The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

then as the lead truck turned and rumbled across the crossing and down the slope, François had a perfect head-on shot with no deflection and he held his aim as the first short burst hit the road just ahead and the truck rolled into it. A sustained burst and the truck slowed as if it had hit a wall, and careered off the road and into a ditch. The second truck drove into the same burst of fire, drove through it and failed to make the bend and rolled into the river. François paused, switched his aim, and raked the last truck, now stopped just before the level crossing. The two trucks stuck in the middle were trying frantically to turn, soldiers leaping out into the trees. The last truck exploded as the petrol tank blew up and ammunition began to cook off. Long raking bursts into the trees, and then the sound of single shots as the rifles began firing at the soldiers. François would have to change the machine gun barrel soon. Another two bursts into the two middle trucks. More single shots. Now the Germans were firing back, but firing anywhere, François’s position still unspotted. Time to go. His Frenchmen were capering with joy behind him, the fools. They’d attract bullets. He pushed them down the slope beyond the ridge toward Audrix. His headache had quite disappeared.

    Boridot’s farm looked deserted and ramshackle and the small vineyard was thick with weeds. But the vegetable garden was well kept and blooming with early radishes and some of the fattest cabbages Manners had ever seen. There were some chickens pecking in the yard, and two dogs chained to rings in the stone wall. They came barking at Manners until their chains yanked them back as he pushed Berger’s bicycle through the sagging gate. It was held closed by a piece of old rope that looked as if it had come from the same batch that now served Boridot as a belt. The old farmer wore a faded red handkerchief on his head, the four corners tied into tiny knots to keep it in place, and wooden sabots instead of shoes. And his teeth gripped the aged pipe between his teeth with the same determination as his hands kept the gleaming shotgun pointed at Manners’s chest.
    “I have come to see the wounded man, the one who was shot in the thigh,” said Manners, suddenly conscious that he did not know the wounded man’s name, that he sounded foreign, and that a German might be asking the same sort of question. The barrel of the shotgun looked very big indeed. He scoured his mind for something reassuring to say. Had not Berger said that old Boridot too was a veteran? “You will remember from the Great War that it is the rule in the British Army that an officer must see to the comfort of his wounded men.”
    “It is all right, Grand-père . This is the English officer,” said a woman’s voice, and the vet he had seen the previous day appeared in the doorway wiping her hands on a towel. She was wearing a full gray skirt and a white blouse, buttoned neatly to the neck, with her fair hair tied up in a large knot. Even wearing the same sturdy boots, she looked far more fetching than she had dressed in baggy pants as a hiker. “I know him. Berger introduced us.”
    “Is he really your grandfather?” Manners asked her as the shotgun was lowered and the craggy old man came forward to shake his hand.
    “No, I just call him that. I’ve known him all my life,” she said, coming forward to be kissed on both cheeks. It was a French greeting Manners always enjoyed, although it made him slightly uncomfortable, and he did it clumsily with an abrupt jerk of his head. She carried a scent of faded lavender, like the bowl his mother kept in her sewing room. He remembered her name was Sybille, and there was amusement in her eyes as he stepped back.
    “How is your patient?”
    “I’ve known worse, but not since the last pregnant cow whose calf was turned in the womb,” she said. “I’m glad to see you, because you must tell London to start sending medical supplies in the parachutes. Not just those field dressings, which will get us all arrested and shot if the Germans find them. We are short of everything, even aspirin. But the new sulfa drugs, can you get London to send some? And plain white bandages? And scalpels and gut for sewing wounds?”
    “I’ll try, Sybille. But I think they are more concerned with inflicting wounds than treating them.”
    “Well, come and see the old goat. Perhaps you can order him to stop trying to put his hand up my