The Girl You Left Behind (46 page)

Liliane, across from me, sat very still,
like a rabbit scenting the air for danger. I tried to think past my throbbing head and
gradually became aware of the sounds of a market: the jovial call of traders, the
soft-spoken negotiations of women and stallholders. Just for a moment I closed my eyes
and tried to imagine that the German accents were French, and that these were the sounds
of St Péronne, the backdrop to my childhood. I could picture my sister, her pannier
under her arm, picking up tomatoes and aubergines, feeling their weight and gently
putting them back. I could almost feel the sun on my face, smell the
saucisson
,
the
fromagerie
, see myself walking slowly through the stalls. Then the flap
lifted and a woman’s face appeared.

It was so startling that I let out an
involuntary gasp. She stared at me and for a second I thought she was going to
offer us food – but she turned, her pale hand still holding up the
canvas – and shouted something in German. Liliane scrambled across the back of the truck
and pulled me with her. ‘Cover your head,’ she whispered.

‘What?’

Before she could say anything else, a stone
shot through the back and landed a stinging blow on my arm. I glanced down, confused,
and another landed, cracking the side of my head. I blinked, and three, four more women
appeared, their faces twisted with hate, their fists loaded with stones, rotting
potatoes, pieces of wood, whatever missiles came to hand.

‘
Huren!
’

Liliane and I huddled in the corner, trying
to cover our heads as the armaments rained down on us, my head, my hands stinging at the
impact. I was about to shout back at them:
why would you do this? What have we done
to you?
But the hatred in their faces and voices chilled me. These women truly
despised us. They would rip us apart, given a chance. Fear rose like bile in my throat.
Until that moment I had not felt it as a physical thing, a creature that could shake my
sense of who I was, blast my thoughts, loosen my bowel with terror. I prayed – I prayed
for them to go, for it all to stop. And then when I dared to glance up I glimpsed the
young soldier who had sat in the back. He was standing off to the side and lighting a
cigarette, calmly surveying the market square. Then I felt fury.

The bombardment continued for what was
probably minutes but felt like hours. A fragment of brick struck my mouth and I tasted
the iron slime of blood on my lip.
Liliane didn’t cry out, but
she flinched in my arms as each missile made contact. I held on to her as if there were
nothing else solid in my universe.

Then suddenly, abruptly, it stopped. My ears
ceased ringing and a warm trickle of blood eased into the corner of my eye. I could just
make out a conversation outside. Then the engine charged, the young soldier climbed
nonchalantly into the back and the vehicle lurched forwards.

A sob of relief filled my chest. ‘Sons
of whores,’ I whispered in French. Liliane squeezed my hand with her good one.
Hearts thumping, we moved, trembling, back on to our benches. As we finally pulled out
of the little town, the adrenalin slowly drained from my body and I found myself almost
bone-dead with exhaustion. I was afraid to sleep then, afraid of what might come next,
but Liliane, her eyes rigidly open, was scanning the tiny patch of landscape visible
through the canvas. Some selfish part of me knew she would look out for me, that she
would not sleep again. I laid my head on the bench, and as my heartbeat finally returned
to normal I closed my eyes and allowed myself to sink into nothingness.

There was snow at the next stop: a bleak
plain with only a small copse and a derelict shed to break the flat landscape. We were
hauled out into the dusk and shoved towards the trees, mutely instructed, with the wave
of a gun, as to what we should do. There was nothing left in me. Shivering and feverish,
I could barely stand. Liliane limped off to the relative privacy of the shed, and as I
watched her, the landscape swayed around me. I sank
down into the
snow, vaguely aware of the men stamping their feet by the truck. Part of me relished the
icy cool against my hot legs. I let the cold air settle on my skin, the blood cool in my
veins, enjoying the brief sensation of being anchored again to the earth. I looked up at
the infinite sky, through which tiny glittering stars were emerging, until I felt dizzy.
I made myself recall the nights, so many months ago, when I had believed he might be out
there, looking at the same stars. And then, with my finger, I reached down into the
crystalline surface and wrote: ÉDOUARD.

After a moment, I wrote it again on the
other side of me, as if to persuade myself that he was real, somewhere, and that he –
and we – had existed. I wrote it, my blue-tinged fingers pressing into the snow, until I
had surrounded myself with it
. Édouard. Édouard. Édouard
. I
wrote his name ten, twenty times. It was all I could see. I was in a great ring of
Édouards, all dancing up at me. It would be so easy to tip over here, to sit in my
Palace of Édouard and let it all go. I leaned back a little and began to laugh.

Liliane came out from behind the shed and
stopped. I saw her staring at me and in her face I saw suddenly the same expression that
Hélène had once worn, a kind of exhaustion, not from within but from weariness
with the world, a fleeting indecision as to whether this was a battle she still had the
energy to fight. And something pulled me back.

‘I – I – my skirt is wet,’ I
said. It was the only sensible thing I could think of to say.

‘It’s just snow.’ She
pulled me up by my arm, brushed off the snow and, with her limping and me swaying, we
made our way back past the incurious soldiers and their guns and
climbed into the truck.

Light. Liliane was looking into my eyes,
her hand over my mouth. I blinked and involuntarily bucked against her, but she lifted
her finger to her lips. She waited until I nodded, to show I understood, and as she
removed her hand I realized that the truck had stopped again. We were in a forest. Snow
blanketed the ground in piebald patches, stilling movement and stifling sound.

She pointed at the guard. He was fast
asleep, lying across the bench, his head resting on his kit bag. He was snoring,
completely vulnerable, his holster visible, several inches of neck bare above his
collar. I found my hand reaching involuntarily into my pocket, fingering the shard of
glass.

‘Jump,’ whispered Liliane.

‘What?’

‘Jump. If we keep to that dip, there,
where there is no snow, we will leave no footprints. We can be hours away by the time
they wake up.’

‘But we are in Germany.’

‘I speak a little German. We will find
our way out.’

She was animated, filled with conviction. I
don’t think I had seen her so alive since St Péronne. I blinked at the
sleeping soldier, then back at Liliane, who was now carefully lifting the flap, peering
out at the blue light.

‘But they will shoot us if they catch
us.’

‘They will shoot us if we stay. And if
they don’t shoot us it will be worse. Come. This is our chance.’ She mouthed
the word, motioning silently for me to pick up my bag.

I stood. Peered out at the woods. And
stopped. ‘I can’t.’

She turned to me. She still carried her
broken hand close to her chest, as if fearful anything would brush against it. I could
see now in daylight the scratches and bruises on her face where the missiles had caught
her the previous day.

I swallowed. ‘What if they are taking
me to Édouard?’

Liliane stared at me. ‘Are you
insane?’ she whispered. ‘Come, Sophie. Come. This is our chance.’

‘I can’t.’

She ducked in again, glancing nervously at
the sleeping soldier, then grabbed my wrist with her good hand. Her expression was
fierce and she spoke as one would to a particularly stupid child. ‘Sophie. They
are not taking you to Édouard.’

‘The
Kommandant
said
–’

‘He’s a German, Sophie! You
humiliated him. You revealed him as less of a man! You think he will repay that with
kindness?’

‘It’s a faint hope, I know. But
it’s … all I have left.’ As she stared at me, I pulled my bag
towards me. ‘Look, you go. Take this. Take everything. You can do it.’

Liliane grabbed the bag and peered out of
the rear, thinking. She readied herself as if working out where best to go. I watched
the guard nervously, fearful that he would wake.

‘
Go
.’

I couldn’t understand why she
wouldn’t move. She turned towards me slowly, in anguish. ‘If I escape, they
will kill you.’

‘What?’

‘For aiding my escape. They will kill
you.’

‘But you can’t stay. You were
caught distributing resistance material. My position is different.’

‘Sophie. You were the only person who
treated me as a human. I cannot have your death on my conscience.’

‘I’ll be fine. I always
am.’

Liliane Béthune stared at my dirty
clothes, my thin, feverish body, now shivering in the chill morning air. She stood there
for the longest time, then sat down heavily, dropping the bag as if she no longer cared
who heard it. I looked at her but she averted her eyes. We both jumped as the
truck’s engine jolted into life. I heard a shout. The truck moved off slowly,
bumping over a pothole so that we both banged heavily against the side. The soldier let
out a guttural snore, but he did not stir.

I reached for her arm, hissing,
‘Liliane, go. While you can. You still have time. They will not hear
you.’

But she ignored me. She pushed the bag
towards me with her foot and sat down beside the slumbering soldier. She leaned back
against the side of the truck and stared into nothing.

The truck emerged from the forest on to an
open road and we travelled the next few miles in silence. In the distance we heard
shots, saw other military vehicles. We slowed as we passed a column of men, trudging
along in grey, ragged clothes. Their heads were down. They were like spectres, not even
like real people. I watched Liliane watching them and felt her presence in the truck
like a dead weight. She might have made it, if it were not for me. We might have made it
together. As my thoughts gained clarity, I realized I had probably
destroyed her last chance to be reunited with her daughter.

‘Liliane –’

She shook her head, as if she did not want
to hear it.

We drove on. The skies darkened and it began
to rain again, a freezing sleet, which bit my skin in droplets as it sliced through the
gaps in the roof. My shivering became violent, and with every bump, pain shot through my
body as if from a bolt. I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I wanted to tell her I knew I
had done something terrible and selfish. I should have granted her her chance. She was
right: I had been fooling myself to think the
Kommandant
would reward me for
what I had done.

Finally she spoke. ‘Sophie?’

‘Yes?’ I was so desperate for
her to talk to me. I must have sounded pathetically eager.

She swallowed, her gaze fixed on her shoes.
‘If … if anything happens to me, do you think Hélène will look
after Édith? I mean, really look after her? Love her?’

‘Of course. Hélène could no
more fail to love a child than she could … I don’t know – join the
Boche.’ I tried to smile. I was determined to make myself appear less ill than I
felt, to try to reassure her that good might still happen. I shifted on my seat, trying
to force myself upright. Every bone in my body hurt as I did so. ‘But you
mustn’t think like that. We will survive this, Liliane, and then you will go home
to your daughter. Maybe even within months.’

Liliane’s good hand lifted to the side
of her face, tracing a livid red scar that ran from the corner of her eyebrow along her
cheek. She seemed deep in thought, a long way
from me. I prayed that
my certainty had reassured her a little.

‘We have survived so far,
haven’t we?’ I continued. ‘We are no longer in that hellish cattle
truck. And we have been brought together. Surely the fates must have looked kindly upon
us to do that.’

She reminded me, suddenly, of
Hélène in the darker days. I wanted to reach across to her, touch her arm, but
I was too weak. I could barely stay upright on the wooden bench as it was. ‘You
have to keep faith. Things can be good again. I know it.’

‘You really think we can go home? To
St Péronne? After what we each did?’

The soldier began to push himself upright,
wiping his eyes. He seemed irritated, as if our conversation had woken him.

‘Well … maybe not straight
away,’ I stammered. ‘But we can return to France. One day. Things will be
–’

‘We are in no man’s land now,
you and I, Sophie. There is no home left for us.’

Liliane lifted her head then. Her eyes were
huge and dark. She was, I saw now, completely unrecognizable as the glossy creature I
had seen strutting past the hotel. But it was not just the scars and bruises that
altered her appearance: something deep in her soul had been corrupted, blackened.

‘You really think prisoners who end up
in Germany ever come out again?’

‘Liliane, please don’t talk like
that. Please. You just need …’ My voice tailed away.

‘Dearest Sophie, with your faith, your
blind optimism in human nature.’ She half smiled at me, and it was a terrible,
bleak thing. ‘You have no idea what they will do to us.’

And with that, before I could say another
word, she whipped the gun from the soldier’s holster, pointed it to the side of
her head and pulled the trigger.

‘So we thought we might take in a
movie this afternoon. And this morning Jakey’s going to help me walk the
dogs.’ Greg drives badly, dipping his foot on and off the accelerator, apparently
in time with the music, so that Paul’s upper body lurches forward at odd intervals
all the way down Fleet Street.