FRENCH STREET

Jenny lived in French Street (which, for those who don’t know, is one of the oldest streets in Southampton). She knew she lived in French Street, because every time she left the house her mother made her recite her name and address.

“Just in case,” said her mother.

“In case of what?” asked Jenny.

Her mother wouldn’t say. But Jenny knew. Jenny knew it was in case they were bombed and got separated. Jenny hadn’t ever been bombed yet, and didn’t know what it was like. She didn’t think her mother had ever been bombed yet, either, though she was sure her mother had talked to people who had been, when her mother was in London, doing her very important work.

Bobby, the little boy at school with the squint and the biggest freckles she’d ever seen, claimed to have been bombed, and one day he offered to show her what it was like during break-time, and the minute they were in the play-ground he started throwing things at her, sticks, stones, books, pencils, everything he could find, and he wouldn’t stop when she asked him, and he just went on until he’d run out of things to throw and she was crying as much as she ever let herself cry.

When she asked him why he hadn’t stopped when she asked, he said, that was what bombing was like, it just went on and on and on, however much you wanted it to stop. And then it did stop, at last. But by then you didn’t care any more.

Jenny was afraid he might be right, but still thought it wasn’t very nice of him. If his father hadn’t been missing, she’d have told her teacher about him. She made up her mind that when his father had been found again, she and Heather would get him in a corner and pull his hair (which was rather long) until he said he was sorry and promised never to do it again.

But she still wanted to know what being bombed was like, so she thought she’d ask her teacher, because she was sure she knew everything. Her teacher was actually from Spain – well, from a part of Spain with another name – and her name was Miss Vizcaya, but all the children called her Mrs Whisky, because it was easier to say and easier to remember. She spoke English very well and had been in Southampton ever since she left Spain, four years ago, (which was half Jenny’s whole life) and when anyone asked her why she was there, she said she couldn’t go home as things were, and Southampton was the first place she had come to and she didn’t have any particular reason to go anywhere else.

Most of the children from the school, and all the other teachers, had gone out into the New Forest and beyond, to be safe, in case they were bombed, but Jenny’s mother didn’t want to let her go, and there were some other children who couldn’t or wouldn’t go, and they were all taught together by Mrs Whisky.

Because there were so few of them, and because they were such a mixture of ages, she let them find out a lot of things for themselves, and just talked about the things that interested them and answered the questions they asked. Jenny thought it was much more fun than school had been before, with set lessons and lots and lots of copying stuff from the board that none of them understood.

When Jenny asked what being bombed was like, and whether she had ever been bombed, Mrs Whisky said, No, she’d been very lucky, but she would bring in a picture that showed what it was like, and the next day she did, and it was very odd and very scary, and Jenny was especially upset by the big horse that seemed to be screaming in pain and terror, but Bobby simply asked whether all horses in Spain screamed like that, which just went to show how silly he was.

Mrs Whisky talked about the history of her part of Spain, and how everybody spoke a language that no one else could understand, because it wasn’t like any other languages, and how it was probably the oldest language in Europe that anyone still spoke. And then she asked the children what they knew about the history of Southampton, and when she discovered they didn’t know very much, she set them to find out.

So Jenny thought she’d find out about French Street and especially why it was called French Street, because that was odd. They’d been doing nationalities, and writing out in their books, “He is from Spain, he is Spanish, he is a Spaniard” and “He is from France, he is French, he is a Frenchman” and “He is from Germany, he is German, he is a German” and so on, and it seemed very odd to have a street called French Street in a town in England, even if it wasn’t that far from France.

So she found out that it was called that because people from France had lived there once upon a time, and she was very pleased with herself, and told the whole class. And her friend Heather had found out about the walls that went round the town, and how the sea used to wash up against them, but not long ago they’d built the big Western Docks, and now there wasn’t a beach by the Central Railway Station any more, which seemed a pity to Jenny, who loved playing in the sand and paddling in the water and had to go all the way to Weston Shore if she wanted to do that.

And Bobby, who was clever, even if he was a bit silly, had found out when and why the walls were built.

He said that to start with, the walls had only been on the landward side of the town, but that one sunny afternoon in 1341, when nobody was expecting any trouble, the French came and landed at West Quay and burnt a lot of the town and killed a lot of people. So, after that, they had to build walls all round, to protect the town against attacks from the sea.

Jenny was puzzled, because she thought the French must have been friends, otherwise why would they be living in Southampton, and wanted to ask more questions, but it was the end of the school day, so she packed up her school-bag and went home.

Mrs Sims, their next-door neighbour, was there, getting Jenny’s tea, and she told Jenny that her mother would be late back from London, but that she should just do her homework and read some Winnie the Pooh and go to bed as normal, and everything would be all right.

It wasn’t the first time, by any means, that Jenny’s mother had been late, and although she didn’t like it, and would rather have had her mother there, Jenny was also quite pleased to be thought grown up enough to go to bed on her own. Mrs Sims had made her some cocoa and put it in a thermos flask, and at eight o’clock precisely she drank it and went upstairs to bed.

She fell asleep quite easily, but something must have been disturbing her, because she began having dreams. Actually, it wasn’t so much a dream as a feverish and repeated thought: if they wanted to build walls in the sky, to protect the town against attacks from the air, how could they do it?

And she was sharpening her pencil to draw a big plan for girders that would go straight up from Windwhistle Tower and Catchcold Tower, and she was using the school pencil-sharpener, that was ever so exciting and you turned a handle and it gripped your pencil and sucked it in and made it as sharp as a pin – only there was something wrong with it, because it was making a low, roaring sound that seemed to be shaking the whole house.

And then she heard a knocking at the door, and there was light streaming into the room, which was strange, because she knew she’d closed the curtains, but she didn’t have time to think about it, because the knocking sounded ever so urgent, so she pulled on her dressing gown and ran down to open it, thinking that something must have happened to her mother, and not wanting to think that at all.

The man at the door had blood on his face from some cut that she couldn’t see, otherwise she’d have offered to bandage it, because she was very good at that kind of thing, and he was panting as if he’d been running very hard and he looked very scared indeed.

“They’re coming!” he said, glancing back over his shoulder.

“Who are?” asked Jenny, who always wanted to know more than she was told.

“The French!” That was nice, thought Jenny, who had just learnt a few words of French in school, enough to say Hello, and How are you?, and so on, because Mrs Whisky had told them there were quite a few French people in Southampton now – just like her, they couldn’t go back home as things were, so they were staying, and Mrs Whisky thought it would be nice for them if people could speak to them in their own language, which was a lot easier to learn than hers –

“The French!!” said the man, even more urgently than before, and Jenny noticed what odd clothes he was wearing, like a piece of sacking, but maybe he hadn’t had time to – “Hide!” he said, “Hide, before they come and kill you!”

Jenny may have liked to ask questions, but she usually did what grown-ups told her, especially when they seemed as upset as this man was, so she closed the door, because he’d just run away again, and went and snuggled herself down in the little gap under the spiral staircase, where the shoes went, which was covered by a big rough brown curtain. She knew it was a good place to hide, because Heather had taken half an hour to find her there. And just as she’d squeezed up and pulled her feet in, there was a tremendous crash and an awful lot of dust and everything went dark, and there was this screaming of machines in the air, as if someone were standing on the tail of a gigantic mechanical cat.

She didn’t quite know what happened next. She’d shut her eyes tight, as you do, if you don’t want to be seen, because if you can’t see, then no one can see you - everyone knows that – but when she opened them, it didn’t make the slightest difference.

She wondered whether time had passed, because she was beginning to feel quite hungry and thirsty. She tried to move, as well, because she was starting to get pins and needles, since her left leg had gone to sleep, but there were big, rough stones lying right up against the curtain, and on top of it, so she couldn’t pull it away, and she was a little scared to try moving the stones, because they were sort of grating and slipping against each other, with a noise like the tide going out on the shingle beach at Folkestone.

Then she heard a voice calling to her. And it was speaking French. She knew it was French, because she could clearly hear the word Vous, which is what the French say instead of You, and she recognised that. She was about to call out, in reply – but then she thought –

Only before she could finish the thought, she heard another voice, talking English this time.

“Pierre!” it said, “Don’t be silly! How’s anyone going to answer you in French? We’re all English in Southampton – even if this is called French Street – and we don’t speak that funny foreign stuff.”

“Hello!” called Jenny. “Bon jour! Bon jour! I’m over here!”

And in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, they had her out and dusted down, and sat up on Pierre’s shoulders, so he could carry her over the rubble more easily, and just as they reached the High Street, there was her mother, who’d walked up from Terminus Station because they weren’t running the trains through to Central at the moment, and she’d been crying with worry and her mascara had run and her lipstick had all come off on the handkerchief she’d been chewing with nerves, but Jenny still thought she was the prettiest mother in the world, and Mrs Sims was there, and they all went off to spend the night with Mrs Sims’ married daughter in Shirley.

At school the next week, Mrs Whisky asked them all to write down their experiences. Heather and Bobby (who had become very friendly now, Jenny noticed) just did big drawings of aeroplanes and searchlights and fires (the town had smelt of burnt bacon and scorched sugar for days) and hardly wrote anything. But Jenny tried to explain what had happened, so far as she understood it:

A German came from Germany in a German aeroplane and dropped German bombs on me. But I was saved from the French in French Street... That was as far as she had got when Mrs Whisky came round and looked over her shoulder at what she was writing.

“No, Jenny,” she said, “you were saved by a Frenchman in French Street.”

“Yes, Mrs Whisky,” said Jenny, and wrote what she’d been told, because she was a good girl, and didn’t argue with grown-ups.

But she knew what she knew, and never forgot it.

Finished 15.17 November 15^th 2001