by Anne Bennett
‘You know I am so pleased to be here on your wedding day,’ Yvette said. ‘And let me say that you are as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside, Bridgette, and are a true credit to your mother. I hope that this Xavier knows what a gem he is getting.’
Bridgette laughed. ‘Believe me, I am no gem. Xavier is much nicer than me sometimes. Anyway, I love him to bits, and for me the wedding can’t come soon enough.’
‘Well,’ said Yvette, ‘I would say that is the best way to feel about something that’s a life-long commitment.’
Gabrielle said nothing. She hoped and prayed that it would stay that way for her daughter. At least there was no chance that she would have her husband stolen away from her by war, and that was one thing to be thankful for.
Lisette and Marie helped Bridgette dress on the morning of the wedding. As she put her arms into her sleeves she heard the delicious rustle of the many petticoats as they slid down her silk-clad legs before billowing around her like cloud of lace. Just the tips of her white shoes were visible. Then Marie fastened the bodice, and Lisette put the veil in place, and they turned Bridgette round to look at herself in the mirror. She was transformed, a princess!
‘Darling girl, you look a picture,’ Marie said brokenly. Her eyes were so full of tears that she had difficulty in fastening the amber necklace that she was loaning Bridgette. She managed it in the end, and Bridgette saw that it lay just above the scoop of the neckline and that the deep amber stone was indeed the same colour as her eyes. She turned this way and that, and the gold filigree surrounding the stone twinkled in the light.
‘Oh, Marie, thank you so much. It’s so beautiful.’
‘It matches the person who wears it then,’ Marie said.
Bridgette turned and put her arms around Marie. ‘Thank you, thank you for everything, but most of all thank you for giving me Xavier.’
Marie was too choked to speak and eventually she pushed Bridgette gently away. ‘You will crush your gown,’ she said brokenly. ‘And really we must be on our way.’ She glanced up at the clock. ‘By now Guiseppe will be waiting in Rue Jacqueline. When he sees us pass he will come along to fetch you.’
‘We know that, Maman,’ Lisette said. ‘Go on now, and stop fussing. I will look after Bridgette. It’s what bridesmaids are supposed to do.’
With a last look around the room and a kiss for each girl, Marie was at last prevailed upon to leave.
As they stood at the window and watched her and Maurice hurrying quickly down the road, Lisette grinned at Bridgette and said, ‘Isn’t Maman a mother hen?’
‘She’s lovely,’ Bridgette said. ‘She just wants to make sure that everything goes right.’
‘I know, and it will,’ Lisette assured her. ‘And you look magnificent. I just want to say how glad I am that you are marrying Xavier; there is no one that I would rather see him marry than you. I have enjoyed having you as a sort of sister these past few years and I am looking forward to you joining the family properly.’
It was too much. Tears were raining down Bridgette’s cheeks and she was unable to speak.
‘Me and my big mouth, upsetting you when we have to go in a few minutes,’ Lisette apologised.
Bridgette struggled to control herself as she heard the rumble of Guiseppe’s trap on the cobbles, and then it came into view and the driver pulled up in front of the shop. Bridgette saw white ribbons were threaded into the pony’s mane and tail, and decorated the trap, and Guiseppe himself was dressed in his Sunday finery.
His blue eyes twinkled as the girls emerged. ‘My, my!’ he said, but there was a wealth of meaning in those two words.
Then he lifted first Bridgette into the trap as gently as if he were handling fine porcelain, and she sat on the silken cushion he had ready, and then Lisette was beside her. With Guiseppe at the head of the pony they set off. It was a glorious spring morning and the sun shone brightly in the pale blue sky, gilding everything in its golden light.
The children of the town, who had been clustered around the shop doorway, followed behind the trap, shouting and cheering, and shoppers and shopkeepers alike stood to watch. Some men doffed their caps and berets, and others just waved their arms in the air, but all had smiles on their faces as they called out, ‘Bonne Chance!’ or ‘Félicitations!’ By the time Bridgette reached Notre Dame she was warmed through by their good wishes.
She was nervous, though, and as the pony and trap drew to a halt, she whispered to Lisette, ‘My mouth is so dry, I really don’t know if I will be able to say anything.’
‘You only have to say, “I do”,’ Lisette said. ‘Those are all the words Xavier wants to hear.’
‘I know.’
‘And you will be all right. It’s just the thought of it,’ Lisette assured her. ‘Look, there’s your father waiting for you on the steps.’
‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’
Lisette suppressed a smile. ‘Come on, Bridgette. Xavier will probably be just as bad. You do want to marry him, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Well, come on then,’ Lisette said briskly. ‘Let’s get on with it.’
Bridgette didn’t bother protesting any more, but went forward to meet Legrand. ‘You look very well,’ he said to her, almost grudgingly.
‘Thank you,’ Bridgette said, and they moved towards the church door. There was no time to say anything else. In the small porch Lisette had just finished rearranging the folds on Bridgette’s dress when the strains of the wedding march could be heard.
The church was fuller than Bridgette had expected it to be, and filled with the happy cheerful faces of friends of her own and her parents, or of the Laurents, or neighbours who had watched her grow up. With Lisette falling into place behind her, she walked down the aisle slowly and on Legrand’s arm, and while he had an expression on his face that Yvette said later would curdle milk, she smiled from side to side at all the well-wishers.
Bridgette saw Xavier, with Edmund, leave the pew they’d occupied at the front of the church to stand in front of the altar and she felt a tingle of excitement that began in her toes and spread all over her body. She could never remember feeling so happy, and she loved Xavier so much she ached. She kept her eyes fastened on him, the man she would soon promise to love and honour in sickness and in health, whether they were rich or whether they were poor until they were parted by death.
FIFTEEN
Within a few weeks of marriage, Bridgette knew just how lucky she was in having such a considerate husband. Their first night together set the pattern when Xavier spent time caressing and fondling her slowly and sensually. When he placed his lips on hers, she responded eagerly, and then he kissed her lingeringly, then let his tongue slip in and out of her mouth until yearning shafts of passion were shooting all through her so that she moaned aloud. Still he waited, and not until she was giving little yelps of pure desire did he enter her.
Later that first night, as she lay in Xavier’s arms, her mother’s words came back to her about the gentle and considerate husband who would wait for his bride to be ready. She couldn’t help wondering if her mother had been talking from experience, but then how could she be? She knew her father was the sort to seek his own pleasure first and she doubted it had been different when he had been younger.
She wished her mother had such joy and happiness in her life, and the contentment of curling up with a young husband, as she was doing, and she wondered afresh what had induced her to marry a man like her father. She hated him with a passion and didn’t care how wicked that made her. But she could do nothing to help her mother, or try to cement over the wide-open chasms in her marriage.
Suddenly the events of the day made her feel very drowsy and she cuddled against Xavier, closed her eyes and was soon fast asleep.
As one month slipped into another Bridgette found herself loving Xavier more and more. She knew what a marvellous father he would make and she longed to hold their child in her arms, but she was disappointed time after
time, and she told herself to have patience.
Great-aunt Bernadette sickened and died at the end of January 1935. Gabrielle had wanted to go to the funeral, but Legrand wouldn’t allow it. Bridgette felt so sorry for her mother when she told her this, because she knew how much she had loved her aunt, and she told her to stand up to her father.
Gabrielle shook her head sadly, though some days she reflected on the courage she once had that enabled her to creep out at night to meet Finn. However, fear for her daughter, as well as herself, had dogged her life and stripped her of any confidence she might have had and so she had allowed herself to be treated shamelessly by both her husband and his son. Her daughter would have a much better life, she knew, and was immensely glad, but for her it was already too late.
Warmth began to steal into the days of early spring and buds started to appear on the trees when Lisette and Edmund Gublain became engaged. The marriage was set for September 1935. After, Lisette would move into the house in Rue Charles Jonart that Edmund shared with his widowed mother.
Bridgette was delighted for them. She had got to know Edmund since she’d married Xavier and liked him a lot, but she truly loved Lisette, like a sister and she knew that she would miss her greatly.
‘I will still see you everyday when I’m married because I’m continuing in the shop,’ Lisette said, a few days before her wedding. ‘At least until the babies come.’
‘That’s what I said,’ Bridgette reminded her. ‘And the babies seem as far away as ever.’
‘It’s early days,’ Lisette consoled. ‘I’m sure that it will happen soon.’
‘That’s what I tell myself,’ Bridgette said.
However, things got decidedly harder for Bridgette when Lisette fell pregnant almost immediately after the wedding and, in June 1936, she gave birth to a little boy she called Jean-Paul. He was the most adorable child and Bridgette loved him almost as much as his mother did. She missed Lisette, though, for since his birth she had given up work in the milliner’s and Maurice had taken on a young boy as an apprentice to train up.
Jean-Paul was only a couple of months old when everyone was talking of the Olympic Games, which were being held in Berlin. Herr Hitler, Chancellor of Germany had refused to shake the hand of the black African-American athlete Jesse Owens, or decorate him with the four gold medals that he’d won.
‘The man is mad,’ Maurice said one night at the evening meal. ‘Anyone can see that, and the German people are worse for voting him into such a position of power.’
‘They were bound to think that he was good for the country,’ Xavier said, ‘because he did turn Germany round. It was in a dreadful mess before.’
‘And whose fault was that?’ Maurice burst out. ‘They were the aggressors in that dreadful war that took so many young lives. Many of my friends did not come back and I can’t forget that.’
Xavier knew how much his father had suffered when he fought in the war. ‘I’m no lover of Germany, Papa,’ he said gently, ‘All I’m saying is, if your country is in a mess and someone comes along and gives you a bit of hope for the future, then you are going to vote for that person. It’s human nature.’
‘I don’t think the Jews in Germany have much hope,’ Bridgette put in. ‘Not according to Aunt Yvette, anyway. She said that Jews fleeing from Germany are streaming into Paris and the tales they tell of what is happening to those left behind are so shocking they are almost unbelievable.’
‘Well, I’m sorry for them if the tales are true,’ Maurice said. ‘But I’m not that surprised. Funny race of people, the Germans. Personally, I think the only good German is a dead one.’
It was a shocking thing to say, especially from the peaceable Maurice, but no one said anything to him because in their heart of hearts they all felt something of the same.
In March 1938, Hitler marched into Austria and took over the country. He called it the Anschluss and most of the world looked on in surprise, mainly because the Austrian people hadn’t seemed to mind that much.
‘Maybe that’s because he is Austrian by birth,’ Bridgette said.
‘Well, whatever he is, he has control of the two countries now,’ Marie said.
‘I think that this is the tip of the iceberg,’ Maurice murmured.
‘It may be,’ Xavier admitted. ‘And perhaps we shouldn’t be all doom and gloom. Austria, by all accounts, welcomed Hitler in and so that’s that, really.’
‘I hope it is,’ Marie said. ‘Lisette can do without this worry with her expecting again so don’t you start all this war talk when she’s around.’
Bridgette had no wish to upset Lisette, but how she envied her being pregnant again. When, in early September 1938, Lisette gave birth to a little girl she called Leonie, Bridgette tried to be happy for her, but though she said the right words her heart felt as heavy as lead because her arms ached to hold her own child.
In late September, the paper reported that Hitler was intending invading Czechoslovakia unless he was given Sudetenland, where the majority of people spoke German.
‘Why do they?’ Bridgette asked.
‘Because Sudetenland belonged to Germany until the war,’ Xavier told her. ‘Under the terms of the Versailles Treaty after the Armistice, it was taken off them.’
‘So what can they do about it now, if it was all agreed at the time?’
Xavier shrugged. ‘Give it back, I suppose. Anyway, according to the paper, Britain’s Prime Minister, Chamberlain, is having a meeting with Hitler in Munich to discuss it, and our own Prime Minister, Daladier, is going too, and Stalin.’
‘That’s another one I wouldn’t trust,’ Maurice said. ‘That Stalin.’
‘Nor me either, Papa,’ Xavier said. ‘I think that he and Hitler are in the same mould, but if between them they can come up with a scheme to avert war, then it has got to be a good thing, however it’s done.’
The Laurents’ weren’t the only household to breathe a sigh of relief when they had heard that with, the gift of Sudetenland, Hitler was appeased. The threat of war had been lifted.
In late autumn, the Laurents heard news of a pogrom against the Jews that had begun in Munich. They read with horror of the people thrown on to the streets while houses and businesses were destroyed, and synagogues set alight, till the sky was blood red with flames and the pavements like carpets of crystal with shattered glass. The violence quickly spread to other towns and villages until it was estimated that 1,300 synagogues had been burned to the ground and many people left dead or badly injured. Sinisterly 30,000 had simply disappeared.
The savagery and brutality of it shocked everyone. ‘What was it all for anyway?’ Bridgette asked as they sat eating dinner that night. ‘What had they done?’
‘They had done nothing,’ Xavier said. ‘It seems a Polish Jew shot a German official in Paris because he was angry at the way his family had been treated in Poland. This was Germany’s idea of revenge.’
‘Against innocent people?’
‘Look,’ Xavier said, ‘this is how I see all this. After the Armistice and the terrible loss of life in the Great War, everyone wanted to make Germany pay. Land was confiscated and given to other countries Germany had violated and they had to pay back so much compensation that the country was sinking under the debts it owed. Then, along comes a little Austrian who feeds the German people’s resentment and convinces them that it is somehow all the Jews’ fault.’
‘But why?’ Marie said.
‘They wanted to hear it.’ Xavier said. ‘They wanted someone to blame.’
‘I think you have hit the nail on the head there,’ Maurice said. ‘And when they have finished with the Jews, who d’you think they’ll blame then?’
‘The countries that defeated them in the last war?’ Xavier answered quietly.
‘You have it exactly.’
‘You mean France?’ Marie said. ‘We’ll have to suffer it all again.’
‘France, most certainly,’ Maurice said. ‘In fact most of Europe.’
/> ‘And,’ Xavier said, ‘I don’t believe such a man as Hitler will be easily appeased, whatever paper he signed.’
Xavier was soon proved right. Despite Hitler’s assurance, he invaded Czechoslovakia in March 1939. In doing so, Germany had broken the terms of the Munich agreement and the threat of war in Europe moved closer.
A few weeks later, Xavier said to Bridgette, ‘I think that war with Germany is almost inevitable now. Italy probably will be dragged into it too, with Mussolini in charge, and Spain, now that Franco has won the civil war. At the moment, France is surrounded by potential enemies.’
‘I know,’ said Bridgette, and her voice was little above a whisper.
‘And so, I must fight for France.’
‘Oh, Xavier…’
‘Every man will be needed, Bridgette,’ Xavier said. ‘Anyway, there will be no choice because I’ll be called up. This is just to prepare you for what will happen. Edmund feels the same.’
‘But Edmund has a family.’
‘And he will not be the only one,’ Xavier replied.
They both received their call-up papers as Germany cast its eyes towards Poland. Britain had promised to protect and support Poland, and Xavier knew once the German tanks rolled into Poland’s streets, France, and all the countries surrounding her, would be plunged into another major war, and they would have to fight to try and stop the monster creeping across Europe.
By the time Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, Xavier and Edmund were at a training camp. Though Xavier wrote every week to both Bridgette and his parents, he could tell them little, certainly not where he was or what he was doing, except in the most general terms. As the autumn rolled on, Bridgette couldn’t tell him either about the Allied soldiers, mainly British, who were coming ashore from ports all across Northern France to help the French Army in their fight against the German aggressors.
‘You will see a difference now, mark my words,’ Maurice announced one night as they sat around the fireside. ‘Trouble is, those Germans have not hit anything that you could really term resistance. I mean, they goose-stepped unopposed into both Austria and Czechoslovakia.’