Ignorance (26 page)

I found two spare pairs of children’s long winter socks, and rolled them carefully into balls, so that they wouldn’t get separated. In the kitchen I gave the little Jews their soup, then tugged them down the corridor and along the red passage, through the big black door, into the convent entrance hall. I took them upstairs to their makeshift bedroom on the second floor as usual. I put them to bed fully dressed, so that I could stuff their coats, extra socks, scarves and nightclothes into a pillowcase for them to take with them. I left their slippers on them, and set out their boots at the ready. I put in two apples, a piece of bread.

I didn’t want them to get upset. We didn’t want a lot of crying, and Mother Lucie waking up and getting into a terrible state. So I put my finger to my lips and told them: you mustn’t make a sound. Your daddy’s coming to fetch you tonight, because you’ve been so good, but it’s a big secret. It’s a game, like hide-and-seek. So no crying. Your daddy’ll be here soon.

Good little chaps they were indeed. Quiet as mice. Just sat there watching me, the blankets pulled up round their chins. After a bit they lay back, sucking their thumbs, then their heads lolled and they fell asleep. I did as I’d been told and stayed with them, perched on the edge of one of the beds. I pulled out my beads and said my rosary. When the children stirred I sang to them gently, to lull them.
C’est le clocher du vieux manoir, du vieux manoir, qui sonne le retour du soir, le retour du soir. Ding! Ding! Ding!

Soon as it was nearly proper dark, I heard a thump upstairs. The gendarmes, entering from the neighbouring house. I heard them open the door in the attic cupboard that let them in through the wall. They clumped across the floor over our heads, down the stairs, opened our door, came in.

I don’t properly remember the order of what happened. All so quick. I jumped up. Their beam of light leaped about. I waved my hand: sssh! I stuffed my beads into my pocket. The children were fast asleep. I started humming, so that if they woke they wouldn’t feel scared. I pulled back the bedclothes and the gendarmes lifted up one child each. I said: switch off that torch! You’ll wake them! They laid the children over their shoulders like little sacks of grain. I followed them, carrying the boots, the pillowcase.

We went out into the little hallway, climbed the stairs up to the attic, went through the cupboard door in the wall, arrived in the house next door. We’d stepped into some kind of lumber room. Very bare. It smelled of fresh paint. Out of it we went, down the stairs, several flights in the half-dark. The children were so good! As good as gold. They didn’t make a sound. I kept murmuring to them, so they’d know I was close by. Nearly there. Nearly there.

Out of the house we went, by the front door, into the
place
. The convent, when I turned to look, was completely dark. Everybody asleep. The truck was parked just in front. A tarpaulin covered its back, its lower part left unlaced. A hand pulled the tarpaulin aside. A white face glimmered. I whispered to the gendarmes: gently! Gently!

One gendarme handed up the children, very carefully, to those outstretched hands. Then the little pillowcase-sack. The other gendarme pushed the boots back at me: they won’t need these. The truck revved its engine, rattled off.

Next day, Reverend Mother got Monsieur Baudry to come in and seal up the opening in the attic cupboard. He built a wall of bricks at the back. I left the boots there, I don’t know why.

Soon afterwards, Monsieur Blanchard bought that house, it didn’t suit the Germans as a barracks after all, and he did the place up. Renovated it, re-painted. A couple of the other lay sisters went over to give Madame Blanchard a hand with the cleaning, but not me. I stuck fast in the kitchen, with my pots. I kept my head down. I waited for the war to end.

Jeanne

Towards the end of the war I began seeing the days of the week as coloured squares. Andrée was born on a Wednesday, which was green. The Tuesday she went on to solids: dark red. The Saturday morning when I agreed to get a job in England: pale blue. Marie-Angèle delivering me a passport, a few franc notes: a brown Thursday. Leaving France: a yellow Friday. I collected up the squares of colour, arranged them in patterns. Controlled them. They couldn’t stretch arms to me and wail. The colours could clash all they liked. They hurt each other not me.

Yellow Friday: the curé himself escorted me to the boat, I suppose to make sure I did actually leave. Marie-Angèle sent her brother over with the message. Marc Baudry was only a boy still, but he acted as though he ruled the roost. He just shouted in through our door: you’ll be called for at eight tomorrow.

I packed my black papier mâché suitcase, a postulant’s cast-off donated by the convent, with my art things, a change of clothes, and Maman’s cookery book, which she gave me as a parting present. Its lavender cardboard covers were crumbled away at the edges. Over the cracked spine she’d pasted a strip of brown paper. Her face snapped shut like a volume someone smartly closes.

The curé and I took the bus to Ste-Madeleine. He glanced at me slyly when he thought I wasn’t looking. What did he see? A thin, red-eyed young woman, wearing a grey woollen hat, a cheap navy-blue jacket and skirt. He and I didn’t bother speaking to each other. Not on the train to Paris and not on the train from there to Le Havre.

What had the port looked like before the war? Jagged edges looming in the shadowy dusk, it hardly seemed a town at all. Bombs had reduced it to rubble, poking up in raw heaps, which made you feel broken inside. We picked our way between hills of debris that must have once been streets. Outside a mound of collapsed masonry we boarded a bus to the docks.

Beyond a low wall, the backs of dark huts, screaming gulls skimmed a black flatness. Coldness came off it. I realised it must be the sea. It wanted to tilt into me, drown me, so I held myself very upright, lips closed.

The sign for departures pointed us to a bleak pre-fab shed. Inside, the waiting area locked in a crowd of people muffled up in coats and scarves. The curé repeated his instructions. On the boat there’ll be some kind of lounge where you can sit. One of the London nuns will be on the quayside to meet you at the other end.

He paused. You be a good girl, Jeanne, do as you’re told, and you’ll be all right. He lifted his hand and made the sign of the cross over me. I stared at his black toecaps.

His raincoated back retreated. A bell clanged. I joined the queue of foot passengers straggling towards a pair of metal doors. Out on to the black quay under the black sky we went, filed up the narrow, ridged gangplank. Black water depth I stumbled across. At the top, sailors reached out and pulled us on to the deck. They glanced at our tickets, waved us forward. We stood in a huddle in the noisy darkness. People pushed and pulled on every side. Children squealed and whimpered.

If I looked frightened, someone might dart up and hit me. I clasped the cold iron of the handrail, trying to look as though I were admiring the lights of the town strung out in the black night. My fellow passengers chattered to each other, shouted down to the dark silhouettes of people standing on the quayside come to see them off. More people, clutching luggage, straggled on board: families, couples, a young man in naval uniform, peaked cap under one arm, leather grip in one hand. Above me invisible seagulls called and cried. I smelled rust, and salt water. I began to shiver, and to wonder if I dared to find the passenger lounge. Did you need a special ticket to go in? Would it be full of people? What would I say if someone talked to me? I crossed my arms over my thin jacket to try and trap warmth inside me. Perhaps I wouldn’t venture into a lounge. I could lie down on one of the benches lining the inner side of the deck, or under a tarpaulin in one of the lifeboats. No: much too cold. I’d freeze, be found in the morning rigid as a sheet hung out in winter, a panel of white ice.

I was beginning to feel plated with cold, glassed-in, stiffening up as the night air scraped closer to me. A howl unwound itself in my stomach. I pressed my lips together. My jacket flapped open. The cold formed a layer on top of my skimpy clothes. The wind knifed up my skirt. I clenched my knees together.

Can I help you? Need a hand with anything,
mademoiselle
?

A male voice, speaking French with a foreign accent. I looked round. I hadn’t noticed him drift up and stand next to me. A gentle presence; almost apologetic. The young officer I’d seen come on board. My height, young, with an open face, a high forehead. Brown hair already beginning to recede. He wore a dark uniform with gilt buttons and yellow stripes on his cuffs and carried a peaked cap under one arm.

I’m the ship’s purser, he said: Bernie Mathers. At your service,
mademoiselle
.

I said: you’re English? He said: certainly.

The shouts of men down below on the quay, undoing the hawsers, mixed with the blare of the ship’s hooter behind us. I glanced back: clouds of black smoke belched from the funnel into the black sky. The unfastened ropes were flung up on to the deck, caught by the sailors. A dark gap appeared between us and the edge of the stone quay. It widened. The sailors rapidly coiled the thick hairy ropes, which poured like water from their hands, into neat heaps. You need somewhere to sleep? Come with me,
mademoiselle
.

Bernie Mathers picked up my suitcase and took me below, clattering down metal companionways in front of me, turning round from time to time to check I was following him. The cream-painted passageways were busy with travellers, with porters hefting cases and trunks. Nobody took any notice of us. We walked deep into the ship, past the noisy engine room, then went back up two short companionways to deck level. Bernie Mathers escorted me to a cabin he assured me I wouldn’t have to pay for. No one except him would know I was using it. The stewardess wouldn’t be along, because these were the crew’s quarters. He made me a little mock bow, smiling.

I said: you speak good French. He said in his odd accent: I’ve got to go and do my duty, but I’ll be back soon and then we can have a drink. What d’you say?

I said: what’s your duty? He explained. As the ship’s purser, he sat in his office below decks, behind a little window, and checked the passengers’ passports. He did this twice: when they got on and before they got off. That was the rule. They just had to stand patiently in a queue and wait for him to check and stamp their documents. He also opened his office at a certain moment during the voyage in order to change people’s money, from French banknotes into English ones or vice versa. He was kept busy: he snatched just a few hours’ sleep during the crossing.

He said: you don’t need to queue up outside my office. You’re OK. Stay here and get some rest. He pulled down the bunk, sheets and blankets tightly tucked in, from the cabin wall. Lavs are along there. He waved his hand in the direction of the corridor. The door shut behind him.

An open leather grip stood on the metal chair. It must be Bernie’s. The one I’d seen him carry on board. This was obviously his cabin. Too late to do anything about it now. The floor of the cabin rose and fell, rose and fell: we had left harbour and were putting out to sea. When I pulled aside the little grey curtain, the round grey metal porthole showed blackness tumbling past. A round grey-lipped mouth wanting to spew black bile.

I forbade myself to feel seasick. I removed my woollen hat and threw it into the wastebin, took off my jacket, kicked off my shoes, lay down on the bunk under the orange blanket. I shivered, then grew warm. The waters rocked the ship and the ship rocked me, up and down, up and down. At least no one could find me here and scream at me. I was crossing over, between two lands, two parts of my life. Tearing myself in two like a piece of coloured paper. Bits of paper dropped into the sea. Disintegrating. Sinking. The sea received me, closed over my head. I sank, spiralled down into green depths green seaweed green-bearded mussels all of us green water.

A click. Strip of brightness, then wedge of yellow light as the cabin door opened and the stewardess peeped in. She wore a white veil over her wavy brown hair. Her dark eyes gazed at me. No, she was the Blessed Virgin, doing her rounds for the night. No, she was my mother, tying on her lace mantilla before going out dancing. Dance with me, Jeannette, come and dance. She nodded at me then twirled off to find Monsieur Jacquotet.

The boat rocked on, over undersea continents, all the people I’d lost, coral-clad, fish-bejewelled, waving with feathery green. My mother, a compact island, rose up, surrounded by white breakers. I rowed to her, docked in her little bay. The salt water of her words met me; her sharp spray. Seagulls nested in her wild hair. I stumbled up the wet grey sand of the beach. Debris marked the shoreline: pieces of broken green glass rubbed to emerald, seashells, grey-blue pebbles glinting with quartz, bladderwrack, starfish, tiny bits of white bone, fingernails, teeth. A child’s cry startled up. My daughter lay, struggling, in the shade of a rock, waving her fists in the air. All mouth. Wailing and wailing.

It was that woollen hat, Bernie said: any girl wearing that hat had to be a real personality. Jeanne. That’s Joan, isn’t it. Named after Joan of Arc were you? Proper Joan of Arc hairdo you’ve got there.

Tiny squares of coloured paper whirled in the air. Confetti. Military flags. Red white and blue bunting. I shut my eyes but a blade forced them open. Sun-reddened faces. A blister of heat. All round me people gabbled and shrieked. Turkeycocks with wobbly red throats, pimpled and ribbed, opening their beaks to cackle and screech. Banging of drums, shrill trumpets, clashing cymbals, a roar like fire sweeping up. Tears stuck, scraped like grit in my throat. I wanted to throw up. I hiccupped and the fire and the banging drums faded. I tilted more whisky into my mouth.