My Father's War Read online

  I look out of the window, to see the French countryside. It is only just spring here and is quite cold, but the sun is shining, lighting up the bare trees and heathery sort of hills we are passing through. There’s a village, there—oh, and a castle! A real castle, my first one! Mostly ruined and not pretty like in a fairytale, there are no silver turrets or flags flying. It’s more like a fort, Mum says, a relic of an earlier endless war no doubt.

  I can see people in the fields, women in colourful skirts and scarves. They are doing something—sowing? I don’t know much about farming, but I do know spring is when you plant things. Oh, look, there! Some ragged children at a level crossing, very dark, black eyes, black hair, and behind them—it’s a gypsy caravan! A real one, brightly painted! I have never seen one like it before. And then—behind it, another! And another! It is like a solemn procession of gaudy cheerful caravans.

  Mr Van Delden made me jump by saying, ‘Ah yes, you see, Annie, they are probably on their slow and winding way to Sainte Marie de la Mer, on the coast. It’s where the gypsies have a big festival in honour of their patron saint, Mary Magdalene.’ Now he is telling us about how one year he went to watch it and how colourful it all was, and describing it all in detail.

  It is a funny thing, but though it is such an interesting subject, he manages somehow to make it sound dull and I am beginning to feel very sleepy. So I have stopped listening and I am just going to imagine being a gypsy girl in one of those caravans, on my way to Sainte Marie with a skirt made of red and green and blue patches and a white lace blouse and velvet jacket and bare feet. I would not have to listen to boring know-all Flemish gentlemen and perhaps my father would not be at war in the mud, but guiding our family horses through the back lanes to the sea.

  It must be a good life, even if you have to eat hedgehogs, like I’ve heard gypsies do sometimes. I used to wonder about how you could eat them, with all the prickles, but Dad told me that they bake the animal whole with its prickly carapace covered with mud, and then you can just break the dry hard thing off like a shell and eat the meat. Still, I do not like to think of it, because Mrs Tiggy-Winkle was one of my favourite storybook characters when I was little. I have not seen a real live hedgehog yet, but I have seen an echidna in the zoo back home and I think they are rather sweet and quaint. Why would you want to eat them unless maybe you are starving and you

  Later

  I never finished that sentence because I fell asleep. When I woke up I found my book sitting tidily beside me. Somebody—I hope it was Mum, because she believes journals are private things, thank heavens!—must have picked it up when it slid off my lap. I hope it wasn’t Mr Van Delden, because I am sure he is so nosy he would have read what I wrote. Though maybe he wouldn’t with everyone looking. Anyway, he is not looking at me strangely or anything like that, so I suppose he didn’t. He has stopped talking though, and is looking out of the window. Mum has her eyes closed and the greedy family is snoring asleep, except for the father who is not in the carriage at the moment.

  I don’t know where we are now but the countryside has changed. It is hilly, with woods and rivers, the landscape misty brown but with a very faint flush of green. And there, I’ve just seen a patch of snow, up on that hill!

  There are no battles in this part of France. So there’s no war damage here, and no milling crowds of soldiers. Except there’s one thing—you see women doing jobs that men normally do—in the fields, on the stations, in the streets of the towns we pass through. All the young men are away and many of the middle-aged ones too. Only the old men and the boys are left. But then that’s not so different to home, is it?

  March 14

  The greedy family is gone, they got off in the middle of the night. Their place was taken by a pretty but sad-looking lady with two fretful children, twin girls, who kept Mum and me awake (but not Mr Van Delden, who snored away half the night). I finally fell asleep but had lots of horrid dreams with grinning gargoyles and tents full of blood and runaway gypsy horses pulling caravans into a crashing sea. When I woke up I had a headache and a crick in the neck and my limbs felt stiff from being cramped in one position. But worst of all was a very bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. And not a hungry feeling either. Or a sick one. I don’t know, it is just a bad feeling, like something terrible has happened and that we will be too late to—

  Stop it, Annie Cliff, right there. Right now. That’s what Dad would say. Stop thinking black thoughts. Think bright ones. Good ones. Happy ones. ‘Concentrate, pet,’ he’d say. ‘Look around you. What do you see? Get it down on paper. Anything, everything. That’s how an artist works. Because that is the only way you can really capture faces, if you look and think about how they might be feeling. And even if you’re not an artist, it’s good practice. Calming.’

  Right. There’s Mr Van Delden’s moustache hopping up and down on his mouth like a fat humpbacked mouse as he yabbers pompously on. There’s the lady opposite us, and her tear-filled eyes as she clutches one of the thin children to her chest and whispers that they are going to stay with her sister in Paris because they have nowhere else to go. She looks unwell, and cries easily, just like her children. It is like a spring is broken inside her and can’t be fixed. Her husband is a prisoner in a German camp somewhere. He’s been there for nearly three years, and hasn’t seen his children since they were a few months old. At least they know he’s alive. But things have been hard for them. She ran out of money and got behind in the rent so her landlord threw them out, which is why she is going to her sister’s. You’d think that in wartime, people would be kinder to each other. But some people just don’t care. Their hearts are made of stone. They don’t care if you live or die. And people like that poor lady, they’re helpless, they don’t fight back, they’re meek, like lambs.

  Not like Mum. She’d never accept a thing like that. And she’s taken the family under her wing. She tries to coax the fretful twins to eat one of the pains au lait she bought at the station we stopped at just after dawn, and plays counting games with them, so that their exhausted mother can have a little sleep.

  There are soldiers sleeping at the end of the corridor, all hunched in their greatcoats and with big moustaches and bristles all over their chins. Mum’s told me French soldiers are known as the Poilus—the Hairy Ones—because often they don’t bother shaving. Mum’s had a word to a couple of them, they are on their way back to the front. Nice fellows—they even gave me some biscuits! They said that everyone expects the Germans to strike any day and so more and more troops are being poured in to try and stop them. ‘The end is near, madame,’ one of them said. ‘We are heading straight into the antechamber of hell.’

  Mr Van Delden on hearing this has been trying to persuade Mum that she must reconsider. She doesn’t say anything. But I know the stubborn look in her eyes. He might as well just save his breath.

  Later, evening

  We arrived in Paris a couple of hours ago and changed trains. The Gare du Nord, where we arrived, was so full of people I nearly lost Mum in the bustle. Mr Van Delden has gone, thank heavens. When he left, he kissed Mum’s hand a bit too warmly for my liking, and then he strode off. Mum said, ‘Phew,’ and that was all she said but I know exactly how she feels. We don’t need him or his help and I am very glad he has gone away!

  The train to Amiens is crowded, nearly all with soldiers—French Poilus, British Tommies, Aussie and New Zealand Diggers, lots of others too. I saw some black soldiers, and some who looked Arabic, and others who looked like Indians in turbans. They’re noisy, laughing, skylarking even, they do not sound like men going into hell. But that’s to keep their spirits up, Mum says, for as they can’t do anything but obey orders, what is the good of moaning? Stick together, that’s what counts.

  There are a few civilians too, like us, and Mum got talking to two of them, a friendly pair called Monsieur and Mademoiselle Clermont, a middle-aged brother and sister who have a grocer’s shop in Amiens and are stocking up in Paris. They were a little surprised we were heading to their town but did not try and persuade us we shouldn’t. And why would they, when they live there and really know what it’s like?

  Monsieur Clermont says it’s true Amiens has suffered from the war. ‘The Boche occupied us for a while at the beginning, then our boys recovered it, but quite a lot of people left during that time and didn’t return.’

  Mum says, ‘But you’ve stayed.’

  ‘All our life is there, madame. There will always be people who stay—and they have to be able to get their goods from somewhere. What will happen to them if we just shut up shop?’

  ‘You see,’ his sister said, ‘many shops have shut already and we are having to supply so many things these days that we never used to. Besides, people like to come to our shop. It’s a meeting ground. A place where people can chat, exchange news, feel less isolated. Less afraid.’

  Mademoiselle Clermont told us that most of the hotels in Amiens are closed, but she recommended a pension (a guesthouse). ‘It’s run by Madame Elise Baudin, one of the bravest and finest ladies in Amiens. She’s doing it hard these days, what with the war, and lodgers leaving. She’s had so much tragedy in her life! She was a widow already when her dearly beloved only son, whom she’d brought up practically on her own, went to war—he was killed in 1916. There was a grandson, Paul. His mother was already dead, so his grandmother’s been bringing him up.’ She looked at me. ‘Paul’s about your age. Maybe a little older. A difficult child—sullen. Rude.’ She sighed, very deeply. ‘This terrible war, madame. This terrible war! I do not think the world will ever be the same again.’

  ‘No,’ said Mum, softly, and then they fell silent.

  The train is going very slowly. As we pass through the countryside and get closer to Amiens, I see more and more
signs of the war: carts lying abandoned and broken on the side of the road, military posts, bombed and shelled buildings and rubble, bivouacking soldiers under trees who wave as we go past, refugees with horses and carts plodding towards Paris. It feels very strange to be here.

  March 16

  We have arrived in Amiens. Madame Baudin’s pension is called ‘La Petite Venise’, which means ‘Little Venice’, because that’s what one of the French kings, I forget which, called Amiens when he visited it centuries ago. The reason he called it that is that it’s built on canals, like Venice, except these are canals that flow off the Somme river and its tributaries, not from a big lagoon like Venice. The canal area, with its tall, narrow, steep-roofed houses, half-timber, half stone, nestles under the skirts of the hill that leads up to the cathedral. Mum says they are like jostling chicks under a majestic hen, though these days the hen is a bit the worse for wear. The poor cathedral, which stands up clearly on the skyline, has been a target for German bombers, and it’s had some damage: gargoyles with noses knocked off, shrapnel pockmarks on the walls, beautiful stained-glass windows smashed in places. And yet it still stays defiantly upright, and miraculously with much of its structure intact. They’ve sandbagged it inside and out to try to protect it.

  In other parts of Amiens there are signs of shelling from the past, pockmarks of shrapnel and churned-up roads. In some areas, we’ve been told, buildings were destroyed and there are lots and lots of boarded up empty houses and shops.

  There’s a strange feeling in the city. It’s quiet, but tense. Defiant, but anxious. Some shops are still open, business still goes on, the remaining children still go to school, but everyone is on tenterhooks and more and more people leave every day. There are umpteen rumours flying around—that the Germans are on their way, that the Americans are, that the city has been marked for destruction, that it will be bypassed. Nobody knows for sure just yet. It doesn’t scare me because somehow it doesn’t seem real. Or maybe it’s because of living here, in Little Venice.

  In this house it’s like another world. A peaceful, calm world. It’s one of those canal houses, with a steep-pitched roof and velvet curtains at the windows. Inside there’s a ticking grandfather clock and nice old furniture and crackling fires and snowy-white sheets and the rich smell of simmering stew, and a homey sort of feeling that wraps around you like a warm blanket. With the door closed it feels as though the world outside has actually gone away, the war can’t touch us, we’ll find Dad quickly and everything will be all right. Maybe it’s also because of Madame Baudin, who’s like a good fairy who has a special spell that makes everything and everyone feel calm and quiet. Even Mum!

  Madame Baudin doesn’t really look like a fairy, at least not the sort that were in my picture books when I was little. She’s elderly, tall, thin, with silver hair tied in a shining bun, and dark eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, and wears a black lace blouse with a small brooch and a grey woollen skirt. Despite everything that has happened to her, she doesn’t look sad, not like that poor lady on the train. She speaks without a quaver and her eyes behind the glasses are bright, and she always seems busy and lively. But she does not smile. Or only very seldom and very fleetingly. Once she must have done though, because there is a big silver-framed photograph sitting on the mantelpiece in the drawing room, of her, her son and grandson, and there are big beaming smiles on their faces. Well, at least on Madame Baudin’s and her son’s, her grandson looks rather solemn and owlish. But then I suppose he was only a baby in the picture and babies are often grumpy.

  We are the only people staying here (apart from Madame, her grandson and the cook/maid, Julie). There had been lodgers till about a month ago but they had left. (Apparently last year Madame Baudin had an Australian lodger—an officer from the AIF.)

  When we first arrived, and Mum explained what we were doing, Madame Baudin gave her a long cool look and said, ‘You have heard, I suppose, that the Germans might be on their way back here? People might think this is not a good time to be coming to Amiens. That what you’ve done is hardly wise.’

  It was not said offensively, or interferingly like it would have been if it was Mr Van Delden. Just matter-of-factly.

  Mum said, ‘True enough. But I don’t care what people think. I had to come. And besides, you have stayed here, madame. You have not run away.’

  ‘Where should I go? This is my home. This is where my son grew up. Where my grandson was born and my poor daughter-in-law died. I have already lived through years of this war without running away. And I lived through the siege of Paris as a young person in 1870, madame. I know what war is like. No. I will not be moved.’

  Mum nodded. ‘I completely understand. And so I hope you might understand my point of view too, and perhaps advise me on the best course of action, locally.’

  Madame Baudin smiled. ‘At my time of life I know the world’s opinion does not count for a fig. All that matters are our loved ones. What you’ve done may not be wise, but it is right. So of course, my dear. I will do what I can for you. Where do you propose to start?’

  ‘The Chateau de Bertangles headquarters. I believe my husband was transferred there.’

  ‘Ah yes. My Australian lodger, Captain Packard, was also based there at one stage. I do not know if he still is—but you could ask. Perhaps he might be able to help you.’

  ‘Thank you. I will ask. Is the Chateau close to Amiens?’

  ‘Not very far, but too far to go on foot. I’m sure Henri Clermont could take you. He has a car and he is known at the Chateau as he has supplied groceries there.’

  ‘That would be very kind, but I don’t want to disturb Monsieur Clermont. I could take a taxi.’

  Madame Baudin smiled. ‘I doubt you’d find a taxi left in Amiens. And I’m sure Henri won’t mind. He is a most obliging person.’

  I wanted to go too, but Mum said not today. She went off a few hours ago in Monsieur Clermont’s rattly old car. I can’t wait to hear her news!

  But I’ve got to, so I’ll try to keep busy by describing what it is like here. Our room is cosy and light; it is on the very top floor. There is a good fireplace, two single beds, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe in the room, so we easily put away the few things we had brought with us. There is also a small bookshelf with a few books on it, mostly grown-up things with small cramped print that don’t look very interesting, some old novels and a battered old atlas of France, but Madame Baudin said she would find a few children’s books for me from her grandson’s collection.

  I haven’t actually seen her grandson Paul yet (except in that baby photo!) because he was in bed when we arrived last night and had already gone to school when we went down to breakfast this morning.

  Later

  I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about what Mum told us tonight. She and Monsieur Clermont had no trouble getting to the Chateau de Bertangles, which is a huge castle that’s been converted into a base for our soldiers. But once in, finding someone to speak to was quite another matter. Madame Baudin’s old lodger Captain Packard had been transferred elsewhere and no-one seemed to be able or willing to help her.

  She said, ‘I was sent from pillar to post, waiting for hours outside the office of this one or that one, but it wasn’t until I got talking to a nice young Red Cross nurse called May Pryce that I actually started to get anywhere.’

  It was at the dinner table and Madame Baudin was very carefully ladling out thick cabbage soup (which was pretty nice, Julie is a very good cook). Paul, her grandson, sat at her right. He’s quite big for his age—he’s only six months older than me but at least a head or two taller, and broad-shouldered too. He’s got a crooked nose and very black hair cut quite short and not very well. His eyes are black too, and you can’t really tell what he’s thinking. He certainly does not seem very friendly. When his grandmother introduced us to him, he said, ‘Bonjour,’ in a reluctant sort of way. But after that he said nothing at all, the whole meal. But then I suppose I didn’t either. I was too busy listening to what Mum was saying.