Would that I had your dark and too-good looks! That might’ve saved me some of my troubles.
I wanted a brother badly, me, and when you came along I was so proud. Had there been less years between us we could’ve been copains, things might’ve turned out different. But you were still a baby when the War broke out and I had no time for playing nursemaid. I was puffing out my pigeon chest and thinking big. I wanted Ray for my brother.
A damned stupid idea, if ever there was one. Ray Le Poidevoin was two years older and already a strutting cock. Didn’t I know that he was trouble? He was a born fighter, with beady eyes glinting at any opportunity. That day when he plucked me off the boat he’d been collecting all the stuff people had left behind. The wealthy had abandoned their big cars on the docks before running for the boats, the poorest had bundled up their belongings into sheets. No wonder Ray thought it was a party, it was his Christmases and birthdays all rolled into one.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked of me.
I told him it was Charlie and he ruffled my hair.
‘Well, Charlie, when the Hun come they’ll think you’re one of them. How comes you’re so pale? You cannot be an island boy. Perhaps you are a spy.’
I was so pent-up from the excitement I jumped to my feet, tears of fury in my eyes. But he easily held me back.
‘At ease, soldier! I’m kidding.’
Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out a hipflask.
‘How old are you?’
I told him I was a month off thirteen and grabbed at it quickly, taking a greedy slug.
Mon Dju, I thought, this is how evil tastes!
Ray was laughing now. ‘We’ll make a man of you yet. Are you ready to kill for your country?’
‘I shall be ready,’ I squawked, still feeling the fire in my throat.
Ray crouched back down and I followed suit.
‘You got a weapon?’
I shook my head and he narrowed his eyes like he was thinking deeply, then he dug into his jacket and pulled out a pocket knife. He’d flicked it open and was jabbing at the air.
‘It might not look like much but the blade’s sharp and could slit a man’s throat. You know how to use it? You can have it. I’ve another.’
He placed it in the palm of my hand and as I turned it over it twinkled like a jewel.
I thought that meant I was like him, Emile, I thought that meant I was in his gang. Happens I thought a lot of things that day which never quite proved true. As the sun sank into the horizon I was back to the little kid I’d ever been, too scared to go home and face the wrath of our mother. Au yous, back then she had a tongue as sharp as any knife. You know why we called her La Duchesse? She didn’t just act like she was royalty but she made her word the law. The youngest out of seven children, she’d had to fight for everything. Now she was always fighting me.
I see her standing in the hallway with her hands on her hips, still wearing her fancy coat with lace about the collar. She’d waited two hours to give me a good lamming.
‘Why do you test me so?’ she asked, twisting my ear this way and that. ‘Making a scene in front of our neighbours. As if I haven’t got enough on my plate with a baby to look after and your father working all hours to keep the business going!’
Hé bian, the business. Our parents had decided to stay on the island to keep their livelihood. Our father had started his own printing firm, called The Patois Press. It was everything to him and I’m glad you mean to continue. You, Emile, and you alone, can prove it was worth all the trouble and pain. Back then, we only printed posters for the Odeon, local advertisements and parish newsletters – nothing fancy like what you have planned. Pop was a quiet soul, wanting a quiet life. Arlette was the firecracker, always going off. Of course, she came from a lesser family so she had more to prove, and as for Pop, well, he was much changed from his time in France, fighting in that ‘war to end all wars’. It must’ve cut him to the quick to see another coming.