A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [148]
Yvette found herself slipping back to September of 1939 when she was twelve. She could see herself coming home from school with her friend Françoise, both skinny girls with olive skin, dark hair and eyes. They wore black wool stockings that slipped down in folds over their ankles, and their long plaits bounced and swung as they hopped over cracks in the pavements. People always thought they were twins because they were so similar, but Yvette thought Françoise was the prettier; she had dimples in her cheeks and perfect Cupid’s bow lips.
At school their teacher kept talking about the war which had just begun, pinning up maps to show how the Germans were advancing through Poland, but it meant little to Yvette and Françoise, for Poland was so far away from Paris and neither of them had a father who would have to go and fight.
What Yvette remembered most about that time was the food in the shops and the smells that went with it. Perhaps it only stuck in her memory because that was the last time for many years she would see such abundance. Rosy polished apples piled high, luscious purple grapes spilling out of boxes, peaches, carrots and vivid red tomatoes. Freshly baked bread and croissants, the marble counter at the charcuterie laden with dozens of different cheeses, ham and paâté. And so many autumn flowers too, tin buckets crammed with chrysanthemums, dahlias and purple daisies.
‘It was Françoise who first told me that ze Nazis didn’t like Jews,’ Yvette went on. ‘She ’ad relatives in Berlin, and they’d written to her mother to say they were trying to get away as Jews were being attacked and their businesses confiscated. But Francçoise and me, we didn’t really see ourselves as Jews, our mothers didn’t go to the synagogue and they didn’t keep up any of the traditions. To us we were just French, and whatever was happening in Germany had nothing to do with us.
‘But by ze spring of 1940 I could see Mama was worried about something more than paying ze rent and whether ze war would stop her ladies having new clothes made. One day I ask her about it and she told me she was afraid for us.’
Yvette could remember having conflicting feelings as the Germans advanced closer and closer to France. There was a kind of raw excitement in the air, so many men in uniform milling around Paris, tales of heroism bandied around on street corners. To her and Francçoise it was something like waiting for Christmas, so much anticipation and hope, yet because both their mothers were poor, there was also a faint dread as they were used to disappointment.
The casualties of war were already mounting, and the oldest people kept on recounting stories of the young men in their families who had died in the trenches of the First War. People married in haste without any of the customary ceremony and tradition. Young women who until then had been models of decorum were seen kissing young men passionately in public. The bars, nightclubs and restaurants all grew busier and noisier. Churches were packed on Sundays, and people stayed out on the streets as the days lengthened; maybe it was only to discuss the war or gossip, but to the two young girls Paris had an almost carnival atmosphere.
Sometimes Yvette and Francçoise would go to the Gare du Nord to watch troops leaving on the trains. They were too young to fully understand the tears of sweethearts as they clung together, but old enough to want this heady drama for themselves. They threw flowers and waved hand-kerchiefs too. They even hoped that the war wouldn’t end before they were adult enough to have someone to kiss goodbye.
But behind all this frantic activity throughout Paris, there was also a swell of anxiety and unease which grew steadily stronger through April and May. The teachers at school had very grave faces, and they seemed disinclined to show the Germans’ advance through Holland and Belgium on their maps any longer.
Then at the end of May the whole of Paris was aghast as French and English troops retreated to Dunkirk. Church bells tolled and people