Perfectly Ordinary People(84)

Now, the mayor, of course, knew we were safe.

Because he’d provided you with fresh identities?

Exactly. We were compromised, so to speak. Plus, we lived in one of the most isolated houses in the area. So one night, in June ’44, there was a knock on the door and when we opened up it was the mayor with this pilot chap, Sam. They’d disguised him as a French farmer, but that’s what he was, an American Air Force pilot.

He stayed with us for a week and he was absolutely gorgeous. He was kind and funny and, you know, relaxed in that special way Americans can be sometimes. There’s a naive sort of confidence about them, I suppose. He was funny too – he had that Jewish sense of humour.

Was he Jewish, then?

Yes.

So being caught by the Germans would have been pretty bad for him.

Oh, I think it would have been anyway. But yes, you’re probably right. It would have been even more dangerous for Jewish airmen. But did I mention he was also rather handsome? So Christophe, in particular, was smitten.

Oh gosh. And was Sam gay?

No, he was perfectly heterosexual – he showed us photos of his wife and child on the first morning he was with us. So Christophe did his best to keep his feelings under wraps. But, honestly, it was so funny watching him swoon around Sam . . . Christophe would hang on his every word and laugh too loudly at all Sam’s jokes. Often, when I laughed, I was laughing at Christophe’s reaction rather than whatever joke Sam had told.

So did Sam speak French? I’m just wondering how you communicated.

Not one word! But we both knew some English from school. It was pretty rusty, but with a lot of miming, we got by. And in the evenings, we’d sit around and talk, and he’d tell us all about Georgia, where he came from. He liked to tell us all these little details about his life back home. He liked bowling, I remember, and dancing to rock ’n’ roll and reading. His favourite author was John Steinbeck, and after the war I read quite a few Steinbeck novels, and that was entirely thanks to Sam.

Guillaume was quite smitten, too, but Sam couldn’t pronounce Guillaume properly – he called him Guy-home, so that caused much amusement. In the end we told him the English equivalent was probably William, so he started calling Guillaume William, and then Will, and then finally Bill, instead. He used to dance to rock ’n’ roll around our tiny room with him and Guillaume used to laugh and laugh. When Sam left, he even asked if he could take Guillaume with him.

He was joking, I hope?

Of course he was joking! I told him he should take them both – said he’d be doing me a favour if he took Guillaume and Christophe with him, and Christophe said, ‘Yes, please take me!’ That was the closest Christophe ever got to telling Sam how he felt.

And how did Sam react?

Oh, he just cracked some joke about how if he had bigger pockets he’d take us all with him. But that week was a real highlight for me, for all of us. And that’s why I wanted to tell you about it.

Yes, I can see that must have been exciting.

And you know how I was saying that memory plays tricks? How it erases, or at least attenuates, all that miserable coldness, all those arguments, all the boredom . . . But it also enhances the good bits, so that week, when we hid our pilot, well, I remember it as if it was yesterday. And I remember it as if it lasted for months, whereas in fact he was only with us for a week.

Any idea what happened to Sam after he left you?

No, none. You were never told what was next, just in case someone ended up interrogating you. But I believe they mostly got them out over the Pyrenees. The only thing I know for sure is that he did get out. He was definitely OK.

And can I ask how you know that?

Because I gave him a letter to post for me when he got to civilisation. But that’s a whole different story. For later.

Fair enough. Can you describe the day that Germany surrendered? What was it like? Were there celebrations? Did people dance in the streets?

<Laughs> You know, for us, where we were, it was incredibly low-key. We were happy; we were more than happy. It’s just that, without trekking all the way up to the village, there weren’t enough people to have a party. And there weren’t really any streets to dance in either. But we went and clinked glasses with Lucienne and her family. Her extremely drunk neighbour was there too.

How did you get the news? Do you remember?

Oh, you know, that sort of thing – the end of a war – well, you never forget a single detail.

We found out over the radio in the afternoon. Christophe was back earlier than usual that day. He’d been helping the Ponts et Chaussées people with a rockslide that had partly blocked one of the roads leading into the village and they’d finished clearing the blockage earlier than expected. So it was about four or five o’clock.

I was boiling water for fake coffee – we had a gas burner by then. It was only a single cooking ring, but it was much better than the army stove.

You had gas there but no electricity?

It was bottled gas. It came in those huge metal cylinders. The grocer used to bring them to Le Mas during his Saturday trip, and then the builder would transport it down to us in the valley on the back of Eglantine, his long-suffering mule.

Anyway, I was making coffee and Christophe switched on the radio. It was unusual that he would switch it on during the day. It ran on an accumulator, and the charge didn’t last for long, so we had to ration ourselves. But that day, he switched it on – he said afterwards that he’d had an intuition – and De Gaulle’s voice rang out. He was in the middle of a whole speech about Germany’s surrender, so it took us a moment to work out that was what he was saying. The first phrase we heard clearly was something about the French people saluting their valiant allies.