The Girl You Left Behind (4 page)

I had pulled back the curtains at the noise
and it had taken me several moments to comprehend what I saw: the bodies of those two
women, widows and friends for most of their seventy-odd years, sprawled on the pavement,
headscarves askew, their empty baskets upended at their feet. A sticky red pool spread
around them in an almost perfect circle, as if it had come from one entity.

The German officers claimed afterwards that
snipers had shot at them and that they had acted in retaliation. (Apparently they said
the same of every village they took.) If they had wanted to prompt insurrection in the
town, they could not have done better than their killing of those old women. But the
outrage did not stop there. They set fire to barns and shot down the statue of Mayor
Leclerc. Twenty-four hours later they marched in formation down our main street, their
Pickelhaube
helmets shining in the wintry sunlight, as we stood outside our
homes and shops and watched in shocked silence. They ordered the few remaining men
outside so that they could count them.

The shopkeepers and stallholders simply shut
their shops and stalls and refused to serve them. Most of us had stockpiled food; we
knew we could survive. I think we believed they might give up, faced with such
intransigence, and march on to another village. But then Kommandant Becker had decreed
that any shopkeeper who failed to open during normal working hours would be shot. One by
one, the
boulangerie
, the
boucherie
, the market stalls and even
Le Coq Rouge reopened. Reluctantly, our little town was prodded back
into sullen, mutinous life.

Eighteen months on, there was little left to
buy. St Péronne was cut off from its neighbours, deprived of news and dependent on
the irregular delivery of aid, supplemented by costly black-market provisions when they
were available. Sometimes it was hard to believe that Free France knew what we were
suffering. The Germans were the only ones who ate well; their horses (our horses) were
sleek and fat, and ate the crushed wheat that should have been used to make our bread.
They raided our wine cellars, and took the food produced by our farms.

And it wasn’t just food. Every week
someone would get the dreaded knock on the door, and a new list of items would be
requisitioned: teaspoons, curtains, dinner plates, saucepans, blankets. Occasionally an
officer would inspect first, note what was desirable, and return with a list specifying
exactly that. They would write promissory notes, which could supposedly be exchanged for
money. Not a single person in St Péronne knew anyone who had actually been
paid.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m moving this.’ I took
the portrait and moved it to a quiet corner, less in public gaze.

‘Who is it?’ Aurélien asked
as I re-hung it, adjusting it on the wall until it was straight.

‘It’s me!’ I turned to
him. ‘Can you not tell?’

‘Oh.’ He squinted. He
wasn’t trying to insult me: the girl in the painting was very different from the
thin, severe woman, grey of complexion, with wary, tired eyes, who
stared back at me daily from the looking-glass. I tried not to glimpse her too
often.

‘Did Édouard do it?’

‘Yes. When we were married.’

‘I’ve never seen his paintings.
It’s … not what I expected.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well – it’s strange. The
colours are strange. He has put green and blue in your skin. People don’t have
green and blue skin! And look – it’s messy. He has not kept within the
lines.’

‘Aurélien, come here.’ I
walked to the window. ‘Look at my face. What do you see?’

‘A gargoyle.’

I cuffed him. ‘No. Look – really look.
At the colours of my skin.’

‘You’re just pale.’

‘Look harder – under my eyes, in the
hollows of my throat. Don’t tell me what you expect to see. Really look. And then
tell me what colours you actually see.’

My brother stared at my throat. His gaze
travelled slowly around my face. ‘I see blue,’ he said, ‘under your
eyes. Blue and purple. And, yes, green running down your neck. And orange.
Alors
– call the doctor! Your face is a million different colours. You are
a clown!’

‘We are all clowns,’ I said.
‘Édouard just sees it more clearly than everyone else.’

Aurélien raced upstairs to inspect
himself in the looking-glass and torment himself about the blues and purples he would no
doubt find. Not that he needed much excuse, these days. He was sweet on at least two
girls and spent
much time shaving his soft, juvenile skin with our
father’s blunt old cut-throat razor in a vain attempt to hasten the process of
ageing.

‘It’s lovely,’
Hélène said, standing back to look at it.

‘But …’

‘But what?’

‘It is a risk to have it up at all.
When the Germans went through Lille, they burned art they considered subversive.
Édouard’s painting is … very different. How do you know they
won’t destroy it?’

She worried, Hélène. She worried
about Édouard’s paintings and our brother’s temper; she worried about
the letters and diary entries I wrote on scraps of paper and stuffed into holes in the
beams. ‘I want it down here, where I can see it. Don’t worry – the rest are
safe in Paris.’

She didn’t look convinced.

‘I want colour, Hélène. I
want
life.
I don’t want to look at Napoleon or Papa’s stupid
pictures of mournful dogs. And I won’t let
them
–’ I nodded outside
to where off-duty German soldiers were smoking by the town fountain ‘– decide what
I may look at in my own home.’

Hélène shook her head, as if I
were a fool she might have to indulge. And then she went to serve Madame Louvier and
Madame Durant who, although they had often observed that my chicory coffee tasted as if
it had come from the sewer, had arrived to hear the story of the pig-baby.

Hélène and I shared a bed that
night, flanking Mimi and Jean. Sometimes it was so cold, even in October, that we feared
we would find them frozen solid in their nightclothes,
so we all
huddled up together. It was late, but I knew my sister was awake. The moonlight shone
through the gap in the curtains, and I could just see her eyes, wide open, fixed on a
distant point. I guessed that she was wondering where her husband was at that very
moment, whether he was warm, billeted somewhere like our home, or freezing in a trench,
gazing up at the same moon.

In the far distance a muffled boom told of
some far-off battle.

‘Sophie?’

‘Yes?’ We spoke in the quietest
of whispers.

‘Do you ever wonder what it will be
like … if they do not come back?’

I lay there in the darkness.

‘No,’ I lied. ‘Because I
know they will come back. And I do not want the Germans to have gleaned even one more
minute of fear from me.’

‘I do,’ she said.
‘Sometimes I forget what he looks like. I gaze at his photograph, and I
can’t remember anything.’

‘It’s because you look at it so
often. Sometimes I think we wear our photographs out by looking at them.’

‘But I can’t remember anything –
how he smells, how his voice sounds. I can’t remember how he feels beside me.
It’s as if he never existed. And then I think, What if this is it? What if he
never comes back? What if we are to spend the rest of our lives like this, our every
move determined by men who hate us? And I’m not sure … I’m not
sure I can …’

I propped myself up on one elbow and reached
over Mimi and Jean to take my sister’s hand. ‘Yes, you can,’ I said.
‘Of course you can. Jean-Michel will come home,
and your life
will be good. France will be free, and life will be as it was. Better than it
was.’

She lay there in silence. I was shivering
now, out from under the blankets, but I dared not move. My sister frightened me when she
spoke like this. It was as if there was a whole world of terrors inside her head that
she had to battle against twice as hard as the rest of us.

Her voice was small, tremulous, as if she
were fighting back tears. ‘Do you know, after I married Jean-Michel, I was so
happy. I was free for the first time in my life.’

I knew what she meant: our father had been
quick with his belt and sharp with his fists. The town believed him to be the most
benign of landlords, a pillar of the community,
good old François Bessette
,
always ready with a joke and a glass. But we knew the ferocity of his temper. Our only
regret was that our mother had gone before him, so that she could have enjoyed a few
years out of its shadow.

‘It feels … it feels like we
have exchanged one bully for another. Sometimes I suspect I will spend my whole life
bent to somebody else’s will. You, Sophie, I see you laughing. I see you
determined, so brave, putting up paintings, shouting at Germans, and I don’t
understand where it comes from. I can’t remember what it was like not to be
afraid.’

We lay there in silence. I could hear my
heart thumping. She believed me fearless. But nothing frightened me as much as my
sister’s fears. There was a new fragility about her, these last months, a new
strain around her eyes. I squeezed her hand. She did not squeeze back.

Between us, Mimi stirred, throwing an arm
over her head. Hélène relinquished my hand, and I could just make out her
shape as she moved on to her side, and gently
tucked her
daughter’s arm back under the covers. Oddly reassured by this gesture, I lay down
again, pulling the blankets up to my chin to stop myself shivering.

‘Pork,’ I said, into the
silence.

‘What?’

‘Just think about it. Roast pork, the
skin rubbed with salt and oil, cooked until it snaps between your teeth. Think of the
soft folds of warm white fat, the pink meat shredding softly between your fingers,
perhaps with
compôte
of apple. That is what we will eat in a matter of weeks,
Hélène. Think of how good it will taste.’

‘Pork?’

‘Yes. Pork. When I feel myself waver,
I think of that pig, and its big fat belly. I think of its crisp little ears, its moist
haunches.’ I almost heard her smile.

‘Sophie, you’re mad.’

‘But think of it, Hélène.
Won’t it be good? Can you imagine Mimi’s face, with pork fat dribbling down
her chin? How it will feel in her little tummy? Can you imagine her pleasure as she
tries to remove bits of crackling from between her teeth?’

She laughed, despite herself.
‘I’m not sure she remembers how pork tastes.’

‘It won’t take much to remind
her,’ I said. ‘Just like it won’t take much to remind you of
Jean-Michel. One of these days he will walk through the doors, and you will throw your
arms around him, and the smell of him, the feel of him holding you around your waist,
will be as familiar to you as your own body.’

I could almost hear her thoughts travelling
back upwards then. I had pulled her back. Little victories.

‘Sophie,’ she said, after a
while. ‘Do you miss sex?’

‘Every single day,’ I said.
‘Twice as often as I think about that pig.’ There was a brief silence, and
we broke into giggles. Then, I don’t know why, we were laughing so hard we had to
clamp our hands over our faces to stop ourselves waking the children.

I knew the
Kommandant
would
return. In the event it was four days before he did so. It was raining hard, a deluge,
so that our few customers sat over empty cups gazing unseeing through the steamed
windows. In the snug, old René and Monsieur Pellier played dominoes; Monsieur
Pellier’s dog – he had to pay the Germans a tariff for the privilege of owning it
– between their feet. Many people sat here daily so that they did not have to be alone
with their fear.

I was just admiring Madame Arnault’s
hair, newly pinned by my sister, when the glass doors opened and he stepped into the
bar, flanked by two officers. The room, which had been a warm fug of chatty
companionability, fell abruptly silent. I stepped out from behind the counter and wiped
my hands on my apron.

Germans did not visit our bar, except for
requisitioning. They used the Bar Blanc, at the top of the town, which was larger and
possibly friendlier. We had always made it very clear that we were not a convivial space
for the occupying force. I wondered what they were going to take from us now. If we had
any fewer cups and plates we would have to ask customers to share.

‘Madame Lefèvre.’

I nodded at him. I could feel my
customers’ eyes on me.

‘It has been decided you will provide
meals for some of
our officers. There is not enough room in the Bar
Blanc for our incoming men to eat comfortably.’

I could see him clearly for the first time
now. He was older than I had thought, in his late forties perhaps, although with
fighting men it was hard to tell. They all looked older than they were.

‘I’m afraid that will be
impossible, Herr Kommandant,’ I said. ‘We have not served meals at this
hotel for more than eighteen months. We have barely enough provisions to feed our small
family. We cannot possibly provide meals to the standard that your men will
require.’

‘I am well aware of that. There will
be sufficient supplies delivered from early next week. I will expect you to turn out
meals suitable for officers. I understand this hotel was once a fine establishment.
I’m sure it lies within your capabilities.’

I heard my sister’s intake of breath
behind me, and I knew she felt as I did. The visceral dread of having Germans in our
little hotel was tempered by the thought that for months had overridden all others:
food
. There would be leftovers, bones with which to make stock. There would
be cooking smells, stolen mouthfuls, extra rations, slices of meat and cheese to be
secretly pared off.

But still. ‘I am not sure our bar will
be suitable for you, Herr Kommandant. We are stripped of comforts here.’

‘I will be the judge of where my men
will be comfortable. I would like to see your rooms also. I may billet some of my men up
here.’