Perfectly Ordinary People(41)

We went straight past ours to Pierre’s place, where his mother opened the door and promptly fell to her knees. I led him into the apartment while she stayed in the doorway saying over and over, ‘Oh, Pierre. Oh, Pierre! What have you done?’ On about the fourth repetition it annoyed me so much that I shouted at her that he hadn’t done anything, and would she please pull herself together and bloody well help me with her son.

She stood up then and we took Pierre into the kitchen – lots of people still didn’t have bathrooms in those days – and he just stood there limply while we sponged him down. Naked and up close, his body was even more shocking.

In what way?

Oh, the signs of everything they’d done to him. He had some missing toenails – I think it was three or four – and four missing fingernails, two from each hand. He had cigarette burns all down his inner arm, and a wide, deep cut on his cheek. His eye was slowly closing up too, as it swelled. I’d honestly never seen anything like it, and I haven’t since, either. Plus he had all this congealed blood stuck down his left leg that was incredibly hard to get rid of. I couldn’t work out where that had come from and kept looking for a wound.

As we were finishing, his mother became embarrassed by my presence. I saw it happen, and I’m still not sure what suddenly changed. Perhaps she’d just been in shock until that point and only when she started to come out of it did she realise that this young girl was kneeling, helping her clean her naked son. Whatever the reason, she suddenly stopped, threw her flannel down and pushed me towards the door. She even forgot that the baby was lying on the sofa and I had to push back so that I could return to pick him up.

As she reached for the latch she paused to ask me if it was true.

I asked was what true, but I was just playing for time. I knew what she meant. I’d guessed that she’d been told why they’d arrested Pierre, and what she was asking was if he was homosexual. But thankfully, she dropped the subject and instead asked, ‘Will they be back for him, or is everything OK now?’

I told her I didn’t know, and that I’d try to find out. Finally, as I was leaving, she grabbed my sleeve and pulled me back one last time to ask me, ‘Is it his? Is the baby his?’

I stared at her as I tried to run through all the knock-on effects that might result from whether I replied yes or no: the fact that if I said yes, and she believed me, then it might be easier to convince the Germans that we were a couple. But that it was a lie, and a big one, to tell a woman in distress she had a grandson when that totally wasn’t true. In the end I sort of shrugged, because I honestly couldn’t think how best to reply, and she got totally the wrong end of the stick. She muttered, ‘Oh the shame!’ or something like that and slammed the door in my face.

Because she thought you didn’t know who the father was?

Yes, exactly.

God!

Well, you know, afterwards, I thought about it and realised how that made sense. She’d asked me, and I’d shrugged. So it wasn’t an unreasonable reading of my reactions.

I suppose not. But all the same.

I went back home, then. My mother and father were waiting for me in the kitchen and, because my clothes were still covered in blood, I had no choice but to explain. So I told them everything that had happened. My mother went so grey that I thought she was going to be sick.

Once I’d finished, she took the baby from me and started changing his nappy – I think she needed something to do – and my father began telling me off, saying that I shouldn’t have gone without him; I was lucky to have got out of there alive. He asked if I had any idea how stupid I’d been or how dangerous it was. Mum stood up for me a bit, I remember. She pointed out that I’d saved Pierre, and I could hardly have just left him there to rot.

I washed the blood off my arms and then went to change into some clean clothes. When I got back my mother was feeding the baby, and she nodded towards the lounge and told me that my father wanted to talk to me in private.

He was standing looking out of the front window, keeping watch, I suppose, and he barely glanced at me when I entered the room. He told me to close the door.

‘You realise they’ll be back,’ he said. ‘They’ll almost certainly be back for both of you.’

I asked him if he really thought they would and he said he did.

He asked me again if I’d really told them that Pierre was my husband and the baby was ours.

I nodded and said a quiet ‘yes’ and then he turned to face me properly, and I realised that his eyes were glistening.

‘They’re going to check the records, aren’t they?’ I said, and he nodded. ‘They’re going to see that we’re not married.’

Dad nodded again and then cleared his throat and told me he might have to take a trip out to La Vieille-Loye the next day, and my heart leapt into my throat because I knew exactly what he was referring to.

He said he had a customer out there who was having trouble with his old tractor engine. But he needed to find petrol from somewhere first.

I started to cry then so he crossed the room and took me in his arms.

I protested that we should all go together, and he said there was no way that was happening. He said his hillwalking days were long over because of his leg, and I almost explained how injured Pierre was, but then, scared he’d make me leave Pierre behind, that he’d make me leave on my own, I changed my mind.