‘It is the orders of the
Kommandant
,’ the officer said.
‘But she has done nothing! This is a
travesty!’
‘
Courage,
Sophie,’
someone shouted.
I felt as if I were in a dream. Time seemed
to slow, the voices fading around me.
One of the officers beckoned me forwards and
I stepped outside. The sun’s watery light flooded the square. There were people
standing on the street, waiting to see the cause of the commotion in the bar. I stopped
for a moment and gazed around me, blinking in the daylight after the gloom of the
cellar. Everything seemed suddenly crystalline, redrawn in a finer, brighter image, as
if it were imprinting itself on my memory. The priest was standing outside the post
office, and he crossed himself when he saw the vehicle they had sent to take me away. It
was, I realized, the one that had transported those women to the barracks. That night
seemed an age ago.
The mayor was shouting: ‘We will not
allow this! I want to register an official complaint! This is the limit! I will not
let you take this girl without speaking to the
Kommandant
first!’
‘These are his orders.’
A small group of older people were beginning
to surround the men, as if to form a barrier.
‘You cannot persecute innocent
women!’ Madame Louvier was declaiming. ‘You take over her home, make her
your servant, and now you would imprison her? For no reason?’
‘Sophie. Here.’ My sister
reappeared at my shoulder. ‘At least take your things.’ She thrust a canvas
bag at me. It overflowed with belongings she had hurriedly stuffed into it. ‘Just
stay safe. Do you hear me? Stay safe and come back to us.’
The crowd was murmuring its protest. It had
become a febrile, angry thing, growing in size. I glanced sideways and saw
Aurélien, his face furious and flushed, standing on the pavement with Monsieur
Suel. I didn’t want him to get involved. If he turned on the Germans now it would
be a disaster. And it was important that Hélène had an ally these next few
months. I pushed my way towards him. ‘Aurélien, you are the man of the house.
You must take care of everyone when I am gone,’ I began, but he stopped me.
‘It is your own fault!’ he
blurted out. ‘I know what you did! I know what you did with the German!’
Everything stopped. I looked at my brother,
the mixture of anguish and fury on his face.
‘I heard you and Hélène
talking. I saw you come back that night!’
I registered the exchanges of glances around
me.
Did Aurélien Bessette just say what I think he did?
‘It’s not what –’ I began.
But he turned and bolted back into the bar.
A new silence fell. Aurélien’s
accusation was repeated in murmurs to those who hadn’t heard it. I registered the
shock on the faces around me, and Hélène’s fearful glance sideways. I
was Liliane Béthune now. But without the mitigating factor of resistance. The
atmosphere hardened around me tangibly.
Hélène’s hand reached for
mine. ‘You should have gone,’ she was whispering, her voice breaking.
‘You should have gone, Sophie …’ She made as if to take hold of me, but
she was pulled away.
One of the Germans grabbed my arm, pushing
me towards the back of the truck. Someone shouted something from the distance, but I
couldn’t make out whether it was a protest at the Germans or some term of abuse
aimed at me. Then I heard, ‘
Putain! Putain!
’ and flinched.
He
is sending me to Édouard
, I told myself, when my heart felt as if it would
break out of my chest.
I know he is. I must have faith.
And then I heard her, her voice breaking
into the silence. ‘
Sophie!
’ A child’s voice, piercing and
anguished. ‘
Sophie! Sophie!
’ Édith burst through the crowd
that had gathered and hurled herself at me and clutched my leg. ‘Don’t
leave. You said you wouldn’t leave.’
It was the most she had said aloud since she
had come to us. I swallowed, my eyes filling with tears. I stooped and put my arms
around her.
How can I leave her?
My thoughts blurred, my senses narrowing to
the feel of her little hands.
And then I glanced up and saw how the German
soldiers
watched her, something speculative in their gaze. I reached
up and smoothed her hair. ‘Édith, you must stay with Hélène and be
brave. Your
maman
and I will come back for you. I promise.’
She didn’t believe me. Her eyes were
wide with fear.
‘Nothing bad is going to happen to me.
I promise. I am going to see my husband.’ I tried to make her believe me, to fill
my voice with certainty.
‘No,’ she said, her grip
tightening. ‘No. Please don’t leave me.’
My heart broke. I pleaded silently with my
sister.
Take her away from here. Don’t let her see.
Hélène
prised her fingers from me. She was sobbing now. ‘Please don’t take my
sister,’ she said to the soldiers, as she pulled Édith away. ‘She does
not know her mind. Please don’t take my sister. She does not deserve this.’
The mayor put his arm around her shoulders, his expression confused, the fight knocked
out of him by Aurélien’s words.
‘I will be all right, Édith. Be
strong,’ I called to her, above the noise. Then someone spat at me, and I saw it,
a thin, vile trail, upon my sleeve. The crowd jeered. Panic filled me.
‘Hélène?’ I called. ‘Hélène?’
German hands propelled me roughly into the
back of the truck. I found myself in a dark interior, seated on a wooden bench. A
soldier took his place opposite me, his rifle resting in the crook of his elbow. The
canvas flap dropped down, and the engine fired into life. The noise swelled, and so did
the sound of the crowd, as if this action had unleashed those who wished to abuse me. I
wondered briefly if I could throw myself through the small gap, but then I heard,
‘
Whore!
’ followed by Édith’s
thin
wail, and the sharp crack of a stone as it hit the side of the truck, causing the
soldier to bark out a warning. I flinched as another struck, behind where I was sitting.
The German looked at me steadily. The slight smirk in his expression told me of my
terrible mistake.
I sat, my hands pressed together on my bag,
and began to shake. As the truck pulled away, I did not try to lift the canvas flap to
see out. I did not want to feel the eyes of the town upon me. I did not want to hear
their verdict. I sat on the arch of the wheel, and slowly dropped my head into my hands,
murmuring, ‘
Édouard, Édouard, Édouard
,’ to myself.
And: ‘
I’m sorry.
’ I’m not sure who I was apologizing
to.
Only when I reached the outskirts of the
town did I dare to look up. Through the flapping gap in the canvas, I could just see the
red sign of Le Coq Rouge glinting in the winter sun, and the bright blue of
Édith’s dress on the edge of the crowd. It grew smaller and smaller until
finally, like the town, it disappeared.
London, 2006
Liv runs along the river, her bag wedged
under her arm, her phone pressed between ear and shoulder. Somewhere around Embankment,
the loaded grey skies over London have opened, dumping a near-tropical rainstorm across
the centre of the capital, and the traffic sits stationary, the taxis’ exhaust
pipes steaming, their windows obscured by the breath of their passengers.
‘I know,’ she says, for the
fifteenth time, her jacket darkened and her hair plastered to her head. ‘I
know … Yes, I’m well aware of the terms. I’m just waiting on a
couple of payments that –’ She ducks into a doorway, pulls a pair of high heels
from her handbag and slips them on, staring at her wet pumps as she realizes she has
nowhere to put them. ‘Yes. Yes, I am … No, my circumstances
haven’t changed. Not recently.’
She ducks out of the doorway and heads back
on to the pavement, crossing the road and heading up towards Aldwych, the wet pumps in
one hand. A car sends a spray of water over her feet and she stops, staring at its
departing wheels in disbelief. ‘
Are you kidding me?
’ she yells. And
then, ‘No, not you, Mr … Dean. Not you, Dean … Yes, I do
appreciate you’re just doing your job. Look,’ she says.
‘I’ll have the payment by Monday. Okay? It’s not like I’ve
been late paying before. Okay, once.’
Another taxi approaches and this time she
ducks neatly back into a doorway. ‘Yes. I understand, Dean … I know. It
must be very hard for you. Look – I promise you’ll have it on
Monday … Yes. Yes, definitely. And I’m sorry about the whole shouting
thing … I hope you get the new job too, Dean.’
She snaps shut her phone, stuffs it into her
handbag, and looks up at the restaurant hoarding. She dips to check her reflection in a
car mirror and despairs. There’s nothing to be done. She’s already forty
minutes late.
Liv smoothes her wet hair from her face, and
glances longingly back down the street. Then she takes a breath, pushes open the door of
the restaurant and walks in.
‘There she is!’ Kristen Solberg
stands up from her chair in the middle of the long table and opens her arms to greet
her, air-kissing Liv noisily some inches from each side of her face. ‘Oh, my
goodness, you’re drenched!’ Her hair is, of course, an immaculate chestnut
sheet.
‘Yes. I walked. Not my best
decision.’
‘Everybody, this is Liv Halston. She
does wonderful things for our charity. And she lives in
the
most amazing house
in London.’ Kristen smiles beneficently, then lowers her voice. ‘I’ll
consider myself to have failed if she hasn’t been snapped up by some lovely man
before Christmas.’
There is a murmur of greeting. Liv prickles
with embarrassment. She forces a smile, deliberately not meeting the eye of any of the
people seated around her. Sven looks at her steadily, in his eyes an apology for what is
about to come.
‘I saved you a seat,’ Kristen
says. ‘Next to Roger. He’s lovely.’ She gives Liv a meaningful look as
she directs her towards the empty chair. ‘You’ll love him.’
They are all couples. Of course they are.
Eight of them. And Roger. She feels the women surveying her surreptitiously from behind
polite smiles, trying to ascertain whether, as the only single woman there, she is
likely to be a threat. It is an expression with which she has become wearyingly
familiar. The men glance sideways, checking her out for a different reason. She feels
the warm, garlicky blast of Roger’s breath as he leans in and pats the chair
beside him.
He holds out a hand. ‘Rog.
You’re very wet.’ He manages to make it sound faintly lascivious; the kind
of ex-public-schoolboy who finds it impossible to talk to women without introducing a
sexual undertow.
She pulls her jacket across her. ‘Yes.
Yes, I am.’
They smile vaguely at each other. He has
sparse sandy hair, and the ruddy complexion of someone who spends a lot of time in the
country. He pours her a glass of wine. ‘So. What do you do then,
Liv
?’ He says her name as if she may have invented it and he is humouring
her.
‘Copywriting mainly.’
‘Well. Copywriting.’ They both
pause. ‘Any children?’
‘No. You?’
‘Two. Boys. Both at boarding school.
Best place for them, frankly. So … no children, eh? And no man in the wings.
What are you, thirty-something?’
She swallows, tries to ignore the faint stab
of his words. ‘Thirty.’
‘You don’t want to hang around.
Or are you one of
those …’ he holds up his fingers to make
inverted commas ‘… career women?’
‘Yes,’ she says, and smiles.
‘I had my ovaries removed when I last updated my CV. Just to be on the safe
side.’
He gawps at her, then barks a laugh.
‘Oh! Funny! Yes. A woman with a sense of humour. Very
good … ovaries … hah.’ His voice tails away. He takes a swig
of wine. ‘My wife left when she was thirty-nine. Apparently it’s a tricky
age for the girls.’ He downs the rest of his glass and reaches for the bottle to
refill it. ‘Not too tricky for her, obviously, seeing as she got away with a
Puerto Rican called Viktor, the house in France and half my bloody pension.
Women …’ He turns to her. ‘Can’t live with ’em, can’t
shoot ’em, eh?’ He lifts his arms and fires off an imaginary round of
bullets into the restaurant ceiling.
It’s going to be a long night. Liv
keeps smiling, pours herself a second glass of wine, and buries herself in the menu,
promising herself that, no matter how persuasive Kristen is next time, she will chew off
her own arm rather than agree to go to any kind of dinner party ever again.
The evening stretches, the couples bitch
about people she has never met, the courses come agonizingly slowly. Kristen sends her
main back to be redone to her exact specifications. She lets out a weary little sigh, as
if the kitchen’s failure to put the spinach
on the side
is the most awful
imposition. Sven gazes at her indulgently. Liv sits trapped between the broad back of a
man called Martin, whose wife’s friend seems determined to monopolize him, and
Roger.
‘Bitch,’ he says, at one
point.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘First it was my nostril hair putting
her off. Then my toenails. Always a reason why we couldn’t do the
old … you know.’ He forms his thumb and finger into an O and slides his
other index finger through it. ‘Or a headache. No such headaches with old Viktor,
eh? Oh, no. I bet she doesn’t care how long his ruddy toenails are.’ He
swigs from his glass. ‘Bet they’re at it like bloody rabbits.’
The lamb is congealing on her plate. She
puts her knife and fork neatly together.
‘What happened to you,
then?’
She glances up at him, hoping he
doesn’t mean – but of course he does.
‘Kristen said you were married before.
To Sven’s business partner.’
‘I was.’
‘Left you, did he?’
She swallows. Composes her face into a
blank. ‘In a manner of speaking.’