Perfectly Ordinary People(63)

She explained that she didn’t want to be spotted with us, and then led us through the wheat fields to a point where we could see the main road in the distance, and it was there, surrounded by the crop waving in the wind, that we hugged and said our goodbyes. We wished each other good luck, and then, blinking back tears, continued on across the fields.

Once she was out of earshot, Pierre said, ‘Well, she was reasonably pleasant,’ and I burst out laughing.

Sorry, but why did that make you laugh? I think I missed the joke.

Oh, it was just a thing Pierre liked to do . . . He’d say something ridiculously understated – it was a sort of trademark of his. It was the first time he’d cracked a joke in ages too, perhaps even since the beginning of the war, so I was happy he seemed to be feeling better. I laughed, and I remember the baby gurgled too, and that made both of us laugh even more. It was as if the baby had understood the joke, you see.

It took us about half an hour to walk to the outskirts of the town – I think it was Mont-sur-Vaudrey, or it might be Mont-sous-Vaudrey. Anyway, it was this small town where the train station had been closed for years, so we hunted around for ages, trying to get our bearings, trying to find the correct bus stop for Poligny, and when the bus arrived, it was so stuffed full of soldiers that I didn’t think we’d be able to get on board. But the soldiers all laughed and joked and squashed in a little more so that we could climb aboard – considering France had been defeated, they seemed in a surprisingly good mood but I suppose they were just happy to be going home to their families in one piece. One of them started making a fuss over Guillaume and got a photo—

Sorry, Guillaume?

Oh, yes, sorry . . . We changed his name again. The German name had seemed like a good idea in the German zone, but now we weren’t so sure. So we changed his name to Guillaume at that point. That was Pierre’s choice. I wanted to stick with Oscar – the French version of Ansgar – but Pierre said it made him think about Oscar Wilde, and Oscar Wilde made him think of persecution and prison. In the end we plumped for Guillaume.

Any particular reason?

No, I think it was just a name we both liked. We didn’t have that long to think about it.

OK. Gosh, that poor baby must have been so confused!

Yes. I’m sure he was. Anyway, the soldier got a photo of his own baby out to show me. He asked me where we were heading and Pierre jumped into the conversation and replied that we were heading for Lyon. Marie had warned us repeatedly not to trust anyone, and never to say where we were from or where we were going and I think Pierre had guessed, quite rightly, that I was about to give the game away and tell everyone on that bus that we were going to Cannes.

At Poligny we bought a ticket to . . . was it? . . . Do you know, I can’t remember? Bourg-en-Bresse, maybe . . . I do remember we had to buy a new ticket for each leg of the journey. I’m not sure if that was a war thing, or if that’s just how things were in those days, but I definitely remember having to buy fresh tickets over and over again. We were terrified every time that the train would be full, or there would be some rule about essential travel and we’d have to justify ourselves or . . . I don’t really know what we were frightened of, but buying tickets always felt nerve-wracking.

And the trains were full, too. Everyone was trying to get somewhere back then . . . troops going home, people wanting to get away from the border, people attempting to join their families . . . people trying to return to the border now the fighting was over . . . The whole country seemed to be in movement and the trains were filled way over normal capacity. But other than that terrifying squeeze to get in – and sometimes you’d still be hanging out of the door as the train pulled away – it was fine. We managed it every time.

How long did it take to get to Cannes?

Two days.

Two days?!

Yes. Two full days of crowded trains and stations with a crying baby. We ate the picnic that Marie had given us, and I warmed Guillaume’s bottle up by stuffing it down my blouse.

We slept on a pile of those wooden railway sleepers behind one of the sidings – that was in Lyon, I think. We went back to using newspapers as nappy liners, and the poor thing got a rash and started whingeing even more.

It was sunset by the time we got to Cannes the next day. I remember that because as we were trying to find Pierre’s cousin’s address I caught a glimpse of the sea down a side street and begged Pierre to allow a detour so I could get a proper look. I’d never seen the sea before, not once; I’d only ever seen it in black and white at the cinema, or on postcards. But we had our bags with us and the baby was crying, and Pierre was obsessed about finding the address before it got dark. The streets were eerily empty, too, so we were worried there might be a curfew in Cannes, in which case we feared we’d be stopped and questioned, or even arrested for being out after dark.

We asked an old man for directions and then found the place quite easily – it was only about half an hour from the station. But instead of the welcome we’d been hoping for, the cousin, Francine, seemed dismayed by our arrival. She grudgingly let us in and introduced me to her aged mother, Pierre’s aunt Jeanne, who was living with her because of the war.

Francine kept muttering, ‘They just can’t do that . . . they just can’t turn up like that . . .’ over and over again, as if she was talking to some invisible person, and I wondered if she wasn’t a bit mental. Pierre’s aunt made no bones about the fact that she didn’t want us staying either, and at one point the two of them – mother and daughter – had a raging argument in the kitchen. Aunty Jeanne was shouting that we couldn’t possibly stay, and what would we eat? And where would we sleep? And cousin Francine was agreeing, saying that yes, she knew that, but what the hell was she supposed to do? Throw us out?