Perfectly Ordinary People(21)

And then we sat and waited for news of my father, and for Leah to come and claim her baby.

The first person through the door was my father. He arrived just as the sun was setting, and my mother ran across the room into his arms.

He said everything was fine. He told us all to calm down. He said they’d just wanted a chat, ‘that was all’.

Mum asked him what they’d wanted to know, and he said, ‘Just stuff about the other war.’ He said they were perhaps a bit nostalgic. It was typical of him to try to reassure us by joking about it, but I could tell from the tremor in his voice that he was shaken.

He noticed the baby then, so I told him how I’d been to Leah’s place and how she’d dumped the baby on me and he said he hoped that she would be back for him because a trainload had gone out at five.

A trainload of Jews?

Yes. I asked him where they’d gone, and I remember he said, ‘To wherever they go.’ It was all pretty mysterious back then. The rumours were the south-west, he said, but no one knew for sure.

‘So what do we do with the baby?’ my mother asked him. He was someone else’s child, after all, and Jewish, and therefore dangerous. Dad said he’d ask around to see if there were any of Leah’s family left. But he said we’d have to keep him until the next day because of the curfew.

When Mum told him that my friend had been taken in too he thought at first that she meant Pierre and got really angry. He was still hoping that I’d come to my senses and get married to Pierre someday. So I explained that no, it was Pierre’s friend Johann, and he calmed down.

Dad asked me if I knew why they’d taken Johann and I just shook my head. I remember that felt less like lying than saying I didn’t know.

‘They’re probably just being nosey then,’ he said. He was sure that Johann would be fine. They seemed to want to talk to everyone, he said.

And was Johann fine?

No. No, Johann wasn’t fine at all. I waited until it was dark and the baby was sleeping and slipped next door to Pierre’s house. We weren’t supposed to go out after seven p.m., but our gardens joined up and were pretty overgrown. As long as you were quiet there wasn’t much chance of getting caught.

His mother told me rather abruptly that he was in his room and went back to her sewing, so I opened his bedroom door and slipped in. He was lying flat on the bed with his head in the pillow, and when I touched his shoulder, he jumped and looked up at me. His eyes were all red from crying.

I asked if he’d found anything out, and he explained what Matias had told him: that Johann was in a cell with all the others. When I asked him what he meant by ‘the others’, he said, ‘Davide, Michel, Princess, Lala . . . all of them. They’re all there. They’ve been rounding them up one by one.’ These were all names I recognised from the tea dance. Michel, particularly, I knew really well.

I asked him how they’d got hold of everyone’s names, and he said, ‘That . . .’ but stopped short because I don’t think he could think of a bad enough word to describe her. ‘That . . . Lala,’ he finally said. ‘Apparently she’s given them a list.’

He started to cry again then, so I hugged him. I asked if he was on the list too – if I was on the list – and he said he didn’t know, but he thought it was unlikely and they’d have already come for him if he was on it.

I asked him about Matias, too, but he said she wouldn’t dare name a policeman. No one would.

I’m confused. Who wouldn’t dare?

Sorry, Lala. Lala was a man, but everyone referred to him as ‘she’. He was pretty camp. His real name was Leonhardt, I think.

Right. Of course.

When I asked Pierre what else Matias had said he started to shake. Matias had told him to get out while he could. He’d said to escape over the border into France.

Gosh, was that feasible?

I hadn’t known that it was, but apparently Matias knew of someone in a place called La Vieille-Loye – some carpenter chap – who’d been helping people get through the forest and over the demarcation line.

That sounds incredibly dangerous.

That’s what I said. And that’s when Pierre explained, through sobs, the other thing that Matias had told him: that they were torturing Johann. And that it was only a matter of time before Johann gave them Pierre’s name too.

God, did they really do that? Torture people just to get their friends’ names?

Yes. They absolutely did. Which is no doubt why Lala had given them a whole list of names in the first place. Apparently no one ever resisted for long. Their interrogation methods were brutal.

Selfishly, I thought about myself then, because Johann definitely knew my name and address, but Pierre said that, no, they weren’t interested in women, only the men.

I asked him if he was going to try to get over the border and how – there were Germans everywhere by then – and he said he didn’t know. Johann was still at the police station and Pierre was terrified they’d release him and he wouldn’t be there to help – he loved that boy so much. But he was also terrified they’d come for him next.

And what did you want to do? Were you tempted to escape as well?

Not at that point. I just went back next door to bed. I was shattered, but I couldn’t sleep. I had Leah’s baby in my bed, and he was really annoying. He kept kicking me and squirming and crying. He was dirty, so I got up and changed him – Mum had made some nappies out of old towels – and I remember looking to see if he’d been circumcised. I suppose I was already starting to imagine that he might be with us for a while, and I wondered if he was visibly Jewish, which of course might pose an extra problem. But the truth was that I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t very expert on penises, in fact I’d never seen one up close. My mind was going crazy, wondering where Leah was, and if they’d really shipped her out on the train, and what we’d do with that poor baby if that was the case. I was thinking about poor Johann being tortured and wondering what they were doing to him, and about Pierre maybe leaving, and being tortured himself if he didn’t leave . . . And of course there was no one I could talk to about any of it, because I couldn’t explain to anyone why Johann had been arrested, nor why Pierre might be in danger. And despite Pierre’s reassurances, I was pretty scared for myself. I definitely didn’t know for sure that the SS wouldn’t start going after women too.