Rosie's War

by Rosemary Say

  Some days later my suitcases arrived. Madame Morbelli raised no objection to letting me unpack and store my things in a small back room away from the eyes of the commercial traveller. She had seen the quality of the leather and perhaps imagined that I must have a rich family back home. These suitcases are much too heavy for anyone to use nowadays. They are under my writing desk and still have their battered labels on the side: Wagons Lits/Cook, 2 Place de la Madeleine, Paris.

  One Monday morning early in December I made my way to our cafe. It was unusually crowded for this time of day and buzzed with excitement. Marek rushed forward and hugged me.

  ‘Pat. The Americans have come into the war!’ he cried. ‘The Japanese attacked them last night.’

  We spent the rest of the day celebrating the American entry and speculating over its significance. One unexpected side effect of their involvement was to make me feel increasingly insecure. What would happen to Mr Randall and the Consulate now that the USA was in the war? Would I still get money? Would anyone be working on my visa? Events were moving too fast and I needed to feel the security of my pre-war world. I began to think about the Manguins in Avignon. I wanted to see them.

  I made the decision to visit them on the spur of the moment. We were all talking about our plans for Christmas when I suddenly blurted out, ‘I’d like to go to Avignon. To see the Manguin family.’

  Everyone looked at me quizzically before Jean led the way in protest in his slightly patronizing drawl. ‘Pat, I would strongly advise you not to go. Remember that you are an escaped prisoner of war. You would have to get official permission to travel. Don’t bring yourself to the attention of the authorities if you don’t need to.’

  But it was pointless trying to dissuade me. I was determined to go. It was a year and a half since I had last seen the family and during all that time I had been in a state of constant worry for my future well-being. At this particular moment I just needed the comfort of a familiar, pre-war life with people who loved me. If I could not yet get back to my own family in North London then Madame Odette’s in Avignon would be a more than adequate substitute. I later explained this to Frida who understood completely. She agreed to come with me.

  The next few days were hectic. With some difficulty I got in touch with the Manguins. I knew that they had moved to the Île de la Barthelasse, a cigar-shaped island in the middle of the Rhône by Avignon’s Palais des Papes. In my letter I was at pains to stress to Madame Odette that I wanted to visit only for a couple of days. I assured her that we would come only if we could get all the necessary papers. I wouldn’t dream of jeopardizing her family’s safety. She was delighted at my suggestion.

  Our travel passes entailed interminable queuing at the prefecture but it was worth it. On 23 December we squeezed onto a crowded train bound for Avignon. We were met at the station by the whole family: Madame Odette, Biquet, Katia, Jean-Pierre and even Monsieur Claude, who had been invalided out of the Army. We drove to the new farm which was impressive and sat down to eat at a large table overlooking the orchard. We talked into the night, well after Katia and Jean-Pierre had been packed off to bed. Biquet was in that awkward phase of early adolescence and was quite reserved over the meal, but he finally overcame his reticence and plied us with questions about our escape. Two parts stood out for him: the hole in the wire fence behind the Casino at Vittel and our lucky find of the station hotel at Marseille, with the train inspection facing us at the end of the platform. We had to go over every inch of these stories for him.

  ‘I think young Biquet is a little in love with you,’ said Frida teasingly as we lay in bed later. ‘You’re the romantic prisoner of war on the run.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I replied as I rolled over to go to sleep.

  I smiled to myself, remembering that during my previous time in Avignon I had always been just Patoun to Biquet, the gangly English au pair with whom he had never really got on.

  The next day was Christmas Eve. We were all up early and were given tasks to do. It was obvious that months of preparation had gone into these Christmas celebrations, with carefully planned black-market dealings, cooking and storing. Friends and neighbours arrived in the early evening. About twenty of us finally sat down for the réveillon feast of seven courses and various wines. It was a wonderful evening, if somewhat frenetic. Between some of the courses we danced to a gramophone. Everyone was determined to enjoy themselves and to forget the anxieties and worries of the outside world. And for me there was the added joy of seeing again my French family.

  ‘Tell us about the hole in the wire, Patoun,’ said Biquet from across the table.

  So Frida and I had to recount for the guests the story of our lives over the last eighteen months. As we did so I became aware for the first time that my war story, even though it was still unfinished, was already becoming a carefully edited party piece. This was a highlights-only version for people whom I hardly knew. I would probably spend the rest of my life refining it. There were hoots of laughter at our description of shuttling between brothels in Marseille, and joyful disbelief at the thought of my elegant suitcases arriving from Paris courtesy of Thomas Cook. A sombre note was struck when I described how I had watched the magnificent march of the German Army down the Champs-Elysées in June 1940.

  Monsieur Claude brought out two bottles of a liqueur that he had recently started to produce from the pear trees on the farm. He sat down next to me and began to tell me of his problems. He had for sure provided lavish hospitality, yet the future was insecure for the small farmer. The supplies necessary to run a farm were restricted, many debts were unpaid and much of the farming produce went straight to Germany at rock-bottom prices. For the moment he could see no solution. As we drank more of the beautiful liqueur he became morose and cynical. I was quite relieved when the party broke up and some of us went to continue the festivities in the barn of a neighbouring farm. We danced and drank for the rest of the night.

  Back in Marseille a couple of days later we found our friends were hard at work planning the New Year celebrations. For the festivities we crowded into a small cafe on the main street, the Canebière. A young Belgian artist had produced individual menus for each of us in beautiful copperplate writing. Everyone contributed to the meal, which was as sumptuous as our Christmas feast with the Manguins. It included almost unheard of luxuries such as olives, mandarins, pâté and a delicious roast rabbit as a main course. Four different wines were served. Again we danced and sang until dawn. I remember Frida and I doing a rendition of ‘Roll out the Barrel’ with tears in our eyes. Our friends didn’t know the words but they banged their hands on the tables in accompaniment.

  I think that our singing of that particular song was inspired by an amazing woman I had met soon after our arrival in Marseille. Nancy Wake (or Madame Fiocca, to use her married name) was Australian. She was a striking, fleshy woman who was only a few years older than I. She had married a wealthy Marseille steel industrialist and they had a beautiful, white flat with all mod cons on the hill overlooking the city and the harbour.

  I met Nancy for the first time after being taken to her house for dinner and the two of us instantly became friends. She took us with her to the bars and cafes around the Canebière where the barmen all knew her. My favourite was a nightclub called Eden. With its soft music and plush red seating it was a haven away from war. Frida disliked it and rarely visited.

  After one particularly raucous evening there, Nancy and I staggered out, linked arms and began to sing ‘Rule, Britannia’ in the dark streets. Frida was furious when I told her what I had done. She thought I had been foolish. But Nancy was irrepressible. On one memorable occasion, when she was incensed by some piece of war news, she stood up in the crowded little bar at the Eden, raised her glass and shouted: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the King.’

  It was probably Nancy who had provided most of the luxuries for the New Year celebrations. She was incredibly generous, although her hospitality could be quite daunting if her temper was up. S
he would have the most spectacular rows with her husband Henri. Having grown up with the restrained tensions of silence of my own home, I found such explosions quite extraordinary. Frida and I would weather these storms by keeping our mouths shut until the pieces of broken crockery had been gathered up and the beloved dogs had come out from behind the sofa.

  One day I made a jokey comment to her about the amount of food that seemed to be consumed in her house even when there were no guests around.

  ‘You keep that trap shut, my dear,’ she said. Her round jolly face suddenly looked wary.

  Nancy certainly had much to hide, even from Frida and me. Late in 1940 she had met by chance a British officer on parole from the nearby Fort Saint-Jean, where he and several hundred other British servicemen had been interned by the French military authorities. Would she be able to provide hospitality to some of his friends when they visited the town? She certainly would. To Henri’s initial concern, she not only fed them but used her contacts to help them escape. From there it was a logical step to be asked to set up a safe house for escaping prisoners. No wonder there was so much food at all times.

  When I first met her in December 1941 she was involved in setting up resistance lines across Vichy France and helping British soldiers to escape. She was fetching, delivering, organizing, protecting and feeding British servicemen on the run. She decided that the only way to conceal these activities was to behave as normally as she could. Being Nancy, this involved going to parties, entertaining and behaving outrageously. She kept up outward appearances magnificently. At no time would anyone have suspected that there was such an enormous strain on her as we gamboled and drank in the bars. I certainly knew nothing of her clandestine activities at the time.

  Inevitably the moment came (in 1943) when she too had to escape to England. After much difficulty she got to London where she was recruited by the French section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Parachuted back into France the following year, she operated as an agent there with her usual disregard for danger, her Maquis and Resistance exploits becoming legendary. While she was there she discovered that Henri had been arrested by the Gestapo the previous year. He had been horribly tortured, beaten until his kidneys were hanging out of his body, and finally shot. He had disclosed nothing of their activities. She was nicknamed ‘The White Mouse’ by the Gestapo, because of her ability to disappear when they thought they had her cornered, and was at one time their most wanted target in France. She ended the war a highly decorated hero, awarded the Croix de Guerre with Palm and Bar, the Croix de Guerre with Star, the Chevalier de Légion d’Honneur, the Médaille de la Résistance, the George Medal and the American Medal of Freedom with a Bronze Palm.

  I saw her in London in 1945 on the VE Day parade, wearing a raft of medals on her chest. She was standing in a military vehicle looking out on the crowd. Suddenly she saw me, waved and shouted: ‘See you tonight at Jack’s! Don’t I look like a Christmas tree, old girl?’

  It was after the New Year celebrations that I ran into another formidable female patron, Hoytie Wiborg, who had been my saviour at the American Hospital in Paris almost two years before. As I walked slowly down to the Vieux Port one morning I heard a loud, American voice hailing me. I turned round. It was Hoytie.

  ‘Hello, my wonderful girl. What are you doing here?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I demanded in return.

  Hoytie was just the same: full of life, delighted to see me and to hear my story. She was very generous, treating me to a wonderful black-market meal. In the restaurant she told me for the first time all about her own extraordinary life: her wealth, her part in the artistic circles of interwar Paris and her love for other women. I never found out precisely what she was doing in Marseille. She left for Lisbon the next day.

  Many years later I discovered that she had written a delightful and warm letter to my parents from Lisbon. In it she even promised that she would go the airline offices there to make reservations for our flights back to the UK. This was in an effort to expedite the granting of our Spanish and Portuguese visas. Neither of those countries, she wrote, ‘want strangers admitted for an indefinite stay… owing to the food situation’. I am still grateful for her reassuring letter to my parents and for her help in Lisbon.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  To London

  It was a shock more than a joy when at last our transit visas for Spain and Portugal came through one morning in February 1942. I don’t know if they were granted as a result of Hoytie’s efforts but surely our French exit visas wouldn’t be long in coming now? Frida and I returned from the prefecture and went to a bar, which was practically deserted at that time of day. This should have been a moment of celebration after all our months of planning, travelling and waiting but instead both of us felt curiously flat.

  ‘Pat, I don’t know what I feel about going home. I don’t know if I want to. It’ll be such a different world. I feel like a prisoner afraid to leave prison.’

  ‘I agree. Remember that night in the outhouse at Vittel waiting to escape?’ Frida nodded. ‘Well, I had the same feeling of panic then as I have now. I don’t want to leave our friends. I’ll probably never see any of them again and we’ll certainly never know such a strange collection of individuals.’ I grimaced as I drank my coffee.

  ‘What about Marek?’ Frida looked at me with a sly grin.

  I shrugged my shoulders. I couldn’t even tell my closest friend how confused I was in my feelings for him. On the one hand I certainly loved him. Our few months together had been wonderful. On the other, I knew that this was the end of our relationship. I was secretly relieved that I wouldn’t be the one left behind.

  The last few days in Marseille were frantic as we said our goodbyes and made the final arrangements. We were going home via Spain, Portugal and Ireland. On a cold and wet Tuesday morning we gathered at the railway station. All our friends had come to see us off: amongst others I remember Marek, Nancy, Henri, Alfred, Fritz, Jean, an Iraqi doctor who had treated me for bronchitis just a week or so before, an elderly German anarchist, an Austrian Communist couple and a former deputy from the German Reichstag. They were such a disparate group, some of whom were barely on speaking terms and summed up Marseille at that time, full of tormented prejudices, lost ideals, jealousies and the desperate hope that one day they could leave. For a brief moment they were all united by the departure of the English girls.

  Nancy grabbed my arm. ‘Now remember, Pat, we’ll have tea at Fortnum’s and after that send Henri off while we do some shopping.’

  Henri smiled. ‘Tell them when you get back that we are waiting for them,’ he said. ‘And that our morale is strengthened by their pluck and daring.’

  I hugged them both. Henri’s parting words were very formal but so eloquent that I was to use them in a talk I gave on the Welsh border just a month later. I still have the battered carbon copy of that speech.

  ‘Come back with the British Army!’ shouted Alfred as we got on to the train with our luggage and bits and pieces. He was grinning madly and giving a punched fist salute.

  Marek and I had said our farewells earlier that morning. He was standing by a station pillar watching the hugging, the kissing, the tears and the good wishes. He now approached the train, kissed me and without a word gave me a leather-bound copy of Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste et son maître.

  My thoughts were with him during the train journey. I took little interest in what was going on around me and just curled up in my corner of the carriage. Frida left me alone. As usual, she spent almost the entire journey talking to the other occupants of the train. There were a couple of French soldiers travelling to see their families. She was very buoyed up by her conversation with them. She told me later that they were fed up with the new breed of young French fascists who were taking over the armed forces.

  We had a long wait at Perpignan, where we had to change trains. The proprietor of the station cafe must have overheard us speaking in English. He leant over
us and spoke softly.

  ‘There’s a rumour going around that the British and American armies have landed in Brittany. Maybe the BBC news will tell us more. Wait here.’

  He saw the glint of excitement in our eyes and gave us a wink. He returned to the bar and continued dealing with the few customers that were there. After a while he disappeared into the back, returning after what seemed an age. He approached our table casually to change the ashtray, whispered a dejected ‘Rien’ and walked away, shaking his head.

  When we finally got up to leave there were only two old men sitting at the bar counter. The proprietor handed us a small bag of food.

  ‘To England?’ he said. I nodded. ‘You are lucky, Mesdemoiselles, to go back to a country that is still fighting. Bonne chance.’

  Just as we got to the door Frida suddenly seemed to come to a decision. ‘Wait here, Pat. I need to see someone.’

  With that she disappeared. She was presumably off to see a contact. I sat down again and prepared to wait. I didn’t want to be involved in her politics and preferred not to know what she was doing. Eventually she returned, obviously excited but not saying anything. We boarded the train. Only after our return home did I discover that her contact had given her two cigarettes containing messages for General de Gaulle, the leader of the Free French government-in-exile in London.

  As we approached the tunnel at Cerbère leading into Spain, I hung out of the window and whispered a quiet and sentimental goodbye to this much loved country where I had lived for three years. Over the border at Port Bou we found there were long customs formalities. By now I was beginning to regret my impetuous gesture of sending for my suitcases, which were heavy enough when empty, let alone when full of my things. Our bags were examined carefully. I couldn’t understand much of what the officials were saying and looked curiously at their gaudy uniforms and the posters of General Franco on the walls.