The Girl You Left Behind

are going to sing like this all
     day?’
    It wasn’t the gathering itself that
     troubled him. He was like my husband: physically pained by any art that was not
     beautiful. ‘It’s possible.’
    The
Kommandant
stood very still,
     his senses trained on the sound. I was suddenly anxious: if his ear for music was as
     good as his eye for painting, he might yet detect the chiming beneath it.
    ‘I was wondering what you wanted to
     eat tonight,’ I said abruptly.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Whether you had any favourites. I
     mean, our ingredients are limited, yes, but there are various things I might be able to
     make for you.’ I could see Madame Poilâne urging the others to sing louder, her
     hands gesturing surreptitiously upwards.
    The
Kommandant
seemed briefly
     puzzled. I smiled, and for a moment his face softened.
    ‘That’s very –’ He broke
     off.
    Thierry Arteuil was running up the road, his
     woollen scarf flying as he pointed behind him. ‘
Prisoners of
     war!
’
    The
Kommandant
whipped round
     towards his men, already gathering in the square, and I was forgotten. I waited for him
     to go, then hurried across to the group of singing elders. Hélène and the
     customers inside Le CoqRouge, perhaps hearing the growing commotion,
     were peering through the windows, some edging out on to the pavement.
    There was a brief hush. Then up the main
     street they came, around a hundred men, organized into a small convoy. Beside me, the
     old people kept singing, their voices at first faltering as they realized what they were
     witnessing, then growing in strength and determination.
    There was hardly a man or woman who did not
     anxiously scan the stumbling soldiers for a well-known face. But there was no relief to
     be had from the absence of familiarity. Were these really Frenchmen? They looked so
     shrunken, so grey and defeated, their clothes hanging from malnourished bodies, their
     wounds dressed with filthy old bandages. They passed a few feet before us, their heads
     lowered, Germans at their front and rear, and we were powerless to do anything but
     stare.
    I heard the old people’s chorus
     lifting determinedly around me, suddenly more tuneful and harmonic: ‘
I stand
     in wind and rain and sing bailero lero …
’
    A great lump rose in my throat at the
     thought that somewhere, many miles away, this might be Édouard. I felt
     Hélène’s hand grip mine, and knew she was thinking the same.
    Here all the grass is greener,
    Sing bailero lero …
    I shall come down and fetch you o’er …
    We scanned their faces, our own frozen.
     Madame Louvier appeared beside us. As quick as a mouse, she forcedher way through our little group and thrust the black bread that she had just
     collected from the
boulangerie
into the hands of one of the skeletal men, her
     woollen shawl flying around her face in the brisk wind. He glanced up, unsure of what
     had arrived in his hands. And then, with a shout, a German soldier was in front of them,
     his rifle butt thrashing it from the man’s hand even as he registered what he had
     been given. The loaf toppled to the gutter like a brick. The singing stopped.
    Madame Louvier stared at the bread, then
     lifted her head and shrieked, her voice piercing the still air, ‘You animal! You
     Germans! You would starve these men like dogs! What is wrong with you? You are all
     bastards! Sons of whores!’ I had never heard her use language like it. It was as
     if some fine thread had snapped, leaving her loose, untethered. ‘You want to beat
     someone? Beat me! Go on, you bastard thug. Beat me!’ Her voice cut through the
     still, cold air.
    I felt Hélène’s hand grip my
     arm. I willed the old woman to be quiet, but she kept shrieking, her thin old finger
     pointing and jabbing at the young soldier’s face. I was suddenly afraid for her.
     The German glanced at her with an expression of barely suppressed fury. His knuckles
     whitened on his rifle butt and I feared he would strike her. She was so frail: her old
     bones would shatter if he did.
    But as we held our breath he reached down,
     picked the loaf out of the gutter and thrust it back at her.
    She looked at him as if she had been stung.
     ‘You think I would eat this knowing that you knocked it from the hand of a
     starving brother? You think this is not my brother? They are all my brothers! All my
     sons!
Vive la France!
’ she spat, her old eyes glistening. ‘
Vive
     la France!
’As if compelled to do so, the