The Girl You Left Behind

We were not alone in
     taking on men’s 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 evenLe 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 wasn’t 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?’
    ‘I’m 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.
    ‘It’s me!’ I turned to
     him. ‘Can you not tell?’
    ‘Oh.’ He squinted. He
     wasn’t trying to insult me: the girl in the painting was very different from the
     thin, severe woman, grey of complexion, with wary, tired eyes, whostared back at me daily from the looking-glass. I tried not to