The Child Left Behind (21 page)

With the men gone, the women grew closer, though they began to wonder after a few weeks if France was at war at all. Merchant ships carrying vital foodstuffs were sunk, and so things were in short supply, in the shops, but that was all. Christmas was very meagre, but they managed. The men’s letters spoke of boredom and activities to fill their off-duty hours, and the only thing they complained of was the cold, which was intense at night. They were all looking forward to the spring.

Worry for Xavier was constantly in Bridgette’s mind, despite his claims that there was nothing for her to fret over, so at first when she didn’t get her monthly bleed, she put it down to her emotional state. It was when she started to feel nauseous in the morning that she realised she might be expecting a baby.

Marie had been aware that there had been no linen pads disappearing from the chest for some time and she had dared to hope herself, because she knew that a child was the one thing that Bridgette and Xavier wanted. When Bridgette confided in her, she put her arms around her in delight.

‘It had to be now,’ Bridgette grumbled. ‘With
the country at war and the child’s father not even around.’

‘Huh,’ said Marie, with a chuckle. ‘The one thing I have learned about babies over the years is that they seldom come at an opportune time. You take yourself off to see the doctor and make sure, and then write and tell Xavier. I know my son and, whether he is here or not, he will be delighted at the thought of becoming a father.’

And Xavier was beside himself with joy. His concern was all for Bridgette. She had to take care of herself, eat well and healthily, and give up the work in the shop because she needed plenty of rest.

He wrote in the same vein to his mother, but when Marie asked Bridgette if she wanted to stop working in the shop she said, ‘No, I don’t. What on earth would I do with myself all day? The baby isn’t due until August and anyway, the work is not arduous, especially as trade has dropped off considerably of late.’

Marie was only too aware of that. The downturn had begun just after the official declaration of war, although they had had a little upsurge just before Christmas. It affected Maurice even more. Women must have also decided that a hat in wartime was too frivolous a purchase, and he had such little trade that he had let the boy go that he had taken on to train. Most of his work now was revamping old hats to give them a new lease of life. This, of course, did not pay well, and Marie
was seriously concerned how much longer they could continue in business.

Finding decent food to feed anyone, quite apart from a pregnant woman, was difficult too because of the shortages. You ate what they had in and made the best of it, or did without. Bridgette didn’t burden Xavier with those concerns, though, and just emphasised how much she was looking forward to the birth of the baby.

Rumours about the progress of the war were flying as spring approached. In the end, Maurice went out and bought a wireless. As the warmer days took hold, the dress shop had had a little surge again as women bought pretty underwear and lighter dresses. Maurice had even sold a few new hats as Easter approached.

Just over a fortnight after Easter, on a Thursday evening, the Laurents learned of the invasion of Denmark and Norway. Lisette had come over, as she did some evenings, her mother-in-law being only too happy to listen out for the children. The four adults, gathered around the wireless, looked at each other fearfully.

‘Norway had been warned by the British,’ Maurice grumbled. ‘Think they might have put up more of a fight. I mean, not to mine the fiords was madness. There were British warships in the area, according to what they said on the wireless, and they would have gone to their aid.’

‘I think,’ Marie said, ‘neither Denmark nor
Norway was prepared for the might and precision of the German armies. It makes you wonder, is any country prepared for it?’

The question hung in the air for a few moments and then Lisette said, ‘I wonder what Hitler’s next move will be.’

‘Yes,’ Maurice replied. ‘Praise God that we have the Maginot Line.’

About four weeks later Hitler struck again. The attacks were before dawn on Friday 10 May, and the stunned French people read in their newspapers in disbelief of a German offensive that had left their country wide open. The German armies had ignored the Maginot Line and instead one company had seized first Eben-Emael, the underground fort in Belgium. It was said to be impregnable, but the Germans got around that by landing 400 paratroopers on top of it. The fort was there to protect three strategic bridges, the main defence of Belgium and Holland.

Despite a spirited response by the surprised Allies, the fort was in German hands in twenty-four hours, allowing German soldiers, tanks and other military vehicles free access into the Low Countries. Luxembourg, with no defences to speak of, surrendered and the government fled to London.

Another sizable company of German soldiers also ploughed their way through the Ardennes forest. The French army were fighting for their lives, the broadcaster said, although they had barely sufficient resources.

‘You know why, don’t you?’ Maurice said as he snapped off the wireless almost angrily. ‘They hadn’t expected any attack through that. We were told that it was a natural barrier and we believed them.’

‘Maybe it was, once,’ Bridgette said. ‘But modern tanks might have been able to cope with it better.’

‘You have it, my dear,’ Maurice said. ‘We cannot hope to win a war based on tactics from a war fought twenty years ago.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘France has made a grave mistake and that mistake could be very costly.’

Four days later, there was a massive raid on Rotterdam. According to the man on the wireless, who sounded totally stunned, it lasted for two and a half hours and it was estimated that almost 1,000 people had been killed, many many thousands more injured and 50,000 were homeless. The reporter said that Allies, moving in to help, were hampered by the streams of people trying to leave the city, and both they and the troops had been constantly strafed by machine-gun fire from the ever-circling Stukas.

That same evening, still coming to terms with the appalling loss of life in Holland, the Laurents learned that the Germans had broken through the French defences. The invaders, who had ridden rough-shod over so many countries, were now going to march through France. In fact it was no
surprise, because the family, like many, had heard the gunfire growing closer and closer and the relentless drone of planes overhead.

‘They’ll never hold them,’ Maurice said with pursed lips. ‘They’ll be in Paris before we know it.’

Out of the corner of her eye, Bridgette caught sight of Marie as she glared at her husband and shook her head sharply.

‘Don’t try to shield me, Marie,’ Bridgette said. ‘This is absolutely dreadful news, but I really need to know everything. We are all involved. I’m sure Lisette would agree.’

‘I would,’ Lisette said. ‘In fact, I would go further and say that now these savages are in our country, I will not come here often in the evening. My mother-in-law will be too nervous and I should hesitate to leave the children anyway. I think we know what cruelty the Germans are capable of.’

‘Ah, yes, my dear,’ Marie said. ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘In fact,’ Lisette said. ‘I will do as Edmund suggested long ago and buy my own wireless.’

‘I get a cold dead feeling inside me every time I think of Xavier and Edmund out there,’ said Bridgette.

‘That’s perfectly natural, my dear,’ Maurice said. ‘I am worried too about both men. But I take heart in the fact that if anything happened to them, we would be informed by the military.’

‘I know that that is what should happen,’ Bridgette replied. ‘I just think that this isn’t a fight
on some tidy battlefield, but spread out across various areas. They are under attack from soldiers on the ground, bombs and machine-gun bullets from the air.’ Her voice was becoming dangerously high. ‘Have they the least idea how many soldiers are stretched out by the roadside outside Rotterdam, shot down as they tried to help the fleeing people?’

No one spoke, for there was nothing to say.

No one was surprised either when the Dutch Commander-in-Chief, Queen Wilhelmina, surrendered the next day and she and her government flew to England.

When Bridgette visited her mother, they spoke of the terrible things happening all around them.

‘The hardest thing in the world is waiting to hear from a loved one, as you are,’ Gabrielle said. ‘Throughout history that’s what women seem to have done.’

‘You can’t possibly know how the longing to hear from Xavier almost overwhelms me at times,’ Bridgette said.

Gabrielle knew only too well, for she had experienced those feelings herself, but she blinked the tears from her eyes and swallowed deeply before saying, ‘I can imagine, Bridgette and your unhappiness is almost tangible. Try not to worry too much. You have the child to think of.’

‘I know, Maman,’ Bridgette said fervently. ‘And though I long for the baby to be born, I know it will be another to fret about.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Gabrielle said. ‘From the minute a child is born, it takes away a piece of your heart. I had a letter from Yvette today and they are sending their sons out of Paris to a cousin of Henri’s in the countryside.’

‘Why?’

‘Yvette is afraid of Raoul being sent to a labour camp, and Gerard in his turn. She feels they will be safer there for now.’

Bridgette shook her head helplessly. ‘No one knows what to do for the best these days. All we know is that the enemy is at the gate. I fear the country I know and love is going to be destroyed before my eyes.’

People from the coastal towns and villages began arriving in St-Omer, driven out by the advance of the German armies. They told of meeting bedraggled lines of Allies marching towards the coast and the roads strewn with discarded vehicles of every description and even some large guns.

There was no official news on the wireless other than that odd message on BBC World Service almost a couple of weeks before. Bridgette translated it and said it was from the Admiralty requesting all owners of self-propelled pleasure craft between thirty and a hundred foot in length to send specifications to the Admiralty within fourteen days. At the time it had made no sense.

A couple of weeks on, Maurice was sure that Allied soldiers were in retreat, disabling equipment and vehicles en route.

‘But where could they retreat to?’ Bridgette said. ‘There are only the beaches.’

‘And no naval ships could get near them there,’
Maurice said. ‘That’s what they wanted those small boats for—to try to lift the soldiers off before the Germans curl round and encircle them. Either way, I fear it is too late now for France. Our battle is already lost.’

‘What d’you think they will do to any soldiers they capture?’ Bridgette said. ‘Will they take them all back to Germany as prisoners of war?’

Maurice couldn’t meet Bridgette’s eyes as he mumbled, ‘Aye, they may well do that.’

Marie knew Maurice didn’t believe that for an instant, and neither did she. She guessed that many on the beaches would never leave them alive, and Xavier and Edmund could easily be two of them. She could say none of this; Bridgette was agitated enough.

‘Don’t take on so,’ she pleaded with Bridgette. ‘Think of the baby.’

‘I am thinking of the baby,’ Bridgette said almost harshly. ‘And of the baby’s father, who I might never see again.’

On 3 June there was the roar of many German planes in the air. The noise and sight of them struck fear into the townspeople, yet St-Omer was not their target and they passed over towards Paris. They heard the noise of the ensuing Blitz and trembled in fear for the people there, especially Yvette and Henri. Bridgette realised how sensible they had been to send their sons away.

They heard on the wireless of the people
streaming out of Paris, fleeing south, pursued and strafed mercilessly by the German Stukas until, it was said, the roads were lined with bodies and ran with blood. Bridgette studied the grainy newsprint pictures in the paper and saw they were bodies of the old, of women and children, and of dogs and cats, obviously family pets, and there were dead donkeys still shackled to their carts.

She was glad when they heard that Yvette and Henri, who took shelter in a cellar, were unhurt, but she wept over the pictures of people who hadn’t been so lucky. She realised with sick horror that a nation that could attack innocent civilians in that way would have no mercy for the trapped Allies on the beaches.

However, a few days later she heard Winston Churchill talking on the BBC World Service about Operation Dynamo, which was what they called the evacuation from the Dunkirk beaches, using small boats to ferry the men to the naval ships waiting in deeper water. She also heard that well over 300,000 Allied troops had been rescued, and that included over 140,000 French troops, and she prayed that Xavier was one of those.

For France, however, the war was over. The President resigned and the rest of the French Government fled to Bordeaux on 11 June, and Philippe Pétain was asked to form a new government. On 16 June Italy declared war on France, attacking from the south through the Riviera, and the following day Pétain applied for an armistice
with Germany. A furious General de Gaulle left Bordeaux for Britain.

While they were still digesting this distressing news, Lisette brought a letter she’d received from Edmund, written from a military hospital in Britain. He had been one of the 140,000 French men lifted from the beaches at Dunkirk and had been injured, which was why he hadn’t written sooner. However, he told them, Xavier had been killed as they stood on the makeshift pier waiting for one of the smaller boats to carry them out to the troop ships.

Bridgette received the news in horrified silence. She had known, as the news worsened, that it was possible that Xavier hadn’t made it to safety, but she had clung to the tiniest glimmer of hope, telling herself that she would have been informed if anything had happened to him. Now that hope was gone, and she gave a cry like a wounded animal, doubling over as the acute pain in her stomach matched the one in her heart, which she felt had shattered into a million pieces.

She continued to shout and scream and thrash out at Marie and Maurice, who were in tears themselves, and trying to hold her. Lisette took one look at her distressed friend and ran for the doctor. Before he arrived, Bridgette felt the stickiness between her legs. She looked down with horror and saw blood dripping onto the floor and pooling around her feet. Marie saw it at the same time and acted with speed. She had Bridgette in bed in minutes, packed around with towels.

The sight of the blood and what it might mean had stopped Bridgette’s screams, but sent her into shock. She trembled all over and the desolation in her eyes, standing out in her white face, brought tears to Marie’s. But she brushed them away impatiently, sat by Bridgette’s side and held her hand tight.

‘You’ll be all right,’ she told her. ‘The doctor will be here shortly.’

He was just in time to deliver Bridgette’s baby. It was a little girl, small, beautiful and perfect, and quite dead.

Bridgette couldn’t believe it. She had known it was too early for her to give birth, but for a perfect baby to be stillborn…People were speaking to her, holding her, but she was unaware of them. There was room in her mind for one thing and one thing only, and that was hatred of the Germans who had taken first her beloved husband and then her precious baby. Now she would have no part of Xavier and she knew if she lived to be a hundred she would never forgive them.

The next morning, when Bridgette came to from a drug-induced sleep, it was too much effort to open her eyes. She lay in the darkened room and knew that what she wanted more than anything was to be able to float away from this harsh and cruel world and be with her beloved Xavier again.

She remembered the golden future they had once mapped out, which now lay like dust beneath her
feet, and she gave a small gasp as a sudden pang of loss pierced her heart like a shard of glass. Marie, dozing in a chair, was roused enough to open her own saddened, rheumy eyes and she leaned forward and said gently, ‘Bridgette?’

Bridgette heard, but when she tried to open her eyes they were too heavy. The watching Marie had seen the fluttering movements behind the lids, however, and she stroked her face so very gently.

‘I know how you are feeling, my love,’ she almost whispered. ‘I am sorrow-laden myself.’

At her words, tears seeped from beneath Bridgette’s closed lashes and then slowly she peeled her lids back. Marie wanted to recoil from the anguish in those beautiful, amber eyes, which she fastened on her as she said, ‘What am I to do, Marie? How am I to bear such sorrow?’

‘By taking each day as it comes,’ Marie said. ‘It is the only way.’

Bridgette shook her head. ‘I don’t think I can.’

Marie took hold of Bridgette’s hands in her own and said earnestly, ‘You will because there is no alternative. And you will not be alone in your sadness. Maurice and I have lost a much-loved son, and Lisette, the brother she has always adored. And that is not to mention the loss of the child, who could have been consolation for us in our bleaker moments.’

‘I can’t tell you how much I loved Xavier,’ Bridgette cried. ‘There will never be another like him.’

‘And you will never forget him,’ Marie said. ‘He will lodge forever in your heart.’

Bridgette closed her overflowing eyes and sighed heavily. Deep pain filled every part of her until it seemed to be seeping out of her very pores. She couldn’t see the point of living, knowing there would never be anyone special in her life ever again and she would never hold her own child in her arms. The future stretching out before her seemed sterile and of no purpose, and suddenly overwhelmed by everything, she turned her head to the pillow and cried as if her heart was broken, and Marie cried with her.

Eventually Bridgette left her bed and began to take up the threads of life again, but she was a shadow of her former self.

‘She is standing there doing and saying all the right things,’ Marie said to Maurice and Lisette, ‘but it is as if the essence of her has gone.’

Lisette thought her mother had put it well. Bridgette now carried an aura of sadness around with her. In fact, the only thing she became impassioned about were the Germans occupying the town, and she didn’t care who knew of her hatred of them, for all Marie and Maurice begged to be more circumspect. She had no fear of them because she felt that she had nothing more to lose.

Throughout that golden summer, their insidious presence was everywhere. Jackboots ringing on the cobbled streets, the black and menacing swastikas
fluttering from every public building in the town, and arrogant Gestapo officers stopping people at whim. They were hated and feared, along with the SS officers, and with reason. They were known to be brutal and had immense power.

The occupying German soldiers liked to flirt with the girls and young women of the town. This made Bridgette’s skin crawl and she was disgusted by those who played along with their oppressors, even going so far as to fawn around them. She could barely keep the contempt from her voice if she was forced to speak, but usually they were amused by her response and that angered her still further.

From early summer, the French expected Hitler’s armies to invade Britain, for they had amassed a fair armada of vessels to cross the Channel: barges, cargo ships, motorboats and even tugs.

‘And when that happens,’ Maurice said, ‘Britain will fall under Nazi dominance as well. How can one small country like that hold out when other, bigger powers have fallen?’

However, by the autumn, nothing had happened and the rumour was that for the invasion to be a success, the Luftwaffe had to disable the Royal Air Force and it was reported that many on the coast had witnessed dogfights between the two forces, but the RAF seemed as strong as ever and so the invasion plans had been put on hold.

It was the only cheering news. Life for most
French people was hard under Nazi rule. Food was getting even scarcer in the shops now that much was shipped back to Germany, and the towns also often had to provide food for occupying officers. One cold autumn day, Bridgette had gone into St-Omer with a basket and a few francs in her purse to queue for anything she saw that they could use for a meal.

However, when she saw the lines of people being herded towards the railway station, urged on none too gently with the butts of the guns the Germans guards carried, she was intrigued. ‘Where are they taking them?’ she asked a passer-by.

He gave a typical Gallic shrug. ‘They are Jews. Who knows where they go? Germany, I suppose.’

Some of the trudging people were neighbours Bridgette recognised. A few had owned businesses in the town, some women had babies in their arms and others children no older than Jean-Paul and Leonie. Some of the babies were wailing, children sniffling and the elderly being helped along by younger relatives. In horrified fascination Bridgette followed them to the station, where she saw them being packed into windowless cattle trucks. So many of them pushed one against the other.

The people were crying in earnest now, shouting and protesting, but some were whimpering in an abject fear that was so profound it could almost be smelled. How long did it take to get to Germany, or wherever it was they were making for, and how would all those people breathe, Bridgette
wondered. One elderly Jew seemed to have similar thoughts and as he approached the trucks he made a dash for it, running back the way he had come, pushing past the people. The guard by the train did not hesitate: a shot rang out and the old man folded onto the cobbles.

A gasp of shock rippled through those watching and Bridgette espied an old woman struggling to leave the truck, shrieking and screaming. She guessed the old man was her husband. She was being restrained by a young man who obviously didn’t want her to face the same fate. Then the guard, seeing the commotion, hit her on the side of the head with the butt of his rifle. The old woman sagged forward, her head spurting blood, but the press of people was such that she didn’t fall.

Bridgette turned her head away in disgust, but she was incensed at the injustice of it. She didn’t blame the old man for being so panic-ridden—the thought of being incarcerated in one of those trucks filled her with horror—but there was no need to kill him so mercilessly and then abuse his wife. The other guards pushing the people on had no shame or thought for the man either, for one of them callously kicked him into the gutter and the shuffling people averted their eyes from the crumpled heap on the ground.

‘It is happening in France now like it has happened in other occupied countries,’ Marie said when Bridgette told them what she had witnessed.

‘It’s monstrous to treat people like that,’ Bridgette said, still incensed. ‘I didn’t even know some of the people they were leading away were Jews.’

‘No,’ Marie said sadly. ‘And some of them don’t think of themselves as Jews either.’

‘And we all stood there, every one of us, and no one said a word about it,’ Bridgette said. ‘I wanted to, maybe others did too, but I was afraid. What sort of a coward does that make me?’

‘You did the right thing,’ Marie said. ‘You couldn’t have stopped it.’

‘I don’t know,’ Bridgette said. ‘Maybe if I had spoken out, others might have got the courage to do the same.’

Marie grasped Bridgette’s hands. ‘It would have changed nothing,’ she said. ‘Listen to me. We are living through very dangerous times and we cannot stop anything these monsters want to do.’

Bridgette sighed. ‘Oh God, Marie, what a sad, sad world we are living in.’

In mid-December, Bridgette again went into the town to try to get some food for the festive season, and if possible a toy of some sort for Jean-Paul and Leonie, but there was so few things in the shops that she was getting quite desperate. She knew she would have to go to the bakery and take the flour her mother always pressed on her. ‘We have plenty,’ she would say.