The Girl You Left Behind

holding.
    ‘You held the pig before them? They
     came here and you held it out in front of their noses? And then you told them off for
coming here
?’ Her voice was incredulous.
    ‘In front of their snouts,’ said
     Aurélien, who seemed suddenly to have recovered some of his swagger. ‘Hah!
     You held it in front of their snouts!’
    I sat down on the cobbles and began to
     laugh. I laughed until my skin grew chilled and I didn’t know whether I was
     laughing or weeping. My brother, perhaps afraid I was becoming hysterical, took my hand
     and rested against me. He was fourteen, sometimes bristling like a man, sometimes
     childlike in his need for reassurance.
    Hélène was still deep in thought.
     ‘If I had known …’ she said. ‘How did you become so brave,
     Sophie? My little sister! Who made you like this? You were a mouse when we were
     children. A mouse!’
    I wasn’t sure I knew the answer.
    And then, as we finally walked back into the
     house, as Hélène busied herself with the milk pan and Aurélien began to
     wash his poor, battered face, I stood before the portrait.
    That girl, the girl Édouard had
     married, looked back with an expression I no longer recognized. He had seen it in me
     long before anyone else did: it speaks of knowledge, that smile, of satisfaction gained
     and given. It speaks of pride. When his Parisian friends had found his love of me – a
     shop girl – inexplicable, he had just smiled because he could already see this in
     me.
    I never knew if he understood that it was
     only there because of him.
    I stood and gazed at her and, for a few
     seconds, I remembered how it had felt to be that girl, free of hunger, of fear, consumed
     only by idle thoughts of what private moments I might spend with Édouard. She
     reminded methat the world is capable of beauty, and that there were
     once things – art, joy, love – that filled my world, instead of fear and nettle soup and
     curfews. I saw him in my expression. And then I realized what I had just done. He had
     reminded me of my own strength, of how much I had left in me with which to fight.
    When you return, Édouard, I swear I
     will once again be the girl you painted.

2
    The story of the pig-baby had reached most
     of St Péronne by lunchtime. The bar of Le Coq Rouge saw a constant stream of
     customers, even though we had little to offer other than chicory coffee; beer supplies
     were sporadic, and we had only a few ruinously expensive bottles of wine. It was
     astonishing how many people called just to wish us good day.
    ‘And you tore a strip off him? Told
     him to go away?’ Old René, chuckling into his moustache, was clutching the
     back of a chair and weeping tears of laughter. He had asked to hear the story four times
     now, and with every telling Aurélien had embellished it a little more, until he was
     fighting off the
Kommandant
with a sabre, while I cried ‘
Der Kaiser
     ist Scheiss!
’
    I exchanged a small smile with
     Hélène, who was sweeping the floor of the café. I didn’t mind.
     There had been little enough to celebrate in our town lately.
    ‘We must be careful,’
     Hélène said, as René left, lifting his hat in salute. We watched him,
     convulsed with renewed mirth as he passed the post office, pausing to wipe his eyes.
     ‘This story is spreading too far.’
    ‘Nobody will say anything. Everyone
     hates the Boche.’ I shrugged. ‘Besides, they all want a piece of pork.
     They’re hardly going to inform on us before their food arrives.’
    The pig had been moved discreetly next door
     in theearly hours of the morning. Some months ago Aurélien,
     chopping up old beer barrels for firewood, had discovered that the only thing separating
     the labyrinthine wine cellar from that of the neighbours, the Fouberts, was a
     single-skin brick wall. We had carefully removed several of the bricks, with the
     Fouberts’ co-operation, and this had become an escape route of last resort. When
     the Fouberts had harboured a young Englishman, and the Germans had arrived unannounced
     at their door at dusk, Madame Foubert had pleaded incomprehension at the officer’s
     instructions, giving the young man just enough time to sneak down to the cellar and
     through into our side. They had taken her house to pieces, even looked around the
     cellar, but in the dim light, not one had noticed that the mortar in the wall was
     suspiciously gappy.
    This was the story of our lives: minor
     insurrections, tiny