Page 95 of The Girl You Left Behind
“Come on, Liv. Let’s head over to court two. I’ll get someone to fetch you some water.”
•••
The press area is packed. She sees the reporters wedged in beside each other, muttering and joking, flipping through the day’s newspapers before the judge arrives: a herd of predators, relaxed but intent, watching for their prey. She wants to stand up and shout at them:This is a game to you, isn’t it? Just tomorrow’s fish-and-chip paper.Her heart is racing.
Each side is weighed down with fat files of documentation, lists of expert witnesses, statements on obscure legal points of French law. Henry, jokingly, has said that Liv now knows so much about specialist litigation that he might offer her a job afterward. “I may need it,” she says grimly.
“All rise.”
“Here we go.” Henry touches her elbow, gives her a reassuring smile.
The Lefèvres, two elderly men, are already seated along the bench with Sean Flaherty, watching the proceedings in silence as their barrister, Christopher Jenks, outlines their case. She stares at them, taking in their dour expressions, the way they cross their arms over their chests, as if predisposed to dissatisfaction. Maurice and André Lefèvre are the trustees of the remaining works and legacy of Édouard Lefèvre, he explains to the court. Their interest, he says, is in safeguarding his work and protecting his legacy for the future.
“And lining their pockets,” she mutters. Henry shakes his head.
Jenks strolls up and down the courtroom, only occasionally referring to notes, his comments directed at the judge. As Lefèvre’s popularity had increased in recent years, his descendants had conducted an audit of his remaining works, which uncovered references to a portrait entitledThe Girl You Left Behind, which had once been in the possession of the artist’s wife, Sophie Lefèvre.
A photograph and some written journals have turned up the fact that the painting hung in full view in the hotel known as Le Coq Rouge in St. Péronne, a town occupied by the Germans during the First World War.
TheKommandantin charge of the town, one Friedrich Hencken, is recorded as having admired the work on several occasions. Le Coq Rouge was requisitioned by the Germans for their personal use. Sophie Lefèvre had been vocal in her resistance to their occupation.
Sophie Lefèvre had been arrested and removed from St. Péronne in early 1917. At around the same time, the painting had disappeared.
These, Jenks claims, are suggestive enough of coercion, of a “tainted” acquisition of a much loved painting. But this, he says emphatically, is not the only suggestion that the painting was obtained illegally.
Evidence just obtained records its appearance during the Second World War in Germany, at Berchtesgaden, at a storage facility known as the Collection Point that had been used for stolen and looted works of art that had fallen into German possession. He says the words “stolen and looted works of art” twice, as if to emphasize his point. Here, Jenks says, the painting mysteriously came into the possession of an American journalist, Louanne Baker, who had spent a day at the Collection Point and written about it for an American newspaper. Her reports of the time mention that she received a “gift” or “memento” from the event. She kept the painting at her home, a fact confirmed by her family, until it was sold ten years ago to David Halston, who, in turn, gave it as a wedding present to his wife.
She listens to the history of her painting read aloud in court and finds it hard to associate her portrait, the little painting that has hung serenely on her bedroom wall, with such trauma, such globally significant events.
She glances at the press bench. The reporters appear rapt, as does the judge. She thinks, absently, that if her whole future did not depend on this she would probably be rapt, too. Along the bench Paul is leaning back, his arms behind his head.
Liv lets her gaze travel sideways, and he looks straight back at her. She flushes slightly, turns away. She wonders if he will be here for every day of the case. She wonders if she has ever felt so angry at someone.
Christopher Jenks is standing before them. “Your Honor, it is deeply unfortunate that Mrs. Halston has unwittingly been drawn into a series of historic wrongs, but wrongs they are. It is our contention that this painting has been stolen twice: once from the home of Sophie Lefèvre, and then, during the Second World War, from her descendants, by its illegal gifting from the Collection Point, during a period in Europe so chaotic that the misdemeanor went unrecorded, and, until now, undiscovered.
“But the law, both under the Geneva Convention and current restitution legislation, says that these wrongs must be put right. It is our case that this painting should be restored to its rightful owners, the Lefèvre family. Thank you.”
Henry’s face, beside her, is expressionless.
Liv gazes toward the corner of the room where a printed image ofThe Girl You Left Behind,reproduced to actual size, sits on a small stand. Flaherty had asked for the painting to be placed in protective holding while its fate was decided, but Henry had told her that she was under no obligation to agree to that.
Still, it is unnerving to seeThe Girlhere, out of place, her gaze somehow seeming to mock the proceedings before her. At home, Liv finds herself walking into the bedroom simply to look at her, the intensity of her gaze heightened by the possibility that soon she may never be able to look at her again.
The afternoon stretches. The air in the courtroom slows and expands with the central heating. Christopher Jenks takes apart their attempt to time-bar the claim with the forensic efficiency of a bored surgeon dissecting a frog. Occasionally she looks up to hear phrases like “transfer of title” and “incomplete provenance.” The judge coughs and examines his notes. Paul murmurs to the woman director from his company. Whenever he does, she smiles, showing perfect, tiny white teeth.
Now Christopher Jenks begins to read:
15 January 1917
Today they took Sophie Lefèvre. Such a sight you never saw. She was minding her own business down in the cellars of Le Coq Rouge when two Germans came across the square and dragged her up the steps and hauled her out, as if she were a criminal. Her sister begged and cried, as did the orphaned child of Liliane Béthune, a whole crowd rose up and protested, but they simply brushed them aside like flies. Two elderly people were actually knocked to the floor in the commotion. I swear, mon Dieu, if there are to be just rewards in our next life the Germans will pay dearly.
They carted the girl off in a cattle truck. The mayor tried to stop them, but he is a feeble character, these days, weakened by the death of his daughter, and too prone to lying down with the Boche. They fail to take him seriously. When the vehicle finally disappeared he walked into the bar of Le Coq Rouge and announced with great pomposity that he would take it up at the highest possible level. None of us listened. Her poor sister, Hélène, wept, her head on the counter, her brother Aurélien ran off, like a scalded dog, and the child that Sophie had seen fit to take in—the child of Liliane Béthune—stood in the corner like a little ghost.
“Eh, Hélène will look after you,” I told her. I bent down and pressed a coin into her hand, but she looked at it as if she didn’t know what it was. When she stared at me her eyes were like saucers. “You must not fear, child. Hélène is a good woman. She will take care of you.”
I know there was some commotion with Sophie Lefèvre’s brother before she left, but my ears are not good, and in the noise and chaos I missed the heart of it. Still, I fear she has been ill-used by the Germans. I knew that once they decided to take over Le Coq Rouge the girl was done for, but she never would listen to me. She must have offended them in some way; she always was the more impetuous one. I cannot condemn her for it: I suspect if the Germans were in my house I would offend them, too.
Yes, I had my differences with Sophie Lefèvre, but my heart is heavy tonight. To see her shoved onto that cattle truck as if she were already a carcass, to imagine her future... These are dark days. To think I should have lived to see such sights. Some nights it is hard not to believe our little town has become a place of madness.
