The Children's War
Page 44
“Oh, you know. The usual. A spot of bother.”
That was his humour, the quiet understatement and then a sideways conspiratorial glance, to see if she had got it. With other people he spoke differently. He seemed to see her as a special friend. He did not want to talk about the past and neither did she. Instead, they talked about the future. Tom dreaded the return home. French prisoners of war were returning; the newspapers were full of pictures of receptions at station platforms, of the brave soldiers kissing wives and sweethearts. He found these pictures amusing.
“It won’t be like that in England,” he said. “We have too many heroes.”
How sad, she thought, that when he went home there would be nobody to meet him. But then he, like her, was the sort who stood apart.
An exchange was organised by the Red Cross: German civilians for French deportees. Those who had worked in Germany as farm labourers came home fat, with good-quality clothes. They were surprised at how badly those who had stayed in France had fared. The first walking skeletons returned, women who had been in the camp of Mauthausen. Again, she had a vision, quickly suppressed, of the river of human misery that flowed through Gurs. The skeletal women were whisked away. Nobody wanted to hear those depressing stories. Nobody wanted to see pictures like that in the newspapers. Nothing was sure. When the war ended, she thought, she would go through the camps and look for Otto herself. But the thought of returning to Germany made her sick with anxiety.
“Tom, do you think any of those in the German camps will survive?”
He did not answer.
“Tom?”
He seemed far away. He could not talk about the camps any more than she could. Then she saw that to open this discussion at all, he had to be told who she really was. It should have been easier to disclose her secret, but it was not. It grew harder each time.
“You do know,” she said, then paused and chose slightly different words. “You should know—I’m German. A refugee from the Nazis. And I’m half Jewish. Nobody knows here. Not even Marie-France really understands.”
His eyes came back to her. “You’re full of surprises.”
“Do you mind?”
“Why should I mind? I don’t mind who you are,” he said. “None of us are what we thought we were, are we? We’ve all had to become something else. The main thing is that whatever you are, it doesn’t stop you seeing me.”
Incredibly, that was all it meant to him. Perhaps all Englishmen were this tolerant. She stared at her feet, absorbing this. Glancing up, she caught him staring at her in that intent way he had. On the boat that day, as the others went off to tour the Château d’If, he had stood at the railing watching her with just this look. It was a very flattering look. She thought about it. It was as though she had something he wanted badly.
“Tom? That day you docked in Europe, in Marseilles. You were supposed to go straight to La Californie, weren’t you?”
He kept on giving her that look.
“But you didn’t.”
He produced his most charming smile. “I went sightseeing. And I met someone,” he said.
Gene had nowhere private to take Marie-France. Sometimes, Ilse found them grappling on her friend’s bed in their little room, intense struggles from which Marie-France emerged energised and pink-cheeked. She refused to go to a hotel: nice girls did not do that. Maman was always in the way, or Ilse was. Marie-France made certain of that. “If I fall—and there’s no certainty of it—it won’t be before Germany does,” she said.
The Ardennes offensive terrified everyone with its unexpectedness and accuracy. Hitler chose the precise place where the Germans had breached France last time and where they had defeated the French so unexpectedly. This was where François might die and Willy. Ilse felt ill at the thought.
Tom scoffed at her fears. “We’ll defeat them. This is their last attempt.”
Such certainty began to be reassuring. Then the news started getting better all the time. The Allies, racing to get across the Rhine, forded it on March 7th. Inside Germany, soldiers were surrendering in vast numbers. Eventually the Russians and the Americans met. Everything was easing. With good air force contacts, a person could hop just about anywhere they wanted to in France. Gene announced that he was going to take Marie-France to Paris because she had never been there. That, said Marie-France drily, was not the real reason. She asked Simone for a holiday. Gene cadged them a lift in a plane. They would be there from Sunday to Wednesday. Jubilant, he came to collect her, bearing a bag of first-rate provisions for the stay-at-homes.
Marie-France returned with cheeks as pink as ever. Ilse had never seen her more full of life and mischief. Proudly, she showed off three tiny splinters of diamond on her finger. Admiring the ring, Ilse liked better the confiding way Marie-France leant against Gene without ever letting go of his hand. Maman cried when she understood the good news.
“Did you find the café?”
“Café Tournon, Tuesday afternoon, two o’clock. The big round table. We had the hot chocolate. We sat for two hours but nobody came. We were there, weren’t we, Gene?”
“Sure. You know my fiancée, she’s on time everywhere.”
They all laughed, knowing Marie-France. Ilse wanted to say that the rendezvous was for three o’clock, but then she thought that it could not matter. Albert was never late. Sitting for two hours, they could not possibly have missed a very tall, unusually ugly but attractive man with a squint so noticeable you just could not look away. So she merely thanked her.
When they were alone, Marie-France told her what had happened. They had wandered through Paris, lovers in every respect but the crucial one. Gene had spent several intensely frustrating nuits blanches in bed with a naked but still chaste Marie-France. Ilse started to ask her friend if she was absolutely sure about him.
“Don’t start,” said Marie-France. “You can see that I’m very, very happy.”
So she desisted.
On Sunday she went to the convalescent home. Tom said how much he had missed not seeing her that week. She laughed and smiled and was cheerful. There was nothing to do but be cheerful. He noticed what good spirits she was in and complimented her. She thought about how much older Tom was. He had certainty about things. He seemed to be right all the time. People like François were not safe. With François, it had never been possible to anticipate anything, though anticipation was her greatest defence. With someone like François there would be an endless procession of surprises, most of which would be unwelcome.
Tom gave her an easier book by a writer he admired called Rosamond Lehmann. The book, about a girl growing up, was full of intimate feelings between men and women with a constant note of sadness, of loneliness, that she recognised in herself and that carried on resonating in her. Tom enjoyed her surprise, that this should be his taste. He had scribbled a bit, he said. She, with her quick intelligence, should try. Alone, she wondered how he had divined the ambition she kept secret, almost from herself. The author obviously was German and probably Jewish.
The next time she saw him she ventured the question. “Is she German?”
“Oh no, English,” said Tom.
“Are you sure?”
“As English as me.”
She understood, finally, how different his England must be, where a person wrote such things and did not have to hide her surname and yet could still be English.
That evening Ilse opened the back of the photograph frame, took out the fifty-dollar note and presented it to a stunned Marie-France, insisting that she use the money to buy fabric for her wedding dress. The girls made a collection to buy her shoes. Marie-France persuaded Simone to let her have a length of the most beautiful oyster satin that Simone’s sister-in-law had squirrelled away. They cut and fitted it in the atelier and Ilse did all the embroidery, hand-scalloping the hem. As soon as the war was over, as soon as Gene was demobilised, as soon as the wedding happened, Marie-France would be gone. All the time she sewed she kept asking herself what she was goi
ng to do. The next time Ilse had a couple of days off she suggested to Tom that they might spend the time together.
“What do you want to do?”
Life, she said, ought to contain more celebrations. She would surprise him. On the train to Marseilles, she asked him where he was from. Perhaps he was a country boy, from a village. She had never thought to enquire before. No, he said. He was from a small industrial town in the northwest of England called Birkenhead. It was very near Liverpool, which was a great seaport. She nodded politely. It would be just like Marseilles.
On a bright spring day, she led him down the steps from the Gare St. Charles, along the Boulevard Dugommier and down the Canebière to the seafront. It took a while to find the perfect restaurant with an awning and a view of the sea. She insisted that she must do the ordering.
“What’s this all about?”
“We are going to try a very special dish only made in Marseilles,” she said.
These plates were almost too hot to touch, the reddish-browny liquid seemed an odd colour and the rascasse slightly sour. Her mother had imagined something lighter and creamier. Still, Ilse quite liked the taste of bouillabaisse.
Tom managed a couple of spoonfuls, then put his spoon down. “Very nice,” he said. He was frowning.
“What is it?”
“It’s all bits,” he said. “I mean, with all this ocean—just look at that water out there—you’d think you could go to a restaurant and get a decent piece of fish.”
It was uncanny. This, of all possible comments, deeply moved her.
“You’re right,” she said. “Tom, tell me, what would you like to have?”
“Lobster,” he said. “We’re celebrating, aren’t we? I’m hoping you’ll tell me what and why. So let’s go mad.”
Ilse did something very strange and unexpected, which she had never seen anyone do. She laughed uncontrollably and at the same time she cried. Tears flowed down her cheeks. She could not speak for several minutes. He patted her on the back, offered his handkerchief. Then he took her hand in his two warm hands and would not let her have it back. As speech returned, she tried for several helpless moments to say that nothing was wrong. With one thing and another, she never did manage to explain.
1 “You are Ilse.”
2 “Have you got my black pudding?”
3 Welcome to Oran, dear Ilse!
4 “Whoever buys from a Jew is a traitor.”
5 “Young folk,” the branch of the Hitler Youth for ten- to fourteen-year-olds.
6 “Sharp stone,” i.e., “sch”-sounding words characteristically pronounced by Hamburgers with an “s.”
7 League of German Girls—the female equivalent of the Hitler Youth, known as BdM.
8 The duties of the courtly knight.
9 Return addressee.
10 Life studies / philosophy of life.
11 People’s radio receiver. † White lightning flash emblem (literally, “victory rune”).
12 The most important Nazi song.
13 Cadre leader in the Hitler Youth.
14 Standard-bearer.
15 Conformity; making all equal, especially through the wearing of uniforms.
16 Cleansed of Jews.
17 “Dear Mummy, how lovely Paris is! One feels so free. We are thinking of you.”
18 “Otto, we missed you!”
19 Police permission to remain in France.
20 “Don’t you know me?”
21 La Falaise concentration camp.
22 Christmas Eve.
23 “A people with no space” (title of Hans Grimm’s 1926 epic novel; its message was that the decent, industrious white German nation needed more space and lived within too narrow frontiers).
24 “My head is a chirruping bird’s nest of confiscatable books,” from Deutschland ein Wintermärchen by Heinrich Heine.
25 “You idiots, looking for my contraband in the Café Tournon—you won’t find anything. It is hidden in my head.”
26 German nationals.
27 Forget-me-not.
28 “Clear the street for the brown battalions, / Make way for the SA man; / Millions full of hope gaze at the swastika, / For the day of bread and freedom has come.”
29 Touch wood.
30 Air Defence League.
31 German army.
32 “Abandoned populations: have confidence in the German soldier!”
33 “Fugitive,” i.e., deserter.
34 “You slut.”
35 “You can come out now, Mummy.”
36 “We’ve got to help these poor Flemish people all the same.”
37 Dirty Krauts.
38 Little sister.
39 Municipal welcome centre.
40 “We’re going, we’re going against England.”
41 Office of Automated Reporting.
42 “Where are the whores?”
43 Tarbooshes.
44 “Give me the liar.”
45 “Come in, my treasure.”
46 A brothel.
47 “Through night and fog”: sinister German expression.
48 Pass.
49 Salad spinners.
50 The English Channel.
51 “Perhaps a little pepper.”
52 “Den Himmel überlassen wir den Engeln und den Spatzen.” Heinrich Heine, Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen.
53 Schiller’s tragedy of 1787 in blank verse.
54 Residence permit.
55 The Selection Committee.
56 Police roundup/raid.
57 “Old monkey.”
58 Brothel.
59 “My little collaborators.”
60 “Do you love me?”
61 “Dirty bitch!”
62 French letter.
63 Grape sugar.
64 “Long live honour.”
65 Ground route.
66 Gestapo agency in unoccupied France.
67 Shits.
68 Refusal of permission to remain in a place, i.e., a document which is invalid.
69 “Real hairy man”; also World War I term for a French soldier.
70 Germanness.
71 “Lord: it is time. The summer was very great.”
72 “Who has no house will not build one now. / Who is alone will long remain so / will wake, read, write long letters / and wander restless in the avenues as the leaves fall.” From “Herbsttag” (“Autumn Day”) by Rainer Maria Rilke.
73 “The land belongs to the French and Russians.”
74 “Let us go, children of the motherland—the day of glory is here!”
75 “One rubs along.”
76 Informer.
77 “My, my, young lady.”
78 “He’s got no balls.”
79 Charcoal-fueled gas generator. Engines were adapted as petrol was scarce.
80 “Perhaps we might be left a tree on the slope that we would be able to see every day.” Rainer Maria Rilke, “Die Erste Elegie,” Duino Elegies.
81 Railwaymen.
82 “What’s your name?”
83 “Nurse.”
84 A fascist youth organisation.
85 “The thinkers and poets become hangmen and judges.”
86 Child’s game: “Jump, rider, jump! / When he falls, it’s a thump / If he falls in the ditch, the ravens eat each stitch / If he falls in the bog, he tumbles like a log.”
87 Name given to wild countryside on the coast, hence to French Resistance members hiding there.
88 “How do you like Cohen-Cannes?”
89 Obligatory Work Service.
90 Notice: Following two serious outrages against the German army on January 3rd, all traffic is forbidden between Marseilles, Septemes, Allauch, . . . etc.
91 Breaches will be punished according to the laws of war.
92 Marshalling yard.
93 “Who has no house will not build one now. / Who is alone will long remain so”—Rilke, “Herbsttag.”
94 “That is one of our trusted men.”
95 Sugar-
beet molasses.
96 “Every corner burnt at the same time. / There was nothing to see but smoke and flames. / The church towers flared up / And with a roar collapsed.” From Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen, by Heinrich Heine.
97 Reich Work Service.
98 Emergency matriculation.
99 Blue Henry.
100 Foreign workers (often conscripts).
101 HilfsWilliger, i.e., “willing helper”; actually a prisoner of war.
102 Führer, we are marching with you to final victory.
103 “Enjoy the war. Peace will be appalling.”
104 Mutter und Kinder—mothers and children.
105 German organization employing forced labour.
106 “Too hot to work, Miss!”
107 “I have big thirst.”
108 “I thank, Miss.”
109 “We’ll have a real treat.”
110 Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur.
111 There are two eternal things: France and our faith.
Acknowledgments
This book was championed by Charles Walker of PFD, London. Robin Desser of Alfred A. Knopf, in New York, and Courtney Hodell of Fourth Estate, in London, edited it with great skill. My mother kindly gave her advice, as did Dennis McKay. My husband was, as always, a source of inspiration and endless support. I thank them all.
MONIQUE CHARLESWORTH
The Children’s War
Monique Charlesworth was born in Birkenhead, England, and has lived in France and Germany. She began writing fiction while living in Hong Kong and is the author of three previous novels. She has worked as a journalist and as a screenwriter for both film and television. She lives with her husband and two children in London.
ALSO BY MONIQUE CHARLESWORTH
The Glass House
Life Class
Foreign Exchange
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2005
Copyright © 2004 by Monique Charlesworth
Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Charlesworth, Monique, [date]
The children’s war / Monique Charlesworth. —1st American ed.