Jean was in love. He adored Marie; he worshipped the ground she walked on.
He lived just down the road with his parents in a large house with a beautiful garden, but he would spend hours at Nell’s, sprawled in the only armchair regaling them with amazing stories, tall stories, preposterous anecdotes. He was always looking to Marie for approval, hoping for a sign. But she only saw him as a brother, a good friend. She was the older woman. He was sixteen; she was seventeen.
Jean was a hothead. The great sorrow of his life, apart from his unrequited love for Marie, was that he could not take part in the war. He knew it would all be over by the time he was old enough to fight and he was just dying to have a go. But he could still find many small ways to annoy the Germans, and got up to all sorts of tricks just to get rid of his frustration.
Late at night, Nell would hear an urgent knock on the front door.
‘Open up, open up . . .’
Standing behind the door, she would say fearfully, ‘Who’s that?’
‘It’s me! Jean. Open up, quick, quick . . .’
She would unlock and open the door and Jean would thrust a stolen pair of German army boots into her hands, or a can of petrol off an army lorry.
‘Here,’ he would say, breathless. ‘Look after this for me. I’ll be back later.’
‘Oh no, Jean! Not at this house! Not here of all places.’
Jean would simply look over his shoulder before disappearing into the night. ‘I’ll see you later!’ He’d done his daily bit for the war effort.
One afternoon, Jean and Marie returned from an outing, eyes sparkling. They were laughing and had a tale to tell. They had gone out in Jean’s father’s car to the nearby airfield and had parked by the fence. There, arms round each other pretending to kiss, they had counted the German machine-gun emplacements. Jean would report his findings to the underground movement later and feel useful in his small way.
Nell was furious. She turned on Marie. ‘Don’t you ever, ever do anything like that again! You know very well your father’s in German hands, and should you ever get into trouble, there could be reprisals against him.’
Nell had been approached time and time again by the Resistance. With her knowledge of English, she could have been very useful to them. But she felt strongly that she had been given a job to do, and that was to get her family through this wretched war unharmed and she refused to get involved. She also suspected at times that she didn’t know whether people were on her side or against her. Many of the French were resentful that their country had been invaded twice in twenty-five years and some were apt to blame the Allies as much as the Germans, and so Nell tried not to draw attention to herself too much.
But some were very friendly and she knew she could trust them.
One evening, Nell was visiting Monsieur and Madame Begue. Their son Roger was in Marie’s class and they were very happy to invite her over for a chat. Nell sensed there was an atmosphere in the Begue’s kitchen that night, a feeling of excitement that Nell could not fathom out at all. They talked of this and that and, as she left, she still felt puzzled; it had been a very odd evening indeed.
When Nell bumped into Madame Begue the following week, all was made clear. Nell had been sitting with her back to an R.A.F. airman sitting in the next room, waiting to be rescued! Madame Begue continued, ‘We know you don’t want to get involved with the Resistance and we respect your wishes.’ But Nell was slightly disappointed. She would have loved to have had a chat with one of ‘Our boys’.
One Sunday evening, returning in the blackest of blackouts from their weekly visit to the flea-pit, Marie fell and twisted her ankle. She just could not walk on it.
It was an awful end to an awful evening.
They had seen a costume drama, a real weepy. Marie-Antoinette was being prepared for her walk to the guillotine. A nasty, leering man had cut off her beautiful long hair with a sword and her weeping attendants had gently removed the lace collar from her neck so that the blade would cut cleanly.
Jeanne had been vaguely aware of movement in the cinema, of people walking heavily down the aisles. But she was much too engrossed in the film to take any real notice. The queen’s walk to the scaffold, her head held erect, had her undivided attention. The film ended, the lights went up. Women were dabbing their eyes.
‘Nobody move! Stay right where you are!’ a voice shouted.
The cinema was full of German troops blocking every exit, their guns at the ready.
The audience panicked. Everyone was screaming. Women clung to their husbands or sons, really crying now.
‘No, no!’ they shouted. Some men tried to hide under the tip-up seats, others looked towards the toilets, but it was too late. The doors were already blocked by more armed guards.
Jeanne’s hand sought Nell’s and held on to it. They were herded towards the exit.
‘Papieren! Papieren!’ The soldiers were checking identity papers. Once this was established to their satisfaction, they let the women go, but the men were detained for further questioning. These events occurred frequently. Able-bodied Frenchmen were forcibly sent to Germany to help with the war effort, or to work on the Atlantic wall running along the west coast of France, built to repel any Allied invasion. Many carried forged identity papers that stated they were ill or disabled and unable to work.
The lobby was in pandemonium. Weeping women were wrenched from their men and told roughly to go home.
A voice called out, ‘Marie! Marie!’
Marie gasped. ‘My goodness, it’s Paul, one of the boys from college. They’ve got him!’
Paul shouted, trying to make his voice heard above the commotion. ‘Marie, go and tell my mother I’ve been arrested. Can you hear me?’
She waved and tried to smile reassuringly. Poor Paul! She wondered what would happen to him. She turned to Nell and her sisters. ‘Come on, I know where he lives, it’s just round the corner. His poor mother! What a shock.’
They forced their way through the crowd gathered outside the cinema and were soon at Paul’s house. They knocked on the door. A first-floor window opened cautiously and a frightened voice said, ‘Who is it?’ People always feared a nocturnal knock on the door.
‘It’s me, Marie Sarginson. We’ve come from the cinema. Paul’s been picked up.’ They heard a gasp and the window closed. Within seconds, Madame Dupuis was on the doorstep in her dressing gown and they gave her as much information as they could.
When they had delivered their message, they walked on towards home, discussing the evening’s events. Surely Paul, being only seventeen and still at college, would be released? Paul was indeed freed, but immediately disappeared. His mother had decided he might not be so lucky next time. He was, it was said, ‘en foret’. Working in forestry was a euphemism in wartime France for ‘he’s in hiding’ or ‘he’s joined the Resistance’.
It was on the way home that Marie fell and twisted her ankle. She just could not walk on it. They stood around her in the pitch-dark blackout, the inadequate light of Nell’s torch shining feebly on Marie’s ankle, not quite knowing what to do next, when, incongruously, they heard someone walking down the street, cheerfully whistling Geraldo’s signature tune, straight off the forbidden BBC broadcasts: He-llo again. We’re on the radi-o again . . .
There was only one person in German-occupied Cambrai who had the audacity to do such a thing.
‘Jean! Jean . . .Come here, over here!’ they called.
That night, Jean got his heart’s desire. He scooped Marie up in his arms and, holding her close to him, carried her home.
Much, much later, after the liberation, a man stood on their doorstep resplendent in brand-new uniform. It was Jean, the youngest brigadier in the French army!