Perfectly Ordinary People(76)

I hung up the phone and smiled. Every now and then Freida would come up with these phrases – phrases that were perfectly good English but were simply forms or phrases we never use in speech.

‘Somewhat expedited,’ I repeated out loud, grinning to myself.





Cassette #4

ML: Hello. This is Marie Lefebvre, talking to Genevieve Schmitt, cassette number four, I think? Third day.

Hi, Genevieve. I’d just like to apologise for last time. I feel that I pushed you too hard, and I realise that was upsetting for you, so I’m sorry. If I do that again, just—

GS: You know, really, it’s fine. Let’s not, um, dwell on that. Let’s just get on with it, shall we?

Of course. But I am sorry. So thanks for having me back. When we left off, you were still in Cannes. How did you come to move on? Because I don’t think you were there for long, were you?

No, we stayed for just over a week. Pierre spent his days trying to find work, and I spent mine trying to find a room to rent. But neither of us managed to find either. There were thousands of refugees and they were all looking for work and places to live. The only time we ever found a horribly overpriced room for rent, the woman didn’t want anyone with a baby.

I was sad we were going to have to leave Cannes, but I understood that the situation was untenable. We were clearly going to have to try a different town, even if we were in no great hurry to do so.

But then something happened that made us get a move on. We returned to the house for lunch on the Saturday to find Francine’s neighbour from across the landing in the process of telling her the police had been by. They’d been looking for a Monsieur Meyer and a Mademoiselle Schmitt, she said, and she asked if that was us.

Now the fact that they’d used my surname was doubly scary because it meant that not only did the police know where Pierre was living, but they knew we weren’t really married. Because, of course, I’d been telling everyone my surname was Meyer.

Not Poulain?

Oh, no, we’d had to switch to Meyer. Because Pierre’s cousin knew he wasn’t called Poulain.

Of course she did! Silly me.

I’d been going by Pierre’s name, Meyer, so that really scared us.

There were incredible rumours going around about everything back then. I don’t think I’ve ever heard as many rumours as I did during the war. So we’d heard that the Italians were about to take Cannes, and that Pétain had started rounding up the Jews. We heard the Germans were about to invade the Free Zone, and it was said that the French police were arresting people willy-nilly and handing them over to the Germans.

At a later date, virtually all of those rumours came true. Back then, in July 1940, most of them really were just rumours, but we were terrified all the same. And I don’t know if Jeanne and Francine believed we were in danger or not, but seeing a chance to get rid of us, and sensing our fear, they certainly didn’t hold back from whipping us into a frenzy.

You know, these days, I wonder if the police had just come to deliver a message from my mother. Perhaps they simply wanted to inform me that my father was missing and my mother wanted me home. If my mother had compared notes with Pierre’s parents she could have guessed at where we were staying from the fact I was sending postcards from Cannes, where they knew Pierre had a cousin. But we never got to find out why they were looking for us because we left that same day.

Francine went out and returned with slimy Jean-Noel, who announced, rather theatrically, that he’d solved all our problems. He had a place we could rent – a perfectly idyllic-sounding country house up in the back country. It had two floors and an open fireplace. The garden was full of wood we could burn and had a river running along one side. For the paltry sum of one thousand five hundred francs, we could stay there for a whole year, he said. And the war would probably be over by then!

When Pierre baulked at the cost, Jean-Noel added that, included in the price, he would drive us up there and even provide bedding and groceries to ‘get us going’.

By chance, that sum was most of the money we had. With hindsight, it seems obvious that Francine had found and counted our stash of cash, and together they’d fixed the price to fit. But we were so desperate to leave, and his offer was so perfect, solving as it did every one of our problems, that it truly didn’t cross our minds.

Jean-Noel wanted half the cash up front, he said, so that he could get our groceries on the black market. He needed cash to bribe someone he knew for petrol, as well. And rather naively – very naively, really – we handed the money over and waited for him to return.

And did he ever come back? Because that does sound pretty trusting.

Oh, it was. It was a ridiculous thing to do. We didn’t even like the man, so God knows why we trusted him. But we needed to believe, I think. We were scared and out of options, that’s all.

But he did return, late that afternoon. He had borrowed a butcher’s van, and in the rear, as promised, there were blankets and pillows and pots and pans. There was a hamper of food, as well, including a surprising number of luxury items that were incredibly difficult to come by, and that all seemed so kind of him that when he asked, we handed over the rest of the cash.

You gave him the cash before you’d seen the house?

I know. Don’t . . . I never forgave myself for that.

And, what happened then? Did the house even exist?