Perfectly Ordinary People(15)

We were perhaps a little more aware than most. Her family had relatives in Germany, so her father knew quite early on that things were going wrong. The Nazis were organising boycotts of Jewish businesses as early as 1933 and Ethel’s father would definitely have heard about that. I was a bit young to remember whether it was in the newspapers in France, but I suspect it was. But in 1938, once the Kristallnacht happened – when they burned all the Jewish shops – everyone definitely knew what was going on. I can remember talking about it quite a bit with Ethel’s cousin, who was visiting at the time.

But Ethel’s father wasn’t the only reason. By then, by 1938, I was old enough to have my own friends with contacts in Berlin, too. The Nazis had started sending gay men to Dachau – the concentration camp – in ’35, so we’d heard terrible tales about that too. It’s such a shame no one reacted. People could have got together and sorted Hitler out before he built up that massive army. But they were ‘just’ homosexuals, after all, so no one cared. And then it was ‘just’ the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and ‘just’ the Jews and the communists . . . There’s a real lesson to be learned there.

But anyway, in France we considered ourselves relatively safe. The French government had built the Maginot Line . . . Yes, I guessed – you don’t know what that is either! I do wonder what you learn in school these days. So, the Maginot Line was a series of forts and fortifications all the way down the German border. It was supposed to be impenetrable; that’s what everyone said, anyway. The French were very proud of it. They told us we were safe. And for some reason we believed them.

So you weren’t scared, even a bit?

I don’t know. It’s hard to say. These things build so gradually. We were very aware, I’d say, and as the years went by and we heard rumours from homosexual friends and other rumours from Jewish friends, we were more and more aware. At some point that awareness morphed into fear, I suppose, though I’d be hard put to say exactly when that happened. But it wasn’t our single subject of conversation, strange as that might seem. Not by any means. People carried on living their lives.

You mentioned Ethel’s cousin coming to stay? Can you tell us something about her, because as I recall she ends up being quite important.

Yes. She was important. So, Ethel had a cousin – quite a distant cousin – living in London. Her name was Hannah, and she was a dumpy, rather dull girl from a pretty orthodox Jewish family. Her father had made a killing in the garment trade. Hannah was studying French, so she was sent to stay with Ethel’s family for a few months to practise, not that she made much effort. She arrived for Rosh Hashanah – Jewish New Year, in September – and was supposed to stay until December, I think. But after the Kristallnacht – that happened in November – her father started sending quite hysterical telegrams ordering her home.

Because he thought that France would be invaded?

I don’t know exactly what he thought, but he certainly didn’t think it was safe. He had a friend, I believe, who was a diplomat. So he was one of the rare people who believed the rumours and who understood that war was coming. And that’s when we all became very aware. Because he considered our town too dangerous for his own daughter.

And did Hannah go home?

Yes, she went back to London almost immediately. They tried to convince Ethel’s family to leave as well, but Ethel’s father wouldn’t consider it. Like most people, he was convinced they’d be just fine. I remember Ethel’s father gesturing around his shop and saying, ‘Everything we have is here! Where would we go?’ And ‘What makes you think England is safer than France anyway?’ A lot of people assumed that if France fell – which they considered unlikely – that England would fall too. That said, he was open to the idea of his daughters leaving, just until things calmed down. But neither of them wanted to.

Ethel didn’t want to leave because of you, I assume?

Yes, I suppose it was because of me. With Hannah staying, we hadn’t been able to . . . you know . . . be intimate . . . for ages. We hadn’t even been able to kiss. So we were pretty happy when Hannah’s visit got cut short. But once she’d returned to London, she started writing to Ethel’s father, and sometimes to Ethel too, begging them to leave and even offering them accommodation in London. Ethel’s sister was engaged to be married so she wouldn’t leave either.

So they all stayed put?

Yes. Sadly, they did.

That must have been a scary time.

Well, I was worried about the possibility of war, in an abstract kind of way. We all were. France had lost millions in the First World War, so every family had a horror story to tell about that. But – and this is embarrassing, shameful really, with hindsight, the stupidity of youth – I didn’t feel like it really affected me, if you can understand that? For starters, I was a girl. So I knew I wouldn’t have to do national service, and I wouldn’t ever get called up to fight. You see how selfish this sounds? It’s horrible, isn’t it?

I just think that it’s great you can be so honest.

I was young, I suppose. And yes, I was a girl; I wasn’t Jewish and I lived in France behind the impenetrable Maginot Line. So I was worried about the poor Jews in Germany, and I was worried about the homosexuals in Berlin, but in a distant kind of way, the way you might worry about people in Chile or the Soviet Union today, you know? Without television and everything, the world felt much bigger in those days. Places seemed further away.