Ursula received a postcard from Michel, sent from an English port before
his departure. It contained his new military address, to which Ursula
wrote every day.
In Down Street, packing cases were being hammered closed. Everyone was
preparing to leave, and some of the privileged had already left. Petit
was among the first to go, to serve as a liaison officer right at the
front. We now spent all our lives glued to the radio or scrutinizing the
newspapers.
We passed an agitated week. All of us were so unnerved that we quarreled
for no reason whatever. One felt that the Down Street period was coming
to an end.
At the Carleton Gardens headquarters, bags were being packed, files were
being burned, cases of documents were carried off. And every day
officers left to join the active forces, while the entire GHQ was
getting ready to move.
During the noon hour we all went to the newsreel theatre to see the
American tanks advancing on the roads of France. We watched our own
people, the people of France, throwing flowers to the Americans, and we
saw our villages in ruins.
* * * * *
About two weeks after the opening of the second front I happened to be
on Buckingham Road, passing the Polish headquarters, when I saw one of
Michel’s friends from the office to which he had been attached. The
young man said to me, “You know the news?”
I felt a sort of contraction in my heart, for the Polish soldier’s face
was grave.
“Michel was killed on the first day, during the landing. He got sixteen
bullets in him while he was running to help another fellow who was
wounded. His body was recovered. He’s buried there, at Falaise, in
Normandy.”
I could scarcely keep from bursting into tears right there in the middle
of the street. Ursula, poor Ursula! Poor Michel!
Once more I saw the round face, the great black eyes, the raised
questioning brows, and the small plump form of Michel in his heavy khaki
uniform. And I thought of all the things he had said to Ursula and
Mickey and Jacqueline and me, about the future, and reconstruction, and
the United Nations, the things he had not really believed in his heart.
So he had been right. There was really only death, all death.
Suddenly I thought again of Ursula and the baby. It was frightening.
What should be done? The Polish sergeant told me that a letter addressed
to Ursula had been found in Michel’s pocket, and that his chief had
received the letter and had just informed Down Street that morning.
I had an important errand and couldn’t get to the barracks. I had not
been there for lunch, and I was afraid that Ursula might have been there
and received the news. I hurried to Mickey’s office. When I told her
what had happened, she started to cry, soundlessly, weeping as we
telephoned Down Street to find out if Ursula had come in for lunch. The
sentry said no, and we concluded that Ursula could not yet have learned
about Michel. We had the rest of the day to think of some way to protect
her. We tried and tried to find a solution. It seemed to us that the
child would be the only safeguard. She would have Michel’s child to
raise. Yes, there would be the child, and that would be a help for
Ursula. It was life, it had to be accepted.
At the same time, we simply could not bring ourselves to believe that
the gentle Michel, the foe of all that was hateful, could have been
killed—not that particular boy, immediately, in the forefront of the
liberating army. Mickey said frantically that perhaps it was a mistake,
that he was a prisoner, that the news was false. I could see that she
had to doubt, she had to deceive herself, for if Michel were only the
beginning of the list, if Peter too....