The Ugly Carnival

By Gráinne Armstrong

Mama always said my hair would get me in trouble.

Golden highlights shimmered amongst my long, titian curls. My hair reminded her of the sunsets on Calais beach, she said, but that was before the Germans invaded. Putrefied bodies of young Allied soldiers turned the white sand into a grizzled grey. Mama begged me then to cover my hair.

He was like a raiding boar, rutting and salivating over what was not his to take. Like a foraging animal, he sniffed my tresses before he devoured my virginity. “Collaboration horizontale,” the villagers called it, but that German officer had violated me. Mama had no choice in him staying; the enemy billeted in the village houses. That was the last night I slept in my bed. I slept with Mama from then on.

Simone was my best friend. We made daisy chains as children. One night, I watched her fumble with the enemy in the village square. His peaked cap askew on her head, the death’s head badge shining in the reluctant moonlight. Grotesque shadows on the cobblestones. I recognised her laugh as I listened from my open bedroom window. The next day, she tried to share his token of chocolate with me. Mama slapped the chocolate squares out of my hand. But I guarded Simone’s secret.

* * *

V-E Day celebrations broke the iron grip of fear. Calais revelled in drunken ecstasy, strangers kissing strangers, their lips moist with the taste of freedom. I gazed out the window at the field of sunflowers framed by hills of the bluest lavender. Their vibrant yellow heads followed the sun as lazy sheep, newly shorn, ambled to a nearby green pasture. I don’t remember if the birds were singing; I expect they were, but the raucousness of the advancing mob deadened sweet noises that day. Mama and I knew what the rabble had done to other women in the village. The smell of burning hair travelled for miles on the summer breeze. When they should have celebrated freedom from the invading forces, they instead turned on their own.

The cowards came, and I recognised them all. My teenage friends. They had genuflected to the German army, impotent fools. I imagined the color of cowardice as an insipid yellow. Similar to an artist’s brush soaking in water after delighting a blank canvas with a golden sun. Simone wore that same anaemic colour as a hairband. Pierre courted my affections last summer. Mama shooed him away as she would a fly landing on a fresh loaf. “If you are old enough to chase my daughter, you are old enough to fire a gun. Why are you not fighting, Pierre?”

“Some men need to stay behind to protect our women,” he said.

I picked up the silver-embossed hairbrush and dragged it slowly through my hair. One hundred strokes, mama said, to make it shine. Then mama sheared my head gently. Her tears dripped silently. Fallen tresses looked like embers on the floor, still alive, capable of igniting again. I heard them come closer, native wild boar this time, stampeding and squealing. The ugly carnival, and I was the major attraction.

Mama and I sat on the porch swing, waiting as they came closer. Pierre. Simone. Several others stood at our fence. They were the invading swine now. I saw them gaping at me, my baldness. The frenzy shifted to silence.

Mama rose slowly from the swing and directed her gaze at Pierre.

“Is this how you protect our women, Pierre? You’re no better than the pigs that wallowed in our trough for too long.”

Pierre spat on the ground and led them away. Simone glared at me and grabbed Pierre’s arm. They marched on to the next victim. Bloody cowards! Simone fraternised with the Germans, not me.

The sunflowers, heads drooping, closed their eyes. I heard the chucking of the blackbird summoning in the night. Simone’s secret I kept to myself, but my secret babbled inside the house: Eloise. I rubbed her crown, feeling the golden velvet of her new-born hair. She didn’t need to know who her father was. I remembered the story about the cuckoos papa had told me, horrendous birds that brazenly occupy other bird’s nests and lay their eggs. They fly away, leaving the true occupier to raise its chicks.

I carried my wee bundle out to the porch, where Mama waited with open arms. Her smile decimated the darkness, and her voice was so sweet as she sang a lullaby.

And my wise mama hugged me close. “Your hair will grow back, bolder than before, like the sunset at Calais.”

About the author

Gráinne Armstrong is a therapist by day, a scribbler of words by night. She lives in the west of Ireland with her two dogs, two cats and two daughters who ensure she keeps her feet firmly on the ground. Gráinne was thrilled to have a Tiny Love Story published in The New York Times, ecstatic to have been a winner in Globe Soup’s historical fiction category, and will have a story appearing in the new Mums’ Life stories anthology. She likes nothing better than having her head stuck in a history book while sipping a glass of merlot. 

About the illustration

The illustration is "This girl pays the penalty for having had personal relations with the Germans. Here, in the Montelimar area, France, French civilians shave her head as punishment", August 29, 1944. In the collection of the National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. In the public domain.