The Devils of D-Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

Jacques, standing up
and giving a small bow. ‘It isn’t often we have people to eat with us. I
suppose we are too close to the tank, and people don’t like to come this way.’
    ‘It’s that bad?’
    ‘Well, it isn’t comfortable.’
    While Madeleine helped to take out the last dishes, and
Jacques went to open the farm gate for me, I stood in the kitchen buttoning my
coat and watching Eloise’s bent back as she washed up over the steamy sink.
    I said, ‘Au revoir ,
Eloise.’
    She didn’t turn round, but she said, ‘Au revoir , monsieur .’
    I took a step towards the back door, but then I paused, and
looked at her again.
    ‘Eloise?’ I asked.
    ‘ Oui , monsieur ?’
    ‘What is it really, inside that tank?’
    I saw the almost imperceptible stiffening of her back. The
mop stopped slapping against the plates, and the knives and forks stopped
clattering.
    She said, ‘I do not know, monsieur. Truly.’
    ‘Have a guess.’
    She was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘Perhaps it is
nothing at all. But perhaps it is something that neither heaven nor earth knows
anything about.’
    ‘That only leaves hell.’
    Again, she was silent. Then she turned from the sink and
looked at me with those pale, wise eyes.
    ‘ Oui , monsieur .
Et le roi de l’enfer , c’est le diable .’
     
    The priest was very old. He must have been almost ninety,
and he sat at his dusty leather-topped desk like a sagging sack of soft
potatoes. But he had an intelligent, kindly face; and even though he spoke
slowly and softly, as his lungs filled and emptied with the laboured aspiration of ancient bellows, he was lucid in his words, and precise. He had
fraying white hair and a bony nose you could have hung your hat on, and as he
talked he had a habit of steepling his long fingers
and lifting his neck so that he could see down into the grey cobbled courtyard
that fronted his house.
    He said, ‘The English cleric’s name was the Reverend
Taylor,’ and he peered out of the window as if expecting the Reverend Taylor to
appear around the corner at any moment.
    ‘The Reverend Taylor? There must be
five thousand Reverend Taylors in England.”
    Father Anton smiled, and did something complicated inside
his mouth with his dentures. ‘That is probably so.
    But I am quite certain that there is only one Reverend Woodfall Taylor.’
    It was four-thirty now, almost dark, but I had got so caught
up in the mystery of this decaying Sherman that I had skipped my cartographic
readings for the day, and taken a trip up to the opposite end of the village to
talk to Father Anton. He lived in a huge, sombre ,
forbidding French house in the severest style, with a hall of dark polished
wood that you could have landed a 747 on, and
staircase after staircase of chilled marble, flanked by gloomy oil paintings of
cardinals and Popes and other miserable doyens of the church. Everywhere you
looked, there was a mournful face.
    It was as bad as spending the evening at a Paul Robeson
record night in Peoria, Illinois. . Father Anton said, ‘When he came here, Mr Taylor was a very enthusiastic young vicar. He was full
of the energy of religion. But I don’t think he truly understood the importance
of what he had to do. I don’t think he understood how terrible it was, either.
Without being unkind, I think he was the kind of young cleric who is easily
seduced into thinking that mysticism is the firework display that celebrates
true faith.
    Mind you, the Americans paid him a great deal of money. It
was enough to build himself a new steeple, and a
church hall. You can’t blame him.’
    I coughed. It was wickedly cold in Father Anton’s house, and
apart from saving on heating he also seemed to have a penchant for
penny-pinching on electricity. The room was so shadowy and dark that I could
barely make him out, and all I could see distinctly was the shine of the silver
crucifix around his neck.
    I said, ‘What I don’t understand is why we needed him. What
was he doing