The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (17 page)

For God's sake, forget about that miserable island and marry me. I'll take you there on our honeymoon—if I must.

Love,

Mark

From Juliet to Mark
20th May 1946

Dear Mark,

You're probably right, but even so, I'm going to Guernsey tomorrow and
you can't stop me
.

I'm sorry I can't give you the answer you want. I would like to be able to.

Love,

Juliet

P.S. Thank you for the roses.

From Mark to Juliet

Oh for God's sake. Do you want me to drive you down to Weymouth?

Mark

From Juliet to Mark

Will you promise not to lecture me?

Juliet

From Mark to Juliet

No lectures. However, all other forms of persuasion will be employed.

Mark

From Juliet to Mark

Can't scare me. What can you possibly do while driving?

Juliet

From Mark to Juliet

You'd be surprised. See you tomorrow.

M.

From Juliet to Sidney
22nd May 1946

Dear Sidney,

There's so much to tell you. I've been in Guernsey only twenty hours, but each one has been so full of new faces and ideas that I've got reams to write. You see how conducive to writing island life is? Look at Victor Hugo—I may grow prolific if I stay here for any length of time.

The voyage from Weymouth was ghastly, with the mail boat groaning and creaking and threatening to break to pieces in the waves. I almost wished it would, to put me out of my misery, except that I wanted to see Guernsey before I died. And as soon as we came in sight of the island, I gave up the notion altogether because the sun broke beneath the clouds and set the cliffs shimmering into silver.

As the mail boat lurched into the harbour, I saw St Peter Port rising up from the sea, with a church at the top like a cake decoration, and I realised that my heart was galloping. However much I tried to persuade myself it was the thrill of the scenery, I knew better. All those people I've come to know and even love a little, waiting to see—me. And I, without any paper to hide behind. Sidney, in these past two or three years, I have become better at writing than living—and think what you do to my writing. On the page, I'm perfectly charming, but that's just a trick I've learnt. It has nothing to do with me. At least, that's what I was thinking as the boat approached the pier. I had a cowardly impulse to throw my red cape overboard and pretend I was someone else.

I could see the faces of the people waiting—and then there was no going back. I knew them by their letters. There was Isola in a mad hat and a purple shawl pinned with a glittering
brooch. She was smiling fixedly in the wrong direction and I loved her instantly. Next to her stood a man with a lined face, and at his side, a boy, all height and angles. Eben and his grandson Eli. I waved to Eli and he smiled like a beam of light and nudged his grandfather—and then I went shy and lost myself in the crowd that was pushing down the gangplank.

Isola reached me first by leaping over a crate of lobsters and pulled me up in a fierce hug that swung me off my feet. ‘Ah, lovey!' she cried while I dangled. Wasn't that sweet? All my nervousness was squeezed out of me along with my breath. The others came towards me more quietly, but with no less warmth. Eben shook my hand and smiled. You can tell he was broad and hardy once, but he is too thin now. He manages to look grave and friendly at the same time. How does he do that? I found myself wanting to impress him.

Eli swung Kit up on his shoulders, and they came forward together. Kit has chubby little legs and a stern face—dark curls, big grey eyes—and she didn't take to me one bit. Eli's jersey was speckled with wood shavings, and he had a present for me in his pocket—an adorable little mouse with crooked whiskers, carved from walnut. I gave him a kiss on the cheek and survived Kit's malevolent glare. She has a very forbidding way about her for a four-year-old.

Then Dawsey held out his hands. I had been expecting him to look like Charles Lamb, and he does, a little—he has the same steady gaze. He presented me with a bouquet of carnations from Booker, who couldn't be present; he had concussed himself during rehearsal and was in hospital overnight for observation. Dawsey is dark and wiry, and his face has a quiet, watchful look about it—until he smiles. Except for a certain sister of yours, he has the sweetest smile I've ever seen, and I remembered Amelia writing that he has a rare gift for persuasion—I can
believe it. Like Eben—like everyone here—he is too thin. His hair is going grey, and he has deep-set brown eyes, so dark they look black. The lines around his eyes make him seem to be starting a smile even when he's not. I don't think he's more than forty. He is only a little taller than I am and limps slightly, but he's strong—he loaded all my luggage, me, Amelia and Kit into his cart with no trouble.

I shook hands with him (I can't remember if he said anything) and then he stepped aside for Amelia. She's one of those women who are more beautiful at sixty than they could possibly have been at twenty (oh, how I hope someone says that about me one day!). Small, thin-faced, lovely smile, grey hair in plaits wound round her head, she gripped my hand tightly and said, ‘Juliet, I am glad you are here at last. Let's get your things and go home.' It sounded wonderful, as though it really was my home.

As we stood there on the pier, some glint of light kept flashing in my eyes, and then around the dock. Isola snorted and said it was Adelaide Addison, at her window with her opera glasses, watching every move we made. Isola waved vigorously at the gleam and it stopped. While we were laughing about that, Dawsey was gathering up my luggage and ensuring that Kit didn't fall off the pier and generally making himself useful. I began to see that this is what he does—and that everyone depends on him to do it.

Off we went out into the countryside. There are rolling fields, but they end suddenly in cliffs, and all around is the moist salt smell of the sea. As we drove, the sun set and the mist rose. You know how sounds become magnified by fog? Well, it was like that—every bird's cry was weighty and symbolic. Clouds boiled up over the cliffs, and the fields were swathed in grey by the time we reached the manor house, but I saw ghostly shapes that I think were the cement bunkers built by the Todt workers.

Kit sat beside me in the cart and sent me many sideways glances. I was not so foolish as to try to talk to her, but I played my severed-thumb trick—you know, the one that makes your thumb look as though it's been sliced in two. I did it over and over again, casually, not looking at her, while she watched me like a baby hawk. She was intent and fascinated but not gullible enough to break into giggles. She just said at last, ‘Show me how you do that.'

She sat opposite me at supper and refused her spinach with a thrust-out arm, hand straight up like a policeman. ‘Not for me,' she said, and I, for one, wouldn't care to disobey her. She pulled her chair close to Dawsey's and ate with one elbow planted firmly on his arm, pinning him in his place. He didn't seem to mind, even if it did make cutting his chicken difficult, and when supper was over, she climbed on to his lap. It is obviously her rightful throne, and though Dawsey seemed to be attending to the conversation, I spied him poking out a napkin-rabbit while we talked about food shortages during the Occupation. Did you know that the Islanders ground bird-seed for flour until they ran out of it?

I must have passed some test I didn't know I was being given, because Kit asked me to tuck her up in bed. She wanted to hear a story about a ferret. She liked vermin. Did I? Would I kiss a rat on the lips? I said, ‘Never,' and that seemed to win her over—I was plainly a coward, but not a hypocrite. I told her the story and she presented her cheek an infinitesimal quarter of an inch to be kissed.

What a long letter—and it only contains the first four hours of the twenty. You'll have to wait for the other sixteen.

Love,

Juliet

From Juliet to Sophie
24th May 1946

Dearest Sophie,

Yes, I'm here. Mark did his best to stop me, but I resisted him mulishly, right up to the bitter end. I've always considered doggedness one of my least appealing characteristics, but it was valuable last week.

It was only as the boat pulled away, and I saw him standing on the pier, tall and scowling—and somehow wanting to marry
me
—that I began to think perhaps he was right. Maybe I am a complete idiot. I know of three women who are mad about him—he'll be snapped up in a trice, and I'll spend my declining years in a grimy bed-sit, with my teeth falling out one by one. Oh, I can see it all now: no one will buy my books, and I'll ply Sidney with tattered, illegible manuscripts, which he'll pretend to publish out of pity. Doddering and muttering, I'll wander the streets carrying my pathetic turnips in a string bag, with newspaper tucked into my shoes. You'll send me affectionate cards at Christmas (won't you?) and I'll boast to strangers that I was once nearly engaged to Markham Reynolds, the publishing tycoon. They'll shake their heads—the poor old thing's crazy as a coot, of course, but harmless.

Oh God. This way lies insanity.

Guernsey is beautiful and my new friends have welcomed me so generously, so warmly, that I hadn't doubted that I was right to come here—until just a moment ago, when I started thinking about my teeth. I'm going to stop thinking about them. I'm going to run through the wild-flower meadow outside my door and up to the cliff as fast as I can. Then I'm going to lie down and look at the sky, which is shimmering like a
pearl this afternoon, and breathe in the warm scent of grass and pretend that Markham V. Reynolds doesn't exist.

I'm back indoors. It's hours later—the setting sun has rimmed the clouds in blazing gold and the sea is moaning below the cliffs. Mark Reynolds? Who's he?

Love always,

Juliet

From Juliet to Sidney
27th May 1946

Dear Sidney,

Elizabeth's cottage was plainly built for an exalted guest, because it's quite spacious. There is a big sitting room, a bathroom, a larder and a huge kitchen downstairs. There are three bedrooms, and best of all, there are windows everywhere, so the sea air can sweep into every room.

I've shoved a writing table by the biggest window in my sitting room. The only flaw in this arrangement is the constant temptation to go outside and walk over to the cliff edge. The sea and the clouds don't stay the same for five minutes running and I'm frightened I'll miss something if I stay inside. When I got up this morning, the sea was full of sun pennies—and now it seems to be covered in lemon scrim. Writers ought to live far inland or next to the city dump if they are ever to get any work done. Or perhaps they need to be stronger-minded than I am.

If I needed any encouragement to be fascinated by Elizabeth, which I don't, her possessions would do it for me. The Germans arrived to take over Sir Ambrose's house and gave her only six hours to move her belongings to the cottage. Isola said
Elizabeth brought only a few pots and pans, some cutlery and everyday china (the Germans kept the good china, silver, crystal and wine for themselves), her art supplies, an old wind-up gramophone, some records, and armloads of books. So many books, Sidney, that I haven't had time to investigate them—they fill the living-room shelves and overflow into the kitchen. She even stacked some at one end of the sofa to use for a table—wasn't that brilliant?

In every nook, I find little things that tell me about her. She was a noticer, Sidney, like me: all the shelves are lined with shells, feathers, dried sea grass, pebbles, eggshells, and the skeleton of something that might be a bat. They're just bits that were lying on the ground, that anyone else would step over or on, but she saw they were beautiful and brought them home. I wonder if she used them for still lifes? I wonder if her sketchbooks are here somewhere? There's prowling to be done. Work first, but the anticipation is like Christmas Eve seven days a week.

Elizabeth also carried down one of Sir Ambrose's paintings. It is a portrait of her, painted I imagine when she was about eight years old. She is sitting on a swing, all ready to fly up and away—but having to sit still for Sir Ambrose to paint. You can tell by her eyebrows that she doesn't like it. Glares must be inheritable, because she and Kit have identical ones.

The Big House (for want of a better name) is the one that Elizabeth came to close up for Ambrose. It is just up the drive from the cottage and is wonderful. Two-storeyed, L-shaped, and made of beautiful blue-grey stone. It's slate-roofed with dormer windows and a terrace stretching from the crook of the L down its length. The top of the crooked end has a windowed turret and faces the sea. Most of the huge old trees had to be cut down for firewood, but Mr Dilwyn has asked Eben and
Eli to plant new trees—chestnuts and oaks. He is also going to have peach trees espaliered in the walled garden, as soon as that is rebuilt too. The lawn is growing green and lush again, covering up the wheel ruts of German cars and trucks.