter cannon going back up beyond la Farge, and there were these two arguing like fishwives.”
    “What I remember next was the big explosion, as I was going back up the hill. One of the carts we had to abandon was full of ammo. Le capitaine crawled up to it, took the pin out of a Mills bomb, and stuck it between two of the cases, so when the Germans came to move it, the lever snapped back and the whole cart blew. There were bullets cooking off all over the place. That was when it ended. Le capitaine told me about it later. We had a laugh about it the last time I saw him, when he came over for old Lespinasse’s funeral.”
    “Where did young François want to take the guns? Did he know a place?”
    “Oh, he had places everywhere, that one. He knew everybody, all the farmers and their sons, and most of the daughters too, knowing young François. I suppose he knew old Dumonteil, up on the ridge. The Germans deported him, and burned the farm. But we’d never have got the carts up there. Young François must have had somewhere else nearby, some little cave or hollow. He knew it all like the back of his hand, because of his hunting. He was a great one for hunting as a boy. Still is, come to that. You can have all these political crises up in Paris, and he’ll still come down here and take a day or two hunting the bécasse with me. The best hunting in the world, he calls it, the fastest, most cunning bird of them all. Even round here, he can still show me little corners that I don’t know, where he says we might get lucky, and sure enough, there’s a bécasse .”
    “Maybe the guns were just abandoned that night, with all the fighting and the argument,” Clothilde pressed.
    “Oh no, we’d never do that. And anyway, I know we got some of the stuff that night because le capitaine had promised us some of those new wonder drugs, sulfa drugs they called them, for our medical supplies. And I know we got that because they used it on me when I got shot later on at Terrasson, when that Das Reich division came through. About a week or ten days later, it must have been. I remember it very well. It was a powder, and they sprinkled it on my shoulder where the bullet had gone through. Strapped me up with a bandage, and told me I was as good as new. I wasn’t, mind, but young François said since it was my left shoulder, and that didn’t stop me firing a gun. I was young then, and healed fast, and it was all so exciting that you couldn’t stop. That’s where your dad was killed, Terrasson.”
    “Where did young François get the sulfa powder from? Where had he kept it?”
    “He gave some of us a medical kit to carry with us. I remember Lespinasse had one, because he had to use it at Terrasson. Young François was using that Citroën car by then, the one he’d pinched from the Milice in le Buisson. The old traction-avant with the running boards. It was a lovely car, that. He’d pile five or six of us in, guns and all, ammo in the trunk, and those medical kits he made up, and off we’d go. The mobile reserve, he called it. That was a joke, because the real Mobile Reserve was the Vichy one. Real bastards, they were. He always made sure we had some medicinal brandy in the back of the Citroën, brandy and cigarettes. He couldn’t do without his cigarettes, young François. That’s how we got to Terrasson, in that Citroën. We had to make a detour round Rouffignac, because the Germans had burned it.”
    “Was the English capitaine with you at Terrasson?” asked Lydia.
    “I don’t know, mademoiselle, I don’t remember seeing him. He didn’t come in the Citroën. He used one of the trucks we got from the Falange, a nasty bunch of North Africans. Sort of police, based in Périgueux, led by a real bastard called Villeplana, used to be