The Soldier's Wife (20 page)

Chapter 44

I
N SEPTEMBER, MILLIE
starts school, at St. Peter's up in the parish square.

She wears her blue Viyella dress, which has tucks around the bodice that I will let out as she grows, and her pigtails are tied with red ribbon. Her bar shoes used to belong to Blanche, but I've polished them till they look new.

The playground is full of children, the ones who are starting today pressed up against their mothers, the older ones milling around, playing marbles or hopscotch or jacks. Some girls are doing handstands against the wall of the school, their full skirts billowing out like the petals of overblown flowers. I remember how Blanche cried and protested when first she went to school, how she was terrified of the playground, not wanting to let go of me, so I had to peel her fingers like Band-Aids from my hands, but Millie just looks back at me briefly and then walks boldly forward, stepping out into the stream of her future in the shiny bar shoes.

The house feels different without her. Even when she was quiet I always knew she was there, as though the air was charged by her vivid, purposeful presence. I keep busy; I get through my tasks much quicker than I did when she was at home. I scrub my kitchen till it gleams, I pick the last of my runner beans, I bottle the plums from my plum tree. They're good fruit for bottling—Victorias. They keep their rich rose color even when they're cooked, and all day my kitchen is fragrant with their winey, opulent scent. I'm pleased with what I've achieved, but I miss her.

At home time, I wait outside the school with all the other mothers. I know a few of these women from when Blanche started school, though that was ten years ago now—some of them have big families, or a gap between children, like me. There's Susan Gallienne, tall and slender and stylish: she has a classy pallor and her hair is cleverly waved. There's Vera Hill, who runs her household with army-camp precision; a bracing scent of carbolic soap hangs about her. There's Gladys Le Tissier, who has six children, and an air of being always slightly distracted, as though everything happens too quickly for her. We greet one another, share our news, promise that we'll meet up.

The school doors open, the children spill out. Millie comes running up to me, flushed, rather dazed by all the newness of everything. One of her ribbons has come undone and is flying out like a little flag as she runs. I bend to hug her. She smells of school—of wax crayons, chalk dust, apples. The smell fills me with nostalgia—for best friends and playground conspiracies, for skipping games and whispered secrets and fingers smudged with ink. All the school things.

“Sweetheart. Did you have a nice day?”

She nods vigorously.

“
I
was good,” she tells me. “But Simon had to stand in the corner. Miss Delaney made him. He put a wriggly worm down Annie Gallienne's blouse.”

“Simon Duquemin?”

“Yes,” she says. “Simon Duquemin.” She rolls the name around her mouth, as though it tastes especially good, like a stolen caramel. “Simon is
seven
.” As if this were a major achievement and worthy of respect.

The next day, as we walk home from school, she talks about Simon again.

“Simon got the slipper,” she tells me.

I remember Blanche talking about the slipper. It's not really a slipper at all, but an old plimsoll that Miss Delaney keeps in the drawer of her desk. She beats the children with it if they're very badly behaved. All the children are afraid of it.

“But, Millie, it's only the second day of term. I thought you'd all still be on your best behavior.”

“He had to bend over the desk,” she says. “He said it didn't hurt him, but I think it did. I think he was trying not to cry.”

The countryside is mellowing with September, autumn's gold gloss on everything. The first bright leaves are falling and rustling on the tarmac. They sound like stealthy footsteps in the quiet of the lane.

“So what did Simon do to deserve the slipper?” I ask.

“He was very naughty,” she tells me. “He was sitting behind Maisie Guerin, and he stuck the end of Maisie's pigtail in his bottle of ink.” Again, there's that thread of respect in her voice. “Mummy, I want to play with Simon.”

This worries me: Simon Duquemin sounds a little wild. But Millie is insistent.

The next morning, I speak to Ruthie Duquemin as we wait in the playground. I know her only by sight. She's a pale, rather anxious woman, with a mist of fair hair around her head and eyes of a startling clear green, like the hart's-tongue fern in the hedgebank.

“I was wondering, would Simon like to come and play with Millie after school?”

Her smile is spacious and kind.

“Yes, I know he'd love to,” she says. “He seems very taken with Millie.”

SIMON KNOCKS AT
our door. He has white arms blotched with freckles, and his mother's exuberant hair, and a suspicious expression. He peers past me into the passageway.

“I've come for
her,
” he says.

Millie has changed out of her school clothes into her oldest frock. She takes an old satchel of Blanche's. I've put a jam jar in it, with string tied around it for fishing, and an apple to eat. As I say good-bye, it's as though her feet won't keep still: she hops from one foot to the other like a dancer. Her eyes are sunlight on water.

“Don't go too far. And be sure to come back before dark.”

My words fall into silence. They're over the lane already, and through the orchard and into the wood, their clear voices trailing like bright streamers behind them.

I tidy my kitchen. I stack up the Kilner jars full of plums on the larder floor. It's good to see all that abundance, the heavy glass jars that are filled with rose-red fruit. I wash my kitchen floor, though it doesn't really need it. As the tree shadows lengthen and reach like grasping hands across the lane, anxiety creeps up on me and I long to have her safe at home with me. It's the first time she's ever played out.

But well before teatime, Simon brings Millie back to our door and heads off up the lane to his house. Millie bursts into the living room, where I am doing the darning and Blanche is brushing her hair. Millie is muddy, disheveled, pink with happiness.

“Simon climbed to the top of a tree,” she says.

“Boys are such show-offs,” says Blanche, pausing in her hairbrushing. She's counting the strokes, bent forward, her bright blond hair hanging down; each day she tries to do a hundred strokes before bed.

“Well, I hope he didn't expect you to climb up there as well,” I say to Millie.

“He was looking for an old wood pigeon's nest,” she tells me. “I was meant to catch him if he fell out. And then we made a den in the wood. We were hiding from bombs. The bombs killed everyone but they didn't hit us. . . . And then we were
soldiers,
” she says.

She shoots a pretend gun at Blanche.

“Honestly, Millie. Girls don't shoot. You ought to know that,” says Blanche.

She straightens, swings her hair back over her head. She looks at herself in the mirror over the mantel, posing a little. Light shimmers on the river of her hair.

“Simon really likes me,” says Millie, boastful. “Simon says I'm really not like a girl at all.” As though this is the highest praise.

After that, Simon plays with Millie most days after school.

ONE EVENING, SHE
comes home tense and breathless and thrilled.

“We made an army camp in Mr. Mahy's barn,” she says.

Peter Mahy's barn is just beyond my orchard, on the track through the fields that I took when I went to Les Brehauts. He doesn't keep it well, he scarcely ever goes to it: he stores his old farm machinery there, now he can't get the spare parts. There's a rickety ladder to the hayloft, where the children could climb and fall through.

“You must be very careful when you play there. You mustn't play on the tractor. And you mustn't go in the hayloft,” I say.

“We were
very
careful, Mummy.”

“You're all out of breath,” I tell her.

“That's because we got chased,” she says.

“
Chased,
Millie? Who chased you?”

“Mr. Mahy's dog,” she says. “His dog is very nasty. We went back past the farmhouse and he chased us up the lane.”

I know the dog—he's a big Alsatian, rather bad-tempered. This worries me.

“What were you doing, to make him chase you?” I say.

“Simon threw a stone at him.”

“
No,
Millie. That's a very bad thing to do.”

“Simon isn't bad. It was a very little stone.”

“He shouldn't have done that,” I say.

“It was little as a leaf,” she says. “It was really, really tiny. Like this.”

She holds her finger and thumb together: between them, just the smallest sliver of air.

“I don't care how little it was,” I say.

I feel a niggle of doubt: there's a streak of wildness in Simon, something that makes him just not care what adults tell him to do. I worry what he could lead her into.

“You must never do that again, either of you,” I tell her.

“
I
didn't do anything. I promise, Mummy,” she says.

Chapter 45

W
ITH MILLIE AT
school, I have a little more freedom, though I don't like leaving Evelyn on her own for very long.

One afternoon in November, I cycle up to town. I buy bread and meat and onion sets, and change my library book. I manage to find a few balls of knitting wool for Evelyn, and I buy some powdered carravita from Carr's in the arcade; it's made from seaweed and you can use it as a gelling agent. The
Press
had a recipe for a jam that you can make from turnips. It didn't sound very inviting, but I thought I would give it a try.

As I cycle homeward up the hill, I pass Acacia Villa, where Nathan Isaacs used to live, where I'd sometimes go to music evenings, before he went on the boat. I remember those evenings: a little opulent claret to drink, a fine fire burning in the grate; playing Beethoven's “Spring Sonata” for violin and piano. He especially loved Beethoven. He was a wonderful violinist, a much better musician than me; and there's something about the violin—the silken flow of it, the way it soars and sings—that can make the piano seem a little pedestrian. I wonder how Nathan is now. He said his cousin's house in Highgate was rather full of relatives: I hope it isn't too boisterous for him; I hope he has a room where he can play his violin. The villa always looked elegant, a shiny lion brass door knocker on the green-painted front door, the front lawn sleek, with flower borders. But it's grown shabby, run-down, without him. The flower beds are a tangle of docks and dying blond grasses, and the brown-paper heads on the hydrangeas rustle and lisp in the wind. The salt air pushes my hair from my face, and a sudden sadness clutches at me, for the way the world is changing, so much torn, uncared for, destroyed.

As I pass the front door, two men come out. I can tell they're not island people. They're thin, and their clothes are ragged, and they're speaking a language that's strange to me—not German, which I recognize now. They look rather desolate and lost, their shadows falling in front of them, jagged and thin as winter branches. I can tell that they're shivering. Today you need a good woolen coat, with the wind that whips off the sea. It's unnerving, to hear this unknown language on our island. I wonder who they are, why they're here, in this place so far from their home.

The light thickens so early now: it's getting dark already. Seagulls cry. Winter is coming.

THAT NIGHT, WHEN
Gunther is with me, when we lie together in the peace of my bed, I ask about the men I saw.

“There were some people in St. Peter Port. In a house called Acacia Villa, where I used to visit, before . . . You know, before all this. . . . They were foreign—not island people. Not German. They looked really thin and they didn't have warm enough clothes.”

Something tenses in him when I say that; I see a little hardening in the muscles around his mouth.

“The Führer wants to fortify these islands,” he tells me, carefully. “He is very proud of his conquest. The fortifications are nothing to do with us.”

“What d'you mean, they're nothing to do with you?”

“It's a different organization—the Organisation Todt. They're bringing workers in to build defenses around the islands.”

“Bringing them in from where?” I think of the language I didn't recognize.

“Holland, Belgium, some of them. Some are from Poland and Russia. They're prisoners of war or volunteers. Some are building camps to live in. . . . Don't worry about it,” he tells me, smoothing my hair from my face. “Let's leave the war outside. Let it be just you and me here.”

But later, in the darkness, he abruptly starts awake. His sudden movement wakes me too. He trembles, and the trembling passes into my body. He must have been stalked by some fear in his sleep, some night terror. I've blown my candles out, but the moonlight leaks through my curtains and falls on his face, on his eyes. He stares at me, but seems to be looking through me, as though he doesn't see me. The sweat on his forehead gleams in the chalky light of the moon. He frightens me.

I stroke his arm, trying to bring him back to the present.

“Gunther. There's nothing to be afraid of. Everything's all right. This is Vivienne. My darling, you're here with me, remember?”

He stares.

“Gunther . . .”

His face shifts.

“Oh,” he says. “Oh. Vivienne.”

He rubs his hand over his face, becomes himself again.

I wonder what he saw in his dream. But he doesn't tell me, and I don't ask.

I WALK HOME
from Angie's through the darkening evening. The sepia air is still; no wind—a thing that rarely happens on Guernsey; a single brown leaf traces out slow spirals as it falls. The world feels empty, hollow, and the shadows are purple as damsons. A sadness seems to come on the countryside with the fall of the dusk. Above the pale earth and the black trees the sky is the dark blue of ashes.

I move through the intricate long shadows of the poplars in the hedgebank, past the land that belongs to the Renoufs. I see that Joseph Renouf has put up a scarecrow in his field that stands in a pool of damson shadow. It's cleverly constructed, made of scraps of wood and twigs, and dressed in tattered castoffs. My footsteps are loud and echoey in the silence of the lane. There's a cold smell of night coming.

I walk on. But something about the sight disturbs me—something that doesn't make sense. A shiver of leaves behind me makes me suddenly turn. Fear fingers the back of my neck: the scarecrow has moved to a different place in the field. All the little hairs stand up on my skin. I can see the scarecrow's face now—I see that he is a man. I don't know who he is, or what he can be doing there, in the empty sepia dusk in Joseph Renouf's field. I worry that he will see me; I worry he might be dangerous, but he seems quite unaware of me. He is utterly intent on something he has in his hand, which looks like an old cabbage stalk. As I watch he thrusts it against his face, gnawing furiously at it.

I wonder what can have happened, that a man has been reduced to this, to eating a thrown-out cabbage stalk. Has he escaped from a locked ward somewhere? Has he lost his mind?

Before I turn the corner, I look behind me again, but the tattered man has vanished, as though he had never been there. As though I conjured him up from some dark place inside me.

THE NIGHTS ARE
drawing in, and Millie and Simon can't play out after school. Sometimes she goes up to his house, and sometimes he comes down to ours.

When they're playing together around the house, it's all too much for Evelyn.

“My head hurts. Such a racket,” she says. “So many comings and goings.”

I tell them to be quieter, but my warnings just slide off them.

Evelyn overhears them singing in German: “
Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.
” They've been learning German Christmas carols at school. She raps her knitting needle on the arm of her chair.

“Stop that at once,” she says.

Millie flushes.

“Sorry, Grandma.”

For myself, I think it's good that they're learning German: we may face a long future of Occupation, and if they can speak the language they will be better prepared—though I'd never say that to Evelyn.

“Evelyn, they learned it from Miss Delaney. It doesn't mean anything,” I tell her.

“Well, that's where you're wrong,” says Evelyn. “Of course it means something. The Hun may have come to Guernsey, but we're not letting him into our house.”

I turn from her, my face hot.

I send them to play in the small back attic, where they can't be heard. Evelyn settles back to her knitting. I don't see the children again till I call up the stairs for Simon, to tell him it's time to go home.

“Did you have a good time, sweetheart?” I ask Millie, after he's gone.

She nods vigorously.

“Simon was a varou,” she says. “He had fur and very big teeth.”

I ask her to repeat this—I don't recognize the word.

“A
varou,
Mummy.
You
know.
You
know what a varou is.”

“No, I don't.”

She gives me a dubious look, as though she can't believe my ignorance.

“A varou looks like a man, except by the light of the moon—then . . .”

She puts back her head and gives a shivery wolf howl.

“Oh. A
werewolf,
” I say.

“Yes, of course. The varou bit me. Look.”

She holds out her arm, rather proudly. I can see the fading white toothmarks. I'm appalled.

“Millie—you shouldn't let Simon
bite
you.”

“Don't worry, Mummy. There wasn't any blood.”

“I should hope not.”

“Anyway, it was just a game. It was only pretend. He isn't one really,” she says.

“No—well, of course not.”

“But shall I tell you a secret, Mummy?”

I nod.

She pulls my face down close to hers and whispers in my ear. “Simon knows where there's a real varou,” she says.

“Millie, werewolves aren't real. Not
ever
.”

She ignores me.

“
This
varou is real,” she says. “The varou I'm talking about.” Her mouth is very close to me: I feel her moth breath on my face. Her whispery voice is dramatic, intense. “He prowls down the lane that leads from St. Pierre du Bois to Torteval. He has a barrow full of parsnips that he pushes along. And he likes to eat bad children.”

There's a thread of fear in her voice.

“Oh. And how does Simon know this exactly?”

“His big brother told him,” she says. “It's really true, Mummy.”

“No, sweetheart. It's just a story.”

She shakes her head, emphatically.

“Simon's big brother knows lots of things,” she tells me. “Simon's big brother made a biplane from cartridge paper and glue. It can really fly. Simon showed me.”

I feel angry with Simon, and Simon's big brother, for frightening Millie like this.

JOHNNIE COMES TO
see me, with a jar of apple chutney from Gwen and a bag of spinach, just picked. We sit at my kitchen table and drink some mint tea I've made. He's never said anything more about the swastika scheme, but there's an uneasiness between us now. There are small awkward gaps in the conversation and something reserved in his eyes.

To fill in one of the silences, I ask him about the men I saw at Nathan's house.

“They'll be workmen from Holland and Belgium, the ones you saw,” he tells me. “They're bringing lots of workers in from the Continent. Hitler's building a ring of concrete all around the island,” he says.

I ask what I couldn't ask Gunther.

“But
why,
Johnnie? It doesn't make any sense. It's like they really expect the RAF to attack; but nobody thinks that's going to happen. Nobody thinks that Churchill is bothered about us at all. We're just a little island.”

Johnnie shrugs.

“Well, that's what they're doing,” he says. “That seems to be Hitler's plan. Those workmen you saw in St. Peter Port—they don't get treated so badly, they get a bit of a wage.”

I think of the men I saw—how thin they were, how the salt wind made them shiver.

“They looked as though they were treated quite badly enough,” I tell him. “They looked as though they didn't eat.”

He shakes his head. There are little lines between his eyes, precise as if cut with a blade.

“It's worse in the work camps—far worse. You know, like the camp they've been building up on the hill near the cliffs. Up above Les Tielles.”

“I didn't know,” I tell him. “I never go that way.”

“The men are there to fortify the clifftop. The camp up there is a brutal place. They scarcely feed them at all.”

At once I understand.

“I saw a man in a field,” I say. “He was very thin. I think he was eating a cabbage stalk. I thought he was just a scarecrow, till he moved and I saw his face.”

“He was probably from the camp,” says Johnnie. “Those men are really wretched. They're from Poland or Russia, most of them. They're like slaves, the people who work there, treated like slaves. Worse than slaves. They beat them.” A shadow crosses his face. “I've seen a man hanged from a tree there. The body was hanging for days.”

A shudder goes through me.

“There are Algerians too, and Gypsies. You should go and see for yourself, Auntie. You ought to know what's happening here on our island,” he says.

“Yes. I probably should. . . .”

But I'm saying that only because it's what Johnnie expects me to say. The thought of going to the camp appalls me. What good would it possibly do to go and see for myself? It's all too big for me. I can't change it, none of us can, it's all beyond us, we can't stop it from happening. . . . Yet my reluctance still shames me. I know that it's a weakness, that I feel this.

“No man should be treated like that,” says Johnnie. “You hear things, don't you? Things people say—that they must be there because they've committed some terrible crime. Florrie Gallienne at church was saying that. But what could any man possibly do, to deserve such punishment? We're looking into it, me and Piers. We're going to do what we can.”

The mention of Piers unnerves me.

“Johnnie, what can you possibly do? It's this great war machine—you can't stop any of it.”

He ignores me.

“In Jersey they've started already. They're setting up a network to help some of the workers escape,” he tells me. “Safe houses and so on.”

This seems extraordinary to me.

“But where would they go?” I ask him. “None of us can escape. There's no getting off these islands. We're all just stuck here now.”

“They live as islanders,” he tells me.