A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [142]
‘You look like a schoolgirl now,’ Fifi laughed when she had finished. She was about to say that Yvette should dye over the grey hair and have it cut into a bob, but she stopped herself just in time, and found her handbag mirror to show the older woman how she looked.
Yvette smiled at her reflection. ‘This is how I wore it as a leetle girl,’ she said. ‘Mama would plait it as I ate my breakfast. Before I left for school she would tie ribbons on the end, but every day I lose one.’
‘Me too,’ Fifi smiled. ‘My mother used to get really cross. She said once it was a waste of time trying to make me look pretty. I always thought that meant I was really ugly.’
Yvette patted her cheek. ‘Mothers do not weesh to say their leetle girls are beautiful in case it make them vain.’
‘Did your mother tell you that you have lovely eyes?’ Fifi asked. ‘They are like liquid dark chocolate, and your figure is so good too. Why didn’t you ever marry?’
Yvette smiled. ‘I never knew anyone ask so many questions! To get married it is not enough just to ’ave lovely eyes or a good figure.’
‘But you are so nice,’ Fifi said. ‘A bit mysterious perhaps. I would think lots of men would fall for you.’
Yvette chuckled. ‘So you theenk I am mysterious.’
Fifi grinned. ‘Yes, but then men are supposed to like that.’
‘I do not care what men like,’ Yvette said a little sharply. ‘I would rather be alone for ever than ’ave to live with a man. Look at ’ow these men treat us! No food, only one blanket. Another woman could not do that.’
The day passed even more slowly than the previous one, and with nothing to do but think how hungry they were, they grew snappy with each other. When Fifi began climbing up the bars for some exercise, Yvette complained. When Yvette rocked herself back and forward as she sat on the mattress, that got on Fifi’s nerves.
‘Stop it,’ Fifi shouted. ‘You look like you’re going mad.’
‘Stop what?’ Yvette asked.
‘Rocking!’
‘I do not know what you mean,’ Yvette retorted.
They ignored each other after that. Yvette lay down, curled up in a foetal position, and Fifi did exercises she remembered from ballet class, pretending to herself that the bars were the barre.
But as it gradually became dark, Fifi gave way to anger. She was hungry, cold and dirty and she felt she couldn’t stand another moment of it.
‘We really are going to die, aren’t we?’ she suddenly screamed out. ‘Stuck here getting thinner and thinner until we’re too weak to even stand. And you won’t even talk to me to take my mind off it.’
‘What do you want me to talk about?’ Yvette said, looking surprised. ‘You are such a child sometimes, Fifi, always ze drama.’
‘It doesn’t bloody well get any more dramatic than this,’ Fifi snarled at her. ‘I can’t take it any more.’
Yvette got up and walked over to Fifi, putting her arms around her and holding her tightly.
‘Hush now,’ she said soothingly. ‘Screaming and shouting won’t make it any better.’
Fifi burst into tears, and Yvette led her back to the mattress, wrapped the blanket around her as though she was a small child and cuddled her close.
‘How can you be this calm?’ Fifi asked after a while when her sobbing had abated. ‘Aren’t you frightened?’
‘Yes, I am frightened,’ Yvette admitted. ‘I am just as hungry as you too. But I ’ave been very hungry and frightened before in my life, and perhaps this is why I seem calm now.’
‘When you first came to England?’
‘No, all I remember of that was the cold, not fright or hunger. But in Paris I was very scared, for every day the Germans come and round up Jewish people to take them away. We did not know then where they were taking them, but we knew it wasn’t good. Sometimes my mama and I ’ad no food at all, for who needs a dressmaker when your country has fallen to the enemy?’
‘Did the Nazis take you then?’ Fifi asked through