is nothing behind the facades but planks of wood and trestles, holding up a front. Paris is hollow and if you knocked upon its dome with a hammer you’d only hear an echo. There are two dogs trotting down the Rue de ha Bienfaisance, sniffing at the closed doors.
I don’t remember the moment they came. But I can see those wretched flags everywhere, on almost every building. I am standing on the Champs-Elysees watching a parade. They did that every day with a full military band. At some point they even landed a plane on the Place de la Concorde. They were great ones for letting you know they were there, the Germans. Hitler turned up at some point but I have no recollection of it whatsoever, which is gratifying.
At first they were extremely polite, which surprised everyone. And that’s not all. I remember seeing a truck by one of the bridges, with soldiers leaning out of the back charming the girls with jokes and chocolate. With some success, I might add. I think it was Simone de Beauvoir who said now that they were here there were going to be lots of little Germans running around.
What else? A curfew, the hours sometimes changing. Shots in the night. Queuing endlessly for food. Everyone awfully hungry. Bicycles everywhere, because special permits were required to drive (Jacques’ father got one because he was a doctor). People heaving cases along the pavement or using a wheelbarrow That was daily life under the Germans.
I know it doesn’t sound so bad to you, seeing the war as you must from its outcome. But for those of us who were there, the fall of Paris, the fall of France, was devastating. From the moment they came and soiled our streets the mourning began. I cannot tell you how dark those times seem to me. And all around the Germans were on holiday That’s another memory I have. I can see lots of young soldiers larking about, taking photographs of each other in front of the Arc de Triomphe. Some of them have an army-issue guidebook.
I think it is the frailty of time that brings people together. When you don’t know if you will even see the year out, and you’ve lost a great deal, you seize what happiness comes by In those days, we all held on to each other in different ways. For Jacques and me there was a strange, satisfying desperation about our coming together, as if we were one step ahead of misfortune. One evening Madame Klein, trying to winkle an admission out of me, said, ‘I expect you see rather a lot of young Fougeres?’ I said I did. She said, ‘I suspect he rather likes you.’ And I told her to stop it. She was a terrible schemer, that woman.
But then we both got a big surprise, way beyond her suspicions and my expectations. I became pregnant.
1st May.
My generation doesn’t talk about this sort of thing. Things got out of hand. It only happened once but, as you will appreciate, that’s all it takes.
Jacques displayed his Catholic entrails, as Father Rochet put it, offering to marry me within the week, As he spoke I all of a sudden saw him dressed in a respectable black uniform, safely behind the rail of a huge ship, throwing me one of those circular life rings. Standing over his shoulder was a severe captain, his eyes concealed by shadow Then he was just earnest Jacques again, alone with me by the windmill in Montmartre. I said no, not yet. I’ve never been that good at giving explanations so I described my picture. He couldn’t see what I was trying to say I said, ‘Give it time.’
Jacques’ family were the best kind of Catholic — principles never interfered with practice. They welcomed me and our child for what we were — part of their fold. Madame Fougeres was very pleased: she already had one grandchild from Claude, a boy named Etienne. One day she said, they’d play together.
I suppose it was a very modern arrangement. I lived overlooking Parc Monceau and Jacques was a stone s throw away on the Boulevard de Courcelles. Our infant was happily tossed between the two households. So I think we would have married, eventually In all that matters he was an utterly devoted father, but he clung to wilful ignorance when faced with the more unpleasant chores of parenting — like most men I have known (including Freddie).
Notwithstanding the ‘Not yet’ to marriage, I did agree to a baptism, if only because I wanted Father Rochet to place his hands upon my boy All I remember about the ceremony is sticking my head around the parlour door afterwards and seeing him alone with my baby I instantly thought of that story by Maupassant, ‘Le Bapteme’, about the lonely priest caught crying over an infant. That was 21st April 1941.
I have said nothing about Victor. He found out about Jacques and me by chance. And it was ironic that he should stumble upon us in the way he did. I said in passing to Father Rochet that an anti-Semitic exhibition had just opened in Paris,’ Le Juif et la France’. He told me to keep well away from such filth. But Jacques and I decided to go anyway On the day, Victor suggested going over to Saint-Germain-des-Pres to hobnob with the intellectuals solving the problems of France in a cafe. Jacques and I made our different excuses, met up secretly and headed off. Who did we meet at the exhibition? Victor. And for reasons best known to himself, Father Rochet had urged him to go.
After that I have only two or three other memories of Victor. When I told him I was pregnant, it was as though I had struck him across the face with the flat of my hand. I didn’t see much of him from then on and neither did Jacques. He withdrew, as if betrayed, and only came forward to witness the consequences of his revenge. For come it did.
Chapter Twelve
1
Left to his own devices, Anselm would have preferred to walk — a long, irreverent ramble through the vineyards of France, blistering his feet on the Alps, drinking too much wine and then descending, light-headed and a boy again, through the landscape of frescoes on to Rome. Instead, he did as he was told and took the 12.15 p.m. flight from Heathrow to Fiumicino. He was to stay with a community of friars at San Giovanni’s, an international house of studies incongruously situated between two restaurants near Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, beneath the Janiculum Hill. A priest would collect him.
Anselm was standing in the arrivals area in his long black habit, beginning to feel the heat, when he was greeted from behind by a back-slapping friar in cut-off shorts and a T-shirt:
‘Hello there, I’m Brandon Conroy But call me Con.’
He had the build of a shaven ox with hands like pit shovels. But the most startling feature was his eyes, china blue, elfin and glittering, deeply set beneath a brow of heavy bone.
‘I knew it was you from your outfit,’ said Conroy ‘Here, give us your bag,’ and off he went, whistling, while Anselm trailed behind, all pores opening.
Conroy compressed himself into a flaming red Fiat Punto, with Anselm at his side, and took the autostrada to the city.
Crossing the Grande Raccordo Anulare and accelerating towards the west bank of the Tiber, Anselm sensed a gradual disintegration in conventional road positioning. A slanging match of horns, bewildered voices and Latin passion tumbled through the open window, while Conroy made various offensive hand signals to right and left. There seemed to be a wide digital vocabulary the sophistication of which had completely escaped Anselm’s well- informed schooldays. The whole melee was thrashed out under the blessed heat of the sun and a cloudless cobalt sky
‘Been here a month now and I’m beginning to get the hang of it,’ said Conroy, his gesturing arm at rest on the doorsill. ‘I thought Rio was bad, sure. But here you’ve got to play to kill. No arsing around, you know, or they’ll have your cojones on pasta.
Anselm didn’t quite know how to respond. It wasn’t the usual language of recreation at Larkwood. He kept a firm grip on the door handle while Conroy clattered on.
‘I’m brushing up my theology. Then back to Paula and the kids.’
Paula? Kids? Anselm had to reply He’d start with the children.
‘Kids?’
‘Yep.’
‘How many?’
