Ignorance (10 page)

She was babbling now. Hysterical. I said: calm down. Jeanne said: he can get hold of anything, can't he, that boy? What else does he get for you? That's a nice row of pearls you've got on. Maurice give them to you, did he?

Madame Nérin was wiping Jeanne's face with a damp flannel. Hush,
ma chérie
, she murmured: just hush. She turned her head, flicked a worried look across the room. I couldn't bear it that she should gaze at me apologetically, as though she knew a secret I didn't. I wanted to slap Jeanne. I should have. Instead, I stopped twiddling the cord of the blind, walked away from the window, held on to the back of the chair by the washstand. I looked down at it. What a mess! I began putting things into order: brush and comb, little bottles, sponge in saucer.

Jeanne said: you know, he used to love coming to the house in Ste-Madeleine. He couldn't get enough of it.

The midwife, four-square in her felted grey skirt, seated between Jeanne's splayed legs, stitching her up, swivelled her attention, looked up at me inquisitively. I said to Jeanne: shut up. Jeanne said: oh, Marie-Angèle and I keep each other's secrets, don't we, darling?

I said: I'm going now.

Outside I leaned against the frosty wall for a bit. Then I walked along the street with my knees feeling like india rubber, hands shoved into the pockets of my coat. My feet knew the way home, or else I don't know how I'd have got there. While I stumbled along I pretended to be a girl at school again. When people passed you nasty notes in class, under the desk, you tore them up. If necessary you put the tiny pieces into your mouth and swallowed them. Tiny papery bits, like tiny hosts. Then you could deny they'd ever existed. That was how you forgot words. Lick them, suck them. Ink swimming over your tongue and down your throat.

I concentrated on the approach of Christmas and the New Year, the approach of the birth of my second child. In April 1944 our daughter arrived. Little angel, I whispered to her. She flung herself into the world and gave us fresh hope. She heralded the Liberation. Joyful shouts banging along the street. Church bells clanging. More military vehicles grinding in. People bursting out of their houses and running along the square. I heard them rather than saw them. My world had shrunk to my bed, the baby in the cot next to it. I was sleepy and I was warm. I wanted to stay in bed for ever and never get up. I dozed, then fed the baby, then dozed again.

Everybody gave the troops the best welcome they could. My parents too. My mother repeated the story for years afterwards: a group of American soldiers, invited in for a drink, emptied their glasses of Benedictine at one go, then held them out for more. They finished the entire bottle in five minutes. My mother had guarded that bottle, well hidden, throughout the long war years, and now in the blink of an eye it was gone.

September brought the celebration of Liberation. The town councils of Ste-Marie and Ste-Madeleine decided to join together, to demonstrate unity and solidarity, to hold the festivities in Ste-Marie. They pooled resources: double the size of brass band, double the number of flags, two mayors marching abreast, two lots of choirboys and altarboys at the thanksgiving Mass. The gold-fringed velvet banner of Ste-Marie waved next to the silver satin banner of Ste-Madeleine.

Maurice and I, plus our two little ones, joined our neighbours to watch the victory parade. My mother stayed indoors. Papa, wearing his service medals, left early, to take his place among the veterans. Maurice and I, carrying the children, walked down all the way through town from our house in the square. We descended flight after flight of stone stairs cutting between narrow streets. Every step of the way resonated with memories of the last five years. I was not yet properly well again, and still very tired, but I wanted to be with my compatriots, to offer thanksgiving. We all wanted that. To be together, to merge into one another, all joined up, whole, perfect, full of light, a simplicity, a pure feeling, all united all part of one another part of the crowd. The old skin of unhappiness cast off, wrinkled, dirty, and the new beautiful self of France rising up reborn, intact, after so many years of deprivation and distress.

Maurice gave both children into my care so that he could stand like a soldier, heels together, shoulders back, as upright and erect as possible. People pressed three deep on the pavements, spilled along the kerbs. Tricolores tying up women's hair, worn as armbands, worn as sashes. Down the centre of the street marched the bandsmen, in braided maroon uniforms and gold-trimmed képis, carrying their golden instruments, followed by the mayors, all the local dignitaries, the military, the police, the veterans, the two church choirs, the nuns, the church youth groups. Then the crowd fell back, and made space.

Jammed up against the entrance to a shop, at first we just heard the cries, not the words at that point, just the angry shouts, the shrill jeers of children, and then we saw the bald creatures thrust forward through the mêlée of townspeople, men and women hollering and cursing.

No hair. Not just bare-headed. No hair. That made them seem utterly naked. Just the gleaming domes of their skulls. Whiteness of skin and bone where hair should be. All that was female ripped off them. Young ones. Middle-aged ones. One fat one seemed really old: sixty or so. Wrinkles. Mascara rather than eyelashes. Rouged, pendulous cheeks. The fat one and the thin ones; the old one and the less old ones. They staggered along, faces turned aside, eyes cast down.

The men propelled along the things they held between them. One gendarme on each side, gripping them by the forearms so that they couldn't escape. They were going fast, half-dragging them. They hauled at them so fiercely they seemed to be pulling them apart. The bald women stumbled in their high heels over the cobbles. They looked stupid as beasts being driven to market, terrified as beasts being driven to the abattoir. The fat, old one looked the most ridiculous, bosom bulging out of her décolletage. One young one seemed a kind of heifer, in a white coat like an overall flapping loosely over the dress beneath, her bald head bent down over the wailing child clutched in her arms. I knew her, but at the same time she was not a person you could know or name. Shaved, she was no longer human. Words whimpered in my brain. I couldn't speak the words I wanted to. I gripped Maurice's sleeve and held on. I heard my own bewildered voice crying: Jeanne, Jeanne.

They'd seized her and shaved off all her hair so that they could parade her, part of the procession of tarts, let everyone know she'd been with Germans. Baldness her sign of betraying France, her badge of shame. She was a repulsive sight and she was stripped of all disguise she was a mockery of a woman she was a disgrace to womanhood. The citizens of our town looked on triumphantly and judged the creatures: outcast; alien; lowest of the low. Filth. I felt sick. I swayed against Maurice, my handkerchief to my mouth.

Jeanne's child focussed the crowd's hoots and cries. Alone of the tarts, Jeanne blundered along bare-legged. Women, her own age and older, respectable, clad in skirts and blouses, ankle socks and sturdy shoes, their hair neatly pinned up, followed her, a chorus of good women staring and catching each other's sleeves and pointing, then joining in to scream insults. Everyone around her, a troop of little children included, pulled at her dress as she passed, got as close to her as they could to yell at her, to spit on her. She was lower than a cockroach. Really there were no words for her. I felt the crowd feeling all this and I was part of the crowd and I felt it too.

Two days later, when I had calmed down, I went to pay a visit to the Blessed Sacrament. The glowing red lamp recalled me to my duty. I realised that Jeanne needed help to get back on the right path. She'd come from a bad home, she'd been led astray, she'd fallen by the wayside, like a little sparrow. Now she needed a second chance, to be given a fresh start. I decided to take charge.

Through fine rain I went back to Madame Nérin's mean little flat. Madame Nérin didn't offer to shake hands. She said in a dull voice: oh, it's you. She didn't look grateful at all for my visit, but she could hardly not let me in. She told me Jeanne was asleep, with baby Andrée, in the bedroom. So I sat with her in the cramped kitchen, at the oilcloth-covered table jammed in between the stove and the sink. Madame Nérin's mouth set hard. I tried not to let her see how much her squalid surroundings depressed me. Brown oilcloth, brown lino floor. Nappies soaked in a tin bucket. A rack of damp clothes tilted against the food cupboard. The place smelled of milk, soup, soap, bleach. Not a crucifix or a statue in sight. Did her religion no longer matter to her?

How chilly it was in here. The mild autumn didn't seem to exist. I kept my coat and hat on, pushed my gloved hands into my wide sleeves. Madame Nérin, having observed me in silence for a while, roused herself, made me barleycorn coffee. She pushed away a pile of books, served the coffee in little cups whose stencilled blue and yellow pattern had almost completely worn off. How those cups affected me! I didn't want anyone I knew to have to drink from such cups, chipped and saucerless. Nonetheless I accepted and drank the coffee: Madame Nérin needed to feel she could give me something, so that she'd be less beholden. She pulled her sleeves down over her wrists, chafed her hands. She'd obviously run out of fuel. How cold it was! Much too cold for a baby.

I said: now, please listen to me. Beggars can't be choosers, you know.

I spoke as tactfully as possible. However well-meaning Madame Nérin was, with her shaky health there was little she could do to help. Better for everyone, and especially for Jeanne, if Jeanne went away for a while, far from shame and humiliation, to a place where no one knew her.

Madame Nérin frowned down at her folded arms. The fingers of her right hand tapped her woollen sleeve. She said: there was a man in Ste-Madeleine Jeanne mentioned, who I think wanted to marry her.

I said: well, he won't want her now.

The following day I consulted the curé, and the nuns. The convent in London, the daughter-house, was the obvious choice. Reverend Mother fetched a sheet of writing paper from one locked drawer, pen and ink from another. She peered round. Blotting paper? She put on her spectacles. She dipped her pen, hesitated: we've been out of touch for so long, because of the war. I can't be sure how well they understand French. I said: they'll have someone teaching French who can translate it, don't worry.

I took the letter away with me, bought a stamp, went to the post. Two weeks later the reply arrived, written in bad French you could just about understand. The English nuns agreed to take in our little penitent, find her a job and a room. Maurice and I got Jeanne a passport, bought her ticket to England. Maurice had a discreet word with the town hall authorities, who let Jeanne off having to report in every week, and agreed she was better off moving away.

Andrée being weaned, Jeanne could now give her up for adoption without any problem. Unthinkable to keep the child. Unmarried mothers, and particularly one in Jeanne's situation, should try to bury their shame. Better by far to leave the child in the care of the good sisters.

Jeanne sipped her cup of tisane. She'd tied a gaudy yellow scarf around her head. From time to time one of her hands went up to touch it, explore the knot. Then she'd fiddle with the handle of her cup. I said: Jeanne, are you listening? She glanced at me but said nothing. She seemed stunned; apathetic. The ease with which she allowed other people to take over her responsibilities shocked me. I couldn't believe she really cared about the baby. A few weeks later she signed the necessary papers, relinquishing all maternal rights, swearing complete severance from the child, and departed without any fuss.

Madame Nérin proved the difficult one. She didn't want to let go of the baby. She insisted on keeping little Andrée with her. I was all for informing the town hall, consulting a lawyer, but Reverend Mother counselled patience: she'll come round soon, just you wait and see. No need to involve the authorities just yet.

Just as the nuns thought, the new arrangement did not last long. Small Andrée needed constant attendance, while the grandmother had to go out to earn her living. She took the baby with her, but this of course made her working life very difficult. Then, to make matters more urgent, Madame Nérin fell ill with some chest complaint. Confined to her bed, she could not properly care for her little granddaughter. She kept the baby with her in her bedroom. That was not hygienic.

My own situation made it difficult for me to give Madame Nérin the help she needed. Maurice and I had already decided to leave our house at the top of town. We wanted to start life afresh. We required money for that. So we sold the house to an elderly couple moving to Ste-Marie to be near their children. They appreciated the dignified architecture, the generous proportions of the rooms. We moved temporarily back with my parents while Maurice went down south to look for a new job. At night the children slept on makeshift cots in the living room. There was certainly no room for an extra child. I had no time to look after one: soon after the war ended my mother had a bad attack of nerves.

She crumpled; just let go. She became very forgetful. She denied all knowledge of the things she'd been keeping for me in her locked cupboards. She lost control. She would burst into tears and wail:
putain
! Everything's been taken away from me. You're trying to take everything away! She retreated to her armchair by the stove, sat in silence with her neck poking forwards, her head bent. In her lap she gripped her black iron ring of keys.