The Soldier's Wife (22 page)

Chapter 48

I
SIT ON THE
bed. I've planned what I will say, but now I'm with him the words won't come. In the shivery light of my candles, the cabbage roses on my walls are absolutely black and tremble as though they are shaken by a secret, silent wind.

He's turned a little away from me, taking off his clothes. His face seems made of shadow.

I clear my throat, which is suddenly thick.

“I saw something,” I tell him.

Perhaps he hears the shake in my voice. He stops undoing his shirt. He waits.

“I was picking mushrooms up near the top of the cliff . . . where there's a break in the hedgebank, on Harry Tostevin's land. Harry has a farm there. . . . I saw something in the lane there. I stood in the field and watched it.”

I don't know why I'm giving him all these irrelevant details. Perhaps it's a way of putting off the thing I have to say.

He stands there, his shirt half undone, his questioning gaze on me.

“I saw a terrible thing,” I say. “I saw a guard kill a man—one of the men in the work gangs. Just because the man fell over. He beat him and kicked him to death.”

Gunther's eyes are on me, trying to read me.

“I'm sorry you had to see that,” he says, carefully.

“It's not that I saw it—it's that it happened at all,” I tell him.

He chews his lip, as though he's struggling to find the right words.

“Bad things happen in wartime. You must know that,” he says then.

“But he did it so casually, as though it didn't mean anything.” My voice is shrill. “As though it was just part of his day's work.”

Gunther clears his throat.

“Vivienne,” he says quietly. “It is very easy to kill. To start with, maybe not so easy. But after a while it is very easy to kill. Maybe that shouldn't be so, but it is.”

I don't ask how he knows this.

“You mustn't think about it,” he says. “You must try not to dwell on it.”

But all I can see is the man who was beaten to death. He is there between us. He will always be there between us.

“I can't just
decide
not to think about it,” I say.

“I know you probably blame us, but it was nothing to do with us,” he says.

“How can it not be to do with you?” I hear the sharpness in my voice: you could cut yourself on it. “You're part of the German army.”

When I say it baldly like that, I suddenly think of what I am doing—loving him, giving so much of myself, all the love I could never give Eugene. In this moment, I see with absolute clarity how others would judge me for it. And might be right to judge me.

He shakes his head.

“No, Vivienne. It's a different organization. Like I told you—it's the OT. They're in charge of all the fortifications and the work camps. We're not responsible for them. We can't control what they do.”

“There must be
something
you can do,” I tell him. “You can't just let this happen. This savagery.”

“Vivienne, we can't stop it, we have no power to stop these things.” He sits beside me, reaches out toward me. His touch is urgent: he holds my wrist too tightly, his fingers dig into my skin. “We have to think of our families, of the people who depend on us, who need us to stay alive for them. If you protest they send you to the Russian front,” he tells me.

“How do I know that you're not just saying that?” I ask, in a little shred of a voice.

My throat feels sore, as though saying this has hurt me.

He looks startled, that I could suggest such a thing—could accuse him of lying to me. Seeing this offers me just a crumb of reassurance.

“It's happened already,” he tells me.

“When? What happened?”

“One of our officers protested about the treatment of the prisoners. He was down at the harbor when one of the prison ships came in. They sent him there, to Russia,” he says. He's speaking very quietly; I can scarcely hear him. There's something new in his voice—a jagged splinter of fear. “It's hell on earth, in Russia,” he says. “It's a death sentence.”

I wish we had more news, more understanding, of the war. I know so little.

“Why? What's happening there?” I say.

“We came very close to Moscow,” he says. “But then winter came, and many were frozen alive.”

“Oh,” I say.

“There are men on this island who've killed themselves rather than be sent there. Or tried to break their legs in a fall so they couldn't fight anymore.”

“I've never heard of that,” I say.

“There was one incident only last week. It happened in St. Peter Port. A man threw himself from a wall and died. You have to believe me. This is the trap that we're in. . . . There's nothing we can do,” he says.

“There must be something,” I say again. But sounding less certain.

He hears the concession in my voice. He kneels in front of me, takes my hand, and holds it between his—carefully, as though I am very fragile, as though if he moved too suddenly, something might break.

“I'm not a hero, Vivienne,” he says. “I want to come through this war alive. I want to see my son again.”

I remember what he told me about his stepfather, how his stepfather beat him. I think of what life has taught him. Keep your head down. Don't protest. If you keep quiet, perhaps they will come for someone else, not you.

“Yes, I know that,” I say. “I understand that.”

I let myself be reassured. I tell myself that he has no choice, he can't stop it. It's what I want to be told—that it's nothing to do with him, that it's all beyond him. . . .

He sees the change in me. He puts his hands to my face. I feel his heat go through me.

“My darling, can't we leave all this on the other side of the door?” he says. “Can't we forget the war for a while? It's just you and me here. . . .”

But it isn't. Not anymore.

Chapter 49

A
FEW DAYS LATER
, I'm busy in my kitchen when I hear a sound of rattling and clinking from the living room. I go to see what is happening.

Evelyn is on her knees in front of the china cabinet. The glass door is open; she's taking out the china piece by piece and laying it down on the carpet—all the cups and plates from my flowered tea set that survived the break-in.

“Evelyn, what are you doing?” I say gently.

She turns, gives me a stern look.

“Someone's coming, Vivienne. We want to be ready,” she says.

“Who's coming, Evelyn?”

“
You
know, Vivienne.” Conspiratorial—as though this is a secret. “Careless talk costs lives,” she says. “But we want to be prepared.”

“Evelyn, no one's coming. It's just the four of us here—you and me and the girls.”

I kneel down beside her. I put my hand on her arm, hoping my touch will bring her back to reality. She shakes my hand off.

“We have to be ready,” she tells me. “Someone has to keep an eye on things.”

She reaches into the cabinet, takes out another cup. She holds it close to her face, studies its intricate, formal pattern of flowers and ribbon and leaves, with a puzzled look. Then, it's as though she loses interest in it—her hand goes suddenly limp. The cup slips from her fingers, falls to the floor, shatters. At the sound of breaking, a shudder goes through her.

She peers at the broken pieces, as though they have nothing to do with her. She picks up a flowery shard and stares at it, trying to make sense of it.

“Someone broke a cup, Vivienne,” she says, austere and disapproving.

“I'll see to it,” I say.

“Someone's in trouble,” she says.

“It doesn't matter,” I tell her. “No one's in trouble. You should just sit down now.”

I help her to her feet and into her chair.

“But we can't just sit here and twiddle our thumbs,” she says. She's a little breathless: the movement has exhausted her. “We have to get out the tea things. We might not be ready in time.”

I know I have to humor her.

“We'll be ready,” I tell her.

She picks up her knitting. Her sherry-brown gaze glides vacantly around the room.

“Someone's coming,” she says. “You mark my words. Someone's coming.” But she sounds less certain now.

I go to find the dustpan and brush, to sweep up the broken pieces.

When I come back she's almost asleep, her breathing slow and labored, her eyes closing: you can see how her eyelids are netted with tiny lavender veins. I take her knitting from her and wrap her blanket around her knees.

Chapter 50

J
ULY: THE SCHOOL
summer holiday. Millie plays with Simon through the long lazy days of summer, going off after lunch each day, taking the old school satchel with an apple in, bringing it back full of treasures: a milk-white pebble, a twig to make a catapult, a silky indigo feather from a crow. She's thin—both girls are far too thin—but her skin has a flushed, healthy look. She has permanent scabs on her knees, and grass stains on her dresses, and a cocoa-powder spill of freckles on her nose.

There's a day when she doesn't come back when she should. Tea is ready on the table, and the shadow of my pear tree reaches out over the yard, fingering the wall of the house. I go to the gate, peer anxiously through the orchard and into the wood, fearful that Simon may have led her into some new mischief.

But at last she comes rushing in, waving to Simon, who is running off up the lane.

“Millie, you're late. I was really worried.” I'm cross, because she frightened me. “Next time, you're to come back earlier. If this happens again, I won't let you play out anymore.”

My admonition slides off her.

“It was really fun, Mummy. Me and Simon played in the barn.”

“Mr. Mahy's barn, you mean?”

“Yes. I
said,
Mummy.”

I think of Peter Mahy's barn—the rickety ladder to the hayloft and all the old farm machines.

“You must be careful when you play there,” I tell her. “You mustn't go up the ladder.”

“We didn't. We were
very
careful,” she says.

“And I hope you stayed well clear of Mr. Mahy's dog.”

“We went like this.” She walks across the room elaborately on tiptoe. “The dog didn't even
see
us.”

When tea is over, and Evelyn has gone to her room and Blanche is on the sofa, rereading one of her favorite Angela Brazil books, Millie comes to the chair where I'm sitting with my darning. She puts her arms around my neck.

“Can I tell you a secret, Mummy?” she says. “A big, big secret?”

She smells of the outdoors, of apple-green days, of pollen and leaves and warm bracken. I feel the touch of her dark silk hair on my skin.

“Yes, sweetheart.”

She whispers in my ear, a melodramatic stage whisper.

“There's a ghost in Mr. Mahy's barn. We saw a ghost,” she tells me.

A little judder of anxiety goes through me. She's six: she should be able to tell what's just imagined by now.

“Millie, listen to me. It's fun to play make-believe sometimes. But ghosts aren't really real.”

“Yes, they are. You can see them.”

“No, sweetheart. They're just stories—like witches and all the things in our fairy-tale books.”

She gives me a dubious look.

I feel guilty. I've told her too many fairy stories, encouraged her to believe in all sorts of imagined things. So when Simon talks about werewolves or ghosts—like when he told her about the varou that haunts the lane to Torteval, that gobbles up bad children—she believes him.

“Witches are just stories. But my ghost is real,” she says.

“No, sweetheart. Ghosts are just stories too.” I remember how I explained it before, when I read to her from the book of Guernsey tales. “They're stories that people make up because they're afraid of the dark. Simon's been teasing you again.”

“No, he hasn't,” she says. “I saw the ghost with my
own eyes
.”

She points to her eyes with an air of triumph, as though this is conclusive proof.

“Mum,” says Blanche, “why does it matter so much? She's only a baby really. Babies believe in
everything
. Babies believe in the
tooth fairy,
” she says, with fraudulent tenderness. She puts down her book, gets up, gives Millie an extravagant hug. “Who's my ickle baby?”

“Blanche—leave her alone,” I say. “Don't be horrible.”

Millie wriggles away from her sister.

“You're
all
horrible. No one believes me,” she says. Her voice blazes with impotent anger.

She squeezes her eyes tight shut, but tears leak from her eyelids.

Chapter 51

O
UR LIVES BECOME
more constricted. There are new laws and regulations: we read about them in the
Guernsey Press.
Civilian wirelesses have been banned. The Germans are searching people's houses, and if you have kept a wireless, they will send you to prison in France.

Everyone grumbles: it's so frustrating to be deprived of news.

But Johnnie is encouraged.

“It's because the war isn't going so well for them now,” he tells me. His eyes gleam, brown and bright as autumn. He doesn't tell me directly, but I suspect they have a wireless hidden somewhere at Elm Tree Farm. “They don't want us to know. It's all about morale, Auntie.”

Johnnie amazes me, the way he can find reasons for hopefulness in anything.

The pattern of our days changes a little. Blanche rarely listens to our story in the evenings now. After tea, she likes to go up to Celeste's house, where she and Celeste will lie on the bed and flick through their copies of
Vogue,
dreaming kaleidoscope dreams of the future—a future gorgeous with pearls and lipstick and ruby-red suede court shoes.

“Mum, you'll never guess what Celeste told me,” she says one day, her voice quiet, full of secrets. “Her mum has hidden her wireless. She hasn't handed it in.”

This immediately worries me. What if the Germans find it? If the Germans come and Blanche is there, will Blanche be blamed as well? Nightmare scenes spool out in my mind, with a horrible vividness—Blanche and Celeste arrested and sent away to prison.

“But, Blanche—that's terribly dangerous, surely.”

Blanche grins.

“Not where she's keeping it,” she says. “She hides it in a coffin at Mr. Ozanne's.” Mr. Ozanne runs the funeral parlor. “Well, they're not exactly going to look there, are they?”

So now it's Blanche who keeps us up to date with the war. We hear about the battles in the desert in North Africa, and in Russia the Germans have crossed the River Don and are advancing on the great city of Stalingrad. I'm not sure that Johnnie is right: I can't find much reason for hopefulness in any of this news.

I MAKE SOME
bean flour cake with runner beans from the garden, using a recipe from the parish magazine. You dry bean pods in a slow oven, pass them through a mincer, sift them, and mince them again until they've all been turned into flour. You seem to need a lot of beans for very little flour. Then you rub fat into the flour and mix it up with milk and a little honey and sultanas, and bake it in a cake tin. The process seems to take forever.

Before the war, the girls loved the times when I took out my big yellow bowl to make cupcakes or sponge cakes. They'd help me stir the mixture, and loved to scrape out any uncooked mixture left in the bowl and to eat it as a luxurious treat. Later we'd make icing, blush-pink with cochineal, and Millie was always thrilled to hear how the color was made from crushed spiders. But neither of them is interested in the bean flour cake.

We have it for tea, after a plateful of vegetables from the garden: boiled potatoes and peas and cabbage. The cake is bland and rather grainy.

“It tastes like sawdust,” says Millie.

“You don't even know what sawdust tastes like,” says Blanche.

“I do. I
do
know. It tastes like this,” she says.

Blanche shrugs.

“Don't listen to her, Mum. It isn't that bad, really. . . . Well, not when you're famished, anyway. There are days when I feel so hungry I could eat my hair,” she says.

I know what Millie means. The cake is a bit like blotting paper: it seems to soak up all the moisture in your mouth. Perhaps I was impatient and didn't mince the beans for long enough. You chew and chew, but it takes a long time to go down. At least it's filling.

Blanche pushes her plate away and gives a little sigh.

“Sometimes I dream about food,” she says. “I had a dream about jam roll—that lovely steamed roll you used to make, the one with strawberry jam in. I could taste the jam in the dream. And sherbet—sometimes I dream of sherbet. . . .” Her voice is yearning, nostalgic. “And toffee crumble and licorice and humbugs and peppermint sticks . . .”

“
I
had a dream about treacle pudding,” says Millie, not to be outdone. “With a big, big dollop of custard.”

“What about you, Evelyn?” I ask her. “Do you dream about food?”

“I don't know really, Vivienne,” she says. “Though I do like a good roast dinner. When will we have a good roast dinner again, Vivienne?”

“It's difficult,” I tell her. “But I'll see what I can do.”

“What do you dream about, Mum?” says Blanche. “What was your best food ever?”

I think of that first bar of chocolate Gunther brought me, the velvety smoothness on my tongue, the rush of sweetness.

“I like jam roll as well,” I tell her.

When we've finished our tea, there are four slices left of the cake, and I put them in my food safe. It's in the coolest place at the very back of my larder; it has a wire-mesh door, to let in the air and keep out the flies. I keep food that has to be covered there, and my butter and milk. We'll finish the cake tomorrow.

THE NEXT EVENING,
Blanche does the ironing while I make a vegetable stew. I have spread my ironing blankets on the kitchen table for her; you can hear the hiss of the fabric, and the friendly smell of hot clean linen fills the room. Blanche irons one of her pin-tucked blouses, then shakes out the fabric and folds it, very exact. She's meticulous: I know that she'll be a much better housewife than me. She will put the blouse on after tea, to go up to Celeste's house.

When the stew is simmering, I go to the larder to fetch the slices of bean flour cake.

“No.”

The plate is empty.

“What is it, Mum?” says Blanche, alarmed.

I'm briefly afraid that my mind is going—that I'm becoming confused like Evelyn, forgetting things that I've done.

“I thought there was some of that cake left. I
know
there was,” I tell her.

There's an edge of rage in my voice. I feel a sudden surge of self-pity, my eyes filling up with hot tears. I try so hard, work so hard. And then
this.
I know it's the sudden, helpless anger that comes from being always a little too hungry, always tired. I try to push it away from me.

Blanche looks at me warily, afraid she is being accused.

“Mum, you know it wasn't me, don't you? You know I'd never do that.”

“I'm not blaming you,” I tell her.

“I know how careful we have to be, with the war and everything,” she says. “I know we can't just eat what we want.”

“Really, Blanche, I know it's not you. It's just odd, that's all. I don't understand it,” I say.

Millie, hearing our urgent voices, slips into the room.

“What's the matter, Mummy?” Her eyes are wide and curious.

“It's the bean flour cake. It's gone,” I say.

“But nobody liked it,” she says to me. “Why do you look so upset?”

“I just don't understand what's happened.”

Briefly I wonder about Millie. But she had really hated the cake. Then it enters my mind that someone might have broken into our house. That whoever broke in on that long-ago day when we nearly went on the boat—Bernie Dorey, or whoever it was—has come back and raided our larder. Though even as I think this, I know it's a crazy notion. No one has broken into our house. Nothing else is gone.