Two Silver Crosses, page 14
But the evenings were the best times back at the Boule’ Miche, at ‘their’ table on the pavement in the heat and passion of politics.
On Saturday evening Gérard announced that they would all meet at the Place de la Bastille at three o’clock the following afternoon.
‘Will you join us?’ he asked Ginny. ‘It will be the biggest gathering of the Left this city has ever seen. If it goes well, we might see the beginning of a popular front against the fascists.’
‘They’re on the march tomorrow, too,’ Mauricette said. ‘We’ll go and see them first, if you like.’
It took a long time for all the left-wing groups to gather in the Place de la Bastille the following afternoon.
‘Take a good look at them,’ Mauricette commanded. She and Ginny stood on the cobbles among their friends, as the crowds of demonstrators jostled into position around their various banners. ‘I want you to pay particular attention to what they look like.’
‘They all look quite ordinary,’ Ginny said. And so they did, old men in the ubiquitous blue beret, middle-aged women in little flat hats, young men in cheap crumpled suits and young women in cheap cotton frocks. ‘Very ordinary.’
‘Good!’ Mauricette said. ‘Now come with me.’ And when Ginny looked puzzled. ‘We’ve plenty of time to see the other lot. We won’t be marching out of here for another hour.’
They took the Métro to the Champs Elysées and emerged into the summer sunshine to the sound of drums and a military band.
‘That’ll be them,’ Mauricette said, and, seizing Ginny’s hand, she ran towards the sound, pushing through the crowds who were waiting on the pavements for the march to pass. ‘Up here!’ she said. ‘Now! Look! There they are.’
There was a column of dark-suited men marching towards them up the Champs Elysées. They were preceded by a military band and a line of flag bearers carrying long black, red and white pennants and they all marched in step with perfect discipline, like an army. For a few crazy seconds Ginny had the impression that they were robots — there was something so mechanical and menacing about them. But then she realised that it was because they were all men and so alike. Dressed in dark uniforms with medals on their chests and red, black and white armbands on their left arms, they had the same hair-cut, short, severe and glued to their skulls with pomade, and what was worse, oh much much worse, the same terrible expression on their faces, a hard, set, hating expression. They made her blood run cold.
‘Now do you see?’ Mauricette asked at her elbow.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘They are men capable of cruelty, Mauricette. You’re right. We’ve got to stop them.’
Mauricette kissed her with pride and affection. ‘I knew you’d see it,’ she said. ‘And you’ll join us?’
There was no doubt about that now. ‘Yes. I’ll join you.’
On the first floor at the Hôtel Royaume D’or, just behind the pavement where the two girls were standing, somebody else was watching the demonstration from the windows of the banqueting rooms. Claud Everdale and his new military friends were meeting for the second time that year and they’d been enjoying their aperitifs when the thud of the drums called their curiosity to the window.
‘Human nature,’ a French major said in sing-song English that made Claud think of Maurice Chevalier. ‘You see ’ow it is. We march in battalions. We sing ze hymns of war. Always we ’ave to fight one anozer.’
‘Which is just as well,’ Claud said, ‘or we should be out of business, tous les deux.’ He was rather proud of his ability to throw oddments of French into the conversation, and the military men seemed to like it.
‘’Eads will be broken before ze end of ze day,’ the major said, stroking the rim of his glass. ‘Ze communists, zey march today also. Zey will fight unless the gendarmerie can prevent it.’
Good, Claud thought happily. Let them. First on the street with fists and staves, then on the field of battle with GS Holborn’s rifles. We shall make a fortune.
Left alone in the permanent darkness that was her world, Emily Lisieux was thinking most unhappily. For the first time in her life she had no daily companion to act as interpreter; no bed mate to gossip with either, and it was making her feel very lonely.
Maman got on with her work and sounded cheerful and Cousin Berthe and Old Joliot were the same as always, but Emily knew that she herself had suffered a change. Her mother’s warning was constantly in her thoughts, the words echoing and re-echoing, ‘You are different from other young women. You have an illness. A taint. You could end up like your father.’ She couldn’t make any sense of it. She could only feel afraid. And remember.
It was now that she realised there had been frequent clues to all this, things she’d heard and stored away even though she hadn’t understood them at the time, now, she enumerated them and turned them over in her mind: the secrecy that surrounded Daddy’s illness, Maman’s hysteria when they left High Holborn, her insistence that they shouldn’t let anyone in England know where they were, the way she panicked for no apparent reason and rushed off without references or pay to get a worse job than the last. The more she thought about it the more anxious Emily became.
Eventually on Thursday evening when she and Maman were weeding in the garden — Cousin Berthe had gone stomping off down the cinder path to the earth closet pour faire pipi — she tried to ask a careful question.
‘Maman,’ she said, resting on her hoe, ‘I’ve been thinking about this illness you told us about…’
Her mother’s reaction was so quick and extreme it made her heart skid with fear.
‘Be quiet!’ she ordered, laying her hand across Emily’s mouth. ‘You foolish child. What are you thinking about to speak of it out here? Don’t you understand? You must never mention it. Never, never, never. Someone might hear. Holy Mary, Mother of God pray for us sinners. Where’s your sense? She could be back at any moment.’
Emily mumbled an apology, her heart thumping.
‘I’ve told you about it,’ Maman said. ‘That should be enough. Now speak of something else. She’s coming back.’ She turned to say something about the beans to Cousin Berthe in a voice that was so artificially cheerful that Emily felt quite ashamed for her.
There was no doubt now in Emily’s mind. She stood with the warmth of the easy sunshine on her upturned face, and the summer sounds of the village all about her; horses whinnying and scraping their hooves in the stables, Old Joliot’s hens crooning in that odd plaintive way they had, cart wheels creaking under some great weight, the advocate’s little dog yapping as he trotted off for his evening walk, and she was afraid. This illness was serious and shameful and threatening. She had reason to be afraid. Oh, if only Ginny hadn’t gone off to Paris.
The days passed slowly. Being unable to share her thoughts increased Emily’s fears and diminished her pleasures. Even Mass was lessened without Ginny’s hand to pinch at high moments, although she was soothed by the ritual, the heady scent of the incense, the clink of the swinging censor, the hymns echoing into the high roof and the steady, familiar chant of the responses.
But when she and Maman walked out of the church into the sunshine she heard something that sharpened her fear to such a pitch of intensity it gave her a hard, heavy pain in her chest.
Father André was speaking to Maman, but not in the usual way he spoke to parishioners as they left his church. His voice was lower than usual, and confidential, and there was an insistent tone to it, too. And when Maman answered him she spoke very quietly, as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear.
‘I hope I shall see you take communion soon, my daughter,’ the Father said.
‘Oh yes, Father. Very soon.’ But her listening daughter knew she didn’t mean it.
‘It’s been many a long month.’
‘Yes, Father. I will put it right.’
‘Soon?’ Father André was insistent.
‘Yes, Father. Very soon.’
‘The confessional is always open to a contrite heart.’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Pray for grace, my daughter.’
Holding her mother’s arm, Emily walked back to Cousin Berthe’s house deep in the most painful thoughts. Maman didn’t take communion. She didn’t take communion because she hadn’t been to confession. And the reason why she hadn’t been to confession must be because she’d committed a sin too dreadful to be spoken about, even to a priest. The pattern was clear, the reasons obvious. It was only the sin that was unknown. A sin so dreadful it couldn’t be mentioned. A mortal sin. It must be. Oh, poor Maman. How dreadful to have such a secret. How awful not to be able to confess it and to be cleansed of it. How terrible to be so unhappy and to have to keep her unhappiness hidden. Underneath Emily’s thoughts fear of that unknown illness crept like a snake, subtle and full of poison. If only Ginny were home, she yearned. If only I could talk to my Ginny. The evening, and her sister’s return, seemed impossibly distant. Once we can talk about it everything will be better.
But Ginny returned to Boves a changed woman, happy and excited, with a copy of the left-wing paper Le Populaire under her arm and leaflets in her bag, bubbling with the news that she’d been on a demonstration. She was not in a fit state to listen to anything.
‘You should have been there, Em,’ she said, kissing her sister. ‘It was really exciting. I’ve got such a lot to tell you.’
She seemed charged with energy. Cousin Berthe and Maman watched in amazement as she rushed precipitately up the stairs, returned with her box of talcum powder from the washstand, flung open the back door and emptied the contents on to the cinder path.
‘That’s that!’ she said triumphantly. Then she crumpled the empty box to pieces and burnt the pieces in the stove.
‘This is what comes of visiting the capital,’ Maman remarked, in her teasing voice. ‘Now she has money to burn, you see.’
‘No, no, my dear,’ Cousin Berthe contradicted. ‘It’s only an old box, that’s all.’
‘I’ve joined the socialists,’ Ginny told them.
‘So you burn boxes?’ her mother said.
‘Monsieur Coty’s boxes, certainly. He uses his money to support the Croix de Feu.’
‘Oh well,’ Hortense said with mocking sarcasm, ‘that explains everything. What else do you intend to burn?’
‘Nothing else,’ Ginny laughed back. ‘I’ve scorched enough for one day. You’re quite safe. I’m a socialist not an arsonist. You should be pleased, Maman. I didn’t fall in love or get married or anything like that. I went to a political meeting instead.’
Hortense was relieved to hear it, but she didn’t say so. Partly because Cousin Berthe was in the room, partly because their easy teasing was so pleasant, she didn’t want to bring it to an end, and partly because she was trying to forget the other reminders: the painful scene in the cemetery, Emily’s unwonted questioning in the garden and Father André’s prodding reminder that morning. But whatever else might be hard in her life, at least the warning had been given. She’d done her duty by these two, dear daughters of hers. There was no need to talk about it any further. Providing her girls were sensible they could all go along the way they had before this visit to Paris. They could be happy. She could watch over them and remind them from time to time. There needn’t be any changes.
But her newly political daughter had other ideas. The very next day, she stayed in Amiens after work to meet the local socialists. On Tuesday, she was again late home because she’d been addressing envelopes. By Friday, she was the secretary of the group.
Hortense declared she couldn’t keep up with her.
‘She’s like a greyhound at full pelt,’ she said, and her voice was warm with admiration. Because she felt such relief, it was easy to admire this headstrong daughter of hers. This plunge into politics was turning out to be a good thing. It might put Virginie in the path of rather too many young men but, at the moment at least, she was so fully occupied she didn’t seem to be interested in any of them. Not in that way. So, thank Heaven for it. Perhaps there was truth in the English proverb that there was safety in numbers.
Emily tried to take an interest in what her sister was doing, too, but with anxiety nipping at her thoughts all the time it was very difficult. Ginny will listen to me soon, she thought. But it wasn’t until the second Sunday after her return that Ginny found a moment for conversation. Walking home from church after mass she suddenly noticed how pale and quiet Em was and asked what was the matter.
‘Come for a walk,’ Emily said, ‘and I’ll tell you.’
Ginny listened until the entire garbled story was unravelled, fears, suspicions, ancient clues, nightmares and all.
‘Oh, Em, my darling,’ she said, ‘you mustn’t worry about it. You really mustn’t. I’m sure it was just Maman’s way of putting me off.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ her sister said. ‘She doesn’t take communion, Ginny.’
‘I know,’ Ginny said. ‘But that could be for a hundred different reasons. Trust you to think of all the sins there are.’
‘This one’s so bad she can’t confess it.’
‘It could be something she did during the war. Lots of people did wicked things during the war. I’ve been hearing about some of the atrocities. Gérard said…’
Em didn’t want to hear about atrocities. ‘This illness,’ she insisted, ‘Maman wouldn’t let me talk about it.’
‘Because there’s no such thing,’ Ginny said trenchantly. ‘We’d have heard of it if there had been. It was just her way of telling us she doesn’t want us to get married. She’s always been on at us about that, hasn’t she?’ Ginny had to believe her own conclusion, it was the only way to still her own fears. ‘Look at us. We’re not ill. We don’t have fevers or coughs. We can both walk and talk and do everything we’re supposed to.’
‘I can’t see,’ Emily pointed out.
‘But that’s because you were born blind.’
‘Yes,’ Emily said sadly but doggedly. ‘But why was I born blind? That’s the point.’
‘Because you were. Some people are. Some people are born with club feet or a harelip. It’s the way things are.’
But Emily insisted. ‘What if it was something to do with the illness?’
Ginny simply wouldn’t allow it. That would have been too terrifying. ‘Well, it’s not,’ she said, ‘so you can stop worrying. Listen, why don’t you come to the meeting with me on Wednesday? You’d love it. You should hear what we’ve got planned for after the election. Nobody’s going to work more than forty hours a week. We’re planning a national fund to pay people a wage when they’re out of work. We’re going to nationalise the armaments industry.’
That intrigued Emily despite her fears. ‘Why?’
‘Because it’s immoral for a rich man to grow richer making weapons. Leon Blum says, “Socialism has to be moral or it will not be at all.”’
‘Who is Leon Blum?’
Relieved that their conversation was on safer ground, Ginny clicked her teeth in mock exasperation at her sister’s ignorance. She’d never heard of him either before she went to Paris. ‘Who’s Leon Blum! Shame on you, Em! He’s the man who will be prime minister when the Popular Front have won the election.’
‘Do you think they will win, Ginny?’
‘Yes,’ Ginny said stoutly. ‘The way I’m working, yes they will.’
‘I love you when you’re fierce,’ Emily said, and kissed her.
‘So you’ll come to the meeting.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ It would be better than sitting at home worrying about an illness.
But as the weeks passed, she worried about it anyway.
They were frightening times. That autumn the news was almost invariably bad, and the papers were full of articles analysing the likelihood of another war. It came on October third when Mussolini marched a hundred thousand Italian troops into Ethiopia while his new war planes roared off to bomb the border town of Adowa.
‘Now,’ Ginny said to Emily, ‘we shall see whether the League of Nations can stop them.’
‘How can they?’
Her political sister knew the answer. ‘By imposing sanctions against Italy, refusing to trade with her, refusing to send supplies, cutting her off from the things she needs. That’s what they’re going to do.’
‘Will it work?’
‘If every single nation joins in,’ Ginny said.
But every single nation didn’t. Austria and Hungary voted not to apply sanctions. Trainloads of arms were sent to Italy from Czechoslovakia. The League dithered. The British Cabinet met in London. And dithered. The war continued and escalated. Adowa was captured. Mustard gas was dropped on the Ethiopian troops with appalling effect. Mussolini bragged to his people that Italy would soon have her own empire to rival the other great imperial powers. And Adolf Hitler observed it all.
On March seventh he opened his own campaign. That morning, just before dawn, German troops marched into the Rhineland. The shock of it reverberated along the Somme Valley like the echo of remembered guns. The French government was thrown into confusion, some deputies called for immediate military action, others urged restraint. The British government still dithered, sent messages to France that no action should be taken until the matter had been given full consideration and then decided, considerately, that nothing should be done about it anyway. As one newspaper commented, ‘Hitler had merely re-occupied his own backyard.’
