Me Before You (51 page)

I addressed him directly: ‘And for what supposed misdemeanour have your men come to punish us now?’

I guessed he had not heard a woman speak to him in this way since his last leave home. The silence that fell upon the courtyard was steeped in shock. My brother and
sister, on the ground, twisted round, the better to see me, only too aware of where such insubordination might leave us all.

‘You are?’

‘Madame Lefèvre.’

I could see he was checking for the presence of my wedding ring. He needn’t have bothered: like most women in our area, I had long since sold it for food.

‘Madame. We have information that you are harbouring illegal livestock.’ His French was passable, suggesting previous postings in the occupied territory, his voice calm. This was not a man who felt threatened by the unexpected.

‘Livestock?’

‘A reliable source tells us that you are keeping a pig on the premises. You will be aware that under the directive the penalty for withholding livestock from the administration is imprisonment.’

I held his gaze. ‘And I know exactly who would inform you of such a thing. It’s Monsieur Suel,
non
?’ My cheeks were flushed with colour; my hair, twisted into a long plait that hung over my shoulder, felt electrified. It prickled at the nape of my neck.

The
Kommandant
turned to one of his minions. The man’s glance sideways told him this was true.

‘Monsieur Suel, Herr Kommandant, comes here at least twice a month attempting to persuade us that in the absence of our husbands we are in need of his particular brand of comfort. Because we have chosen not to avail ourselves of his supposed kindness, he repays us with rumours and a threat to our lives.’

‘The authorities would not act unless the source were credible.’

‘I would argue, Herr Kommandant, that this visit suggests otherwise.’

The look he gave me was impenetrable. He turned on his heel and walked towards the house door. I followed him, half tripping over my skirts in my attempt to keep up. I knew the mere act of speaking so boldly to him might be considered a crime. And yet, at that moment, I was no longer afraid.

‘Look at us, Kommandant. Do we look as though we are feasting on beef, on roast lamb, on fillet of pork?’ He turned, his eyes flicking towards my bony wrists, just visible at the sleeves of my gown. I had lost two inches from my waist in the last year alone. ‘Are we grotesquely plump with the bounty of our hotel? We have three hens left of two dozen. Three hens that we have the pleasure of keeping and feeding so that your men might take the eggs. We, meanwhile, live on what the German authorities deem to be a diet – decreasing rations of meat and flour, and bread made from grit and bran so poor we would not use it to feed livestock.’

He was in the back hallway, his heels echoing on the flagstones. He hesitated for a moment, then walked through to the bar. He barked an order. A soldier appeared from nowhere and handed him a lamp.

‘We have no milk to feed our babies, our children weep with hunger, we grow ill from lack of nutrition. And still you come here in the middle of the night to terrify two women and brutalize an innocent boy, to beat us and threaten us, because you heard a rumour from an immoral man that we were
feasting
?’

My hands were shaking. He saw the baby squirm, and I realized I was so tense that I was holding it too tightly. I stepped back, adjusted the shawl, crooned to it. Then I lifted my head. I could not hide the bitterness and anger in my voice.

‘Search our home, then, Kommandant. Turn it upside down and destroy what little has not already been destroyed. Search all the outbuildings too, those that your men have not already stripped for their own wants. When you find this mythical pig, I hope your men dine well on it.’

I held his gaze for just a moment longer than he might have expected. Through the window I could make out my sister wiping Aurélien’s wounds with her skirts, trying to stem the blood. Three German soldiers stood over them.

My eyes were used to the dark now, and I saw that the
Kommandant
was wrong-footed. His men, their eyes uncertain, were waiting for him to give the orders. He knew he could instruct them to strip our house to the beams and arrest us all to pay for my extraordinary outburst. But I knew he was thinking of Suel, whether he might have been misled. He did not look the kind of man to relish the possibility of being seen to be wrong.

Do you remember when we used to play poker? How you laughed and said I was an impossible opponent as my face never revealed my true feelings? I told myself to remember your words now. I knew this was the most important game I would ever play. We stared at each other, the
Kommandant
and I. I felt, briefly, the whole world still around us, the distant rumble of the guns at the Front, my sister’s coughing, the scrabbling of our poor, scrawny hens disturbed in their coop. It faded until just he and I
faced one another, each gambling on the truth. I swear I could hear my very heart beating.

‘What is this?’

‘What?’

He held up the lamp, and there it was, dimly illuminated in pale gold light: the portrait you painted of me when we were first married. There I was, in that first year, my hair thick and lustrous around my shoulders, my skin clear and blooming, gazing out with the self-possession of the adored. I had brought it down from its hiding place several weeks before, telling my sister I was damned if the Germans would decide what I should look at in my own home.

He lifted the lamp a little higher so that he could see it more clearly.
Do not put it there Sophie,
Hélène had warned.
It will invite trouble.

When he finally turned to me, it was as if he had had to tear his eyes from it. He looked at my face, then back at the painting. ‘My husband painted it.’ I don’t know why I felt the need to tell him that.

Perhaps it was the certainty of my righteous indignation. Perhaps it was the obvious difference between the girl in the picture and the girl who stood before him. Perhaps it was the weeping blonde child who stood at my feet. It is possible that even
Kommandant
s, two years into this occupation, have become weary of harassing us for petty misdemeanours.

He looked at the painting a moment longer, then at his feet.

‘I think we have made ourselves clear, Madame. Our conversation is not finished. But I will not disturb you further tonight.’

He caught the flash of surprise on my face, barely suppressed, and I saw that it satisfied something in him. It was perhaps enough for him to know I had believed myself doomed. He was smart, this man, and subtle. I would have to be wary.

‘Men.’

His soldiers turned, blindly obedient as ever, and walked out towards their vehicle, their uniforms silhouetted against the headlights. I followed him and stood just outside the doorway. The last I heard of his voice was the order to the driver to make for the town.

We waited as the military vehicle travelled back down the road, its headlights feeling their way along the pitted surface. Hélène had begun to shake. She scrambled to her feet, her hand white-knuckled at her brow, her eyes tightly shut. Aurélien stood awkwardly beside me, holding Mimi’s hand, embarrassed by his childish tears. I waited for the last sounds of the engine to die away. It whined over the hill, as if it, too, were acting under protest.

‘Are you hurt, Aurélien?’ I touched his head. Flesh wounds. And bruises.
What kind of men attacked an unarmed boy?

He flinched. ‘It didn’t hurt,’ he said. ‘They didn’t frighten me.’

Hélène stared at the ground. ‘I thought he would arrest you. I thought he would arrest us all.’ I was afraid when my sister looked like that, as if she were teetering on the edge of some vast abyss. She wiped her eyes and forced a smile as she crouched to hug her daughter. ‘Silly Germans. They gave us all a fright, didn’t they? Silly Maman for being frightened.’

The child watched her mother, silent and solemn. Sometimes I wondered if I would ever see Mimi laugh again.

‘I’m sorry. I’m fine,’ she went on. ‘Let’s all go inside. Mimi, we have a little milk I will warm for you.’ She wiped her hands on her bloodied gown, and held her hands towards me for the baby. ‘You want me to take Jean?’

I had started to tremble convulsively, as if I had only just realized how afraid I should have been. My legs felt watery, their strength seeping into the cobblestones. I felt a desperate urge to sit down. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose you should.’

My sister reached out, then gave a small cry. Nestling in the blankets, swaddled neatly so that it was barely exposed to the night air, was the pink, hairy snout of the piglet.

‘Jean is asleep upstairs,’ I said. I thrust a hand at the wall to keep myself upright.

Aurélien looked over her shoulder. They all stared at it.

‘
Mon Dieu
.’

‘Is it dead?’

‘Chloroformed. I remembered Papa had a bottle in his study, from his butterfly-collecting days. I think it will wake up. But we’re going to have to find somewhere else to keep it for when they return. And you know they will return.’

Aurélien smiled then, a rare, slow smile of delight. Hélène stooped to show Mimi the little pink comatose pig, and they both grinned. Hélène kept touching its snout, clamping a hand over her face, as if she couldn’t believe what she was holding.

‘You held the pig before them? They came here and
you held it out in front of their noses? And then you told them off for
coming here
?’ Her voice was incredulous.

‘In front of their snouts,’ said Aurélien, who seemed suddenly to have recovered some of his swagger. ‘Hah! You held it in front of their snouts!’

I sat down on the cobbles and began to laugh. I laughed until my skin grew chilled and I didn’t know whether I was laughing or weeping. My brother, perhaps afraid that I was becoming hysterical, took my hand and rested against me. He was fourteen, sometimes bristling like a man, sometimes childlike in his need for reassurance.

Hélène was still deep in thought. ‘If I had known …’ she said. ‘If I had known … How did you become this brave, Sophie? My little sister! Who did this to you? You were a mouse when we were children. A mouse!’

I wasn’t sure I knew the answer to that.

And then, as we finally walked back into the house, as Hélène busied herself with the milk pan and Aurélien began to wash his poor, battered face, I stood before the portrait.

That girl, the girl you married, looked back with an expression I no longer recognized. You saw it in me long before anyone else did: it speaks of knowledge, that smile, of satisfaction gained and given. It speaks of pride. When your Parisian friends found your love of me – a shop girl – inexplicable, you just smiled because you could already see this in me.

I never knew if you understood that it was only there because of you.

I stood and gazed at her and, for a few seconds, I remembered how it had felt to be that girl, free of hunger,
of fear, consumed only by idle thoughts of what private moments I might spend with you, Édouard. You reminded me that the world is capable of beauty, and that there were once things – art, joy, love – that filled my world, instead of fear and nettle soup and curfews. I saw you in my expression. And then I realized what I had just done. You had reminded me of my own strength, of how much I had left in me with which to fight.

When you return, Édouard, I swear I will once again be the girl you painted.

Be safe, and may God watch over you as he did us this night.

Your loving wife

Sophie

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First published 2012

Copyright © Jojo Moyes, 2012

Cover illustration © Sarah Gibb

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ISBN: 978–0–141–96918–3