Most Secret by Nevil Shute Page A

supervise there on the foreshore, just outside the mouth of the harbour. What it was I do not know. It kept him down there for about a month, and for that time he lived in a billet half-way up the hill towards St. Petrox.
    He was still slightly uneasy in his uniform, though desperately proud of it. He knew that he was foreign in his ways and he sought out the company of other officers to study them. Dartmouth at that time was stiff with officers, mostly young naval officers who came into town each evening from trawlers and M.L.s. The Royal Sovereign on the quay was the hotel they favoured most, and Simon was usually to be found in a remote corner of the bar, sipping a pint of heavy English beer, watching, and learning. He did not very often talk to anybody.
    He was there after dinner one warm summer night, sitting in his usual corner. The bar was nearly empty and a little groupof R.N.V.R. officers near him were chatting about their work. One of them came from a destroyer, fresh from a sweep over to the other side.
    “Never saw a Jerry plane the whole time,” he said. “I don’t know what’s become of them.”
    “Got them all over in the East,” somebody said. “He’s going to go for Russia.”
    “Wouldn’t be such a fool.”
    The first speaker said: “We went right close in shore, east of the Ile Vierge. You could see the people working in the fields and everything. Broad daylight, it was.”
    “See any Jerries?”
    “Not a sausage.”
    Somebody said: “Did the people you saw look downtrodden and oppressed beneath the Nazi heel, like it says in the
Times
?”
    The first speaker took a drink of beer. “They looked just like any other people in the fields. I don’t believe the occupation means a thing to them. Not to the ordinary run of people in France.”
    The Army captain in the corner stirred a little, but he did not speak.
    “I don’t suppose it does,” another said. “I don’t suppose they know there’s a war on—any more than our farm labourers over here do.”
    “Ours know it all right,” said another. “And how! Three quid a week I see they’re going to get.”
    Somebody said: “It’ll be just the same over on the other side. Farm labourers always do well in a war. Win, lose, or draw—they get their cut all right.”
    “So does everybody else. Look at the chaps in the aeroplane factories. They’re the ones that make this shortage of beer.”
    The barmaid pushed half a dozen brimming tankards to them across the bar. One of the naval officers threw down a ten-shilling note, and harked back to the subject.
    “I wish one knew what it was really like over there,” he said thoughtfully. “Tantalising, just seeing it and coming away.”
    Probably it was the beer; he had already had two pints. Charles Simon stood up suddenly. “I’ll tell you what it’s like upon the other side,” he said vehemently. “It is terrible, and horrible. You cannot know how terrible it is.”
    They all turned to stare at him, a little startled at the queer choice of words and at the foreign accent, always more noticeable in moments of excitement.
    One said: “I suppose it must be pretty bloody for them.” He thought the Army chap had had quite sufficient beer, and wanted to conciliate him.
    Simon said: “Even so, you fellows do not understand. It it … simply foul. I will tell you.” He stood there before them, the dark hair falling down over his forehead, deadly serious and rather embarrassing to them. “In Douarnenez, in January of this year, only four months ago. Only just across the sea from here—a hundred and thirty miles, no more. There was a little boy of nine called Jules that used to pick up—what you call it? Droppings of the horse, and throw them at the German sentry in the night.” There were faint smiles all round, and somebody said: “Red hot!” Simon went on: “And they ran him through the body with a bayonet, but he did not die, and the priest who came by told them to fetch a