an envelope. I don’t know what it said but it was bad news, for sure. At the time I imagined it was a letter from Mum saying so long and goodbye, you good-for-nothing husband. But later I decided it was a letter from Dr Senner saying come into the surgery or you’ll soon be dead.
It was only much-much later, when I found the letter tucked inside Grandma’s leather folder, that I worked out what I’d actually seen. Then everything I thought I knew had to change again. It was annoying, because by then I’d gotten very attached to my version of the truth.
I suppose that’s the thing about History, there are always several versions of that thing we call the truth.
A Mother’s Story [Extract]
Not for publication
By E.P. Rozier, 12/4/81
Shortly before my mother suffered her second and fatal stroke she provided me with fresh information regarding the imprisonment of her eldest son, Charles André Rozier, during the years of Occupation. Her statement, which was only offered on condition that it never be published, goes some way towards explaining her years of silence.
Shocking though this now seems, my mother believed that it was her husband, Hubert Rozier, who had alerted the German police to their eldest son’s activities. Hubert had become anxious about Charlie’s increasingly irresponsible behaviour. The Occupation gave young people ample opportunities to misbehave, and Charlie for one showed no respect for authority and was continually going out after curfew ‘looking for trouble’. The sense of crisis and fracture between father and son deepened as the years wore on. Hubert had never recovered from his experiences of the First World War, and the Occupation brought back many bad memories. ‘It was as if an old wound was re-opened, and it slowly bled him dry,’ said Arlette.
Hubert withdrew from family life, leaving his wife to run the household single-handedly, which she did as best she could, but by that time Charlie was spending large amounts of time outside the family home and there was little she could do to stop him. She often heard Hubert muttering about this. Hubert felt certain that some tragedy would befall his eldest son and warned Arlette that Charlie was mixing with ‘bad company’.
Arlette was certain that Hubert informed on his own son in a desperate and misguided attempt to stop Charlie doing something foolhardy and life-threatening. He intended it as a warning to his teenage son, hoping to show Charlie that he was putting himself and his family in danger. Having found an unlikely friend in the form of Anton Vern, Hubert confided in him and the two men planned the house search.
Their plan might even have worked had it not been for Charlie’s scrapbook, hidden under the floorboards of the spare room Hubert now occupied. Arlette was adamant that Hubert knew nothing of the scrapbook until it was discovered. Had he known of its contents or its whereabouts, he would surely never have allowed the search to take place. This would explain his readiness to claim it as his own.
Sadly, at this stage in her life La Duchesse was not the most reliable of sources. Although she was able to recall events from her early childhood with almost photographic accuracy, the years of the Occupation were marred by tragedy and heartbreak. Her voice would falter when asked to recall these troubling times:
‘Hubert was becoming like a stranger to me. I’m not even sure if he trusted me. Working for the Germans was hard on all of us and Hubert locked himself up in a strange world where we were all against him. He could become agitated and suspicious for no reason.
‘He’d often ask me where Charlie was, and if I shrugged and said I didn’t know I could see the despair in his eyes. When the German soldiers came to search the house I felt sure it was because of something he’d said to Vern. He wasn’t at all surprised. But then they found this scrapbook and I didn’t know what to think. I was terrified that we’d all be sent to France, and I could tell from Hubert’s face he wasn’t expecting it. Still, he knew what he had to do and in that moment I was reminded of the man I had married.
‘None of what then followed surprised me. It was entirely in his character to lay down his life on a point of principle. I suppose that was his last show of strength, but it was all because of what? A