Chapter 18
My days at the pensione soon settled down into a routine.
Up at seven o’clock, for breakfast – always a baguette fresh from the boulangerie and jam, but now with a glass of water.
I have my coffee a little later at Café Felix before spending the day exploring different parts of Antibes.
Dinner at the pensione – which is better than breakfast, I have to say – is served by Madame Dupont’s daughter, Odette.
She understands a little English and smiles more than her mother.
By my fourth day, the original trio at breakfast had left and I was joined at breakfast by an American couple, David and Simone Cooper.
I can’t say how much I enjoyed their presence.
Sadly, they quickly informed me that they were only in Antibes for two days before moving on to Nice or Monaco, depending on where they could find a hotel room.
They told me that hotels all along the Riviera have been requisitioned as a rest and relaxation area, R Madame Dupont’s coffee has a certain reputation in town.’ As a waiter approached, Stéphane held up two fingers, ‘Vin rouge, s’il vous pla?t.’
‘I’d rather have a coffee now,’ I said.
‘Désolé. I’ve ordered now. Next time I will order coffee for my American friend. So how do you like Antibes?’ He took a long drag on his cigarette and blew rings of smoke out as he waited for my reply.
‘I love it, but I so wish I could have seen it in the years before the war damaged it.’
Stéphane nodded. ‘The war, it did not just destroy buildings, it damaged the spirit of the place. It returns slowly, but the Antibois take time to recover.’ He gave a despondent shrug.
‘It was from here,’ he said, gesturing at the restaurant behind us, ‘that we, the resistance, marched into town on August twenty-fourth.’
‘You were part of the resistance?’ I whispered.
Stéphane nodded. ‘Me, I was lucky to survive that day. Nine of us died, including my only brother. He lived through both the Italian and the German occupation and then he died on the very day freedom was won. Très difficult for me and the family.’ His eyes were glistening as he turned away from me briefly. ‘I miss him.’
Our wine glasses were placed on the table at that moment, and we both picked up a glass.
Stéphane almost threw his down his throat in a single gulp.
I drank mine slowly, waiting for him to recover.
I had no words of comfort to offer him. I could only imagine the nightmare of living through the occupation, and then the liberation, such a short time ago.
The little Stéphane told me of what happened that day makes me sad.
The town, like the rest of the C?te d’Azur, might now be free, but the scars and the destruction left by the Germans, and the Allies as they fought to regain it, are evident everywhere you look.
Shops are open but shelves barely have anything on them and rationing still exists.
Talking to a few of the local women I’ve met, I know stories like those Stéphane told me are sadly common down here, families devastated by loss, but things are slowly starting to improve.
Even in the short time I’ve been here, people smile at me quicker than when I first arrived, there’s more optimism in the air, and the restraint in greeting strangers that I noticed at first has virtually disappeared.
It’s as if they finally believe they are free and life is getting better, believing too that what is coming can only be better.
* * *
Evie sighed as she closed the journal. Stéphane’s story about losing his brother during the liberation of Antibes was tragic.
But sadly she knew that so many families had suffered family losses in the six years of the Second World War.
Wars were brutal and the devastation they caused was long-lasting and not easy to come to terms with.