Perfectly Ordinary People(65)

I didn’t know that.

Well, no one talks about it much. Being French and having fought for the Germans was considered pretty shameful, I expect, even if the men involved didn’t have any choice in the matter. Plus, not a lot of them survived to tell the tale. They were mostly sent to the Russian Front as cannon fodder. I don’t think many came back.

God, how awful. Surviving a concentration camp and then dying fighting for Germany.

Yes, I know. It’s dreadful. Everything the Nazis did was dreadful.

And what was it like being in Cannes in 1940?

Oh, gosh, it was so beautiful. I’d never seen anywhere so pretty. And other than the refugees everywhere, things felt quite normal. The shops were mostly still open – the bakeries had bread and so on. Things changed later on, of course, especially once the Nazis took over the Free Zone. Once that happened people went hungry because they shipped all the food off to Germany to help with the war effort. But in July 1940 things felt relatively normal. We bought croissants and ate them sitting on the seafront.

And seeing the sea for the first time?

Oh, it took my breath away. I’d been feeling pretty emotional anyway because for the first time in days we felt relatively safe. We were walking down beautiful sunlit streets and then we turned a corner and there was this glimpse of blue in the distance. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. And when we stepped out on to the Croisette – oh, I remember this so clearly – our view of the whole thing opened up into this crazy blue panorama. It was . . . I can’t think how to describe it other than to say it was blue and fresh and so big. We crossed the road and I had to sit on a wall to catch my breath. There was the sound of it, of the waves . . . I hadn’t expected the sea to have a sound. And the smell, too – that lovely fresh iodine smell. I’d never seen anything so wide or so far away or so blue. The biggest expanse of water I’d ever seen was a lake. So I really had never seen anything so beautiful.

I handed little Guillaume to Pierre and ran down on to the beach so that I could sift the sand through my fingers. When I saw a child paddling at the water’s edge, I turned and asked Pierre if I could do that too, and he laughed and said that of course I could. I was worried there might be things in the sea that would bite me, and that made him laugh even more.

I pulled off my shoes and stockings and paddled, and you know the way the wet sand crumbles through your toes? That felt wonderful. I still love that sensation, even now, and it always makes me think of Cannes.

It was only when I turned back to beckon to Pierre that I looked at the seafront for the first time. I’d been so smitten by the sea that I hadn’t noticed the palm trees and those grand hotels. It was all so incredible to realise we’d escaped from Nazi-run Alsace to the luxury seafront in Cannes that I burst into tears.

When I joined Pierre on the wall again, I told him I’d fallen in love with Cannes, and I wanted to stay there for ever, and he said that he hoped I realised we couldn’t stay with his cousin. Of course I knew that already, but I asked if we could please, please, try to stay on in Cannes and Pierre said it might be possible, but only if we could find somewhere to stay, and only if one of us could find some work to pay the bills. It’s funny really how we fell into those old-fashioned heterosexual roles of me wanting things and him trying to work out how to make them happen, because until we’d left Mulhouse I’d always been fiercely independent. But Pierre had a reassuringly practical nature, and I tended to bow to his supposedly greater wisdom. He could see which problems needed to be solved in order to do something far more quickly, and more clearly, than I ever could. Perhaps that came from all the problems he had to solve as a plumber.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the day trying to find a cheap hotel room or a bed and breakfast or even just a bed in a hostel, but every single place we tried was full. To stop people bothering them, most had ‘no vacancy’ notices on the door. We went into shops at random and asked if anyone knew of someone with a spare room, but no one ever did.

Why was that? Surely it’s not just because it was summer?

No. Thousands of refugees had fled the occupation and had arrived in the south just before us. They’d taken every available room and there were people sleeping rough all over the place.

By the time we got back to his aunt’s place, we were exhausted from walking, and disheartened because we hadn’t found anywhere. Pierre was looking quite ill.

His aunt greeted us with a fresh barrage of questions about had we found somewhere to stay? And why not? And we didn’t think we could stay with her, did we? Because anyone could see that the place was too small for the five of us. When she started ranting like that, the words flew out of her mouth like bullets from a machine gun. But before we’d even attempted to reply, I heard a thump and a crash come from behind me and turned to see that Pierre had collapsed, taking the coat-stand down with him. He’d just handed Guillaume to me, thank God.

In a way, Pierre fainted at the perfect moment, because that indisputable proof of illness was probably the only thing that could break all the ice around Aunty Jeanne’s heart.

You mean she was nice to him after that?

<Laughs> No, I really wouldn’t say she was nice. In fact I’m not sure that she even had the capacity to be nice. But she was nicer. She was less horrible, let’s say.

She didn’t stop harping on about how inconvenient it was that we were staying, but she did at least let us stay. And she arranged for Pierre to see a doctor as well.