Perfectly Ordinary People(36)

‘D’you remember that time we surprised them?’ Mum said. ‘How strange your dad was?’

‘Yeah,’ Dad said. ‘Yes, that was the last time we ever dropped in, wasn’t it? We always phoned after that.’

‘I’m not sure we went back at all after that,’ Mum said.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh, nothing really,’ Dad said. ‘Nothing specific. They were just strange. It was uncomfortable.’

‘But if you made an appointment, they were OK,’ Mum said. ‘They were nice to me anyway. We used to meet them in that restaurant Genny liked.’

‘Claude’s,’ Dad said. ‘French place. It’s gone now. She used to try to get us all to eat snails.’

‘They were fine,’ Mum said. ‘Your father wouldn’t try them, but they tasted a bit like mushrooms. Lots of garlic. Actually, that’s all you could taste, really: the butter and the garlic.’

‘But you’d all meet up together? Even after the divorce?’

‘Yeah. Sometimes,’ Dad said. ‘Until she moved to Brighton. After that it was usually separately.’

‘So they still got on OK? They didn’t hate each other’s guts?’

‘No, they got on fine,’ Dad said. ‘Better than before, I think.’

‘That happens a lot,’ Mum said. ‘It’s the day-to-day grind that kills the passion. It’s the dirty socks and the skid marks. And I should know.’

‘Cheeky!’ Dad said, then, ‘So, are you ever going to give us another one of those tarts? Or are you just going to sit there and stuff them down your gullet?’ He looked at me and tipped his head sideways, asking me for back-up.

‘Yeah, I was kind of wondering that too,’ I said. ‘They are your gift, Mum. But you may still share if you so wish.’





Cassette #2

ML: This is Marie Lefebvre interviewing Genevieve Schmitt for Gai Pied magazine. Day one, second cassette.

GS: Perhaps I’m giving you too much detail. I am rambling on a bit, aren’t I?

Not at all. I’m really interested in your story and I’m sure our readers will be too. We may have to edit it down a bit for the magazine . . . but for now, I’d like to get the whole thing exactly the way you’re telling it, if that’s OK?

<Laughs> I’m rather enjoying telling it actually. Perhaps ‘enjoying’ isn’t the right word. So much of it is horrific. But I think it’s doing me some good to tell it. You know, no one has ever been that interested.

I find that hard to believe.

Oh, it’s true. I can assure you. Of course, bits and bobs. Once every decade someone will say, ‘Tell me about the war,’ but they don’t usually mean it. People want tales of heroism. They don’t really want to hear how sordid it all was. You can always see their eyes glazing over after a few minutes.

Well, I really do want to hear. So, you know, just carry on and tell me when you’ve had enough, OK?

OK then, I shall. Can you remember where I was up to?

Yes, you, um, have Leah’s baby back home. Pierre is being held by the police. And Matias has just cycled off into an obscenely beautiful sunset.

Well, it was closer to sunrise than sunset, but . . .

Yes, sorry. Of course.

When I got home, Mum was washing a pile of nappies a neighbour had given her. They stank of mildew, she said. At least the baby had stopped crying.

Mum wanted to know what Matias had said to do with him and I didn’t dare admit that I’d forgotten to ask, so I lied and said he’d told me that if we handed him over, he would probably be killed because he was Jewish. From everything Matias had told me about the Germans’ brutality, that felt like a reasonable guess, and with hindsight it’s what would almost certainly have happened.

Really? They even killed newborn babies?

Absolutely, they did. The Jewish babies who arrived at the camps were ripped from their mothers’ arms and thrown straight into a burning pit. They were of no use to the Nazis, so they were either gassed or burned alive.

Jesus! I didn’t know that.

No . . . I think some details are so harsh that people don’t like to talk about them, even now. But it’s true. Anyway, I didn’t know that at all, but I suppose I was finally starting to get the picture, and that’s what I told Mum. She said that I was being ridiculous and that no one would kill a baby, but I remember she glanced at my father, who rather vaguely wobbled his head from side to side, indicating that it was as likely an outcome as anything.

Mum asked me then if I had any news about Pierre. She seemed to assume that he’d have been questioned and released, just like Dad was. Of course I still couldn’t explain to them why that was unlikely so I told her that, no, he hadn’t, and that all I knew was that they were still holding him. I added that they were treating him pretty badly, I think, and this made Dad jump into the conversation, asking me why were they holding him. Had he done something? Did he have communist friends? Did they think he was Jewish?

I told him that I didn’t know. And then I said that I thought they suspected him of something that he hadn’t done.

Dad picked up that I knew more than I was admitting, so eventually I told him that they suspected Pierre of being friends with some queers, which I insisted he ‘evidently’ wasn’t.