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France as an au pair instead of choosing a more traditional pre-marital path for a middle-class girl. I was always conscious of the fact that my very conventional parents compared me unfavourably to my older sister Joan, who was ensconced in a good job in London and soon to marry an ambitious naval officer. I certainly did not want to return to London having seemingly failed in my French adventure. As I wrote to my parents in August 1939:
I understand that you must be wanting to see me safely installed – and if one can look into the future with any certainty – Hitler and God permitting – I’ll arrive somewhere in the end even if by a slower and more irregular route than Joan and in a different line.

CHAPTER THREE
    France at War
    I t was only when France was merely days away from war that the seriousness of my situation finally dawned on me.
    The family spent what was in many ways a very normal holiday in August 1939 at Père Manguin’s. I was looking forward to seeing my brother David, who was planning a visit at the very end of the month. One evening before dinner I wandered down to the beach and saw warships in the bay. An old man stood there watching them.
    ‘La guerre arrive,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘La guerre arrive.’
    I watched him staring fixedly out to sea. The sight of the warships in that beautiful bay – their sheer size and dull colour menacing the bright little sailing yachts and fishing boats – made the prospect of war very real and immediate. I looked at the old man and thought of my father. His generation had already survived the Great War. It must have seemed unbelievable to them that war was about to engulf Europe again.
    Monsieur Claude called me aside a couple of days later. He looked ashen-faced. It had just been announced on the radio that Germany and the Soviet Union were about to sign a non-aggression pact. I slowly began to understand that this meant war for France and Britain. As he explained, Hitler could now turn his attention to attacking the West without having to look over his shoulder at the Soviet Union.
    Certainly the pact seemed to shake everyone in the Midi out of their lethargy. Two days later I wrote to my parents: ‘The situation internationally is now the first subject of everyone’s conversation.’ I began to hear that lots of foreigners in St-Tropez were making hasty plans for departure.
    Monsieur Claude, who was a captain in a reserve regiment, received a telegram ordering him to report to his unit the following week. He sped back home to Avignon that very afternoon, returning to St-Tropez a few days later at 3 a.m. (he didn’t have permission to leave his barracks) to pick us all up. The children grumbled sleepily in the back of the car about this abrupt change in plans. Their father explained to them that he had work to do. The parents tried to appear cheerful but I could detect real concern under the surface.
    We arrived back to a very different Avignon from the one we had left less than a month before. The town was already teeming with soldiers on the move. We saw off Monsieur Claude the next evening at the station; his unit was being dispatched north. The scene was like the photographs of Victoria Station in 1914, with every carriage of the train packed with troops and military equipment.
    What was I to do now? I wrote to my parents of the need to be realistic: ‘To gaze at the proverbial blue Mediterranean only means watching perpetual manoeuvres in the bay with bombers roaring overhead.’ But what was realistic or advisable at this point? I didn’t know where I would be safer if the German bombers started their campaign – London or Avignon. Or even if I could reach England if I decided to go home.
    I discussed what to do with Madame Manguin but before we could reach any firm conclusions the decision was taken out of my hands by the fast-moving events of the following days. By Sunday, 3 September 1939, Britain and France were at war with