Perfectly Ordinary People(46)

Because chocolate was hard to come by during the war?

No. Well, it was – chocolate was incredibly hard to come by. But when I saw the chocolate, I knew they weren’t going to kill us. Because if you’re going to murder someone, well, you don’t give them chocolate first, do you?

I asked her what her name was, and she said that her daddy had told her no names. She told us, very precisely – because she was clearly reciting what she’d been told – she said to put the lamp out as soon as we’d eaten so no one would see it through the cracks, and she’d be back for it the next day. And then she left, padlocking the door behind her.

And that’s how we lived for a week. There was a jar of dried peas on the shelf by the wood-burner and once we’d realised that we were losing track of time, we removed one each day and lined them up on the shelf. We couldn’t wash properly because we only had a jug of water, and we only ever spoke in whispers. The baby cried a lot and we did our best to keep him quiet, but that was it. That was how we lived.

Was it always the little girl who came?

Yes, every night, she’d come just after dusk and swap her lit lantern for the one from the day before. She always brought a baguette and a litre of milk, and sometimes a bit of goat’s cheese or a slice of ham, or some jam.

But no more chocolate?

No. The chocolate was only that first day and Pierre was annoyed that we’d eaten it. He said we should have rationed ourselves to make it last.

Couldn’t you have forced her to leave the door open or to leave you the key, if she was just this little girl, on her own?

Well, we asked her on the second day to leave the door unlocked and she said her papa had told her to lock it. She could lock us in or lock us out, she said, but the door had to be locked. We were hardly going to fight a little girl for the key, were we? So we chose to stay locked in. Plus we were depending on her for food, of course . . .

Do you know why they locked you in?

I can only suppose that it was dangerous for them if we wandered around and got seen. It could have given their whole operation away.

I see. And what did you feed the baby? What about bottles and nappies and stuff?

Well, we fed the baby the milk, straight from a cup. It gave him colic at first, which made him scream, but we didn’t have any other choice. I worked out a way to put my little finger in the cup and he’d suck at it and swallow milk at the same time. And for the other end, when we ran out of nappies, we lined his nappy with newspaper. There was a whole pile of old newspapers in the corner for lighting the fire, so we just used those as sort of nappy liners. When they were dirty we put them in the poo bucket and when the girl came she let us empty it in a hole behind the cabin.

Gosh, newspapers as nappy liners? Did that work?

No, not really. They weren’t very absorbent and they left newsprint all over his bum, but it was what we had, so for a while we made do. After a few days the girl began taking the dirty nappies away so her mother could wash them, so things were a bit easier after that.

Pierre slowly got better. After a few days, he could use the bucket without bleeding too badly, and on the third or fourth day he was able to walk around the room without too much pain. One of his toes was infected, and hurt a lot, but he was able to walk. He started doing press-ups too, which made us laugh, because I could always beat him. I could always do more press-ups than Pierre. I thought it was because of all my rowing, but he was still quite weak, I think.

Time must have gone very slowly, didn’t it, locked up in the dark?

During the day, it wasn’t completely dark. Some light leaked in around the edges of the shutters and if you sat in the right place you could even read the old newspapers. That was peculiar, I remember, reading the papers – all the silly things people used to worry about before the war. It all seemed so . . . frivolous, I suppose. But yes, it did seem a long time.

Is that what you did then? Just read old newspapers?

Well, Pierre slept a lot. He slept for maybe fifteen hours a day. And when he was awake, we talked, endlessly, in whispers. We were childhood friends, remember, so we had lots of things we could talk about – our parents and what they’d be doing or saying. We talked about Ethel in London, and what might be happening to Johann or Leah, which always made us cry, or what it was going to be like once we got over the demarcation line, and whether we’d find ourselves in occupied France or free France. We didn’t know then where one ended and the other began and neither did we know how far down the border we’d be crossing. We talked about how we’d explain the fact that we’d lost our papers if anyone stopped us . . .

Had you, then? Lost your papers, I mean?

No. But Dad had made us hide them in the lining of the suitcase. He’d said it was too dangerous to show them, because of course they said that we weren’t husband and wife at all. He thought that Pierre would end up on some sort of wanted list as well.

We argued about what to call ourselves – we even managed to have a tiny bit of fun going through names. In the end we decided to call ourselves Mr and Mrs Poulain. Genevieve Poulain and Pierre Poulain.

Can I ask why you chose Poulain?

Yes. <Laughs> It was the name on the chocolate, that’s all. It was the brand. It was a bar of Chocolat Poulain, and we liked the name. We liked the chocolate, too, so . . .

And then, one day, when the girl came back – it was eight days after we’d arrived – she said that her papa had told her we were leaving that night and we were not to go to sleep.