Perfectly Ordinary People(98)

I suggested that it was precisely because they couldn’t communicate with each other that they got on. I said it was hard to argue, or start a war, if you can’t even speak each other’s languages. But Christophe said he thought it was the opposite. He said he thought that wars happened because people from different countries didn’t mix and communicate enough. But it’s true, isn’t it? That thing about kids and how they’ll just play together. It’s like society teaches them to be nasty at some point.

Hum. You say that, but the other kids were pretty horrible to me at school.

Ha! Touché. That’s true, too. Children can be cruel little buggers.

But please, can we get to Speakers’ Corner? I’m dying of anticipation here!

Sorry, yes, I’m getting sidetracked. So we went, and Ethel wasn’t there.

Oh no. I’m so disappointed!

So was I, as you can imagine.

There was a man with a strong accent – Russian, or something like that – ranting on about Winston’s Iron Curtain, and because of our poor English and his strong accent, we could barely understand a word he was saying. Certainly we had no idea what he was talking about when he said ‘Iron Curtain’. That wasn’t a phrase either of us had ever heard before.

But he shouted on and on about it, and people wandered up, listened for a while, and then drifted off. Someone shouted that he was a ‘bloody communist’, and someone else told the heckler to shut up. Because that’s what Speakers’ Corner turned out to be – a simple street corner where anyone was allowed to say anything.

We must have got there about a quarter to twelve, and we listened to his incomprehensible ranting until after one, at which point Christophe and I started to argue – me, of course, wanting to stay, and him wanting to leave. Ethel wasn’t there, he said, which was indisputable, and Guillaume was hungry and getting irritable. He said we’d find a way to earn some money and return there the following month, but I was scared that if we left that wouldn’t happen, and certain that if I took the decision to walk away, I’d burst into tears. So I just hung on and on.

Finally the Iron Curtain man got off his soapbox – and it literally was a soapbox in those days, it said Lifebuoy on the side – and a Frenchman replaced him, so I lied and told Christophe that I wanted to hear what our fellow countryman had to say.

He started by telling us that he wanted to talk about the Jewish Question, and because of his French accent he was much easier for me to understand. He claimed the Allies had known about the gas chambers but hadn’t done anything, and people drifted away until hardly anyone remained. At that point, the man beckoned us forward. He was a bit scary, really, with a wild, unkempt beard and crazed blue eyes, but he was very insistent so in the end we sheepishly obeyed and moved forward.

Christophe started to argue with me again, saying it was time to leave and that Ethel wasn’t here, and if I didn’t make a move he’d leave me there and I’d just have to find my way back on my own. When he paused for breath we realised that the Frenchman had stopped speaking too and was staring at us intently. I assumed it was because we’d been talking during his speech and so I apologised to him, quite naturally speaking in French.

He frowned at me, and then at Christophe, and then at Guillaume, and then finally back at me before saying, ‘You’re not Genevieve, are you?’

I nodded that I was, and he asked, ‘Genevieve from Mulhouse?’ and I nodded again, wondering how he knew me.

‘She said you’d be alone,’ he said, still speaking French. ‘I’m sorry, but she said you’d be alone. That’s why I didn’t recognise you.’

He pulled a folded slip of paper from his pocket, then, and held it out so that I could take it. And before it had even reached my fingers, tears started to well up, because I knew, finally, that I had found her.

The address on the paper was in Islington – not that either of us had any idea where that was. Personally, I didn’t even know it was in London.

So I interrupted the poor Frenchman, who by then had resumed his speech, to ask how far away it was. He shrugged and told me that he didn’t know. I asked how he knew Ethel, and he said he didn’t.

Christophe tried to lead me away at that point, but I shook him off, telling him I didn’t want to go and find somewhere to eat, that I wanted to go to the address on the bit of paper I was waving around, right then.

He very reasonably tried to point out that we didn’t know where that was, and we didn’t know how to get there. He explained it was likely that it was either a long way away, or Ethel was out somewhere working, because otherwise she would simply have come to Speakers’ Corner herself. He said we should go and find something to eat, and then make a proper plan about how and when we’d travel to Islington.

But I was too excited. I couldn’t calm down. So I interrupted our Frenchman again to ask him why Ethel hadn’t come: was it because Islington was a long way away, or was it because she was at work?

Clearly annoyed, he shouted that he didn’t know where Ethel worked or when she worked or even why she worked and he didn’t know what size shoes she wore either, so now would I please shut up and let him speak.

It was a thoroughly deserved telling-off, and I knew it. Especially because the subject of his speech – firing squads and gas chambers – was far from frivolous. So I blushed and apologised to him and the few people who had gathered to listen, and finally let Christophe drag me off to a workmen’s café for egg on toast. The owner kindly let us consult his A-Z, and we were relieved to see that Islington was no more than a few miles away.