The Girl You Left Behind Page 3

  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 Peronne 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 Peronne 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?' Aurelien 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 Edouard 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.'

  'Aurelien, 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. 'Edouard just sees it more clearly than everyone else.'

  Aurelien 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,' Helene 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. Edouard's painting is ... very different. How do you know they won't destroy it?'

  She worried, Helene. She worried about Edouard'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, Helene. 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.'

  Helene 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.

  Helene 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 Francois 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. Helene 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 compote of apple. That is what we will eat in a matter of weeks, Helene. 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, Helene. 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 Rene 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 Lefevre.'

  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.'

  I heard old Rene mutter, 'Sacre bleu!'

  'You are welcome to see the rooms, Herr Kommandant. But you will find that your predecessors have left us with little. The beds, the blankets, the curtains, even the copper piping that fed the basins, they are already in German possession.'

  I knew I risked angering him: I had made clear in a packed bar that the Kommandant was ignorant of the actions of his own men, that his intelligence, as far as it stretched to our town, was faulty. But it was vital that my own townspeople saw me as obstinate and mulish. To have Germans in our bar would make Helene and me the target of gossip, of malicious rumour. It was important that we were seen to do all we could to deter them.

  'Again, Madame, I will be the judge of whether your rooms are suitable. Please show me.' He motioned to his men to remain in the bar. It would be completely silent until after they had left.

  I straightened my shoulders and walked slowly out into the hallway, reaching for the keys as I did so. I felt the eyes of the whole room on me as I left, my skirts swishing around my legs, the heavy steps of the German behind me. I unlocked the door to the main corridor (I kept everything locked: it was not unknown for French thieves to steal what had not already been requisitioned by the Germans).

  This part of the building smelt musty and damp; it was months since I had been here. We walked up the stairs in silence. I was grateful that he remained several steps behind me. I paused at the top, waiting for him to step into the corridor, then unlocked the first room.

  There had been a time when merely to see our hotel like this had reduced me to tears. The Red Room had once been the pride of Le Coq Rouge; the bedroom where my sister and I had spent our wedding nights, the room where the mayor would put up visiting dignitaries. It had housed a vast four-poster bed, draped in blood-red tapestries, and its generous window overlooked our formal gardens. The carpet was from Italy, the furniture from a chateau in Gascogne, the coverlet a deep red silk from China. It had held a gilt chandelier and a huge marble fireplace, where the fire was lit each morning by a chambermaid and kept alight until night.

  I opened the door, standing back so that the German might enter. The room was empty, but for a chair that stood on three legs in the corner. The floorboards had been stripped of their carpet and were grey, thick with dust. The bed was long gone, with the curtains, among the first things stolen when the Germans had taken our town. The marble fireplace had been ripped from the wall. For what reason, I do not know: it was not as if it could be used elsewhere. I think Becker had simply wanted to demoralize us, to remove all things of beauty.

  He took a step into the room.

  'Be careful where you walk,' I said. He glanced down, then saw it: the corner of the room where they had attempted to remove the floorboards for firewo
od last spring. The house had been too well built, its boards nailed too securely, and they had given up after several hours when they had removed just three long planks. The hole, a gaping O of protest, exposed the beams beneath.

  The Kommandant stood for a minute, staring at the floor. He lifted his head and gazed around him. I had never been alone in a room with a German, and my heart was thumping. I could smell the faint hint of tobacco on him, see the rain splashes on his uniform. I watched the back of his neck, and eased my keys between my fingers, ready to hit him with my armoured fist should he suddenly attack me. I would not be the first woman who had had to fight for her honour.

  But he turned back to me. 'Are they all as bad?' he said.

  'No,' I replied. 'The others are worse.'

  He looked at me for such a long time that I almost coloured. But I refused to let that man intimidate me. I stared back at him, at his cropped greying hair, his translucent blue eyes, studying me from under his peaked cap. My chin remained lifted, my expression blank.

  Finally he turned and walked past me, down the stairs and into the back hallway. He stopped abruptly, peered up at my portrait and blinked twice, as if he were only now registering that I had moved it.

  'I will have someone inform you of when to expect the first delivery of food,' he said. He went briskly through the doorway and back to the bar.

  3

  'You should have said no.' Madame Durant poked a bony finger into my shoulder. I jumped. She wore a white frilled bonnet, and a faded blue crocheted cape was pinned around her shoulders. Those who complained about lack of news now that we were not allowed newspapers had evidently never crossed my neighbour's path.

  'What?'

  'Feeding the Germans. You should have said no.'

  It was a freezing morning, and I had wrapped my scarf high around my face. I tugged it down to respond to her. 'I should have said no? And you will say no, when they decide to occupy your house, will you, Madame?'

  'You and your sister are younger than I am. You have the strength to fight them.'