There was a small bistro opposite the station. He led the way to it and inside — a small zinc bar at which a single man stood in a countryman’s corduroy coat, and two tables where other men in the rough clothes of farmers or laborers sat with glasses of coffee or wine, playing dominoes, all of them turning to look as Picklock led his party in and up to the bar, where a tremendous woman in black said,
‘Messieurs?’
‘Coffee, Madame, and bread if you have it,’ Picklock said.
‘I dont want coffee,’ the third said. ‘I want a drink.’
‘Sure,’ Picklock said in a calm and furious voice, even lowering it a little: ‘Stick around here until somebody comes and lifts that box, let alone opens it. I hear they always give you a drink before you climb the steps.’
‘Maybe we could find another—’ a fourth began.
‘Shut up,’ Picklock said. ‘Drink that coffee. I’ve got to think.’ Then a new voice spoke.
‘What’s the matter?’ it said. ‘You boys in trouble?’ It was the man who had been standing at the bar when they entered. They looked at him now — a solid stocky man, obviously a farmer, not quite as old as they had thought, with a round hard ungullible head and a ribbon in the lapel of the coat — not one of the best ones but still a good one, matching in fact one which Picklock himself wore; possibly that was why he spoke to them, he and Picklock watching one another for a moment.
‘Where’d you get it?’ Picklock said.
‘Combles,’ the stranger said.
‘So was I,’ Picklock said.
‘You in a jam of some sort?’ the stranger said.
‘What makes you think that?’ Picklock said.
‘Look, Buster,’ the stranger said. ‘Maybe you were under sealed orders when you left Paris, but there hasn’t been much secret about it since your sergeant got out of that carriage this afternoon. What is he, anyway? some kind of a reformist preacher, like they say they have in England and America? He was sure in a state. He didn’t seem to care a damn that you were drunk. What seemed to fry him was, how you managed to get twelve more bottles of brandy without him knowing how you did it.’
‘This afternoon?’ Picklock said. ‘You mean it’s still today? Where are we?’
‘St Mihiel. You lay over here tonight while they finish nailing enough black cloth on your carriage to make it look like a hearse. Tomorrow morning a special train will pick you up and take you on to Paris. What’s wrong? Did something happen?’
Suddenly Picklock turned. ‘Come on back here,’ he said. The stranger followed. They stood slightly apart from the others now, in the angle of the bar and the rear wall. Picklock spoke rapidly yet completely, telling it all, the stranger listening quietly.
‘What you need is another body,’ the stranger said.
‘You’re telling me?’ Picklock said.
‘Why not? I’ve got one. In my field. I found it the first time I plowed. I reported it, but they haven’t done anything about it yet. I’ve got a horse and cart here; it will take about four hours to go and come.’ They looked at one another. ‘You’ve got all night — that is, now.’
‘All right,’ Picklock said. ‘How much?’
‘You’ll have to say. You’re the one that knows how bad you need it.’
‘We haven’t got any money.’
‘You break my heart,’ the stranger said. They looked at one another. Without removing his eyes, Picklock raised his voice a little. ‘Morache.’ Morache came up. ‘The watch,’ Picklock said.
‘Wait now,’ Morache said. It was a Swiss movement, in gold; he had wanted one ever since he saw one first, finding it at last on the wrist of a German officer lying wounded in a shell crater one night after he, Morache, had got separated from a patrol sent out to try for a live prisoner or at least one still alive enough to speak.
He even saw the watch first, before he saw who owned it, having hurled himself into the crater just in time before a flare went up, seeing the glint of the watch first in the corpse-glare of the magnesium before he saw the man — a colonel, apparently shot through the spine since he seemed to be merely paralysed, quite conscious and not even in much pain; he would have been exactly what they had been sent out to find, except for the watch.
So Morache murdered him with his trench knife (a shot here now would probably have brought a whole barrage down on him) and took the watch and lay just outside his own wire until the patrol came back (empty-handed) and found him. Though for a day or so he couldn’t seem to bring himself to wear the watch nor even look at it until he remembered that his face had been blackened at the time and the German could not have told what he was even, let alone who; besides that, the man was dead now. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Wait, now.’
‘Sure,’ Picklock said. ‘Wait in that carriage yonder until they come for that box. I dont know what they’ll do to you then, but I do know what they’ll do if you run because that will be desertion.’ He held out his hand. ‘The watch.’ Morache unstrapped the watch and handed it to Picklock.
‘At least get some brandy too,’ he said. The stranger reached for the watch in Picklock’s hand.
‘Whoa, look at it from there,’ Picklock said, holding the watch on his raised open palm.
‘Sure you can have brandy,’ the stranger said. Picklock closed his hand over the watch and let the hand drop.
‘How much?’ he said.
‘Fifty francs,’ the stranger said.
‘Two hundred,’ Picklock said.
‘A hundred francs.’
‘Two hundred,’ Picklock said.
‘Where’s the watch?’ the stranger said.
‘Where’s the cart?’ Picklock said. It took them a little over four hours (‘You’d have to wait anyhow until they finish nailing up that black cloth and get away from the carriage,’ the stranger said) and there were four of them (‘Two more will be enough,’ the stranger said. ‘We can drive right up to it.’) — himself and the stranger on the seat, Morache and another behind them in the cart, north and eastward out of the town into the country darkness, the horse itself taking the right road without guidance, knowing that it was going home, in the darkness the steady jounce of jogging horse and the thump and rattle of the cart a sound and a vibration instead of a progress, so that it was the roadside trees which seemed to move, wheeling up out of the darkness to rush slowly backward past them against the sky.
But they were moving, even though it did seem (to Picklock) forever, the roadside trees ravelling suddenly into a straggle of posts, the horse, still without guidance, swinging sharply to the left.
‘Sector, huh?’ Picklock said.
‘Yeah,’ the stranger said. ‘The Americans broke it in September. Vienne-la-pucelle yonder,’ he said, pointing. ‘It caught it. It was right up in the tip. Not long now.’ But it was a little longer than that though at last they were there — a farm and its farmyard, lightless. The stranger stopped the horse and handed Picklock the lines. ‘I’ll get a shovel. I’m going to throw in a ground-sheet too.’
He was not long, passing the shovel and the folded ground-sheet to the two in the back and mounting the seat again and took the lines, the horse lurching forward and making a determined effort to turn in the farmyard gate until the stranger reined it sharply away. Then a gate in a hedgerow; Morache got down and opened it for the cart to pass. ‘Leave it open,’ the stranger said. ‘We’ll close it when we come out.’
Which Morache did and swung up and into the cart as it passed him; they were in a field now, soft from plowing, the unguided horse still choosing its own unerring way, no longer a straight course now but weaving, at times almost doubling on itself though Picklock could still see nothing. ‘Dud shells,’ the stranger explained. ‘Fenced off with flags until they finish getting them out. We just plow circles around them.
According to the women and the old men who were here then, the whole war started up again after that recess they took last May, right in that field yonder. It belongs to some people named Demont.
The man died that same summer; I guess two wars on his land only a week apart was too much for him. His widow works it now with a hired man. Not that she needs him; she can run a plow as good as he can. There’s another one, her sister. She does the cooking. She has flies up here.’ He was standing now, peering ahead; in silhouette against the sky he tapped the side of his head. Suddenly he swung the horse sharply away and presently stopped it. ‘Here we are,’ he said.
‘About fifty metres yonder on that bank dividing us, there used to be the finest beech tree in this country. My grandfather said that even his grandfather couldn’t remember when it was a sapling. It probably went that same day too. All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s get him up. You dont want to waste any time here either.’
He showed them where his plow had first exposed the corpse and he had covered it again and marked the place. It was not deep and they could see nothing and after this length of time or
