Two Silver Crosses, page 28
On April 27th, 1937, German bombers, Heinkel 1—11s and Junker 52s, escorted by fighters, attacked a market town called Guernica, first dropping high explosive bombs, then incendiaries, and then strafing it with machine-gun fire. The town was crowded because it was market day but, what was worse, it was completely undefended. Even in the most hideous days of the Great War neither side had ever deliberately gone out to bomb civilians.
The shock of the news affected everyone, and people pored over the newspapers. Even Aunt Grace took an interest and read out the details at the supper table, her eyes round with horror behind her glasses.
‘Hark at this, Ruby,’ she said, folding the paper so that she could lift it up into the light.
‘“They bombed and bombed and bombed,” said the mayor. One reporter, who arrived in the city soon after the planes had left, said, “As we drew nearer, on both sides of the mad, men, women and children were sitting dazed.” Dreadful! “I saw a priest in one group, his clothes in tatters. He couldn’t talk. He just pointed to the flames, still about four miles away, then whispered…” Something in Spanish. Can’t make it out. “In the city soldiers were collecting charred bodies.” Imagine that. Poor devils! “They were sobbing like children. There were flames and smoke and grit, and the smell of burning human flesh was nauseating. Houses were collapsing into the inferno. It was impossible to go down many of the streets, because they were walls of flame. Debris was piled high. The shocked survivors all had the same story to tell: aeroplanes, bullets, bombs, fire.”
‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to an’ that’s a fact.’
‘Same as it was coming to last time,’ Stan said morosely, laying his own newspaper beside his plate. ‘You’d a thought we’d all’ve had enough of it.’
‘That’s the Jerries for yer.’ Grandpa Jones said, taking a moon-shaped bite out of his bread and marge. ‘Never could trust the Jerries. Bomb you soon as look at you, they would.’
‘Those poor people!’ Ruby said. ‘You imagine it.’
Charlie said nothing. He was facing the fact that another war was possible and that, if it came, they would all be in it. If bombers could attack this Guernica place what was to stop them dropping bombs on London? Or Paris? Or Amiens? Or anywhere else they wanted?
‘It’s a bad business,’ his father said, mopping the last of the gravy from his plate with a chunk of bread. No good dwellin’ on it, though. Only makes you morbid. I’m off up the pub for a quick one. You comin’, Charlie?’
Best place, Charlie thought, and followed his father.
There was something unreal about their stroll to The Windmill that evening. As they crossed the road, sunset dropped grey-blue shadows across the familiar green and stained the sky pink above the chestnut trees — but the gentle colour made Charlie think of fires. There was a cheerful whirr of trams along Southside and the chirrup of small boys sailing their boats on the pond, but he was thinking; this could be destroyed — ‘houses collapsing’, ‘the smell of burning human flesh’, ‘they bombed and bombed and bombed’. As he walked into the pub, he found himself praying, Please God, don’t let it happen here. Not in London. And certainly not in France.
In his kitchen in Boves, Old Joliot was holding forth about the Maginot Line. He had spread a map of Europe across the table and, using a broken bean stick as a pointer, he was lecturing his women.
‘Regardez,’ he commanded. ‘Look at it, mes petites. Formidable, n’est-ce-pas?’
The three women looked at the map obediently, but they weren’t paying attention. Ginny and Emily were thinking about the letters that had arrived for them that morning, Hortense was planning the next day’s spring cleaning and although Cousin Berthe was hanging on his every word, her normally bland face ecstatic, she didn’t understand what he was saying at all.
‘If we’ve got to face the German army,’ Old Joliot said, ‘this is the way to do it. Underground, d’you see, in a series of forts. Impregnable. When I think of the trenches, how exposed we were. Terrible. All those poor boys. Two metres they’d go and then rat-a-tat-tat, blown to bits. Hands, legs, bits of bodies everywhere. Now look at this.’ He traced the length of the line with his stick. ‘Three hundred kilometres from end to end they say. D’you see? And now I show you pictures taken inside one of the forts. Voilá!’
Ginny examined the pictures — the rows of neat soldiers sitting bolt upright in trains no bigger than toys, the bright electric light, clean, concrete tunnels. But she was thinking, this isn’t war. War was what was happening in Spain.
Mauricette had written to her that very morning with the news that it wasn’t just Guernica that had been under attack. Madrid was being shelled, too. ‘And still we won’t help the Spanish government,’ she’d written angrily. ‘It is an abomination.’ A demonstration was being organised. Her group was enraged, she said, absolutely enraged. As to herself…
Oh, my dear friend, I am desolated. My dear fine Gérard is threatening to go to Spain to fight for the government. What if he were killed? I couldn’t bear it. How can I persuade him against such idiocy? We’ve told him the group won’t be able to function without him. He takes no notice.
Ginny wrote back by return to comfort her friend, but she couldn’t think of anything to say to dissuade Gérard. ‘Don’t stop him, Mauricette,’ she wrote. ‘If he wants to go, he will.’ Ten days later she was proved right.
Despite the war in Spain, it was a wonderful summer for the Holborn twins. At the beginning of May, Emily went to stay with Mauricette for a fortnight and, as he’d promised, Charlie came over for a long weekend every three weeks, throughout May and June (when he wasn’t taking examinations) and, then, in July and August. The weather was miraculous. He and Ginny spent Saturday and Sunday in Boulogne, eating well, kissing whenever they wanted, which was very often indeed, and sleeping inches away from one another on either side of their chaste wall.
The strain this arrangement put on Charlie Commoner was formidable, but despite his frustration, he was proud of his ability to resist the ultimate temptation. At the end of August they planned to spend an entire holiday together. Fourteen whole days and nights! The thought of it made him ache with an exquisite combination of desire and hope.
Apart from his exams (and he really hadn’t paid much attention to them) the only real snag that summer was that he never got any answers to his advertisements. He put one into every single local paper in every town he visited and left stamped and addressed envelopes for the return of information. None ever came back. Every week he wrote to Mrs Everdale to report his lack of progress and her answers were always so patient and hopeful that he felt ashamed to be achieving nothing. Eventually it was the beginning of August and he had to confess to her that there was only Amiens left to visit.
I have been there before, as you know, he wrote, trying to be positive, but on that occasion I only advertised in two of the local papers and there are actually five of them. This time, I will place advertisements in every paper that is on sale. I have very good hopes of success in Amiens, considering that so many of Miss Babbacombe’s postcards were posted there and I trust I shall be sending you good news very soon. I shall be away in France for two weeks on my summer holiday at the end of August, but I will write to you from there should anything happen.
What actually happened was something he hadn’t expected at all. In the first week of August the examination results were posted, and he learned to his horror that he had failed two of the papers.
For the first time ever, Jack Bond had passed all his.
‘Can’t understand it, old thing,’ he said. ‘I thought it was a doddle. It must have been, for me to pass.’
‘What will happen now?’ Charlie said.
‘Nothing much,’ his friend reassured him. ‘You’ll probably have to re-sit. In November. That’s what I’ve always done. Go and see Mr C. He’ll tell you.’
Mr Crabbit was surprisingly sanguine. ‘You made a right pig’s ear of that,’ he said cheerfully.
Charlie was still feeling pretty demoralised. ‘Yes, sir. I know.’
‘Happens to all of us at one time or another. Just make sure you pass the re-sits. That’s all. Now how’s the search for the Holborn twins coming along?’
‘Not good,’ Charlie said ruefully. ‘There’s only Amiens left.’
‘Ah well, you’d better find them there, hadn’t you?’
‘Yes sir. I hope so.’
That night he wrote a long, miserable letter to Jeannie telling her that he’d failed his exams, promising to pass them next time and assuring her that it wouldn’t make all that much difference to the time they had to wait before they could get married. ‘A few more months, that’s all.’
He was very relieved when she wrote back to say how sorry she was to hear his news and that she was sure he’d pass the second time round — and, anyway, their holiday was the important thing. ‘Fourteen whole days together. I can’t wait.’
Ginny hadn’t mentioned anything about his search for the heiresses, but that didn’t concern him, because she rarely showed any interest in it. The holiday loomed so large in his dreams and his plans that it wasn’t long before he’d forgotten about everything else, even the re-sits.
Actually Ginny was deliberately ignoring his search. After their silly row in Paris she’d decided to let him get on with it and meet him when the week’s work was done and finished with. What were two stupid heiresses to her? They gave him the opportunity to travel to France at regular intervals and for that she was grateful to them. Otherwise they weren’t important. What was worrying her was that she had told Maman that she was going to spend her summer holiday with Mauricette.
‘It’s terrible to be telling her lies,’ she said to Emily. ‘But what else could I do?’
‘I wish we’d told her all about it at the beginning,’ Emily said sadly.
‘It’s no good wishing that now,’ Ginny said. ‘We didn’t. So we’ve got to find some way to break it to her gently.’
What could they say? They’d rehearsed all the alternatives over and over again that summer and none of them would do. One possibility was to tell Maman they had made friends with some English people — but they weren’t supposed to talk or write to anyone from England. What if they said they had met some friends of Mauricette’s? No, that would be a lie and it was no good starting a confession with a lie. And if they hinted that they thought they might be falling in love, that would provoke such a row it didn’t bear thinking about.
In the end, they said nothing because Maman seemed determined not to give them the chance.
She agreed with Ginny, at once, that a holiday with Mauricette would be a very good thing. ‘You go, ma chérie,’ she said. ‘You are twenty-one now. Years of discretion, n’est-cepas? Even among your political friends I can trust you to behave well. Eh bien, we will all take a holiday this year. It will do us all good. Berthe and Emily and I will crop our little harvest in the early morning and then we’ll rush through the housework, and after that we can sit in the sun all afternoon and be thoroughly idle. We won’t listen to the radio and we won’t read any newspapers. All they ever talk about is this wretched war, which is altogether too disagreeable. We’ll sit in the sun and be peaceful.’
So it was all arranged. Ginny said goodbye to her family early on Saturday morning and half an hour later she and Charlie were travelling to Boulogne — and freedom.
Charlie had recovered his good spirits and was feeling very pleased with himself that morning. He’d been in Amiens all day Friday and hard at work. The advertisement was placed in every single local paper and would run in the weekend editions for the following two weeks. Stamped addressed envelopes had been left for the answers. He had done his very best for Mrs Everdale. Now, he thought, as he and Jeannie settled themselves as comfortably as they could on their wooden seats, there must be some answers. Somebody somewhere must see the name.
But the person who might have seen the name wasn’t looking. A newspaper did infiltrate Old Joliot’s cottage later that week, but it was wrapped around a bundle of rhubarb from the advocate’s garden — and Hortense was much too busy cutting the long red sticks into cubes to bother about reading advertisements.
Chapter 19
The port of Boulogne was riding out a summer storm, the grey houses round the harbour stolid against a fury of green seas and white spume, their windows stabbed by needles of wind-hurled rain. On the hill above the town the black dome of Notre Dame basilica shone in the wet and the roofs of the old Ville Haute seemed to huddle under the menace of a sky heavy with cloud, which uncurled at visible speed and trailed long dark fringes whipped to tatters by the wind. Battling in to harbour with the morning’s catch, the boats of the fishing fleet were tossed like corks on the heavy swell and the herring gulls, which usually followed them wheeling and screaming for fish, now rode the choppy water like battered flotsam. There was a pulse of elemental energy about the place, a sense that anything could happen, at any moment.
‘Come on,’ Charlie said, charging from the station. ‘I don’t know about you, but I could do with some breakfast. I’m starving.’
Cracking their coats like whips, the wind blew them straight to Madame Boulanger’s. Madame was standing behind the counter chatting to the concierge from the tenement next door.
‘Your lovers are returned, I see,’ the concierge observed.
‘For two weeks this time,’ Madame said, watching them as they settled into their favourite corner.
‘They love one another to distraction,’ the concierge said. ‘You have only to look at them to know that.’
‘And yet they still sleep in separate rooms. Poor fools.’
‘He is English, is he not?’
‘More’s the pity.’
‘I understand you, Madame. If he were French, there would be no such nonsense.’
‘Indeed not.’
‘The folly of love!’ the concierge sighed. ‘But who are we to argue with idealism?’
‘They are ready to order,’ Madame said, and eased her bulk from behind the counter. ‘Bonjour M’sieur, Ma’moiselle.’
‘Bonjour,’ Ginny said happily. ‘Here we are again. At the same table.’
‘En vacances,’ Charlie said, trying out his French.
‘The same table and the same rooms,’ Ginny said.
‘Alors!’ Madame said. ‘The same table. That is no problem. But as to the rooms, I am afraid they are not available. You may have them for the weekend, comme d’habitude, but during the week, they are reserved for my regulars.’
Ginny was so upset by the news that she could only echo Madame’s words. ‘Your regulars?’
‘Commercial travellers, my dear,’ Madame explained. ‘They come to me month after month, you understand. There was a change of plan at the last minute, in consequence the rooms are needed this week. It is a great pity for you, I understand that. However all is not lost. There is still the front room, the one you and your mother rented. That is vacant for the next two weeks. You are more than welcome there.’
‘What is it?’ Charlie asked. Madame’s French was too rapid for him to understand and he could see that Ginny was upset by what was being said.
Ginny explained in English. ‘We can’t have our usual rooms. She’s offering us another one instead.’
‘One?’ Charlie said, thinking, My God! Are we going to share a room at last?
‘It’s got two beds,’ Ginny hastened to explain. ‘We could… I mean we needn’t… What I mean is…’
‘We’ll see it,’ Charlie said to Madame in French.
‘Of course. When you are ready, I will take you up. Enjoy your breakfast, Monsieur, Mademoiselle.’
Nothing had changed in the room. Even the wallpaper was the same. Ginny remembered the pattern so well, the sharp pink rosebuds and those ghostly blue leaves. There were the same old sun-faded curtains, the same pink washbowl and ewer, the soap dish that didn’t match, the single bed tucked into its corner, the double bed dominating the room, dominating her thoughts, paralysing her tongue.
Charlie was cheerfully in command. ‘We will take it, Madame,’ he said. And, feeling he ought to try to make the situation look respectable, ‘Nous nous sommes fiancé.’
‘But of course,’ Madame said, answering both his observations at the same time. ‘There is no need to wait until midday. Not with this room. You may take occupation at once, if you wish.’ And left them.
Ginny was still looking anxious.
‘I can sleep in the single bed,’ Charlie said, ‘if you’d rather…’
‘Yes,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘That would look better, wouldn’t it?’
‘Not that anyone’s going to see,’ he said, putting his arms round her.
‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘It’s just…’
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I know what it is. Look you’re quite safe with me.’ And he kissed her to prove it.
‘I wouldn’t want anything to get back to Maman,’ she said, between kisses.
‘Well, it won’t, so you can stop worrying. We’re all on our own and we’re going to be well behaved and sleep in separate beds. Yours is rather splendid, don’t you think? Bit religious, though.’
She followed the direction of his gaze. ‘It’s only a crucifix.’
‘Over the bed?’
‘Yes. Why not? Lots of people have them there.’
‘They don’t in England. And what’s this?’ He was looking at the headboard.
‘That’s a stoup,’ she explained, opening her case. ‘For holy water. There’s one on each side. Do you see?’ And as he still looked puzzled. ‘For when you say your prayers.’
He suddenly realised. ‘You’re a Catholic.’
She was hanging up her clothes in the wardrobe. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Most people are. France is a Catholic country.’
