The Girl You Left Behind (18 page)

The
Kommandant
’s face, inches
from my own, was flushed, his expression agonized. I stopped breathing as I grasped his
predicament. I didn’t know what to do. But his eyes locked on mine and he knew
that I knew. He pushed himself roughly backwards so that his weight was off me.

‘You –’ he began.

‘What?’ I was conscious of my
exposed breasts, my skirt bunched around my waist.

‘Your
expression … so …’

He stood, and I averted my eyes while I
heard him pull up his trousers and fasten them. He stared rigidly away from me, one hand
on the top of his head.

‘I – I’m sorry,’ I began.
I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for. ‘What did I do?’

‘You – you – I didn’t want
that!’ He gestured towards me. ‘Your face …’

‘I don’t understand.’ I
was almost angry then, accosted by the unfairness of it. Did he have any idea what I had
endured? Did he know what it had cost me to let him touch me? ‘I did what you
wanted!’

‘I didn’t want you like that! I
wanted …’ he said, his hand lifted in frustration. ‘I wanted
this
! I wanted the girl in the painting!’

We both stared in silence at the portrait.
The girl gazed steadily back at us, her hair around her neck, her expression
challenging, glorious, sexually replete. My face.

I pulled my skirts over my legs, clutched my
blouse around my neck. When I spoke, my voice was thick, tremulous. ‘I gave
you … Herr Kommandant … everything I was capable of
giving.’

His eyes became opaque, a sea that had
frozen. The tic jumped in his jaw, a juddering pulse. ‘Get out,’ he said
quietly.

I blinked.

‘I’m sorry,’ I stammered,
when I realized I had heard him correctly. ‘If … I
can … ’

‘GET OUT!’ he roared. He grabbed
my shoulder, his
fingers digging into my flesh, and wrenched me
across the room.

‘My shoes … my
shawls!’

‘OUT, DAMN YOU!’ I had time only
to grab my painting, and then I was propelled out of the door, stumbling to my knees at
the top of the stairs, my mind still struggling to grasp what was happening. There was
the sound of a tremendous crash behind the door. And then another, this time accompanied
by the sound of splintering glass. I glanced behind me. Then, barefoot, I ran down the
stairs, across the courtyard and fled.

It took me almost an hour to walk home. I
lost the feeling in my feet after a quarter of a mile. By the time I reached the town
they were so frozen that I was not aware of the cuts and grazes I had collected on the
long walk up the flinted farm track. I walked on, stumbling through the dark, the
painting under my arm, shivering in my thin blouse, and I felt nothing. As I walked, my
shock gave way to understanding of what I had done, and what I had lost. My mind spun
with it. I walked through the deserted streets of my home town, no longer caring if
anyone saw me.

I reached Le Coq Rouge shortly before one
o’clock. I heard the clock chime a solitary note as I stood outside, and wondered
briefly whether it would be better for everyone if I failed to let myself in at all. And
then, as I stood there, a tiny glow appeared behind the gauze curtain and the bolts were
drawn back on the other side. Hélène appeared, her night bonnet on, her white
shawl around her. She must have waited up for me.

I looked up at her, my sister, and I knew
then that she
had been right all along. I knew that what I had done
had put our entire family at risk. I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I wanted to tell
her I understood the depth of my mistake, and that my love for Édouard, my
desperation for our life together to continue, had made me blind to everything else. But
I couldn’t speak. I just stood in the doorway, mute.

Her eyes widened as she took in my bare
shoulders, my naked feet. She reached out a hand and pulled me in, closing the door
behind her. She placed her shawl around my shoulders, smoothed my hair back from my
face. Wordlessly, she led me to the kitchen, closed the door and lit the range. She
heated a cup of milk, and as I held it (I couldn’t drink it), she unhooked our tin
bath from its place on the wall and put it on the floor, in front of the range. She
filled copper pot after copper pot with water, which she boiled, wrenched from the stove
and poured into the bath. When it was full enough, she walked around me and carefully
removed the shawl. She unlaced my blouse, then lifted my chemise over my head, as she
might with a child. She unbuttoned my skirts at the back, loosened my corset, then
unhooked my petticoats, laying them all on the kitchen table until I was naked. As I
began to shake, she took my hand and helped me step into the bath.

The water was scalding, but I barely felt
it. I lowered myself so that most of me, except my knees and shoulders, was under the
water, ignoring the stinging of the cuts on my feet. And then my sister rolled up her
sleeves, took a washcloth, and began to soap me, from my hair to my shoulders, from my
back to my feet. She bathed me in
silence, her hands tender as she
worked, lifting each limb, gently wiping between each finger, carefully ensuring that
there was no part of me not cleansed. She bathed the soles of my feet, delicately
removing the small pieces of stone that had embedded themselves in the cuts. She washed
my hair, rinsing it with a bowl until the water ran clear, then combed it out, strand by
strand. She took the washcloth, and wiped at the tears that rolled silently down my
cheeks. All the while she said nothing. Finally, as the water began to cool and I
started to shake again, from cold or exhaustion or something else entirely, she took a
large towel and wrapped me in it. Then she held me, put me into a nightgown and led me
upstairs to my bed.

‘Oh, Sophie,’ I heard her
murmur, as I drifted into sleep. And I think I knew even then what I had brought down
upon us all.

‘What have you done?’

Days passed. Hélène and I went
about our daily business like two actors. From afar perhaps we looked as we always had,
but each of us floundered in a growing unease. Neither of us talked about what had
happened. I slept little, sometimes only two hours a night. I struggled to eat. My
stomach coiled itself tightly around my fear even as the rest of me threatened to
unravel.

I returned compulsively to the events of
that fateful evening, berating myself for my naïvety, my stupidity, my pride. For it
must have been pride that had brought me to this. If I had pretended to enjoy the
Kommandant
’s attentions, if I had imitated my own portrait, I might
have won his admiration. I might have saved my husband. Would that have been such a
terrible thing to do? Instead I had held on to this ridiculous notion that by allowing
myself to become a thing, a vessel, I was somehow lessening my infidelity. I was somehow
being true to us. As if that could make any difference to Édouard.

Each day I waited, heart in mouth, and
watched silently as the officers filed in and the
Kommandant
wasn’t with
them. I was afraid to see him, but I was more afraid of his absence and what it might
mean. One night, Hélène plucked up the courage to ask the officer with the
salt-and-pepper moustache where he was, but he just waved a hand and said he was
‘too busy’. My sister’s eyes
met mine and I knew
that was no comfort to either of us.

I watched Hélène and felt cowed by
the weight of my guilt. Every time she glanced at the children I knew she was wondering
what would become of them. Once, I saw her talking quietly to the mayor, and I thought I
heard her asking him to take them, if anything happened to her. I say this because he
looked appalled, as if he were astonished that she should even think such a thing. I saw
the new lines of strain as they threaded their way around her eyes and jaw, and knew
that they were my doing.

The smaller children seemed oblivious to our
private fears. Jean and Mimi played as they always had, whining and complaining of cold
or each other’s minor transgressions. Hunger made them fractious. I dared not take
the smallest scrap from the German supplies now, but it was hard telling them no.
Aurélien was again locked in his own unhappiness. He ate silently, and spoke to
neither of us. I wondered if he had been fighting again at school, but I was too
preoccupied to give it further thought. Édith knew, though. She had the sensitivity
of a divining rod. She stuck to my side at all times. At night she slept with my
nightgown clenched in her right hand, and when I woke her big dark eyes would be fixed
on my face. When I caught sight of my reflection, my face was haggard, unrecognizable
even to myself.

News filtered through of two more towns
taken by the Germans to the north-east. Our rations grew smaller. Each day seemed longer
than the last. I served and cleaned and cooked but my thoughts were chaotic with
exhaustion. Perhaps the
Kommandant
simply wouldn’t appear.
Perhaps his shame at what had happened between us meant he
couldn’t face seeing me. Perhaps he, too, felt guilt. Perhaps he was dead. Perhaps
Édouard would walk through the door. Perhaps the war would end tomorrow. At this
point I would usually have to sit down and take a breath.

‘Go upstairs and get some
sleep,’ Hélène would murmur. I wondered if she hated me. I would have
found it hard not to, if I were her.

Twice I returned to my hidden letters, from
the months before we had become a German territory. I read Édouard’s words,
about the friends he had made, their paltry rations, their good spirits, and it was like
listening to a ghost. I read his words of tenderness to me, his promise that he would be
with me soon, that I occupied his every waking thought.

I do this for France but, more selfishly, I do it for us, so that I may travel
back across a Free France to my wife. The comforts of home; our studio, coffee
in the Bar du Lyons, our afternoons curled up in bed, you passing me pieces of
peeled orange … Things that were domestic mundanity have now taken on
the glowing hues of treasure. Do you know how much I long to bring you coffee?
To watch you brush your hair? Do you know how I long to watch you laughing on
the other side of the table, and know that I am the cause of your happiness? I
bring out these memories to console myself, to remind me why I am here. Stay
safe for me. Know that I remain

Your devoted husband.

I read his words and now there was an extra
reason to wonder whether I would ever hear them again.

I was down in the cellar, changing one of
the casks of ale, when I heard footsteps on the flagstones. Hélène’s
silhouette appeared in the doorway, blocking out the light.

‘The mayor is here. He says the
Germans are coming for you.’

My heart stopped.

She ran to the dividing wall, and began
pulling the loose bricks from their placements. ‘Go on – you can get out through
next door if you hurry.’ She pulled them out, her hands scrabbling in her haste.
When she had created a hole about the width of a small barrel, she turned to me. She
glanced down at her hands, wrenched off her wedding ring and handed it to me, before
pulling her shawl from her shoulders. ‘Take this. Go now. I’ll hold them up.
But hurry, Sophie, they’re coming across the square.’

I looked down at the ring in my palm.
‘I can’t,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘What if he keeps his side of the
deal?’

‘Herr Kommandant? Deal? How on earth
can he be keeping his side of the deal? They are coming for you, Sophie! They are coming
to punish you, to imprison you in a camp. You have gravely offended him! They are coming
to send you away!’

‘But think about it, Hélène.
If he wanted to punish me, he would have had me shot or paraded through the streets. He
would have done to me what he did to Liliane Béthune.’

‘And risk revealing what he was
punishing you for? Have you taken leave of your senses?’

‘No.’ My thoughts had begun to
clear. ‘He has had time to consider his temper and he is sending me to
Édouard. I know it.’

She pushed me towards the hole. ‘This
is not you talking, Sophie. It is lack of sleep, your fears, a mania … You
will come to your senses soon. But you need to go now. The mayor says to go to Madame
Poilâne so that you can stay in the barn with the false floor tonight. I’ll try
and send word to you later.’

I shook off her arm.
‘No … no. Don’t you see? The
Kommandant
cannot possibly
bring Édouard back here, not without making it obvious what he has done. But if he
sends me away, with Édouard, he can free us both.’

‘Sophie! Enough talking
now!’

‘I kept my side of the
deal.’

‘GO!’

‘No.’ We stared at each other in
the near dark. ‘I’m not going.’

I reached for her hand and placed the ring
in it, closing her fingers around it. I repeated quietly, ‘I’m not
going.’

Hélène’s face crumpled.
‘You cannot let them take you, Sophie. This is insanity. They are sending you to a
prison camp! Do you hear me? A camp! The very thing you said would kill
Édouard!’

But I barely heard her. I straightened up,
and let out a breath. I felt strangely relieved. If they were coming only for me,
Hélène was safe, the children too.

‘I was right about him all along, I am
sure. He has thought about it all, in the light of day, and he knows I tried, despite
everything, to keep to my side of things. He is an honourable man. He said we were
friends.’

My sister was crying now. ‘Please,
Sophie, please don’t do this. You don’t know your own mind. You still have
time –’ She tried to block my path, but I pushed past her and began to walk up the
stairs.

They were already in the entrance to the bar
when I emerged, two of them in uniform. The bar was silent and twenty pairs of eyes
landed on me. I could see old René, his hand trembling on the edge of the table,
Mesdames Louvier and Durant talking in hushed voices. The mayor was with one of the
officers, gesticulating wildly, trying to convince him to change his mind, that there
must have been some mistake.