The Girl You Left Behind

  Liliane lifted her head. She looked at him as if she could not remember what it was to be treated with kindness, and my eyes filled with tears. The Frenchman nodded at us, as if we were in another world and he was courteously bidding us good night, then withdrew to where the men slept. I sat and I fed Liliane Bethune, sip by sip, as I would have done a child. When she had consumed the second bowl, she gave a shaky sigh, rested her head against me and fell asleep. I sat there in the dark, surrounded by quietly moving bodies, some coughing, some weeping, hearing the accents of lost Russians, Englishmen and Poles. Through the floor I felt the occasional vibration as some distant shell hit home, a vibration that nobody else seemed to find remarkable. I listened to the distant guns, and the murmuring of the other prisoners, and as the temperature dropped I began to shiver. I pictured my home, Helene sleeping beside me, little Edith, her hands wound into my hair. And I wept silently in the darkness, until finally, overcome by exhaustion, I, too, fell asleep.

  I woke, and for several seconds I did not know where I was. Edouard's arm was around me, his weight against me. There was a tiny crack in time, through which relief flooded - he was here! - before I realized that it was not my husband pressing against me. A man's hand, furtive and insistent, was snaking its way inside my skirt, shielded by the dark, perhaps by his belief in my fear and exhaustion. I lay rigid, my mind turning to cold, hard fury as I understood what this intruder felt he could take from me. Should I scream? Would anyone care if I did? Would the Germans take it as another excuse to punish me? As I moved my arm slowly from its position half underneath me, my hand brushed against a shard of glass, cold and sharp, where it had been blasted from the windows. I closed my fingers around it and then, almost before I could consider what I was doing, I had spun on to my side and had its jagged edge pressed against the throat of my unknown assailant.

  'Touch me again and I will run this through you,' I whispered. I could smell his stale breath and feel his shock. He had not expected resistance. I was not even sure he understood my words. But he understood that sharp edge. He lifted his hands, a gesture of surrender, perhaps of apology. I kept the glass pressed where it was for a moment longer, a message of my intent. In the near pitch dark my gaze briefly met his and I saw that he was afraid. He, too, had found himself in a world where there were no rules, no order. If it was a world where he might assault a stranger, it was also a world where she might slit his throat. The moment I released the pressure he scrambled to his feet. I could just make out his shape as it stumbled across the sleeping bodies to the other side of the factory.

  I tucked the glass fragment into my skirt pocket, sat upright, my arms shielding Liliane's sleeping form, and waited.

  It seemed I had been asleep a matter of minutes when we were woken by shouting. German guards were moving through the middle of the room, hitting sleepers with the butts of their rifles to rouse them, kicking with their boots. I pushed myself upright. Pain shot through my head, and I stifled a cry. Through blurred vision I saw the soldiers moving towards us and pulled at Liliane, trying to get her upright before they could hit us.

  In the harsh blue light of dawn, I could see our surroundings clearly. The factory was enormous and semi-derelict, a gaping, splintered hole at the centre of the roof, beams and windows scattered across the floor. At the far end the trestle tables were serving something that might have been coffee, and a hunk of black bread. I lifted Liliane - I had to get her across that vast space before the food ran out. 'Where are we?' she said, peering out of the shattered window. A distant boom told us we must be near the Front.

  'I have no idea,' I said, filled with relief that she felt well enough to engage in some small conversation with me.

  We got the cup filled with coffee, and some in the Frenchman's bowl. I looked for him, anxious that we might be depriving him, but a German officer was already dividing the men into groups, and some of them were filing away from the factory. Liliane and I were ordered into a separate group of mainly women, and directed towards a communal water closet. In daylight, I could see the dirt ingrained in the other women's skin, the grey lice that crawled freely upon their heads. I itched, and looked down to see one on my skirt. I brushed it off with a sense of futility. I would not escape them, I knew. It was impossible to spend so much time in close contact with others and avoid them.

  There must have been three hundred women trying to wash and use the lavatory in a space designed for twelve people. By the time I could get Liliane anywhere close to the cubicles, we both retched at what we found. We cleaned ourselves at the cold-water pump as best we could, following the lead of the other women: they barely removed their clothes to wash, and glanced about warily, as if waiting for some subterfuge by the Germans. 'Sometimes they burst in,' Liliane said. 'It is easier - and safer - to stay clothed.'

  While the Germans were busy with the men, I scouted around outside in the rubble for twigs and pieces of string, then sat with Liliane. In the watery sunlight, I bound the broken fingers of her left hand to splints. She was so brave, barely wincing even when I knew I must be hurting her. She had stopped bleeding, but still walked gingerly, as if she were in pain. I dared not ask what had happened to her.

  'It is good to see you, Sophie,' she said, examining her hand.

  Somewhere in there, I thought, there might still be a shadow of the woman I knew in St Peronne. 'I never was so glad to see another human being,' I said, wiping her face with my clean handkerchief, and I meant it.

  The men were sent on a work task. We could see them in the distance, queuing for shovels and pickaxes, formed into columns to march towards the infernal noise on the horizon. I said a silent prayer that our charitable Frenchman would stay safe, then offered up another, as I always did, for Edouard. The women, meanwhile, were directed towards a railway carriage. My heart sank at the thought of the next lengthy, stinking journey, but then I scolded myself. I may be only hours from Edouard, I thought. This may be the train that takes me to him.

  I climbed aboard without complaint. This carriage was smaller, yet they seemed to expect all three hundred women to get into it. There was some swearing and a few muffled arguments as we attempted to sit. Liliane and I found a small space on the bench, me sitting at her feet, and I stuffed my bag underneath it, jamming it in. I regarded that bag with jealous propriety, as if it were a baby. Someone yelped as a shell burst close enough to make the train rattle.

  'Tell me about Edith,' she said, as the train pulled off.

  'She's in good spirits.' I put as much reassurance into my voice as possible. 'She eats well, sleeps peacefully, and she and Mimi are now inseparable. She adores the baby, and he adores her too.' As I talked, painting a picture of her daughter's life in St Peronne, her eyes closed. I could not tell if it was with relief or grief.

  'Is she happy?'

  I answered carefully: 'She is a child. She wants her maman. But she knows she is safe at Le Coq Rouge.' I could not tell her more, but that seemed to be enough. I did not tell her about Edith's nightmares, about the nights she had sobbed for her mother. Liliane was not stupid: I suspected she knew those things in her heart already. When I had finished, she stared out of the window for a long time, lost in thought.

  'And, Sophie, what brought you to this?' she asked, eventually turning back to me.

  There was probably nobody else in the world who would understand better than Liliane. I searched her face, fearful even now. But the prospect of being able to share my burden with another human being was too great a lure.

  I told her. I told her about the Kommandant, the night I had gone to his barracks, and the deal I had offered him. She looked at me for a long time. She didn't tell me I was a fool, or that I should not have believed him, or that my failure to do as the Kommandant had wished had been likely to bring about my death, if not that of those I loved.

  She didn't say anything at all.

  'I do believe he will keep his side of things. I do believe he will bring me to Edouard,' I said, with as much con
viction as I could muster. She reached out her good hand and squeezed mine.

  At dusk, in a small forest, the train ground to a juddering halt. We waited for it to move off again, but this time the sliding doors opened at the rear, and the occupants, many of whom had only just fallen asleep, muttered complaints. I was half dozing and woke to Liliane's voice in my ear. 'Sophie. Wake up. Wake up.'

  A German guard stood in the doorway. It took me a moment to realize he was calling my name. I jumped up, remembering to grab my bag, and motioned for Liliane to come with me.

  'Karten,' he demanded. Liliane and I presented our identity cards. He checked our names on a list, and pointed towards a truck. We heard the disappointed hiss of the other women as the doors slammed behind us.

  Liliane and I were pushed towards the truck. I felt her lag a little. 'What?' I said. Her expression was clouded with distrust.

  'I don't like this,' she said, glancing behind her, as the train began to move away.

  'It's good,' I insisted. 'I think this means we are being singled out. I think this is the Kommandant's doing.'

  'That is what I don't like,' she said.

  'Also - listen - I cannot hear the guns. We must be moving away from the Front. This is good, surely?'

  We limped to the back of the truck, and I helped her aboard, scratching the back of my neck. I had begun to itch, detected lice beneath my clothing. I tried to ignore them. It had to be a good sign that we had been removed from the train. 'Have faith,' I said, and squeezed her arm. 'If nothing else we have room to move our legs at last.'

  A young guard climbed in at the back, and glared at us. I tried to smile, to reassure him that I was unlikely to attempt to escape, but he looked at me with disgust, and placed his rifle between us like a warning. I realized then that I, too, probably smelt unwashed, that forced into such close proximity my own hair might soon be crawling with insects, and I busied myself with searching my clothing and picking out those I found.

  The truck pulled away and Liliane winced at every jolt. Within a few miles she had fallen asleep again, exhausted by pain. My own head throbbed, and I was grateful that the guns seemed to have stopped. Have faith, I willed us both silently.

  We were almost an hour on the open road, the winter sun slowly dipping behind the distant mountains, the verges glinting with ice crystals, when the tarpaulin flipped up, revealing a flash of road sign. I must have been mistaken, I thought. I leaned forward, lifting the edge of the flap so that I might not miss the next, squinting against the light. And there it was.

  Mannheim.

  The world seemed to stop around me.

  'Liliane?' I whispered, and shook her awake. 'Liliane. Look out. What do you see?' The truck had slowed to make its way around some craters, so as she peered out I knew she must see it.

  'We are meant to be going south,' I said. 'South to Ardennes.' Now I could see that the shadows were behind us. We were driving east, and had been for some time. 'But Edouard is in Ardennes.' I couldn't keep the panic from my voice. 'I had word that he was there. We were meant to be going south to Ardennes. South.'

  Liliane let the flap drop. When she spoke, she didn't look at me. Her face had leached of the little colour it had had left. 'Sophie, we can no longer hear the guns because we have crossed the Front,' she said dully. 'We are going into Germany.'

  24

  The train hums with good cheer. A group of women at the far end of Carriage Fourteen bursts into peals of noisy laughter. A middle-aged couple in the seats opposite, perhaps on the way home from some celebratory Christmas trip, have bedecked themselves in tinsel. The racks are bulging with purchases, the air thick with the scents of seasonal food - ripe cheeses, wine, expensive chocolate. But for Mo and Liv the journey back to England is subdued. They sit in the carriage in near silence; Mo's hangover has lasted all day, and must apparently be remedied with more small, overpriced bottles of wine. Liv reads and re-reads her notes, translating word by word with her little English-French dictionary balanced on her tray-table.

  The plight of Sophie Lefevre has cast a long shadow over the trip. She feels haunted by the fate of the girl she had always thought of as glowingly triumphant. Had she really been a collaborator? What had become of her?

  A steward pushes a trolley down the aisle, offering more drinks and sugary snacks. She is so lost in Sophie's life that she barely looks up. The world of absent husbands, of longing, of near starvation and fear of the Germans seems suddenly more real to her than this one. She smells the woodsmoke in Le Coq Rouge, hears the sound of feet on the floor. Every time she closes her eyes, her painting morphs into the terrified face of Sophie Lefevre, hauled by soldiers into a waiting truck, disowned by the family she loved.

  The pages are brown, fragile and draw moisture from her fingertips. There are early letters from Edouard to Sophie, when he joins the Regiment d'Infanterie and she moves to St Peronne to be with her sister. Edouard misses her so much, he writes, that some nights he can barely breathe. He tells her that he conjures her in his head, paints pictures of her in the cold air. In her writings, Sophie envies her imaginary self, prays for her husband, scolds him. She calls him poilu. The image of them prompted by her words is so strong, so intimate that, even struggling with her French translation, Liv feels almost breathless. She runs her finger along the faded script, marvelling that the girl in the portrait was responsible for these words. Sophie Lefevre is no longer a seductive image in a chipped gilded frame: she has become a person, a living, breathing, three-dimensional being. A woman who talks about laundry, shortages of food, the fit of her husband's uniform, her fears and frustrations. She realizes, again, that she cannot let Sophie's painting go.

  Liv flicks through two sheets. Here the text is more dense, and interrupted by a formal sepia-tinted photograph of Edouard Lefevre, gazing into the middle distance.

  October 1914

  The Gare du Nord was heaving, a boiling sea of soldiers and weeping women, the air thick with smoke and steam and the anguished sounds of goodbye. I knew Edouard wouldn't want me to cry. Besides, this would only be a short separation; all the newspapers said as much.

  'I want to know everything you're doing,' I said. 'Make lots of sketches for me. And be sure to eat properly. And don't do anything stupid, like getting drunk and fighting and getting yourself arrested. I want you home as quickly as possible.'

  He made me promise that Helene and I would be careful. 'If you get wind that the enemy line is moving anywhere towards you, promise me you will come straight back to Paris.'

  When I nodded, he said, 'Don't give me that sphinx face, Sophie. Promise me you will think of yourself first. I will not be able to fight if I believe you might be in danger.'

  'You know I'm made of strong stuff.'

  He glanced behind him at the clock. Somewhere in the distance a train let out a piercing whistle. Steam, the stench of burned oil, rose around us, briefly obscuring the crowds on the platform. I reached up to adjust his blue serge kepi. Then I stood back to look at him. What a man my husband is! A giant among men. His shoulders so broad in his uniform, half a head taller than anyone else there. He is such a huge physical presence; to look at him made my heart swell. I don't think I believed even then that he was actually leaving.

  He had finished a little gouache painting of me the week before. He patted his top pocket now. 'I will carry you with me.'

  I touched my heart with my hand. 'And you with me.' I was secretly envious that I hadn't one of him.

  I glanced around me. Carriage doors were opening and closing, hands reaching past us, fingers entwining for the last time.

  'I'm not going to watch you go, Edouard,' I told him. 'I shall close my eyes and keep the image of you as you stand before me.'

  He nodded. He understood. 'Before you go,' he said suddenly. And then he swept me to him and kissed me, his mouth pressed against mine, his big arms pulling me tight, tight to him. I held him, my eyes squeezed shut, and I breathed him in, absorbing the scent of him, as if I
could make that trace of him last for his entire absence. It was as if only then I believed he was actually going. My husband was going. And then, when it became too much, I pushed myself away, my face rigidly composed.

  I kept my eyes closed, and gripped his hand, not wanting to see whatever was on his face, and then I turned swiftly, straight-backed, and pushed my way through the crowds, away from him.

  I don't know why I didn't want to see him actually get on the train. I have regretted it every day since.

  It was only when I got home that I reached into my pocket. I found a piece of paper he must have slipped in there while he held me: a little caricature of the two of us, him a huge bear in his uniform, grinning, his arm around me, petite and narrow-waisted, my face straight and solemn, my hair pulled neatly behind my head. Underneath it he had written, in his looping, cursive script: 'I never knew real happiness until you.'

  Liv blinks. She places the papers neatly in the folder. She sits, thinking. Then she unrolls the picture of Sophie Lefevre, that smiling, complicit face. How could Monsieur Bessette be right? How could a woman who adored her husband like that betray him, not just with another man but with an enemy? It seems incomprehensible. Liv rolls up the photocopy and places her notes back inside her bag.

  Mo pulls off her earphones. 'So. Half an hour to St Pancras. Do you think you got what you wanted?'

  She shrugs. She cannot speak past the huge lump that has risen in her throat.

  Mo's hair is scraped back into jet-black furrows from her face, her cheeks milk pale. 'You nervous about tomorrow?'

  Liv swallows and flashes a weak smile. She has thought about almost nothing else for the past six weeks.

  'For what it's worth,' Mo says, as if she has been thinking about it for some time, 'I don't think McCafferty set you up.'