فصل 02

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 didnt 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. Theyre hardly going to inform on us before their food arrives.

The pig had been moved discreetly next door in the early 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 officers 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 victories, a brief chance to ridicule our oppressors, little floating vessels of hope amid a great sea of uncertainty, deprivation and fear.

You met the new Kommandant, then? The mayor was seated at one of the tables near the window. As I brought him some coffee, he motioned to me to sit down. More than anyone elses, his life, I often thought, had been intolerable since the occupation he had spent his time in a constant state of negotiation with the Germans to grant the town what it needed, but periodically they had taken him hostage to force recalcitrant townspeople to do their bidding.

It was not a formal introduction, I said, placing the cup in front of him.

He tilted his head towards me, his voice low. Herr Becker has been sent back to Germany to run one of the reprisal camps. Apparently there were inconsistencies in his book-keeping.

Thats no surprise. He is the only man in Occupied France who has doubled in weight in two years. I was joking, but my feelings at his departure were mixed. On the one hand Becker had been harsh, his punishments excessive, born out of insecurity and a fear that his men would not think him strong enough. But he had been too stupid – blind to many of the towns acts of resistance – to cultivate any relationships that might have helped his cause.

So, what do you think?

Of the new Kommandant? I dont know. He could have been worse, I suppose. He didnt pull the house apart, where Becker might have, just to show his strength. But … I wrinkled my nose … hes clever. We might have to be extra careful.

As ever, Madame Lefèvre, your thoughts are in harmony with my own. He smiled at me, but not with his eyes. I remembered when the mayor had been a jolly, blustering man, famous for his bonhomie hed had the loudest voice at any town gathering.

Anything coming in this week?

I believe there will be some bacon. And coffee. Very little butter. I hope to have the exact rations later today.

Any news from your husband?

Not since August, when I had a postcard. He was near Amiens. He didnt say much. I think of you day and night, the postcard had said, in his beautiful loopy scrawl. You are my lodestar in this world of madness. I had lain awake for two nights worrying after I had received it, until Hélène had pointed out that this world of madness might equally apply to a world in which one lived on black bread so hard it required a billhook to cut it, and kept pigs in a bread oven.

The last I received from my eldest son came nearly three months ago. They were pushing forward towards Cambrai. Spirits good, he said.

I hope they are still good. How is Louisa?

Not too bad, thank you. His youngest daughter had been born with a palsy she failed to thrive, could eat only certain foods and, at eleven, was frequently ill. Keeping her well was a preoccupation of our little town. If there was milk or any dried vegetable to be had, a little spare usually found its way to the mayors house.

When she is strong again, tell her Mimi was asking after her. Hélène is sewing a doll for her that is to be the exact twin of Mimis own. She asked that they might be sisters.

The mayor patted her hand. You girls are too kind. I thank God that you returned here when you could have stayed in the safety of Paris.

Pah. There is no guarantee that the Boche wont be marching down the Champs-Élysées before long. And besides, I could not leave Hélène alone here.

She would not have survived this without you. You have grown into such a fine young woman. Paris was good for you.

My husband is good for me.

Then God save him. God save us all. The mayor smiled, placed his hat on his head and stood up to leave.

St Péronne, where the Bessette family had run Le Coq Rouge for generations, had been among the first towns to fall to the Germans in the autumn of 1914. Hélène and I, our parents long dead and our husbands at the Front, had determined to keep the hotel going. We were not alone in taking on mens work the shops, the local farms, the school were almost entirely run by women, aided by old men and boys. By 1915 there were barely any men left in the town.

We did good business in the early months, with French soldiers passing through and the British not far behind. Food was still plentiful, music and cheering accompanied the marching troops, and most of us still believed the war would be over within months, at worst. There were a few hints of the horrors taking place a hundred miles away we gave food to the Belgian refugees who traipsed past, their belongings teetering on wagons some were still clad in slippers and the clothes they had worn when they had left their homes. Occasionally, if the wind blew from the east, we could just make out the distant boom of the guns. But although we knew that the war was close by, few believed St Péronne, our proud little town, could possibly join those that had fallen under German rule.

Proof of how wrong we had been had come accompanied by the sound of gunfire on a still, cold, autumn morning, when Madame Fougère and Madame Dérin had set out for their daily six forty-five a.m. stroll to the boulangerie, and were shot dead as they crossed the square.

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 Péronne 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 wasnt 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 Péronne knew anyone who had actually been paid.

What are you doing?

Im moving this. I took the portrait and moved it to a quiet corner, less in public gaze.

Who is it? Aurélien asked as I re-hung it, adjusting it on the wall until it was straight.

Its me! I turned to him. Can you not tell?

Oh. He squinted. He wasnt 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 Édouard do it?

Yes. When we were married.

Its lovely, Hélène 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. Édouards painting is … very different. How do you know they wont destroy it?

She worried, Hélène. She worried about Édouards paintings and our brothers 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. Dont worry – the rest are safe in Paris.

She didnt look convinced.

I want colour, Hélène. I want life. I dont want to look at Napoleon or Papas stupid pictures of mournful dogs. And I wont 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.

Hélène 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.

Hélène 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 cant remember anything.

Its because you look at it so often. Sometimes I think we wear our photographs out by looking at them.

But I cant remember anything – how he smells, how his voice sounds. I cant remember how he feels beside me. Its 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 Im not sure … Im not sure I can …

I propped myself up on one elbow and reached over Mimi and Jean to take my sisters 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 François 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 elses will. You, Sophie, I see you laughing. I see you determined, so brave, putting up paintings, shouting at Germans, and I dont understand where it comes from. I cant 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 sisters 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. Hélène relinquished my hand, and I could just make out her shape as she moved on to her side, and gently tucked her daughters 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 compôte of apple. That is what we will eat in a matter of weeks, Hélène. 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, youre mad.

But think of it, Hélène. Wont it be good? Can you imagine Mimis 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. Im not sure she remembers how pork tastes.

It wont take much to remind her, I said. Just like it wont 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 dont 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 René and Monsieur Pellier played dominoes Monsieur Pelliers 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 Arnaults 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 Lefèvre.

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.

Im 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. Im sure it lies within your capabilities.

I heard my sisters 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 René 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 Hélène 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 château 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 firewood 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.