‘Hang on!’
The car wouldn’t start. Again and again, I tried it. Petrol, were we out of petrol?
The engine caught at last and I drove into the ditch and across the field. Racing along the side road, we passed the traffic. I took a left, another and another, went east towards the Seine only to be forced to the right, the right!
Back at the route nationale, I nudged our way into the traffic again as the day began to cool and the sun to set, and when the German fighters returned, I pulled the children out of the car and ran like everyone else, but the scream from the Stuka was petrifying. Nailed to the earth, I gripped the children and fought to shut out the sound of that siren. Jean-Guy was huddled beside me. Marie … Where was Marie?
The tac-k-tac-k-tac of the machine guns faded, but by then the sound of the bomb had come rushing back to engulf me. ‘MARIE! MARIE!’ I cried.
Knees … I must bend my knees. I must push hard. ‘Jean-Guy … Jean-Guy …’ I gave a scream, the first of many.
It’s morning now, and Dupuis, my husband, and the others haven’t come for me yet, but I know they will. The last leaves are falling from the pear, plum, and apple trees in the orchard behind the house. Dark red to brown or yellow, each leaf is different, unique, yet all are the same. They lie on top of the rabbit hutches, have been swept into corners here and there. Against the grey-white, sun-bleached wood, they look so beautiful but, of course, the rabbits are no longer here and the cage doors have been left wide open.
I used to feed those leaves to my rabbits. In an apron, old skirt, socks, boots, beige cardigan, and faded blouse, I didn’t play favourites. One couldn’t afford to.
There were five rabbits, and when I came to the buck, which had all the pleasures of mating and none of the responsibilities, I withheld the leaf but only for a moment. His dark blue eyes gazed dumbly at me. He was white and black and rusty brown, with big, floppy pink ears, and I wanted so much to call him Hitler.
Instead, I would summon a tired disinterest and tell him, ‘Someday we’re going to eat you.’
I had bought him in the market at Fontainebleau, had paid far too much, but even then, in those first few weeks, I had known how essential he would be. That part of me had remained practical-the no-nonsense Lily, sharpened, yes, by the years of practice Jules had given me.
The other part was already dead. Jean-Guy and I would feed the rabbits and kill them one by one. If a doe didn’t produce, she’d be the first to see the pot. One quickly shaved life down to its essentials.
France … What had happened? The château was in the Occupied Zone, nearly three-fifths of the country and the whole of its northern part. One needed a permit to do almost anything. One couldn’t go near the English Channel or Atlantic Coast, nor Belgium, Switzerland, or Italy, or into the Pyrenees to Spain, et cetera. All of these frontier areas were in what was known of as the Forbidden Zones, the zones interdites.
There were regions within regions, and each of them in the zone occupée was under German military control. Those people had needed offices, and they had had to be billeted. I could understand this, but why had God insisted I look after three of them?
There were windfalls lying about, the last of the pears. Each of the rabbits got one-sliced with my Opinel, the peasant’s standby, which never seemed to leave me then. Sliced so as to be pushed through the gaps in the wire.
The buck saved nothing for a hungry moment. Neither did any of the does. They ate constantly as if there would never be a tomorrow, just like prisoners would, something I came to know only too well.
‘Maman?’
‘Oui?’
‘I’ve made something for Marie. It’s a doll’s house.’
‘Jean-Guy, you’re sister’s dead.’
‘NO, SHE ISN’T! SHE RAN AWAY!’
I grabbed him by the arm and shook him violently. ‘Dead! Did you hear me? We saw the cross. They buried her in that field along with the baby.’
The rabbits watched, chewing all the time while Jean-Guy’s dark eyes blazed in tearful rebellion. ‘Marie wasn’t wearing a dress!’ he blurted. ‘She was wearing her brown overalls! I saw her!’
I wanted to slap his face. As always, my eyes rapidly misted at the mention of Marie, and I turned quickly from him. ‘Don’t you dare give me hope!’
There were thousands missing-displaced people all over the country. Advertisements in every newspaper, but I was always like this to Jean-Guy. I wouldn’t go in search of Marie. I wanted to believe his little sister was dead.
‘Forgive me, please. I’m so tired today, I wish I could just go to sleep.’
‘You’re always tired. You’re not any fun. Make us some loaves of bread. Make Marie an elephant. Use the Germans’ flour!’
Believe, hope, pray. Let him have his little dream even if it hurts.
He was growing tall, was thin, was all I had. I smothered his jet-black hair with kisses, caressed his cheek, and let my hand linger on a shoulder. ‘All right, but first, could you look after the house? I need to be by myself. Let me go for a walk in the forest, to that old stone tower like we used to. If anyone asks, tell them I’ve gone to gather acorns. That, at least, is permitted for the present.’
‘Rudi helped me with the doll’s house. He made me measure things exactly. We first made a sketch, maman, and then a detailed plan.’
‘That was kind of him. Now go and paint it. Yes, that would be best. Tell Gefrieter Swartz that there’s some old paint in the storeroom.’
‘You don’t need to call him a private first class corporal, not when Herr Oberst is away. Rudi says that Rudi is good enough.’
‘And Obersturmführer Schiller, what does he say about it?’
‘He’s in the forest again, making sure there’s enough timber to make the charcoal and lumber the Reich needs. Rudi says they’re going to cut down all the trees. He says the lieutenant means business and that we must be very careful with him.’
Never had there been such a beautiful autumn as in that year of 1940. For weeks on end, the skies, as if in punishment, had been clear. Perhaps God had granted the French a time of healing. Perhaps it was only the pause before another harsh winter. Oh, for sure, Paris had been declared an open city during the blitzkrieg, and I was aware that all the theatres and restaurants had reopened almost on the day of the Occupation and that there were already the beginnings of a black market. But this was all hearsay to me. Travel permits to visit the city were still very hard to obtain. Already there were rumours of food shortages and worse, and there was not enough fuel for cooking. In some suburbs of Paris, where there was no producer gas, communal kitchens had been set up in apartment blocks. Coal that used to come by barge no longer did because the Germans had seized all the barges for the invasion of England. Nearly one-third of all trains and other rolling stock had been sent to the Reich. Virtually all petrol-driven vehicles, including two-thirds of the buses, had been requisitioned solely for the use of the military or the French police. Then, too, there was the curfew, ending at five, which was four in the old time, Hitler having put us on Central European time. In consequence, the central market, Les Halles, the belly of Paris, was open for a few hours late in the day, and what was offered was pitiful. Farmers fed their milk to the pigs, and the children of Paris went without since the milk trains had also been stopped. France was being bled not yet of its people, except for the one-and-a-half million who were prisoners of war, but of its economy. The need for forced labour would come later.
Having not even noticed the beauty of the trees, I reached the stone tower, and for a moment, that old familiar excitement came, but I deliberately shut it out and sat down to lean back and warm myself in the sun. I had to think about how I was going to cope. I was a British subject and by rights should have been sent to the internment camp at Besançon in the Franche-Comté, but so far the Germans hadn’t demanded this. Jules now had a very important job in Paris, and it must have been because of him that I’d been left alone.