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162 pages

English

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War-time France - intrigue, deception and divided loyalties. Under the Mediterranean sun, a shadowy world where ambivalence and compromise test loyalties to breaking point. Alec Ross is an innocent born at the outset of the twentieth century. This gripping novel explores his journey through its first half as he finds himself almost accidentally drawn into the murky by-ways of espionage. His life has been one of avoided commitment and abandoned relationships, but now he sees young men and women, escapees and their resistance helpers rise to heights of bravery. He also sees corruption and squalor, and the horrors of Nazism. Amidst the extremes of humanity at both its best and its worst, he struggles to work out what matters to him in an existence where nothing is what it seems. Till the very end, the question persists: will Alec commit himself to a cause and to the woman he loves, or will he surrender in the face of demands which are finally too complicated for this simple man? Start reading and you won't stop till you find out.

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Thriller

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Publié par	Austin Macauley Publishers
Date de parution	30 octobre 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781528991902
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

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The Quickening of Alec Ross
Walter Reid
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-10-30
The Quickening of Alec Ross About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © French Catalonia in the Second World War Part One: Perpignan, French Catalonia, 1940 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Part Two: England, France and the Levant, 1916–1937 Chapter 3 Somerset and Devon, 1916 Chapter 4 Devon, 1918 Chapter 5 Devon, Autumn 1918 Chapter 6 Menton, Côte d’Azur, December 1918 Chapter 7 London, December 1918 Chapter 8 Mesopotamia, 1919 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Menton and London, 1921 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Part Three: Perpignan Before Inez Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Part Four: After the Meeting Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Part Five: Epilogue Afterwards Afterword
About the Author
Walter Reid was educated at Oxford and Edinburgh universities. He is married with two children. His time is divided between the west of Scotland, where he raises sheep and cows, and the south of France, where he grows olives. He has written seven books on aspects of British twentieth-century history. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Dedication
To Janet, with thanks for her enthusiastic participation in the research.
Copyright Information ©
Walter Reid (2020)
The right of Walter Reid to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Austin Macauley is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In this spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528991896 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528991902 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
First Published (2020)
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French Catalonia in the Second World War

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Part One: Perpignan, French Catalonia, 1940
Chapter 1
After a long day’s spying, Alec Ross was walking back to Perpignan. It was a warm, spring evening. Behind him lay the Mediterranean. Ahead of him lay the summit of le Canigou, the sacred mountain of the Catalans on both sides of the border, French and Spanish. It was twenty miles away, but clear in the crisp air, the snow on its upper slopes amber in the rays of the setting sun.
The cloudless skies had kept the temperature high while the sun was up; now they allowed it to fall sharply. The early evening air was cool. Narrow wraiths of wood-smoke rose from fires lit to cook evening meals. In the stillness of the air, the grey smoke lay in horizontal bands not much above roof height. As Ross made his way towards the centre of the town, he could smell it, sharp and welcome, cutting through the coolness of the air. He was tired and hungry. His pace quickened.
The single cotton-cloud that often floated above the summit of le Canigou was absent today. Over Alec Ross too, spy and gentleman-artist, the man who had killed a wife and abandoned a lover, there floated no cloud of self-doubt or introspection.
Had he been asked, he would have been unable to say what, if anything, he was thinking about. He was self-absorbed, but not absorbed in thought. Serious mental activity had been dulled by the rhythm of his march, his speed disguised by the length of his pace. He wore an old khaki shirt, brown corduroy trousers and desert boots. At his side, a canvas case swung against his hip.
The approach to Perpignan was dominated by its one remaining city gate, le Castillet. He entered the town through this bastion of the old city, a looming tower of stone and the red brick decoration the local people called cayroux . Most of its narrow windows were barred. As in mediaeval times so today, it was used in part as a prison. On its inner side lay the Place Arago. Ross’s goal was the Café Gambetta at the far side of the Place. As he walked across the place, le Castillet now behind him, he hardly noticed another of the daubs that had started to appear on the walls: “Nourriture pour les français — merde pour les juifs” —“Food for the French—Shit for the Jews”.
At the Castillet’s foot was a group of refugees from Franco’s Spain. They had come across the border after the outbreak of the Civil War. Their numbers had increased since the fall of Barcelona. But now there was only a trickle. They had never been welcome. The Catalans of the north had neither enough food nor prosperity to see their fellow republicans of the south as other than a threat. The pitiful mass which made up La Retirada had at first been held up at the border by French border guards. Defeated soldiers, mothers with babies in their arms, and the old and sick had stood in the cold for days on end, facing the bayonets of their northern cousins.
They had come for refuge to France, the birthplace of liberty, the source of the Rights of Man. A hundred thousand men, women and children crossed the Albères, the foothills of the Pyrenees, in the first wave, and within two weeks of the fall of Barcelona a further half a million refugees arrived. They did not know what awaited them.
Eventually, they had been allowed to squat in and around Perpignan. Some were confined behind barbed wire on the beaches, where they had been inspected by Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun in an earlier war, still awaiting his destiny in the current one. Others remained at liberty. The system didn’t acknowledge their existence and wasn’t particularly concerned to bother itself with them. These tolerated sans-papiers were the people who congregated daily around the station, in the open space of les Platanes, and especially at le Castillet.
Ross had become used to seeing them and their plight, their begging, their hunger. But over the last few days, he had noticed a difference. A few weeks earlier, France herself had fallen to Fascism, and the aged Marshal Pétain had found his destiny, ruling France as the puppet of the Nazis. Now there was no longer even the hope that France could protect the refugees from the forces of oppression. Pétain’s France might prove worse even than the rule of Franco from which they had fled. The dispirited huddle was no longer animated by gossip and camaraderie. It stood listless and silent.
Ross had seen too that the Spaniards were no longer the only people who congregated in the Place. At first, the refugees were unwelcomed but largely ignored; however, since the fall of France and of democracy, the slimier elements of society were emerging into the light, like slugs from under stones. Round the three sides of the square that faced the ancient Castillet, swinging sticks and batons, were supporters of the Marshal: unprepossessing bunches of thugs, some of them formally uniformed, others wearing scraps of any official-looking clothing they could find. There were weathered veterans of the earlier war and of lawless skirmishes, but others little more than children, amongst them boys as young as ten. If the older thugs, who called themselves the Milice, were a version of Hitler’s Brownshirts, the youths, the Jeune Milice , were Hitler Youth on the cheap.
The thugs studied the refugees. They themselves were observed unnoticed by a man who loitered in an angle of the Castillet tower. He wore a blue serge suit, shiny and threadbare. He had sharp features, a whiskery moustache. He was bare-headed, his black oiled hair growing from a widow’s peak.
There was a strange silence. The refugees hardly spoke, and the strong men and spotty boys of collaborationist Vichy only muttered amongst themselves in low voices. They stared down the broken Spaniards. The sense of menace in the square was inescapable.
Because of that—perhaps only because of that—Ross noticed something that might have escaped his attention a couple of weeks earlier. Three or four hobbledehoys wearing the homemade uniform of the Jeune Milice were jeering at a young woman. As Ross passed, they pushed her. She fell heavily on to the cobbles. He could see a youth preparing a kick for her ribs. She did not ask Ross’s help, but her eyes met his.
Ross had no sense of sympathy. His reaction was not so much concern for the girl as a feeling that it wasn’t acceptable that ill-assorted youths with no legal status should control events. He was himself the creature of an ordered society. Disorder offended him. He could not do nothing. But he didn’t do very much. He didn’t hit anyone. He didn’t threaten anyone. All he did was to snap at the boys in a tone of contempt, telling them to get home to their parents.
When he thought about it, very much later, Ross wondered why his uncharacteristic intervention had been so effective. Was there some authority in a forty-five-year-old man with a military background? He had spoken French, though he could equally well have used Catalan, but did they detect a hint of a foreign accent? Or were they a little ashamed of what they were doing, glad to have an excuse to stop? They hadn’t looked it, and they didn’t just slink off. They paused in their assault, surprised to have their authority challenged. They looked for guidance at the older men who stood nearby. Ross didn’t break his gaze on the louts, so he didn’t see what instructions they received, if any; however, after a moment or t