Hitler for liberation. For the first time in my life I did not feel safe.
The reports poured in from Germany. Jews banned from this, Jews banned from that. You might as well make your own list because everything was on it. And, of course, more camps. We knew it wasn’t just regulations for the death toll went on and on, long before Kristallnacht, and long after. So the music drained out of our Sunday gatherings. There were too many questions to ask. ‘Should we get out while there’s still a chance?’ ‘How much will it cost?’ ‘What about so-and-so’s grandmaman?’ ‘And her cousin, the one who’s ill?’ There were no easy answers. You must realise these people had either grown up in France or had fled from somewhere else. They’d had enough. They wanted to believe they were safe. That said, two families did jump and made it to Canada, but they left behind half their blood because of visa problems. That was a warning in its own right, for the doors of escape would soon close. We had a party for them and Mr Rozenwerg sang a Yiddish song of farewell. He was the old man I told you about, the one through the keyhole who understood Father Rochet’s warning. After all these years I’ve remembered his name. I cannot think of that might without seeing the faces of those who stayed behind, trusting in better times when the endless partings would cease. That is my overwhelming feeling of those days, a gradual falling apart, of broken pieces being broken still further.
The Germans occupied the Sudetenland, and them invaded Czechoslovakia. Next, Poland. They were on the march. War was declared. That was when Father Rochet called the meeting.
21st April.
No one knew who else was coming. Each had been told it was secret, although in my case Madame Klein had already been informed. We all knew one another for we were the non-Jewish members of our Sunday gathering. By then we were all aged between twenty (me, the youngest) and twenty-three. I must name them: Jean, Cecile, Philippe, Tomas, Monique, Melaine, Francoise, Alban, Therese, Mathilde, Jacques and, of course, Victor.
Same day
We met in Father Rochet’s presbytery on 1st November 1939. It was a large, yellowish room with a very high ceiling, and a single central light without a shade. The grate was empty, and you could smell the damp. There were no curtains, We were so cold that no one took their coat off. Yet Father Rochet didn’t seem to notice.
He said he’d called us together to form a ‘Round Table’ of knights dedicated to chivalry. I remember thinking that he must have been drinking. But he was deadly sober. He said he’d always loved the stories of Arthur, the dream of a fairer world and the longing for the return of the King. I recall that distinctly He said life is a great waiting. There was no King, as yet. So we had to struggle for the dream in the meantime.
Do what? asked Victor. Father Rochet said that if France fell the Nazis would move against the Jews in a matter of months. Many would not be able to escape. But we could make a small difference. The Round Table would smuggle children to safety. He could not tell us when or how or where or who else was involved. He just wanted to know if we would act as young parents, older brothers and sisters, taking a child from A to B.
We all looked at each other, huddled in the cold, sitting around a huge oval table. Father Rochet drew a circle in the air with his finger, bringing all of us in on his scheme. Everyone nodded. Including Victor, but he voiced some doubts.
I should tell you something else about Victor. He was an organiser. Very practical-minded. He was the one who’d arranged the picnics, getting everyone to the pick-up point on time, allocating different jobs and so on. He liked lists and crossing things off. After Father Rochet’s little speech he said he didn’t think the Germans would ever march along the streets of Paris. If they did then the survival of everyone would be through cooperation, not confrontation. Including the Jews. That would be the key, finding an accommodation. In due course that is precisely what Victor did, at the expense of everyone in that room.
As I recollect, Father Rochet replied that Victor would soon change his mind about cooperation when he felt a jackboot up his bottom.
22nd April.
I discovered the full explanation for The Round Table in two parts, one openly, the other at the keyhole.
First, I asked Father Rochet and he told me it was a private literary joke.
At the turn of the century a political movement called Action Francaise had been formed, dedicated to re-establishing the monarchy It was an extreme right-wing organisation, attracting certain types of Royalists and Catholics. Its leadership and many members were notoriously anti-Semitic. Soon it had a youth movement called the Camelots du Roi and they entertained Paris by rioting in the streets with the Socialists.
So far, I understood it. Then he said this: he wanted to use the myth of Arthur from the Middle Ages to carry out his own small purge of history — the Christian persecution of the Jews. The Round Table, he said, would enact the chivalry denied to Jews in the past. I didn’t understand what he meant at the time. Father Rochet was a learned man, always reading something, and he knew tracts of medieval verse off by heart.
But now the keyhole, which made a bit more sense.
Madame Klein asked the same question as me. Father Rochet replied that he was swinging a punch at his old Prior who had thrown him out. There had been a bitter election for the leader of the monastery and one of the candidates had had connections to Action Francaise. Father Rochet had made a stink about it, hoping to stop him getting elected. He’d failed. Shortly afterwards, Father Rochet had been shown the door.
For opposing him? asked Madame Klein. Wasn’t there another reason?
There was a long pause, so I looked. Father Rochet had his face in his hands. I never heard the reply.
23rd April.
The Germans took Paris in June 1940. I’m afraid from mow on my memory is all in pieces, some large, some small. Many of the simple day-to-day details have been blotted out, and not the things I’d rather forget. It has always been a curse of mine.
I have disconnected pictures in my head.
I am standing near the Gare Montparnasse. I don’t know what I’m doing there. Thousands are queuing for the trains, desperate to get out. Gaunt, hot faces. Hordes of people burdened with everything of value they can carry, and children running wild. For months afterwards there were notices in the shops from mothers listing the names of their lost boys and girls, just like those ‘Have you seen…?’ things in the newsagent describing missing pets. Name, age, colour of hair and so on.
Next I am standing at the gates of a park. This must be later on. It is deadly quiet. A pall of black smoke hangs over the city. An old gardener tells me, ‘That’s our boys. They’ve set fire to the oil reserves. We’re on our own now.’ The streets are empty. I remember thinking the buildings are like a wall of scenery, where maybe there is nothing behind the facades but planks of wood and trestles, holding up a front. Paris is hollow and if you knocked upon its dome with a hammer you’d only hear an echo. There are two dogs trotting down the Rue de ha Bienfaisance, sniffing at the closed doors.
I don’t remember the moment they came. But I can see those wretched flags everywhere, on almost every building. I am standing on the Champs-Elysees watching a parade. They did that every day with a full military band. At some point they even landed a plane on the Place de la Concorde. They were great ones for letting you know they were there, the Germans. Hitler turned up at some point but I have no recollection of it whatsoever, which is gratifying.
At first they were extremely polite, which surprised everyone. And that’s not all. I remember seeing a truck by one of the bridges, with soldiers leaning out of the back charming the girls with jokes and chocolate. With some success, I might add. I think it was Simone de Beauvoir who said now that they were here there were going to be lots of little Germans running around.
What else? A curfew, the hours sometimes changing. Shots in the night. Queuing endlessly for food. Everyone awfully hungry. Bicycles everywhere, because special permits were required to drive (Jacques’ fathe
r got one because he was a doctor). People heaving cases along the pavement or using a wheelbarrow That was daily life under the Germans.
I know it doesn’t sound so bad to you, seeing the war as you must from its outcome. But for those of us who were there, the fall of Paris, the fall of France, was devastating. From the moment they came and soiled our streets the mourning began. I cannot tell you how dark those times seem to me. And all around the Germans were on holiday That’s another memory I have. I can see lots of young soldiers larking about, taking photographs of each other in front of the Arc de Triomphe. Some of them have an army-issue guidebook.
I think it is the frailty of time that brings people together. When you don’t know if you will even see the year out, and you’ve lost a great deal, you seize what happiness comes by In those days, we all held on to each other in different ways. For Jacques and me there was a strange, satisfying desperation about our coming together, as if we were one step ahead of misfortune. One evening Madame Klein, trying to winkle an admission out of me, said, ‘I expect you see rather a lot of young Fougeres?’ I said I did. She said, ‘I suspect he rather likes you.’ And I told her to stop it. She was a terrible schemer, that woman.
But then we both got a big surprise, way beyond her suspicions and my expectations. I became pregnant.
1st May.
My generation doesn’t talk about this sort of thing. Things got out of hand. It only happened once but, as you will appreciate, that’s all it takes.
Jacques displayed his Catholic entrails, as Father Rochet put it, offering to marry me within the week, As he spoke I all of a sudden saw him dressed in a respectable black uniform, safely behind the rail of a huge ship, throwing me one of those circular life rings. Standing over his shoulder was a severe captain, his eyes concealed by shadow Then he was just earnest Jacques again, alone with me by the windmill in Montmartre. I said no, not yet. I’ve never been that good at giving explanations so I described my picture. He couldn’t see what I was trying to say I said, ‘Give it time.’
Jacques’ family were the best kind of Catholic — principles never interfered with practice. They welcomed me and our child for what we were — part of their fold. Madame Fougeres was very pleased: she already had one grandchild from Claude, a boy named Etienne. One day she said, they’d play together.
I suppose it was a very modern arrangement. I lived overlooking Parc Monceau and Jacques was a stone s throw away on the Boulevard de Courcelles. Our infant was happily tossed between the two households. So I think we would have married, eventually In all that matters he was an utterly devoted father, but he clung to wilful ignorance when faced with the more unpleasant chores of parenting — like most men I have known (including Freddie).
Notwithstanding the ‘Not yet’ to marriage, I did agree to a baptism, if only because I wanted Father Rochet to place his hands upon my boy All I remember about the ceremony is sticking my head around the parlour door afterwards and seeing him alone with my baby I instantly thought of that story by Maupassant, ‘Le Bapteme’, about the lonely priest caught crying over an infant. That was 21st April 1941.
I have said nothing about Victor. He found out about Jacques and me by chance. And it was ironic that he should stumble upon us in the way he did. I said in passing to Father Rochet that an anti-Semitic exhibition had just opened in Paris,’ Le Juif et la France’. He told me to keep well away from such filth. But Jacques and I decided to go anyway On the day, Victor suggested going over to Saint-Germain-des-Pres to hobnob with the intellectuals solving the problems of France in a cafe. Jacques and I made our different excuses, met up secretly and headed off. Who did we meet at the exhibition? Victor. And for reasons best known to himself, Father Rochet had urged him to go.
After that I have only two or three other memories of Victor. When I told him I was pregnant, it was as though I had struck him across the face with the flat of my hand. I didn’t see much of him from then on and neither did Jacques. He withdrew, as if betrayed, and only came forward to witness the consequences of his revenge. For come it did.
Chapter Twelve
1
Left to his own devices, Anselm would have preferred to walk — a long, irreverent ramble through the vineyards of France, blistering his feet on the Alps, drinking too much wine and then descending, light-headed and a boy again, through the landscape of frescoes on to Rome. Instead, he did as he was told and took the 12.15 p.m. flight from Heathrow to Fiumicino. He was to stay with a community of friars at San Giovanni’s, an international house of studies incongruously situated between two restaurants near Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, beneath the Janiculum Hill. A priest would collect him.
Anselm was standing in the arrivals area in his long black habit, beginning to feel the heat, when he was greeted from behind by a back-slapping friar in cut-off shorts and a T-shirt:
‘Hello there, I’m Brandon Conroy But call me Con.’
He had the build of a shaven ox with hands like pit shovels. But the most startling feature was his eyes, china blue, elfin and glittering, deeply set beneath a brow of heavy bone.
‘I knew it was you from your outfit,’ said Conroy ‘Here, give us your bag,’ and off he went, whistling, while Anselm trailed behind, all pores opening.
Conroy compressed himself into a flaming red Fiat Punto, with Anselm at his side, and took the autostrada to the city.
Crossing the Grande Raccordo Anulare and accelerating towards the west bank of the Tiber, Anselm sensed a gradual disintegration in conventional road positioning. A slanging match of horns, bewildered voices and Latin passion tumbled through the open window, while Conroy made various offensive hand signals to right and left. There seemed to be a wide digital vocabulary the sophistication of which had completely escaped Anselm’s well-informed schooldays. The whole melee was thrashed out under the blessed heat of the sun and a cloudless cobalt sky
‘Been here a month now and I’m beginning to get the hang of it,’ said Conroy, his gesturing arm at rest on the doorsill. ‘I thought Rio was bad, sure. But here you’ve got to play to kill. No arsing around, you know, or they’ll have your cojones on pasta.
Anselm didn’t quite know how to respond. It wasn’t the usual language of recreation at Larkwood. He kept a firm grip on the door handle while Conroy clattered on.
‘I’m brushing up my theology. Then back to Paula and the kids.’
Paula? Kids? Anselm had to reply He’d start with the children.
‘Kids?’
‘Yep.’
‘How many?’
‘Too many’ Conroy waved his first and little finger at a priest on a bike.
Anselm’s eyes widened involuntarily ‘I see,’ he observed, politely sympathetic but resolved now to make no further enquiry about Father Brandon Conroy’s domestic arrangements. Each took a side-glance at the other.
‘Loosen up, Father, I’m only having a laugh,’ chuckled Conroy his hands off the wheel while he scratched his shoulders. ‘Street kids. The homeless. Sao Paulo. I’ve been at it thirty-five years.
Anselm laughed. Small buttons flew off some carefully ironed garment of childhood restraint. He’d never met anyone like Conroy in his life, except perhaps Roddy: they both gave copiously from the wine of themselves. The Punto weaved its way into the narrow streets of Trastevere and Conroy, tired of rambling, turned to enquiry:
‘Anyway, what brings you to Bernini’s twisted columns?’
‘My Prior received a fax asking me to attend a meeting at four o’clock tomorrow ‘
‘Sounds serious.’
‘It is. We’ve just had a Nazi land on us claiming “sanctuary”.’
‘My arse.’
‘Funnily enough, that’s what my Prior said:
‘Really?’ asked Conroy, surprised, gesturing in response to an attack of horns.
‘Not in quite the same terms.’
‘Thought not.’
They drove on. Conroy was thoughtful. He’d slowed down his driving and the roads were
somehow all the quieter for it. He said, ‘Who’s your meeting with?’
‘Cardinal Vincenzi.’
Conroy chewed his bottom lip. ‘There’s only one other higher than your man, and that’s Himself.’ The jester was no longer at the wheel. With the earnestness of experience he asked, ‘But why you?’
‘I used to be a lawyer and I speak French. Our visitor was based in Paris during the war. That’s all I can think of.’
‘Father, let me give you some advice, all right? I know this place.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Let’s just say I’ve had my little run-ins. If you’re going to get dragged into Church politics, you’re entering one of those tents at the circus packed with curved mirrors, twisting and pulling things out of shape. Be careful. Don’t go by appearances. Nothing’s what it seems here.’
The car came to an abrupt halt and they walked into San Giovanni’s, Conroy restored to his former self, shouting out for peaches, Anselm trailing behind, subdued.
2
Beniamino Cardinal Vincenzi, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, welcomed Anselm as if he were an old friend from whom he had been separated by cruel misfortune. He had a disarming warmth wholly Italian in its excess, which almost concealed his formal identity — that of a highly polished diplomat more familiar with crisis than tranquillity. He was short and round with dark olive skin, the burden of his office carried by gleaming eyes that lured condolence as he spoke. He drew Anselm to one of three elegant chairs forming an intimate triangle at the furthest end of the room. One chair was already occupied by a priest in a neat black soutane, a red sash draped across one knee. He was introduced as Monsignor Renaldi. Of paler skin than his master, he conveyed a similar warmth, its expression subdued by an air of professional competence. He had the happy sheen of a recently appointed Recorder. Anselm took his seat by a small, highly polished table with legs like a dancer on tiptoe. A green cardboard folder lay upon it. Bright sunshine flooded through graceful windows on to paintings of sober men dressed in scarlet. They watched with old, expressionless eyes, keeping their own secrets.
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