The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (19 page)

Together, they pulled the wreckage to shore, and she brought the boy to Sir Ambrose's house to dry off. She returned his money, and as they sat steaming before the fire, she turned to him and said gloomily, ‘We'll just have to steal a boat, that's all.' Ian told his mother that he'd decided it would be simpler to go to school after all.

I know it will take you a prodigious amount of time to catch up on your work. If you do have a moment to spare, could you find a book of paper dolls for me? One full of glamorous evening gowns, please.

I know Kit is growing fond of me—she pats my knee in passing.

Love,

Juliet

From Juliet to Sidney
10th June 1946

Dear Sidney,

I've just received a wonderful parcel from your new secretary. Is her name really Billee Bee Jones? Never mind, she's a genius anyway. She found Kit two books of paper dolls, and not just any old paper dolls, either—Greta Garbo and
Gone with the Wind
paper dolls, pages of lovely gowns, furs, hats, boas … oh they are wonderful. Billee Bee also sent a pair of blunt scissors, a piece of thoughtfulness that would never have occurred to me. Kit is using them now.

This is not a letter but a thank-you note. I'm writing one to Billee Bee too. How did you find such an efficient person? I hope she's plump and motherly, because that's how I imagine her. She enclosed a note saying that eyes do not stay crossed permanently—it's an old wives' tale. Kit is thrilled and intends to cross her eyes until supper.

Love to you,

Juliet

P.S. I would like to point out that contrary to certain insinuating remarks in your last, Dawsey Adams makes no
appearance in this letter. I haven't seen Mr Dawsey Adams since Friday afternoon, when he came to pick up Kit. He found us decked out in our finest jewels and marching around the room to the stirring strains of
Pomp and Circumstance
on the gramophone. Kit made him a tea-towel cape, and he marched with us. I think he has an aristocrat lurking in his genealogy: he can gaze into the middle distance just like a duke.

Letter received 12th June 1946
To ‘Eben' or ‘Isola' or Any Member of a Book Society on
Guernsey, Channel Islands
Delivered to Eben, 14th June 1946

Dear Guernsey Book Society,

I greet you as those dear to my friend Elizabeth McKenna. I write to you now so that I may tell you of her death in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. She was executed there in March 1945.

In those days before the Russian Army arrived to free the camp, the SS carried truckloads of papers to the crematorium and burnt them in the furnaces there. Thus I feared you might never learn of Elizabeth's imprisonment and death.

Elizabeth spoke often to me of Amelia, Isola, Dawsey, Eben and Booker. I recall no surnames, but believe the names Eben and Isola to be unusual Christian names and thus hope you may be found easily on Guernsey.

I know that she cherished you as her family, and she felt gratitude and peace that her daughter Kit was in your care. Therefore I write so you and the child will know of her and the strength she showed to us in the camp. Not strength only, but a métier she had for making us forget where we were
for a small while. Elizabeth was my friend, and in that place friendship was all that aided one to remain human.

I reside now at the Hospice La Forêt in Louviers in Normandy. My English is yet poor, so Sister Touvier is improving my sentences as she writes them down. I am now twenty-four years old. In 1944, I was caught by the Gestapo at Plouha in Brittany, with a packet of forged ration cards. I was questioned and beaten only, and sent to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. I was put in Block Eleven, and it was here that I met Elizabeth.

I will tell you how we met. One evening she came to me and said my name, Remy. I had a joy and surprise to hear my name spoken. She said, ‘Come with me. I have a wonderful surprise for you.' I did not understand her meaning, but I ran with her to the back of the barracks. A broken window there was stuffed with papers and she pulled them out. We climbed out and ran towards the Lagerstrasse. Then I saw fully what she had meant by a wonderful surprise. The sky showing above the walls looked to be on fire—low-flying clouds of red and purple, lit from below with dark gold. They changed shapes and shades as they raced together across the sky. We stood there, hand in hand, until the darkness came. I do not think that anyone outside such a place could know how much that meant to me, to spend such a quiet moment together.

Our home, Block Eleven, held almost four hundred women. In front of each barracks was a cinder path where roll call was held twice a day, at 5.30 a.m. and in the evening after work. The women from each barracks stood in squares of one hundred women each—ten women in ten rows. The squares would stretch so far to the right and left of ours we could often not see the end of them in the fog.

Our beds were on wooden shelves, built in platforms of three. There were pallets of straw to sleep on, sour-smelling and alive with fleas and lice. There were large yellow rats that ran over our feet at night. This was a good thing, for the overseers hated the rats and stench, so we would have freedom from them in the late nights. Then Elizabeth told me about your island of Guernsey and your book society. These things seemed like Heaven to me. In the bunks, the air we breathed was weighted with sickness and filth, but when Elizabeth spoke, I could imagine the good fresh sea air and the smell of fruit in the hot sun. Though it cannot be true, I don't remember the sun shining one day on Ravensbrück. I loved to hear, too, about how your book society came to be. I almost laughed when she told of the roasted pig, but I didn't. Laughter made trouble in the barracks.

There were several standpipes with cold water to wash in. Once a week we were taken for showers and given a piece of soap. This was necessary for us, for the thing we feared most was to be dirty, to fester. We dared not become ill, for then we could not work. We would be of no further use to the Germans and they would have us put to death.

Elizabeth and I walked out with our group each morning at six to the Siemens factory, where we worked. It was outside the walls of the prison. Once there, we pushed handcarts to the railway siding and unloaded heavy metal sheets on to the carts. We were given wheat paste and peas at noon, and returned to camp for roll call at 6 p.m. and a supper of turnip soup.

Our duties changed according to need, and one day we were ordered to dig a trench to store potatoes for the winter. Our friend Alina stole a potato but dropped it on the ground. All digging stopped until the overseer could discover the thief. Alina had ulcerated corneas, and it was necessary that the
overseers not notice this, for they might think her to be going blind. Elizabeth said quickly she had taken the potato, and was sent to the punishment bunker for one week.

The cells in the bunker were very small. One day, while Elizabeth was there, a guard opened the door to each cell and turned high-pressure water hoses on the prisoners. The force of the water pushed Elizabeth to the floor, but she was fortunate that the water never reached her blanket. She was eventually able to rise and lie under her blanket until the shivering stopped. But a young pregnant girl in the next cell was not so fortunate or so strong as to get up. She died that night, frozen to the floor.

I am perhaps saying too much, things you do not wish to hear. But I must do this to tell you how Elizabeth lived—and how she held on hard to her kindness and her courage. I would like her daughter to know this also.

Now I must tell you the cause of her death. Often, within months of being in the camp, most women stopped menstruation, but some did not. The camp doctors made no provision for the prisoners' hygiene during this time—no rags, no sanitary towels. The women who were menstruating just had to let the blood run down their legs. The overseers liked this, this oh so unsightly blood; it gave them an excuse to scream, to hit. A woman named Binta was the overseer for our evening roll call and she began to rage at a bleeding girl. Rage at her, and threaten her with her upraised rod. Then she began to beat the girl.

Elizabeth broke out of our line fast—so fast. She grabbed the rod from Binta's hand and turned it on her, hitting her over and over again. Guards came running and two of them struck Elizabeth to the ground with their rifles. They threw her into a truck and took her again to the punishment bunker.

One of the guards told me that the next morning soldiers formed a guard around Elizabeth and took her from the cell. Outside the camp walls there was a grove of poplar trees. The branches of the trees formed an allée and Elizabeth walked down this by herself, unaided. She knelt on the ground and they shot her in the back of her head.

I will stop now. I know that I often felt my friend beside me when I was ill after the camp. I had fevers, and I imagined Elizabeth and I were sailing to Guernsey in a little boat. We had planned this in Ravensbrück—how we would live together in her cottage with her baby Kit. It helped me to sleep. I hope you will come to feel Elizabeth by your side as I do. Her strength did not fail her, nor her mind—not ever—she just saw one cruelty too many.

Please accept my best wishes,

Remy Giraud

Note from Sister Cécile Touvier, in the envelope with Remy's letter

Sister Cécile Touvier, Nurse, writing to you. I have made Remy go to rest now. I do not approve of this long letter, but she insisted on writing it.

She will not tell you how ill she has been, but I will. In the few days before the Russians arrived at Ravensbrück, those filthy Nazis ordered anyone who could walk to leave. Opened the gates and turned them loose upon the devastated countryside. ‘Go,' they ordered. ‘Go—find any Allied troops that you can.'

They left those exhausted, starving women to walk miles and miles without any food or water. There were not even any gleanings left in the fields they walked past. Was it any
wonder their walk became a death march? Hundreds of the women died on the road.

After several days, Remy's legs and body were so swollen with famine oedema she could not continue to walk. So she just lay down in the road to die. Fortunately, a company of American soldiers found her. They tried to give her something to eat, but her body would not receive it. They carried her to a field hospital, where she was given a bed, and quarts of water were drained from her body. After many months in hospital, she was well enough to be sent to this hospice in Louviers. I will tell you she weighed less than sixty pounds when she arrived here. Otherwise, she would have written to you sooner.

It is my belief that she will get her strength back once she has written this letter and she can set about laying her friend to rest. You may, of course, write to her, but please do not ask her questions about Ravensbrück. It will be best for her to forget.

Yours truly,

Sister Cécile Touvier

From Amelia to Remy Giraud
Mademoiselle Remy Giraud
Hospice La Forêt
Louviers
France

16th June 1946

Dear Mademoiselle Giraud,

How good you were to write to us—how good and how kind. It could not have been an easy task to call up your own
terrible memories in order to tell us of Elizabeth's death. We had been praying that she would return to us, but it is better to know the truth than to live in uncertainty. We were grateful to learn of your friendship with Elizabeth and to think of the comfort you gave to one another.

May Dawsey Adams and I come and visit you in Louviers? We would like to, very much, but not if you would find our visit too disturbing. We want to know you and we have an idea to put to you. But again, if you'd prefer it that we didn't, we won't come.

Always, our blessings for your kindness and courage,

Sincerely,

Amelia Maugery

From Juliet to Sidney
16th June 1946

Dear Sidney,

How comforting it was to hear you say, ‘God damn, oh God damn.' That's the only honest thing to say, isn't it? Elizabeth's death is an abomination and it will never be anything else.

It's odd, I suppose, to mourn someone you've never met. But I do. I have felt Elizabeth's presence all along; she lingers in every room I enter, not just in the cottage but in Amelia's library, which she stocked with books, and Isola's kitchen, where she stirred up potions. Everyone always speaks of her—even now—in the present tense, and I had convinced myself that she would return. I wanted so much to know her. It's worse for everyone else. When I saw Eben yesterday, he seemed older than ever. I'm glad he has Eli. Isola has disappeared. Amelia says not to worry: she does that when she's sick at heart.

Dawsey and Amelia have decided to go to Louviers to try to persuade Mademoiselle Giraud to come to Guernsey. There was a heart-rending moment in her letter—Elizabeth used to help her go to sleep in the camp by planning their future in Guernsey. She said it sounded like heaven. The poor girl is due for some heaven: she has already been through hell.

I am to look after Kit while they're away. I am so sad for her—she will never know her mother—except by hearsay. I wonder about her future, too, as she is now—officially—an orphan. Mr Dilwyn said there was plenty of time to decide. ‘Let us leave well alone at the moment.' He's not like any other banker or trustee I've ever heard of, bless his heart.

All my love,

Juliet

From Juliet to Mark
17th June 1946

Dear Mark,

I'm sorry that our conversation ended badly last night. It's very difficult to convey shades of meaning while roaring into the telephone. It's true—I don't want you to come this weekend. But it has nothing whatsoever to do with you. My friends have just been dealt a terrible blow. Elizabeth was the centre of the circle here, and the news of her death has shaken us all. How strange—when I picture you reading that sentence. I see you wondering why this woman's death has anything to do with me or you or your plans for the weekend. It does. I feel as though I've lost someone very close to me. I am in mourning.