Échos du Temps is French for Echoes of Time. It sounded better than the French for Time Anomalies. Unsurprisingly, this story is set in France. To be precise, it is set in the French town of Parthenay in Deux Sevres. Even more precisely, Christo and Julia are staying in one half of a converted coaching inn situated in the Rue Fauborg St. Jacques. Fauborg mean suburb, distinguishing that part of the road, to the north of the river, from the older part, Rue Vau St. Jacques, which dates back to the twelfth century. The house is based on a house owned by a friend of mine, from Minnesota. She is selling it due to financial pressures. Unfortunately I can’t afford it right now. I wish I could. It has a charm even though it’s a little shabby from lack of use and needs some work. The best I can do is use it as a backdrop for this story as well as two in the Marion and Kristoph series that explain how the house in Rue Fauborg St. Jacques came to be owned by Chrístõ’s father.

I did a fair bit of research into that region of France for these stories. One thing I couldn’t find was any mention of fruit trees that grow in the area. The greengage tree overhanging the courtyard comes from a film I saw more years ago than I want to admit to called The Greengage Summer. It was set in southern France and there were greengage trees involved in the plot. The idea that that particular variety of plum grows in France works for me, so I put one in the garden of the house and put the idea of baking pies and making jam in Julia’s head. Of course, Julia is going to marry a Time Lord who lives in a mansion in extensive lands. She will have servants to cook for her. She doesn’t need to bake pies or make jam, but she does need to show Chrístõ that she can be a wife in every possible way to him. And he needs to learn to appreciate such efforts. Living together without servants, is something they need to do.

Then the Nazis rear their ugly heads. I made the first glimmer of a problem a subtle one – Nazi flags in the church instead of the French ones. Then there was the appearance on the bridge, followed by the much more serious one in the town centre.

As far as I know, people were not massacred by the Germans in Parthenay. If they had been, I probably wouldn’t have written about it in a fictional way. They ARE responsible for atrocities beyond all imagining right across Europe, many of which go beyond anything I would choose to write about. They certainly treated people in towns like this one badly. I don’t think I’m slandering them by inventing a sadistic man like Commandant Hans Koehler or an angry one like Yves Musson.

Blut und Ehre - Blood and Honour - was the motto inscribed on knives given to Hitler Youth. Since boy scout organisations all over the world carried knives there is nothing sinister about that in itself. Blood and Honour is the sort of motto an aristocrat like Christo would understand well enough. It is only that the followers of Hitler, whether youths or adults, were so dangerously miasguided that makes them evil.

Is Chrístõ responsible for Koehler’s suicide? There’s a question. Time can be rewritten. Perhaps the scare he gave him tipped him over the edge. Perhaps he would have done it anyway knowing the Allies were coming. Should Chrístõ lose any sleep over him? I think not.

http://www.pearsecom.co.uk/Marion/100/193ruejacquess.htm
http://www.pearsecom.co.uk/Marion/100/194histoire.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greengage_Summer

http://genessa.webring.com/parthenay.htm
http://le-monde-de-celine.over-blog.com/article-34364933.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenay
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poitou-Charentes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deux-S%C3%A8vres

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Youth_knife
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen_ss