The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (21 page)

There must be enough stories to fill three books—it may be a matter of culling. But don't worry if Juliet sounds nervous from time to time—she should. It's a daunting task.

I must stop now and get changed for Juliet's dinner party. Isola is swathed in three shawls and a lace tablecloth—and I want to do her proud.

Love to you all,

Sidney

From Juliet to Sophie
7th July 1946

Dear Sophie,

Just a note to tell you that Sidney is here and we can stop worrying about him—and his leg. He looks wonderful: tanned, fit, and without a noticeable limp. In fact, we threw his cane in the sea—I'm sure it's halfway to France by now.

I had a small dinner party for him—cooked by me, and edible, too. Will Thisbee gave me
The Beginner's Cook Book for Girl Guides
. It was just the thing; the writer assumes you know nothing about cookery and gives useful hints: ‘When adding eggs, break the shells first.'

Sidney is having a lovely time as Isola's guest. Apparently they sat up late talking last night. Isola doesn't approve of small talk and believes in breaking the ice by stamping on it.

She asked him if he and I were engaged to be married. If not, why not? It was plain to everyone that we doted on each other. Sidney told her that indeed he did dote on me; always had and always would, but that we both knew that we could never marry—because he was a homosexual. Isola neither gasped, fainted, nor blinked. She fixed him with her
fish eye and asked, ‘And Juliet knows?' When he told her yes, I had always known, Isola jumped up, swooped down, kissed his forehead, and said, ‘How nice—just like dear Booker. I'll not tell a soul; you can rely on me.'

Then she sat back down and began to talk about Oscar Wilde's plays. Weren't they a laugh? Sophie, wouldn't you have loved to have been a fly on the wall? I would.

Sidney and I are going shopping now for a present for Isola. I said she would love a warm, colourful shawl, but he wants to get her a cuckoo clock. Why???

Love,

Juliet

P.S. Mark doesn't write, he telephones. He rang me up only last week. It was one of those terrible connections that force you constantly to interrupt one another and bellow ‘WHAT?' However, I managed to get the gist of the conversation—I should come home and marry him. I politely disagreed. It upset me much less than it would have done a month ago.

From Isola to Sidney
8th July 1946

Dear Sidney,

You are a very nice guest. I like you. So does Zenobia, or she would not have flown on to your shoulder and perched there so long.

I'm glad you like to sit up late and talk. I like that myself of an evening. I am going to the manor now to find the book you told me about. How is it that Juliet and Amelia never made mention of Miss Jane Austen to me?

I hope you will come and visit Guernsey again. Did you like Juliet's soup? Wasn't it tasty? She will be ready for pastry and gravy soon—you must go at cooking slowly, or you'll just make slops.

I was lonely after you left, so I invited Dawsey and Amelia to tea yesterday. You should have seen how I didn't utter a word when Amelia said she thought you and Juliet would get married. I even nodded and slitted my eyes, like I knew something they didn't, to throw them off the scent.

I do like my cuckoo clock. How cheering it is! I run into the kitchen to watch it. I am sorry Zenobia bit the little bird's head off—she has a jealous nature—but Eli said he'd carve me another one, as good as new. His little perch still pops out on the hour.

With fondness, your hostess,

Isola Pribby

From Juliet to Sidney
9th July 1946

Dear Sidney,

I knew it! I knew you'd love Guernsey. The next best thing to being here myself was having you here—even for such a short visit. I'm happy that you know all my friends now, and they you. I'm particularly happy you enjoyed Kit's company so much. I regret to tell you that some of her fondness for you is due to your present,
Elspeth the Lisping Bunny
. Her admiration for Elspeth has caused her to take up lisping, and I am sorry to say she is very good at it.

Dawsey has just brought Kit home—they have been visiting his new piglet. Kit asked if I was writing to Thidney. When
I said yes, she said, ‘Thay I want him to come back thoon.' Do you thee what I mean about Elspeth? That made Dawsey smile, which pleased me. I'm afraid you didn't see the best of Dawsey this weekend; he was extra-quiet at my dinner party. Perhaps it was my soup, but I think it more likely that he is preoccupied with Remy. He seems to think that she won't get better until she comes to Guernsey.

I am glad you took my pages home to read. God knows, I am at a loss to divine just
what exactly
is wrong with them. I only know something is.

What on earth did you say to Isola? She dropped in on her way to pick up
Pride and Prejudice
and to berate me for never telling her about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy. Why hadn't she known that there were love stories not riddled with ill-adjusted men, anguish, death and graveyards! What else had we been keeping from her?

I apologised for such a lapse and said you were absolutely right:
Pride and Prejudice
was one of the greatest love stories ever written—and she might actually die of suspense before she finished it.

Isola said that Zenobia is pining for you—she's off her feed. So am I, but I'm so grateful you could come at all.

Love,

Juliet

From Sidney to Juliet
12th July 1946

Dear Juliet,

I've read your chapters several times, and you're right—they won't do. Strings of anecdotes don't make a book.

Juliet, your book needs a centre. I don't mean more interviews. I mean one person's voice to tell what was happening all around her. As written now, the facts, as interesting as they are, seem like random scattered shots.

It would hurt like hell to write this letter to you, if it wasn't for one thing: you already have the core—you just don't know it yet.

I'm talking about Elizabeth McKenna. Have you noticed that everyone you've interviewed sooner or later mentions Elizabeth? Lord, Juliet: who painted Booker's portrait and saved his life and danced down the street with him? Who thought up the lie about the Literary Society—and then made it true? Guernsey wasn't her home, but she adapted to it and to the loss of her freedom. How? She must have missed Ambrose and London, but she never, I gather, whined about it. She went to Ravensbrück for sheltering a slave worker. Look at how she died, and why.

Juliet, how did a girl, an art student, who had never had a job in her life, turn herself into a nurse, working six days a week in the hospital? She did have dear friends, but she had no one to call her own. She fell in love with an enemy officer and lost him; she had a baby alone during wartime. It must have been terrifying, despite all her good friends. You can only share responsibilities up to a point.

I'm returning the manuscript and your letters to me—read them again and see how often Elizabeth's name crops up. Ask yourself why. Talk to Dawsey and Eben. Talk to Isola and Amelia. Talk to Mr Dilwyn and to anyone else who knew her well. You live in her house. Look around you at her books, her belongings.

I think you should focus your book on Elizabeth. I think Kit would greatly value a story about her mother—it would
give her something to hang on to, later. So, either give up altogether—or get to know Elizabeth well.

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

Love to you and Kit,

Sidney

From Juliet to Sidney
15th July 1946

Dear Sidney,

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

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

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

Undying love and gratitude,

Juliet

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

From Juliet to Sidney
17th July 1946

Dear Sidney,

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

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

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

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

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

‘“For my house?” I snapped.

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

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

Yesterday, Will Thisbee appeared at my door with a plate of little cakes, iced with prune whip, so I invited him to tea. He wanted to consult me about two different women; which one of the two I'd marry if I were a man, which I wasn't. (Do you have that straight?)

Miss X has always been a ditherer—she was a ten-month baby and has not improved in any material way since then. When she heard the Germans were coming, she buried her
mother's silver teapot under an elm tree and now can't remember which tree. She is digging holes all over the island, vowing she won't stop until she finds it. ‘Such determination,' said Will. ‘Quite unlike her.' (Will was trying to be subtle, but Miss X is Daphne Post. She has round vacant eyes like a cow's and is famous for her trembling soprano in the church choir.)

And then there is a Miss Y, a local seamstress. When the Germans arrived, they had only packed one Nazi flag. This they needed to hang over their headquarters, but that left them with nothing to run up a flag pole to remind the Islanders they'd been conquered. They visited Miss Y and ordered her to make a Nazi flag for them. She did—a black nasty swastika, stitched on to a circle of dingy puce. The surrounding field was not scarlet silk, but baby-bottom pink flannel. ‘So inventive in her spite,' said Will. ‘So forceful!' (Miss Y is Miss Le Roy, thin as one of her needles, with a lantern jaw and tight-folded lips.)

Which did I think would make the best companion for a man's nether years? I told him that if one had to ask which, it generally meant neither. He said, ‘That's exactly what Dawsey said—those very words. Isola said Miss X would bore me to tears, and Miss Y would nag me to death. Thank you, thank you—I shall keep up my search.
She
is out there somewhere.'

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

Love,

Juliet

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

From Juliet to Sidney
19th July 1946

Dear Sidney,

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