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.