Assignment in Brittany by Helen Macinnes

Author:Helen Macinnes [MacInnes, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781781161586
Publisher: Titan
Published: 2012-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

18

ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNTAIN

The road to Mont Saint-Michel was simple, for it stretched in a series of straight lines over the flatness of the reclaimed sea land. But it was just this simplicity which added to the danger of the journey, which forced Hearne to follow the road itself and not trust himself to the emptiness of the miles of open grass and vegetable fields. Flat as a pancake, he said to himself in disgust, and there was just about as much cover as a fly would find in a stroll over a pancake. One thing he could be thankful for: he wasn’t the only person on this road. Here and there was a lonely figure trudging patiently along with a heavy basket for company, or a small family group of fishers and oyster-gatherers.

In front of him a woman thickly bundled in black petticoats had halted to rest. The little boy in his faded and patched blue dress waited patiently beside her. As Hearne drew level with them the woman lifted the basket slowly on to her back.

Hearne slowed his pace. “You’ve a heavy load there,” he said.

The woman gave a final heave to the basket, settling it as comfortably as it was possible between her shoulders. The black blouse was threadbare and sewn into a patchwork of mends. She was eyeing his dusty, crumpled clothes, probably trying to place him within her limited knowledge of people. But at least he couldn’t have seemed dangerous, even if he was filthy, for she at last gave him an answer.

“Yes,” she said, and plodded on with the child half walking, half running at her side. He was a thin little thing, probably no more than five years old although he had the face of a child of ten. His closely cropped hair, as if shaved for scarlet fever, bristled thinly over the egg-shaped head and made his large, dark eyes larger, darker.

“I’ll take the basket,” Hearne said, “and you can take the child. He looks tired.”

The woman didn’t answer, but she had heard him, for she gave him a long sideways look and tightened her hold on the basket.

“I said I’d carry the basket for you,” he tried again, and again there was silence. He was only frightening the woman into tight-lipped distrust.

Hearne smiled. “Well, I’ll carry the boy,” he said. The child would be lighter than the. basket, but if the woman was afraid to trust him with the oysters, then that was her look-out.

The child’s body stiffened as Hearne picked him up. And then, as he felt himself quite safe on this strange man’s back, with his two thin hands tightly clasped under the funny man’s chin, with his bony little shanks held firmly by the big man’s arms, the rigor of his body disappeared. He was speaking in his thin, hoarse voice after they had gone only twenty steps: he was saying, “I’ve got a horse! Look, maman, I’ve a horse!”

The mother didn’t speak. Her mouth had tightened as if to say, “Such like nonsense: teaching the boy bad habits, that’s what you are.

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