Evacuated

1943

My three year old brother Jacques and I, four, were becoming a liability for our parents’ work in the French Resistance. We witnessed too many goings on, on a practically daily occasion and couldn’t be trusted to know what to say and above all what NOT to say to our visitors. Our father’s widowed aunt who lived on her own in Burgundy had offered to help look after us if necessary.


Mother’s work at the village Mayor’s office enabled her to obtain travel permits and we soon found ourselves on a railway voyage that was to end in Montargis, in the heart of Burgundy, where the aunt’s daughter lived. Although mother had said we were going there because it was safer for us, the same night we arrived the sirens went off and we ended up diving for the air-raid shelter just before the bombs came down. My brother and I were very relieved because we had been having pumpkin soup for our supper and neither of us could bear to swallow the sweet gritty orange mulch, no matter how much coaxing or threatening.

Mother seemed to disappear the next morning, she hadn’t wanted to provoke tears as she was leaving and, all of a sudden, we were just the two of us, on our way to unknown territory with a mountainous aunt who smelt of garlic and spoke in a very coarse burgundian accent. She was taking us to her home, a one up, one down diminutive cottage in the deepest part of the country. We were very tearful of course but Tante Irène was a darling and adored us.

Bewildered and clinging to each other, we were taken on another train journey. Once the train stopped at Toucy, the nearest market town to her home, a horse and cart was waiting for us, driven by an acquaintance. Tante Irène and the strange man started talking in a local patois we couldn’t fathom out…..but there again, we were used to hearing foreign talk back in Normandy when the visitors came to see our parents. We couldn’t help wailing for our mother but the man decided to give us turns at driving the horse and we got lots of smelly cuddles from the aunt. That made things much better and we soon calmed down! Some long time later, we finally rode down a very bumpy narrow lane, past three lonely cottages and, at the end of the path, stopped outside the tiniest house we had ever seen. I wondered how Tante Irène was going to squeeze through the door!

Tante Irène may well have been living on her own but she had many visitors, principally nephews and cousins who were working in the neighbouring fields, all too young to be doing a man’s job. They’d been up at dawn, gone out with little breakfast and, by mid morning, needed a hearty meal which the “aunt” could guarantee. She had a reputation for being mean with her resources but she knew how to feed a starving lad. She kept chickens, geese, ducks, a couple of pigs and a goat, she ran a good vegetable garden and had some fruit trees. The visiting lads helped her with the heavy chores and she made sure to repay them with sumptuous food.

Our arrival caused little upset with her routine as we were very much left to our own devices. We were soon adopted by the lads who treated us like their own young siblings. Most days, we rode on the heavy horses and helped with the animals. We went snail hunting after a rainfall and were taught how to catch frogs for supper. By midday, we were often so tired we could hardly eat our lunch and the aunt insisted we had an afternoon sleep. We had to climb the steep outside steps to the one bedroom we shared with her. Two enormous roll top beds filled the room, one for her gigantic frame, the other for the two of us.

Many months went by when we learnt to speak in a coarse burgundian drawl, eat most things with our fingers, drink well water tinted with local red wine, wear the same clothes for days on end, sleep sometimes five or six to a bed when there was a visit from the family in Montargis. We didn’t have to wash every day as we were going to get dirty again straight away and we spent most of our time outdoors. We got up early and all went to bed at sundown. The aunt always made sure we knelt down by the bed and said prayers after her before climbing in for the night.…and she insisted we confessed all our sins! The first problem was that we didn’t know what a sin was. Then, we had to wrack our brains to find our daily sin to confess, bare knees on the hard floor, hands joined in prayer, eyes tightly shut…..Even when we had been naughty (like the day we jumped on the big puffed up eiderdown on our bed…. and it burst!) she would love us and laugh till she shook all over.

When mother came back for us, we were proper little strangers and we’d grown shy of her. She looked so sad and preoccupied, father had been captured and disappeared, and it made her cry in the night. It was so hard to leave the aunt!

Grandmère

My grandparents lived on a small island (Oleron) off the coast of France, not far from La Rochelle. Both of them had many sisters (all the brothers seem to have been killed in WW1) and we had numerous cousins, most of whom we never recognised when we came for our regular summer holidays. Two months of bliss, those holidays were! In those days, the summer break was from the end of June till the end of August.

My four brothers and I yearned for summer when we cycled or walked to the beach every day. The best time was when our parents left us in the care of Grandmère when they went back to work. Grandpère always thought that children’s care was the premise of the woman in the house and we only looked to him when we wanted stories of his time as a soldier (he was wounded twice at Verdun) or when there was a special tide and he would take us far out on to the sands to catch shellfish of all kinds. We would come home exhausted and very sunburnt (no one bothered about suncream factors in those days). When we got home, Grandmère would sort out the catch and soon the house would fill with the smells of cooking. After a wholesome supper, all to bed for a well deserved sleep.

Only Grandmère stayed up to clear up and do the washing up. In those days, no dishwasher…no hot water…no running water indeed no electricity in the early days either (this was installed in the early 50s). The water was fetched from the well, using a zinc bucket dangling on a chain which you let down by turning the fat handle of the pulley mechanism. You’d let the bucket down easily until you heard the splash and then you had to hoist the full load using both hands. Retrieving the bucket was quite perilous and the well was very deep and scary!

One old lady told us (I think she was a great aunt…anyway, she was old and had stiff hairs on her cheek that stabbed you when you were made to kiss her on her visits to the house), she told us that naughty noisy children were thrown in people’s wells quite regularly.

The three eldest shared this chore. Once the water was brought in, first of all, some had to be filtered through cotton wool in a funnel for the drinking bottles. It was fascinating to watch little water shrimps and other creatures wriggling on the cotton ball. We could play with them for hours! The rest of the water was divided up for the washing up, cleaning the stone floors, cooking and to fill water jugs in all the bedrooms (we had washstands as there was no bathroom, just a WC with three holes in the wooden shed in the garden, by the palm tree). Every morning, we did “the slops”. Once a week, the water was warmed up and we took turns to be washed in a zinc tub with carbolic soap. We were glowing…no little beastie had a chance to pester us!

Poor Grandmère worked so hard and we were such a lively bunch! She was feared, mind you! Very tiny but browny-black eyes that could melt you down. We had three sitting down meals a day, counting breakfast, all seven of us at least plus the odd visiting cousins. Most years, a nanny would also be there or a maid that my parents employed all the year round. It was not unusual to find a dozen sitting round the table. We were expected to be on best behaviour. Any misbehaviour and Grandmère would send the culprit to the scullery to fetch the horse whip. “Va chercher la police!” This was a six foot long black rod that had lost its leather strip. Grandmère kept it by her side for the rest of the meal, threatening to whack anyone who made a noise. The threat never failed to work. She probably would not have carried it out. Grandpère presided at the head of the table but he wasn’t allowed to talk about the Great War or he would suddenly receive a well aimed kick on the shin from Grandmère sitting by his side.

We woke up early, to the sounds of swallows on the electricity wires outside the bedroom windows. Grandmère was up already. My bedroom was above the kitchen and I could hear her grinding the coffee beans ready for breakfast. Then, the most gorgeous smell of fresh coffee would rise through the ill fitting floorboards. Ablutions at the washstands, all bedding thrown to air on the windowsills and straight down for breakfast. We all raced one another to get the crust of the cream that topped the milk pan after it had boiled relentlessly on the solid fuel stove.

After breakfast, the chores began. Sweeping, dusting, polishing, cleaning, slops and making the beds. Making the beds was a very tough task as they were huge. Big wooden frames encompassing a big canvass bag two foot deep with slits in the top. Inside the bag was jam-packed with dried maize leaves. On top of that rested an enormous feather mattress with a cumbersome bolster. The bed linen consisted of heavy linen sheets, thick woollen blankets and a fat eiderdown. Totally unwelcome when the daily temperatures are around 25º to 30º. Making the bed was the most demanding chore. You slide your arms through the slits into the maize to regain a flat base. You ease the mattress back and pummel out all the bumps, you shake the bolster so that it returns to the desired fat sausage shape and then you can distribute the linen suitably so that it passes Grandmère’s inspection at the end of the morning (lucky is the one of us in charge of getting the fresh baguettes up the road). Of course, the minute you get back into the bed, you’ve made your nest for the night and can’t climb out of it till you are fully conscious.

Grandmère was a superb cook and to this day, she is responsible for our great love of sea food of all kinds. Both main meals had at least three courses and the shopping lists were astronomical since she never used tinned or frozen food. Everything was fresh and in season. Grandpère had a vegetable garden (see Grandpère's garden) which helped a lot. Being naughty was often sanctioned by spending a couple of hours helping him in the garden but Grandmère didn’t realise we saw that as great fun…so did he! Nothing was ever wasted and our plates had to be polished clean with every course.

Table manners were strictly respected and although we lived in our bathing costumes, we had to cover up for our meals. I was the only one with a birthday in August. My father always mysteriously forbade any such celebration in the family but on my special day, just as mysteriously, the best china came out and a big bouquet of Grandmère’s garden jasmine filled every vase in the house (see Smells and childhood memories).

Grandmère had made every single outfit my mother wore and she kept them all in big trunks in the attic. I was allowed to explore the trunks when my brothers weren’t around. I used to try some on and pretend I was “maman”, and I used to dress the dressmaker’s dummy as well. There were boxes full of buttons, beads, sequins, hats, handbags, shoes, dress patterns…She even saved and used Grandpère’s old army uniforms to make coats, hats and capes for my mother.

My best childhood memories rest with my grandmother and her house. She was such a character. She taught us to whistle proper melodies and she could sing beautifully. Sometimes, she would break into the local patois which left us speechless. We thought this language came from a heavenly place. She could beat all of us at marbles and we had to win them back by doing some extra chores. Now that my own granddaughters are growing up, I often wonder how they will remember the holidays we spend together in Dorset.