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The Soldier’s Wife
Margaret Leroy
�A riveting story of betrayal’ -Stylist1940, GUERNSEYVivienne de la Mare waits nervously for the bombs to drop. Instead comes quiet surrender and insidious occupation. Nothing is safe any more.As her husband fights on the front line, Vivienne’s façade as the perfect wife begins to crack. Her new life is one where the enemy lives next door. Small acts of kindness from one Nazi soldier feel like a betrayal. But how can you hate your enemy when you know his name, when he makes you feel alive, when everything else is dying around you?It’s time for Vivienne to decide: collaboration or resistance. But, in the darkest hours of history, no choices are simple.'Stunning and evocative…utterly beguiling' Rosamund Lupton
Praise for MARGARET LEROY (#u207d9e98-5197-58ab-b248-ba9c40d9ec3c)
�Utterly beguiling …’
—Rosamund Lupton, bestselling author of Sister
�Margaret Leroy writes with candour and intelligence, capturing the menace of suddenly finding the world may not be at all as you’ve thought it’
—Helen Dunmore
�Leroy handles … domestic life with the same graceful, precise, rueful style as [Richard Yates] the late novelist did, though with a warmer, more hopeful intelligence’
—Washington Post
�Engrossing and affecting’
—Eve
�Brilliant at portraying the slow, steady disintegration of a seemingly ordinary life when secrets are unearthed and dark suspicions spread’
—Baltimore Sun
�Powerful and haunting’
—Daily Mirror
�What a storyteller Leroy is and what an eye she has for contemporary life’
—Fay Weldon
�[Leroy’s] quiet, self-assured narrative voice delivers tremendous psychological depth and emotional resonance’
—Kirkus Reviews
�Leroy expertly draws a picture of a woman and a family in crisis and the moral questions one sometimes has to face’
—Toronto Sun
MARGARET LEROY studied music at Oxford. She has written four novels, one of which was televised by Granada and reached an audience of eight million. Margaret has appeared on numerous radio and TV programmes, and her articles and short stories have been published in The Observer, The Sunday Express and The Mail on Sunday. Her books have been translated into ten languages. Margaret is married with two daughters and lives in London.
The Soldier’s Wife
Margaret Leroy
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
�Qui veurt apprendre a priaïr, qu’il aouche en maïr.’
He who wishes to learn to pray, let him go to sea.
—Guernsey proverb
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#u207d9e98-5197-58ab-b248-ba9c40d9ec3c)
My thanks are due to my wonderfully thoughtful and perceptive editor, Maddie West, and the whole talented team at MIRA; I am especially grateful to Kim Young, Oliver Rhodes and Sue Smith, my meticulous copyeditor. Thank you as well to Brenda Copeland and Elisabeth Dyssegard at Hyperion in New York. I am also deeply grateful to my agents, Kathleen Anderson, and Laura Longrigg in London, who are so committed to my writing and who have supported me in so many ways. And thank you as always to Mick and Izzie, who shared Guernsey with me, and Becky and Steve, for so much love and encouragement.
Among the books that I read while researching this story, two deserve special mention—Madeleine Bunting’s fascinating history, The Model Occupation, and Marie de Garis’s enchanting volume, Folklore of Guernsey.
Table of Contents
Cover (#u391e0443-8723-5228-be9b-5a4c08d1c00a)
Praise
Author the Author (#u68b16a18-174b-5f06-9086-447d17bf2e65)
Title Page (#u3469954a-abc4-57b8-973d-f2cd20bd0e95)
Epigraph (#u676f6e9c-db22-5637-a34f-d2088505bed8)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PART I: JUNE 1940
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
PART II: JULY – OCTOBER 1940
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
PART III: OCTOBER 1940 – SEPTEMBER 1941
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
PART IV: SEPTEMBER 1941 – NOVEMBER 1942
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
PART V: DECEMBER 1942 – NOVEMBER 1943
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
CHAPTER 83
EPILOGUE: APRIL 1946
CHAPTER 84
Extract
Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
PART I: (#u207d9e98-5197-58ab-b248-ba9c40d9ec3c)
JUNE 1940 (#u207d9e98-5197-58ab-b248-ba9c40d9ec3c)
CHAPTER 1 (#u207d9e98-5197-58ab-b248-ba9c40d9ec3c)
�“Once upon a time there were twelve princesses …”’
My voice surprises me. It’s perfectly steady, the voice of a normal mother on a normal day—as though everything is just the same as it always was.
�“Every night their door was locked, yet in the morning their shoes were all worn through, and they were pale and very tired, as though they had been awake all night …”’
Millie is pressed up against me, sucking her thumb. I can feel the warmth of her body: it comforts me a little.
�They’d been dancing, hadn’t they, Mummy?’
�Yes, they’d been dancing,’ I say.
Blanche sprawls out on the sofa, pretending to read an old copy of Vogue, twisting her long blonde hair in her fingers to try and make it curl. I can tell that she’s listening. Ever since her father went to England with the army, she’s liked to listen to her sister’s bedtime story. Perhaps it gives her a sense of safety. Or perhaps there’s something in her that yearns to be a child again.
It’s so peaceful in my house tonight. The amber light of the setting sun falls on all the things in this room—all so friendly and familiar: my piano and heaps of sheet music, the Staffordshire dogs and silver eggcups, the many books on their shelves, the flowered tea set in the glass-fronted cabinet. I look around and wonder if we will be here this time tomorrow—if after tomorrow I will ever see this room again. Millie’s cat Alphonse is asleep in a circle of sun on the sill, and through the open window that looks out over our back garden you can hear only the blackbird’s song and the many little voices of the streams: there is always a sound of water in these valleys. I’m so grateful for the quiet—you could almost imagine that this was the end of an ordinary sweet summer day. Last week, when the Germans were bombing Cherbourg, you could hear the sound of it even here in our hidden valley, like thunder out of a clear sky, and up at Angie le Brocq’s farm, at Les Ruettes on the hill, when you touched your hand to the window pane, you could feel the faint vibration of it, just a tremor, so you weren’t quite sure if it was the window shaking or your hand. But for the moment, it’s tranquil here.
I turn back to the story. I read how there was a soldier coming home from the wars, who owned a magic cloak that could make him completely invisible. How he sought to discover the princesses’ secret. How he was locked in their bedroom with them, and they gave him a cup of drugged wine, but he only pretended to drink.
�He was really clever, wasn’t he? That’s what I’d have done, if I’d been him,’ says Millie.
I have a sudden vivid memory of myself as a child, when she says that. I loved fairytales just as she does—enthralled by the transformations, the impossible quests, the gorgeous significant objects—the magic cloaks, the satin dancing shoes; and, just like Millie, I’d fret about the people in the stories, their losses and reversals and all the dilemmas they faced. So sure that if I’d been in the story, it would all have been clear to me: that I’d have been wise and brave and resolute. I’d have known what to do.
I read on:
�“When the princesses thought he was safely asleep, they climbed through a trapdoor in the floor, and he pulled on his cloak and followed. They went down many winding stairways, and came at last to a grove of trees, with leaves of diamonds and gold …”’
Briefly, I’m distracted by the charm of the story. I love this part especially, where the princesses follow the pathway down to another world, a secret world of their own, a place of enchantment—loving that sense of going deep, of being enclosed. Like the way it feels when you follow the Guernsey lanes down here to our home, in this wet wooded valley of St Pierre du Bois—a valley that seems so safe and cloistered, like a womb. Then, if you walk on, you will go up, up and out suddenly into the sunlight, where there are cornfields, kestrels, the shine of the sea. Like a birth.
Millie leans into me, wanting to see the pictures—the girls in their big, bright glimmery skirts, the gold and diamond leaves. I smell her familiar, comforting scent—of biscuits, soap and sunlight.
The ceiling creaks above us as Evelyn gets ready for bed. I have filled her hot-water bottle for her—she can feel a chill even on warm summer evenings. She will sit in bed for a while and read the Bible. She likes the Old Testament best—the stern injunctions, the battles: the Lord our God is a jealous God. Our Rector at St Peter’s is altogether too gentle for her. When we go—if we go—she will stay with Angie le Brocq at Les Ruettes. Evelyn is far too old to travel—she’s like an elderly plant, too frail to uproot.
�Mum,’ says Blanche, out of nowhere, in a little shrill voice. �Celeste says all the soldiers have gone—the English soldiers in St Peter Port.’ She speaks rapidly, as though the words are rising in her like steam. �Celeste says that there’s no one left to fight here.’
I take a breath: it hurts my chest. I can’t pretend any more.
�Yes,’ I say. �I heard that. Mrs le Brocq told me.’
Now, suddenly, my voice seems strange—shaky, serrated with fear. It sounds like someone else’s voice. I bite my lip.
�They’re coming, aren’t they, Mum?’ says Blanche.
�Yes, I think so,’ I say.
�What will happen to us if we stay here?’ she says. There’s a thrum of panic in her voice. Her eyes, blue as hyacinths, are urgent, fixed on my face. She’s chewing the bits of skin at the sides of her nails. �What will happen?’
�Sweetheart—it’s a big decision. I’ve got to think it through …’
�I want to go,’ she says. �I want to go to London. I want to go on the boat.’
�Shut up, Blanche,’ says Millie. �I want to hear the story.’
�Blanche—London isn’t safe.’
�It’s safer than here,’ she says.
�No, sweetheart. People are sending their children away to the country. The Germans could bomb London. Everyone has gas masks …’
�But we could stay in Auntie Iris’s house. She said we’d be more than welcome in her letter, Mum. You told us. She said we could. I really want to go, Mum.’
�It could be a difficult journey,’ I say. I don’t mention the torpedoes.
Her hands are clenched into fists. The bright sun gilds all the little fair hairs on her arms.
�I don’t care. I want to go.’
�Blanche, I’m still thinking …’
�Well, you need to get a move on, Mum. We haven’t got for ever.’
I don’t know what to say to her. In the quiet, I’m very aware of the tick of the clock, like a heartbeat, beating on to the moment when I have to decide. It sounds suddenly ominous to me.
I turn back to the story.
�“The princesses came to an underground lake, where there were twelve little boats tied up, and each with a prince to row it …”’ As I read on, my voice steadies, and my heart begins to slow. �“The soldier stepped into the boat with the youngest princess. �Oh, oh, there is something wrong,’ she said. �The boat rides too low in the water.’ The soldier thought he would be discovered, and he was very afraid …”’
Blanche watches me, chewing her hand.
But Millie grins.
�He doesn’t need to be frightened, does he?’ she says, triumphantly. �It’s going to be all right, isn’t it? He’s going to find out the secret and marry the youngest princess.’
�Honestly, Millie,’ says Blanche, forgetting her fear for a moment, troubled by her little sister’s naivety. �He doesn’t realise that, does he? Anything could happen. The people in the story can’t tell how it’s going to end. You’re four, you ought to know that.’
CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_292b6841-f651-5656-9b0a-790caf8dfd97)
When Millie is settled in bed, I go out to my garden.
The back of the house faces west, and the mellow light of evening falls on the long lawn striped with shadows and on the rose bed under the window, with all the roses I’ve planted there that have names like little poems: Belle de Crécy, Celsiana, Alba Semi-plena. It’s so quiet you can hear the fall of a petal from a flower.
I remember how this sloping garden delighted me when first I came to this place, to Le Colombier. �Vivienne, darling, I want you to love my island,’ said Eugene when he brought me here, just married. I was pregnant with Blanche, life was rich with possibility, and I did love it then, as we sailed into the harbour, ahead of us St Peter Port, elegant on its green hill; and I was charmed too by Le Colombier itself—by its age and the deep cool shade of its rooms, by its whitewashed walls and grey slate roof, and the wide gravel yard across the front of the house. In summer, you can sit and drink your coffee there, in the leaf-speckled light. The house stands gable to the road, the hedgebanks give us seclusion, we’re overlooked only by the window of Les Vinaires next door, where the wall of their kitchen forms one side of our yard. It was all a little untidy when first I came to Guernsey, the gravel overgrown with raggedy yellow weed: with Eugene away in London, Evelyn wasn’t quite managing. Now I keep the gravel raked and I have pots of herbs and geraniums, and a clematis that rambles up and over the door. And I loved the little orchard on the other side of the lane that is also part of our land, where now the small green apples are just beginning to swell; and beyond the orchard the woodland, where there are nightingales. People here call the woodland the Blancs Bois—the White Wood—which always seems strange to me, because it’s so dark, so secret in there in summer, under the dense canopy of leaves. But my favourite part of it all is this garden, sloping down to the stream. This garden has been my solace.
I work through all my tasks carefully. I dead-head the roses, I water the mulberry and fig that grow in pots on my terrace. Even as I do these things, I think how strange this is—to tend my garden so diligently, when tomorrow we may be gone. My hands as I work are perfectly steady, which seems surprising to me. But I step on a twig, and it snaps, and I jump, let out a small scream; and then the fear comes at me. It’s a physical thing, this dread, a shudder moving through me. There’s a taste like acid in my throat.
I put down my secateurs and sit on the edge of the terrace. I rest my head in my hands, think through it all again. Plenty of people have gone already, like Connie and Norman from Les Vinaires, shutting up their houses, leaving their gardens to go to seed. Some like me are still unsure: when I last saw Gwen, my closest friend, she said they couldn’t decide. And others are sending their children without them, with labels pinned to their coats. But I couldn’t do that. I could never send my children to England without me. I know how it feels to be a motherless child: I will do everything I can to protect my daughters from that. We go together, the three of us, or we stay. I try to look into the future, but it’s all a dark blur to me: I can’t imagine it, can’t see down either path. The boat, the dangerous journey and going to London and sleeping on Iris’s floor. Or staying here—everything fine and familiar to start with, everything just as it always was, sleeping in our own beds. Waiting for what must happen.
The shadows lengthen, the colours of my garden begin to recede; till the shadows seem more solid, more real, than the things that cast them. I can hear a nightingale singing in the Blancs Bois. There’s a sadness to evenings on Guernsey sometimes, though Eugene could never feel it. When I first came here, he took me on a tour of the island, and we stopped on the north coast and watched the sun go down over L’Ancresse Bay—all colour suddenly gone from the sky, the rocks black, the sea white and crimped and glimmering, the fishing boats black and still in the water, so tiny against that immensity of sea—and I felt a surge of melancholy that I couldn’t explain. I tried to tell him about it, but it didn’t make any sense to him: he certainly didn’t feel it. I had a sense of distance from him, which soon became habitual. A sense of how differently we saw the world, he and I. But I feel bad even thinking such things, of the many ways in which we were unhappy together, now that he’s gone.
There’s a sudden scatter of birds in the sky; I flinch, my heart leaping into my throat. Little things seem violent to me. And in that moment my decision is made. I am clear, certain. We will go tomorrow. Blanche is right. We cannot just stay here and wait. Terrified by the snap of a twig or a flight of startled birds. We cannot.
I go to the shed and take out my bicycle. I cycle up to the Rectory to put our names on the list.
CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_0547cdcb-40bd-512b-935b-7b928c71c9c5)
I take Evelyn her tea and toast in bed, the toast cut in exact triangles, as she likes it. She’s sitting up, ready and waiting, in the neat bed-jacket of tea-rose silk that she’s worn each morning for years, her back as straight as a tulip stalk. Her face is deeply etched with lines, and white as the crochet trim on her pillowcase. Her Bible is open on her bedside table, next to a balaclava that she’s knitting for the Forces. She’s always knitting. A tired, nostalgic scent of eau-de-cologne hangs about her.
I sit on the bed beside her. I wait until she has drunk a few sips of her tea.
�Evelyn—I’ve decided. I’m going to go with the girls.’
She doesn’t say anything, watching me. I see the puzzlement that swims in her sherry-brown eyes. As though this is all news to her—though we’ve talked it through so many times.
�I’m taking you to Les Ruettes. You’re going to live with Frank and Angie. Angie will look after you once the girls and I have gone …’
�Angie le Brocq goes out in the lanes with her curlers in,’ she says.
Her voice is firm, as though her disapproval of Angie’s behaviour gives her some certainty in this shifting, troubling world—something to cling to.
�Yes, she can do,’ I say. �But Angie’s got a good heart. You’ll be well looked-after. I’m taking you there after breakfast, as soon as I’ve packed up your things.’
Sometimes I hear myself talk to her as though she were a child. Spelling everything out so carefully.
She looks shocked.
�No. Not after breakfast, Vivienne.’ As though I have said something slightly obscene.
�Yes, it has to be straight after breakfast,’ I tell her. �As soon as I’ve packed a bag for you. Then the girls and I will be going to town to get on the boat …’
�But, Vivienne—that’s really much too soon. I don’t want to go today. I really don’t feel ready. I’ve got one or two things that I really need to sort out. I’ll go next week, if that’s all right with you …’
I’m full of a frantic energy: it’s such a struggle to be patient. Now I’ve decided, I’m panicking that we’ll get to the harbour too late.
�Evelyn, if we’re going, it has to be today. They’re sending a boat from Weymouth. But after today there may not be any more boats. It’s too dangerous.’
�It’s not very helpful of them, is it? To rush us all like this? They have no consideration, Vivienne.’
�The soldiers have left,’ I tell her. �There’s no one here to defend us …’
I don’t say the rest of the sentence: And the Germans could walk straight in.
�Oh,’ she says. �Oh.’ And then, with a light coming suddenly into her face, the look of one who has found the answer: �Eugene should be here,’ she says.
�Eugene’s away fighting, remember?’ I say, as gently as I can. �He went to join the army. He’s being very brave.’
She shakes her head.
�I wish he were here. Eugene would know what to do.’
I put my hand on her wrist, in a gesture of comfort that’s empty, utterly futile—because what solace can I offer her when the son she adores has gone? I feel how frail she is, her limbs thin and brittle as twigs. I don’t say anything.
I make the girls their breakfast toast. I’m looking around me, aware of all the detail of my kitchen—the tea-towels drying in front of the stove, the jars of raisins and flour. On the wall there’s a print by Margaret Tarrant, a Christening present from Evelyn for Blanche—the Christ Child in his crib, with angels all around. It’s a little sentimental, yet I like it, for the still reverence of the angels, and the wonderful soft colour of their tall fretted wings that are the exact smoky blue of rosemary flowers. I wonder if I will ever see these things again—and if I do, what our life will be like, in that unguessable future. I say a quick prayer to the angels.
The girls come down to the kitchen, bleary, smelling of warm bedclothes, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Alphonse sidles up to Millie and walks in small circles round her. She bends down to stroke him, the morning sun shining on her dark silk hair, so you can see all the reddish colours in it.
�Right, girls. We’re going,’ I tell them. �We’ll get the boat today. It’ll take us to Weymouth and from there we’ll take the train to London and stay with Auntie Iris. I put our names on the list last night.’
Blanche’s face is like a light switched on.
�Yes.’ There’s a thrill in her voice. �But you could have decided earlier, Mum, then I could have washed my hair.’
�You’ll have to pack quickly,’ I tell them. �As soon as you’ve finished breakfast. You’ll need underwear and your toothbrushes, and all the clothes you can fit in.’
I’ve put out a carpet bag for Millie, and for Blanche a little leather suitcase that was Eugene’s. Blanche looks at the suitcase, appalled.
�Mum, you’re joking.’
�No, I’m not.’
�But how can I possibly get everything in there?’
London to Blanche is glamour—I know that. We went to stay with Iris for a holiday once—when Blanche was six, four years before Millie was born. Ever since that holiday, London has been a promised land to her, a dream of how life could be, ought to be. Once it was a dream of Trafalgar Square, with its dazzling fountains and pigeons, of the Tower of London, of seeing the chimps’ tea-party at the zoo. But now that she’s almost a woman, it’s a dream of men in uniform—resolute, square-jawed, masterful—and tea in the Dorchester tea-room under a glittery chandelier: a dream of cakes and flirtation, with maybe a swing band playing Anything Goes. She wants to take all her very best things, her nylons, her coral taffeta frock, her very first pair of high heels that I bought for her fourteenth birthday, just before she left school. I understand, but I feel a flicker of impatience with her.
�You’ll have to, Blanche. I’m sorry. There won’t be much room on the boat. Just put in as many clothes as you can. And you’ll need to wear your winter coats.’
�But it’s hot, Mum.’
�Just do your best,’ I say. �And, Blanche, when you’ve finished, you can give Millie a hand …’
�No, she can’t. I can do it myself,’ says Millie.
She’s been drinking her breakfast mug of milk, and her mouth is rimmed with white. She bites languidly into her toast and honey.
�Of course you can, sweetheart. You’re a big girl now,’ I tell her. �But Blanche will help you. Just be as quick as you can, both of you. If we’re going to go, it has to be today …’
I watch them for a moment, Blanche with her sherbet-fizz of excitement, Millie still fogged with sleep. We’ve come to the moment I’ve been dreading.
�There’s one thing that’s very sad, though,’ I say. �We’ll have to take Alphonse to the vet’s.’
Millie is suddenly alert, the drowsiness all gone from her. Her eyes harden. She gives me a wary, suspicious look.
�But there’s nothing wrong with him,’ she says.
�No. But I’m afraid he needs to be put to sleep.’
�What d’you mean, put to sleep?’ says Millie. There’s an edge of threat in her voice.
�We have to have him put down,’ I say.
�No, we don’t,’ she says. Her face blazes bright with anger.
�Millie, we have to. Alphonse can’t come with us. And we can’t just leave him here.’
�No. You’re a murderer, Mummy. I hate you.’ Her voice is shrill with outrage.
�We can’t take him, Millie. You know we can’t. We can’t take a cat on the boat. Nobody will. Everyone’s taking their cats and dogs to the vet. Everyone. Mrs Fitzpatrick from church was taking their terrier yesterday. She told me. It was terribly sad, she said, but it had to be done …’
�Then they’re all murderers,’ she says. �I hate them.’ Her small face is dark as thunderclouds. Her eyes spark. She snatches Alphonse up in her arms. The cat struggles against her.
�Millie. He can’t come with us.’
�He could live with someone else, then, Mummy. It isn’t his fault. He doesn’t want to die. I won’t let him. Alphonse didn’t ask to be born now. This war is stupid,’ she says.
Suddenly, it’s impossible. All my breath rushes out in a sigh. I can’t bear to distress her like this.
�Look—I’ll speak to Mrs le Brocq,’ I say wearily, defeated. It’s as though the room breathes out as well, when I say that. But I know what Evelyn would say—the thing she’s said so often before: You’re too soft with those girls, Vivienne … �I’ll see what I can do,’ I tell them. �Just get yourselves packed up and ready to leave.’
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_471504e8-a848-537c-84b1-a3be895dab99)
I walk with Evelyn to Angie’s house, up one of the narrow lanes that run the length and breadth of Guernsey, their labyrinthine routes scarcely changed since the Middle Ages. High, wet hedgebanks press in on either side of the lane; red valerian grows there, and toadflax, and slender, elegant foxgloves, their petals of a flimsy, washed-out purple, as though they’ve been soaked too long in water. I have Alphonse in a basket, and a bag of Evelyn’s clothes.
The climb exhausts Evelyn. We stop at the bend in the lane, where there’s a stone cattle-trough, and I seat her on the rim of the trough to catch her breath for a moment. Sunlight splashes through leaves onto the surface of the water, making patterns that hide whatever lies in its depths.
�Is it much further, Vivienne?’ she asks me, as a child might.
�No. Not much further.’
We come to the stand of thorn trees, turn in at the track to Les Ruettes. It’s a solid whitewashed farmhouse that’s been here for hundreds of years. There’s an elder tree by the door: islanders used to plant elder as a protection against evil, lest a witch fly into the dairy and the butter wouldn’t form. Behind the house are the glasshouses where Frank le Brocq grows his tomatoes. Chickens scratch in the dirt; their bubbling chatter is all about us. Alphonse is frenzied at the sight and smell of the chickens, writhing and mewing in his basket. I knock at the door.
Angie answers. She has a headscarf over her curlers, a cigarette in her hand. She sees us both there, and a gleam of understanding comes in her eyes: she knows I have made my decision. Her smile is warm and wide and softens the lines in her face.
�So. You’ve made your mind up, Vivienne.’
�Yes.’
I’m so grateful to Angie, for helping me out yet again. She’s always been so good to me—she makes my marmalade, smocks Millie’s dresses, ices my Christmas cake—and I know she’ll be welcoming to Evelyn. There’s such generosity in her.
She puts out a hand to Evelyn.
�Come in, then, Mrs de la Mare,’ she says. �We’ll take good care of you, I promise.’
We enter the cool dark of her kitchen. Angie takes Evelyn to the settle by the big open hearth. Evelyn sits on the edge of the seat—tentative, as though she fears it won’t quite take all her weight, her hands precisely folded.
I put her bag on the floor. A chicken scuttles in and starts to peck at the bag. I keep tight hold of Alphonse’s basket.
�I don’t know how to thank you, Angie,’ I say.
She shakes her head a little.
�It’s the least I could do. And never doubt that you’re doing the right thing, Vivienne. With those two young daughters of yours, you don’t know what might happen.’ Then, lowering her voice a little, �When they come,’ she says.
�No. Well …’
She leans close to whisper to me. Her skin is thickened by sunlight and brown as a ripening nut. I feel her warm nicotine-scented breath on my cheek.
�I’ve heard such terrible things,’ she says. �I’ve heard that they crucify girls. They rape them and crucify them.’
�Goodness,’ I say.
A thrill of horror goes through me. But I tell myself that this is probably just a story. Angie will believe anything. She loves to tell of witchcraft, hauntings, curses: she says that hair will grow much quicker if cut when the moon is waxing, that seagulls gathering at a seafarer’s house may presage a death … Anyway, I ask myself, how could such atrocities happen here, amid the friendly scratching of chickens, the scent of ripening tomatoes, the summer wind caressing the leaves—in this peaceful orderly place? It’s beyond imagining.
Maybe Angie sees the doubt in my eyes.
�Trust me, Vivienne. You’re right to want to get those girls of yours away. She’s right about that, isn’t she, Frank?’ I turn. Frank, her husband, is standing in the doorway to the hall, half dressed, his shirt undone and hanging loose. I can see the russet blur of hair on his chest. I’m never quite sure if I like him. He’s a big man, and a drinker. Sometimes she has black eyes, and I wonder if it’s his fists.
He nods in response to her question.
�We were saying that only last night,’ he says. �That you’d want to keep an eye on your girls, if you’d decided to stay. You’d want to watch your Blanche. She’s looking quite womanly now. I don’t like to think what might happen—if she was still here when they came.’
He’s looked at Blanche, noticed her—noticed her body changing. I don’t like this.
�It would be a worry,’ I say vaguely.
He steps into the kitchen, buttoning up his shirt.
�Vivienne, look, I was thinking. If it would help, I could give you a lift to the boat.’
I feel an immediate surge of gratitude for his kindness. This will make everything more straightforward. I’m ashamed of my ungracious thought.
�Thank you so much, that would be so helpful,’ I say.
�My pleasure.’
He tucks in his shirt. A faint sour smell of sweat comes off him.
�The other thing is …’ I say, and stop. I’m embarrassed to be asking more: they’re already doing so much. �I was wondering if you could maybe look after Alphonse? I ought to have had him put down, but Millie was distraught.’
�Bless her tender heart. Of course she would be,’ says Angie. �Of course we’ll take poor Alphonse in. He’ll be company for Evelyn, with all of her family gone.’
�Thank you so much. You’re a saint, Angie. Well, I’d better be off …’
I go to kiss Evelyn.
�You look after yourself,’ I say.
�And you, Vivienne,’ she says, rather formally. She’s sitting there so stiffly, as if she has to concentrate or she might fall apart. �Give my love to the girls.’ As though she didn’t say goodbye to them just before we left. As though she hasn’t seen them for weeks.
I pat her hand, and thank Angie again, and hurry back down the hill. I can’t help thinking about what she said, about what the Germans could do. I tell myself she’s wrong—that it’s just a salacious story. In the Great War we heard that the Germans were cutting the hands off babies, but it proved to be just a terrible rumour.
Yet the pictures are there in my mind and I can’t push them away.
CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_4efd8e95-2022-5ad6-a1be-197cfb7fb727)
The streets of St Peter Port are quiet. Some of the shops are boarded up, and there’s a lot of litter lying and shifting slightly in little eddies of air. The sky has clouded over, so it has a smudged, bleary look, like window-glass that needs cleaning. It’s a grey, dirty, rather disconsolate day.
Frank drops us at the harbour, wishing us luck.
We see at once why the streets were empty: all the people are here. There’s already a very long queue of silent, anxious islanders, snaking back from the pier and all along the Esplanade. We go to a desk set up on the pavement, where a flustered woman ticks off our names on a list. She has a pink, mottled face, and disordered hair that she keeps distractedly pushing out of her eyes.
We join the queue. People are sweating in woollen coats too cumbersome to pack up: they take out their handkerchiefs, wipe the damp from their skin. On this clammy summer day, the winter colours of the coats look sombre, almost funereal. Some people don’t have suitcases, and have tied up their belongings in neat brown-paper parcels. A bus arrives, and children spill down the steps; most of them have labels carefully pinned to their coats. They have a lost, dazed look in their eyes. Older children officiously clutch at younger brothers and sisters, responsibility weighing on them, clasping at a coat collar or the cuff of a sleeve.
Millie stares at the children. She frowns. She holds very tight to my hand.
Blanche is wearing her coral taffeta dress beneath her winter coat. She unbuttons her coat and runs her hand over her skirt, trying to smooth out the creases in the glossy fabric.
�Oh, no, Mum,’ she says suddenly.
Her voice is full of drama; my heart pounds, hurting my chest.
�What is it?’ I say sharply.
�I think I’ve forgotten my Vaseline. My skin will get all chapped.’
I feel a little cross with her, that she frightened me like that.
�It doesn’t matter,’ I say. �We’re all sure to have forgotten something.’
�It does matter, Mum. It does.’
We stand there for what seems like a very long time. The queue is orderly, subdued: nobody talks very much. Seagulls scream in the empty air above us, and there are many boats at anchor; you can hear the nervous slap and jostle of water round their hulls. The sun comes briefly out from the cloud, throwing light at everything, then rapidly snatching it back; where the sun isn’t shining on it, the sea looks black and unspeakably cold. I can’t see the boat that will take us to Weymouth—it must be moored out of sight. The only vessel that’s moored to this part of the pier is quite a small boat, not much bigger than the fishermen use, tied up where stone steps lead down from the pier to the sea. I wonder vaguely who it belongs to.
More and more people come, with their coats, their suitcases, their bulging parcels of precious belongings: with the fear that seems to seep like sweat from their pores.
�Will I have my own room at Auntie Iris’s?’ Blanche asks me.
�No, sweetheart. It’ll be a crush. You’ll probably have to sleep in the back bedroom with the boys.’
�Oh,’ she says, digesting this. It isn’t quite what she’d hoped for. �Well, I don’t mind. It might be quite fun, really, sharing a room.’
�What does London look like?’ says Millie.
�You’ll love it,’ says Blanche. She relishes being asked this—she loves being the expert on London. �The women have beautiful clothes, and the trains go under the ground, and there’s a park with pelicans …’
I understand Blanche’s yearning for London: sometimes I long for it too, even after all these years away, remembering the thrilling hum of the city, the people so different from island people, so much more vivid and purposeful, the yellow lamplight on smoky streets, the slow brown surge of the Thames. I remember too the sense of possibility—of a world that’s freer, wider, more open than this island. I share her excitement for a moment, allowing myself a spark of hope—that there could be good things about this, in spite of the war. A new freedom.
�Can we go and see Buckingham Palace?’ says Millie.
She has a Buckingham Palace jigsaw that Evelyn gave her for Christmas.
�I’m sure we will,’ I say.
To my relief, the queue begins to edge forward. Then I see that the people at the front are going down the steps from the pier and over a gangplank onto the boat. The small boat. It can’t be. They can’t expect us to go in that, all the way to England.
�What is it, Mum?’ says Blanche, urgently. She’s heard my quick inbreath.
�Nothing, sweetheart.’
She follows my gaze.
�It isn’t a very big boat, Mum.’ A little uncertain.
�No. But I’m sure it will be fine. I’m sure they know what they’re doing …’
She hears the apprehension in my voice. She gives me a questioning look.
The queue inches forward, silently.
In front of me is a solid middle-aged woman. Round her neck she wears a fox fur, which has a glass-bead eye, a predatory mouth, a lush russet tail hanging down. Millie is intrigued: she stares at the fox. A smell of mothballs hangs about the woman; she will have taken her best winter clothes out of storage. Next to her is her husband, who seems rather passive and cowed. You can tell she’s the one who makes the decisions.
�Sorry to bother you,’ I say.
She turns and gives a slight smile, approving of my children.
�It was just that I was wondering—is that the boat?’ I say.
�Well—that’s what it looks like,’ she says.
She obviously takes trouble over her appearance; she has plucked her eyebrows out then pencilled them carefully in, and her face is heavily powdered. Her hat is fixed with a silver hatpin like a pansy flower.
�We’ll never all get on that,’ I say. �They should have sent something bigger. Didn’t they realise how many of us there would be?’
The woman shrugs.
�To be honest—excuse my language—but I don’t think they give a damn about us, in England,’ she says.
�But—you’d think they’d have sent some soldiers. I mean, there’s no protection for us. We could meet anything on the journey …’
�We’re expendable, let’s face it,’ says the woman. �They’ve given us up for lost. Well, I suppose Mr Churchill’s got an awful lot of things on his mind.’
She’s sardonic, resigned. I wish I could be like that—perhaps it’s a good way to be: not to expect very much, not to struggle against what is happening. But she doesn’t have children with her.
She pulls out the pansy hatpin and fans her face with her hat. Sweat has made thin runnels in the powder on her face. She turns back to her husband.
Panic moves through me. Millie’s hand is so tiny and helpless in mine: everything feels so unguessably fragile, so opened up to disaster—the bodies of my children, the flimsy little boat. I have to protect my children, I have to keep them safe; but I don’t know how to do that. I think of the boat, packed tight with all these people, edging its way across the wideness of sea, all that shining waste of water between us and Weymouth; of the dark secret threat that lurks in the depths of the sea.
I’m scarcely aware of the moment of decision—as though I perform the action almost before I think the thought. I find myself pulling Millie out of the queue, dumping the bags down beside her.
�Stay there,’ I tell her.
I go to grab Blanche’s arm.
She’s startled. She turns to me jumpily.
�Mum. What on earth are you doing?’
�We’re going back home,’ I tell her.
She ignores what I say, or doesn’t hear me.
�Mum.’ Her voice is splintered with panic. �We’ll lose our place in the queue.’
�We’re going home,’ I say again.
�But, Mum—you said we had to go now, or we couldn’t go at all.’ Her eyes are wide, afraid.
Millie tries to pick up her carpet bag, but she’s only holding one handle. The bag falls open and all her things tumble out—her knickers and liberty bodices, her candystripe pyjamas, her beloved ragdoll—all her possessions, intimate, lollipop-bright, spewing out all over the grubby stone of the pier. She starts to cry—shuddery, noisy sobs. She’s frightened and cross, and ashamed that she made the things spill.
�Shut up, Millie. You’re such a crybaby,’ says Blanche.
Millie, outraged, sobs more loudly. There’s a slight cold drizzle of rain.
I gather up Millie’s things and try to brush the dirt off them. Everyone’s eyes are on me.
�Mum, you can’t do this,’ hisses Blanche, in an intense whisper. She’s torn—desperate to make me listen, yet mortified at being involved in such a public scene. �We’ve got to get to England.’
�The boat’s too small. It isn’t safe,’ I say.
The rain comes on more heavily. Rainwater soaks my hair, runs down my parting, runs down my face like tears.
�But nothing’s safe any more,’ she says.
I have nothing to say to that.
�And I want to go. I want to go to London.’ Her voice is shrill. �You said we were going to go. You said.’
I’m trying to gather up Millie’s things.
�Blanche, for God’s sake, just grow up. This isn’t all about you. Can’t you think of somebody else for once?’
Immediately I’ve said it, I regret it. I shouldn’t have told her off like that. I have snatched her dream away from her: I know she’s upset, and afraid. But the words hang between us, sharp as blades, and I can’t take them back again.
I straighten up, put my hand on her shoulder. She shakes me off and stands a little aside, as though she is nothing to do with us. Her face is a papier maché mask: it’s set and white and looks about to dissolve.
I usher them back, past the queue of people. I don’t know how to get home, I haven’t thought this through, haven’t thought beyond this moment—just wanting to turn my back on the boat, the journey, the treacherous heave and shine of the sea.
We walk along the Esplanade, heading away from the pier. I don’t know if there are any buses going to St Pierre du Bois. Maybe all the buses are busy bringing the children here, to the harbour. The mist and rain are blowing in so you can’t see far over the water, the horizon edging nearer, everything closing in, closing down. They’ll have a wet, choppy crossing.
And then, with a rush of relief, I see a vehicle I recognise: it’s Angie’s brother, Jack Bisson, in his ramshackle van. Jack works as a handyman; like Angie, he’s resourceful, he can fix anything—burst pipes, loose slates, a cow that’s struggling to calve. I wave, and he comes to a stop beside us and winds his window down.
�We were going to go and then we decided not to,’ I say.
�She decided not to,’ Blanche mutters behind me. �Not us. Her.’
Jack has quick dark eyes like a sparrow and Angie’s warm wide smile. His bird-like gaze flits over us. He nods, accepting what I’ve said.
�Mr Bisson—I know it’s an awful lot to ask—but I don’t suppose you’re going our way? You couldn’t give us a lift?’
�Of course I could do that, Mrs de la Mare. Just you hop in,’ he tells us.
He drops us in the lane just above Le Colombier.
CHAPTER 6 (#ulink_6ec86088-cc24-5aca-a443-ea29abbe3f2e)
We trudge down the lane towards our house.
There’s no sound but the rustle of rain on the uncountable leaves of the woods and orchards of the valley. Fat drips spill from the branches above us and soak our hair and our clothes, and I want to wipe the rain from my face, but I’m holding two bags and Millie’s hand and can’t brush the water away. Millie is tugging at me: she says her feet have blisters. All I can think is how much I want to get home.
We come to the wide five-bar gate that opens into our yard. The gate is unfastened. I must have left it like that—not noticing that I hadn’t fastened it in our rush to leave. But I’m surprised I was so careless.
I go to the door: it’s half ajar. I feel my pulse skittering off.
�What’s the matter, Mummy?’ says Millie.
�I’m not sure. You two can wait out here for a moment,’ I tell them.
�Why?’ says Blanche. �It’s our home. And it’s raining, Mum, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
�Just do as you’re told,’ I say.
My voice has an edge. Blanche flinches.
I step cautiously into the passage, then into the kitchen. Fear rushes through me. Someone has been here. Someone has broken into our house. My kitchen is wrecked, the cupboard doors flung open, my pottery jars broken, flour and raisins and biscuits all over the floor.
I call out.
�Hello?’
My shrill voice echoes.
I stand silently for a moment and listen for running footsteps, my heart thudding. But the house has an empty, frail stillness: whoever did this has gone. I step warily into the living room. All my precious music is scattered, the sheets of paper like white petals from some great blossoming tree that a wind has shaken. The cabinet is open, and they’ve taken some of the china, and the Staffordshire dogs and the eggcups from the mantelpiece have gone.
The girls come cautiously into the house to find me.
�No.’ Blanche’s voice is freighted with tears. �I told you, Mum. We did the wrong thing. We should never have come back,’ she says.
�The Germans are thieves,’ says Millie severely. �I hate them.’
�This wasn’t the Germans,’ I tell her. �The Germans haven’t come.’ I only just manage not to add yet. I swallow down the word.
�It was the Germans,’ says Millie. It’s so simple for her. �They’re robbers. They’ve taken our china dogs. They shouldn’t have.’
�No, sweetheart. It must have been someone who lives around here who did this.’
There’s the crunch of something broken, splintering under my feet. I kneel, pick up a china shard. It’s from one of the flowered teacups I brought all the way from London, that I always kept for best and only used for Sunday tea, because I was scared they might get damaged. Now, I see I was wrong: I should have made the most of the flowery cups while I could.
�I bet it was Bernie Dorey,’ says Blanche. �I’ve seen him and his gang round here sometimes. He was in the same class as me at school, his family are all horrible. He used to nick my satchel and he never brushed his teeth.’
�We don’t know who it was,’ I say.
The thought appals me—that somebody was just waiting for us to leave, watching the house and scheming and taking their chance. Seeking a way to profit from the anarchy of war. And I’m upset by the destructiveness of it, all the spilt flour and the breakages, as though it was just a game to them, as though they enjoyed what they did. I hate that.
Blanche is seized with anger—that nothing has happened as she dreamed it.
�You see, Mum? I was right, we should have gone to England. We could be on the boat by now. We could be sailing.’ She’s furious with me: her eyes are hard as blue flints. �It’s going to be awful here. Worse than ever,’ she says.
�We’ll be all right, sweetheart,’ I say. �It doesn’t matter that much. We can manage without the china dogs, and the silver eggcups were such a nuisance to clean. At least they haven’t taken our books …’
�So why do you sound so unhappy, Mummy?’ says Millie.
I don’t say anything.
Blanche rips off her winter coat and flings it onto a chair. She stares down at herself, at the hem of her taffeta dress, which is crumpled and dark with rainwater.
�Look. It’s all ruined,’ she says.
Her eyes are shiny with tears.
�Blanche—your dress will be fine. We’ll hang it up so it doesn’t crease. It’s only water,’ I say.
But I know she isn’t talking only about the taffeta frock.
I go upstairs and look around, in the girls’ bedrooms, and Evelyn’s, and mine. Nothing has been disturbed here; it looks as though the burglars didn’t come this far. But I have to be certain. Le Colombier is a big old rambling house, a labyrinth. The many people who have lived here have built onto it over the years: there are rooms leading into one another, twisty passages, places where you could hide. I hunt around everywhere—open up all the cupboards, explore all the secrets and hidden ways of my house. I climb right up to the attics, to the big front attic we use as a spare bedroom, and the little one at the back, that you reach by a separate stair. All is as it should be. At last I come down to the girls again, and send them off to unpack their bags.
I clear up the mess, the shards of china crunching under my feet. A feeling like grief washes through me, and not only because of the things that are broken or lost. This doesn’t feel like our home now, since the intrusion: it feels wrong, smells wrong, in that indefinable way of a place where someone unwelcome has been. Everything is falling apart—all the intricate warp and weft of the peaceful life we have lived here: everything unravelling. They haven’t come yet, but it has already begun.
CHAPTER 7 (#ulink_6f606bc7-88b2-55ba-a0a2-8a4ca3feec4a)
I put together a meal with some food that hasn’t been touched by the burglars—a loaf of bread I forgot to throw out, a tin of corned beef. After we’ve eaten, I walk up to Les Ruettes to bring Evelyn back home. Millie comes with me. The rain has stopped and the sky is starting to clear. There are still great banks of cloud that look as solid as far countries, but now between the heaps of cloud, there are depths and reaches of blue. The hedgebanks are drenched, and the air is rich with musky, polleny scents—wild garlic, wet earth, violets. I breathe in gratefully. The foxgloves brush against us like hands, and there are pale briar roses, each holding a drop of clear water. The little ferns that love the damp flicker like green tongues of flame.
As we near the door of Les Ruettes, Alphonse slinks out from behind a glasshouse and circles around Millie, arching, purring resonantly.
Frank le Brocq comes to the door, a cigarette clamped between his lips. He’s wearing his check cloth cap; he takes it off when he sees me. A splinter of amusement floats in his eye.
�We saw you come back. Cold feet?’ he says.
�Yes. You could put it like that.’
I feel awkward. There’s something shameful about returning like this: it suddenly feels like an act of cowardice—not a reasoned decision, more a failure of nerve.
He takes a long drag on his cigarette and looks me up and down, in his appraising way that I don’t quite like.
�That cat of yours wouldn’t settle,’ he tells me. �He kept going back to your house. Cats are like that, cats are territorial creatures. A bit like you lot.’ He grins.
Millie picks up Alphonse and wraps her arms around him.
�Did you miss me?’ she says.
The cat rubs his head extravagantly against her.
�Look, Mummy, look, he knows what I’m saying. He really missed me,’ she says.
Frank stands aside, and we go into the kitchen. Angie is kneading dough on her table; she greets us with a smile. Evelyn is on the settle where I left her, still sitting upright on the edge of the seat.
�Vivienne.’ There’s a puzzled look in Evelyn’s face, as though her life is a knotted tangle she can’t begin to undo. �Well, you didn’t take long.’
�We’re taking you back home,’ I say. �We changed our minds. We didn’t go in the boat.’
�Least said, soonest mended,’ she says.
I feel a little surge of unease. She often gives me this feeling now—that the things she say sound normal, yet somehow they don’t quite make sense.
I turn to Angie.
�Thank you so much …’
�Don’t you worry, Vivienne. I was more than glad to help out … Let’s hope you made the right decision,’ she adds, a little doubtfully.
�Well, time will tell,’ I say vaguely; then think that I owe her some explanation, after everything that she has done for me. �The thing is—it was such a little boat. And it’s such a long way …’
We walk back slowly down the lane. I take Evelyn’s arm to help her. A bird calls with a sound like a pot being scraped, and the moist air is cool on our skin. Millie tries to carry Alphonse, but the cat wriggles down and scampers off through the fields, heading for Le Colombier. Millie slips her hand in mine.
�I’m glad we came back home,’ she says, her voice fat with contentment. �I didn’t really want to go. It’s nice here, isn’t it, Mummy?’
�Yes, sweetheart.’
But even as I say it, a little tremor goes through me. Above us the clouds retreat, regroup, creating new shapes in the sky—new countries, new islands.
CHAPTER 8 (#ulink_d0754fb6-ff5c-5197-b921-33daec686a6c)
On Friday I cycle up to town.
The streets are empty because so many people have gone, and some of the shops are boarded up, but otherwise St Peter Port feels much the same as always, calm and orderly in the warm June sunshine—as though the panic of the evacuation hadn’t happened at all. I buy a lamb joint, and stock up on coffee and cigarettes and tea. Such luxuries may become rather harder to buy—when they come, when it happens.
I come to Martel’s watch and clock shop, where Blanche’s friend, Celeste, has been working since she left school. I glance in through the window, wondering whether she’s gone, and she sees me and waves vigorously, her glossy dark curls dancing. I feel so happy for Blanche because her friend will still be here. In Grand Pollet, I pass the music shop that belonged to Nathan Isaacs; this is one of the shuttered shops. Nathan left a while ago, before the fall of France, saying that he could see which way the wind was blowing, a rueful smile on his clever, diffident face—talking about it so lightly. I miss him. We grew friendly because of the shop, where I’d often go to buy music. He was a good musician, a violinist, and sometimes I’d play duets with him at one of his music evenings, up at Acacia Villa, his tall, graceful house on the hill.
I go to the library, where I choose a new Elizabeth Goudge, and then on to the haberdasher’s to buy more wool for Evelyn. I can’t get her balaclavas and gloves to the Forces any more, but at least the knitting keeps her occupied. And I stop off at Boots on the High Street to buy a first lipstick for Blanche—wanting to give her a bit of glamour, something to make her happier, now I have snatched her dream of London from her.
I like chemists’ shops. I walk slowly down the aisle, past opulent silver compacts that I could never afford, moving through drifts of perfume-lavender water, and Devon Violets talcum powder, and all the lavish gorgeousness of Chanel No. 5.
The Yardley counter is right at the back of the shop. From here the land slopes steeply, and through the high arched windows you look down over russet-tiled roofs and out across the harbour; you can see the little boats bobbing, and all the glimmery blue dazzle of the sky and sea. Seagulls wheel and cry in the clear air. The day is mellowing now towards evening, the sunlight turning gold. The tomato lorries are parked in a line on the pier—there are still boats to take the crop to the mainland, though I don’t suppose this will happen for many more days. Way above the harbour, in the splendour of the sky, I notice two tiny black specks—a couple of planes that are flying there, very high, very far: they look innocuous as birds. I can’t tell if the planes are theirs or ours. Frank le Brocq would be able to tell, even from such a distance—he says he often sees German reconnaissance planes. It’s a good thing, really, that they fly over, he says: they’ll be able to tell that we’re defenceless—that there are no army camps or naval ships or anti-aircraft guns here. That we’re really not worth bothering with.
I stare at all the Yardley lipsticks, not knowing which colour to choose—maybe the rose-pink, maybe the peach. The simplest choices seem hard now, after all my hesitation about whether or not we should leave—as though I have somehow lost faith in my power to decide. In the end I choose the coral because it will match Blanche’s taffeta dress. Then I head back down the High Street: I have left my bike against a wall in the lower part of the road.
�Vivienne! It is you!’ I feel a warm hand on my arm. �I called you but you didn’t turn. You looked like you were off in a dream …’
I spin around. It’s Gwen.
She smiles, a little triumphant—as though I am something she has achieved. Her gaze—chestnut-brown, vivid, shining—rests on my face. Her frock has a pattern of polka dots and little scarlet flowers. It’s so good to see her I’d like to put my arms around her.
�I didn’t know if you’d gone or not,’ she says. �It was all so sudden, wasn’t it? Having to choose?’ She dumps her heavy bag of shopping down on the pavement, rubs a sore shoulder. �So you’ve decided to stick it out?’
I nod.
�Cold feet, at the last moment,’ I tell her. �A bit pathetic really. We actually got to the pier. Then we went back home, and someone had broken in and stolen some of our things …’
She shakes her head wearily.
�It happened to a lot of people,’ she says. �You wouldn’t think it of islanders, would you?’
�It was horrible,’ I say.
She puts her hand on my arm again.
�I’m so glad, though, Vivienne,’ she tells me. �I’m just so glad you’re still here.’
Her warmth is so welcome.
�Look—are you in a rush?’ she says.
�Not at all.’
�We’ll have tea, then?’
�I’d love to.’
We have a favourite tea shop—Mrs du Barry’s on the High Street. We take the table we always choose—the table right at the back that has a wide view over the harbour. There’s a crisp starched tablecloth, and marigolds in a glass vase; the marigolds have a thin, peppery scent. The shop is almost empty, except for an elderly couple talking in slow, hushed voices, and a woman with eyes smudged with tiredness and a baby in her arms. As she sips her tea, the woman rests her cheek against the baby’s head. I feel a surge of nostalgia, remembering the sensation of a baby’s head against you—how fragile it feels where the bones haven’t fused, and how hot and scented and sweet.
�Gwen—how did you decide?’ I ask.
�Ernie wouldn’t leave,’ she tells me. Gwen and Ernie live at Elm Tree Farm, in Torteval; they have a big granite farmhouse and a lot of fertile land. �Not after all those years of work. “I’m damned if I’ll let them take it all away from me,” he said.’
�Well, good for him …’
Her bright face seems to cloud over. She pushes back her hair. A haze of anxiety hangs about her.
�How can you ever know what the right thing is? How can you ever know?’ she says.
�You can’t. I keep wondering too. Whether I’ve made an awful mistake …’
�Johnnie can’t bear it, of course, being stuck here, kicking his heels. Poor kid. He simply can’t bear that he was too young to join up.’
�I can imagine that. How he would feel that …’
I think of her younger son, Johnnie—how impulsive he is, how he’d yearn for action. I’ve always been fond of Johnnie, with his exuberance, his wild brown hair, his restless, clever hands. He and Blanche would play together a lot when they were small—making mud pies and flower soup, or building dens in the Blancs Bois—until at seven or eight, as children will, they went their separate ways. Then I taught him piano for a while, though he often forgot to bring the right music, and scarcely practised at all. Until he discovered a talent for ragtime, which I could never play. He had the rhythm in him, and there was no stopping him.
�But I wasn’t going to let Johnnie go to England on his own,’ says Gwen. �Not after … Well …’
She doesn’t finish her sentence. Her eyes glitter with unshed tears: the stricken look crosses her face. Brian, her elder son, was lost at Trondheim, in the Norwegian campaign. After it happened, I would panic sometimes when I was with her; afraid of the gaps in our conversations, as though they were cliffs you could fall from, afraid of saying his name. Once I told her: I’m so frightened of reminding you, I don’t want to make you upset … And she said, Vivienne, it’s not as though you’re reminding me of something I’ve forgotten. It’s not as though I don’t think of him every moment of every day. The only time I don’t think of him is when I’m fast asleep—then every morning I wake up and I have to learn it again. So let’s just get on with it …
�I want to keep Johnnie close,’ she says now.
I put my hand on her wrist.
�Of course you do,’ I say. �Of course you wouldn’t want him to go …’
Perhaps I’m lucky that both my children are girls. When I was younger, I felt I’d love to have a son, as well; but war changes everything. Even the things you hope for.
Mrs du Barry brings our tea. The quilted tea cosy is shaped like a thatched cottage, and the milk jug has a crochet cover held in place by beads. There are cakes on a silver cake stand—Battenberg, cream slices, luxurious chocolate eclairs. I take a slice of Battenberg. We sip our tea and eat our cake, and watch as the sun sinks down in the sky and spreads its gold on the sea.
Gwen sighs.
�Johnnie’s such a worry—what he might get up to,’ she says. �He’s been a bit wild since it happened. It’s not really anything he’s done—just what I feel he could do …’
�It’s such a short time,’ I tell her.
�He worshipped his brother,’ she says.
�Yes.’
I remember Brian’s memorial service—how Johnnie didn’t cry; how he stood to attention, his face white as wax, his body so rigid, controlled: making me think of a cello string stretched too tight, that might suddenly break. He troubled me. I know just why Gwen worries so about him.
�He longs to do what Brian did,’ she tells me. �He wears Brian’s army jumper. And he’s got a box of Brian’s things—his binoculars, and his shotgun that he used for shooting rabbits, and his famous collection of Dinky cars that he kept from when he was small. The box is Johnnie’s most precious possession; he keeps it under his bed …’
I feel a tug of sadness, for Johnnie.
We’re quiet for a moment. It’s getting late, and Mrs du Barry hangs the Closed sign on her door. My hands are sticky with marzipan from the Battenberg cake, and I wipe them on my handkerchief. The spicy scent of the marigolds is all around us.
And then I ask the question that looms at the front of my mind—vivid as neon, inescapable.
�Gwen. What will happen?’
She leans a little towards me.
�They’ll overlook us,’ she says, too definitely. �Don’t you think? Like in the Great War.’
�Do you really think so?’
�Nobody bothered with us, during the Great War,’ she says.
�That’s true enough. But that was then …’
�I mean, what difference do we make to anything? What use could these little islands possibly be to Hitler?’ There’s a note of pleading in her voice: perhaps it’s herself as much as me that she’s trying to persuade. �Maybe he won’t think of us. That’s what I hope, anyway. You’ve got to hope, haven’t you?’
But her hand holding the teacup is shaking very slightly, so the tea shivers all across its surface.
She clears her throat, which seems suddenly thick.
�Anyway, Vivienne—tell me more about all of you,’ she says. Moving on to safer things.
�Blanche is unhappy,’ I tell her. �She terribly wanted to go.’
�Well, she would, of course,’ says Gwen. �There isn’t much here for young people, you can see how she’d long for London. And Millie?’
�She’s being ever so brave, though she doesn’t really understand.’
�She’s a poppet,’ says Gwen.
�And Evelyn—well, I’m not sure she’s quite right in her mind any more. Half the time she seems to forget that Eugene joined up …’ I see the shadow that rapidly moves across Gwen’s face, at the mention of Eugene, then fades away just as quickly. I wish I hadn’t eaten the Battenberg cake: the sweetness of the marzipan is making me feel slightly sick. �Sometimes she asks for him,’ I tell her, �as though he’s still at home.’
�Poor Vivienne. Your mother-in-law was never exactly the easiest of people,’ says Gwen carefully. �You’ve certainly got your hands full.’
CHAPTER 9 (#ulink_a3729927-1a69-5323-9b97-d5d470cb7910)
We say goodbye. Gwen leaves, and I go to the Ladies. I wash the marzipan from my hands, push my brush through my hair, take out my compact to powder my face. My hands have a clean, astringent smell from Mrs du Barry’s carbolic soap. Then I go back to the table to pick up my cardigan that I left there.
All the china on the tables begins to rattle violently. There’s a roaring noise from outside; at first, I can’t work out what it can be, then I think it must be a plane—yet the sound is too sudden, too loud, too near, for a plane. Fear surges through me: if this is a plane, it will crash on the town. Everyone rushes to the window at the back of the shop, which looks out over the harbour. The air seems too thin, so it’s hard to breathe.
�No no no no,’ says Mrs du Barry. She’s standing close to me; she clutches my arm.
We see the three planes that are flying over, swooping down over the harbour: we see the bombs falling, shining, catching the sun as they fall. They seem to come down so slowly. And then the crump of the impact, the looming dust, the flame—everything breaking, broken, fires leaping up, loose tyres and oil drums flung high in the air by the blast. I hear the ferocious rattle of guns. I think, stupidly, that at least there are soldiers here after all, the soldiers haven’t left us. Then I realise that the guns I hear are German guns, in the planes. They’re machine-gunning the men, the lorries: there’s a ripping sound, a flare of fire, as a petrol tank explodes. The men on the pier are scattered, running, crumpling like straw men, thrown down.
Fear floods me. My whole body is trembling. I think of my children. Will the planes fly all over the island, will they bomb my children? And Gwen—where is Gwen? How much time did she have? Could Gwen have got away?
I stand there, shaking. Someone drags me under a table. We are all under the tables now—the elderly couple, Mrs du Barry, the mother clutching her child. Someone is saying Oh God oh God oh God. There’s a shattering sound as the window blows in, shards of glass all around us in a dangerous, glittering shower. Somebody screams: it might be me, I don’t know. We crouch there, wait for the end, for the bomb that will surely land on us.
Suddenly, amid the clamour, the air-raid siren goes off.
�About time,’ mutters Mrs du Barry beside me. �About bloody time.’ I hear the sob in her voice. Her fingers dig into my arm.
The elderly woman is gasping now, as though she has no breath, her husband holding her helplessly, like someone holding onto water, as though she might slip from his grasp. The young mother presses her baby tight to her chest. The sounds from the harbour assault us, the boom and crash of falling bombs, the growl and scream of plane engines, the terrible rattle of guns. More windows shatter around us. It goes on and on, it seems to last for ever, an eternity of noise and splintering glass and fear.
And then at last the sound of the planes seems to fade, receding from us. I find that I am counting, like you do in a storm—waiting for the thunderclap: expecting them to circle back, more bombs to fall. But there’s nothing.
A silence spreads around us. The tiniest sound is suddenly loud. I hear a splash of tea that spills from a table onto the floor: there’s nothing but the drip drip of tea and the pounding of blood in my ears. Within the silence, the baby starts wailing, as though this sudden stillness appals him more than the noise.
I look down, see that a piece of glass is stuck in my hand. I pull it out. My blood flows freely. I don’t feel any pain.
I crawl out from under the table, leaving the other people. Not thinking at all, just moving. I get to my feet and run out of the door and down the High Street and through the arch to the covered steps that take you down to the pier. The steps are dark and smell of fish and the damp stone is slippery under my feet. I have only one thought—to look for Gwen, to see if Gwen is alive.
At the bottom of the steps I come out into sunlight again, on the Esplanade that runs along the harbour past the pier. All the horror of it slams into me. Everything is on fire before me, I can feel the heat of it here, but the fire seems unreal, as though it couldn’t burn me. There are bodies everywhere, lying strangely, arms and legs reaching out, as though they were flung from a great height. The lorries are all burning. Tomato juice and blood run together over the stones, and there is grey smoke everywhere—smoke from the fires, and a smoke of dust—and smells of burning and blood, and a terrible rich charred smell that I know must be burning flesh. The body of a man has dropped out of the cab of his flaming lorry—it’s an ugly, broken, blackened thing. I hear a cry, and it chills me—it’s like an animal blind with anguish, not a human sound. I rub my eyes, which are stinging, as though the sight of the fire is hurting them. Everything is so bright, too bright—the red, the flames, the blood that streams on the stones.
I look up and down the Esplanade, but I can’t see Gwen, I don’t think Gwen can have been here. I’m praying she got away in time. I walk out onto the pier. Heat sears at my skin as I pass a smouldering lorry. My foot slips in a pool of blood. I have some vague thought that perhaps I could help—I can do a splint, a neat bandage, I know a little First Aid. Yet even as I think this, I know how pointless, how useless, it is—that everything here is utterly beyond me.
I come to a man who is lying on the pier beside his lorry. His face is turned away, but something draws my eye—the check cloth cap on the ground beside him. There’s some significance to this, but my thoughts are so heavy and slow.
�Oh God,’ I say then, out loud. �Frank. Oh God.’
It’s Frank le Brocq.
I kneel beside him. I can see his face now. At first I think he must be dead already. But then his eyelids flicker. I cradle his head in my hands.
�Frank. It’s Vivienne. Frank, it’s all right, I’m here …’
But I know it is not all right. The one thing I know is that he cannot live with such wounds—the blood that seeps from the side of his head, the blood that slides out of his mouth. I feel a heavy, passive helplessness: so any gesture, any word, takes all the strength I have.
He’s trying to speak. I put my ear close to his mouth.
�Bastards,’ he whispers. �Fucking bastards.’
I kneel there, holding him.
I try to say the Lord’s Prayer. It’s all I can think of. My mouth is stiff and I’m afraid that I won’t remember the words. But before I get to the power and the glory he is dead. I carry on anyway. For ever and ever. Amen.
He’s staring at me with empty eyes. I reach out and close his eyelids. Then I just kneel there beside him. I don’t know what to do now.
A shadow falls across me; someone is bending down to me. I look up—it’s a fireman. Behind him, I see the single fire engine that’s come.
�Excuse me,’ I say. �I know you’re terribly busy, but this man—he’s a friend of mine, Frank le Brocq …’
The fireman’s face is white but composed. He peers down.
�I know Frank,’ he says.
�The thing is—he’s dead, you see,’ I say.
�Poor, poor bugger,’ says the man. �You knew him, did you? You knew Frank?’
�Yes.’ My voice rather cheerful and brittle and high. �Well, I know his wife better, really. Angie le Brocq. I was up at Les Ruettes just a few days ago. They were going to take in my mother-in-law, if we had gone on the boat … But then we didn’t go of course …’
The words tumbling out of me. This has nothing to do with what’s happening, but somehow I can’t stop talking.
The man looks at me in a worried way. He puts his hand on my shoulder.
�Look, ma’am, you need to go home. You should go and get yourself some rest. Go home and make yourself a cup of sugary tea …’
�But I can’t just leave him here like this …’
�There’s nothing you can do,’ he says. �Someone will see to him later.’
I feel he’s being obtuse.
�No, you don’t understand. I know Frank. I can’t leave him lying here. Look at him. It’s so awful …’
He gives me a hand and pulls me up. The effort of standing stops the stream of talk from my mouth. I’m shaking so hard I can scarcely stand.
He gives my arm a wary pat, as though I’m some skittery wild animal that he is trying to soothe.
�I mean it, ma’am. You should just take yourself off home now,’ he tells me.
I ring Elm Tree Farm from the first public phone box I pass.
Gwen answers.
�Oh, Gwen. Thank God … I wondered …’
�I’m all right, Viv,’ she tells me. �I got away in time. I’m so glad to hear your voice. I’ve been sick with worry about you …’ Then, when I don’t say anything, �Viv—are you sure you’re all right?’
I can’t answer her question: my mouth won’t seem to work properly.
�Gwen—I can’t talk now. I have to get back to the girls. But I’m not hurt—don’t worry.’
I put down the phone.
When I arrive back at Le Colombier, Blanche’s face is at the window. She sees me and runs to the door.
�Mum. What happened?’
Her voice is shrill, her eyes are wide and afraid.
�They bombed the harbour,’ I tell her.
�We heard the planes.’ she says, in a little scared voice. �Mum. We thought you were dead.’
Millie is clinging to Blanche’s hand. I can tell she’s been crying: the tracks of tears gleam on her cheeks.
�I’m all right. I’m not hurt,’ I say.
I reach out to hug Millie. She pulls away, stares at my dress. All the colour has gone from her face.
�Mum. You’ve got blood all over you,’ says Blanche, in that small thin voice.
I look down. I hadn’t realised. There’s a lot of blood on the front of my dress, where I cradled Frank as he died.
�It isn’t my blood,’ I tell them. �I’m all right. Really.’
They don’t say anything—just stand there, staring at me.
�Look—I’m going to have to leave you for a little longer,’ I say. �I have to go to Angie’s.’
I can see that Blanche understands at once. Her face darkens.
�To Angie’s? Did they get Frank?’ she says.
I nod.
Her eyes are round, appalled.
�But, Mum—what on earth will Angie do without him?’ she says.
�I don’t know,’ I tell her.
I can’t go to see Angie with her husband’s blood on my clothes. I change, and put my dress to soak in a bath of cold water, swirling the water around to try to loosen the stain. I almost faint as I straighten up, the bathroom spinning around me. My body feels flimsy as eggshell, as though the slightest touch might shatter me. I can’t break the news to Angie feeling like this.
I make myself drink some sugary tea, just as the fireman advised. Something has gone wrong with my throat, and it’s hard to swallow the drink, but afterwards I feel a little stronger. The girls sit at the table with me, watching over me anxiously.
�Now, will you two be all right?’ I say. �I promise I won’t be long.’
�We’ll be fine, Mum,’ says Blanche.
�No, we won’t. I won’t let you go,’ says Millie.
She comes to stand by my chair, wraps herself around me. I have to peel her fingers like bandages from my arms.
Reluctantly, full of dread, I walk up the lane to Les Ruettes. My feet are heavy, as though I am wading through deep water. I knock at Angie’s door, and my dread is a bitter taste in my mouth. I would rather be anywhere else but here.
She opens the door.
�Angie.’ My throat is thick. �Something’s happened …’
She stares at my face. She knows at once.
�He’s dead, isn’t he?’
�Yes. I’m so sorry.’
She sinks down. She’s trying to hold to the door post, but her hands slide down, her body collapses in on itself, as though she has no bones. I can’t hold her. I bring a chair and pull her up onto it. I kneel beside her.
�I was in town today. Frank was there with his lorry. They bombed the pier and I found him. Angie—I was with him, I was holding him when he died.’
She wraps her hands around one another, wrings them. Her mouth is working, but she can’t speak. There are no tears in her eyes, but her face looks all wrong—damaged.
At last she tries to clear her throat.
�Did he—say anything?’ Her voice is hoarse, and muffled as though there’s a blanket over her mouth. �Did he have a message for me, Vivienne?’
I don’t know what to tell her. I think of his last words. Fucking bastards.
�He couldn’t speak,’ I say.
I take her hand in mine. Her skin is icy cold; the cold in her goes through me.
�He died very quickly, he wouldn’t have suffered,’ I say.
She moves her head very slightly. I can tell she doesn’t believe me.
�Come back with me, I’ll give you a meal,’ I tell her.
�No, Vivienne,’ she says. �It’s so kind of you, but I won’t …’
�I think you should,’ I tell her. �You can’t stay here all alone.’
�I’ll be all right,’ she says. �I just need some time on my own, to take it in.’
�I don’t like to leave you,’ I say.
�Really, Vivienne. Don’t you worry. In a bit I’ll take myself over to Mabel and Jack’s.’
Mabel and Jack Bisson have four children; their house will be busy and boisterous. But Angie is insistent.
I leave her sitting alone by her hearth, wringing her hands as though she is wringing out cloth.
I cook tea for Evelyn and the girls, though I can’t eat anything. Then Blanche helps me bring the girls’ mattresses down from their rooms, and I make up beds for both of them in the narrow space under the stairs. This is the strongest part of the house, its spine.
�Look,’ I tell Millie, trying to keep my voice casual. �Tonight you and Blanche will be camping under the stairs. I’ve made you a den to sleep in.’
She frowns.
�Is it so we won’t get killed? When the Germans come and bomb us?’
I don’t know what to tell her.
�It’s just to be on the safe side,’ I say vaguely.
I decide to leave Evelyn in her room—I know I couldn’t persuade her to sleep in a different place. And I think I too will stay upstairs: I can’t believe I’ll sleep at all, and even if I do doze off, if anything happens I’ll wake.
I sit at the kitchen table, light a cigarette. I remember that there’s some cooking brandy in the kitchen cupboard; it’s left over from Christmas, when I put some in my mince pies. I don’t drink alcohol often, but I pour myself a glass. The brandy has a festive smell, which feels troublingly wrong for the day, but I feel a little calmer as the drink slides into my veins, all my sadness blurring over.
I sit there for a long time, smoking, drinking, my body loosening, trying not to think. At last I get up to go to bed. As I take the glass to the sink to wash, it simply slips from my hand, falls to the floor, shatters. The dangerous sound of breaking glass triggers something in me: I suddenly find I am weeping. I sob and sob, as I kneel on the floor and sweep up the glittery shards. I feel as though I will never stop weeping.
I check on the girls before I go up to my room. Blanche is asleep but Millie’s eyes are wide open; the light is still on in the kitchen, and slivers of gold from the half-open door reflect in the dark of her eyes.
�Mummy, they’re going to kill us, aren’t they?’ she says, in a hissing, melodramatic whisper, so as not to wake Blanche. �They’re going to come in the night and bomb us to bits.’
�No, sweetheart. I don’t think they will.’
�Why are we sleeping here, then?’ she says.
�We’re just being sensible,’ I tell her.
She gives me a doubtful look.
I lie awake for a long time. Nothing happens. There are no planes: all I hear is the creaking of my house as it settles and turns in its sleep, and outside the deepening quiet of the Guernsey summer night, depth on depth of quiet. But my anger keeps me awake. I feel a blind, furious rage—rage against this violence, when there weren’t any soldiers here, when we couldn’t fight back. I think how they slaughtered Frank like an animal—Frank who I didn’t much like, who maybe wasn’t such a good man, but who shouldn’t have died, who was too young to die, and who died such a terrible death. How they could come in the night and kill my children. How they will walk in, enslave us, take our island for their own.
I sleep for a while, and wake again, with a start, as though something disturbed me. I get up and go to the window. The moon hangs down like a fruit, and moonlight whitens everything. It’s so bright there are exact leaf-shadows on my gravel, and the hollyhocks in the flowerbeds of Les Vinaires next door are pale, almost luminous—ghost flowers.
I press my face to the pane. All the anger has left me. There’s a cold sweat of fear on my skin. I think—What have I done? We could be in London, in Iris’s house. Have I made the worst mistake of my life? Oh, my God—what have I done?
CHAPTER 10 (#ulink_68f97546-12a9-535b-922b-f21480f0ef8c)
Sunday evening. I weed my garden while Millie plays on the lawn. She tries to make a daisy chain, but her fingers aren’t yet clever enough and the stalks keep splitting right through. She leaves the daisies lying there, and plays for a while with her ball, practising throwing and catching. The ball is striped with colours and makes a vivid blur as it falls.
The day cools as the sun sinks down. I pull my cardigan close around me. Evenings can be cold on Guernsey, even in high summer—there’s often a freshness in the air, a chill that blows off the sea. A little movement of air shivers the leaves of the mulberry tree, and shadow clots and thickens beneath the elms in the hedge that shield the top part of our garden from the garden of Les Vinaires. The sky is purple as amethyst and streaked with rose-coloured cloud, and I can hear a nightingale in my orchard over the lane, its song spilling out like bright water-drops.
A distant growl of aircraft noise disturbs me. I look up. Six planes are circling in the sky above us. I can see the markings on them. I know they are German aircraft.
The pier is in my mind—the bombing, the shooting, the blood. My heart lurches.
�Millie. Come indoors at once.’
She doesn’t move.
�Millie!’
�But my ball just went over the hedge. It was my best ball, Mummy …’
�Do as I say,’ I tell her. �Go to the den we made under the stairs. Go this minute.’
�Is it the Germans? Will they kill us?’
�Just do as you’re told, Millie.’
I call to Blanche from the passageway but she doesn’t seem to hear. I rush upstairs. Music spools down from her bedroom: she’s playing Irving Berlin on her gramophone. Cheek to cheek. I rush straight in, without knocking. She’s standing in the middle of her bedroom floor, startled, slightly shame-faced. I briefly wonder if she’s been dancing in front of her mirror, practising moves, as I would do at her age: conjuring up a shiny, scented future, and a louchely handsome partner to hold you close in the dance.
�There are German planes coming over,’ I say. �Go to the den with Millie. Now.’
�But my record …’
�Blanche, just go,’ I tell her.
She hears the edge in my voice. She leaves the gramophone, races downstairs. As I follow, I hear the disconsolate sound as the music slows and runs down.
Evelyn is in her armchair in the living room, knitting.
�You should go and shelter with the girls. You’d be safer there,’ I tell her.
She doesn’t get up. Her sherry-brown gaze flicks briefly over my face.
�There’s no need to worry, Vivienne. You always were a worrier …’ She speaks so slowly, each word precisely enunciated. I’m frantic with impatience. �You always did get yourself in a state over every little thing.’
�This isn’t a little thing, Evelyn …’
She ignores this, goes on knitting. Her face is still, unmoved, as though nothing I’ve said has touched her. There’s a sound like screaming in my head.
She clears her throat.
�Eugene always says as much. Worry, worry, worry.’
I tell myself that she doesn’t mean to criticise. That she doesn’t really mean some of the things she says any more.
�Just come and shelter,’ I say.
�I’m not going to hide away, Vivienne. I’m hurt that you thought that I would. Somebody’s got to make a stand.’
�Please, Evelyn. Just in case something happens …’
�I’m not going to let the Hun move me about,’ she tells me. �Where would we be if everyone did that?’
There’s nothing more I can say to persuade her. I leave her in her chair.
I watch the planes from the window. They fly low, towards the airfield, and vanish beyond the wooded brow of the hill. They must have landed. I watch the sky for a long time, as the west flares red with sunset, then deepens to a lingering indigo dark; but they don’t take off again.
In the end I tell the girls to come out from under the stairs. I wonder if it has happened: the world cracked open.
Monday afternoon. There’s a commotion from outside the door—Blanche jumping off her bicycle, flinging it down. She’s been to town to see Celeste. She bursts through the door, her blonde hair shimmering, flying out like a flag.
�Mum, Mum. We saw them. They’re here.’ She’s breathless, the words tumbling out of her; she’s flushed and thrilled with the drama of this. �We saw the German soldiers, me and Celeste.’
�I hate the Germans,’ says Millie, staunchly.
�Yes, sweetheart. We all hate them,’ I say.
�They’re ever so tall, Mum,’ says Blanche. �Much taller than island men. One of them bought an ice cream and tried to give it to me. I didn’t take it, of course. It was a strawberry cornet.’
Millie stares at Blanche, a little frown deepening in her forehead. I can tell her opinion of the Germans is being slightly modified.
�I like strawberry cornets,’ she says.
�They were very polite,’ says Blanche. �There was one who had his picture taken with a policeman. He said he wanted to send it back home to his wife …’
She pulls The Guernsey Press from her bag. We open the newspaper out on the table and read. There are a lot of new rules. There will be a curfew: no islander should be out of doors after nine o’clock at night. All weapons must be handed in … Reading this, I think with a prickling of fear of Johnnie, of his brother’s shotgun that he kept in a box beneath his bed: I wonder what he has done with it. The use of boats and motorcars is banned, and all our clocks must be put forward one hour.
As I read, I’m seized by a feeling I didn’t expect. It’s shame—a dirty, contaminated feeling. That this is happening to us. That we have allowed it to happen. I try to reason with myself, to tell myself that we can live with these regulations, and now at least the girls can sleep in their rooms, because with the Germans here, there won’t be any more bombing. But still the shame seeps through me.
I go to talk to Evelyn. I put my hand on her arm.
�Evelyn, I need to tell you something important. I’m afraid that the Germans have landed on Guernsey,’ I say gently.
She looks up at me, her mouth pursed and tight. She puts her knitting down in her lap.
�I don’t like cowardly talk,’ she says. �We mustn’t give in. We mustn’t ever give in.’
�I’m so sorry,’ I tell her. As though it’s my fault. �But it’s happened. The Germans are here. That’s what we have to live with now.’
She stares at me. Suddenly, there’s a flicker of understanding in her face. She starts to cry soundlessly, slow tears trickling down from her eyes, that she doesn’t try to wipe away. The sight tugs at my heart.
�Evelyn, I’m so sorry,’ I say again.
I find her handkerchief for her, and she rubs at her face.
�Does that mean we’ve lost the war, Vivienne?’
�No. No, it doesn’t mean that,’ I say, with all the conviction I can manage.
Then suddenly her tears stop. She folds her handkerchief precisely and puts it away in her pocket. There’s a sudden purposefulness to her.
�We ought to tell Eugene at once,’ she says. �Eugene will know what to do.’
I put my hand around her; her body feels at once stiff and brittle.
�Evelyn—Eugene isn’t here, remember? Eugene’s away with the army.’
�Well, find him, Vivienne,’ she says. �We can’t manage without Eugene.’
She picks up her knitting again; like dandelion seeds on the air, the memory of her sorrow has drifted away.
I change the time on our clocks. Then Blanche and I drag the mattresses back up the stairs.
Once Millie is tucked up in bed, Blanche comes to find me, in her dressing gown and pyjamas. She says she wants me to plait her hair, so it will curl in the morning.
She sits on the sofa beside me, with her back towards me. I start to plait her hair, which is silky and cool in my hands. The lamplight shines on its different colours—caramel-blonde, with pale buttery streaks where the summer sun has bleached it. I love doing this: it’s a way of touching that still feels comfortable for her. We don’t touch very often now—she’s withdrawn from me a little, being fourteen. I breathe in the scent of her—soap, and rose-geranium talc, and the sweet, particular, musky smell of her hair.
�D’you know what it’ll be like, Mum?’ Her voice rather small and uncertain. �It’ll all be different, won’t it?’
I should be able to tell her: it’s what a mother should do—prepare her children, warn them. But I don’t know, can’t imagine. There is nothing I have ever been through that could prepare me for this.
�Yes, it’ll be different. Well, a lot of things will be different.’
�Will it be like that for ever?’
She has her back towards me and I can’t see her expression.
I don’t say anything.
�Mum. I want to know. Will the Germans be here for ever? Is that what it’ll be like now?’
�I don’t know, Blanche. Nobody knows what will happen.’
�I’ve been praying about it,’ she says.
�Oh. Have you, sweetheart?’
There’s a streak of religious devotion in Blanche, that I always find a surprise. We go to church every Sunday; for me, it’s mostly out of habit. But Blanche is devout, like Evelyn: she reads the Bible and prays. There’s a part of her that’s frivolous, loving dancing and stylish clothes, and a part that I only see sometimes, that’s reflective, rather serious.
�It’s hard, though, isn’t it, Mum?’ she says now. �To know what to pray for—with everything that’s happening.’
�Yes. It’s hard.’
�I prayed that we’d go on the boat, and then we didn’t,’ she says.
There’s an edge of accusation in her voice. I know she’s still angry with me.
�Sweetheart—that was a hard thing too. When I had to decide.’
She ignores this.
�And sometimes I pray that we’ll win. But I expect the Germans do that too …’
�Yes, I suppose so …’
�Celeste reckons we’re going to win the war,’ she tells me. �She told me that. She said we mustn’t give up hope. But how can we, Mum? How can we possibly win?’
There are pictures in my mind: Hitler’s Victory March up the Champs Elysées in Paris, which we saw on a newsreel at the Gaumont in town. The massed ranks of Nazi soldiers surging onwards, like a force of nature, like a storm or flood—utterly invincible.
I fix a rubber band around the end of her plait.
�You ought to go to bed,’ I say.
She stands and turns to face me. With her hair in a plait she looks younger, her cheeks full and flushed, like a child’s—like when she was only seven, and still played in the Blancs Bois with Johnnie. Her face is troubled. She turns and goes up the stairs.
The next morning I clean my bedroom. It isn’t long since I last cleaned it—I just need something to occupy me. The work isn’t very vigorous, but my heart is beating too fast.
My bedroom is a pleasant room. The wallpaper has a pattern of cabbage roses, and there’s a taffeta eiderdown on the big double bed, and on my dressing table, all the special things I’ve collected: a perfume bottle that has a dragonfly glass stopper; my silver hairbrush and comb; a music box that I’ve had since I was a child. The music box was my mother’s. It has an Impressionist painting on it, two girls at a piano in a hazy, pretty room, all the colours running together as though they are melting and wet. It plays Für Elise, the sound at once ethereal and clunky, because you can hear the abrasion of all the tiny parts inside. The music always calls up a feeling of sweetness and yearning in me—a window open, a muslin curtain billowing, brown hair blown over a mouth—conjuring up the lavender scent of the past. Just a trace of memory, and a longing I can’t satisfy. Playing this music is the nearest I can come to the mother I lost.
This bedroom is at the front of the house; from the window, you can see out over my yard, and the roof and front garden of Les Vinaires next door. I dust the sill, looking out. Connie loved plants, and her garden is full of the loveliest things—honeysuckle, and fuchsias, and Oriental poppies, their colours singing together, scarlet and amber and pink, so vivid, and fading so quickly, just one day in flower and then a bright blown litter of petals over the lawn. But the garden is looking neglected already, grass straggling into the borders, the roses gangly and reaching out over the path, all the neat boundaries blurring and lost—everything grows so fast in high summer. I remember Connie saying, �Keep an eye on things for me, won’t you, Viv?’ I feel guilty that I’d forgotten. I ought to try and do something—weed the borders, cut the grass. I tie a knot in my handkerchief to remind me.
A sound comes through my open window—the chunter of an engine drawing nearer down the lane. My pulse quickens. Someone must be disobeying the rules and using a car; whoever it is may be endangering us. I wait to see who will drive past.
But as I watch, a German vehicle draws up at Les Vinaires. Two men in uniform get out. They stand talking for a moment in the profound wet shade of the lane. A little wind ruffles the leaves and the shadows of leaves dance over them. I feel a sense of shock, my heart drumming, to see these invaders standing there, surrounded by the secret gardens and orchards of these deep valleys. Just as Blanche said, these men are tall, much taller than island men. The sunlight glints on their buckles and jackboots and the guns at their belts. They look entirely out-of-place in the leaf-dappled light, amid the cowpats and the potholes, between the hedgebanks with their jumble of leaves and entangled flowers and briars.
They open the gate of Les Vinaires, walk up the path to the door. They seem too big for the garden. I notice that one of them has a clipboard in his hand. There’s a bang and a crack as the other man breaks the lock of the door.
Rage surges through me, and a hot flaring shame: that I can’t stop them, can’t protect Connie’s house from them. That I’m so utterly helpless.
In a little while they come out again, and go back down the path. My rage is blotted out by fear: it’s as though a small cold hand is fingering the back of my neck. Angie’s words are there in my mind. They crucify girls. They rape them and crucify them … What if these soldiers come in here and take our house, as well? They own us, they can do as they wish, they could walk in anywhere—there’s nothing to stop them, nothing.
But for now, they drive off.
Later I hear another engine. I rush upstairs to my bedroom, look out over the lane.
It’s a different vehicle this time, with four men in it—two in the cab, and two in the back. I watch as the men in the cab get out. One is spare and dark, with a hollow, cynical face, the other is rather broad-shouldered, with greying hair. The second man takes out a pack of cigarettes, taps it to release one, holds it between his lips as he fumbles for his lighter. I notice that he has a ragged pink scar on his cheek. I’m immediately curious. I wonder how he acquired the scar, what happened to him. Perhaps he fought in the Great War: his face has a lived-in look, and there’s a web of lines round his eyes—he seems old enough. I wonder what he has been through, what he has seen. How much this injury hurt him.
Then I push the thought away. These men are the enemy: I shouldn’t really be thinking about them at all.
The other two men are younger and both have fair hair. I guess they are lower in rank than the men who sat in the cab. They jump down, pull out kitbags. The man with the scar goes round to the back of the vehicle, and holds the cigarette in his mouth as he reaches in for his bag. The man with the hollow face pushes open the gate. All four of them seem more leisurely than the men who came with the clipboard. They look around with an appraising air—almost an air of ownership: and, seeing this, I feel a flare of impotent rage. They’re joking, laughing, their gestures expansive, easy. They have the look of men who have come to the end of a journey.
They walk down the petal-littered path between the overgrown borders. The roses snag on their uniforms as they push their way through the flowers; the hollyhocks, pale as skimmed milk, brush against their legs as they pass. I see that Alphonse is sleeping in a pool of sun on the path; it’s a favourite sleeping spot of his, because the stone gets warmed there. He’s curled in a perfect circle, as though he feels quite safe. As the men approach he wakes, and languidly stretches. One of the younger men crouches to stroke him, makes a fuss of him; the man has the kind of pink, freckled skin that peels in the sun. Alphonse rubs against the man and arches his back ecstatically, so I can see the supple bones rippling under his fur. I feel an irrational surge of fury with the animal—that he’s so easily won over, that he isn’t resisting at all.
The men go in and don’t come out again.
An hour or two later, I’m in my yard in front of my house, picking some herbs for a stew, when I see that the window of Les Vinaires that overlooks us is flung open. I can hear German voices through the window. I can’t tell what they’re saying—I know only a little German, just the words of some Bach cantatas, from when I was in London and used to sing in a choir. I can’t even judge the emotion from the sound of the words.
The thought slams into me—that we will be so exposed. When we are out in our yard, or if our front door is open, the Germans will hear our conversations. I wonder if they will understand us, if they speak English at all. But even if they can’t understand us, they will see what we do: whenever I come here to pick some herbs they will see. We won’t be able to hide from them.
The day feels unstable, feverish. The outward things—the sigh of the wind in my pear tree, the long light of afternoon slanting into my yard—all these things are just so, just as they should be: yet it feels as though there’s something strange on the air, subtle but troubling as a faint smell of scorching, or an insect whine that’s almost too high to be heard.
I will have to move these pots that stand beside my door. I will carry them through to the back of the house and put them out on the terrace. There I’ll be able to tend them without being seen.
But I stand for a moment, irresolute. Something in me is reluctant. I hear Evelyn’s assertion in my mind: I’m not going to hide away, Vivienne. I’m hurt that you thought that I would. I’m not going to let the Hun move me about. And in that moment I make my decision. I will leave my herbs and geraniums here—leave everything just as it was. This is the only protest I can make, the only way I can fight this: to live as I have always lived, not let them change me at all.
Millie stares at the cat’s bowl of food, which hasn’t been touched.
�Where’s Alphonse?’
�I don’t know, sweetheart.’
�But it’s nearly night-time.’
�Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’m sure he’ll turn up. Cats always find their way home.’
But Millie is unhappy, a frown pencilled in on her forehead. I think, guiltily, that she’s worried because the cat was so nearly put down: she has a new sense of Alphonse’s vulnerability.
I read her a story, but she can’t sit still. She keeps jumping up and going to the kitchen, looking for him.
�It’s the Germans, isn’t it?’ she says. �The Germans have taken Alphonse.’
�I don’t expect so,’ I say.
�I want him back, Mummy,’ she says. �And I want my ball back. Everything’s horrible.’ Her face crumples up like paper, and tears spill from her eyes.
I’d forgotten about the ball that she lost in the garden of Les Vinaires.
�Millie, the ball’s not a problem. I can easily buy you another one …’
She ignores this. She rubs her tears away angrily.
�Blanche says it’s the Germans. Blanche says the Germans eat people’s cats,’ she tells me. Her voice is shrill with outrage.
�She was teasing you, Millie,’ I tell her. �I really don’t think they do.’
But I wonder if Alphonse’s absence is in fact the Germans’ fault—remembering the young blond man and how he petted the cat. Perhaps he has put out food for him. Cats have no loyalty.
I listen to Millie’s prayers, and tuck her up in bed.
�You’ve got to find him,’ she tells me, sternly.
The sky through the living-room window darkens, to a rich cobalt blue, then to night. There’s a silver scatter of stars, a slice-of-melon moon. Still the cat doesn’t come home. It’s well after nine o’clock now. I think about the curfew, but the blackout curtains are already drawn at Les Vinaires, and everywhere is quiet.
I decide I will go out and look for the cat. I know I can be silent, and I’m sure I won’t be seen.
My back door isn’t overlooked from the windows of Les Vinaires. I go out that way, into the yawn of a black night. I cling to the hedgebank, creep along in the shadows, edge up the lane as far as the track that leads to Les Ruettes. I don’t dare call, but I’m hoping Alphonse will hear me—or maybe sense my presence, with that strange sixth sense that cats have.
There’s a sudden engine noise behind me. It must be German soldiers, now that islanders can’t use cars. I’m suddenly very afraid, my pulse racing, a cold sweat of fear on my skin. I slip through a gap in the hedge, crouch down in the field. The headlights sweep over the hedgebank and pass. I pray they didn’t see me. Then I hear the car slow and come to a stop. It must belong to the Germans who have moved into Les Vinaires.
I creep back to my house, and close the door on the night. Relief surges through me that at least I got home safely. Alphonse is on a chair in the kitchen, licking himself assiduously. I curse him under my breath.
I take him up to Millie. Her face shines.
But I can’t believe I did this. I think of something that the aunts who raised me were always saying to me, �Vivienne, you’re too trusting. You shouldn’t let people walk all over you. You shouldn’t be such a doormat … Your soft-heartedness will get you into trouble, one of these days …’ I think that perhaps they were right. I’ve been so stupid, so irresponsible, taking this risk for a cat, just because Millie was a bit unhappy.
* * *
I’m making my coffee at breakfast-time when I spill a jug of milk. Anxiety must be making me clumsy. I’m on my knees on the kitchen floor, wiping up the spillage, when there’s a crunch of boots on our gravel and a rapid knock at our door.
It’s one of the men from Les Vinaires, the spare dark man with the hollow face. His uniform, his nearness, make me immediately afraid. And mixed in with the fear, I have a sense of embarrassment, that I’m in my apron, a dishcloth in my hand, that he can see into my kitchen, which is messy with wet washing hung on the rail in front of the stove. I have some inchoate sense that I am letting the side down.
�Good morning,’ he says. His English is very precise and measured. I can see him noticing my apron, and the pool of milk on the floor. �I’m afraid I may have come at an inconvenient time.’
I’m about to say, �That’s all right’, the automatic response to his concession. But it isn’t all right—nothing is all right. I bite my tongue to stop myself from speaking.
He puts out his hand. This shocks me. I think how they bombed the harbour when all our soldiers had gone; how they shot at the lorries so the petrol tanks would explode, when the men were sheltering under them; of Frank’s burnt and bleeding body. I shake my head; I push my hands in my pockets. I can’t believe he thought I’d be willing to shake his hand.
He lowers his hand, shrugs slightly.
�I am Captain Max Richter,’ he says.
A sudden fear grabs at me. He has come here because I went out after the curfew. He saw me. My mouth is dry: my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
He makes a small imperative gesture, wanting to know my name.
�I’m Mrs de la Mare,’ I tell him.
He waits, expecting more, looking enquiringly over my shoulder into the house.
�Four of us live here—me, and my daughters, and my mother-in-law,’ I tell him, in answer to his unspoken question.
From my front door you can see into the living room. I notice him looking in that direction; I turn. Evelyn is in her chair, watching everything. He inclines his head, acknowledging her. She gives him a look as barbed as a fish-hook, then lowers her eyes.
�And your husband?’ he asks me.
�My husband is away with the army,’ I say.
He nods.
�We will be your neighbours now, Mrs de la Mare,’ he says.
�Yes.’
�Now—you know the rules, I think.’
There’s a hard set to his face when he says this, his mouth thin as the slash of a razor. I find myself wishing that it had been the other officer who came—the scarred one. Thinking that perhaps he’d be less harsh than this man, and less correct and remote.
�Yes,’ I say.
�You know about the curfew.’
�Yes.’
My heart races off. I see myself being taken away, imprisoned. And my children—what will happen to my children? I still have my hands in my pockets. I dig my nails into my palms, to try and stop myself from trembling.
�We hope for a quiet life here—all of us,’ he says.
�We do too. Of course.’ My voice is too high, too eager. I sound naive, like a girl.
�Don’t put us in a difficult position,’ he says.
�No, we won’t,’ I say.
His cool, rather cynical gaze is on me. There’s something about his look that tells me he saw me in the lane.
�I’m glad we understand one another,’ he says.
He lowers his hand towards his belt. Fear has me by the throat: I think he is going to take out his gun. But he pulls something out of his pocket.
�This must be yours, I think,’ he says. �Perhaps it belongs to one of your girls.’
I see what he has in his hand. Relief undoes me, making me shaky and weak. It’s the ball with coloured stripes on, which Millie lost over the hedge. A little mirthless, hysterical laughter bubbles up in my throat: I swallow hard.
�Oh. Well. Thank you …’
I stare at the ball. I take it. I don’t know what else to say.
�I also have daughters, Mrs de la Mare,’ he says.
There’s a brief note of yearning in his voice. This startles me.
�You must miss them,’ I say, immediately. Because he does—I can tell. Then I wonder why I said that, why I was sympathetic like that. I’m cross with myself—I don’t have to make any concessions, don’t have to give him anything. I feel entirely lost: I don’t know the right way to behave.
His gaze flicks back to my face. I know he can read my confusion. Everything’s messy, all mixed up in my head—the fear I feel, the stern set of his face when he talked about the curfew; and now his kindness in bringing back the ball.
�Well, then. Good morning, Mrs de la Mare. Remember the curfew,’ he says, and turns.
I close the door rapidly. I feel exposed, in some way I couldn’t articulate or define. There are little red crescents in my palms, where I pushed my nails into my skin.
�Vivienne.’ Evelyn is calling for me.
I go to her.
�The Hun came in the house,’ she says. �You opened the door to the Hun.’
She’s agitated. She puts down her knitting; her crêpey hands flutter like little pale birds.
�Evelyn—I couldn’t not open the door. The man’s living at Les Vinaires now.’
�Fraternising is an ugly word. An ugly word for an ugly deed,’ she tells me severely.
�Evelyn, I wasn’t fraternising. But we have to be civil. Stay on the right side of them. They could do anything to us …’
She’s implacable.
�You’re a soldier’s wife, Vivienne. You need to show some backbone. If he comes to the door again, don’t you go letting him in.’
�No. I won’t, I promise.’
�Never let them in,’ she says. Ardent. �Never let them in.’ As though the maxim is something to cling to amid all the chaos of life.
She picks up her knitting. But then she puts it down again, looks vaguely in my direction. There’s a sudden confusion in her face, a blurring like smoke in her eyes.
�Tell me who that was again—the man who came to the door? Who did you say he was, Vivienne?’
I can’t face repeating everything.
�It was one of our neighbours,’ I tell her.
�Oh. You and your neighbours.’
She takes up her knitting again.
CHAPTER 11 (#ulink_e86c66b5-0b7a-53a0-bcf6-62b3c102ef2f)
As darkness falls, I go out into the yard to take some vegetable peelings to the compost heap. Out there, I pause for a moment, breathing in the night air, all the sweet mingled scents that bleed from the throats of the flowers. I can smell the flowering stocks in the borders in my back garden, and the perfume of my tobacco plants, which always seems richer at night. The sky is profound, the shadows are long, everything turning to blue. From the Blancs Bois, where the entangled trees are drawing darkness to them, I hear the call of an owl-shivery, like a lost soul haunting the wood: unworldly.
There’s a table-lamp lit in the kitchen of Les Vinaires, and the blackout curtains aren’t drawn yet. Lamplight spills across the gravel of my yard, leaching the colours from everything it falls on, so the petals of the geraniums in the pots beside my door are a sickly amber, without brightness. I look in at the window, see the man who is sitting there, at Connie’s kitchen table. He’s in his shirtsleeves, he has his top shirt button undone. At first glance I think it’s Captain Richter, who came to our kitchen door: but then I see it’s the other man, the scarred one. The lamplight falls on him, illumines one side of his face. I can see his scar quite clearly, the jagged line of it, the pink, frail tissue that doesn’t match the rest of his skin. He seems different from when he came in the vehicle, sitting there alone in the light of the lamp—pensive, less authoritative.
As I watch, he pushes up his cuffs—mechanically, not thinking about what he’s doing. His mind is somewhere else entirely. He’s reading something—a book, a letter; I can’t see what it is, the table is just below the level of the windowsill. I think it must be a letter: only a letter could hold him as this does—for whatever it is, it takes all of his attention. Some new expression flickers over his face: there’s something there that displeases him. He frowns; he runs his finger abstractedly over his brow. I think, This is how he looks when he’s concentrating. Blue smoke from a cigarette resting in an ashtray wraps around him and softly curls and spirals in front of his face. He’s alone; and I know he feels alone: he is utterly unaware of me watching him. He has the look of a man who doesn’t know he is looked at.
I feel a sudden curiosity about his other life—the life he has when he isn’t being a soldier: his home, the people who matter to him. I wonder what it is like for him to be here—with all around him the unfamiliar island night. Landscapes are most themselves, most separate from us, at night: and even to me, who has lived so long in this secluded valley, the Guernsey night can feel a little alien—the cry of the owl so lonely, the dark so dense and deep. I wonder about him—where he comes from, what he longs for. Is he a little homesick, as I was when I first came here? It’s a word we use so lightly, but I think of what I learned then—that homesickness is a true sickness, a longing like grief, for what has been lost or taken away. I can still feel it from time to time, just a trace of that yearning: it comes with a memory of lamplight, of pavements under rain, of the scorched smell of the Underground—all the scents and sounds of London, its humming, sultry energy. I wonder what he longs for.
I stand there watching him. I will him to look up, to look out of the window at me. It’s like a child’s game—as though I could make him see me, as though he is my puppet. I have the power now, in this moment—just the tiniest sliver of power. Because I am looking in on him, and he doesn’t know, doesn’t see me.
But he doesn’t move, doesn’t stir, his eyes are on what he is reading. I slip back into the house. I feel troubled, but in a way I couldn’t put into words. As though things are not quite as I thought they were.
I go to bed, but for a long time I can’t sleep.
PART II: (#ulink_7f0790b7-da07-500e-922c-5f1b2ca81bc3)
JULY – OCTOBER 1940 (#ulink_7f0790b7-da07-500e-922c-5f1b2ca81bc3)
CHAPTER 12 (#ulink_79f04d05-f033-5081-8e11-aa4b34f4707a)
My mother died when I was three. I remember how we were taken into her bedroom to say goodbye—me and Iris, my big sister. The room smelt wrong. Her bedroom had always had a scent of the rosewater she wore: but now it held a harsh, sore-throat smell of disinfectant. And my mother looked strange, somehow blurred, as though her face were made of wax and had started to melt. I was a little frightened of her. I wanted to leave the room, to be anywhere else but there. And she gripped my hand too tightly, and she was crying, and I didn’t like that.
I don’t remember much from the weeks and months that followed—except that for the funeral I had to wear a stiff black dress that was made of some itchy fabric, and people told me off for scratching. After my mother’s death I was mute for a while, simply refusing to speak at all: or so I’ve been told, though I don’t recall that part of it. There’s a fog in my head when I think of those months—I don’t remember much at all from those times. Except for the music box that was mine to keep, that I would play for hours, the music perfumed with memories of her. And there are little images in my head of the house where we lived, off Clapham Common, at 11 Evington Road—a tall, thin, rambling house that was never quite asleep, that would go on settling and creaking all through the night; and the hidden, enclosed garden with whispery, overhanging trees and the leaves of years piled up under them; and the aunts who looked after us, Auntie Maud and Auntie Aggie, who were kind but weren’t my mother, so when they combed my hair it hurt. I always remember that—how they pulled too hard at the tangles, not gently easing out the knots as my mother had done.
I was a nervous, frightened child, frightened of so many things—thunderstorms, and the edges of railway platforms; spiders, even the tiny ones that ran all over the terrace at the back of the house, and, crushed, left a smear like a blood stain; afraid above all of the dark. I was always afraid of the dark. Once Iris and I were playing teacher and pupil. I was five, just a little older than Millie is now—and Iris was the teacher, and was very strict and stern, and she decided I’d been bad, and locked me in the coalshed. It was a concrete shed, no windows, the door close-fitting to keep the coal dry—not even a thread of light from under the door. I remember the darkness, sudden and absolute, the fear that broke over me like nausea, the rapid panicky skittering of my heart. It was so dark I thought at first I had my eyes shut—that they’d been stuck shut somehow—and I put up my hand and found my eyes were open, I could feel the bristly fluttering of my eyelashes. I learned in that moment that there are different darknesses. That there is ordinary darkness—like the night in the countryside, where even on a night with no moon, as you stare things loom, take form; or the darkness of your bedroom—like the flimsy dark of the room I shared with Iris, with the murky amber lamplight seeping in under the curtains. And there is another darkness—a dark so profound you cannot begin to imagine it, cannot conjure it up in your mind. A darkness that blots out all you remember or hope for. A darkness that teaches that all that consoles you is false.
I don’t think I was in there for long. Auntie Aggie realised what had happened; scolded Iris, came and unlocked the door. But I don’t remember that clearly at all—the moment when she let me out into the cheerful day again. It’s the darkness I remember.
How much did that loss of my mother shape the course of my life? Hugely, I can see that now—though it’s taken me years to learn this. Now I even wonder if that was why I married the very first man I went out with—whether my decision had something to do with that loss. Wanting to have something settled; longing for safety, wanting to keep things the same—so frightened of change and uncertainty.
I was nineteen when I met Eugene, and still living in the house in Evington Road. I was working as a secretary, in an insurance firm in Clapham. I met Eugene at a church social; he was a bank clerk with the National Provincial bank, living in digs in Streatham that always smelt of broccoli. He’d been excited to move to London, but had hoped for something from it that it had somehow failed to give. He was already longing to go back to Guernsey when I met him. There was a faint mothball scent of disappointment that hung about him, though at first I wasn’t aware of it. He was a good-looking man—clear eyes, symmetrical features, sleeked-down hair—a clean-cut face that made him seem much younger than his years. Our daughters have that face as well, that open, candid look. And he was always very well turned-out—his business suits pressed with a razor-sharp edge, his shoes as shiny as mirror-glass. �He’s so handsome,’ everyone said. �He looks just like Jack Pickford. Well, haven’t you done well for yourself?’ There was something reassuring about his effortless, practised courtship of me—the yellow roses, the boxes of New Berry Fruits—a feeling that I could leave it to him, that he would take control, make the decisions. What did he see in me, I wonder? I don’t know, can’t imagine now—though he would always be very flattering about my looks, my clothes. He knows how to flatter a woman. Maybe my rather French-sounding name reassured him in some way, suggested I would fit in on his island. That may sound rather fanciful, yet people will often let themselves be guided by such things, making a weighty decision because some small hand beckons: I’ve seen this. Whatever the reason—he couldn’t wait to gather me up and bring me back to Guernsey.
But from our very first night together, it wasn’t as I’d imagined. I didn’t feel the way I knew I was meant to feel. I thought it must be my fault—that there was something wrong with me, something missing. Or, to put it more precisely, something misplaced. Because I knew I could feel these things—just not in bed with Eugene. I’d see a man—a stranger—loosen his tie, unbutton his cuffs, push up the sleeves of his shirt, and my stomach would tighten, I’d feel the thrill go through me. Or I’d dream a dream in which a man who stood behind me was brushing my hair, and I’d lean against him and feel the warmth of him pressing into my back, and I’d wake in a haze of longing.
Maybe he felt something similar—that sense of something missing. Because we made love only rarely, and, once I was pregnant with Millie, never again. We never talked about it—well, how could you possibly talk about such a thing? Slowly, insidiously, with a little shake of the heart, I became aware that there were rumours. Eugene loved amateur dramatics, and he joined a society that rehearsed in St Peter Port: he had a pleasant, eloquent voice, he loved to play a role. There was a woman there—Monica Charles—who sometimes played opposite him. Red hair, an abundant cleavage, pointy lacquered nails; and the plush velvet scent of Shalimar, which she always wore. She was rather outspoken—the sort of woman who seems to use up all the air in the room: she always made me feel somehow small and faded.
Gwen said once—carefully, with a slight anxious frown, not quite looking at me: �Does it worry you—Eugene being so friendly with Monica Charles?’
My heart lurched. �No. Why should it?’
�I just wondered,’ she said.
�He loves the theatre, he’s passionate about it,’ I said. Putting the words down with such care, like little stones, between us. �It’s good that he has something to do that he enjoys so much …’
�You’re very strong—I admire you,’ said Gwen, and moved the conversation on. I closed my mind to what she’d said, careful never to touch on that conversation again—as though her words were sharp things that could cut me.
There was an evening when I took the girls to see him backstage. He’d been starring in Private Lives opposite Monica Charles. Millie was two; she was tired out after the performance, and heavy and warm in my arms. I knocked, he didn’t answer, I pushed at the door. The scent of Shalimar brushed against me, darkly velvet, insidious. Eugene was there with Monica Charles. She was standing with one foot on a chair, her skirt bunched up round her thighs: he was easing down her stocking, very slowly. There was a sensuousness in the caressing movement of his hand that was entirely unfamiliar to me. They looked up, saw me, moved apart. I saw the shock—then all the excuses, forming, hardening, in his eyes. I didn’t stay to hear them. Blanche was behind me, Millie was dozing. �He isn’t here,’ I said. �We must have missed him.’ I bundled the girls away, I don’t think they saw anything.
We never talked about it, just carried on as we were. But something closed in me then, irrevocable as the sound of the dressing-room door that I’d slammed shut behind me. Something was over for me.
Sometimes I’ve wondered about it—this thing that was so lacking in my marriage—this part of me that it seemed could never be expressed, yet could be stirred up so suddenly, randomly almost, by a dream or a glance at a stranger, or a stranger glancing at me.
I remember a moment from long before, from when I first knew Eugene, when I was still in London. There was a man who looked at me as I walked along the Embankment by the Thames—who turned around to look at me. It wasn’t long before the wedding—I was on my way to meet Iris at the Lyons Corner House in Tottenham Court Road. She was going to be the maid of honour at my wedding, and I wanted to show her some fabric samples for her dress. I was wearing a neat navy suit, my high-heeled strappy suede shoes, my best silk stockings, the seams exact, a hat in dusty-pink felt with a petersham ribbon around it. I was a little late for our meeting—probably off in a dream as usual, perhaps with a line of poetry running through my mind—and I must have been flushed from walking in the chill autumn air. The man was older than me, and tall, with a rather worn, lived-in face. He had a serious look, no smile: a look that required something of me, a look beyond approbation or flattery. His glance felt as real to me as the touch of a hand. I felt the heat go through me, the bright thread of sensation passing down through my body, and all around the brown leaves fluttering, falling, the shining river surging: everything fluid, dancing.
I still sometimes think of that moment. If he had asked, I’d have gone with him.
CHAPTER 13 (#ulink_99713e16-e4d8-5555-8c89-a10b0f79a18d)
Thursday. I go up the hill to see Angie. I’m wearing one of my two best dresses—the everyday dress that I’d normally wear isn’t fit to be seen. It’s the one I wore on the day of the bombing, and I’ve soaked it again and again, but I still can’t get the bloodstains out.
This morning there’s no sign of the Germans at Les Vinaires: they must have gone to their work already. Though I can’t imagine what occupies them: it can’t be very strenuous, keeping our island under control. The weather lifts my spirits a little. It’s a bright, breezy day, the summer wind smelling of salt and earth and flowers. The hedgebanks are gorgeous with foxgloves and purple woundwort, and the stream that runs beside the lane is overgrown with green harts’ tongue fern, little cresses, mother-of-thousands. The thread of water that runs through the ferns squirms in the light like a live thing. Just for a moment I can dream that all is as it always was, that the Occupation hasn’t happened.
I’ve brought Angie a cake, and some blackberry jelly left from last year’s batch. Though I wonder if I’m bringing these gifts for myself as much as for her—feeling helpless, needing to feel I’m doing something for her. But she’s so grateful. �Oh, Vivienne, you’re always so thoughtful … And don’t you look lovely today? You’re a sight for sore eyes in that dress,’ she says.
�Oh. Thanks, Angie.’
I smooth down the skirt. As she says, it’s pretty: the cotton has a pattern of flowers of many colours, yellow and cream and forget-me-not blue, like a blowing wildflower meadow. I don’t tell her why I’m wearing it.
She makes tea for us, in her big brown pottery teapot. Chickens scratch and bustle outside the open door.
�So, have you seen much of them?’ she asks me.
I know she means the Germans.
�They’ve requisitioned Connie’s place next door. There are four of them living there now,’ I tell her.
Angie snorts.
�Requisitioned? They use all these fancy words, just to confuse us,’ she says. �Stole is what they really mean … But that’s rather close, isn’t it, Vivienne? You’ll be living in one another’s pockets. I wouldn’t like that at all.’
�Well—at least they didn’t take our house …’
It’s her wash day. Her kitchen has a wholesome smell of laundry soap and damp linen. She’s nearly come to the end of her wash, she’s putting her clothes through the mangle before she hangs them out on the line. I see that she’s washing some shirts of Frank’s.
�You wouldn’t mind if I just finished this off, Vivienne?’ she asks me.
�No, of course not.’
She sees me noticing the shirts.
�I thought I’d clear out his clothes,’ she says. �There’s plenty of wear left in them. I’m going to give them to Jack, my brother. He’s always grateful for hand-me-downs. They’re a bit hard-pressed, him and Mabel, with all those children to feed.’
I sip my tea, and watch as she moves the heavy arm of the mangle. Water flurries into the tray that catches the drips, in little spurts that fall in time with the rhythm of her movement.
�So, Angie—are you …?’ The words are solid things in my mouth. �I mean—how is everything?’
She fixes me with her sad, steady gaze.
�Not so good, to be honest, Vivienne,’ she tells me, very matter-of-fact. �But I know I shouldn’t complain. So many people have lost someone.’
�That doesn’t make it any easier though,’ I say.
We are silent for a moment. From outside, you can hear the bubbling sound of chickens, and the bright whistle of a blackbird in the elder tree by her door.
Her appearance troubles me. Her face has an eroded look, as though years have passed since Frank died; as though those years like a river have washed over her and started to wear her away.
�You must say if there’s anything I can do,’ I tell her, rather helplessly. �Just anything at all. I could bring you some meals, or something …’
She looks up at me. She pushes her hand through her hair, which is a wiry dark mass round her head—she hasn’t bothered with her curlers.
�You’ve got a kind heart, Vivienne. And—seeing as you’ve offered—well, there is something,’ she says. She flushes, a little embarrassed, and I wonder why. �I need to choose some hymns. For his funeral tomorrow. The thing is—I don’t have much book-learning.’
She’s telling me she can’t read; it surprises me that I never knew this before.
�Just tell me what to do,’ I say.
�There’s a hymn book in the cabinet in the parlour,’ she says. �I wonder if you could bring it for me? Just while I finish my wash.’
I go to her parlour across the passage. When her house was built hundreds of years ago, this room would have served as the byre—people and animals all sleeping under one roof. It doesn’t feel homely like her kitchen. There’s a lumbering three-piece suite that’s shrouded in dust sheets, and the air is stale, with a thick sweet scent of lavender polish and damp: you can tell she doesn’t often open the windows in here. I find the hymn book, take it to her.
�Is there a list of hymns in the book?’ she asks me.
I turn to the front, to the contents list.
�Could you read through the first lines for me?’ she asks. �Just to remind me—so I can choose my favourites?’
I read the first lines of the hymns, with a little pause after each, while she considers it, all the time turning the handle, so the water from the mangled clothes splutters down into the tray. She listens scrupulously, with an intent expression.
At last we come to one that she likes.
�There. Stop there, Vivienne. “Rocked in the cradle of the deep.”’ She rolls the phrase round her mouth, as though it is succulent, like some sun-warmed fruit. �I’ve always been fond of that one,’ she says.
�Yes. Me too. Would Frank have liked it?’ I say.
She considers this.
�Frank didn’t think all that much of religion, to be honest,’ she says. �He didn’t have much time for religious folk at all. God-botherers, he called them. Bible-thumpers. What he always said was—they’re just as bad as the rest of us … But I like a bit of religion myself. I think it helps you through.’
�Yes, it can do,’ I say.
�Are you a believer, Vivienne?’
The direct question unnerves me. I think how, right through my life, I’ve always liked going to church: how I adored the church Nativity play when I was a child—being an angel, with wings of frail muslin fixed to my fingers with curtain-rings, and a halo of Christmas tinsel; how I love the stained glass and the singing; how I can still find comfort in the familiar, resonant words; how I still pray sometimes. But I’m not sure how much I believe now.
�Well, I suppose so,’ I say.
The drip of the water seems too loud in the stillness of Angie’s kitchen—louder than her voice, which is confiding, nicotine-stained.
�When I was a child, my mother taught me a prayer,’ she says. �The prayer of the Breton fisherman, she said it was. It was the only prayer you ever needed, she said. Oh, Lord, help me, for Your ocean is so great, and my boat is so small. That’s a good prayer, isn’t it? Do you like that prayer, Vivienne?’
I think of waiting at the harbour. Of the little boat that I couldn’t trust, wouldn’t go in. Of the perilous, shining, unguessable immensity of the sea.
�Yes, I like it,’ I say.
She nods.
�I always thought that was a good prayer.’ A little rueful smile. �Except He didn’t help me, really, did He? He didn’t help me at all. Not this time.’
I leave her wringing out her dead husband’s clothes.
CHAPTER 14 (#ulink_18e8ab46-9df7-555b-9721-e9d9e9ce9bf6)
I walk home through the summer morning, feeling so sad for Angie, thinking how lost she seems, how much she has aged. Wondering what I can do to help her. I’m not really looking around me: I’m in a trance, abstracted, like when I was a child and didn’t come when I was called, and Aunt Aggie would shake her head at me: �You’re such a dreamer, Vivienne. You’re always off in cloud cuckoo land. You think too much, you need to live in this world …’
If I hadn’t been so preoccupied, maybe I would have noticed the car in the lane: maybe I would have turned in time, and made for the track through the fields, and come home by the back way. But I’ve almost reached the car before I really take it in. It’s not an army vehicle, but a big black Bentley, drawn up on the verge outside the gate of Les Vinaires. I recognise the car. It used to belong to the Gouberts; they lived at Les Brehauts, an imposing whitewashed house near the church, before they went on the boat. The Germans must have requisitioned the car—which, as Angie says, means stealing.
The bonnet is open. One of the men from Les Vinaires is there, the scarred man I saw in the window, peering under the bonnet. I see him too late. I’d have done anything to avoid him, but I can’t turn back now: I know it would look like cowardice, and I’d hate him to think I was scared. He’s tinkering with the engine, muttering under his breath; then he opens the door, climbs in and tries the ignition—still with the bonnet up. The engine turns once, splutters, dies. He gets out, kicks a tyre, and swears, a rushed volley of German expletives. With a part of my mind, I’m thinking, Good—he may have stolen the car, but at least he can’t make it go … But I’m frightened too, and the prayer that Angie quoted to me slides into my mind. Oh, Lord, help me … I stand there, uncertain, apprehensive. I have to walk past him to reach the gate to my yard. I’m wishing more than ever that I’d thought to come back through the fields.
He turns, sees me. He has a shocked look: he stares, as if I am a ghost or apparition. As though I am the one who is out of place, who shouldn’t be there. The scented wind blows about us; it billows my skirt, then wraps it back against my body and pushes a strand of unruly hair into my mouth. My face feels hot, I know I’ve gone red, and I hate this. My heart stutters. I think he is going to shout at me or threaten me.
�I apologise,’ he says. His English accent is very good, as good as Captain Richter’s. His face flushes slightly, almost as though he’s ashamed.
I don’t know what to say. I feel stupid, wrong-footed—clumsy, as though I use up too much space, as though my feet and hands are too big for my body.
�That’s all right, it doesn’t matter,’ I say—the automatic response. Then I feel my hand fly to my mouth, as if to stop myself from talking.
He inclines his head in a little bow, and turns and goes into the house.
There’s a small scolding voice in my head: You’re letting the side down, you handled everything wrong. You shouldn’t have said it didn’t matter—you shouldn’t have spoken at all. Everything matters, nothing’s all right. It comes to me that this will be the shape of it, of our new life under the Occupation: always these troubling, frightening encounters—leaving you feeling that you’ve transgressed, and given something away.
Later, from my bedroom window, I watch as the scarred man comes out with one of the younger men, the one who has the kind of skin that peels in the sun. The young man has a tool box. He mends the car—deftly, with no fuss. The scarred man climbs in and turns the ignition: I hear the car start up. Through the car window, I can see the ironic smile on his face. The thought ripples in me that I know certain things about him. How he loathes machines, feels they oppose him, will never do his will: how this helplessness makes him angry. How he can lose himself in reading a book or a letter—frowning, running a finger absently over his brow. I know the look he has when he thinks that nobody is watching: how he will light a cigarette and leave it lying there, and roll up his shirtsleeves, doing these things unthinkingly, unaware of what he is doing. This knowledge makes me uneasy. It’s as though I am party to a secret that I never asked to be told.
Before the man drives off, he glances up at my bedroom window. Almost as if he knows I am looking, expects me to be looking. My heart thuds. I draw back into my room.
CHAPTER 15 (#ulink_3ca4dd3f-e1e4-5c02-975e-ff778f22edc4)
August. The island has never been lovelier, all our gardens lavishly flowering, the sky high and bright, a fresh salt wind off the sea. The Belle de CrГ©cy roses are blooming in my back garden, drowsy with bumble bees, the flowers opening helplessly wide and spreading out their perfume.
Before the war, on such beautiful days I’d have taken the girls to the beach—perhaps to Petit Bôt with a picnic, Millie perched in my bicycle basket. Blanche and I would cycle down the lane that leads to the shore, a lane that is shadowed and secret with branches that meet overhead, and musical with the singing of the streams that run down to the water there; and then suddenly coming out into light at the end of the lane, to the beach that is held between tall cliffs like a jewel cradled between cupped palms, to the sleek wet sand and the glistening jade-green clarity of the sea. Or perhaps we’d go to Roquaine Bay, where the soft sand is perfect for sandcastles, or up to the north, to Vazon, with its wide clean air, all its spaciousness, or to the Forts Roques, the savage black rocks that rise from the water like broken teeth. You could always find a sheltered spot there, a patch of sandy grass where you could spread a rug for a picnic. There’d be crickets, and rock pools with emerald crabs, and delicate tamarisk flowers.
But we can’t do these things any more. The beaches are forbidden to us. They’re mined by the Germans, in case our army comes to take our island back—something that none of us thinks will happen. Our island is a prison.
Every evening I turn on the BBC news on the wireless, listening with a weight of lead in my chest—the news is all terrible. The Luftwaffe are bombing English airfields. Churchill calls it the Battle of Britain: he says that the Battle of France is over, the Battle of Britain has begun. Evelyn listens with me, though I don’t know whether she understands—whether what she hears makes sense to her. Sometimes as she listens her face seems to melt and tears spill over her face. Her emotions are always so near—as though with the passing of the years some defence she had, some outer protective shell, has been scoured and worn away in her.
�That’s terrible, Vivienne,’ she’ll say.
�Yes, I’m afraid so,’ I tell her. �But we mustn’t give up hope.’
I don’t know why I say that, when I have given up hope myself. Sometimes in the evening we hear the Nazi bombers coming over from France, and then their fighter planes going up from the Guernsey airfield, to escort the bombers over England. When we hear them, I think we all send up a quick, fervent prayer for our aircrews who will meet them—even those of us who’d never normally pray. Will they hold off the Luftwaffe? How long can they hold out against the invasion of England? How long before Hitler crosses the Channel? We know it must happen sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time.
Often I think about Eugene—wondering where his division is, praying that he’ll be kept safe. But at these times when I think of him, he feels almost a stranger to me. I tell myself it’s because he’s so far away now, and because we don’t receive any letters or any news of our men. Most women with husbands at war must feel this—the sense of distance, of separation. I don’t entirely acknowledge, even in the deeps of my mind, that it was like that when he lived here too. When he’d sit at the breakfast table fenced off behind his newspaper, as though I was nothing to him, as though I didn’t exist. When he’d say, We’re rehearsing tonight, don’t wait up, I could be home on the late side … Sounding so easy and casual, yet I’d sense the sharks darkly circling under the surfaces of his words. When he’d lie in our bed, turned away from me, never touching. I don’t admit that we were strangers long before he left.
Millie seems mostly unbothered by the Occupation, though sometimes I hear her reprimanding her ragdoll: �If you’re naughty, I’m going to tell the Nazis. And when I tell them they’ll come and bomb you to bits …’ But Blanche is still unhappy that we didn’t go on the boat. She spends too much time in her room. Mostly she listens to her Irving Berlin records, but one day I go in and she’s just sitting there, pulling at a fraying thread on her cuff: not doing anything, staring blankly in front of her. A sudden sadness tugs at me, grief for the things she is missing out on because of the Occupation—dressing up, being taken to dinner, being bought flowers—that whole gorgeous charade of courtship, the gilded time of a woman’s life. She worries me. Sometimes I almost wish she were little again, like Millie. When they’re small, it’s so simple: you only have to buy them a bun or some aniseed balls, and they’ll be content.
One day at the end of August, she does some shopping for me, at Mrs Sebire’s grocery shop, up on the main road near the airfield. She comes home bright-eyed, hair flying, a smile unfurling over her face: everything about her is smiling.
�Mum. You’ll never guess what happened. Mrs Sebire wanted to know if I’d like a job in her shop!’
�What did you say?’ I ask her.
�Yes. I said yes, of course. That’s all right, isn’t it? She was really pleased. Since her daughter left on the boat, she said it’s been a struggle, and she’s sure I’ll be good at the job.’
�That’s wonderful,’ I tell her.
It’s not what I’d once have hoped for. When Blanche was younger, before the war began, I’d hoped she’d go to the mainland to study—perhaps to train as a teacher. But for now, with everything in turmoil, this offer of work is a gift.
Her face is lit up: her hyacinth-blue eyes dazzle.
�I’ll be like Celeste now, won’t I, Mum?’ she says.
Blanche has always seen Celeste’s job at Mr Martel’s watch shop as the height of glamour.
I’ll miss having her round the house in the day—Evelyn seems so fragile now, so confused, that I sometimes worry about leaving her and Millie together. But it’s lovely to see Blanche happy again—and her money will certainly help. We’re just about managing for the moment—I have a little money saved, and Evelyn pays some of the bills. But every penny matters.
She starts work on Monday. She gets up early, puts on a crisp gingham Sunday-best frock and some of the lipstick I bought for her. She comes home tired but pleased with herself, with a bag of over-ripe peaches that Mrs Sebire had decided were a little too bruised to sell. We eat the peaches: they are delicious.
�I’m glad you got that job,’ says Millie, the sweet juice dripping down her chin.
We are all glad.
Through August, I don’t see much of the Germans at Les Vinaires. I tell myself, Maybe they won’t bother with us. Maybe they scarcely think of us at all. They want a quiet life here, as Captain Richter said. But I’m wary. I never go out after curfew. When I come back from Angie’s, I’m careful always to take the track through the fields. If I’m cleaning my bedroom, I try not to look out into the lane. I don’t see the scarred man any more—not in the lane, not in the lighted window. Now, they always draw the blackout curtains early, at Les Vinaires.
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