‘Bonjour, Monsieur le Maire,’ she said coolly, and walked stiffly away to join her father. Léon saw the good-looking major with whom she had gone riding immediately materialise at her side.

Dammit. What was that about?

*

Léon sat himself down next to the headmistress, Mademoiselle Madeleine Caron. She was a straight-backed woman in her fifties whose sharp features and equally sharp reprimands he recalled only too well from his schooldays. She was wearing a brown felt hat set at a precise right angle on her head and maintained a blinkered focus on the colonel. Léon listened to the colonel’s talk on the necessity of establishing the Dumoulin base here, but he listened with only one ear, drifting in and out. Most of his attention was focused on the audience. They had all been shepherded into a lecture theatre with tiered seats and a podium up front for the speaker and the interpreter. There was lots of rustling and expectation in the room.

Colonel Masson had welcomed the visitors and run through the history of Dumoulin Air Base from a small grass airfield during the war to the efficient cog that it was now in the military machine that was fighting against the Soviet threat. The United States had already poured millions of American dollars into the air base, building full and extensive facilities for the airmen and aircraft deployed here. However, the runways were not long enough or sufficiently reinforced to accommodate the new larger and heavier aircraft coming into service. Masson spoke well. Just the right touch of military arrogance and paternalistic concern. His pride in the base and in his men shone through.

The colonel swept a hand in the direction of the front row. ‘We are particularly pleased to welcome Monsieur Aristide Caussade and his daughter here today because we owe Monsieur Caussade a debt of thanks. By allowing us to take possession of a stretch of his land, it will enable us to extend our main runway from seven thousand feet to the ten thousand feet required for larger aircraft. Merci, Monsieur Caussade.’

He led a ripple of applause, though there was an awkwardness about it. People were not sure they wanted 10,000ft runways, and definitely not larger aircraft. Léon noticed that the mayor played it safe, giving token applause but no more and the woman beside Léon gave a grunt of anger. There was a stir of interest when Colonel Masson commenced a slide-show of the base’s facilities and of the different types of aircraft on its apron. The images displayed up on screen paraded the sleek miracles of technology and Léon could not deny the thrill of viewing the aircraft roaring into action.

‘Here we have the Republic F-84 Thunderjet, Strategic Air Command’s primary strike aircraft. A turbojet fighter-bomber armed with six M3 Browning machine guns, plus of course a considerable weight of bombs and rockets.’