While Jacques was called away to advise reconnaissance pilots, I worked dawn to dark in the children’s hospital. Many of our nurses had been called away in case they were needed as French troops massed near the border, though most believed Hitler was all bluff. Some newspapers had been claiming that the real enemy was the Soviet Union with their dictator Joseph Stalin. However, in England, Winston, in speech after speech, harangued Parliament that another invasion of Europe and war could come.
I had mixed feelings about allowing the now healthy ten-year-old Katrine to be my aide after school, since I was overseeing several village women who were filling in for nurses as well as doing my administrative job. But the adoring and adorable child stuck to me like glue, as did the two elderly male villagers Jacques had hired to protect me. We did not believe I was in imminent danger of being spirited away by the distant Nazis for ransom, but stranger things had happened.
“Madame, must I wear this mask when you do not wear one?” Katrine asked, fidgeting with the half-face cotton protection I made her wear.
“Since you have had the disease and insist on helping, my girl, yes. Otherwise, I must banish you to using that typewriter in my office.”
“Yes, madame. But I am tired of hearing war, war, war.”
“I too, but that is the way things are now. So we shall all stick together, like you and I do.”
“No matter what,” she said and pulled down her mask for a moment so I could see her smile.
She was like a bright and sparkling jewel to me, like another granddaughter, which made me miss Sarah even more. I felt so alone without Jacques, and missed Winston too. I could understand why he was on his own warpath, despite the fact even Clemmie had told him to tone down his inflammatory rhetoric. Hitler had taken Austria last year and was in league somehow with the Italian dictator Mussolini who had annexed Ethiopia, of all places. At least the German border was not near our part of France, for Belgium was closer here. Yet most people, Jacques included, believed that since we lived near Normandy, our little village would be safe.
I put on a good front, yet I was secretly afraid. For France, for Jacques, for all we had built here, and for myself. I had told him if the Huns, mostly called the Nazis now, crossed France’s borders, we must move the patients in the children’s hospital farther south. But to where?
“When I was ill and then got better,” Katrine broke into my agonizing, “I learned you keep your promises.” She pointed to a soft cloth doll in the arms of a sleeping young patient named Susanne we were watching through a glass divider. “I still have my doll. It meant so much that she could stay with me, and now I want to stay at your side, to help out.”
I set the tray I carried aside on a cart and hugged her with one arm. “Little things like that, daily kindnesses and gifts, are more precious than gold,” I told her. “We must remember that with big things swirling around us. Come along now, and we will have a quick lunch at the château before we come back here.”
Sometimes on weekends she stayed with me there, but I planned to send her home tonight, because I knew she helped her mother with the younger children. Katrine’s father had gone into the army and had trained near Paris. When he came home for a brief leave before being stationed in the east, he had assured us there would be no war, for the Parisians were enjoying life to the full, partying, shopping, dancing. His naïve, happy report made me wonder if I had once been like that. Too many grand parties, too much shopping for luxuries, even properties? But never enough dancing, not with my Jacques.
I TOOK MY daily phone call from Jacques inside the château while Katrine sat out on the terrace. She looked so peaceful there, so young and pretty.
“My darling,” came his voice over the receiver, “anything doing there? I miss you terribly, but these are terrible times.”
“The usual at the hospital. Very quiet, normal, but for lack of men, including my dear husband. Are you quite all right?”
“Flying, training, advising. Listen, Consuelo, I was thinking perhaps you should go to Blenheim to stay with Bert and Mary. You could see Ivor more. Britain is an island nation and, though Hitler has planes that could fly the Channel to get there—”
“Surely not clear from Germany!”
“If so, they will be met by the Duke of Kent’s RAF planes, just as we would resist here, but—”
“Jacques, I am needed here. You are here in France. I am staying, as much as I long to see my sons. We decided I was safe here, at least for now, so have you changed your mind on France’s borders holding firm?”
“No, but perhaps I have listened to Winston too long. Darling, if things get worse, do not be afraid if I do not call on time or call at all for a while. But now to my real news. I have been informed there will be a high-ranking official who will be visiting you tomorrow, General Armand Fuisse, to advise about a possible evacuation of your hospital.”
“Oh, thank heavens! So you are thinking as I do, that if there are any problems at the border, I must move the children farther south. Perhaps he will know where I can take them.”
“I do not know, but he is most insistent, and the hierarchy here know you are on that ransom list. I will be eager to hear what he has advised you. I love you, my dearest, and pray we will soon have our life together back.”
“I too. Such treasures now, our memories, but we shall survive this and make more.”
“I must go. General Fuisse, tomorrow or the next day. I know you will entertain him and win him over.”
His tone had become more agitated, even, for my confident Jacques, a bit shaky. Win him over? So did he not like or trust this General Fuisse? And did he not really trust that I was safe here in our haven far from the German border?
“AH, A LARGE château, some outlying cottages too,” General Fuisse said, scribbling notes after he had looked around the estate. He had come in a long, black motorcar with a driver and a guard. “And that hospital you have built—excellent.”
I was already beginning to think of him as General “Fussy.” He was prissy and fastidious, drinking his coffee with his little finger in the air. His uniform boasted a billboard of medals. He had ordered his men to stay with their vehicle, although I had invited them inside, too. I told him, “I worry that if there would be some sort of . . . of invasion, the children in the hospital—”
“If the Huns try,” he interrupted, “we will repulse them. But if there are some casualties, if refugees flee south from Belgium, that could be a problem here with our soldiers needing care.”
“From Belgium? You do not think Hitler will be content to have Austria but will want Belgium, too? But that is right on our border. Then you agree with Winston Churchill. He is a relative and friend of mine, you see.”
“Ah, I did not know that,” he said, putting his coffee cup in its saucer and writing on his notepad again. “Quite the rabble-rouser, is he not?”
“And quite right on Hitler’s intentions, I believe, though my husband says we will repulse him.”
He appeared to shake that off with a little shrug. He did not seem to take me seriously, which would not please Jacques and did not please me. He had skirted the question each time I mentioned protecting the ill children.
“Madame Balsan, should there be casualties, Mother France will need hospitals and rehabilitation sites in the countryside for our soldiers. As you and Colonel Balsan are surely patriots, we know we can rely on you.”
“But in what way? Unless I can be certain the children in our facility are carefully and comfortably moved to another, General, I do not see how this could be accomplished.”
“I thought an American would be all full steam ahead on this, take charge,” he said, looking up and squinting at me. “We may indeed need not only the facilities of the hospital here for France’s soldiers but the château also.”
I gasped and sat up even straighter.
“I give you the duty,” he went on, “for you are, of course, respected and even honored here—of doing what you can to prepare for the worst.”
“General, turning out our children would be the worst. The château and its outlying cottages can be used for the nation, but the sanitarium cannot just be requisitioned like that!”
Frowning, he only scribbled away as if I had not protested. I wanted to throw the coffeepot at him. I wanted to argue more, to absolutely refuse giving up the hospital, but I had to speak again to Jacques first. Had he realized what this man would ask—would demand? That Fuisse could commandeer the buildings of our estate was one thing, but is that why Jacques had sounded so nervous at the end of our last telephone call?
“I understand, Madame Balsan, you are on a German ransom list, as they call it. It would do this estate good to be swarming with French soldiers, for you could surely keep a room for yourself and help with the nursing, too.”
I stood as he rose. Thank heavens he was leaving, for I wanted so badly to turn into my mother to tell him off and throw him out.
I HIRED SEVERAL villagers—they refused to take payment at first, until I insisted—to store items and some furniture from the château in our cellars, though I made certain there was space for people lest there was an air attack. I even brought in mattresses and cots when I could find them. I had lain awake at night thinking that—as in London during the Great War—the cellar would have to do for a bomb shelter as would those at the hospital. I gave notice to several artists, who were living gratis in our cottages, that they might have to move if there would be any injured French soldiers arriving. The general had mentioned refugees, too.
After speaking to Jacques, who was furious and said he had been misled, I made several phone calls about facilities farther south to move our sanitarium patients if need be. But I got nowhere. I knew I would have to take a motorcar trip to look for sites myself, but Jacques forbid it until he could get a leave. He said he agreed we would have to help with wounded soldiers if it came to that, but he would try to get a promise the ill children would not be evicted.
Yet again today he argued, “You are safe there, Consuelo, I know where you are and it is not far from me, so do not go south on your own or even with a companion or guard.”
“I might as well be on the moon, I feel so far from you. And I feel overwhelmed.”
“This is not like you, my love. I know times are frightening, but we must hang on. You are a strong woman—have always been strong.”
“I do not mean to complain. I want to support you and I know you are under great strain. But, frankly, I just pray the French generals in command of the borders are not like that beastly General Fuisse! I hope they are more like my Jacques!”
“This is a nightmare, I agree. The threat of war . . . our being apart when we were apart for so long. I swear to you I will see you soon, even if briefly. Just pray that the lines will hold. We lived through separation once and built a life together. If the château goes to the state for now—”
“That is one thing, but again, I say, not the hospital!”
“I know. I will inquire. I will even beard old Fuisse in his den if I must, the old— Well, enough said. Enough said, except for how much I miss you and love you. Darling, as I said, if you ever change your mind and want to go to England or even home to America—”
“You are here and that makes France my home.”
“Then, someday, I swear to you, I will make America my home, too—you wait and see.”
“That is all I am doing here. I wait to see what will happen to these dear people in my care and I wait to see you.”
“I will always—” he said and then we were cut off. The line absolutely went dead. I tried to tell myself that was not an omen.
I SLEPT FITFULLY now, even in my exhaustion. Sometimes I dreamed we were under attack as in London. It was dark in the cellar. Where was Jacques? Was he flying in the night sky without me? Despite my weak hearing, I sometimes was certain I heard guns booming, but it was just the wind rattling a shutter or a spring thunderstorm. I wore myself down, caring for the children, visiting the villagers, tiring myself so that I could manage to get some sleep.
Sometimes I lay awake for hours before dawn. Jacques’s telephone calls were scarce now. He said he would be home soon, but when? Perhaps never again if the Germans attacked or broke through the French lines.
Dawn came slowly on a day that should have been so pretty. I tried to reckon the date, it was May 16, 1940, I figured. Yes, that is right, because Winston had been prime minister of England for just six days.
I rolled over and curled into a ball on Jacques’s side of the bed. I ached from lifting buckets and patients at the hospital. Winston had said that the French trench warfare would never stop the Germans and their Wehrmacht war machine this time. Now, finally, he had been given the power to try to stop them. Winston, like a third brother to me, one who had been closer than my real ones, had said England must be ready to fight, and I knew so must we all.
I heard the door to my room open. A shaft of light leaped across my face. Half asleep at first, I instantly dreamed Jacques had come home to me. Then I feared the Germans had come for me. I sat bolt upright in bed.
“Madame, news!” my maid’s voice cut through my half-waking state. “The German invasion through Belgium is progressing with hardly a shot being fired! It is on the radio, and Katrine has come to tell you so! They will try to cross our French lines soon, madame. Oh, what shall we do? Will soldiers be here soon, wounded ones like you said or the enemy?”
Or refugees as Jacques and the general had said?
“I am getting up to make some telephone calls,” I told her, sounding quite in command as I threw off my mussed covers and swung my feet out of bed. I always had my clothes laid out nearby, and I scrambled into them. “Feed Katrine breakfast and send her back home,” I ordered. “As soon as I can, I will pack a small suitcase of clothes and shoes in case I have to head south to find a place for the children. You should do the same—we may have to flee.”
“Flee, madame? But to where and how?”
Exactly, I thought. Doom and disaster could soon be on our doorstep.