Rosie's War

by Rosemary Say

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, quickly stifling my amusement. ‘But I don’t see how they could possibly pass for Frenchmen. They could hardly pass for Englishmen.’

  We woke up the two slumbering giants. Their accents were difficult even for me to decipher, so goodness knows how the elderly couple had coped. After some time I came to understand that they were prepared to make their way to the Pyrenees and over into Spain if I would accompany them.

  ‘We canna make it on our own, missie,’ said the red-headed one. ‘Ye ken the language here.’

  ‘I can’t possibly go with you,’ I replied. ‘I’m registered with the German Kommandatur as a British citizen and I have to sign in every day.’

  ‘Och, so yer’s a spy,’ he said in disgust and spat on the floor in front of me.

  André took a step forward. For a fleeting moment I had a horrible vision of him trying to tackle the two of them single-handed.

  ‘Now look here,’ I informed them haughtily. ‘You are endangering the lives of these good people who are sheltering you. If you are caught, you’ll be put in a POW camp. But they won’t be so lucky. They’ll probably be shot. The same goes for me.’

  André translated this to his friends who nodded vigorously in agreement.

  ‘Anyway,’ I continued. ‘It’s your duty as soldiers to make your way back to your regiment at all costs. You simply have to clear off.’ My prissy impersonation of a schoolmistress seemed to do the trick. They weren’t deserters, they were just biding their time a while.

  André informed me a few days later that they had left that very night. When I eventually got back to Britain I made some enquiries and found out that they had indeed managed to get home (complete with kilts and sporran). They had even been decorated for devotion to duty.

  At the end of August, when the concierge at the canteen fell ill, I moved temporarily to the Young Women’s Christian Association by the Champs-Elysées. A few Englishwomen were staying at the hostel but my long hours of work meant I had virtually no contact with them. Very early each morning I walked across the Pont de la Concorde, past the Chamber of Deputies and along the Boulevard Saint-Germain to the canteen. We were now past the heat of midsummer and the mornings were often misty. These walks were wonderfully peaceful.

  As the summer progressed, Parisians began to trickle back to the capital with terrible stories of the exodus: bombing on the roads, starvation, families separated, children lost and similar horrors. For most of them it would probably have been better to have stayed put in the first place. But the government had, after all, fled Paris just before the Germans’ arrival and the collaborationists had made things worse by encouraging people to flee. The herd instinct had simply taken over.

  The atmosphere in the city changed as the months went by. Those who were Jewish or who had no papers began to hide as best they could. The increasing lack of food and a raging black market dominated many people’s thoughts. Propaganda was rife and false rumours circulated by the hour. One report that persisted for a number of days at the height of the Battle of Britain was that Churchill had been replaced as Prime Minister by Lord Halifax, who was suing for peace. Ridiculous to imagine now perhaps, but it is difficult for anyone who has not experienced it at first hand to understand the insidious power of propaganda and rumour after weeks of hearing practically nothing else.

  As we came into September it became obvious that my time at the police canteen was drawing to an end. Each day the number of policemen there dwindled as their families began to return home. There was less and less work for me, especially at the evening meal. One morning a police friend took me to one side. He told me that the English lady in charge of the YWCA (where I was still staying) had been arrested, apparently for listening to the BBC. He warned me that my days at the canteen and at the YWCA were numbered. I had to move on.

  But what was I to do? I had no idea how to leave Paris. I was told that it would cost several thousand francs (perhaps over £1,000 in today’s money) to cross the demarcation line into the zone libre. I simply did not have that sort of money. There was always the prospect of going to Hoytie Wiborg for more help, but I had no idea where she had gone. One policeman told me he had seen her. ‘C’est un homme,’ he giggled maliciously. Anyway, I didn’t want to push my luck with her.

  Once again, I was seriously worried for my own safety. So much for the blithe assurance to my parents that I was in no danger! It was obvious that I would have to look around for somewhere else to live and work. I couldn’t run the risk of staying on at the YWCA, which seemed to be increasingly exposed to random checks and arrests.

  What I really wanted was some way of staying in Paris unnoticed until something turned up and I knew what to do. In retrospect, this may seem unadventurous but to my mind it was sensible. I had watched the agony of panic flight. Enough was enough for the time being. I would bide my time in Paris, even though it was occupied by the Germans. I thought it was safer than other places, especially London.

  The dilemma over my future was to be solved quite by chance. One day in late September a very distinguished-looking lady arrived at the canteen asking for me by name. Without introducing herself she came straight to the point.

  ‘Would you like to come and look after my children? I can offer you accommodation. We live near by at 98 rue de Varennes.’

  I said yes immediately. I couldn’t believe my luck.

  That evening I took my things over the few blocks to the big, two-floor flat where Madame Georges Izard lived with her family of four children all under the age of ten: Michèle, Madeleine, Marie-Claire, and the youngest child, Christophe. The flat was in a beautifully elegant, eighteenth-century building in a very smart part of town. My room looked down across the narrow street into the garden of the Rodin Museum.

  Madame Izard told me that she had heard about my predicament from a policeman friend of hers. I suspected Hoytie Wiborg’s hand here but I never asked and was never told. Our arrangement was mutually convenient: now that she had found someone to look after her children she could set about looking for her husband, Georges. He had been arrested immediately after the German occupation and she was worried that he would soon be transported to a German POW camp.

  Maître Georges Izard, avocat à la cour (barrister), was already a well-known personality in France. Born in the south of the country and the son of a primary school head teacher, he was one of the youngest Deputies in parliament when elected on a socialist ticket in 1930. He had had an outstanding career at the French Bar, dividing his interests between politics, journalism and the law. I was not to meet him until after the war, when I found him to be a quiet, saintly man with a welcome sense of humour.

  Madame Izard, by contrast, came from an aristocratic Norman family of generals and cardinals (her brother, Cardinal Danielou, was in the 1970s rumoured to be a candidate for Pope but died scandalously in flagrante). She was tall and slim, with an aquiline nose. She was always elegantly dressed and seemed to have an unlimited variety of fur hats and coats. On the third finger of her right hand was the largest diamond ring I have ever seen. I was in awe of her for the short time that I knew her in 1940. She seemed a somewhat distant figure who gave the impression that she expected to be obeyed. She was very kind to me but it was understood that I was under her roof as an employee. It was not until after the war that I got to know her well and came to value her as a friend.

  She soon left Paris to search for her husband and was away for a number of weeks. I was quite content to look after the children while the grumpy loyal housekeeper Jeanne ran the home. During the week I was free for most of the day, apart from taking the girls on the Métro to and from school in Neuilly where their grandmother, a well known educationalist called Madame Danielou, ran an exclusive pensionnat (boarding school) for girls.

  The rue de Varennes was a long street full of government ministries and smart offices. We were just a few doors away from the magnificent Invalides military museum, which I passed daily on my way to regi
ster at the Kommandantur. Perhaps ironically for an English person, I used to take comfort in the knowledge that Napoleon’s tomb was housed there. It seemed to symbolize a greatness and defiance in France that was, at this time, lost.

  I would take three-year-old Christophe on the daily trips to register my presence with the German authorities. In his formal suit he looked for all the world a bright English boy. His contribution to the war effort was a cheeky ‘Good Morning!’ to any German soldiers he encountered on our walks. Luckily, I think this greeting was received as ‘Guten Morgen’ and so passed unnoticed! We often walked around the quiet streets of the Septième with its bright swastika flags waving from the government buildings. For some reason, this sight affected me more than the forest of German signs and notices around the Place de la Concorde. It was a troubling sign of permanence to see such elegant streets taken over by the occupying forces.

  Those months in the latter half of 1940 were a difficult and strange time for Parisians. No one was sure what was going on: prisoners were being shipped to Germany and people were in hiding everywhere. Although it was still too early for organized resistance, a few spoke confidentially to me of the magic letters BBC and RAF.

  Madame Izard took me to see some notable friends of hers. Misia Sert, for example, had a splendid apartment on the rue de Rivoli. She had been at the centre of the pre-war Parisian cultural scene and been feted by Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec (not forgetting that she had also been the object of Hoytie Wiborg’s unrequited love). Nevertheless, I thought her rather dumpy and undistinguished in comparison with Madame Izard. One day I was taken to see old Madame Ritz tucked away in a small room at the top of the Ritz Hotel, where Coco Chanel and her German officer lover later stayed. Madame Ritz was very gracious. I don’t remember why we went. Perhaps she needed help, being Jewish.

  I got a small glimpse of what it meant to be Jewish in Paris at this time when one evening I met a rather frightened, middle-aged woman called Ginette Seidmann at the Izards’ apartment. She arrived when Madame Izard was out and we chatted for a while. She told me that she was originally from Golders Green in North London, very near to where I had been brought up. She was married to a French doctor, Paul-Émile, and had lived for many years in France. As Jews they were already on the run. She stayed a long time that evening, most of it closeted away with Madame Izard in hushed discussion.

  Her war story is told with great verve in her memoirs. She and her husband hid all over France, sometimes outwitting the Germans by just a few hours. Ginette relates in her book how, later in the war when the Izards were making a temporary home near Bourges on the Loire, Madame Izard sent her a postcard saying: ‘This is where we are living. Take the train and come and stay.’ They were hidden there and looked after for many months. She marvelled that the fervently Catholic Izards should risk their lives and those of their four children by sheltering two Jews. After the war Ginette became a powerful figure in Paris as a director of the Balmain couture house, where she was very grand indeed. I saw her once again from afar in London in the 1950s. She was busy attending to Marlene Dietrich.

  Madame Izard showed much patience and kindness (and also courage) in taking me into her house in the first place. Not all her friends approved: Serge Lifar, already busy directing a ballet at the Opéra, asked that the English girl wait outside when we went to visit him. In retrospect, I can’t blame those Parisians I met who felt that they had enough troubles and difficulties of their own without getting mixed up with an English person. Many did not feel this way, of course, but I remembered how different the behaviour of the bistro patron had been when I asked him to look after my luggage on my arrival in Paris from just a few days later when I went to fetch it.

  I was still anxious for word of my parents. I had now been in Paris for three months and had not heard from them. Had they received any of my letters? I learnt much later they had been officially informed early in August that I was registered with the US Embassy in Paris. My father had since then been making desperate and unsuccessful attempts to get in touch with me, including trying to contact HMG’s Trading with the Enemy Branch at the Treasury. But, of course, I didn’t know this at the time and desperately searched for ways to get news through to them.

  An opportunity to do this seemed to present itself one morning when I was on my way to the Kommandantur. I met an old friend from the police canteen called Laurent. He was a senior police officer from the Toulouse area in the zone libre who was in Paris on a regular basis. He was a tall, fleshy man with a mane of carefully combed black hair and a luxuriant moustache. He had always been very friendly to me and extremely pro-English. We had often chatted at length at the canteen. He would show me pictures of a surprisingly stern-looking wife and three adorable young children.

  When I met him that morning I told him about my concerns for my family. He thought for a moment and asked me if I could meet him later that day. I agreed. We went to a small, below-stairs bar very near the Louvre. It seemed to be full of off-duty policemen. I finally plucked up the courage to ask him what had been on my mind since I had met him that morning.

  ‘Monsieur, I wrote a letter to my parents but I can’t send it from here. Could you possibly post it for me from Toulouse?’

  Laurent shook his head sadly.

  ‘An officer in my position could not commit such an illegal act. I would be aiding an enemy alien of the Third Reich. The consequences for me and my family could be extremely serious.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry I asked.’

  ‘But I could write to your parents myself. There is nothing illegal in that. I could inform them that you are registered here in Paris and are well.’ He gave me a rich smile. I nodded slowly, as I began to understand the situation.

  ‘Alors, does that suit you, Mam’zelle Rose?’

  Yes, it suited me. The price, of course, was that I was to go to bed with him. We both honoured the arrangement. We walked to a brothel very near the canteen and made love in a small room surrounded entirely by mirrors. I still have the letter he wrote, along with a rough translation in my father’s hand. It was written on headed paper from the Hotel Terminus-Galilée in Toulouse and couched in a flowing, French provincial style. ‘Monsieur le Commandant, les malheureuses circonstances de la guerre,’ it began. ‘The unfortunate circumstances of the war do not permit your daughter Rose Mary to communicate with you […] She is in good health and is employed as a governess.’

  Now that I felt more settled in Paris I looked up Claude Manguin’s sister, Lucile. The workroom of her thriving dress house was going full blast. Who were the women buying the expensive clothes? I wondered to myself as she showed me around. But I didn’t ask. I had learned to keep my mouth shut about the survival tactics of those I knew. Lucile’s affairs were managed adroitly by her husband André, who was a chuckling, jovial chap. They were extremely friendly towards me during my stay, taking me for drinks at the elegant Les Deux Magots on the Boulevard Saint-Germain and to dinner at Foyot’s (a great treat) where we ate wild strawberries. I visited them at their elegant apartment on the quai de Béthune, where the walls were hung with paintings by Cézanne, Renoir and, of course, Père Manguin.

  My life was generally smooth and comfortable that autumn in Paris. I had managed to let my parents know that I was safe. By now I considered myself part of the Izard family, part of the quartier, where they were very well known and respected. I was ‘plus française que les françaises’ and indeed felt more in sympathy with the conquered French nation than with my own people. Understandable, perhaps, given that I had no regular news from Britain.

  Christmas was not far away. I no longer thought about a knock on the door.

  PART TWO

  Enemy

  Alien

  DECEMBER 1940 – MAY 1941

  CHAPTER SIX

  Arrest and Imprisonment

  One morning in early December, as I was hurrying the girls along to get them off to school, Madame Izard arrived in the breakfast room. She wa
s accompanied by three policemen.

  ‘Rosemary, these gentlemen wish to speak to you for a minute.’ There was a slight note of concern in her voice.

  I nodded to the three men; I recognized them from the canteen where I had often served them. I was still feeling the after-effects of a late session with Lucile Manguin and her husband the previous night. The men stood there for a few moments looking quite hesitant. Then the tall, plump one (Paul, I thought his name was) stepped forward sheepishly.

  ‘Mam’zelle Rose, we would like you to accompany us to the mairie. It’s only a routine check-up for a short while. But you will need to bring a bag of your things with you,’ he added quickly.

  The children were startled and frightened by the policemen. They held on to me and began to cry. I soothed them and told them that I’d be back by the time they returned from school. Jeanne and Madame Izard helped me to put together some things in a small bag. I said goodbye to the family and stepped outside with the men, who were apologizing profusely for having to take me.

  ‘The car is down the road,’ the tall one told me awkwardly. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee at the bar on the corner?’

  I would. As we sipped our coffee they told me they were acting under German orders.

  ‘But I’m registered. My papers are fine,’ I protested. ‘This is just a check up, isn’t it?’

  ‘Wait and see, Mam’zelle Rose.’

  ‘For what? A new German order?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  That they were obviously very uncomfortable with the whole situation didn’t register with me, even at that stage. I thought they were simply embarrassed by the children’s noise or by the fact that I knew them. I certainly wasn’t frightened and didn’t take any of this seriously. It was probably yet another piece of German bureaucracy. These polite men couldn’t be a threat. After all, I had often seen them eating and joking with their friends. There might be some other English people at the station and I could then find out what was happening.