by Anne Bennett
The next morning, when Bridgette came to from a drug-induced sleep, it was too much effort to open her eyes. She lay in the darkened room and knew that what she wanted more than anything was to be able to float away from this harsh and cruel world and be with her beloved Xavier again.
She remembered the golden future they had once mapped out, which now lay like dust beneath her feet, and she gave a small gasp as a sudden pang of loss pierced her heart like a shard of glass. Marie, dozing in a chair, was roused enough to open her own saddened, rheumy eyes and she leaned forward and said gently, ‘Bridgette?’
Bridgette heard, but when she tried to open her eyes they were too heavy. The watching Marie had seen the fluttering movements behind the lids, however, and she stroked her face so very gently.
‘I know how you are feeling, my love,’ she almost whispered. ‘I am sorrow-laden myself.’
At her words, tears seeped from beneath Bridgette’s closed lashes and then slowly she peeled her lids back. Marie wanted to recoil from the anguish in those beautiful, amber eyes, which she fastened on her as she said, ‘What am I to do, Marie? How am I to bear such sorrow?’
‘By taking each day as it comes,’ Marie said. ‘It is the only way.’
Bridgette shook her head. ‘I don’t think I can.’
Marie took hold of Bridgette’s hands in her own and said earnestly, ‘You will because there is no alternative. And you will not be alone in your sadness. Maurice and I have lost a much-loved son, and Lisette, the brother she has always adored. And that is not to mention the loss of the child, who could have been consolation for us in our bleaker moments.’
‘I can’t tell you how much I loved Xavier,’ Bridgette cried. ‘There will never be another like him.’
‘And you will never forget him,’ Marie said. ‘He will lodge forever in your heart.’
Bridgette closed her overflowing eyes and sighed heavily. Deep pain filled every part of her until it seemed to be seeping out of her very pores. She couldn’t see the point of living, knowing there would never be anyone special in her life ever again and she would never hold her own child in her arms. The future stretching out before her seemed sterile and of no purpose, and suddenly overwhelmed by everything, she turned her head to the pillow and cried as if her heart was broken, and Marie cried with her.
Eventually Bridgette left her bed and began to take up the threads of life again, but she was a shadow of her former self.
‘She is standing there doing and saying all the right things,’ Marie said to Maurice and Lisette, ‘but it is as if the essence of her has gone.’
Lisette thought her mother had put it well. Bridgette now carried an aura of sadness around with her. In fact, the only thing she became impassioned about were the Germans occupying the town, and she didn’t care who knew of her hatred of them, for all Marie and Maurice begged to be more circumspect. She had no fear of them because she felt that she had nothing more to lose.
Throughout that golden summer, their insidious presence was everywhere. Jackboots ringing on the cobbled streets, the black and menacing swastikas fluttering from every public building in the town, and arrogant Gestapo officers stopping people at whim. They were hated and feared, along with the SS officers, and with reason. They were known to be brutal and had immense power.
The occupying German soldiers liked to flirt with the girls and young women of the town. This made Bridgette’s skin crawl and she was disgusted by those who played along with their oppressors, even going so far as to fawn around them. She could barely keep the contempt from her voice if she was forced to speak, but usually they were amused by her response and that angered her still further.
From early summer, the French expected Hitler’s armies to invade Britain, for they had amassed a fair armada of vessels to cross the Channel: barges, cargo ships, motorboats and even tugs.
‘And when that happens,’ Maurice said, ‘Britain will fall under Nazi dominance as well. How can one small country like that hold out when other, bigger powers have fallen?’
However, by the autumn, nothing had happened and the rumour was that for the invasion to be a success, the Luftwaffe had to disable the Royal Air Force and it was reported that many on the coast had witnessed dogfights between the two forces, but the RAF seemed as strong as ever and so the invasion plans had been put on hold.
It was the only cheering news. Life for most French people was hard under Nazi rule. Food was getting even scarcer in the shops now that much was shipped back to Germany, and the towns also often had to provide food for occupying officers. One cold autumn day, Bridgette had gone into St-Omer with a basket and a few francs in her purse to queue for anything she saw that they could use for a meal.
However, when she saw the lines of people being herded towards the railway station, urged on none too gently with the butts of the guns the Germans guards carried, she was intrigued. ‘Where are they taking them?’ she asked a passer-by.
He gave a typical Gallic shrug. ‘They are Jews. Who knows where they go? Germany, I suppose.’
Some of the trudging people were neighbours Bridgette recognised. A few had owned businesses in the town, some women had babies in their arms and others children no older than Jean-Paul and Leonie. Some of the babies were wailing, children sniffling and the elderly being helped along by younger relatives. In horrified fascination Bridgette followed them to the station, where she saw them being packed into windowless cattle trucks. So many of them pushed one against the other.
The people were crying in earnest now, shouting and protesting, but some were whimpering in an abject fear that was so profound it could almost be smelled. How long did it take to get to Germany, or wherever it was they were making for, and how would all those people breathe, Bridgette wondered. One elderly Jew seemed to have similar thoughts and as he approached the trucks he made a dash for it, running back the way he had come, pushing past the people. The guard by the train did not hesitate: a shot rang out and the old man folded onto the cobbles.
A gasp of shock rippled through those watching and Bridgette espied an old woman struggling to leave the truck, shrieking and screaming. She guessed the old man was her husband. She was being restrained by a young man who obviously didn’t want her to face the same fate. Then the guard, seeing the commotion, hit her on the side of the head with the butt of his rifle. The old woman sagged forward, her head spurting blood, but the press of people was such that she didn’t fall.
Bridgette turned her head away in disgust, but she was incensed at the injustice of it. She didn’t blame the old man for being so panic-ridden—the thought of being incarcerated in one of those trucks filled her with horror—but there was no need to kill him so mercilessly and then abuse his wife. The other guards pushing the people on had no shame or thought for the man either, for one of them callously kicked him into the gutter and the shuffling people averted their eyes from the crumpled heap on the ground.
‘It is happening in France now like it has happened in other occupied countries,’ Marie said when Bridgette told them what she had witnessed.
‘It’s monstrous to treat people like that,’ Bridgette said, still incensed. ‘I didn’t even know some of the people they were leading away were Jews.’
‘No,’ Marie said sadly. ‘And some of them don’t think of themselves as Jews either.’
‘And we all stood there, every one of us, and no one said a word about it,’ Bridgette said. ‘I wanted to, maybe others did too, but I was afraid. What sort of a coward does that make me?’
‘You did the right thing,’ Marie said. ‘You couldn’t have stopped it.’
‘I don’t know,’ Bridgette said. ‘Maybe if I had spoken out, others might have got the courage to do the same.’
Marie grasped Bridgette’s hands. ‘It would have changed nothing,’ she said. ‘Listen to me. We are living through very dangerous times and we cannot stop anything these monsters want to do.’
Bridgette sighed. ‘Oh God, Marie, what a
sad, sad world we are living in.’
In mid-December, Bridgette again went into the town to try to get some food for the festive season, and if possible a toy of some sort for Jean-Paul and Leonie, but there was so few things in the shops that she was getting quite desperate. She knew she would have to go to the bakery and take the flour her mother always pressed on her. ‘We have plenty,’ she would say.
She was right, they had, and that was because Robert would make the best bread and cakes for the German officers. It maddened her that the best of everything went to people like that when half the town was starving. But she couldn’t refuse the flour, not when she had seen the children crying with hunger.
Suddenly a voice spoke in her ear. ‘The news is that you are no lover of the invaders of our country.’
Bridgette turned slowly and looked at the smallish man beside her. He had quite a sallow complexion, black hair, a small black moustache and deep dark brown eyes. ‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘I am known as Charles.’
‘Charles who?’
‘Just Charles,’ the man said, and then: ‘You have not answered my question.’
‘No, I am no lover of the butchering Germans,’ Bridgette said vehemently. ‘I have made no secret of it. My husband died on the beach at Dunkirk and news of his death caused me to miscarry our baby and so I hate them all with a passion.’
‘So you will help us?’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Those who oppose the oppressor.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Making life difficult for the Germans in our town,’ Charles said. ‘There are groups set up, but they are fragmented at the moment and we need more organisation. Communication is the key and yet we dare not use the telephone. We need a messenger. Could you be that messenger?’
Bridgette felt excitement burn inside her. The thought of hitting back at the Germans raping and pillaging her country filled her with exhilaration. This would be a blow for Xavier and her baby. ‘Yes, I could do that.’
‘It is very valuable work.’ Charles said. ‘And we have found that girls have less trouble going about the town than men or boys.’
Bridgette had to agree that that was true. ‘The soldiers try to flirt and make suggestions sometimes,’ she said with scorn. ‘They are despicable.’
‘We all know that,’ Charles said. ‘But to win a fight like this we have to be clever. Play along with them and never show them the disdain you have for them. You think you can do that?’
‘Of course I can,’ Bridgette said. ‘For my husband and baby, and for love of France I can do anything, but I live with my in-laws and they are no longer young. I cannot put them in danger without first asking them if they wish me to do this.’
Charles nodded. ‘Meet me tomorrow,’ he said, ‘same time and same place, and give me your answer.’
Bridgette told Marie and Maurice that night as they sat around the table and they listened without interrupting.
When she had finished, she said, ‘I will quite understand if you do not wish me to be involved in this. It could be dangerous—for you, I mean, as well as me.’
‘If you are prepared to take the risk, then so am I,’ said Maurice.
‘And I,’ said Marie. ‘But one thing I must say. Lisette must not be told because she has enough on her plate with the children and now Edmund’s sick mother.’
Bridgette nodded. ‘The fewer people that know, the better,’ she said. ‘I shall not tell my mother either. She will only worry.’
‘We will do plenty of that too,’ Marie said.
‘I will do more than worry,’ Maurice said. ‘I will also make you a beret with a secret pocket to carry those messages and so skilful will this beret be that they will have to take it apart totally to find the hidden compartment.’
‘Oh, Maurice,’ Bridgette cried delighted, ‘how lucky I am having in-laws like you and Marie.’
Bridgette never knew when she might be asked to do something for the Resistance. She never saw anyone. Instead, a note or letter would be slid underneath the shop door with details of where she was to take it and who she was to give it to. ‘It is better that you know nothing,’ Maurice said one evening when she queried this. ‘What you don’t know you can’t tell.’
‘But I wouldn’t tell anyway,’ Bridgette said. ‘Surely you know that, Maurice?’
‘I know that sometimes the Gestapo have ways of making someone talk,’ Maurice said. ‘I hope and pray that you shall never be put to that test.’
Bridgette, though, felt totally confident as she made her way across the town, because she knew that she wasn’t suspected at all. Any that saw her now would imagine she was a great friend of the German solidiers, for she would flirt with them and tease them and they wouldn’t even imagine that such a girl might have important letters or documents hidden in the beret that she wore at a rakish angle. She had some barbed remarks about her behaviour by some in the town though, and even Lisette had expressed surprise, but Bridgette was unable to say a word in her defence.
She returned home from shopping one day in mid-March, to find German officers in the shop, and she wondered if they had found out about her after all. Marie saw the trepidation on her face and said quickly, ‘Ah, Bridgette. There you are at last. Take the shopping upstairs, will you, and then perhaps you can make coffee for our customers?’
Customers, Bridgette thought, and so it couldn’t be anything to do with her activities. And she had been asked to make coffee for them. She would have preferred making it with ground glass, or at the very least spit in their cups, but she knew she could do neither of those things.
Later, Marie said, ‘They just came in to buy clothes and hats for their wives and daughters back in Germany. They want them in time for Easter.’
‘And you served them as if they were valued customers?’ Bridgette said, as if she couldn’t believe it.
‘Bridgette, all customers are valued just at the moment,’ Marie said. ‘Germans are virtually the only ones with money to spend today. I know that you haven’t taken wages for some time, but even without that, we are living on our savings and they are running out fast, especially since we bought the coal for last winter. We cannot afford to turn away business. How will it help if we all starve to death?’
Bridgette knew that Marie spoke sense. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, suitably chastened. ‘I spoke out of turn. You could hardly refuse to make things for the German officers, anyway.’
She wondered if she should look for a job, for there was not enough work for both her and Marie in the shop. She knew she should help her mother in the bakery shop, for she looked positively ill at times, but if she helped her, she would not be paid, and at that moment she needed a wage each week.
There was plenty of work about because so many working men had answered France’s call to arms and were now incarcerated in POW camps in and around Germany. The only problem with factory work was that most of them were now making war-related goods. Bridgette felt now that that was helping the Germans win the war.
She knew she had to do something. The dress shop had a flurry of orders from many of the German officers as Easter grew nearer, but these would probably dry up again when Easter was over. So, not wishing to be a burden on the Laurents, she took a part-time job in a café bar in the town.
Before April was over, Edmund’s mother, who had been ailing for some weeks, took a turn for the worst and was dead before the doctor arrived. After the old lady was buried, Marie said that Lisette wanted to move back in with her parents until the war was over.
Bridgette was surprised. ‘Don’t you want to stay where you are,’ she asked Lisette, ‘so Edmund will have a home to come back to?’
‘And when will that be?’ Lisette said. ‘I haven’t even any idea where he is.’
‘I wouldn’t worry too much until you have reason,’ Bridgette said. ‘Edmund might even be in the Free French army under General de Gaulle.’
‘How on
earth do you know about that?’
‘Your father can get the BBC World Service on the wireless,’ Bridgette said, ‘and I translate it.’
‘Aren’t you forbidden to listen to it?’
‘Of course, but no one takes any notice of that,’ Bridgette said. ‘And you get to hear proper news about this awful war. Sometimes de Gaulle speaks too, urging France to stand firm, and seems convinced that Germany will be defeated in the end.’
‘Do you think that?’
‘I’d like to think it,’ Bridgette said. ‘Who knows, though, really?’
‘You are good for me, Bridgette,’ Lisette said. ‘You stop me feeling sorry for myself. You don’t mind me coming to live back here, do you?’
‘No, why should I?’ Bridgette said. ‘It will be like old times, with the added bonus of the children to make us smile.’
On 7 December 1941 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and America was in the war. This put the damper on the whole Laurent family that Christmas. Altogether it was a poor Christmas. The children had no presents to open and it was hard to raise anyone’s spirits, although they tried for the children’s sake.
It would have helped if they had anything in the way of festive food, but there was none of that either. In fact, studying the children that day, Bridgette thought them listless. Their faces were thin and white, and she knew that they were neither getting enough food, nor the right kind of it. Yet she regularly got up from the table still hungry so that the children should eat their fill.
Lisette had noticed this too. The day after Boxing Day, she left the house sometime that afternoon without telling a soul where she was going. When she returned some time later she had savoury sausages, crusty bread, butter and cheese in her shopping bag. Marie looked at the delights on the table with stupefaction.
