Towards the end of 1940, following the French surrender, Henri was freed and returned to Paris. But his reunion with Cécile was short-lived. After two comrades had been arrested, he realized he had to go underground, moving around constantly, so the couple spent the rest of the war living apart, meeting whenever they could. Henri, a keen amateur cyclist before the war, mostly stayed with loyal cycling friends who in general were not politically active and therefore not suspect. Cécile from now on was living mostly with her mother.
Although there was not yet any organized Parisian resistance movement, and the most likely resisters, the communists, had been neutered thanks to the Nazi–Soviet Pact, women in Paris nonetheless found they had to adopt an attitude. In little more than a month at least a million and a half French soldiers had been captured and taken as prisoners of war to Germany. Although some would be released over the next four years, often as a result of bribery, favours owed, blackmail or bargaining, others had escaped to England or were in hiding, and those left behind were often the elderly and infirm. Paris became a significantly feminized city, and the women had to negotiate on a daily basis with the male occupier. Many of those whose husbands were prisoners of war had no cash to buy food because in pre-war days it was the husbands who handed them housekeeping money each month from their wages. Stories of women who did not have their own chequebooks and who had to fight with banks and prove their husbands were still alive and held captive were legion. Most decided they would simply try to get along with daily life as best they could and obtain enough food to feed their children, while hoping they would never come into contact with Germans. But if they encountered them there were stark choices to be faced between making friends with the occupiers, especially if they believed Germany was likely to win the war, and indulging in minor acts of resistance such as walking out of a bar if Germans came in, or misdirecting them if they asked the way. Actual sabotage was rare in 1940.
And there were still English women in the city, often governesses or nannies such as Rosemary Say, who after her sacking from the American Hospital was doing the best she could to survive until she could find a way home. She was working a fifteen-hour day, mostly washing up greasy plates, in one of the many police canteens established all over Paris to feed policemen whose families had fled to the countryside to escape the Germans. She received no wages but was fed at the canteen and lived with the concierge. ‘The Canteen quickly divided into pro-German and pro-English groups … there were fierce arguments and even fights as the pro-German police would curse the English as I served them at table.’ Rosemary was desperate to tell her parents she was alive but could not even send them a letter from Paris as these were banned. She begged a favour from a policeman called Laurent who was often in Paris although based in Toulouse. ‘The price, of course, was that I was to go to bed with him. We both honoured the arrangement. We walked to a brothel near the canteen and made love in a small room surrounded entirely by mirrors. I still have the letter he wrote … from Toulouse.’