The Girl You Left Behind (16 page)

‘Édouard, I –’

‘A really special hat.’

‘Certainly, sir. Did you have anything
in mind?’

‘Something like this one.’ He
pointed at a huge, dark red wide-brimmed Directoire-styled hat trimmed with black
marabou. Dyed black peacock feathers arced in a spray across its brim.

‘Édouard, you cannot be
serious,’ I murmured. But she had already lifted it reverently from its place, and
as I stood gaping at him, she placed it carefully on my head, tucking my hair behind my
collar.

‘I think it would look better if
Madame removed her scarf.’ She positioned me in front of the mirror and unwound my
scarf with such care that it might have been made of spun gold. I barely felt her. The
hat changed my face completely. I looked, for the first time in my life, like one of the
women I used to serve.

‘Your husband has a good eye,’
the woman said.

‘That’s the one,’
Édouard said happily.

‘Édouard.’ I pulled him to
one side, my voice low and alarmed. ‘Look at the label. It is the price of three
of your paintings.’

‘I don’t care. I want you to
have the hat.’

‘But you will resent it. You will
resent me. You should spend the money on materials, on canvases. This is – it’s
not me.’

He cut me off. He motioned to the woman.
‘I’ll take it.’

And then, as she instructed her assistant to
fetch a box, he turned back to my reflection. He ran his hand lightly down the side of
my neck, bent my head gently to one side, and met my eye in the mirror. Then, the hat
tilting,
he dropped his head and kissed my neck where it met my
shoulder. His mouth stayed there long enough for me to colour, and for the two women to
look away in shock and pretend to busy themselves. When I lifted my head again, my gaze
a little unfocused, he was still watching me in the mirror.

‘It is you, Sophie,’ he said,
softly. ‘It is always you …’

That hat was still in our apartment in
Paris. A million miles out of reach.

I set my jaw, walked away from the mirror
and began to dress myself in the blue wool.

I told Hélène after the last
German officer had left that evening. We were sweeping the floor of the restaurant,
dusting the last of the crumbs from the tables. Not that there were many: even the
Germans tended to pick up any strays, these days – the rations seemed to leave everyone
wishing for more. I stood, my broom in my hand, and asked her quietly to stop for a
moment. Then I told her about my walk in the wood, what I had asked of the
Kommandant
and what he had asked in return.

She blanched. ‘You did not agree to
it?’

‘I said nothing.’

‘Oh, thank God.’ She shook her
head, her hand against her cheek. ‘Thank God he cannot hold you to
anything.’

‘But … that does not mean I
won’t go.’

My sister sat down abruptly at a table, and
after a moment I slid into the seat opposite her. She thought briefly, then took my
hands. ‘Sophie, I know you are panicked but you must think about what you are
saying. Think
of what they did to Liliane. You would really give
yourself to a German?’

‘I … have not promised as
much.’

She stared at me.

‘I think … the
Kommandant
is honourable in his way. And, besides, he may not even want me
to … He didn’t say that in so many words.’

‘Oh, you cannot be so naïve!’
She raised her hands heavenwards. ‘The
Kommandant
shot an innocent man
dead! You watched him smash the head of one of his own men into a wall for the most
minor misdemeanour! And you would go alone into his quarters? You cannot do this!
Think!’

‘I have thought about little else. The
Kommandant
likes me. I think he respects me, in his way. And if I do not do
this Édouard will surely die. You know what happens in those places. The mayor
believes him as good as dead already.’

She leaned over the table, her voice urgent.
‘Sophie – there is no guarantee that Herr Kommandant will act honourably. He is a
German! Why on earth should you trust a word that he says? You could lie down with him
and it would all be for nothing!’

I had never seen my sister so angry.
‘I have to go and speak with him. There is no other way.’

‘If this gets out, Édouard
won’t want you.’

We stared at each other.

‘You think you can keep it from him?
You can’t. You are too honest. And even if you tried, do you think this town
wouldn’t let him know?’

She was right.

She looked down at her hands. Then she got up
and poured herself a glass of water. She drank it slowly, glancing up at me twice, and
as the silence lengthened, I began to feel her disapproval, the veiled question within
it, and it made me angry. ‘You think I would do this lightly?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘I don’t know you at all these days.’

It was like a slap. My sister and I glared
at each other and I felt as though I were teetering on the edge of something. Nobody
fights you like your own sister; nobody else knows the most vulnerable parts of you and
will aim for them without mercy. The spectre of my dance with the
Kommandant
edged around us, and I had a sudden feeling that we were without boundaries.

‘All right,’ I said.
‘Answer me this, Hélène. If it were your only chance to save
Jean-Michel, what would you do?’

At last I saw her waver.

‘Life or death. What would you do to
save him? I know there are no limits to what you feel for him.’

She bit her lip and turned to the black
window. ‘This could all go so wrong.’

‘It won’t.’

‘You may well believe that. But you
are impulsive by nature. And it is not only your future in the balance.’

I stood then. I wanted to walk round the
table to my sister. I wanted to crouch at her side and hold her and be told that it
would all be all right, that we would all be safe. But her expression told me there was
nothing more to say, so I brushed down my skirts and, broom in hand, walked towards the
kitchen door.

I slept fitfully that night. I dreamed of
Édouard, of his face contorted with disgust. I dreamed of us arguing, of myself
trying again and again to convince him that I had only done what was right, while he
turned away. In one dream, he pushed the chair back from the table at which we sat
arguing, and when I looked he had no lower body: his legs and half of his torso were
missing.
There
, he said to me.
Are you satisfied now?

I woke sobbing, to find Édith gazing
down at me, her eyes black, unfathomable. She reached out a hand and gently touched my
wet cheek, as if in sympathy. I reached out and held her to me and we lay there in
silence, wrapped around each other as the dawn broke.

I went through the day as if in a dream. I
prepared breakfast for the children while Hélène went to the market, and
watched as Aurélien, who was in one of his moods, took Édith to school. I
opened the doors at ten o’clock and served the few people who came in at that
time. Old René was laughing about some German military vehicle that had gone into a
ditch down by the barracks, and could not be pulled out. This mishap caused merriment in
the bar for a while. I smiled vaguely, and nodded that, yes, indeed, that would show
them, yes, that was indeed fine German steering. I saw and heard it all as if from the
inside of a bubble.

At lunchtime Aurélien and Édith
came in for a piece of bread and a small knob of cheese, and while they sat in the
kitchen we received a notice from the mayor, requesting blankets and several sets of
cutlery to go to a new billet a mile down the road. There was much grumbling as our
customers observed the piece of paper and recalled that they,
too,
would return home to similar notices. Some small part of me was glad to be seen as part
of the requisitioning.

At three o’clock we paused to watch a
German medical convoy pass, the line of vehicles and horses making our road vibrate. The
bar was silent for some minutes afterwards. At four o’clock the mayor’s wife
came in and thanked everyone for their kind letters and thoughts, and we asked her to
stay for a cup of coffee but she refused. She was not good company, she said
apologetically. She made her way unsteadily back across the square, her husband
supporting her by the elbow.

At half past four the last customers left
for the day, and I knew, with dusk falling, that there would be no more, even though we
were open for another half-hour. I walked along the dining-room windows, pulling down
each blind so that our interior was again obscured. In the kitchen Hélène was
checking spellings with Édith, and occasionally breaking off to sing songs with
Mimi and Jean. Édith had taken a fancy to little Jean, and Hélène had
remarked several times what a help the little girl was, playing with him so much.
Hélène had never once questioned my decision to bring her into our home; it
would not have occurred to her to turn a child away, even though it meant less food for
each of us.

When I went upstairs, I pulled down my
journal from the rafters. I made as if to write, then realized I had nothing to say.
Nothing that would not incriminate me. I tucked the journal back into its hiding place,
and wondered whether I would ever have anything to say to my husband again.

The Germans came, without the
Kommandant
, and we fed them. They were subdued; I found myself hoping, as I
often did, that this meant some terrible news on their side. Hélène kept
glancing at me as we worked; I could see her trying to decide what I was going to do. I
served, poured wine, washed up, and accepted with a curt nod the thanks of those men who
congratulated us on the meal. Then, as the last of them left, I scooped up Édith,
who was asleep on the stairs again, and took her to my room. I laid her in the bed,
pulling the covers up to her chin. I gazed at her for a moment, gently moving a strand
of hair away from her cheek. She stirred, her face troubled even in sleep.

I watched to make sure she wouldn’t
wake. Then I brushed my hair and pinned it, my movements slow and considered. As I
stared at my reflection in the candlelight, something caught my eye. I turned and picked
up a note that had been pushed under the door. I stared at the words, at
Hélène’s handwriting.

Once it is done, it cannot be undone.

And then I thought of the dead boy prisoner
in his oversized shoes, the raggle-taggle men who had made their way up the road even
that afternoon. And it was suddenly very simple: there was no choice.

I placed the note in my hiding place, then
made my way silently down the stairs. At the bottom, I gazed at the portrait on the
wall, then lifted it carefully from its hook and wrapped it in a shawl, so that none of
it was exposed. I covered myself with another two shawls and
stepped
out into the dark. As I closed the door behind me, I heard my sister whisper from
upstairs, her voice a warning bell.

Sophie.

After so many months spent inside under
curfew it felt strange to be walking in the dark. The icy streets of the little town
were deserted, the windows blank, the curtains unmoving. I walked along briskly in the
shadows, a shawl pulled high over my head in the hope that even if someone happened to
look out they would see only an unidentifiable shape hurrying through the
backstreets.

It was bitterly cold, but I barely felt it.
I was numb. As I made the fifteen-minute journey to the outskirts of town, to the
Fourrier farm where the Germans had billeted themselves almost a year earlier, I lost
the ability to think. I became a thing, walking. I was afraid that if I let myself think
about where I was going, I would not be able to make my legs move, one foot placing
itself in front of the other. If I thought, I would hear my sister’s warnings, the
unforgiving voices of the other townspeople if it were to emerge that I had been seen
visiting Herr Kommandant under cover of night. I might hear my own fear.

Instead I muttered my husband’s name
like a mantra:
Édouard. I will free Édouard.
I can do this.
I held the painting tight under my arm.

I had reached the outskirts of the town. I
turned left where the dirt road became rough and rutted, the lane’s already pocked
surface further destroyed by the military vehicles that passed up and down. My
father’s old horse
had broken a leg in one of these ruts the
previous year: he had been ridden too hard by some German who hadn’t been looking
where he was going. Aurélien had wept when he heard the news. Just another
blameless casualty of the occupation. These days, nobody wept for horses.

I will bring Édouard home.

The moon disappeared behind a cloud and I
stumbled down the farm track, my feet several times disappearing into ruts of icy water
so that my shoes and stockings were drenched and my cold fingers tightened round the
painting for fear that I would drop it. I could just make out the distant lights within
the house, and I kept walking towards them. Dim shapes moved ahead of me on the verges,
rabbits perhaps, and the outline of a fox crept across the road, pausing briefly to
stare at me, insolent and unafraid. Moments later I heard the terrified squeal of a
rabbit and had to force down the bile it brought to my throat.

The farm loomed ahead now, its lights
blazing. I heard the rumble of a truck and my breath quickened. I leaped backwards into
a hedge, ducking out of the beam of the headlights as a military vehicle bounced and
whined its way past. In the rear, under a flap of canvas, I could just make out the
faces of women, seated beside each other. I stared as they disappeared, then pulled
myself out of the hedge, my shawls catching on the twigs. There were rumours that the
Germans brought in girls from outside the town; until now I had believed them to be just
that. I thought of Liliane again and offered up a silent prayer.