The Girl You Left Behind (37 page)

‘They’ll be in the staffroom
before five o’clock,’ Mo murmurs, as she leaves.

Philippe Bessette sits in a wing-backed
chair, gazing out at a small courtyard with a fountain; an oxygen tank on a trolley is
linked to a small tube taped to his nostril. His face is grey, crumpled, as if it has
collapsed in on itself; his skin, translucent in places, reveals the delicate tracings
of veins underneath. He has a thick shock of white hair, and the movement of his eyes
suggests something sharper than their surroundings.

They walk around the chair until they are
facing him, and Mo stoops, minimizing the height differential. She looks immediately at
home, Liv thinks. As if these are her people.

‘
Bonjour
,’ she says,
and introduces them. They shake hands and Liv offers the macaroons. He studies them for
a minute, then taps the lid of the box. Liv opens them and offers him the tray. He
gestures to her first, and when she declines, he slowly chooses one and waits.

‘He might need you to put it in his
mouth,’ Mo murmurs.

Liv hesitates, then proffers it. Bessette
opens his mouth like a baby bird, then closes it, shutting his eyes as he allows himself
to relish the flavour.

‘Tell him we would like to ask him
some questions about the family of Édouard Lefèvre.’

Bessette listens, and sighs audibly.

‘Did you know Édouard
Lefèvre?’ She gets Mo to translate, waiting.

‘I never met him.’ His voice is
slow, as if the words themselves are an effort.

‘But your father, Aurélien, knew
him?’

‘My father met him on several
occasions.’

‘Your father lived in St
Péronne?’

‘My whole family lived in St
Péronne, until I was eleven. My aunt Hélène lived in the hotel, my father
above the
tabac
.’

‘We were at the hotel last
night,’ Liv says. But he doesn’t seem to register. She unrolls a photocopy.
‘Did your father ever mention this painting?’

He gazes at the girl.

‘Apparently it was in Le Coq Rouge but
it disappeared. We are trying to find out more about its history.’

‘Sophie,’ he says finally.

‘Yes,’ says Liv, nodding
vigorously. ‘Sophie.’ She feels a faint flicker of excitement.

His gaze settles on the image, his eyes
sunken and rheumy, impenetrable, as if they carry the joys and sorrows of the ages. He
blinks, his wrinkled eyelids closing at half-speed, and it is like watching some strange
prehistoric
creature. Finally he lifts his head. ‘I cannot tell
you. We were not encouraged to speak of her.’

Liv glances at Mo.

‘What?’

‘Sophie’s name … was
not spoken in our house.’

Liv blinks. ‘But – but she was your
aunt, yes? She was married to a great artist.’

‘My father never spoke of
it.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Not everything that happens in a
family is explicable.’

The room falls silent. Mo looks awkward. Liv
tries to shift the subject. ‘So … do you know much about Monsieur
Lefèvre?’

‘No. But I did acquire two of his
works. After Sophie disappeared some paintings were sent to the hotel from a dealer in
Paris; this was some time before I was born. As Sophie was not there, Hélène
kept two, and gave two to my father. He told her he didn’t want them, but after he
died, I found them in our attic. It was quite a surprise when I discovered what they
were worth. One I gave to my daughter, who lives in Nantes. The other I sold some years
ago. It pays for me to live here. This … is a nice place to live. So – maybe I
think my relationship with my aunt Sophie was a good one, despite everything.’

His expression softens briefly.

Liv leans forward. ‘Despite
everything?’

The old man’s expression is
unreadable. She wonders, briefly, whether he has nodded off. But then he starts to
speak. ‘There was talk … gossip … in St Péronne that my
aunt was a collaborator. This was why my father said we must not discuss her. Easier to
act as if she did not exist.
Neither my aunt nor my father ever spoke
of her when I was growing up.’

‘Collaborator? Like a spy?’

He waits a moment before answering.
‘No. That her relationship with the German occupiers was
not … correct.’ He looks up at the two women. ‘It was very painful
for our family. If you did not live through these times, if your family did not come
from a small town, you cannot understand how it was for us. No letters, no pictures, no
photographs. From the moment she was taken away, my aunt ceased to exist for my father.
He was …’ he sighs ‘… an unforgiving man. Unfortunately the rest
of her family decided to wipe her from our history too.’

‘Even her sister?’

‘Even Hélène.’

Liv is stunned. For so long, she has thought
of Sophie as one of life’s survivors, her expression triumphant, her adoration of
her husband written on her face. She struggles to reconcile her Sophie with the image of
this unloved, discarded woman.

There is a world of pain in the old
man’s long, weary breath. Liv feels suddenly guilty for having made him revisit
it. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, not knowing what else to say. She sees
now they will get nothing here. No wonder Paul McCafferty had not bothered to come.

The silence stretches. Mo surreptitiously
eats a macaroon. When Liv looks up, Philippe Bessette is gazing at her. ‘Thank you
for seeing us, Monsieur.’ She touches his arm. ‘I find it hard to associate
the woman you describe with the woman I see. I … have her portrait. I have
always loved it.’

He lifts his head a few degrees. He looks at
her steadily as Mo translates.

‘I honestly thought she looked like
someone who knew she was loved. She seemed to have spirit.’

The nursing staff appear in the doorway,
watching. Behind her a woman with a trolley looks in impatiently. The smell of food
seeps through the doorway.

She stands to leave. But as she does so,
Bessette holds up a hand. ‘Wait,’ he says, gesturing towards a bookshelf
with an index finger. ‘The one with the red cover.’

Liv runs her fingers along the spines until
he nods. She pulls a battered folder from the bookshelf.

‘These are my aunt Sophie’s
papers, her correspondence. There is a little about her relationship with Édouard
Lefèvre, things they discovered hidden around her room. Nothing about your
painting, as I recall. But it may give you a clearer picture of her. At a time when her
name was being blackened, it revealed my aunt to me … as human. A wonderful
human being.’

Liv opens the folder carefully. Postcards,
fragile letters, little drawings are tucked within it
.
She sees looping
handwriting on a brittle piece of paper, the signature
Sophie
. Her breath
catches in her throat.

‘I found it in my father’s
things after he died. He told Hélène he had burned it, burned everything. She
went to her grave thinking everything of Sophie was destroyed. That was the kind of man
he was.’

She can barely tear her eyes from them.
‘I will copy them and send this straight back to you,’ she stammers.

He gives a dismissive wave of his hand.
‘What use do I have for them? I can no longer read.’

‘Monsieur – I have to ask. I
don’t understand. Surely the Lefèvre family would have wanted to see all of
this.’

‘Yes.’

She and Mo exchange looks. ‘Then why
did you not give it to them?’

A veil seems to lower itself over his eyes.
‘It was the first time they visited me. What did I know about the painting? Did I
have anything to help them? Questions, questions …’ He shakes his head, his
voice lifting. ‘They cared nothing for Sophie before. Why should they profit at
her expense now? Édouard’s family care for nobody but themselves. It is all
money, money, money. I would be glad if they lost their case.’

His expression is mulish. The conversation
is apparently closed. The nurse hovers at the door, signalling mutely with her watch.
Liv knows they are on the point of outstaying their welcome, but she has to ask one more
thing. She reaches for her coat.

‘Monsieur – do you know anything about
what happened to your aunt Sophie after she left the hotel? Did you ever find
out?’

He glances down at her picture and rests his
hand there. His sigh emanates from somewhere deep within him.

‘She was arrested and taken by the
Germans to the reprisal camps. And, like so many others, from the day she left, my
family never saw or heard of her again.’

1917

The cattle truck whined and jolted its way
along roads pocked with holes, occasionally veering on to the grassy verges to avoid
those that were too large to cross. A fine rain muffled sound, making the wheels spin in
the loose earth, the engine roaring its protest and sending up clods of mud as the
wheels struggled for purchase.

After two years in the quiet confines of our
little town, I was shocked to see what life – and destruction – lay beyond it. Just a
few miles from St Péronne, whole villages and towns were unrecognizable, shelled
into oblivion, the shops and houses just piles of grey stone and rubble. Great craters
sat in their midst, filled with water, their green algae and plant life hinting at their
long standing, the townspeople mute as they watched us pass. I went through three towns
without being able to identify where we were, and slowly I grasped the scale of what had
been taking place around us.

I stared out through the swaying tarpaulin
flap, watching the columns of mounted soldiers pass on skeletal horses, the grey-faced
men hauling stretchers, their uniforms dark and wet, the swaying trucks from which wary
faces looked out, with blank, fathomless stares. Occasionally the driver stopped the
truck and exchanged a few
words with another driver, and I wished I
knew some German so that I might have some idea of where I was going. The shadows were
faint, given the rain, but we seemed to be moving south-east. The direction of Ardennes,
I told myself, struggling to keep my breathing under control. I had decided the only way
to control the visceral fear that kept threatening to choke me was to reassure myself I
was heading towards Édouard.

In truth, I felt numb. Those first few hours
in the back of the truck I could not have formed a sentence if you had asked me. I sat,
the harsh voices of my townspeople still ringing in my ears, my brother’s
expression of disgust in my mind, and my mouth dried to dust with the truth of what had
just taken place. I saw my sister, her face contorted with grief, felt the fierce grip
of Édith’s little arms as she attempted to hang on to me. My fear in those
moments was so intense that I thought I might disgrace myself. It came in waves, making
my legs shake, my teeth chatter. And then, staring out at the ruined towns, I saw that
for many the worst had already happened, and I told myself to be calm: this was merely a
necessary stage in my return to Édouard. This was what I had asked for. I had to
believe that.

An hour outside St Péronne the guard
opposite me had folded his arms, tilted his head back against the wall of the truck and
slept. He had evidently decided I was no threat, or perhaps he was so exhausted that he
could not fight the rocking motion of the vehicle enough to stay awake. As the fear
crept up on me again, like some predatory beast, I closed my eyes, pressed my hands
together on my bag, and thought of my husband …

Édouard was chuckling to himself.

‘What?’ I entwined my arms
around his neck, letting his words fall softly against my skin
.

‘I am thinking of you last night,
chasing Monsieur Farage around his own counter.’

Our debts had grown too great. I had dragged
Édouard round the bars of Pigalle, demanding money from those who owed him,
refusing to leave until we were paid. Farage had refused and then insulted me, so
Édouard, usually slow to anger, had shot out a huge fist and hit him. He had been
out cold even before he struck the floor. We had left the bar in uproar, tables
overturned, glasses flying about our ears. I had refused to run, but picked up my skirt
and walked out in an orderly fashion, pausing to take the exact amount Édouard was
owed from the till.

‘You are fearless, little
wife.’

‘With you beside me, I am.’

I must have dozed off, and woke as the
truck jolted to a halt, my head smacking against the roof brace. The guard was outside
the vehicle, talking to another soldier. I peered out, rubbing my head, stretching my
cold, stiff limbs. We were in a town, but the railway station had a new German name that
was unrecognizable to me. The shadows had lengthened and the light dimmed, suggesting
that evening was not far away. The tarpaulin lifted, and a German soldier’s face
appeared. He seemed surprised to find only me inside. He shouted, and gestured that I
should get out. When I didn’t move swiftly enough, he hauled at my arm so that I
stumbled, my bag falling to the wet ground.

It had been two years since I had seen so
many people
in one place. The station, which comprised two platforms,
was a teeming mass, mostly soldiers and prisoners as far as I could see. Their armbands
and striped, grubby clothing marked out the prisoners. They kept their heads down. I
found myself scanning their faces, as I was thrust through them, looking for
Édouard, but I was pushed too quickly and they became a blur.

‘
Hier! Hier!
’ A door
slid sideways and I was shoved into a freight carriage, its boarded sides revealing a
shadowy mass of bodies inside. I fought to keep hold of my bag and heard the door slam
behind me as my eyes adjusted to the dim light.

Inside there were two narrow wooden benches
along each side, nearly every inch covered with bodies. More occupied the floor. At the
edges some lay, their heads resting on small bundles of what might have been clothing.
Everything was so filthy it was hard to tell. The air was thick with the foul smells of
those who had not been able to wash, or worse, for some time.