Perfectly Ordinary People(80)

‘But you said he’s only there on Saturdays, right?’

The woman nodded in reply. We were stuck there, she announced sourly.

Pierre turned to me then and, looking genuinely fearful, said, ‘I told you. We really are going to starve to death.’

On cue, Guillaume gave out a little cry, prompting me to point out that it was he who would starve to death first. Because the woman was frowning, I explained that, for some strange reason, I currently had no milk.

She nodded at this information thoughtfully, then said that Lucienne would give him a feed, if we had money. ‘Do you have money?’ she asked.

I shrugged and admitted we did still have a little.

‘Ah,’ she said, smiling for the first time. ‘Then tell me what you need, and I’ll see what I can do.’

Did she mean that Lucienne would be willing to wet-nurse him?

Yes. Yes, I hadn’t realised that, but that’s exactly what she meant. And Lucienne turned out to be her daughter. So she was effectively negotiating rental of her daughter’s breasts.

Gosh. It sounds like people were pretty mercenary back then.

Do you think they are less so now? I’m not so sure . . . But anyway, it was a war, you know? People were trying to find ways to survive. And no one really knew if they’d make it to the other side.

Yes, I can understand that. And so, is that what you ended up doing? Did Lucienne breastfeed Guillaume?

I’m never quite sure if I’m supposed to feel ashamed about this, but, yes, that’s what we did.

I can’t see why you should feel ashamed.

No? Me neither really. But I always do feel a bit strange about it. People are often funny about it when I tell them. But in the end, it was a matter of survival. The baby needed feeding, and I had no milk. Lucienne had more milk than her own baby would drink and appreciated the little money we were able to pay.

So yes, for a couple of weeks she fed him three times a day. Quite soon I ended up leaving him with her for the whole day. It was easier than going back and forth. Then in the evenings, I’d give him goat’s milk. But I always had to take him to my own breast afterwards. It was the only thing that would ever put him to sleep.

So you stayed for weeks, in the end?

Ha! We ended up staying for the duration.

You mean the duration of the war?

Yes.

Oh, I wasn’t expecting that.

No, I don’t think we were either. But the following day Pierre trekked up to the main village. It was a difficult forty-minute hike from the hamlet, along a steep forest path up the side of the mountain. I did it myself hundreds of times and it was so steep that even in midwinter I’d be soaked in sweat by the time I got to the top.

But though he got dizzy a few times, he managed it.

Up in the village, Pierre sought out the mayor. His intention was to ask if anyone had any kind of transport so that we could get out sooner than the following Saturday. He was itching to get back and have it out with Jean-Noel, but the mayor had other ideas.

They got talking and got on instantly, I think. And it turned out that the mayor was desperate for someone to do public works in the village.

You mean, he offered Pierre a job?

Yes, ultimately, he did. Once he found out Pierre had all the practical skills that came with being a plumber it was a done deal, really.

There hadn’t been that many young men living in the village before the war, I don’t think, but those that had been there had mostly vanished by the time we arrived.

They’d been killed?

No. I think one woman’s husband might have died, but most of them simply weren’t back yet from having been mobilised. The Germans had taken almost two million men prisoners of war. Plus, the few able men that were still present in the village had other essential jobs, working for the Ponts et Chaussées – that’s the organisation that maintained the roads. Those mountain roads were very crumbly and rocks were always falling on to them. Keeping them open without all the tractors and what have you that they have these days was pretty labour-intensive. The men would head off on foot with just their spades over their shoulders, so sometimes just walking to wherever the job was would take half a day.

Other men had different jobs they’d returned to, too. There was a builder chap who used a mule to carry his bricks and things around, and there was a goat farmer who sold us milk and cheese. But there was no one to help the mayor, so he saw Pierre – who was both light enough to hop around on roofs to mend leaks, and clever enough to fix the water supply when it suddenly dried up – as a godsend.

Pierre really fell on his feet, then.

He did. Particularly because the mayor turned out to be exceptionally sensitive to our situation.

When you say your situation . . . ?

I mean that he worked out almost immediately that we hadn’t ended up in the middle of nowhere for no reason. He could also tell, no doubt from Pierre’s accent, that we were from Alsace, and everyone knew what the Germans had been up to over there . . . So right from the start, he’d asked if putting Pierre on the books, paying him officially, was going to cause him any problems, and Pierre took the risk of trusting him and admitted that it might well.

It turned out the mayor had a contact – I think it might have even been his brother – who worked at the prefecture in Grasse, and he was able to get us fresh paperwork.

So that’s what happened. We wanted to call ourselves Poulain, but the mayor thought something more regional might be better and suggested Solomas, which was a very common local name.