Madame Barbara. Helen Forrester

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СКАЧАТЬ subsequent battle; it was said that one-third of the population had been killed and another third wounded.

      Though the engagement had been arranged by their parents, Michel was fond of his lifelong friend who was to become his wife, and he racked his brains for further sources of enquiry.

      Patiently, he had asked at the hospital in Bayeux, in case she had been brought in there. She was not listed. However, he was invited to visit a woman so traumatised that she had not yet been able to identify herself, in the hope that he might recognise her. The woman was so hurt that he was thankful that she was a stranger to him.

      Suzanne’s parents would remain listed as missing, presumed dead, until such time as the Army could demine a path into their farm and confirm it. Michel argued that whoever put the Fortiers’ names on that list – probably another neighbour – must have known that Suzanne was not at home on the day her father’s farm was destroyed; otherwise her name would have been there along with those of her parents.

      He reminded himself that Suzanne was an only child, so he could be the sole person from nearby who would immediately set in train a hunt for her. She had other relations, he knew, somewhere near Falaise, another place which had been devastated. If he had no luck in Caen, he would go there to ask the few survivors if they had news of her.

      Meanwhile, he had to find at least temporary work, and a place in Bayeux where he and his mother could stay.

      Once Maman had recovered a little, they had been billeted in a house with a small empty attic room to spare. There was no fireplace in it, and even in July the bare floor was cold to lie on. Their reluctant landlady, moved by their plight, had lent them a straw mattress, and an old duvet liable to spill feathers from every corner.

      She allowed Madame Benion to use her kitchen occasionally, to make the thin fish soup which, together with bread – and cheese when they could get it – was all the food they could afford in a city where the price of everything was soaring.

      Madame Benion applied to the hastily reorganised civilian authorities in Bayeux for the re-establishment of payment of her old age pension at her new address. Unfortunately, the steady fall in the value of the franc made it harder and harder for her to manage on it.

      After much hasty hunting, Michel found a job in the kitchen of a hotel recently vacated by the retreating Germans. The desperate owner was trying to get it cleaned and in shape as fast as possible. So Michel scrubbed and disinfected with the same thoroughness that he had cleaned hen coops and brooders for his parents.

      He was occasionally able to augment his and his mother’s diet by hoarding table scraps from the dining room of the hotel; he was supposed to throw all food scraps into a pig bin, but some were still edible. He was also allowed a meagre midday meal with the hotel staff, part of which he often took home for his mother.

      In their attic room, water was their greatest problem, since the only source in the house was a pump in the ground-floor kitchen.

      With a few of the precious francs hoarded in Michel’s Post Office savings book, which Madame Benion now carried stuffed inside the top of her corset, they bought a large bucket and a washbasin. Once or twice a day, Michel filled up the bucket in the house kitchen and carried it up to their eyrie under the eaves.

      The whole telephone system appeared hopelessly damaged, but on the chance that at least some mail was getting through, Michel had, after moving into the attic room, written to Suzanne at her lodgings in Caen, to tell her his new address. The local post office had accepted the letter, but there had been no response to it or any subsequent ones.

      On his enquiry for news of her from her parents at the beginning of April, they had told him that the few letters they had received since she left for Caen simply said that she was all right and was enjoying her work in the café. She had sent no message for him. Madame Fortier was very troubled. Had the young people quarrelled, she wondered.

      They had not quarrelled, and Michel had been mystified by his fiancée’s silence. Despite his uneasiness, he made every possible excuse for her neglect of him. He never doubted her integrity; she was going to be his wife. She would surely write soon.

      In view of warning movements of German troops in the month prior to the invasion, it occurred to Michel that she might, at the last possible moment, have come home to be with her parents. So he went back to the hôtel de ville and checked the casualty lists yet again.

      The official there said flatly that the list was still incomplete. What else did Michel expect, he asked helplessly; there were still pockets of fighting all too near to Bayeux. And on no account, said the harassed man, should Michel try to get back to either the Fortiers’ or his own farm. There were already too many civilians killed or injured by exploding anti-personnel mines and live ammunition: three men dead – they had tried to collect the bodies of their families in order to bury them – and two who had had their feet blown off, a woman shockingly wounded in the face. And two young boys with no hands, poor kids.

      Bearing in mind the hopeless state of his own little poultry farm and others nearby, all well-nigh reduced to a mud heap, Michel accepted the stricture without comment. He did not need to be reminded of the dangers of explosives; he had seen, on his way to Bayeux, a whole family blown up by a heavy explosion, triggered by their passing. Only the good God knew what they had accidentally trodden on.

      He was fairly certain that Suzanne’s parents were indeed dead, and both he and his mother grieved for them; they had been good friends.

      Feeling that they might just possibly have escaped, however, he had again enquired assiduously amongst other refugees who had straggled into Bayeux, many of whom knew each other at least by sight. He invariably heard the same sad story that a great many of the population of that area were believed dead or wounded. He continued to pray that his wife-to-be had not been with them.

      If she had returned to her home just before the attack, he comforted himself, the first thing she would have done would have been to run across to see him – and she had not.

      For some days more, as he worked in the Bayeux hotel, he continued to watch the casualty lists, while the battle to take Caen continued.

      He soon learned that peasants were regarded as of little account unless the authorities wanted to get food delivered to the stricken city.

      One day, before Anatole’s return, he had, in bitter terms, expressed his anger to his mother about the destruction of Calvados.

      ‘We’ve suffered so much from the occupation. We risked our lives – including you, Maman. A good many died horribly for it – and now we are being killed or hurt or ruined in the name of peace. It’s crazy,’ he said in furious frustration.

      Madame Benion had been resting on the mattress laid on the floor of their attic. Her deep exhaustion since the destruction of her home was still apparent.

      She said wearily, ‘It’s true and it grieves me – and I worry daily about Anatole. Where is he? What did the Germans do with him when they took him away? What’s happening to him now?’

      Michel replied slowly, doubt apparent in his tone, ‘They said he would be put to work in Germany.’

      ‘Well, why hasn’t he ever written?’

      To this Michel had no answer. He thought bitterly that it was probable that his brother was dead, but kept this to himself.

      ‘I don’t know why he doesn’t write, Maman. Maybe German mail is disrupted by the СКАЧАТЬ