by Anne Bennett
‘They will probably be much changed the next time that you see them,’ Lisette said. ‘And there must be a next time. You must come back and see us when everything has calmed down and the world is a more stable place.’ And then she added plaintively, ‘This can’t be the end of everything.’
‘Of course it can’t,’ Bridgette cried. ‘I will certainly come back.’
When she bid her dear friends goodbye, they were all crying—even Maurice’s eyes were glistening—and Bridgette had to compose herself and wipe her eyes before she went into the bakery.
The next morning she left the bakery with very mixed emotions. Legrand and Georges were still in bed. In the general way of things they would usually be up by then, but Legrand had said that he was closing the shop for three days as a mark of respect for Gabrielle.
Bridgette had snorted in disbelief when Henri told her that.
‘He never showed my mother an ounce of respect when she was alive,’ she said. ‘And after the way he behaved at her funeral I cannot see that changing now she is dead. The real reason they will not be opening the shop is because he has such few customers now it’s hardly worth starting the ovens up.’
‘Have you left him a note to say where you have gone?’ Yvette asked.
Bridgette shook her head. ‘He’ll know. Come on, Auntie, Henri is getting impatient.’
‘You ready then?’
‘Absolutely,’ Bridgette said. ‘My life has been packed neatly into two suitcases.’
‘Ah, but a new life is just beginning,’ Yvette said.
‘You’re right,’ said Bridgette, and she left her home without a backward glance, closing the door behind her with a definite thud. She climbed into the car beside Yvette and they drove through the mainly deserted streets of the town and started their journey to Paris through the pearly dawn of a summer’s day.
Within a few days of arriving in her aunt’s house, Bridgette knew that she could never settle in Paris. It was no longer the lively city that her aunt had described in her letters. It was a grey, grim place that Henri had to approach cautiously, trying to avoid the fighting that got ever closer as they drew nearer to the city. Burning oil drums at the city’s edge sent a pall of grey smoke into the summer air, and the acrid stench of it reached them even in the car, lodging in their throats and making their eyes water.
As Henri edged his way down the back roads, the gaping holes, piles of masonry and white splashes on the buildings were evidence to the battering the city had endured. Stern, black-booted soldiers were everywhere, the hated swastikas daubed on every building and fluttered from every flagpole, and any Parisians she did spy scurried along the city’s streets with head lowered, their clothes drab and almost shabby.
‘It is what I said to you when we arrived at the bakery,’ Yvette explained to Bridgette. ‘Many of the fashion houses closed up when the Germans moved in, and those that stayed open had to convert to making military uniforms.’ She shrugged. ‘And there are so many restrictions too on clothes they do make. They are allowed only so much material for each garment and there are few adornments allowed, so they have no lace or fancy buttons or seed pearls, and they are rationed too, and you have to save your coupons to buy anything at all. It’s especially hard for mothers with growing children to keep them decently clad, and that’s why I sent that parcel of clothes to Lisette.’
‘She was terribly grateful,’ Bridgette said.
Yvette smiled. ‘She wrote and told me. I was just glad to be able to help, and Jean-Paul sent me a delightful picture.’
‘We didn’t worry much about our own clothes.’ Bridgette said. ‘As you can see from what I wear, I’ve had nothing new for years and what I have is faded and washed out. But certainly fashion wasn’t to the forefront of our minds. It was far more a battle to keep food on the table; it must have mattered far more to many Parisians, though. Everyone knows that Paris was a fashion leader and had some of the most prestigious fashion houses in the world.’
Yvette nodded. ‘And, of course, the fashion industry did employ so many people.’
‘Yes of course,’ Bridgette said. ‘I never thought of that. The people that we passed in the street look so dispirited somehow.’
‘They are,’ Yvette said. ‘We all are. And even if we had the fancy clothes there are few places to wear them. Many theatres and concert halls have closed and there have been restrictions everywhere, on drama, music, books…Jazz music is banned totally. The Germans are a race of barbarians.’
‘The war will soon be over, I think,’ Henri said, ‘and then things will be back to normal. This, I’m sure, is the beginning of the end.’
‘Oh, I do hope so,’ Bridgette said fervently. ‘That’s all anyone wants now.’
And she did wish that. Paris had suffered mightily, and yet she felt even should peace reign again the city could never be home to her. As each day passed the sadness inside her grew as she mourned not only the loss of her mother and her lover, but also the only home she had ever known in St-Omer.
And then a letter came from Marie Laurent that meant that St-Omer too was closed to her. She opened it eagerly but as she read it she gave a cry of alarm.
‘What is it?’ Yvette cried, seeing her niece drop the letter with a cry.
Bridgette turned stricken eyes to Yvette. ‘It is good we got out when we did. The vigilantes came that very night and took Legrand and Georges away and the women searched the house for me. Marie wasn’t even aware of it until later but people who were there said that they seemed hellbent on revenge and weren’t open to listening to any sort of reason.’ She looked up at Henri and Yvette. ‘The Laurents wanted to speak for me and refute the lies that I was a traitor and a Nazi lover, which Madame Pretin was dripping into the ears of any who’d listen, and tell them instead of my work in the Resistance. I told them not to take the risk of it rebounding on them and how right I was. Marie says if I had been there I would probably have been tarred and feathered, as they did to others they accused of fraternising with the enemy.’
‘Ugh, how horrible!’ Yvette said.
‘It’s the mob mentality,’ Henri said. ‘And it’s what I was afraid of. In situations like that, normal ordinary people can behave like a pack of baying wolves.’
‘You’re right,’ Bridgette said. ‘When they couldn’t find me they set the bakery alight.’
Yvette gave a gasp of shock and Henri exclaimed, ‘That really is a monstrous thing to do!’
‘I agree,’ Bridgette said. ‘Marie says they made a good job of it too, for she said it very nearly burned to the ground. It’s just a shell now. It has really shaken me up. If the Laurents had taken my side, they could have been next in the firing line.’
‘What happened to Legrand and Georges?’ Henri asked.
‘They were both shot.’
‘Shot?’ Yvette repeated in horror.
‘Shot along with other traitors, so Marie says,’ Bridgette told her. ‘But before you think it is just too barbaric, remember the type of people they were. They must have quite a few deaths on their consciences, so I’m sorry if it sounds hard, but I can’t even feel the slightest bit sad that they are dead.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Yvette said. ‘But as you said, thank God you got away in time.’
A week after the arrival of the letter, violence spilled onto the streets of Paris. The news reports spoke of FFI ripping up paving slabs and using abandoned German vehicles and furniture to make barricades, until every road leading down to the Seine was blocked in this way. The ensuing battles went on for days. The noise was indescribable—the relentless whine and crack of rifle shot, and the tattoo of machine-gun fire—and then a few days into the conflict they heard the boom of what Henri told the women were probably twelve-pounders.
The air stank of a mixture of cordite, brick dust and gas. Few ventured out and, despite the warm dry weather, windows were kept tight shut. The Germans retreated to Notre-Dame and nearby houses, or the Senate Building in the Luxembo
urg Palace, and the battles with the holed-up Germans and the Resistance groups went on relentlessly, while the Free French and the Allies continued to fight their way into the city.
And then, after almost ten days of fighting, the rumour was that de Gaulle was returning to France. By the time he arrived, the commander of German forces Paris had signed a formal surrender and had been arrested.
‘An historic day,’ Henri said when the news was broken to the French people over the wireless. ‘Friday 25 August, and it is all over for Paris. Now the rest of France will follow.’
The whole city turned out to welcome and cheer de Gaulle riding in front of the victorious troops the following day. When the tricolour fluttered from the top of Notre-Dame and another enormous one was draped from the top nearly to the ground, Henri admitted later that it had brought tears to his eyes.
Bridgette knew that he wasn’t the only one. She had seen many surreptitiously wipe their eyes, and when the bells of Notre-Dame pealed out for the first time in four years, there was a collective sigh from the crowds.
‘As soon as I can I will try and make some enquiries about the boys,’ Henri said to Yvette that evening.
‘Thank you, Henri,’ Yvette said and her eyes were shining. ‘If Raoul and Gerard have survived, then my joy will be complete.’
Bridgette also hoped and prayed that Yvette’s sons were alive, but she knew if they were and they returned home, then she would feel in the way. They had been apart for many years and needed to be together and learn to live as a family once more, and they didn’t need an interloper in the house.
TWENTY-THREE
The months passed and Paris started to come alive again. Many of the people who had deserted the city returned, and the fashion houses reopened their doors. One evening in mid-December as they sat around the table eating the evening meal, Yvette suggested, now that rationing and restrictions were easing, she and Bridgette might buy some new clothes.
Bridgette, however, was harbouring a secret, for she had not a period since a month before her mother died. She had initially put this down to the upset of everything, but when she noticed that she had put on a little weight too, she had surveyed herself in the mirror the previous evening and had seen the round of her stomach. Heat rose up from her toes and spread throughout her body as she realised there might be another reason why she had had no periods.
She felt filled with such joy and excitement that her hands trembled as she struggled to get undressed. She could scarcely believe that the one thing she had wanted in her life, that she had thought denied her, was happening. The child she was carrying would be part of James, the only part she would ever have, and she already loved that unborn baby, his seed, with all her heart.
She knew, though, that Yvette and Henri were unlikely to feel the same way as she did, and she couldn’t help remembering that in this same city twenty-eight years before, her mother had admitted her pregnancy to her aunt Bernadette. She had told Bridgette that her aunt had been shocked and disappointed, and she couldn’t get her back to St-Omer quick enough. But Bridgette knew however her aunt and uncle felt about her news, that option was no longer open.
One thing she couldn’t do was allow them to buy clothes that shortly she wouldn’t be able to fit into. There was no easy way to tell them about her pregnancy, she knew, and so she faced her aunt and uncle across the table and said, ‘Thank you, Aunt Yvette. You have always been so kind and generous to me, but really there is no point in my buying clothes now, because you see…there is no way to break this to you gently, but I am afraid I am having a baby.’
To say Yvette was shocked would be an understatement. She stared at Bridgette as the seconds ticked by as if she couldn’t believe her ears.
‘You can’t be,’ she said. ‘How did such a thing happen?’
‘The child’s father is James Carmichael,’ Bridgette said. ‘The secret agent that I hid.’
‘You said you loved him,’ Yvette said, ‘but I had no idea it had become such an intimate relationship.’
Before Bridgette could answer, Henri said, ‘Well, I am disappointed in you. You have shaken me to the core, Bridgette, and I don’t mind admitting it.’
Bridgette really liked Henri and valued his good opinion, but still she swallowed deeply and went on, ‘To tell you the truth, if it wasn’t for the effect this will have on your lives, I would be delighted to be bearing this child. It is like a gift from James and the only thing I will ever have from him. I understand, though, that you are ashamed of me and if you wish me to leave here then I will.’
‘And how would you support yourself when you have a child to see to?’
‘The same as many others do, I suppose.’
‘We don’t want you to leave,’ Henri said. ‘Neither of us wants that.’
‘No,’ Yvette said. And she too was aware that it was a case of history repeating itself. At least Bridgette had been married. She was already known as Madame Laurent, so all they had to do to save face was to let people believe that Xavier had died later than he did.
Bridgette knew that she would have to agree to this to save her aunt and uncle from shame, but she vowed that when the child was born, she would tell him or her who the real father was. There would be no secrets between them.
Soon, though, Yvette had something else to occupy her. Henri had been searching for news of their sons for months and had discovered, that even with his contacts, finding out details of any in a Resistance cell was more difficult than he thought. But then, just a couple of days after Bridgette’s announcement, Henri had at last been able to contact both boys. Yvette hoped they would be able to come home for Christmas but the letter Raoul wrote put paid to that.
He said that both he and his brother were working with an organisation helping the homeless and destitute in central Europe and neither had the slightest intention of completing their education, which was curtailed because of the war. There was too much to do for them to leave at the moment, but he said they might have some time off the following spring.
Henri had had the boys’ futures mapped out almost from the day they’d been born and he was totally stunned by what Raoul had written. Bridgette felt sorry for him because she knew Henri was still seeing the young men as the boys he had sent to safety at the beginning of the war, but they had experienced things he would have never wanted them to experience and rode alongside danger and so were bound to have changed.
Yvette understood this. She covered her husband’s hand with her own as she said, ‘Their attitude to life has been changed by circumstances, my dear, and if we are not to lose them totally I’m afraid that we must accept it.’
‘I know,’ Henri said. ‘I certainly don’t want to write a censorious letter to them. Many many fathers, grieving for a son who hasn’t made it, would change places with me today. Let’s just be grateful that they have survived and are doing something useful.’
Yvette was unable to sleep for worrying about Bridgette and her predicament. For the first time she realised how hard it must have been for her, virtually alone in a house with a terminally ill mother and a man for many weeks—months, even—with no possibility of any sort of normal life. She had known in hiding the man she was taking a great risk, and surely that added an extra edge of heightened emotion to everything. Small wonder that they had been overcome by their feelings for one another. She felt bad that she had been so judgemental. She should have been more supportive, more understanding.
So with these thoughts tumbling about her head, she sought out Bridgette the next day and said, ‘I’m sorry for the way I reacted when you told me about your pregnancy. I failed to see how it was for you both all that time, cooped up together.’
‘You have no need to be sorry, Aunt Yvette.’
‘Oh, I think I do,’ Yvette said firmly.
‘But how does Uncle Henri feel about it?’ Bridgette asked.
‘Oh, don’t worry about Henri,’ Yvette said. ‘He will follow my lead in issues like this. I
will explain it all to him, never fear. And now let us look forward to the birth, because after all, a new baby is still a new baby. The first thing to do is get you registered with the doctor and draw out a list of things we’ll need to buy.’
Yvette was right, and Henri said that he had maybe been too hasty in condemning her, that she was not to worry about a thing, and all she had to do was look forward to the spring and the birth of her child.
It was all so different from the way her poor mother had been treated, Bridgette thought that night as she lay in bed. Gabrielle had spent the rest of her life paying for the sin of making love to the only man she ever loved, who the war had stolen away from her.
Bridgette knew what her mother meant when she had said that her heart was too hurt to truly love another after Finn Sullivan. Bridgette herself had loved and lost two wonderful men, but now she had a child, her child and James’s, to love and cherish and watch grow up. With her hand curled protectively around her stomach she soon drifted off to sleep.
The war dragged on throughout the rest of the winter and the early spring. The Red Army, beating the Germans back, came upon the first concentration camps in Poland. Then the Allies discovered and liberated Belsen-Bergen and Buchenwald.
Reporters on the wireless brought the appalling horror of what had been happening at these camps into people’s living rooms. Sometimes, after such a report, Henri, Yvette and Bridgette would sit in silence, digesting the terrible brutal things done to innocent civilians who just happened to be Jews.
Yvette would have liked to have kept the gruesome details from Bridgette but she insisted on knowing. ‘No one should be protected from this,’ she told Yvette. ‘Only by acknowledging that these awful things happened can we ensure that they will never happen again.’
