Perfectly Ordinary People(85)

And how did you feel when you realised? What did you say to each other?

We were dumbstruck. We just sat and stared at each other with tears in our eyes. And then eventually Christophe broke the tension by saying, ‘Well, that’s got to be fairly good news, don’t you think?’

We spent a week saying goodbye to everyone and organising our affairs. We gave away some of the things we’d collected over the years and I told Lucienne she could have our chickens and that she should help herself to the vegetables from the garden.

Did you feel sad to be leaving?

No. Not at all. We were sad to say goodbye to some of the people, I suppose. And Guillaume was heartbroken when he understood he couldn’t play with Cathy – that was Lucienne’s daughter – anymore. But no, mainly, we were just happy. Happy that it was over. Happy we could go home. Happy we weren’t going to have to spend winter in that hut ever again. Happy we were going to see our families . . .

And how did you travel?

Well, we hiked up to the village on foot. We were pretty used to it by then. I had the suitcase I’d arrived with and Christophe had a sack – you know, a hessian one – slung over his shoulder. We left with about the same amount of stuff we’d arrived with.

It was a Saturday and everyone had gathered around the grocer’s van, so we said goodbye to all the people we knew up there, and then he drove us – the grocer, that is – to Sigale, where his shop was. Oh, I just remembered, he had this crazy contraption on the back of his van that somehow made it run on wood. I think it heated the wood to make gas or something . . . And he had to stop every now and then to add logs to this oven-thing at the back.

Because there was no petrol by then?

Exactly. I don’t think there was much petrol for years.

From there we took the bus to Nice – I think it ran on wood-gas as well – and then from there a series of trains and buses back home.

Was the mayor sad to lose his number one employee?

I suppose he must have been, but he didn’t say anything. The war was over. Everyone was moving all over the place. People expected change.

As we were leaving, the mayor took Christophe to one side and asked if we were intending to revert to our old identities. And Christophe asked if we could wait a little while to decide because we weren’t sure.

You weren’t sure? I would have thought that would be the obvious thing to do.

Well, to all intents and purposes, homosexuality had been made illegal, hadn’t it? We assumed all the awful laws that had been passed, the laws against the Jews and the Roma, and the communists . . . that they’d be cancelled now that the Germans had been defeated. But we had to be sure. We had to wait and see. No one really knew quite what was coming next.

And were they cancelled? Those awful laws?

Most of them were. All the racial ones were, at any rate. But sadly not the anti-homosexual ones. The Allies decided, in their wisdom, to keep those. Germany’s gift to the nation!

My God, that must have been upsetting, wasn’t it?

It was more than upsetting. It was absolutely shameful. But you know, that was the one thing the Allies agreed with the Germans about. Nobody liked the homosexuals. And they didn’t just keep them for a few years, either. They kept those laws for decades. In France it wasn’t until a few years ago – ’82, I think – that Mitterrand finally removed the last of the anti-homosexuality laws from the statute books.

Yes, I wrote a piece about that. It’s crazy.

But you know, even here in England, right now, in 1986, there are still people who don’t want their kids to know about homosexuality. I’m not sure if you’ve been following it, but in Haringey there have been parents protesting about schools teaching kids about gay relationships just this week. There’s an election next year and if the Conservatives win again they want to stop schools and libraries even owning books that mention homosexuality. So we’re not that far from burning books all over again. But anyway . . . I’m getting sidetracked here, aren’t I? It’s just that it all makes me so angry. I can’t even remember where I was up to, now.

You were just about to leave Le Mas, I think.

Right. Well, we said our goodbyes, and then spent two days getting back home, travelling almost exactly the same way we’d come five years earlier. The only difference was we travelled via Nice rather than Cannes, because that was where the bus went.

You didn’t fancy popping in to see Francine and Jeanne, then?

Ha! No. We thought we’d give that pleasure a miss.

What was it like being back in Mulhouse? That must have felt strange, didn’t it? You’d been away for so long.

It was awful. It was truly awful in every way. I get the shivers even now, just thinking about it.

Because that was when you found out about your parents?

Yes, that was without a doubt the most awful moment of my life. But even before that, being back in Mulhouse felt dreadful.

Lots of buildings had been bombed or burned to the ground and there were still German signs dotted around the place. There were refugees everywhere: people still pouring in from the east, Poles, and Roma and Jews who’d only barely survived the camps; people who’d lost everything for one reason or another. Everyone, everywhere, looked poor, and starved; downtrodden and sad. The whole town felt really shocking and I remember thinking that it would never be the same again.