All Our Wordly Goods (22 page)

‘You look well,’ said Simone.

They kissed, then stood facing each other, hesitant and shy.

‘Have you forgiven me, Mama?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Simone, looking away. ‘I’m very weak,’ she continued. ‘It’s time someone took over from me.’

The front doorbell rang. People had heard that the Hardelots had arrived and were coming to get the latest news. ‘What are they saying in Paris?’ they whispered in anxious, subdued voices. Women with grey faces, wearing mourning dresses and leather gloves, wrung their hands as, one after the other, with courteous greetings and apologies, they entered the sitting room. Each one of them asked the same question, ‘What are they saying in Paris?’

‘But everything is fine,’ replied Rose, ‘just fine,’ as she automatically offered her cheeks for the weak kisses of the ladies of Saint-Elme.

Pierre and Agnès were staying with the elderly Madame Florent. In the middle of the night, both of them woke up, at the very same moment. They could hear the nightingales in the Coudre Woods and, every now and then, a low, muted sound.

‘It’s gunfire.’

Where was Guy? Had he been sent to Belgium? He hadn’t written for several days. Pierre imagined himself back once more in the fields where he had fought, where now, without a doubt, his son was on the march. The evening news had been ambiguous, hardly reassuring …

‘They’ll take a hammering at the beginning. It’s always like that for us at the start,’ Pierre said to himself. ‘They trust to luck, make no preparations and stupidly send men off to be killed. Then, at the very last moment, somehow or other things come together and everything turns out all right. That’s how it was in 1914.’

Yes, that’s what had happened in 1914 and it was impossible, unimaginable, that this time would be any different. He tried to reassure himself, but he was still restless. He got out of bed quietly, went into the dark sitting room, switched on the radio, twiddling the dial anxiously in an attempt to find a French or foreign station that might be broadcasting the latest information, for if he only could hear some good news it might ease the anxiety that was growing within him. He couldn’t understand a thing. The sounds were muddled; other stations played bits of dance music. Finally, he made out a distant voice. ‘All day long our troops have been engaged in bitter combat. Everywhere, they have tenaciously fought off the enemy …’

Angrily he switched off the radio, went over to the window and looked out at a rose bush in full bloom lit up by the moonlight, but without actually seeing it. Such a night, such a beautiful night … it clenched at his heart, filling him with feelings of indignation and anguish.

‘Any news?’ his wife called out.

‘No, nothing.’

He went back to bed. Neither he nor Agnès could sleep. Lying side by side, staring wide-eyed into the darkness, they listened to the sound of gunfire.

Suddenly, Agnès sat up. ‘On the road, down there, on the road …’ she said.

‘What? What is it? I can’t hear anything.’

Then almost immediately he heard the sound of cars driving through the streets, the first refugees. They were
recognisable, somehow: perhaps by the way they sped along the empty streets, perhaps by the impatient hooting of their horns, perhaps by the ever-growing rumbling sound as after one car came another, then another. And when they heard this strange noise, all of Saint-Elme opened their doors, their windows, came out into the streets, stared and wondered.

‘They’re coming from Belgium,’ said Pierre.

They had both got up, crossed the hall and gone into the sitting room. The road passed a few metres from their house. Yes, they had guessed correctly; it was the first refugees. Mattresses were tied to the roofs of the cars and luggage spilled over on to the running boards and bumpers.

The cars continued to come all night long, all through the next day. No one had any news of the fighting, but they could sense defeat. There was something in the air, something heavy with despair, that seeped into the most isolated houses, the most peaceful fields, into each and every home, into the very heart of France. No one could sleep any more. Everyone had lost their appetite. They trotted out the same boring words of comfort: ‘As long as they stand firm, that’s what’s most important … It’s not that we’ve heard anything new … After all, in 1914
they
only managed to get to Compiègne …’

They had no idea what was happening to Guy. No one knew anything about the men out there. They had suddenly all vanished, like passengers on a burning ship who disappear into the smoke and flames,
before the very eyes of the few survivors. Now, it was the people of northern France who were fleeing. Everyone questioned them anxiously; where had they come from? Every day the places they named were a bit closer; some neighbouring villages had been bombed. No orders had been received; they didn’t know whether they should stay or go. Each area had to look out for itself, relying on the courage or cowardice of a handful of men and often there weren’t any men. A nervous woman, or a hysterical old spinster could evacuate an entire village, causing waves of refugees to flee along the roads and spread panic. Panic: it grew from one place to the next. It pervaded all of France, just as the sea rushes on to the beach during spring storms.

One day bombs finally fell on Saint-Elme. Planes appeared in the sky; they dived low, narrowly missing the rooftops. Moments later the little railway station seemed to shoot into the air, as if sucked up by a gigantic gust of wind, before crashing back to the ground in flaming pieces.

A few days earlier Rose and her mother had left Saint-Elme. Experience had shown that taking shelter in the provinces was not as safe as they had thought. Their walls and roofs were not bombproof, and their very way of life was buckling and collapsing. You couldn’t count on anyone; people who had been considered pillars of society, up until now, revealed themselves incompetent and cowardly. Both the mayor
and the ministerial representative had fled. Moreover, in the terrible confusion that began to reign all orders were suspect; no one could say with certainty if they came from French leaders or the enemy. The policemen disappeared; later on they learned they had been tricked by a misleading telephone call. Only a small group of men and women remained in charge of Saint-Elme and, among them, Pierre and Agnès held pride of place. This happened in spite of themselves. They were the only ones who had remained calm; they alone knew how to talk to people quietly, pleasantly, how to encourage them. They alone still thought of others throughout those days of blood and battle when so many could think of nothing but themselves, their own survival. All day and night, now, refugees from the north and Belgium passed beneath Agnès’s window. The ones from the north didn’t have cars. They slung packs over their backs; they carried their children in their arms. Old women ran through the dust behind their terrified cows. Someone found an abandoned baby in a ditch, wearing nothing but a vest and wrapped up in a tablecloth. Agnès could no longer sleep or eat. And besides, there was hardly any food left; what hadn’t been given away had been stolen by bands of marauders who followed the refugees and mixed with them. And so, while Agnès fed the elderly, changed the babies, dressed wounds, gangs of men were getting into the kitchens, breaking into the cupboards, grabbing everything they could get.

There was no news from Rose. They hoped she had
made it safely to Languedoc, where relatives would look after her. They still had heard nothing from Guy; there wasn’t a single family in Saint-Elme who wasn’t waiting, in vain, day after day, like the Hardelots, for a message that never came. In spite of everything, they lived in hope. Out of a pitiable sense of modesty, everyone kept their fears, their secret thoughts to themselves. The women workers from the factory who spotted Agnès on the street never said anything except, ‘It doesn’t seem to be going that well, does it?’ Their tense faces were full of invincible optimism: ‘It will be all right, won’t it?…’

One night, news of the defeat at Sedan blared from the radio; it travelled through the open windows, out into the garden and over to the crowd of refugees. One man let out a cry: ‘It isn’t possible! We’ve been sold down the river!’

For a moment, everyone was so astonished that they fell quiet and through the silence came the sobs of the man who had spoken, a worker who had been wounded in the other war. The guns thundered. Someone called out from the road, ‘Help me! I can’t walk any more … Give me something to drink … Help me!’

Agnès, her teeth clenched, went from one person to the next, from the house to the gate, bringing milk, eggs, a crust of bread. Yet the night was serene and superb. A thousand stars were shining. The garden was full of white roses.

It was at that moment that she was handed a crumpled
letter by a woman from Arras who had come back to the area to look for her children. Agnès read,

The woman was about to leave in a little truck and there was room for Agnès. Once in Arras, the trains would be running … perhaps.

‘But we must stay together!’ cried Agnès.

She had lost all heart. She threw herself into her husband’s arms. To die together, to suffer together, was nothing. But she couldn’t bear the idea of being torn away from Pierre.

‘If it were for my son. But for her …’

‘She’s his wife, Agnès.’

‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘What can you do here? Let’s both go. How am I supposed to get there all alone? Why are you so determined to stay here? You can see very well that it’s all over.’

‘You’ll get there. You have to.’

‘But what about you, Pierre? What about you?’

‘Me? I’ll stay here of course,’ he said quietly.

For a long time they held each other close, silently saying goodbye. Then Agnès left. Pierre had a moment of weakness. All in all, why risk his life? Why give up
the only consolation possible in these terrible times: to die with his wife of so many years? He wasn’t a soldier any more. Who had made him responsible for looking after the workers, the farmers of Saint-Elme? And what could he possibly do for them?

But he didn’t have time to feel sorry for himself. Along the road, interspersed with the refugees, came the first of the defeated soldiers, those who had survived in Belgium. The Germans were right behind them. They had broken through all the defences; they were flooding into the very heart of the country. At the canal, a regiment was re-forming and, in an hour perhaps, there would be fighting in Saint-Elme. The soldiers said that it had been the same in the north. Civilians had been caught up in the tank attacks.

‘You can’t imagine what it’s like until you’ve seen it for yourself. You just can’t …’ exhausted voices murmured.

‘But then, what should we do for ourselves, for the children?’ asked the women.

The soldiers shrugged their shoulders; they didn’t know and didn’t care. They felt they were destined to die; why should everyone else be spared?

A crowd gathered around Pierre.

‘We have to leave. Leave, while there’s still time,’ shouted the women.

But he knew it was impossible. He could picture the crush along the road. And, most importantly, he believed that if the civilians continued to flee the army would be finished.

Near to Saint-Elme were the Coudre Woods, where excavations (the vestiges of a quarry) had left natural shelters; part of the population could take refuge there. Pierre thought for a moment, then said, ‘My friends, go home quickly, pack up some food, if you can, and blankets for the children, and go into the woods. There are no military targets near there; the trees are nearly in full leaf at the moment and will hide you. God willing, you will be able to avoid the fighting, for our troops will mostly be defending the canal and the railway lines.’

As soon as he began to speak, everyone fell silent; finally someone was in charge, someone they knew, who was from Saint-Elme, whose clear, weary, slightly dry voice was familiar to them all. The stars lit up the anxious faces that looked at Pierre; he felt someone’s warm breath against his leg and his hand touched the smooth little head of a child who had snuggled against him, feeling a reassurance and strength the boy could no longer find anywhere else. Pierre stroked his hair.

‘You must hurry,’ he said, ‘but some of the men will stay here with me. If the Germans march in, they mustn’t find the place deserted. But they won’t get through,’ he added, even though, at that very moment, he knew deep down that all was lost.

Silently, they obeyed. He watched the women from the factory run towards their houses, come back carrying bundles of blankets, dragging their children along by the hand. One of them cried out, as she passed the gate, ‘But it’s just so hard.’

Out of habit, she blamed her tough life on her boss. She carried two children in her arms; their heads stuck out of a quilt she had thrown over them.

Pierre took them from her. ‘They’re too heavy for you. I’ll carry them some of the way.’

He held the children and the quilt close, and ran on ahead. The woman hurried beside him. Behind them came other women, rushing along frantically. When they got close to Pierre, he greeted each one by name. ‘Hello Madame Grout, hello Madame François, hello Madame Vandeeke’ and his composed, friendly voice calmed the terrified flock.

‘You don’t think it will be too awful, do you?’ some of the women dared ask.

‘Of course not,’ he replied. ‘Just one difficult night to get through. No need to be afraid; I’m here,’ he added, smiling to himself at the naïvety of his words, but knowing how much store was set by simple words and especially by the sound of a calm voice.

Halfway there he handed the children over to their mother and headed back to Saint-Elme. The night was now vibrating with the roar of planes. They were still very high in the sky, very far away. Suddenly he heard the sound of an explosion and realised they were bombing the roads. That’s where Agnès must be. He imagined the tragic confusion of horses, people and cars.