Returning to places you knew in your childhood and seeing them with a grown-up’s eyes, makes things seem so very different.
I returned to the house of my birth in Calais quite recently. We were very kindly welcomed by the present occupiers and sat in their garden, what had been my wonderful garden where I had played in with my dog Dick and the beautiful cat Zezette. It is still a large garden, but the house seemed so small now, tiny, and yet it had been my huge castle up to the age of eight. How the memory plays tricks.
My sister Irene and I visited Tante Suzanne about thirty years ago. She was my father’s cousin in Paris. I now realised that she lived in the choicest part of intellectual Paris, that the church opposite her flat was the renowned Church of St Germain des Pres and the café opposite was Les Deux Magots, mentioned as the meeting place of all Bohemian Paris of the sixties. The walls of her flat were covered with her father’s paintings, as well as hers, and the beautifully carved furniture had been made by her grandfather, who had been a cabinet maker.
Some time later, we heard from a Madame France Fremaux, who was Suzanne’s godchild, that Suzanne had died. She had been in her nineties and very frail. France Fremaux had been left with a problem: Suzanne had stipulated in her will that her dying wish was to be buried in the vault of Marguerite Castelle, which is our family vault in the Cimetiere de Montparnasse. All our deceased ancestors lie there. It turned out that the vault was already full, and if Suzanne were to be buried there, the coffin of a long dead relative would have to be removed from the vault and buried elsewhere in the cemetery.
Suzanne’s solicitor, Maitre Charles Bricard, requested that all persons having the right to the vault give permission for the coffin of a dead relative be removed and for Suzanne to be interred there, but it had to be done within a year. Meanwhile, Suzanne had been temporarily buried elsewhere. My sister Irene, her son John, my three daughters, Julie, Marina and Sophie and I had to send a letter authorising France Fremaux to have the vault opened, explaining our right of parentage, a copy of our birth certificate and other proof of identity. Irene and I decided not to bother my sister Marie’s children; she had died some time before and we thought that the link with them was broken. After several months, with all the paper work done, one of our unknown relatives was disturbed from their eternal sleep and buried elsewhere; Suzanne’s coffin was exhumed and at last placed in the family vault, as she wished. A very French story!
I have been back to Cambrai in northern France a couple of times. It’s now a thriving town, proud of itself and looking as though it has forgotten the horrors of two world wars. When I stand on the main square and look at the Flemish-style hotels, I still see them covered with red and black flags embellished with swastikas. I just cannot forget.
Walking down to the old dilapidated quarter where we lived, I was amazed to find that the whole district is now a preservation area, and that the council is erecting plaques on each street corner pointing out items of interest to visitors. I knocked on the door of number 8, rue de Monstrelet where we lived for three years, but there was no reply. I had the feeling that it was social housing and that visitors would be unwelcome. I wonder if the smelly toilet is still in the yard, or has it now pride of place in a local museum?
We returned to Rieux-en-Cambresis in 2010, laid some flowers at the memorial to the massacre of September 2nd l944, then drove down to 15, Rue de la Gare, where we had stayed for a few months to get away from the bombings. While taking photos a man approached us. He was painting the house next door and it turned out he was Camille Jackemin, whom I used to play with! We were told off one time by his father for running in his asparagus patch and knocking the tips off. Camille invited us into his kitchen, introduced us to his wife, and we had a coffee and reminisced.
We had an appointment with Monsieur Moussi, the mayor of Rieux-en-Cambresis, and his deputy at the Town Hall. We had asked if we could meet anyone who had been in the village on the day of the massacre. We met Jean Devaux, who had been working in his father’s fields that day and had witnessed the whole thing. He described how he had laid flat in the field and hidden, terrified, when he’d seen the German armoured vehicle approaching and stopping. He’d watched in frozen horror as, one by one, his friends, mostly his school friends, had been mown down. That evening, he had gone with the family ox and cart and brought some of the bodies back to the village. We talked and it brought back the whole, awful episode. Monsieur Moussi presented us with an ashtray embossed with the Rieux-en-Cambresis coat of arms and a book published by Lille University, which is a study of the Rieux dialect – fast disappearing no doubt. We took more photos and left.
My friend Claudette and her husband Daniel are still in Rieux-en-Cambresis. We have kept in touch over the years. We had a long-standing invitation and stayed with them for a few days last year. They live in a large doublefronted house right in the village centre. Daniel explained how their present sitting room had once been a shop and workshop owned by his parents selling overalls and work clothes, including the bleu-de-travail, the blue overalls traditionally worn by French labourers and workmen. The clothes were made by several seamstresses in a workshop in the garden. The workshop has now been dismantled, and Daniel, a retired dentist, is enjoying growing his vegetables on the patch where the workshop used to be.
Looking out of the window onto the street, Claudette pointed out the wall opposite, pockmarked with hundred-year-old shell holes. She said her grandfather had been the village policeman during World War One. Rieux-en-Cambresis was occupied, but right on the front line. Her grandfather and another man had been sending messages by carrier pigeon denoting troop movements when they had been caught and shot by the Germans.
This whole area of northern France was given over to producing textiles until the sixties. There was a textile factory in the village producing particularly fine products. Claudette used to buy seconds from the factory, and she showed me a sheet she had bought, part of Catherine Deneuve, the film actress’s wedding trousseau. It was made of the finest of fine cottons with small pink hearts on it. She said the same firm had also made a long ceremonial tablecloth for the Shah of Iran, covered in embroidery and interwoven with gold thread. All that is gone now, and it seems on the whole that there is no local employment for the people of Rieux-en-Cambresis and they have to find work in Cambrai.
After a few days with our friends we left, promising to return. The constant pull to return to the country of my birth never fades.