Hero de la resistance

I don't usually talk to animals. Frankly I find them squeaky voiced and flea ridden, with a topic range limited to food and territorial disputes, similar reasons indeed why I tend to ignore the residents of middle England and their Nigela v. Delia, overhanging-hedgerow-obsessed views of the universe.

But on my night off in Newcastle, where I'd managed to shake of my shackles and get a pub to myself away from the all-controlling Skins, I found myself sat at the bar next to an irresistibly chatty marmot, who eventually admitted to the name of Maurice.

The evening had started ordinarily enough, I'd sat at the bar and ordered a pint of brown Geordie froth and short Scottish sidekick and was just making inroads into the first when I heard a rasping little voice on the seat next to me.

"Vous est Hitler?" the little rodent asked me.

"Non, je ne suis pas Hitler," I responded, using the one French phrase I know. "The name's De Maget, Brian De Maget, but you can call me Damage."

"Vous connais Hitler?" the marmot continued, with the persistence of a journalist on a ruthless quest to discover pointless celebrity tittle tattle. "Je cherche Hitler."

"Never met the chap I'm afraid. I'm not from round these parts." I was puzzled by this line of questioning and gave my neighbour a thorough once over. He was, as I've said, a marmot, about two foot long, a couple of sharp protruding teeth, scuffed and scruffy brown fur and the smell of a rodent who's lived his life on the edge. I noticed he wasn't drinking and offered.

"Un petit chocolate s'il vous plait."

I ordered a mug of steaming hot chocolate, which he greeted with an appreciative sniff before diving head first into it, as if drinking from the bottom of the mug upwards. He emerged over a minute later, steam rising from his soggy brown fur. A glance at the mug showed it to be empty. Maurice gave me a shamefaced look as if discovering embarrassment at his gluttonous performance.

"Pardon monsieur, mais j'aime le chocolate."

I ordered him another mug, this time with a squirt of cold cream on top to stop him burning himself, and as a side order a bar of chocolate from the sweet counter. Well, not a sweet counter as such, the bar apparently topped up its drincome with sales of crisps, nuts, chocolate and boiled eggs, all the range of a corner store during the war, except that you no longer needed coupons for the eggs and chocolate, and as I say they had crisps and nuts as well.

"Merci beaucoup monsieur," he said as he sunk his sharp white teeth into a slab of dark brown fair trade organic. "This is the life eh monsieur? Eat chocolate, drink chocolate, if only I could bathe in it." I didn't like to mention that he just had.

"So what's all this about Hitler?" I asked.

Maurice's voice dropped to a confidential whisper and I didn't hear a word he said for the next minute. I lifted him up onto my shoulder and he confided once more.

"I am working pour la resistance monsieur, I have been 'specially selected to assassinate Hitler."

"But Hitler's dead isn't he?" I asked in a rare whisper, usually I work on the basis that if anything's worth saying it's worth saying loudly enough to annoy the neighbours. "He died sixty odd years ago at the end of the war."

"That is what they say monsieur, but I nose the truth" he said with a knowing tap on said appendage. "I 'ave had un tip-off. Monsieur le Hitler is alive and living in Newcastle. I am 'ere to track him down then faire le boom." He flayed his arms wide and furious to portray the force of the explosion that would blast Hitler to his long-overdue grave.

"But even if he were alive he'd be over a hundred by now, you'd never recognise him, unless you were lucky enough to intercept his telegram from the queen.

"Le queen et Hitler, oui, j'avais my suspicions about la queen."

"Frankly my little furry friend we've all had our suspicions about the queen."

"Never fear though monsieur, I am hot on Hitler's trial, I will soon track him down. You see that anorak?" he nodded to a beige coat on which he'd been sitting.

"Yes, it seems a bit big for you old chap."

"Eet eez not mine monsieur, eet eez a clue. I fished eet out of la canal today. C'est l'evidence monsieur, c'est l'anorak de Hitler."

Not a fashion attire for which the former Fuhrer was famed of course, but an elderly man living in a cold British climate, it was plausible.

"How do you know it's Hitler's anorak, it could be anyone's?"

"Ah, I know because I have been looking for eet monsieur, I knew it was there. I have been doing the spying close to Hitler's lair. Je porte la disguise."

A disguise! I tried to imagine him undercover, but could only conjure up the image of a two foot rodent dressed up as a pirate, or perhaps a tiny brown clown, an illusion even the British police could see through, let alone the ruthlessly efficient Nazi Stassi. "A disguise dear boy, but what costume would fit you?"

Maurice was elusive, mumbling something about secrets and spies, but eventually I got him to confess to posing as a rat and hiding in the sewers and dark alleyways of Newcastle. An aura of shame momentarily hung around him.

"Well I'm a punk rocker," I empathised, "I spend most of my time in dark alleys and sewers too. Though I generally try to avoid Newcastle."

We paused to slurp our respective beverages, the little addictions that make life bearable.

"But how do you survive, my little marmot chum, there can't be much money in bumping off dictators everyone thinks have been dead for fifty years."

"I get by monsieur. I have ze friends who look after me. Beaucoup de chocolate! It is my only extravagance monsieur, I am easy to please."

I took his hint and ordered a steaming mug of chocolate milk and another Anglo Scottish alliance for myself.

"So how did you get involved with the resistance? They weren't known for their use of animals."

"Eet was mon grandpere monsieur. He was a great hero, the only marmot working for the Resistance, their most important spy, the only hero small enough to climb through the pipes and tubing of the Nazi infrastructure. What my grandpere didn't find out wasn't worth knowing.

"Ee used to tell me all about it, I was eez only confidant. Every evening, when he wasn't out spying, he would sit me on eez knee and tell me of his work, the day he put itching powder in Hitler's trousers, how he stole Hitler's alarm clock the night of the British D-Day landings, so he wasn't awake to give the order to fight back. Mon grand-pere did all that. Eet was even him who drew the joke moustache on Hitler's official portrait. Everyone remembers zat moustache.

"Before setting off on a mission dangerous grandpere always said 'if anything happens to me don't let Hitler get away.' I never expected anything to happen to eem though, he was such an hero.

"But that last night he was particularly grave. I remember eet so well, he gave me this huge slab of chocolate, something you never saw during the occupation, I think ee pinched it from Hitler's personal pantry. 'I am going on a mission tonight Maurice' he said, flapping open his trenchcoat to reveal a display of dynamite. 'I am going to faire le boom pour Hitler. Eef it goes well I will be famed throughout France, but eef it goes bad' and with this he gave a big shrug and a sigh 'Eef it goes bad you will not see me again. Which is why I leave you with this chocolate Maurice, a happy memory of your grandpere'.

"He never returned monsieur, Hitler somehow escaped his ploy. Which is when I vowed to take his place. I was just four years old and by the time I'd completed my weapons training Hitler had faked his death and the war was over. But a small few of us knew the truth and followed Hitler to England. I 'ave been ere ever since."

"But surely your father could have taken over, why pass on the task of assassinating Hitler to a four year old?"

"My father monsieur, he is not a hero."

As he spoke he posed grandly on the beige anorak, pride perking him to revised refinement, oblivious to the plotch of chocolate on his nose and the ragged, unwashed patchy coat of fur that 60 years of resistance work had left him with. It's true of course, heroes come in all shapes and sizes, not all are mounted high on heralded horseback harvesting hurrahs, the real heroes are usually the ones crawling unacknowledged through life's gutters thinking only of their duty.

I left him perched there on Hitler's beige anorak, absorbed by his shiny white knight errand, head shoved deep into a mug of marmot coloured coco, knowing not when he'd next be nourished.

I couldn't explain to the band why I was late for rehearsals and just accepted their wrath and insults like so many inarticulated words. They never seem to believe me whenever I tell them I've been talking to animals, if I get any reaction at all it's always "Marmots can't fucking talk Damage." Of course they can talk, it's just that you never fucking listen.