The Girl You Left Behind

the chits from
     the food. He glanced at them and thrust them back at me, a little irritably. ‘I do
     not handlesuch things. Give them to the men who deliver the food
     tomorrow.’
    ‘
Désolée
,’ I
     said, but I had known this full well. Some mischievous part of me had wished to reduce
     him, if only briefly, to the status of support corps.
    I stood there as they gathered their coats
     and hats, some of them replacing chairs, with a vestige of gentlemanly behaviour, others
     careless, as if it were their right to treat any place as if it were their home. So this
     was it, I thought. We were to spend the rest of the war cooking for Germans.
    I wondered briefly if we should have cooked
     badly, taken less trouble. But Maman had always impressed on us that to cook poorly was
     a kind of sin in itself. And however immoral we had been, however traitorous, I knew
     that we would all remember the night of the roasted chicken. The thought that there
     might be more made me feel a little giddy.
    It was then that I realized he was looking
     at the painting.
    I was gripped by a sudden fear, remembering
     my sister’s words. The painting did look subversive, its colours too bright in the
     faded little bar, the glowing girl wilful in her confidence. She looked, I saw now,
     almost as if she were mocking them.
    He kept staring at it. Behind him, his men
     had begun to leave, their voices loud and harsh, bouncing across the empty square. I
     shivered a little every time the door opened.
    ‘It looks so like you.’
    I was shocked that he could see it. I
     didn’t want toagree. It implied a kind of intimacy, that he
     could see me in the girl. I swallowed. My knuckles were white where my hands pressed
     together.
    ‘Yes. Well, it was a long time
     ago.’
    ‘It’s a little
     like … Matisse.’
    I was so surprised by this that I spoke
     before I thought. ‘Édouard studied under him, at the Académie Matisse in
     Paris.’
    ‘I know of it. Have you come across an
     artist called Hans Purrmann?’ I must have started – I saw his gaze flick towards
     me. ‘I am a great admirer of his work.’
    Hans Purrmann. The Académie
     Matisse
. To hear these words from the mouth of a German
Kommandant
made me feel almost dizzy.
    I wanted him gone then. I didn’t want
     him to mention those names. Those memories were mine, little gifts that I could bring
     out to comfort myself on the days when I felt overwhelmed by life as it was; I did not
     want my happiest days polluted by the casual observations of a German.
    ‘Herr Kommandant, I must clear up. If
     you will excuse me.’ I began stacking plates, collecting the glasses. But he
     didn’t move. I felt his eyes rest on the painting as if they rested on me.
    ‘It is a long time since I had any
     discussion about art.’ He spoke as if to the painting. Finally he placed his hands
     behind his back, and turned away from it to me. ‘We will see you
     tomorrow.’
    I couldn’t look at him as he passed.
     ‘Herr Kommandant,’ I said, my hands full.
    ‘Good night, Madame.’
    When I finally made it upstairs,
     Hélène was asleep face down on top of our coverlet, still wearing the clothes
     she had cooked in. I loosened her corset, took off her shoes and pulled the covers over
     her. Then I climbed into bed, my thoughts humming and spinning towards the dawn.

4
    Paris, 1912
    ‘Mademoiselle!’
    I glanced up from the display of gloves, and
     closed the glass case over them, the sound swallowed by the huge atrium that made up La
     Femme Marché’s central shopping area.
    ‘Mademoiselle! Here! Can you help
     me?’
    I would have noticed him even if he
     hadn’t been shouting. He was tall and heavy set, with wavy hair that fell around
     his ears, at odds with the clipped styles of most of the gentlemen who came through our
     doors. His features were thick and generous, the kind my father would have dismissed as
paysan
. The man looked, I thought, like a cross between a Roman emperor and
     a Russian bear.
    As I walked over to him, he gestured towards
     the scarves. But his eyes remained on me. In fact, they stayed on me so long that I
     glanced behind me, concerned that Madame Bourdain, my supervisor, might have noticed.
     ‘I need you to choose me a scarf,’ he said.
    ‘What kind of scarf,
     Monsieur?’
    ‘A woman’s scarf.’
    ‘May I ask her colouring? Or whether
     she prefers a particular fabric?’
    He was still staring. Madame Bourdain was
     busy serving a