Esther Chilton

If you’d like to be included in this slot, please get in touch: estherchilton@gmail.com. Poems can be up to 60 lines and prose 2000 words. If you’d like to add a short bio and photo, then great. All I ask is that there’s nothing offensive.

My guest this week is an ex-student, who has appeared in this slot before but not for a few years. We ran into each other a few months ago when I was at an event with my authors group. We’d never met before so it was wonderful to meet him. Please give a warm welcome to Gordon Simmonds. He’s written a beautiful short story based on a photo prompt (below).

A Night to Remember

By

Gordon Simmonds

She strode into the restaurant. No, not strode, but rather glided, like the cat-walk model she once was. Tall, slim, elegant, her posture denying the eighty years of her life which even now turned heads of men and women alike. Her clothes, which could have been haute couture, but were more likely a well-chosen ensemble from the racks at Carrefour and worn in the style only a Parisienne could pull off.

Even though all our meetings had been on-line, I rose as she approached and we kissed cheeks like old friends and I detected a hint of some subtle but appropriate scent. I prepared a chair for her and waited till she was comfortable.

“Would you like a drink, or something to eat?” I said.

“Thank you. Just a drink, please. Vodka Martini, if you don’t mind.”

I signalled the waiter and a short while later, turned and studied her intently.

Dark blonde? Corn yellow? It was hard to describe the colour of her hair, cut shoulder length. The lines that now furrowed her face, her neck and hands could not hide the fact that she had once been spectacularly attractive.

“You are still very beautiful Madame.”

Her intense blue eyes met my gaze and her full lips twisted ever so slightly as she said.

“Still? Monsieur.”

Her lips turned into a smile as she watched my discomfort. I swear I must have blushed as I realised my faux pas. She sipped her drink as she watched me gather my thoughts. In reckless abandon I brazened it out and said.

“I’m sorry, but you know what I mean.”

Face to face it was so much easier to read the intimate details of her response than Skype ever could. Perhaps it was the raising of an eyebrow, the slight turn of the head, but I knew she was mocking me.

“Of course, dear boy. Do you really think an old hag like me doesn’t know a compliment when she hears one?”

For once in a long while I was struck dumb. I felt like a schoolboy under the scrutiny of a strict and demanding teacher.

“I… I…” Then my natural arrogance took over and I reasserted myself.

“You are nothing like I imagined, Skype did not do you justice.”

She reached a liver spotted hand across the table and laid it on mine.

“Don’t mind me, Monsieur, it is my pleasure in life to intimidate good looking young men and watch their reaction.”

Her lips spread into a full-blooded grin and I grinned along with her. I placed my other hand over hers and from that point on we were comfortable with each other. She withdrew her hand and as if recomposing herself said.

“Now. To business. You want to know why I murdered Celine Dubios? Are you ready?”

I switched on the tiny recording device I had brought with me and waited for her to begin.

“To understand why, you must hear the whole story from the beginning. As you know was raised in England but spent many years in France as the daughter of an English diplomat. I escaped France in 1940 and arrived in London in time for the Blitz. I volunteered for a number of jobs to aid the war effort and eventually was recruited and trained by the SOE when they found out I was fluent in both French and English.”

“The SOE?” I interrupted.

“The Special Operations Executive – the original spy masters.”

She turned her head to look wistfully out of the window, but barely seeing the ornate gardens beyond.

“It was May 1944 and everyone knew that the invasion was coming soon. I parachuted into a small market town near Paris and met up with a small group of resistance fighters. I had brought a radio transmitter and was soon in contact with London. For days we heard nothing.”

She turned again to look me in the eye. The wistfulness had gone and I suddenly recognised the hard intransigence at the core of her being.

“Then on June 1st 1944,” she continued, “I received the message ‘Mother needs a new dress’. This was the code we were waiting for and I knew then that we had a job to do – we were to blow up an important railway junction near the town.

“Later that night, the five members of our group set out – myself, Pierre, Alain, Philippe and Rene. First we had to find the cache of arms, ammunition and explosives which had been parachuted and hidden weeks before. Deep in dark woods under a moonless night, it was hard to find the exact location. Brambles and bracken would clutch at our clothes so that it was impossible to move quietly. The only saving grace was that any German patrols would be just as noisy.

“Eventually Rene whispered that he had found the marker and thus fully armed and laden with explosives, we made our way to the target area. We heard nothing unusual, just the hoot of an owl or the rustle of some nocturnal creature which turned our blood cold. After perhaps a kilometre, we came to the embankment upon which the railway tracks were laid. The men insisted that I stayed below as a sort of rear guard as they groped their way up the steep treeless slope.”

She hesitated, as if gathering her thoughts, then continued.

“That was when all hell broke loose. A flare arced gracefully into the sky trailing sparks like a November firework and suddenly the night became like a summers day, lighting the embankment with a soft amber glow. Bullets whipped and whined around us as the men scrambled back down the slope. I opened up with my sten gun in the direction of the muzzle flashes – short sharp bursts which may not have hit anything, but kept their heads down – I changed magazines. Pierre stopped to light the fuse on his explosive charge and hurled it toward the incoming fire, but in so doing, collapsed with a bullet in the leg. Rene and Alain went back to drag Pierre along with us.”

She stopped to take another sip of her drink.

“You do realise, Monsieur, that to have left him alive would have meant that he would have been tortured, all of us would have been betrayed and all his friends and family would have been executed?”

Her eyes drilled into mine and I nodded.

“We were fortunate. This far behind the Atlantic Wall there were no crack troops, just old men who hadn’t been in battle since 1918, and youngsters, boys really, who had never been under fire before. So yes, my covering fire kept their heads down, and that saved us.

“We dragged Pierre unceremoniously to a safe house. Us trying not to leave a trail, and him trying not to scream from the pain of his wound. His moans and whimpers were pitiful, but we dared not stop.”

She took another sip of her drink and looked out of the window once more. I thought I could see moisture in her eyes, but she was resolute.

“The rest of that night was chaos. German patrols and armoured cars toured every street and track in the area. Townsfolk and villagers were rounded up and interrogated but none knew where we were. Given time, the Germans would have worked out that the men were missing from their homes, but in the meantime, we were safe in a dugout under the floor of an abandoned barn. We treated Pierre’s wound as best we could, but it was a mess.

“We knew someone close to us had talked about our mission and alerted the Germans. We also knew there could be only one culprit.”

She stopped again, sipped her drink and dropped her gaze to her lap.

“Have you ever wondered, Monsieur, what lengths a pretty girl might go to for a pair of silk stockings and a tube of lipstick?”

She looked me straight in the eye again.

“No-one else knew me. I had the correct papers. I could move freely around the town, and I was, how shall I say it? Pretty.

“I was able to change into passably fashionable street clothes, and the next day, went out seeking retribution, if not revenge. I knew where to find her, our traitor. She would spend her lunch time at a bar near the centre of town where she would meet her man-friend. I went there early and ordered a drink – a vodka-martini.”

A brief nod to the almost empty glass in front of her.

“So…” She took a deep breath.

“Celine came in at her usual time, her man-friend a little while later. I didn’t feel so bad about things then, his SS uniform was all I needed to know to confirm what we already suspected. I sipped my drink and occasionally glared at my watch as if I were expecting someone who was late. I heard Celine excuse herself while she ‘powdered her nose’ and followed her into the ladies toilet.”

She was staring at me now as if waiting for some sort of reaction.

“I took the garrotte out of my purse. She looked at me in the mirror as I looped the piano wire around her throat. The SOE had taught me well, it was quick and clean. The wire crushed her windpipe as I pulled it tight and constricted her carotid arteries. She was dead before I could drag her into an empty cubicle.

“She was a little smaller than me, but I struggled to get her sat unsupported on the toilet. I locked the door from the inside and slid myself under the door. It would be some time before anyone would become concerned and break their way in.

“I just walked out of there, smiling sweetly at the SS officer as I passed.

“Three days later, June 5^th, when the hue and cry had quietened down, Philippe, Rene, Alain and myself left Pierre in the safety of the dugout and went out again to successfully carry out the original attack. The following day the allies landed in Normandy – the rail line and junction had been put out of action in time for D-Day.”

I sat there stunned. She reached into her hand-bag and took out an ornate cigarette case, withdrew a long slim cigarette and lit it, blowing a long stream of smoke to the ceiling. The eyes. I’ll always remember those eyes. It was as if all our communication, all our hidden emotion was through those piercing blue eyes.

“So what do you think of me now, Monsieur?” she glared at me.

“You’re an incredible woman,” I said in all honesty, and let silence fill the void.

The questions I had prepared so carefully escaped me but there were some which I had to ask.

“Do you feel guilty?” I asked.

“Guilty? Guilty? My poor, modern, good looking young man, but so, so ignorant.”

She leaned forward quickly and gripped my hand tightly in both of hers.

“Listen to me, boy. I spent the first part of the war walking home through the bombing of London. Of seeing death and destruction on every street. I’ve seen grief you cannot even imagine and you ask if I feel guilty?

“Did you know that hundreds of SOE agents and resistance fighters just like me, Pierre, Rene, Alain, and Philippe were captured and horribly tortured until, if they were lucky, they were taken outside and shot? All because of people like Celine who thought a fur coat and stockings were worth more than human lives.

“Can you imagine how many Allied lives we saved when we blew up that track? How we made it so much more difficult for the Germans to move men and materials to the front? It couldn’t have happened unless traitors like Celine were eliminated. Don’t you see?

I feel no more guilty than a front-line soldier whose weapon is locked and loaded and sees an enemy soldier two hundred yards away… and kills him. The fact that it was girl on girl is shocking to you, isn’t it? That I could look into her eyes turning grey as she died. That’s shocking too.”

Her voice had risen, her nails were digging into my hand and people were turning in their chairs to watch. I’m sure she drew blood, but I was captivated by her intensity. She relaxed and patted my aching hand and said softly.

“War is shocking, but after the shock, we must either fight or flee. I chose the former.”

She reclined in her chair and crossed her shapely legs. The cigarette now had more ash than tobacco, which she stubbed into an ashtray.

I hesitated to ask and she saw the indecision in my face.

“Go on,” she said, “what more do you want to know?”

It was my turn to look askance.

“Have you any regrets?”

She continued to follow the smoke with her eyes.

“Everyone who takes part in a war has regrets. The survivors continually ask themselves, ‘Why me. When so many comrades lie dead.’ The crippled ask the same question. Only the dead know the true meaning of peace.”

“What happened to Rene, Alain, Philippe… and Pierre.” I almost choked at the end.

She lit another cigarette and watched the smoke spiral to the ceiling. “They were all killed during the liberation, all except Pierre. He stayed in the dugout until the Americans liberated the town, but by then his wound had turned gangrenous. He was evacuated to England where his leg was amputated.”

At this, she turned to me and with a flash of anger flaring in those glorious eyes said.

“He lost not only his leg, but his sister… his name was Dubois.”

“Celine,” I said under my breath, but she heard.

She was crying now. The tears dripping down the creases of her face but maintaining that withering stare as if daring me to criticise. People nearby were staring.

“Yes. Celine was his sister,” she said softly.

She reached into her bag and drew out a tissue which she used to dab away the tears. She allowed the trace of a smile to reanimate her face.

“Why must you insist on making an old woman like me cry? What more do you want from me?”

“Do you know who I am?” I asked her, somewhat more sternly than strictly necessary.

I watched her take in every inch of my face as if she were stroking me with a featherlike touch. I tried to detect a level of understanding in her gaze, willing, yet unwilling for her to seek out the truth without the use of words.

Finally she said, “You are Peter Pan. At least that is what your Skype name is.”

“Yes. I am Peter Pan, but my real name is Peter Dubois. My father lost a leg in the war but he never blamed you for what happened to Celine. She was my aunt.”

“Mon Dieu,” she whispered, eyes locked on mine. “Mon dieu, me pardonne mon ami,” and then, taking my face gently in her hands she said again, “Forgive me, my friend. God forgive me.”

***

Image credit: Pinterest