Perfectly Ordinary People(101)

Later on they sorted out accommodation for adult refugees who’d managed to escape as well; they provided financial guarantees to convince the British government to let them stay on . . . No one really wanted Jewish refugees, not even Britain. There were so many of them and there was so much prejudice towards the Jews. But the Quakers basically did anything they could to convince people and house people and help. They were very, very involved.

And Quakers organised the Kindertransport? I didn’t know that.

Not alone. There were British government officials involved, too. And all the Jewish organisations, obviously. But the Quakers were incredibly active. Groups of them even travelled to Nazi Germany to bring the kids away to safety.

And had Ethel converted? Had she become a Quaker?

No, by the time the war was over she was certainly friends with a lot of Quakers and I know she volunteered in the kitchens they ran and stuff like that. But no, she didn’t convert. I think once she’d seen the horrors of war, she became a fully-fledged atheist. She used to say that if God existed, then he or she would have intervened. And if God did exist and had chosen not to do anything, that wasn’t a God she could worship.

Yes, I can see how a person could feel that way.

Anyway, when Ethel’s uncle kicked her out, a friend had advised her to ask the Quakers for help, and they’d been looking out for her ever since.

How exactly did they help her?

Well, with work, and housing . . . with all the paperwork that was required in order to stay . . . Those sorts of things.

So Ethel told us about all of that. She explained how the first Quaker house she’d stayed in had been bombed and she’d had to move repeatedly before ending up at Irene’s. She told us about the air raids and hiding under the table during the Blitz and all the nights she’d spent in the bomb shelters and how terrifying it was emerging to all the firestorms and bombed-out buildings. She told us how she’d worked as a seamstress the entire time – how she’d sewn uniforms and parachutes, and she showed us the callouses on her hands to prove it.

But though it seemed like she was telling us everything, it still felt like she was holding something back. There was something missing from our reunion, and the more I thought about it, the more I suspected that Christophe was right, and that she’d probably met someone new. It felt like there was, you know, an elephant in the room, as the English say, that none of us were able to talk about.

At dusk, Christophe said he was going to take Guillaume back to the boarding house, and Ethel volunteered to walk with us. After a few hundred yards she tugged at my elbow to slow me down so we could speak privately, so I braced myself for the revelation I felt certain was about to come. I was almost in tears even before she started. But instead of telling me about her new love, she wanted to know more about me and Christophe. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Explain it to me. Explain about you two.’

I frowned at this and even laughed a little, I think. It seemed so obvious to me that I couldn’t possibly be with him that I couldn’t believe that was what she meant. But she did. She really thought we were together.

‘I couldn’t believe it when his mother told me,’ she said. ‘I just couldn’t believe that you were married . . . And married with a kid, as well.’

It was only then that I understood why our reunion had been felt so strained. She really hadn’t been listening.

I told her more explicitly how we’d faked our marriage, and explained that Guillaume wasn’t really our son – he was Leah’s. Amazingly, Ethel wouldn’t believe me at first, and that upset me a lot.

I told her how we’d done it all in order to stay alive, about Christophe being tortured and Leah leaving the baby with me. I explained how dangerous it had been to be people like us in occupied France and I saw that she was finally starting to doubt the story in her mind – the story that Christophe’s parents had told her.

‘So Guillaume’s not yours, then?’ she asked. ‘Because Pierre’s mother said . . . even you said that he was yours when you arrived.’

So I repeated again that obviously Guillaume wasn’t ours, but Guillaume didn’t know that, and I didn’t want him to know it either. And I told her again how Christophe’s parents had wanted nothing to do with him because he was what they termed ‘a sodomite’.

‘And you’re saying the marriage isn’t real?’ she asked, and I got angry and shouted at her about the fact that I kept having to tell her the same things.

‘OK, but do you love him?’ she asked, finally. ‘Because I’ve been watching you, and you look like you do.’

I laughed at that and told her that, yes, I loved Christophe, but more like a brother; I wasn’t in love with him, because in case she hadn’t noticed, I preferred girls.

My laughter upset her so I had to explain I wasn’t laughing at her, just at the silly idea that I might be in love with a man.

‘The only person I’m in love with is you,’ I said, in the hope of breaking through. And that finally had some effect, because she stopped walking and turned away from me.

Once I’d circled back and lifted her chin so that she was facing me, I saw she was crying properly.

‘But they said . . .’ she told me. ‘They said . . . His parents . . . they said you were . . . And I . . .’ She was crying too much to finish her sentences.