‘My father won’t be able to bear it.’
‘Oh come on … he’d be ashamed if you wriggled out of it. One military march, and the most hardened onlookers have tears in their eyes.’
The next fortnight flashed past. The agency closed. Cannes was emptying. The fine summer was dying gently away, indifferent to the preparations for the great upheaval. Jewellers were selling off diamonds, banks dollars. From the horizon in the early morning came the dull, rhythmic crump of artillery. The French navy was exercising out at sea. A regiment from Marseille marched through the town. Troops were taking up defensive positions on the Italian frontier. Mules pulling mountain cannons followed. A regiment of Senegalese garrisoned at Fréjus left for the north. At the harbour master’s a queue formed of foreign yacht owners waiting to have their papers stamped to leave for Spain or Gibraltar. Shops began to run out of sugar, coffee, tea and jam. Jean and Palfy went for drives in the country behind Cannes, where a soothing indifference reigned, sampling the last of a summer that had been heartbreakingly tranquil and delightful. In the cafés, between games of cards and boules, people listened to the wireless as it broadcast with undeniable and vindictive skill its news digest preparing the population for war. Jean was tempted several times to go as far as Saint-Tropez to see Théo and Toinette and confirm that the Norman uncle was really the man he thought he was. He made do with calling Théo on the telephone on his last day to tell him that he was enlisting.
‘In the Train des Équipages?’18 Théo asked with a trace of anxiety.
‘No, no. Infantry.’
‘But you’ll be on foot, and Berlin’s a bit far for marching.’
‘I’ll hitchhike.’
‘All right then. You’re a brave one. I’m just in the GVC.’19
‘The GVC.?’
‘Guarding the lines of communication. When you’re past forty they don’t let you go to war, especially when you’re a father. Anyhow, it’ll be short, I’m telling you … Théo is telling you. We’ll expect you back at Christmas to slosh down some champagne with us. And come back with a Croix de Guerre. That’ll please Toinette.’
‘Send her a kiss from me.’
‘Send her a kiss!’
Jean felt Théo was taking himself a little too seriously as a father, and being excessively strait-laced. Of course he wished Toinette nothing but well. Come to think of it, why shouldn’t she be his wartime godmother? Théo said he would have to think about it.
‘I don’t want her to get any ideas. At her age, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Ask her uncle Antoine what he thinks. Tell him it’s for Jean Arnaud.’
‘Why? He hasn’t got a clue who you are!’
‘Yes he has, I promise he has. I’m a friend.’
The second week’s bill from the Carlton resembled, as foreseen, one of those ultimatums that had been echoing around Europe for the past three years. It was impossible to misread its tone. Palfy had already safely hidden several suits and some underwear, basic necessities for a future hoax that he was already applying his mind to. In the meantime he needed to disappear as fast as he could. Posters on town-hall doors were inviting him to do just that: ‘Enlist. Re-enlist. Beat the call-up.’ Despite having been discharged at twenty, he requested to take a new medical board. The medical officer noted his hollow chest, but in the face of his intense feigned patriotism passed him ‘fit for active service’. Jean was passed fit without reservation. A fifty-franc note slipped to the orderly secretary in charge of the allocation of recruits to training depots got them onto the same list. They were each issued with directions, but Palfy tore up their travel warrants. After a final tour of the town’s nightclubs, where age-exempt saxophonists blew up a storm on empty dance floors, they climbed into the Austro-Daimler and headed west and north, towards the Auvergne.
Palfy was in raptures at the thought of the magnificent bill left behind at the hotel. At every stop he took the account out of his wallet and grieved at not having ordered caviar and champagne every night.
‘One day I shall regret it bitterly. But the truth compels me to say that at this moment I am sick of champagne, caviar, lobster à l’américaine, and foie gras. One must take care of oneself. The MO was right, apart from the fact that he needs new glasses: it’s not my chest that’s hollow, it’s my stomach that’s ballooning.’
Three days later, after numerous stops at restaurants and country hotels, the all-consuming Austro-Daimler pulled up outside high gates at the entrance to a field at Yssingeaux in the upper Loire. On a washed-out banner they read: ‘Military Training Centre. No entry.’ A huge sergeant was on guard duty, his helmet and boots greased, his thumbs tucked into his belt.
‘Move along!’ he shouted mechanically.
It took him some time to realise that the two men alighting from the monstrous dimensions of the vehicle in front of him were recruits. And recruits liable to a week’s confinement to barracks for arriving two hours late.
‘What — what about your car?’ he asked, shocked that they should abandon their fabulous conveyance so blithely, in the middle of nowhere.
‘My chauffeur, who is following behind on his bicycle, should be here in a moment. He will drive it to the garage. And if by some chance he should fail to appear, it’s yours. An extraordinary vehicle, whose like we shall not see again. It was built especially for a Russian grand duke.’
The sergeant judged that this strange recruit was in urgent need of basic discipline and the full rigour of the regulations that constitute the strength of all armies. He sentenced both men to a week’s confinement. Across open fields — they would be given a key when they had earned the colonel’s trust, as the orderly subtly put it — they were led to a barn where several men, all completely drunk, were snoring in the straw. Palfy changed into his silk pyjamas, quite unbothered by the strong smell of rats.
‘You see,’ he said to Jean, who was still angry at their reception, ‘we are about to learn the hard way. They are going to temper us in the steel from which victories are forged. Vive la France!’
Their neighbour, a hirsute ginger-haired man bristling with stalks of straw, sat up.
‘Vive la France? Shut your gob. Demob is all we give a shit about!’
And lay down again. For the record, let us note that this rebel’s name was Boucharon, that, slowed down by his flat feet which prevented him from running, he was, in June 1940, taken prisoner by the enemy and sent to Silesia, where he had to wait another five years to be demobilised. Poor Boucharon, a victim of society, the state and himself. There were hundreds, thousands of Boucharons whose fates were sealed that night of 31 August. The following day, emerging from the aftereffects of their overindulgence in red wine, these warriors took a moderate interest in the news of the day: the Germans were invading Poland. A captain explained to them that the Polish cavalry were accomplishing marvels and that the Nazis’ armoured divisions were staring death in the face. With their lances the Poles were aiming at the firing slits and putting out the eyes of the German tank crews.
The whole troop having been confined to barracks, Palfy and Jean hardly minded their week’s punishment. As the depot lacked new kit, the men were issued with blue-grey uniforms from the last war. An orderly appeared with clippers. In an excess of enthusiasm that had more than a whiff of insolence to it — the high command did not require such zeal — the friends had their heads shaved. They had to ask for new forage caps which did not slip down to their ears. Throughout the first week the Austro-Daimler remained parked outside the gate where they had left it. The colonel summoned Palfy.