Your Édouard

It was dated two months previously.

I don’t know if it was exhaustion, or perhaps shock from the previous day’s events – I am not someone who cries easily, if at all – but I put the letter carefully back into its envelope, then rested my head on my hands and, in the cold, empty kitchen, I sobbed.

I could not tell the other villagers why it was time to eat the pig but the approach of Christmas gave me the perfect excuse. The officers were to have their dinner on Christmas Eve in Le Coq Rouge, a larger gathering than normal, and it was agreed that while they were here Madame Poilâne would hold a secret réveillon at her home, two streets down from the square. For as long as I could keep the German officers occupied, our little band of townspeople would be safe to roast and eat the pig in the bread oven that Madame Poilâne had in her cellar. Hélène would help me serve the Germans their dinner, then sneak through the hole in the cellar wall and out down the alley to join the children at Madame Poilâne’s house. Those villagers who lived too far from her to walk through the town unnoticed would remain in her home after curfew, hiding if any Germans came checking.

‘But that isn’t fair,’ Hélène remarked, when I outlined the plan to the mayor in front of her two days later. ‘If you remain here you will be the one person to miss it. That’s not right, given all you did to safeguard the pig.’

‘One of us has to stay,’ I pointed out. ‘You know it’s far safer if we can be sure that the officers are all in one place.’

‘But it won’t be the same.’

‘Well, nothing is the same,’ I said curtly. ‘And you know as well as I do that Herr Kommandant will notice if I am gone.’

I saw her exchange glances with the mayor.

‘Hélène, don’t fuss. I am la patronne. He expects to see me here every evening. He will know something is going on if I am missing.’

I sounded, even to my own ears, as if I was protesting too much. ‘Look,’ I continued, forcing myself to sound conciliatory. ‘Save me some meat. Bring it back in a napkin. I can promise you that, if the Germans are given rations enough to feast on, I will make sure I help myself to a share. I will not suffer. I promise.’

They appeared mollified, but I couldn’t tell them the truth. Ever since I had discovered that the Kommandant knew about the pig, I had lost my appetite for it. That he had not revealed his knowledge of its existence, let alone punished us, didn’t make me joyous with relief, but deeply uneasy.

Now when I saw him staring at my portrait, I no longer felt gratified that even a German could recognize my husband’s talent. When he walked into the kitchen to make casual conversation, I became stiff and tense, afraid he might mention it.

‘Yet again,’ the mayor said, ‘I suspect we find ourselves in your debt.’ He looked beaten down. His daughter had been ill for a week; his wife had once told me that every time Louisa fell ill he barely slept for anxiety.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said briskly. ‘Compared to what our men are doing, this is just another day’s work.’

My sister knew me too well. She didn’t ask questions directly; that was not Hélène’s style. But I could feel her watching me, could hear the faint edge to her voice whenever the question of the réveillon was raised. Finally, a week before Christmas, I confided in her. She had been sitting on the side of her bed, doing her hair. The brush stilled in her hand. ‘Why do you think he has not told anyone?’ I asked, when I finished.

She stared at the bedspread. When she looked at me it was with a kind of dread. ‘I think he likes you,’ she said.

The week before Christmas was busy, even though we had little with which to prepare for the festivities. Hélène and a couple of the older women had been sewing rag dolls for the children. They were primitive, their skirts made of sacking, their faces embroidered stockings. But it was important that the children who remained in St Péronne had a little magic in that bleak Christmas.

I grew a little bolder in my own efforts. Twice I stole potatoes from the German rations, mashing what was left to disguise the smaller amounts, and ferried them in my pockets to those who seemed particularly frail. I stole the smaller carrots and fed them into the hem of my skirt so that even when I was stopped and searched, they found nothing. To the mayor I took two jars of chicken stock, so that his wife could make Louisa a little broth. The child was pale and feverish; his wife told me she kept little down and seemed to be retreating into herself. Looking at her, swallowed by the vast old bed with its threadbare blankets, listless and coughing intermittently, I thought briefly that I could hardly blame her. What life was this for children?

We tried to hide the worst of it from them as best we could, but they found themselves in a world where men were shot in the street, where strangers hauled their mothers from their beds by their hair for some trivial offence, like walking in a banned wood or failing to show a German officer sufficient respect. Mimi viewed our world with silent, suspicious eyes, which broke Hélène’s heart. Aurélien grew angry: I could see it building in him, like a volcanic force, and I prayed daily that when he finally erupted, it would not come at huge cost to himself.

But the biggest news that week was the arrival through my door of a newspaper, roughly printed, and entitled Journal des Occupés. The only newspaper allowed in St Péronne was the German-controlled Bulletin de Lille, which was so obviously German propaganda that few of us did more with it than use it for kindling. But this one gave military information, naming the towns and villages under occupation. It commented on official communiqués, and contained humorous articles about the occupation, limericks about the black bread and cartoonish sketches of the officers in charge. It begged its readers not to enquire where it had come from, and to destroy it when it had been read.