Tom was a happy man. Back in England, during the depression of the late 1920s / early 1930s, he had answered an advertisement in the employment columns of an English newspaper. Staff were required for the new Courtaulds factory at Calais in northern France. As Tom was now a trained electrician and French was his mother tongue he was a natural choice for the position of Chief Electrical Engineer. He moved over to Calais early in 1927 to help get the new factory off the ground and Nell and his baby daughter Beatrice Marie followed close behind.
The furthest Nell had ever been from home was for the yearly holiday to Aberystwyth in Wales. And now she had followed Tom to a foreign land not knowing a word of French. She felt quite apprehensive about the whole thing.
A row of English-style houses was built for the foremen of the new factory and Tom and Nell moved into one of them. There, Irene Marguerite was born in 1928 and Jeanne Elisabeth in 1932. The family was now complete and the girls were brought up in relative luxury. Nell found herself with both a live-in maid and a cleaning lady. When they were old enough, Nell drove the girls to the Lycee every day, the College Sophie Berthelot in Calais. By 1939, Marie, aged thirteen, was already an accomplished pianist. An examiner had told her at the age of nine that she was gifted. She had not known what that meant; she thought she had done badly! Irene, aged eleven, loved her violin lessons, and there was talk of Jeanne joining a choir.
Clothilde, the maid, would come into Jeanne’s bedroom every winter’s morning carrying a basket. As Jeanne watched, with bedclothes scratching her chin and Dick their dog lying on her feet, the maid crumpled up sheets of old newspaper and laid them in the fireplace. She next criss-crossed the sticks of wood over the paper and finally placed some chunks of coal over the top.
Then she lit the paper with a match and Jeanne looked on fascinated as the wood spat and crackled. When the coal was glowing red and warm, she knew she could get up and dress in front of the fire, ready for school.
Tom and Nell led an exciting social life. Jeanne used to think her Mummy looked every bit a princess in her beautiful long dresses when she came to kiss her goodnight. What she didn’t know was that Tom and Nell sang duets on one of the very first commercial stations, Radio Normandie, run by British enthusiasts and based in Fecamp, a little way down the coast. The station broadcast across to England, where commercial radio was illegal.
When her parents held a dinner party, Tom would order two-dozen oysters and spend a frantic half hour before the guests arrived, prising the obstinate shells with a small, sharp knife. All his choicest Royal Flying Corps language came out during these sessions and Jeanne was sent out of the kitchen until he had finished. She was allowed downstairs later and, sitting on a guest’s knee at the dinner table, was allowed a sip or two from their glass of wine before being sent back to bed.
The garden was Jeanne’s domain. With Leon, the boy next door, she was constantly busy on the swing, in the sandpit and in the field at the back of the houses. There was always so much to do and so much mischief to get up to.
One particular time, she and Leon got drunk. The episode was evermore known in the family’s history as The Story of the Kummel Bottle. She and Leon were rummaging about on an old rubbish tip in the back field one sunny afternoon. They found an empty bottle of Kummel, the delicious damson liqueur from eastern France. Noticing there was some crystallised sugar left in the bottom of the bottle they smashed it on a rock and, with a sharp stone, prised the hardened, liqueur-soaked sugar from the pieces of glass and ate it. The more they ate the more unwell they felt. They came home swaying and complaining of headaches. After a stiff questioning by anxious parents, they were sent to bed to sleep it off, to everyone’s great amusement. In future, whenever someone wanted to embarrass her, they would say, ‘Remember the Kummel story, Jeanne?’ She would slink away, her face bright red, remembering something she needed to do urgently.
As well as Dick the dog, there was Zezette, the beautiful black and white cat, and one day, to Jeanne’s delight, Tom brought home a dozen chicks. He built an incubator with a light burning night and day. He explained that it was to keep the chicks warm and to pretend it was the mother hen. The girls named every one of the chicks. There was Popov, an East European politician forever being mentioned on the radio; Daladier, the French prime minister; and the stripy one they called Zebraline.
Tradesmen called at the house. ‘Grandpere Cresson’ sold freshly-gathered watercress door-to-door, and fishermen brought their catch to the front door. Jeanne liked Monsieur and Madame Matelas best of all. Well that’s what they called them; they never knew their real names. They came once a year and took over the garage, emptied for the purpose. They set up a large trestle table and spent the day bringing the mattresses down from the bedrooms, one by one, unpicking them down one side, and taking the wool out. Jeanne liked to watch them; it was an event to look forward to. The floor of the garage spread with large, clean sheets was completely covered with tight wads of wool, like an Australian sheepshearers’ shed. Monsieur and Madame took great armfuls of wool and fluffed it up, letting the air get at it. They then returned the wool to the mattress, adding more if it was needed, and stitched the side up. When the job was done to their satisfaction, they took the finished mattress upstairs, brought another one down and started all over again. It took up the whole day.
Tom and Nell would rent a seaside cottage at Sandgatte, outside Calais, and the whole household, including Clothilde the maid, would spend the summer months there. Tom commuted to work every day in his beloved Maigret-style Citroën.
The cottage backed onto the beach. It was paradise for three young girls. Jeanne had a shrimping net and spent hours in the shallows with Dick the dog catching shrimps, an assortment of shells and the occasional crab. She learned early to keep away from jellyfish that abounded on the beach but admired their wonderful colours from afar.
Gramp, Granny and Nell’s sister Elsie, known as Rikkie, came over from England. There were long family days and beach picnics.
Yes, life was good to Tom, Nell and the girls, but all that was to change on September 3rd, 1939.
The First World War, called ‘the war to end all wars’, had left the whole of Europe in turmoil, not least vanquished Germany. When Hitler became German Chancellor in the early 1930s, he was thought by many to be the saviour of the German nation. He began regenerating the depressed German economy and building motorways, cars and planes, giving hope to the conquered people.
But almost from the start, he was looking beyond the German frontiers. He annexed Austria, Bohemia and Moravia and, to a mixed reception, his troops entered Prague, the Czechoslovak capital, in March 1939.
He next laid claim to Danzig (Gdansk) in Poland. Britain and France had pledged to defend Poland. On 22nd August 1939, Hitler announced the destruction of Poland ‘starting on Saturday morning’. German troops entered Poland the next day. Britain and France gave Germany an ultimatum to withdraw from Poland by 11.00 am on 3rd September, or war would be declared on Germany. At 11.15 am on that day Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, made his famous broadcast, saying that, ‘No such undertaking has been received, and consequently this country is at war with Germany.’
At first, life went on much as before. This is the period known as the ‘phoney war’. Tom carried on working, and the girls returned to the college Sophie Berthelot at the end of the summer holidays.
Then, almost imperceptibly, things started to change.
‘Look, Jeannot,’ Nell said one evening, ‘I’ve decided to take you away from the college. You’ll have to go to the local school.’
Jeanne was offended. ‘But it’s full of children I’m not allowed to play with. Those awful Durie children go there. Pooh . . . they smell . . . I don’t want to go there . . . Don’t let me go there . . . I don’t want to go . . . Why can’t I carry on going to the college? Why Mummy, why?’
‘I’m sorry Jeannot, there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t get hold of enough petrol to drive you girls to college any more. Marie and Irene can walk there, but you’re too young. It’s too far. You’ll have to go to the village school.’
And that was that.
Then an anti-aircraft battery appeared in the field at the back of the house. It became a meeting place for all the children of the neighbourhood. They spent their time bothering the gun crew and being chased off. Jeanne was learning a few choice words she had never heard before and behaviour that would not have been acceptable previously. Her real education had begun in earnest.
As Spring came, events began hotting up. The grown-ups were getting more and more boring, shushing Jeanne whenever the radio news came on. There was talk of the Maginot Line, the British Expeditionary Forces pouring into France, someone called Mr Chamberlain forever attending meetings. None of it made sense to her.
Tom and Nell were constantly in a huddle, holding long, whispered conversations and telling Jeanne to ‘go and play’.
Still . . . Jeanne had something else to think about; something far more exciting. Her birthday was near. She would be eight on May 10th. Imagine . . . eight – why, that was almost grown up! She knew exactly what she wanted for her birthday. Dolls were not for her; dolls were cissy, stupid things. No, she asked for something much better: tin soldiers, and preferably British ones. A week before the great day, Nell took her to town to choose her present. And there they all were in the shop window, exactly as she had pictured them: a squad of nine British soldiers, in full battle khaki with tin hats on, marching proudly into battle in three rows of three. In front, the flag bearer held the Union Jack aloft, and behind, oh joy of joys, a gun that fired real caps. She was hopping up and down, first on one foot, then the other but, once Nell had bought them, she put the soldiers away.
‘You’ll get them on your birthday,’ she promised.
One evening just before her birthday, Jeanne heard a commotion downstairs. Looking through the banister railings, she saw a man gesticulating and shouting excitedly.
‘Monsieur Tom, Monsieur Tom, all the English are leaving. Go, you must go, the last boat is leaving for Dover tonight!’
‘No,’ Tom said, adamant. ‘My place is here with my work. I’m not going.’ He called to Nell as he closed the door. ‘They’re fools, they’re all panicking. It’ll all be over in no time. It’ll be over by Christmas. You’ll see.’