The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Part 15

Think long and hard and let me know if you think Elizabeth could be the heart of your book.

Love to you and Kit, Sidney From Juliet to Sidney 15th July 1946 July 1946

Dear Sidney,

I don't need more time to think about it-the minute I read your letter, I knew you were right. So slow-witted! Here I've been, wis.h.i.+ng that I had known Elizabeth, missing her as if I had-why did I never think of writing about her?

I'll begin tomorrow. I want to talk to Dawsey, Amelia, Eben, and Isola first. I feel that she belongs to them more than the others, and I want their blessing.

Remy wants to come to Guernsey, after all. Dawsey has been writing to her, and I knew he'd be able to persuade her to come. He could talk an angel out of heaven if he chose to speak, which is not often enough for my liking. Remy will stay with Amelia, so I'll keep Kit with me.

Undying love and grat.i.tude, Juliet

P. S. You don't suppose Elizabeth kept a diary, do you?

From Juliet to Sidney 17th July 1946 July 1946

Dear Sidney,

No diary, but the good news is that she did draw while her paper and pencils lasted. I found some sketches stuffed into a large art folio on the bottom shelf of the sitting-room bookcase. Quick line drawings that seem marvellous portraits to me: Isola caught unawares, beating something with a wooden spoon; Daw-sey digging the garden; Eben and Amelia with their heads together, talking.

As I sat on the floor, turning them over, Amelia dropped in. Together we pulled out several large sheets of paper, covered with sketch after sketch of Kit. Kit asleep, Kit on the move, on a lap, being rocked by Amelia, hypnotised by her toes, delighted with her spit bubbles. Perhaps every mother looks at her baby like that, with that intense focus, but Elizabeth put it on paper. There was one shaky drawing of a wizened little Kit, done the day after she was born, according to Amelia.

Then I found a sketch of a man with a good, strong, rather broad face; he's relaxed and appears to be looking over his shoulder, smiling at the artist. I knew at once that it was Christian-he and Kit have a double crown in exactly the same place. Amelia picked up the drawing; I had never heard her talk about him before and asked her if she'd liked him.

'Poor boy,' she said. 'I was so against him. I thought Elizabeth was mad to have chosen him-an enemy, a German-and I was afraid for her. For the rest of us, too. I thought that she was too trusting, and he would betray her and us-so I told her that I thought she should break it off with him. I was very stern with her.

'Elizabeth just stuck out her chin and said nothing. But the next day he came to visit me. Oh, I was appalled. I opened the door and there was an enormous, uniformed German standing before me. I was sure my house was about to be requisitioned and I began to protest, when he thrust forward a bunch of flowers-limp from being clutched. I noticed he was very nervous, so I stopped scolding and demanded to know his name. 'Captain Christian h.e.l.lman,' he said, and blushed like a boy. I was still suspicious-what was he up to?-and asked him the purpose of his visit He blushed more and said softly, 'I've come to tell you my intentions.'

'For my house?' I snapped.

'No, for Elizabeth,' he said. And that's what he did-just as if I were the Victorian father and he the suitor. He perched on the edge of a chair in my drawing room and told me that he planned to come back to the Island the moment the war was over, marry Elizabeth, grow freesias, read, and forget about war. By the time he'd finished, I was a little bit in love with him myself.

Amelia was half in tears, so we put the sketches away and I made her some tea. Then Kit came in with a shattered gull's egg she wanted to glue together, and we were thankfully distracted.

Yesterday, Will Thisbee appeared at my door with a plate of little cakes, iced with prune whip, so I invited him to tea. He wanted to consult me about two different women; which one of the two I'd marry if I were a man, which I wasn't. (Do you have that straight?) Miss X has always been a ditherer-she was a ten-month baby and has not improved in any material way since then. When she heard the Germans were coming, she buried her mother's silver teapot under an elm tree and now can't remember which tree. She is digging holes all over the island, vowing she won't stop until she finds it 'Such determination,' said Will. 'Quite unlike her.' (Will was trying to be subtle, but Miss X is Daphne Post. She has round vacant eyes like a cow's and is famous for her trembling soprano in the church choir.

And then there is a Miss Y, a local seamstress. When the Germans arrived, they had only packed one n.a.z.i flag. This they needed to hang over their headquarters, but that left them with nothing to run up a flag pole to remind the Islanders they'd been conquered. They visited Miss Y and ordered her to make a n.a.z.i flag for them. She did-a black nasty swastika, st.i.tched on to a circle of dingy puce. The surrounding field was not scarlet silk, but baby-bottom pink flannel. 'So inventive in her spite,' said Will. 'So forceful!' (Miss Y is Miss Le Roy, thin as one of her needles, with a lantern jaw and tight-folded lips.) Which did I think would make the best companion for a man's nether years? I told him that if one had to ask which, it generally meant neither. He said, 'That's exactly what Dawsey said-those very words. Isola said Miss X would bore me to tears, and Miss Y would nag me to death. Thank you, thank you-I shall keep up my search. She is out there somewhere.'

He put on his cap, bowed and left. Sidney, he may have been polling the entire island, but I was so flattered to have been included-it made me feel like an Islander instead of an Outlander.

Love, Juliet

P. S. I was interested to learn that Dawsey has opinions on marriage. I wish I knew more about them.

From Juliet to Sidney 19th July 1946 July 1946

Dear Sidney,

Stories about Elizabeth are everywhere-not just among the Society members. Listen to this: Kit and I walked to the churchyard this afternoon. Kit was playing among the graves, and I was stretched out on Mr Edwin Mulliss's tombstone-it's a table-top one with four stout legs-when Sam Withers, the ancient gravedigger, stopped beside me. He said I reminded him of Miss McKenna when she was a young girl. She used to take the sun right there on that very slab-brown as a walnut, she'd get. I sat up straight as an arrow and asked Sam if he'd known Elizabeth well.

Sam said, 'Well-not as to say real well, but I liked her. She and Eben's girl Jane used to come up here together to that very tombstone. They'd spread a cloth and eat their picnic-right on top of Mr Mulliss's dead bones.' He told me that the girls were always up to mischief-they tried to raise a ghost once and scared the living daylights out of the Vicar's wife. Then he looked over at Kit at the church gate and said, 'That's surely a sweet little girl of hers and Captain h.e.l.lman's.'

I pounced on that. Had he known Captain h.e.l.lman? Had he liked him? He glared at me and said, 'Yes, I did. He was a fine fellow, for all he was a German. You're not going to take that out on Miss McKenna's little girl, are you?'

'I wouldn't dream of it!' I said.

He wagged a finger at me. 'You'd better not, Miss! You'd best learn the truth of certain matters before you go trying to write a book about the Occupation. I hated the Occupation, too. Makes me angry to think of it Some of those blighters was purely mean-they'd come into your house without knocking and push you to the ground. They was the sort to like having the upper hand, never having had it before. But not all of them was like that-not all, not by a long shot.'

Christian, according to Sam, was not Sam liked Christian. He and Elizabeth had come across Sam in the churchyard once, trying to dig a grave when the ground was ice-hard and as cold as Sam himself Christian picked up the shovel and threw his back into it 'He was a strong fellow, and he'd finished as soon as he'd started,' Sam said. 'Told him he could have a job with me any time, and he laughed.' The next day Elizabeth turned up with a Thermos jug full of hot coffee. Real coffee from real beans Christian had brought to her house. She gave Sam a warm sweater, too, that had belonged to Christian.

'To tell the truth,' Sam said, 'as long as the Occupation was to last, I met more than one nice German soldier. You would, you know, seeing some of them as much as every day for five years. You couldn't help but feel sorry for some of them-stuck here knowing their families at home were being bombed to pieces. Didn't matter then who started it in the first place. Not to me, anyway.

'Why, there'd be soldiers on guard in the back of potato lorries going to the army's mess hall-children would follow them, hoping potatoes would fall off into the street. Soldiers would look straight ahead, grim-like, and then flick potatoes off the pile-on purpose. They did the same thing with lumps of coal-my, those were precious when we didn't have enough fuel left.

'There was many such incidents: just ask Mrs G.o.dfray about her boy. He had the pneumonia and she was worried half to death because she couldn't keep him warm nor give him good food to eat One day there's a knock on her door, and when she opens it she sees an orderly from the German hospital. Without a word, he hands her a phial of that sulphonamide, tips his cap, and walks away. He had stolen it from their dispensary for her. They caught him later, trying to steal some again, and they sent him off to prison in Germany-maybe hanged him. We'd not be knowing.'

He glared at me again suddenly. 'And I say that if some toffee-nosed Englishwoman wants to call being human Collaboration, they'll need to talk to me and Mrs G.o.dfray first!'

I tried to protest, but Sam turned his back and walked away. I gathered Kit up and we went home. Between the wilted flowers for Amelia and the gravedigging for Sam Withers, I felt I was beginning to know Kit's father-and why Elizabeth must have loved him.

Next week will bring Remy to Guernsey. Dawsey leaves for France on Tuesday to fetch her.

Love, Juliet From Juliet to Sophie 21st July 1946 July 1946

Dear Sophie,

Burn this letter I wouldn't want it to appear among your collected papers.

I've told you about Dawsey, of course. You know that he was the first here to write to me; that he is fond of Charles Lamb; that he is helping to bring up Kit; that she adores him. What I haven't told you is that on the very first evening I arrived on the Island, the moment Dawsey held out both his hands to me at the bottom of the gangplank, I felt an unaccountable jolt of excitement. Dawsey is so quiet and composed that I had no idea if it was only me, so I've struggled to be reasonable and casual and usual for the last two months. And I was doing very nicely-until tonight.

Dawsey came over to borrow a suitcase for his trip to Louviers-he is going to collect Remy. What kind of man doesn't even own a suitcase? Kit was sound asleep, so we put my case in his cart and walked up to the cliffs. The moon was rising and the sky was coloured in mother-of-pearl, like the inside of a sh.e.l.l. The sea for once was quiet, with only silvery ripples, barely moving. No wind. I have never known the world to be so silent, and it dawned on me that Dawsey himself was exactly that silent too, walking beside me. I was as close to him as I've ever been, so I began to take particular note of his wrists and hands. I wanted to touch them, and the thought made me light-headed. There was a knife-edgy feeling-you know the one-in the pit of my stomach.

All at once, Dawsey turned. His face was shadowed, but I could see his eyes, very dark, watching me, waiting. Who knows what might have happened-a kiss? A pat on the head? Nothing?-because in the next second we heard Wally Beall's horsedrawn carriage (our local taxi) outside my cottage, and Wally's pa.s.senger called out, 'Surprise, darling!' It was Mark-Markham V. Reynolds, Junior, resplendent in his exquisitely tailored suit, with a swathe of red roses over his arm.

I truly wished him dead, Sophie.

But what could I do? I went to greet him-and when he kissed me all I could think was, Don't! Not in front of Dawsey! Don't! Not in front of Dawsey! He deposited the roses on my arm and turned to Dawsey with his steely smile. So I introduced them, wis.h.i.+ng I could crawl into a hole-I don't know why, exactly-and watched stupidly as Dawsey shook Mark's hand, turned to me, shook my hand, and said, 'Thank you for the suitcase, Juliet Goodnight.' He climbed into his can and left. Left, without another word, without a backward glance. He deposited the roses on my arm and turned to Dawsey with his steely smile. So I introduced them, wis.h.i.+ng I could crawl into a hole-I don't know why, exactly-and watched stupidly as Dawsey shook Mark's hand, turned to me, shook my hand, and said, 'Thank you for the suitcase, Juliet Goodnight.' He climbed into his can and left. Left, without another word, without a backward glance.

I could have cried. Instead I invited Mark in and tried to seem like a woman who had just received a delightful surprise. The cart and the introductions had awakened Kit, who looked suspiciously at Mark and wanted to know where Dawsey had gone-he hadn't kissed her goodnight. Me neither, I thought to myself. I put Kit back to bed and persuaded Mark that my reputation would be in tatters if he didn't go to the Royal Hotel at once. Which he did, but with a very bad grace and many threats to appear on my doorstep the next morning at six.

Then I sat down and chewed my fingernails for three hours. Should I take myself over to Dawsey's house and try to pick up from where we had left off? But where did we leave off? I'm not sure. I don't want to make a fool of myself What if he looks at me with polite incomprehension-or worse still, with pity?

And anyway, what am I thinking? Mark is here. Mark, who is rich and debonair and wants to marry me. Mark, whom I was doing very well without Why can't I stop thinking about Dawsey, who probably doesn't give a fig about me? But maybe he does. Maybe I was about to find out what was on the other side of that silence.

d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n and d.a.m.n.

It's two in the morning, I haven't a fingernail to my name and I look at least a hundred years old. Maybe Mark will be repulsed by my haggard appearance when he sees me. Maybe he will spurn me. I don't know that I will be disappointed if he does.

Love, Juliet From Amelia to Juliet (left under Juliet's door) 23rd July 1946 July 1946

Dear Juliet,

My raspberries have come in with a vengeance. I am picking this morning and making pies this afternoon. Would you and Kit like to come for tea (pie) this afternoon?

Love, Amelia From Juliet to Amelia 3rd July 1946 July 1946

Dear Amelia,

I'm terribly sorry, I can't come. I have got a guest. Love,

Juliet