Perfectly Ordinary People(64)

For Pierre, the whole thing was mortifying and, when their shouting set the baby off, he decided he couldn’t take any more. He marched into the kitchen and told them in no uncertain terms we were leaving and that all he needed was the address of a hotel. That offer turned out to be the one thing that could calm everyone down, and in the end they fed us and let us sleep in one of the beds, though they insisted it would be for one night only.

I whispered to Pierre that I really would rather have gone to a hotel, and he said that if I had my way we’d spend everything on a few days of luxury in Cannes and then starve to death the following week. And you know what? I reckon he was probably right about that. He was always better with money than I was.

The next morning, I woke up to the noise of squawking seagulls, and that sound made me feel so happy – it seemed to promise so much. We’d arrived, and we’d arrived not just anywhere, but in Cannes.

I was alone in a comfortable bed for the first time in ages and before I got up I remember allowing myself to luxuriate in the sensation for a while, listening to the sounds of the birds.

But then I suddenly realised that Guillaume was missing and I panicked about his whereabouts so I jumped up and ran into the sunlit kitchen, where I found Pierre busy bottle-feeding him.

‘I’ve just been telling Aunt Jeanne about your condition,’ he said, tapping a fingernail against the baby bottle as a clue.

‘My condition?’ I said, using that special flat tone of voice you use when you’re trying to catch up on whatever lies someone’s been telling in your absence. I took the baby from Pierre, and the warmth of him, the smell of him, the sensation of having him in my arms, it made me feel calm again.

Pierre said he hadn’t been able to recall what ‘my condition’ was called, and his aunt asked me if it was mastitis, because if it was mastitis then that shouldn’t stop me producing milk altogether.

‘Oh, no,’ I told her. ‘No, the doctor didn’t say it was anything like that. He didn’t really seem to know why I’ve stopped at all.’

‘Doctors!’ she said. And then she declared that it was almost certainly just the worry. As proof of this, she said her own mother had stopped lactating for a whole month when her father had died.

I agreed it probably was just because of all the worry, and Pierre nodded at me to indicate that I’d done well.

‘Anyway, I’m going to write to them,’ his aunt said, apparently returning to a previous conversation. ‘I’m going to give them a piece of my mind.’

Pierre explained his aunt was furious that she hadn’t been invited to our wedding. Aunt Jeanne threw me a curveball then, by asking when it had taken place.

I glanced at Pierre, who shrugged almost unnoticeably, indicating I was free to choose. ‘The third of September,’ I said, for no reason other than it was the first date that came to mind.

‘The day we declared war?’ Jeanne said, sounding doubtful, and I realised that was the reason that date had come to mind in the first place.

‘The third was a Sunday. Surely you didn’t get married on a Sunday, did you?’

‘Sorry, I meant the fourth,’ I said. ‘The day after.’

She frowned at me suspiciously and counted on her fingers, working something out. ‘So when was this one born?’ she asked, nodding towards the baby, and I panicked for a moment that I’d chosen a wedding date that implied we’d had premarital sex. That was still a huge deal in the forties.

‘Mid-June,’ Pierre said. ‘The thirteenth. It didn’t take us long, did it?’ He winked at me reassuringly, and I’m pretty sure I blushed.

Even though I was still attempting to count the months without using my fingers, Pierre’s aunt seemed satisfied, so I assumed that Pierre’s timing was probably fine.

‘Anyway, that’s why we couldn’t invite anyone,’ Pierre said, taking the ball and running with it. ‘Because we did it on the spur of the moment. Because of the war.’

Jeanne said that was all very well, but he could at least have written to give her the news.

‘I know!’ I told her. ‘We should have. But what with the war and everything.’

‘Plus that’s why we wanted to visit,’ Pierre added. ‘So you could meet Genevieve and little Guillaume.’

Jeanne pulled a face at that. ‘Oh, you’re here for my sake, are you?’ she said. ‘I did wonder.’

We escaped the flat and Jeanne’s questions as soon as we could, and made our way down towards the seafront.

During the walk, Pierre explained all the other lies he’d had to tell in response to his aunt’s questions. He’d told her that he’d had to run away to avoid being enlisted in the German army, and because she’d noticed his missing fingernails, he’d claimed the Germans had tortured him because of his reluctance to enlist. Finally, he’d explained our missing wedding rings by saying that we’d pawned them in order to pay for the train tickets.

It was strange really, because that line about running away to avoid being enlisted in the Wehrmacht turned out to be prophetic in the end, because the Germans did end up conscripting the men from Alsace. It’s just that it hadn’t happened yet.

They made French soldiers fight for Germany?

Only the men from the annexed zone, but yes. Hitler considered Alsace part of Germany, so Alsace men were German men, as far as he was concerned. Towards the end, when they were losing, they freed men from the concentration camps as well so that they could fight.