Bruno, Chief Of Police

in these days of Europe, the town of St Denis remembered the Liberation with an

annual parade of its venerable veterans.

Bruno had posted the Route Barrée signs to block the side road and ensured that

the floral wreaths had been delivered. He had donned his tie and polished his

shoes and the peak of his cap. He had warned the old men in both cafés that the

time was approaching and had brought up the flags from the cellar beneath the

Mairie. The Mayor himself stood waiting, the sash of office across his chest and

the little red rosette of the Légion d’Honneur in his lapel. The gendarmes were

holding up the impatient traffic, while housewives grumbled that their bags were

getting heavy and kept asking when they could cross the road.

Jean-Pierre of the bicycle shop carried the tricolore and his enemy Bachelot

held the flag that bore the Cross of Lorraine, the emblem of General de Gaulle

and Free France. Old Marie-Louise, who as a young girl had served as a courier

for one of the Resistance groups and who had been taken off to Ravensbruck

concentration camp and somehow survived, sported the flag of St Denis.

Montsouris, the Communist councillor, carried a smaller flag of the Soviet

Union, and old Monsieur Jackson – and Bruno was very proud of arranging this –

held the flag of his native Britain. A retired schoolteacher, he had come to

spend his declining years with his daughter who had married Pascal of the local

insurance office. Monsieur Jackson had been an eighteen-year-old recruit in the

last weeks of war in 1945 and was thus a fellow combatant, entitled to share the

honour of the victory parade. One day, Bruno told himself, he would find a real

American, but this time the Stars and Stripes were carried by young Karim as the

star of the rugby team.

The Mayor gave the signal and the town band began to play the Marseillaise.

Jean-Pierre raised the flag of France, Bruno and the gendarmes saluted, and the

small parade marched off across the bridge, their flags flapping bravely in the

breeze. Following them were three lines of the men of St Denis who had performed

their military service in peacetime but who turned out for this parade as a duty

to their town as well as to their nation. Bruno noted that Karim’s entire family

had come to watch him carry a flag. At the back marched a host of small boys

piping the words of the anthem. After the bridge, the parade turned left at the

bank and marched through the car park to the memorial, a bronze figure of a

French poilu of the Great War. The names of the fallen sons of St Denis took up

three sides of the plinth beneath the figure. The bronze had darkened with the

years, but the great eagle of victory that was perched, wings outstretched, on

the soldier’s shoulder gleamed golden with fresh polish. The Mayor had seen to

that. The plinth’s fourth side was more than sufficient for the dead of the

Second World War, and the subsequent conflicts in Vietnam and Algeria. There

were no names from Bruno’s own brief experience of war in the Balkans. He always

felt relieved by that, even as he marvelled that a Commune as small as St Denis

could have lost over two hundred young men in the slaughterhouse of 1914–1918.

The schoolchildren of the town were lined up on each side of the memorial, the

infants of the Maternelle in front sucking their thumbs and holding each other’s

hands. Behind them, the slightly older ones in jeans and T-shirts were still

young enough to be fascinated by this spectacle. Across from them, however, some

of the teenagers of the Collčge slouched, affecting sneers and a touch of

bafflement that the new Europe they were inheriting could yet indulge in such

antiquated celebrations of national pride. But Bruno noticed that most of the

teenagers stood quietly, aware that they were in the presence of all that

remained of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, a list of names on a

plinth that said something of their heritage and of the great mystery of war,

and something of what France might one day again demand of her sons.

Jean-Pierre and Bachelot, who might not have spoken for fifty years but who knew

the ritual of this annual moment, marched forward and lowered their flags in

salute to the bronze soldier and his eagle. Montsouris dipped his red flag and

Marie-Louise lowered hers so far it touched the ground. Belatedly, unsure of

their timing, Karim and the English Monsieur Jackson followed suit. The Mayor

walked solemnly forward and ascended the small dais that Bruno had placed before

the memorial.

‘Français et Françaises,’ he declaimed, addressing the small crowd. ‘Frenchmen

and Frenchwomen, and the representatives of our brave allies. We are here to

celebrate a day of victory that has also become a day of peace, the eighth of

May that marks the end of Nazism and the beginning of Europe’s reconciliation

and her long, happy years of tranquillity. That peace was bought by the bravery

of our sons of St Denis whose names are inscribed here, and by the old men and

women who stand before you and who never bowed their heads to the rule of the

invader. Whenever France has stood in mortal peril, the sons and daughters of St

Denis have stood ready to answer the call, for France, and for the Liberty,

Equality and Fraternity and the Rights of Man for which she stands.’

He stopped and nodded at Sylvie from the bakery. She pushed forward her small

daughter, who carried the floral wreath. The little girl, in red skirt, blue top

and long white socks, walked hesitantly towards the Mayor and offered him the

wreath, looking quite alarmed as he bent to kiss her on both cheeks. The Mayor

took the wreath and walked slowly to the memorial, leant it against the

soldier’s bronze leg, stood back, and called out, ‘Vive la France, Vive la

Republique.’

And with that Jean-Pierre and Bachelot, both old enough to be feeling the strain