Perfectly Ordinary People(16)

When did that change? When did you first start to feel threatened personally?

Not until 1939. Everyone was talking about all the German troops on the Polish border but even that wasn’t what made us realise. What brought it home was when France started mobilising all the men. So suddenly there were all these soldiers marching through the towns with their kit bags. That’s when things got real.

Did your family discuss leaving at that point? Actually, did your father get called up?

No, he was just too old to be called up. He had a wooden leg from the first war as well, so he would have been exempt anyway. And yes, there were many discussions about leaving. My parents argued about it constantly.

In September Germany invaded Poland, and Britain and France declared war. France evacuated everyone who lived near the German border – it was a ten-kilometre-wide strip, as I recall. There were thousands of people crossing the town in cars and on motorbikes, with hand carts or on donkeys . . . People travelled any way they could. It was quite shocking to see.

But you weren’t evacuated?

No. We were told to stay put. We were outside the ten-kilometre danger zone, or at least, that’s what they told us. So we stayed put. But Jewish families were terrified. I’m not sure if they were advised to leave, or whether they made their own minds up, but many of them fled at that point.

And where did all these people go?

The people from the border were sent on trains to south-west France, I believe. And the Jews tended to go wherever they had family. There were people on the move everywhere.

Including Ethel and her family? Did they leave?

No. No, Ethel’s family stayed put. But her father did insist that Ethel go to London to stay with Hannah.

So you were separated?

Yes, I was heartbroken. We both were. But even then we still thought it would only be for a few weeks. I can’t tell you why we thought that way, but it’s what we believed. I often think that our biggest problem – as humans – is our belief that things will stay the same. Our incapacity to imagine just how much, and how quickly, everything can change. People think their rights – their human rights – are set in stone. But all it takes is one bad government and it’s all over.

Did you ever consider going with her?

Oh, I begged and begged my father to let me go with her! Not because I was scared so much as because I couldn’t bear to be separated. We were very much in love by then. But he’d worked out that our relationship wasn’t a normal friendship, I think. And the more I begged, the more he saw that and the more determined he was to keep me at home in Mulhouse. That’s probably partly why Ethel’s father sent her away, too.

To keep you and Ethel apart.

Yes. Sort of killing two birds with one stone . . . Keeping her safe from the Germans, and from me. My own father called it an unhealthy obsession. He definitely considered Ethel more dangerous than the Germans.

An obsession?

That’s how he used to describe it. ‘You need to get over this unhealthy obsession you have with that girl!’

And you had no desire to disobey? To follow her to London?

No. This was the 1930s, remember. Girls, especially unmarried girls, didn’t disobey their father’s wishes. Not even at eighteen.

So what was it like being left behind once Ethel had left?

Well, it was awful, as you can imagine. I was wretched. I couldn’t sleep because I was upset about Ethel and worried about the Germans . . . I’d fallen out with my father, so we were barely speaking to each other. My mother had timidly taken my side, so things were difficult between her and my father as well. I basically sulked and worked and waited for letters.

Of course. No phone calls!

No. Hannah’s father had a telephone, I think, but we didn’t. And even if we’d had one, I’m not sure you could make international calls back then. It was something that never even crossed our minds in those days. If it was urgent you’d send a telegram. But otherwise, you’d just post a letter. We wrote to each other every day. And the letters took a week or so to arrive.

You mentioned working. I don’t think we’ve covered that yet. What were you doing?

I was working in a Jewish bakery. I’d got the job through Leah, Ethel’s friend, who was the owner’s daughter. Leah was newly married and her husband hadn’t been happy with her working. So her parents had needed someone to replace her. Under normal circumstances they would probably have chosen someone Jewish, but most of their Jewish friends had evacuated by then. I used to start at six a.m., emptying the ovens and stacking the bread in the shop. Sometimes I had to do deliveries. Leah’s father taught me to drive the van even though I didn’t have a driving licence! It was only up and down the street, but it made me feel very grown up. Ethel, in London, was working too, sewing cushions for Hannah’s father in some kind of sweatshop. They switched to making uniforms for soldiers quite early on and I remember her saying that she hated that, because the material was so thick. Some days it made her fingers bleed. But anyway, that was my life. Writing letters, waiting for letters, working and sulking. I did a lot of sulking.

Was Pierre still around?

Yes, he was still there but I saw much less of him. He’d met Johann by then and was in what I suppose you could call a cocooning phase. Neither of us wanted to go to the tea dances anymore, me because I was miserable going out without Ethel, and Pierre because he was seeing Johann. We tried it a few times as a threesome but I don’t think any of us enjoyed it much. And then the dances stopped anyway, so . . .