Madame Barbara

He reminded himself that Suzanne was an only child, so he could be the sole person from nearby who would immediately set in train a hunt for her. She had other relations, he knew, somewhere near Falaise, another place which had been devastated. If he had no luck in Caen, he would go there to ask the few survivors if they had news of her.

Meanwhile, he had to find at least temporary work, and a place in Bayeux where he and his mother could stay.

Once Maman had recovered a little, they had been billeted in a house with a small empty attic room to spare. There was no fireplace in it, and even in July the bare floor was cold to lie on. Their reluctant landlady, moved by their plight, had lent them a straw mattress, and an old duvet liable to spill feathers from every corner.

She allowed Madame Benion to use her kitchen occasionally, to make the thin fish soup which, together with bread – and cheese when they could get it – was all the food they could afford in a city where the price of everything was soaring.

Madame Benion applied to the hastily reorganised civilian authorities in Bayeux for the re-establishment of payment of her old age pension at her new address. Unfortunately, the steady fall in the value of the franc made it harder and harder for her to manage on it.

After much hasty hunting, Michel found a job in the kitchen of a hotel recently vacated by the retreating Germans. The desperate owner was trying to get it cleaned and in shape as fast as possible. So Michel scrubbed and disinfected with the same thoroughness that he had cleaned hen coops and brooders for his parents.

He was occasionally able to augment his and his mother’s diet by hoarding table scraps from the dining room of the hotel; he was supposed to throw all food scraps into a pig bin, but some were still edible. He was also allowed a meagre midday meal with the hotel staff, part of which he often took home for his mother.

In their attic room, water was their greatest problem, since the only source in the house was a pump in the ground-floor kitchen.

With a few of the precious francs hoarded in Michel’s Post Office savings book, which Madame Benion now carried stuffed inside the top of her corset, they bought a large bucket and a washbasin. Once or twice a day, Michel filled up the bucket in the house kitchen and carried it up to their eyrie under the eaves.

The whole telephone system appeared hopelessly damaged, but on the chance that at least some mail was getting through, Michel had, after moving into the attic room, written to Suzanne at her lodgings in Caen, to tell her his new address. The local post office had accepted the letter, but there had been no response to it or any subsequent ones.

On his enquiry for news of her from her parents at the beginning of April, they had told him that the few letters they had received since she left for Caen simply said that she was all right and was enjoying her work in the café. She had sent no message for him. Madame Fortier was very troubled. Had the young people quarrelled, she wondered.

They had not quarrelled, and Michel had been mystified by his fiancée’s silence. Despite his uneasiness, he made every possible excuse for her neglect of him. He never doubted her integrity; she was going to be his wife. She would surely write soon.

In view of warning movements of German troops in the month prior to the invasion, it occurred to Michel that she might, at the last possible moment, have come home to be with her parents. So he went back to the hôtel de ville and checked the casualty lists yet again.

The official there said flatly that the list was still incomplete. What else did Michel expect, he asked helplessly; there were still pockets of fighting all too near to Bayeux. And on no account, said the harassed man, should Michel try to get back to either the Fortiers’ or his own farm. There were already too many civilians killed or injured by exploding anti-personnel mines and live ammunition: three men dead – they had tried to collect the bodies of their families in order to bury them – and two who had had their feet blown off, a woman shockingly wounded in the face. And two young boys with no hands, poor kids.

Bearing in mind the hopeless state of his own little poultry farm and others nearby, all well-nigh reduced to a mud heap, Michel accepted the stricture without comment. He did not need to be reminded of the dangers of explosives; he had seen, on his way to Bayeux, a whole family blown up by a heavy explosion, triggered by their passing. Only the good God knew what they had accidentally trodden on.

He was fairly certain that Suzanne’s parents were indeed dead, and both he and his mother grieved for them; they had been good friends.

Feeling that they might just possibly have escaped, however, he had again enquired assiduously amongst other refugees who had straggled into Bayeux, many of whom knew each other at least by sight. He invariably heard the same sad story that a great many of the population of that area were believed dead or wounded. He continued to pray that his wife-to-be had not been with them.

If she had returned to her home just before the attack, he comforted himself, the first thing she would have done would have been to run across to see him – and she had not.

For some days more, as he worked in the Bayeux hotel, he continued to watch the casualty lists, while the battle to take Caen continued.

He soon learned that peasants were regarded as of little account unless the authorities wanted to get food delivered to the stricken city.

One day, before Anatole’s return, he had, in bitter terms, expressed his anger to his mother about the destruction of Calvados.

‘We’ve suffered so much from the occupation. We risked our lives – including you, Maman. A good many died horribly for it – and now we are being killed or hurt or ruined in the name of peace. It’s crazy,’ he said in furious frustration.

Madame Benion had been resting on the mattress laid on the floor of their attic. Her deep exhaustion since the destruction of her home was still apparent.

She said wearily, ‘It’s true and it grieves me – and I worry daily about Anatole. Where is he? What did the Germans do with him when they took him away? What’s happening to him now?’

Michel replied slowly, doubt apparent in his tone, ‘They said he would be put to work in Germany.’

‘Well, why hasn’t he ever written?’

To this Michel had no answer. He thought bitterly that it was probable that his brother was dead, but kept this to himself.

‘I don’t know why he doesn’t write, Maman. Maybe German mail is disrupted by the bombing of their cities. I’m more worried about Suzanne – she doesn’t write either. It’s obvious that the Boches are defending Caen with everything they have. The bombardment’s constant.’

Madame Benion agreed. ‘It is. The noise is maddening. My head aches and my ears ring.’ She turned restlessly on the mattress. ‘I’m sure that some kind of build-up is going on. General Montgomery himself is here in Bayeux. I heard the news when I went out to try to buy some potatoes.’

It was as if Michel had not heard her. He said, ‘Maybe Suzanne doesn’t know where we are – never received any of my letters. I hope to God she’s found some safe shelter.’

‘All we can do is wait, Michel. And pray.’

‘I don’t care what happens; I’m going to try to get into Caen, Maman. Some people have done it.’

His mother shot up from her recumbent position.

‘No,’ she stormed. ‘How can you think of such a thing? If you’re killed and Anatole is missing, I have no one, no one except your sisters – and only the good God knows what is happening to them in Rouen. Suppose you are stuck there, in Caen, and can’t get out? Mon Dieu, it’s not even that safe here,’ she glanced at the sloping ceiling, and added wryly, ‘particularly in an attic. It’ll be much worse in Caen.’

As if to confirm the latter, there was a roar of planes overhead, followed by explosions in the near distance.

She was right. He knew it. Her own survival depended largely on him, not on her two married daughters in Rouen, which was itself being pulverised by the Allies.

Poor Maman, she was still so shaky from what she had been through. She must rest a little longer, before even thinking of finding work herself. Meanwhile, he must earn for her; she would starve on her miserable pension. The fact that he was himself worn out, very distressed by all that was happening to them, he accepted as a burden which, somehow, must be borne.

In a city crowded with desperate refugees, she had, anyway, almost no hope of getting work herself; she had aged dreadfully in the last few weeks, due to grief over the loss of her home and, he considered with a tinge of jealousy, the constant worry about Anatole.

‘It’s all right, Maman. I’ll wait till the Allies have rooted the Boches out of Caen – and then go. Don’t cry, Maman. This won’t last for ever.’

He had to wait for weeks. The Battle of Caen was long and bitter, and when he finally did walk into it, there was little left of the beautiful Norman city.

He went first in search of the café where Suzanne worked as a waitress. There were very few people about, and the whole street was a shambles; he could not even say for certain exactly where the café had stood; the road was simply a narrow lane dug through piles of rubble, along which a few people sidled on their way elsewhere.

In panic, Michel followed the remains of the railway line, where it had been partially cleared, and began to climb a slope where the damage was not quite so heavy. He toiled up towards the Abbaye aux Hommes, which was still standing.

He began to have hope. Suzanne had a room behind the Abbaye, away from the city centre.

He was right.

He found her sitting listlessly on the front doorstep of her house, as if waiting for him. The windows had been boarded up and part of the roof was broken open to the sky. Smoke from fire had painted feathers of soot up its walls. An older woman, her landlady with whom Michel was acquainted, was seated alongside her. The street was silent, without traffic or even a pedestrian. Most of the houses were obviously derelict.

When Michel shouted a cheerful greeting to them it echoed eerily.

Both turned, as if shocked. As he waved, and increased his pace towards them, Suzanne did not spring up to greet him.

He saw with a pang that she looked wan and tired, poor darling, and that she had had her hair cut very short. It was about an inch long and she had combed it close to her head, like that of a little boy.

As he reached them, he laughed with the sheer relief of finding her alive. He bent down and joyously flung his arms round his Suzanne.

Her companion gave a little snigger.

In his embrace, Suzanne rose slowly. She did not respond to his greeting, and turned her face away as he tried to kiss her.

He leaned back, still holding her. ‘It’s me – Michel,’ he said, and then his voice faded, as he realised the significance of the haircut and that the body in his arms was curiously clumsy and heavy; it did not have its usual willowy suppleness.

He slowly dropped his arms and stepped back.

‘What happened?’ he asked, though he knew already. ‘Suzanne! Answer me.’

To cover the silence her companion spoke up. She sounded cold and cynical, a woman embittered by war, as she said, ‘Can’t you see?’

He looked at her, appalled. ‘A goddamned Boche – and you got your head shaved for it?’ He exploded with rage. Words of condemnation poured out.

She didn’t say a word to him in her own defence, never pleaded that she had been misunderstood, that it had been indeed rape, nothing that might have excused her behaviour.

Her pregnancy was now obvious. Michel had seen her about four months before; she must have suspected it then. It could not have been rape – the locals would never have touched her if it had been that. To be set upon by a mob, have her head shaved, be stripped to her underwear, and then paraded through the streets, she must have been seen to be fraternising regularly with the enemy.

She now began to giggle at his stupefaction.

He lifted first one hand and then the other, and gave her the hardest slap of which he was capable, one on each cheek. Scarlet patches stained her face. She probably carried the bruises for weeks, he thought maliciously.

‘You dirty bitch!’ he screamed, and the empty walls around them echoed, ‘Bitch! Bitch!’ Then he hissed at her, ‘So that’s why you didn’t write! Well, you can thank God your father and mother are dead – he’d have beaten you to death for this.’

She must have been suddenly afraid for her physical safety because, without a word, she turned and ran clumsily up the steps into the house, and slammed the door. He heard the bolts being shot. The other woman had risen, also suddenly nervous. He turned and spat in her face.

Now, over three years later, seated at the side of the road to the cemetery on a damp, cold April day, Michel looked at a girl whose heart had been broken because a foreign soldier had given his life for the freedom of Caen, and for a bitch who had betrayed them all.

He repeated to Barbara, a trifle depressedly, ‘Caen is still a ruin, Madame.’ He stopped, as if his thoughts had strayed elsewhere, and then said with forced cheerfulness, ‘Nevertheless, when I took the Americans there recently, there was some life. People try to begin again.’

He sighed, and Barbara became aware of his deep fatigue. He suddenly ceased to be the rather quaint taxi diver, and became a fellow human being who looked as exhausted as she herself felt.

He went on, ‘Everybody in Caen lose somebody. Much sorrow.’ With her big eyes puffed from weeping, she herself looked like our Lady of Sorrows, he thought. He repeated tentatively, ‘I take you tomorrow, yes? Americans go to Paris for the weekend. We go to Caen, yes?’

He could barely admit to himself that he was desperately lonely for friendly female company. Not normally communicative about his private affairs, he had, on their way to the cemetery, talked a little to her about his family’s misadventures, and had felt a certain amount of relief.

Since his fiancée’s desertion of him, he had made no effort to find himself another girl; he was acutely aware that he was no hero, that his shoulder was hunched, and that he had no assets to attract a matchmaking father.

Even his engagement to Suzanne had been arranged by their parents, a marriage of convenience which would eventually, with a little luck and much hard saving, make it possible for the young couple to buy out Michel’s mother and his siblings.

Originally faced with this same nationwide problem of the subdivision of land in each generation, Suzanne’s father had already bought out his own brother’s share of the Fortier farm, and Suzanne was his only surviving child; because of the problems of land tenure, peasants tended to keep the number of their children small.

But there had been no romantic love between him and Suzanne, Michel admitted frankly to himself, just affection and an agreeable sexual contentment. It could have been a reasonable marriage.

Now, inside him lay an unhealed wound, as if she had stabbed him. She had deserted him for a German, an enemy, probably some great hulking brute of a Prussian. He felt that he also had thereby been publicly shamed, stripped of his self-respect.

Another Frenchman he might have accepted with better grace. But he had felt sick at the idea of a German, one of Hitler’s cohorts, who had tortured and killed men, like his friend Henri, because they continued to fight them underground.

She had got off more lightly than if she had been a man, Michel thought. Men known to be quislings, collaborators who betrayed the Freedom Fighters to the Germans, had been summarily shot, if they did not commit suicide first.

To a degree, justice had been done, admitted Michel, but it did not mean that he had come to terms with the betrayal.

If she had not had a good woman friend to help her, she would have starved to death, he was sure of that. She would have been an outcast.

The ultimate insult had, however, come only the previous month. He had heard, through one of his mother’s friends, also a refugee in Bayeux, that Suzanne’s German had recently sent for her and his child to join him on his farm, a farm which had apparently escaped the ravages of both the Russian and American advances. He was said to be now sowing his second year of crops. It was quite a story and the news spread fast in the back streets of Bayeux.

It seemed to an outraged Michel very wrong that his own land, and that of his fiancée’s parents, should have been decimated, while one of the enemy’s farms remained inviolate.

And who would ever have expected a German to do the honourable thing, and marry the girl? Enemy soldiers were not expected to do that, particularly a Boche.

Michel asked himself again and again why her father had, in the first place, allowed her to go to work in Caen as a waitress in such troubled times – miles away from parental supervision.

He supposed that the family must have had an urgent need for ready money during a time when farms were being stripped of their produce to be sent to Germany. It seemed the only explanation. He still felt, however, that her father had been most unwise – and so had his unfaithful trollop of a daughter. Though there did not seem much hope of it, Michel wished savagely that she would eventually starve amid the ruin which was Germany.

He had been truly happy and surprised when Anatole had eventually been sent home by train by the American Army in Germany; they had discovered him amongst a group of refugees from Eastern Germany fleeing the Russian Army; he was trying to walk back to France.

At least, Michel agreed with Maman, they could nurse Anatole, make him as comfortable as possible, until he died. And Michel was the first to say that, even confined to bed, his brother had given both their mother and Michel some moral support.

Anatole was allowed by the Government a small regular sum with which to maintain himself, because he was a returned deportee very ill with tuberculosis. He also had free medical care. Because there was nothing much that could be done to help him medically, he had elected to be brought home to his mother rather than be put into an overcrowded hospital.

Michel’s small savings account was emptied in an effort to buy extra comforts for him, such as second-hand pillows to prop him up, and black market milk and eggs to augment his diet.

Madame Benion was almost beside herself as, in addition to losing her home and livelihood, she had to watch her elder, stronger son die. She and Michel tended him far better, however, than he would have been looked after in hospital, and while they did it she leaned, pitifully at times, on her younger boy for comfort.

The lifelong sibling jealousy between the two brothers had melted amid the burning need to cope with disaster; and their mother, who had always had to work to the point of exhaustion and could not, therefore, give much attention to her children, had opened up to show her deep attachment to her sons. Misery, instead of separating them, seemed to fuse the remnants of the family together.

As Michel arranged to meet Barbara again, he told himself that he was being driven simply by need for a break from a ruthless routine. To break loose just for a few hours would do him good. If he took this unknown English widow to Caen, he had a hazy hunch that he would be setting out on a new path. What kind of a path he could not yet envisage, since, whatever she was, she was certainly not a peasant woman.

The widow was obviously quite startled at his offer of a trip to Caen and he could see that she instinctively hesitated.

He understood women well enough to read her mind. ‘I take great care of you, Madame,’ he promised. ‘Have no fear.’

He lit his last cigarette after first offering it to Barbara, who politely refused it. He carefully compiled another sentence. Finally, he said grandly, ‘I take you a little from your grief, Madame, and also you may see what happen to our cities.’

While she still hesitated, he added, ‘The Americans produce petrol like a cow make water! Lots of it. They say to me “fill her up”. And I do.’

She considered this and then unexpectedly chuckled, as she realised how apt his simile was. She decided that she might as well accept his offer. She really did, rather morbidly, want to see Caen.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask the hotel if they can provide a picnic lunch.’

And I hope I don’t disgrace myself by crying in public again, she thought.

Chapter Eight

Barbara spent a sleepless, tear-sodden night. She was, like almost everybody else, so deeply worn out with hard work, poor food and generally doing without that she wondered how she had ever managed to get up the energy to take this trip to France; yet, haunted by the lines of crosses she had seen that day, she could not sleep.

Why on earth had she come?

The answer was, she ruminated between sobs, because her mother, Phyllis Williams, and her mother-in-law, Ada Bishop, had been so persistent about it. She had given in simply to please them.

Her mother had said, ‘Don’t be afraid, luv. Seein’ the grave’ll settle you a bit. Your dad never had one, being at sea, like. But your George has one. You go and look at it. Then you’ll know.’

Know what? More grief? She cried on.

When talking to Barbara, Phyllis had not added what she was thinking: See the grave and then you’ll know it’s finished. You got to march forward, not look back. She wanted her girl to look at other decent men, like Graham in the village, who had been in a reserved occupation throughout the war. Barbara could marry again, have kids, be normal. Not always a widow, as she herself was likely to be.

Her Barbara had had nearly four years of mourning, on top of the ruthless grind of the labouring job to which she had been directed during the war. It was enough plain misery for any girl, Phyllis considered.

Now the war was over and Barbara was free to work at home again. Since neither Phyllis nor Barbara had any but domestic skills, she believed that both of them must work to build up their bed-and-breakfast. No matter how unpromising the business seemed at present, it appeared to Phyllis to offer the best prospect of a decent living for herself and her daughter. Even if Barbara did remarry, it would still offer her and her husband a home as well as employment; the country was so short of housing that any man would be glad to live in such a place.

Despite Barbara’s now being able to help her at home, the end of the war had not brought much rest to either of them. Added to their fatigue had been the continued daily monotonous struggle against rationing and shortages of everything; particularly hard for those like themselves, who had to be hospitable to an equally weary, irate clientele.

Further, many had to cope with the return of disoriented or wounded men, or, like Barbara and herself, the knowledge that their men would not return at all. Of the men who had come home, many had returned to homes and jobs that no longer existed, and to wives who were prematurely old – and so tired. They had also had to face children who had never seen their father and resented this strange man who took up so much of their mother’s attention; several of Phyllis’s neighbours had faced this problem, and had, in seeking comfort, wept helplessly on Phyllis’s shoulder.

No matter which way you looked, the day-to-day struggle to revert to a normal life seemed unending. It was nearly as bad as when they had lived in a slum in the north of Liverpool.

Before the war, while her husband was at sea, Phyllis and her daughter had moved from Liverpool to run their little business. It was a fortuitous move, for during the war the little dockside street in which they had lived had been bombed out of existence.