The Girl You Left Behind

and hauled her out, as if she were a criminal. Her
     sister begged and cried, as did the orphanedchild of Liliane
     Béthune, a whole crowd rose up and protested, but they simply brushed them
     aside like flies. Two elderly people were actually knocked to the floor in the
     commotion. I swear,
mon Dieu,
if there are to be just rewards in our
     next life the Germans will pay dearly.
    They carted the girl off in a cattle truck. The mayor tried to stop them, but he
     is a feeble character, these days, weakened by the death of his daughter, and
     too prone to lying down with the Boche. They fail to take him seriously. When
     the vehicle finally disappeared he walked into the bar of Le Coq Rouge and
     announced with great pomposity that he would take it up at the highest possible
     level. None of us listened. Her poor sister, Hélène, wept, her head on
     the counter, her brother Aurélien ran off, like a scalded dog, and the
     child that Sophie had seen fit to take in – the child of Liliane Béthune –
     stood in the corner like a little pale ghost.
    ‘Eh, Hélène will look after you,’ I told her. I bent down
     and pressed a coin into her hand, but she looked at it as if she didn’t
     know what it was. When she stared at me her eyes were like saucers. ‘You
     must not fear, child. Hélène is a good woman. She will take care of
     you.’
    I know there was some commotion with Sophie Lefèvre’s brother before
     she left, but my ears are not good, and in the noise and chaos I missed the
     heart of it. Still, I fear she has been ill-used by the Germans. I knew that
     once they decided to take over Le Coq Rouge the girl was done for, but she never
     would listen to me. She must have offended them in some way; she always was the
     more impetuous one. I cannot condemn her for it: I suspect if the Germans were
     in my house I would offend them too.
    Yes, I had my differences with Sophie Lefèvre, but my heart is heavy
     tonight. To see her shoved on to that cattle truck as if she were already a
     carcass, to imagine her future … These are dark days. To think I
     should have lived to see such sights. Some nights it is hard not to believe our
     little town is become a place of madness.’
    In his low, sonorous voice, Christopher
     Jenks ends his reading. The courtroom is still, only the sound of the stenographer
     audible in the silence. Overhead a fan whirs lazily, failing to displace the air.
    ‘“I knew that once they decided
     to take over Le Coq Rouge the girl was done for.”’ Ladies and gentlemen, I
     think this diary entry tells us pretty conclusively that any relationship Sophie
     Lefèvre had with the Germans in St Péronne was not a particularly happy
     one.’
    He strolls through the courtroom like someone
     taking the air on a beachfront, casually studying the photocopied pages.
    ‘But this is not the only reference.
     The same local resident, Vivienne Louvier, has proven to be a remarkable documenter of
     life in the little town. And if we go back several months, she writes the following:
‘The Germans are taking their meals at Le Coq Rouge. They have the
     Bessette sisters cooking them food so rich that the smell drifts around the
     square and drives us all half mad with longing. I told Sophie Bessette – or
     Lefèvre as she now is – in the boulangerie that her father would not have
     stood for it, but she says there is nothing she can do.’
    He lifts his head. ‘“Nothing she
     can do”. The Germans have invaded the artist’s wife’s hotel, forced
     her to cook for them. She has the enemy actually in her home, and she is utterly
     powerless. All compelling stuff. But this is not the only evidence. A search of the
     Lefèvre archive unearthed a letter written by Sophie Lefèvre to her husband.
     It apparently never reached him, but I believe that will prove irrelevant.’
    He holds up the paper, as if struggling to
     see it in the light.
‘Herr Kommandant is not as foolish as Beckenbauer but unnerves me more. He
     stares at your portrait of me and I want to tell him he has no right. That
     painting, above all others, belongs to you and me. Do you know the most peculiar
     thing, Édouard? He actually admires your work. He knows of it, knows that
     of theMatisse School, of Weber and Purrmann. How strange it
     has been to find myself defending your superior brushwork to a German
     Kommandant!
    But I refuse to take it down, no matter what Hélène says. It reminds
     me of you, and of a