The Girl You Left Behind

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 Lefèvre 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 Édouard
     Lefèvre, 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
     Édouard wouldn’t want meto 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 Hélène 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, Édouard,’ 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 saidsuddenly. 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 Lefèvre,
     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