The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (16 page)

I started to giggle, and she made the first slice before I had time to be afraid. It did hurt, but not like hell. We played a game while she cut the rest of the tops off—we shouted out the names of every woman who had ever suffered under the blade. ‘Mary, Queen of Scots—snip-snap!' ‘Anne Boleyn—thunk!' ‘Marie Antoinette—whoosh!' And we'd finished.

It hurt, but it was fun too because Miss McKenna had turned it into a game.

She swabbed my bald head with Dettol and came in to visit me that evening—with a silk scarf of her own to wrap round my head as a turban. ‘There,' she said, and handed me a mirror. I looked into it—the scarf was lovely, but my nose looked too big for my face, just as it always did. I wondered if I'd ever be pretty, and asked Miss McKenna.

When I asked my mother the same question, she said she had no patience with such nonsense and beauty was only skin-deep. But not Miss McKenna. She looked at me, considering, and then she said, ‘In a little while, Sally, you're going to be stunning. Keep looking in the mirror and you'll see. It's bones that count, and you've got them in spades. With that elegant nose of yours, you'll be the new Nefertiti. You'd better practise looking imperious.'

Mrs Maugery came to visit me in hospital and I asked her who Nefertiti was, and if she was dead. It sounded like it. Mrs
Maugery said she was indeed dead, but also immortal. Later on, she found a picture of Nefertiti for me. I wasn't exactly sure what imperious was, so I tried to look like her. As yet, I haven't grown into my nose, but I'm sure it will come—Miss McKenna said so.

Another sad story about the Occupation is my Aunt Letty. She used to have a big gloomy old house out on the cliffs near La Fontenelle. The Germans said it was in their big guns' line of fire, and interfered with their gun practice. So they blew it up. Aunt Letty lives with us now.

Yours sincerely,

Sally Ann Frobisher

From Micah Daniels to Juliet
15th May 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Isola gave me your address because she is sure you would like to see my list for your book.

If you was to take me to Paris today, and sit me down in a fine French restaurant—the kind of place what has white-lace tablecloths, candles on the walls, and silver covers over all the plates—well, I tell you it would be nothing, nothing compared to my
Vega
box. In case you don't know, the
Vega
was a Red Cross ship that come first to Guernsey on 27th December 1944. They brought food to us then, and five more times—and it kept us alive until the end of the war. Yes, I do say it—kept us alive! Food had not been so plentiful for several years by then. Except for what the devils in the Black Market had, not a spoonful of sugar was left on the Island. All the flour for bread had run out by the beginning of December 1944. Them
German soldiers was as hungry as we was—with bloated bellies and no body warmth from food. Well, I was sick to death of boiled potatoes and turnips, and I would have soon turned up my toes and died, when the
Vega
came into our port.

Mr Churchill, he wouldn't let the Red Cross ships bring us any food before then because he said the Germans would just take it and eat it themselves. Now that may sound like clever planning to you—to starve the villains out! But to me it said he just didn't care if we starved along with them. Well, something shoved his soul up a notch or two and he decided we could eat. He says to the Red Cross, ‘Oh, all right, go ahead and feed them.'

Miss Ashton, there were TWO BOXES of food for every man, woman and child on Guernsey stored in the
Vega
's hold. There was other stuff too: nails, seeds for planting, candles, cooking oil, matches, clothes and shoes. Even a few layettes for any new babies around. There was flour and tobacco—Moses can talk about manna all he wants, but he never seen anything like this! I am going to tell you what was in my box. I wrote it all down in my memory book.

Six ounces of chocolate

Four ounces of tea

Six ounces of sugar

Two ounces of tinned milk

Fifteen ounces of marmalade

Five ounces of tinned sardines

Six ounces of prunes

One ounce of salt

Twenty ounces of biscuits

Twenty ounces of butter

Thirteen ounces of Spam

Eight ounces of raisins

Ten ounces of tinned salmon

Four ounces of cheese

One ounce of pepper

A tablet of soap

I gave my prunes away—but wasn't that something? When I die I am going to leave all my money to the Red Cross. I have written to tell them.

There is something else I should say to you. It may be about those Germans, but honour due is honour due. They unloaded all those boxes of food for us from the
Vega
, and they didn't take none, not one box of it, for themselves. Of course, their Commandant had told them, ‘That food is for the Islanders. It is not yours. Steal one bit and I'll have you shot.' Then he gave each man unloading the ship a teaspoon, so he could scrape up any spilt flour or grain. They could eat that.

In fact, those soldiers were a pitiful sight. Stealing from gardens, knocking on doors asking for scraps. One day I saw a soldier snatch up a cat and slam its head against a wall. Then he cut the head off, and hid the cat in his jacket. I followed him until he come to a field. That German skinned that cat and boiled him up in his billy can, and ate it. That was truly, truly a sorrowful sight to see. It made me sick, but underneath my sick, I thought, There goes Hitler's Third Reich—dining out, and then I started laughing fit to burst. I am ashamed of that now, but that is what I did.

That is all I have to say. I wish you well with your book writing.

Yours truly,

Micah Daniels

From John Booker to Juliet
16th May 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Amelia told us you are coming to Guernsey to find stories for your book. I will welcome you with all my heart, but I won't be able to tell you about what happened to me because I get the shakes when I talk about it. Maybe if I write it down, you won't need me to say it out loud. It isn't about Guernsey
anyway—I wasn't here. I was in Neuengamme Concentration Camp in Germany.

You know how I pretended I was Lord Tobias for three years? Peter Jenkins's daughter, Lisa, was going out with German soldiers. Any German soldier, as long as he gave her stockings or lipstick. This was so until she took up with Sergeant Willy Gurtz. He was a mean little runt. The thought of them together benasties the mind. It was Lisa who betrayed me to the German Commandant.

It was March 1944. Lisa was at the hairdresser's, where she found an old, pre-war copy of
Tatler
magazine. There, on page 124, was a picture of Lord and Lady Tobias Penn-Piers. They were at a wedding in Sussex—drinking champagne and eating oysters. The words under the picture told all about her dress, her diamonds, her shoes, her face and his money. The magazine mentioned that they were owners of an estate, called La Fort, on the island of Guernsey.

Well, it was pretty plain—even to Lisa, who's thick as a post—that Lord Tobias Penn-Piers was not me. She did not wait for her hair to be combed out, but left at once to show the picture to Willy Gurtz, who took it straight to the Commandant. It made the Germans feel like fools, bowing and scraping all that time to a servant—so they were extra spiteful and sent me to the camp at Neuengamme.

I did not think I would live out the first week. With other prisoners, I was sent out to clear unexploded bombs during air raids. What a choice—to run into a square with the bombs raining down or to be killed by the guards for refusing. I scuttled like a rat and tried to cover myself when I heard bombs whistle past my head and somehow I was alive at the end of it. That's what I told myself—Well, you're still alive. I think all of us said the same each morning when we woke up—Well,
I'm still alive. But the truth is,
we weren't
. What we were—it wasn't dead, but it wasn't alive either. I was a living soul only a few minutes a day, when I was in my bunk. Then, I tried to think of something happy, something I'd liked—but not something I loved, because that made it worse. Just a small thing, like a school picnic or bicycling downhill—that's all I could stand.

It felt like thirty years, but it was only one. In April 1945, the Commandant at Neuengamme picked out those of us who were still fit enough to work and sent us to Belsen. We spent several days in a big open truck—no food, no blankets, no water, but we were glad we weren't walking. The puddles in the road were red.

I imagine you already know about Belsen and what happened there. When we got off the truck, we were handed shovels. We were to dig great pits to bury the dead. They led us through the camp to the spot, and I feared I'd lost my mind because everyone I saw was dead. Even the living looked like corpses, and the corpses were lying where they'd dropped. I didn't know why they were bothering to bury them. The fact was, the Russians were coming from the east, and the Allies were coming from the west—and the Germans were terrified of what they'd see when they got there.

The crematorium could not burn the bodies fast enough—so after we'd dug long trenches, we pulled and dragged the bodies to the edges and threw them in. You won't believe it, but the SS forced the prisoners' orchestra to play music as we lugged the corpses—and for that, I hope they burn in hell with polkas blaring. When the trenches were full, the SS poured petrol over the bodies and set fire to them. Afterwards, we were supposed to cover them with soil, as if you could hide such a thing.

The British got there the next day, and dear God, were we glad to see them. I was strong enough to walk down the road, so I saw the tanks crash down the gates and I saw the British flag painted on their sides. I turned to a man sitting against a fence near by and called out, ‘We're saved! It's the British!' Then I saw that he was dead. He had missed it by minutes. I sat down in the mud and sobbed as though he'd been my best friend. The Tommies were weeping too—even the officers. Those good men fed us, gave us blankets, took us to hospitals. And bless them, they burnt Belsen to the ground a month later.

I read in the newspaper that they've put up a war refugee camp in its place now. It gives me the shivers to think of new barracks being built there, even for a good purpose. To my mind, that land should be a blank for ever.

I'll write no more of this, and I hope you understand if I do not care to speak of it. As Seneca says, ‘Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.'

I do have a memory you might like to know about for your book. It happened in Guernsey, when I was still pretending to be Lord Tobias. Sometimes of an evening Elizabeth and I would walk up to the headlands to watch the bombers flying over—hundreds of them, on their way to bomb London. It was terrible to watch, and know where they were headed and what they meant to do. The German radio had told us that London was levelled, flattened, with nothing left but rubble and ashes. We didn't quite believe them, German propaganda being what it is, but still.

We were walking through St Peter Port when we passed the McLaren House. That was a beautiful old house taken over by German officers. A window was open and from the wireless we heard music. We stopped to listen, thinking it
might be a programme from Berlin. But when the music ended we heard Big Ben strike and a British voice said, ‘This is the BBC—London.' You can never mistake the sound of Big Ben. London was still there! Still there. Elizabeth and I hugged, and started waltzing up the road. That was one of the times I could not think about while I was in Neuengamme.

Yours sincerely,

John Booker

From Dawsey to Juliet
16th May 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

There's nothing left to do for your arrival except wait. Isola has washed, starched and ironed Elizabeth's curtains, looked up the chimney for bats, cleaned the windows, made up the beds, and aired all the rooms.

Eli has carved a present for you, Eben has filled your woodshed and Clovis has scythed your meadow—leaving, he says, the clumps of wild flowers for you to enjoy. Amelia is planning a supper party for you on your first evening.

My only job is to keep Isola alive until you get here. Heights make her giddy, but nevertheless she climbed up to the roof of Elizabeth's cottage to stomp for loose tiles. Fortunately, Kit saw her before she reached the eaves and ran for me to come and talk her down.

I wish I could do more for your welcome—I hope it will be soon. I am glad you are coming.

Yours,

Dawsey Adams

From Juliet to Dawsey
19th May 1946

Dear Mr Adams,

I'll be there the day after tomorrow! I am far too cowardly to fly, even with the inducement of gin, so I shall come by the evening mail boat.

Would you give Isola a message for me? Please tell her that I don't own a hat with a veil, and I can't carry lilies—they make me sneeze—but I do have a red wool cape and I'll wear that on the boat.

There isn't anything you could do to make me feel more welcome in Guernsey than you already have. I'm having trouble believing that I am going to meet you all at last.

Yours,

Juliet Ashton

From Mark to Juliet
20th May 1946

Dear Juliet,

You asked me to give you time, and I have. You asked me not to mention marriage, and I haven't. But now you tell me that you're off to bloody Guernsey for—what? A week? A month? For ever? Do you think I'm going to sit back and let you go?

You're being ridiculous, Juliet. Any halfwit can see that you're trying to run away, but what nobody can understand is why. We're right together—you make me happy, you never bore me, you're interested in the things I'm interested in, and I hope I'm not deluded when I say I think the same is true
for you. We belong together. I know you loathe it when I tell you I know what's best for you, but in this case I do.