Ignorance (7 page)

He was so clever, so much more experienced than I was. I worried I wouldn't be able to keep up with him. I could hide my ignorance most of the time, because if he felt like talking he just wanted me to listen. One day, however, parked in the woods, he said: talk to me. He lit cigarettes and passed me one. I didn't know what to say. I offered him stories of my childhood. Memories of Papa making me a doll's house, of Maman stitching me doll's clothes, teaching me to read and to say my prayers. Maurice tapped his fingers on the wheel: you don't know how lucky you are, having a proper family, parents who care about you. Go on, tell me some more. I told him about the Mad Hermit, and his crazy studio, his secret door into the school attic. Tales of hiding and of playing charades, outwitting Bluebeard, escaping into the street. Maurice whistled and flicked my cheek and held me close: I don't believe a word of it!

I left Jeanne out of these tales. We'd been thrown together as children, purely by accident, we'd had a sort of friendship for a certain time, but we couldn't mix now. I preferred to concentrate on positive things. That was how we were getting through the war. We tried to continue a normal life. Because of the curfew, we couldn't go out to dances any more: very well, girls down the street organised secret dances at home to the music of an accordion. I didn't go to these. Too juvenile. I preferred to wait in for Maurice. He and he alone transformed the difficult present. 1942: my year of grace, when I fell in love.

One afternoon, later in June, he took me with him to collect some paperwork from someone in Ste-Madeleine. I carefully did not ask him what sort of paperwork. I prided myself on staying calm and adult, showing no curiosity. He didn't need my help. He just wanted my company. After being held up in a roadblock we got back an hour later than arranged. Maurice dropped me off and I got in to find my mother pacing the shop, fretting about not knowing where exactly we'd gone. Wretched girl! Why had we taken so long? I fobbed her off with some excuse as I removed my beret and fluffed up my hair.

Everybody else in this house is longing for supper, she remarked, watching me take off my coat: except you.

I'm full up, I said: it's the chocolates Maurice brings me, I can't resist them.

You could still fetch some spuds for our dinner, my mother said: some of us are hungry, my fine lady. If dinner's late it will be because of you dawdling about and keeping us all waiting.

Her tartness was unfair. She benefited from Maurice's generosity just as much as I did, and she benefited from my bravery in accompanying him in the car, too. She got some cooking oil out of one of these trips, or a packet of margarine, or a block of lard. I said nothing. I thought: when I've got my own house I shall do exactly as I please and you'll have to ask permission to come and visit me and perhaps I'll say no.

We kept the potatoes in a sack in the back shed, together with all the under-the-counter provisions stacked in locked boxes. I took down the big iron key from the hook next to the shop door. Out I went into the yard, bowl in hand. Twisting the key in the lock, I discovered that the shed door was already unlocked. How careless my father had become. I'd have to mention it to him and hope he didn't hit me for criticising him. I pushed the door wide open, to let in enough light for me to see into the darkness. Sunshine fell on to lumpy shapes of piled logs, barrels, crates. As I filled my bowl with potatoes rats rustled suddenly in the recess at the back of the shed, making me jump.

Not rats. Walking further into the shed I found not just potatoes but people too. A woman and two little children, dressed in coats and hats. Three suitcases, one big and two small ones, bound with leather straps, stood nearby. The sunlight blazed through the open door on to their very bright yellow hair, which peeped out from under their hats. Some sort of odd game? Hide and seek? Were they play-acting? They gazed at me. I opened my mouth to speak, to blurt out their names. Madame Fauchon put her finger to her lips. The children clutched her coat. I shut the door on them, locked it. I locked them back into darkness.

My mother called: hurry up!

I clattered back across the yard. I felt I needed to make a lot of noise, for some reason. Upstairs in the kitchen I scrubbed the potatoes, working the bristles hard. The muddy skin paled. I gouged out rotten bits of potato while my thoughts jumped about. Madame Fauchon and her two younger children were trying to steal our food. They'd crept into our house and stolen the key to the shed. Then returned it. Why? They'd brought suitcases to fill with our potatoes. Why had they bleached their hair with peroxide? Robbers needed a disguise? Surely she had four children? Where were the older two? Presumably it was harder to go thieving with four children in tow. Where was her husband? I chopped the potatoes into greenish-white slices, slimy with starch. The cold water in the tin basin rose up my wrists and made them itch. I put the potatoes on to boil. The water leaped up and down. My mind sloshed with uncertainty. I couldn't tell my parents, summon the gendarmes. We didn't want police poking around our shed, finding our secret supplies. I'd ask Maurice what to do. He'd know. Until then, Madame Fauchon and her two little ones were my captives and deserved reasonable treatment.

I said to my mother: next time I go to the shed I'm going to take a candle. It's so dark in there you can't see a thing, even in the middle of the day. She answered: don't waste good candles. Take an old stub if you must.

I made a large saucepan of potato soup, thinning it out with extra water. While my mother went next door into the living room to check on my brother, who was supposed to be getting on with his homework, I scanned the top shelf, on which my mother kept moulds and crocks she didn't use every day, and took down, from the back, a little tin flask. I ladled some soup into it, screwed the lid on, went downstairs and out to the shed. I didn't speak to Madame Fauchon. I couldn't say her name. I needed her to remain at a distance and not come too close. I didn't want her to talk to me, and so I pretended not to recognise her under her disguise. Her eyes spoke to me. Her eyes told me that Maurice had hidden her and her children in our shed. Her eyes wanted to tell me more. I turned my eyes away and concentrated on putting down the flask on a wooden box.

I did my best for those Jews: I gave them soup, a candle-end, matches. I shoved in a bucket, too, so that they could do the necessary. I went back into the house and got back upstairs without anyone realising where I'd been. We didn't have a telephone. If we had had one I would have telephoned Maurice and said get rid of them, you've got to get rid of them as fast as possible.

I worried that my mother might notice some disturbance in the orderliness of her kitchen. She knew exactly how many plates, cups, pots, dishes she owned. She had too few things to lose any of them. She'd spot the gap where the tin flask had stood.

I needed to keep her out of the kitchen. I went back next door, into the living room. She was sitting by the stove, ticking off entries in an account book. My brother, perched at the table where we ate, was shifting to and fro on the straw seat of his chair. His shorts hardly reached to mid-thigh. He'd outgrown all his clothes, as I had. Dreamily he turned the pages of his stamp album.

He scratched the back of his bare leg. He said: perhaps if I make friends with a German soldier he'll give me some German stamps. My mother glanced across at him. Her brows constricted. She said: how can we lay the table for supper if you sit dawdling there? If you don't get on with your homework and learn that poem, you little brat, I'll tell the Germans to come and take you away!

I spoke in a low, soothing voice: Maman, I'll finish getting the supper, you stay here by the stove and keep warm.

My brother folded his hands, put on a pious expression and recited his lesson: oh dear Marshal Pétain I'm such a good boy, if I'm top of the class will you give me a toy? He bent double with laughter. I tapped his cheek, pushed him out of the way, laid the table, brought in the soup. My father came in and then Maurice arrived, as I expected he would, to drink soup with us. He shook hands with my parents, handed Maman a couple of food coupons. She nodded at him to sit down in his usual place next to Papa. He had his own napkin now, his own raffia napkin ring.

Marc gazed at him with admiration. We all did. His clothes, as ever, looked expensive and new. His navy suit looked freshly pressed, his fingernails looked very clean. Who laundered his shirts for him? His landlady, perhaps. Or that saucy girl, whoever she was, who sometimes left a dark hair on his collar. A buxom landlady, with crimped blonde curls, a woman of the world. Her man away. Lonely at night, no doubt, lying awake, inventing excuses for calling Maurice into her room when he came back of an evening. Simpering at him, asking him to adjust the wireless set or fix the blackout more securely in place. Whereas the forward girl would be a blowsy brunette with a reddened mouth and cheeks. Whether blonde or brunette, the laundress was someone for whom he procured big packets of starch. His collar and cuffs, thick unfrayed poplin, gleamed crisp and white.

He glanced across the table at me, winking, as I passed the soup plates. Papa said: give me some bread. Maman offered him the basket. He said, as he always did: bread!
Putain bordel
! You call this bread? We all knew perfectly well that bread now meant a sawdusty composite scratched together from bakers' rations, bulked out with nameless substitutes. Papa made the same complaint at every meal. Maman said: why do you have to go on about it? Why remind us? Papa said: the word bread should mean bread. His mouth worked. His face flushed red. I clasped my hands together under the tablecloth, praying he wouldn't start shouting, and stared at the greasy water in my plate. Maman said: eat up! Don't let it get cold! My brother chewed his bread and read the comic laid over his knees, out of my father's view. Maurice fingered his moustache. Glossy black brush looking newly trimmed. I wanted to reach out a forefinger and stroke it. I pleated and unpleated my napkin in my lap.

My parents began discussing the news, that's to say Papa talked and Maman half-listened as she spooned down her thin soup. She glanced at the empty bread basket. Tomorrow she'd have to queue for hours again, and perhaps no bread at the end of it. She interrupted Papa: you spend too much time thinking about the war, no wonder you feel so dismal. Papa jerked, and frowned. The muscles at the sides of his mouth started to twitch. I braced myself for him to start bellowing. Maurice smiled at my father and said: so what's the news?

These days Papa's nerves were worse. He kept to his chair by the stove, leaving most of the work of the shop to my mother and me. We were the ones who had to put up with customers' grumbling whispers: we cheated on weights and prices, we watered the milk, we kept certain goods out of the window. Papa would shout: tell them I'll know what to do! An empty threat: he was the one who'd get into trouble. Now he threw down his napkin and started off. Usually, like Maman, I ignored his rants. But because Maurice was listening politely, I listened too. France, with enemies in her midst gnawing her like woodworm, needed loyal sons to restore her to vigorous and fruitful life. We'd been weakened by letting in too many immigrants, aliens, refugees. Now we were paying the price. That the Occupation could have happened at all demonstrated our rottenness. On and on he fulminated to the sound of our swallowing, the rustle of my brother's pages as he turned them. All undesirables should be rounded up and put into camps. For the duration. While we decided what to do with them. For the sake of France and her purity and her strength. Creepy-crawlies, said my brother vaguely: you just pour boiling water on to them. I kept my head down over my plate. The word soup still meant soup, just about. The word Maurice still meant reliable; true gold.

It wasn't yet dark, but the blackout needed putting up in good time. I swallowed the last of my soup. My father clattered down his spoon. Dishwater, he said to my mother. She snorted. What d'you expect! I got up. Maurice said: I'll give you a hand with the shutters. Down we went.

Sawdust felted the floor of the shop. It looked soft. I wanted softness. I wanted Maurice to stroke my cheek and stop me worrying.

He explained rapidly in a low voice. You could say, another form of contraband. Just a package to smuggle out.

I said: but why d'you want to get involved with these people? How come you know them?

Maurice raised his eyebrows. He stuck his hands into his pockets, clinked his loose change: they're human beings in need of help and so I'm going to provide it.

I pressed on: why our shed? We're not the only people living close to them.

Maurice sighed. He said: I knew where you kept the key. I've carried stuff in and out of there often enough. I left the door open so that they could find somewhere to piss outside.

We padlocked the big shutters at the front. At the back, the shutters were smaller. I watched Maurice's hands twist out the bolts, push them into place. Curly black hairs protruded from his cuffs, curled over his wrists. His fingers worked deftly, quickly.

But my mother's bound to discover them, I said: next time she goes to the shed to fetch something.

Fetch it yourself then, Maurice said.

I shivered. My stomach shook. My mouth shook. I already understood some of what was happening from the titbits of information Maurice gleaned at work and brought back. I didn't want to think about the situation too much, because it made me feel so hopeless, so helpless. What was the point of getting upset? But Maurice said: forewarned is forearmed! So, thanks to Maurice, I did know the Germans needed a large labour-force back in Germany, for the war effort. They'd been asking for French volunteers, and in return releasing French prisoners of war. The supply of volunteers having dried up, they'd decided to conscript. They would conscript where they liked. They were planning to take Frenchmen: fair enough they should take Jews too. First of all they were taking the foreign Jews, who didn't belong in France anyway. Those without citizenship were gradually being rounded up and deported to Germany to be resettled there. I felt sorry for the Jews, having to start again in a new country and work in factories, but I felt just as sorry for the Frenchmen who'd be taken away to labour camps. What could I do? French families all around us had already lost sons and husbands in the fighting; the families coped heroically. Soon they'd lose more. We couldn't stop the Germans organising things in their own way. We weren't in charge. We had to survive. People who made even small gestures of resistance got punished. A young woman down in the bottom of town who had embroidered a V for Victory on her blouse had been arrested and taken away to prison in Rennes for three months. Madame Nérin reported to my mother that a big crowd of her neighbours had gathered to see her go. The same neighbours welcomed her back. They hailed her as a heroine but I thought her foolish. She wouldn't have done it if she'd had children and had to consider them.