The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (24 page)

Dear Juliet,

You know Sidney doesn't keep your letters clasped to his heart; he leaves them open on his desk for anyone to see, so of course I read them.

I am writing to reassure you about Billee Bee's errand-running. Sidney doesn't ask her. She begs to perform any little service she can for him, or you, or ‘that dear child'. She all but coos at him and I all but gag at her. She wears a little angora cap with a chin-bow—the kind that Sonja Henie skates in. Need I say more?

Also, contrary to what Sidney thinks, she isn't an angel straight from heaven, she's from an
employment agency
. Meant to be
temporary
, she has dug herself in—and is now indispensable and
permanent
. Can't you think of some living creature Kit would like to have from the Galapagos? Billee Bee would sail
on the next tide for it—and be gone for months. Possibly for ever, if some animal there would just eat her.

All my best to you and Kit.

Susan

From Isola to Sidney
5th August 1946

Dear Sidney,

I know it was you who sent
The New Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Psychiatry: with Size and Shape Tables and Over One Hundred Illustrations
. It is a very useful book and I thank you for it. I've been studying hard, so now I can finger through a whole headful of bumps without peeking into the book more than three or four times. I hope to make a mint for the church at Harvest Festival, as who would not desire to have their innermost workings—good and rotten—revealed by the Science of Phrenology? No one, that's who.

It's a real lightning bolt, this Science of Phrenology. I've found out more in the last three days than I knew in my whole life before. Mrs Gilbert has always been a nasty one, but now I know that she can't help it—she's got a big pit in her Benevolence spot. She fell into the quarry when she was a girl, and my guess is she cracked her Benevolence and was never the same since.

Even my own friends are full of surprises. Eben is garrulous! I never would have thought it of him, but he's got bags under his eyes and there's no two ways about it. I broke it to him gently. Juliet didn't want to have her bumps read at first, but she agreed when I told her that she was standing in the way of Science. She's awash in Amativeness, is Juliet. Also Conjugal
Love. I told her it was a wonder she wasn't married, with such great mounds.

Will cackled, ‘Your Mr Stark will be a lucky man, Juliet!' Juliet blushed red as a tomato, and I was tempted to say he didn't know much because Mr Stark is a homosexual, but I pulled myself together and kept your secret like I promised.

Dawsey up and left then, so I never got to his lumps but I'll pin him down soon. I think I don't understand Dawsey sometimes. For a while there he was downright chatty, but these days he doesn't have two words to rub together.

Thank you again for the fine book.

Your friend,

Isola

Telegram from Sidney to Juliet
6th August 1946

Bought a small bagpipe for Dominic at Gunther's yesterday
STOP
Would Kit like one
STOP
Let me know soonest as they have only one left
STOP
How's the writing
STOP
Love to you and Kit
STOP
Sidney

From Juliet to Sidney
7th August 1946

Dear Sidney,

Kit would love a bagpipe. I would not.

I think the work is going splendidly, but I'd like to send you the first two chapters—I won't feel
settled
until you've read them. Do you have time?

Every biography should be written within a generation of its subject's life, while he or she is still in living memory. Think what I could have done for Anne Brontë if I'd been able to speak to her neighbours. Perhaps she wasn't really meek and melancholy—perhaps she had a screaming temper and dashed crockery to the floor regularly once a week.

Every day I learn something new about Elizabeth. How I wish I had known her myself! As I write, I catch myself thinking of her as a friend, remembering things she did as though I'd been there—she's so full of life that I have to remind myself that she's dead, and then I feel the wrench of losing her again.

I heard a story about her today that made me want to lie down and weep. We had supper with Eben this evening, and afterwards Eli and Kit went out to dig for worms (a task best done by the light of the moon). Eben and I took our coffee outside, and for the first time he chose to talk about Elizabeth to me.

It happened at the school where Eli and the other children were waiting for the Evacuation ships. Eben wasn't there, because the families were not allowed, but Isola saw it happen, and she told him about it that night.

She said that the room was full of children, and Elizabeth was buttoning up Eli's coat when he told her he was scared of getting on the boat—leaving his mother and his home. If their ship
was
bombed, he asked, who would he say goodbye to? Isola said that Elizabeth took her time, as if she was studying his question. Then she pulled up her jumper and unpinned something from her blouse. It was her father's medal from the first war and she always wore it.

She held it in her hand and explained to him that it was a magic badge, that nothing bad could happen to him while
he wore it. Then she got Eli to spit on it twice to call up the charm. Isola saw Eli's face over Elizabeth's shoulder and told Eben that it had that beautiful light children have before the Age of Reason gets at them.

Of all the things that happened during the war, sending children away to try to keep them safe was surely the most terrible. I don't know how the parents endured it. It defies the animal instinct to protect your young. I see myself becoming bearlike around Kit. Even when I'm not actually watching her, I'm watching her. If she's in any sort of danger (which she often is, given her taste in climbing), my hackles rise—I didn't even know I
had
hackles before—and I run to rescue her. When her enemy, the Vicar's nephew, threw plums at her, I roared at him. And through some queer sort of intuition I always know where she is, just as I know where my hands are—and if I didn't, I'd be ill with worry. This is how the species survives, I suppose, but the war put a spanner in all that. How did the mothers of Guernsey live, not knowing where their children were? I can't imagine.

Love,

Juliet

P.S. What about a flute?

From Juliet to Sophie
9th August 1946

Darling Sophie,

What marvellous news—a new baby! Wonderful! I do hope you won't have to eat dry biscuits and suck lemons this time. I know you two don't care which/what/who you have, but I would love a girl. To that end, I am knitting a tiny matinee
jacket and hat in pink wool. Of course Alexander is delighted, but what about Dominic?

I told Isola your news, and I'm afraid she may send you a bottle of her Pre-Birthing Tonic. Sophie—please don't drink it, and don't dispose of it where the dogs might find it. There may not be anything actually poisonous in tonics, but I don't think you should take any chances.

Your enquiries about Dawsey are misdirected. Send them to Kit—or Remy. I hardly see the man any more, and when I do, he's silent. Not silent in a romantic, brooding way, like Mr Rochester, but in a grave and sober way that indicates disapproval. I don't know what the matter is, I really don't. When I arrived in Guernsey, Dawsey was my friend. We talked about Charles Lamb and we walked all over the Island together. I enjoyed his company as much as that of anyone I've ever known. Then, after that appalling night on the cliffs, he stopped talking—to me, anyway. It's been a terrible disappointment. I miss the sense that we understood each other, but I'm beginning to think that was only my delusion all along.

Not being silent myself, I am wildly curious about people who are. As Dawsey doesn't talk about himself—doesn't talk at all to me—I was reduced to questioning Isola about his head bumps in order to find out about his past. But Isola is beginning to fear that the bumps may lie after all, and she offered as proof the fact that Dawsey's violence-prone node isn't as big as it should be, given that he nearly beat Eddie Meares to death!!! Those exclamation marks are mine. Isola seemed to think nothing of it.

It seems that Eddie Meares was big and nasty and gave/traded/sold information to the German authorities in exchange for favours. Everyone knew, which didn't seem to bother him, since he'd go to a bar to show off his new wealth: a loaf of
white bread, cigarettes, silk stockings—which, he said, any girl on the Island would be grateful for.

A week after Elizabeth and Peter were arrested, he was showing off a silver cigarette case, hinting that it was a reward for reporting some goings-on he'd seen at Peter Sawyer's house. Dawsey heard about it and went to Mad Bella's the next night. Apparently, he walked up to Eddie Meares, grabbed him by the shirt collar, lifted him up off his stool and began banging his head on the bar. He called Eddie a lousy little shit, pounding his head down between each word. Then they set to it on the floor.

According to Isola, Dawsey was a mess: nose, mouth bleeding, one eye swollen shut, one rib cracked—but Eddie Meares was a bigger mess: two black eyes, two ribs broken, and stitches. The Court sentenced Dawsey to three months in the Guernsey jail, though they let him out after one. The Germans needed the space for more serious criminals—like Black Marketeers and the thieves who stole petrol from army lorries. ‘And to this day, when Eddie Meares spies Dawsey coming through the door of Mad Bella's, his eyes go shifty, he spills his beer and not five minutes later, he's darting out the back door,' Isola concluded.

Naturally I was agog and begged for more. As she's disillusioned with bumps, Isola moved on to actual facts. Dawsey didn't have a very happy childhood. His father died when he was eleven, and Mrs Adams, who'd always been sickly, grew odd. She became fearful, first of going into town, then of going into her own garden, and finally she wouldn't leave the house at all. She would just sit in the kitchen, rocking and staring out at nothing Dawsey could ever see. She died shortly after the war began. Isola said that what with all this—his mother, farming, and stuttering so badly—he'd always been
shy, and never, except for Eben, had any ready-made friends. Isola and Amelia were acquainted with him, but that was about all.

That was how it was until Elizabeth came—and made him be friends. Forced him, really, into the Literary Society. And then, Isola said, how he blossomed! Now he had books to talk about instead of swine fever—and friends to talk to. The more he talked, the less he stuttered.

He's a mysterious creature, isn't he? Perhaps he
is
like Mr Rochester, and has a secret sorrow. Or a mad wife down in his cellar. Anything is possible, I suppose, but it would have been difficult to feed a mad wife on one set of ration coupons during the war. Oh dear, I wish we were friends again. (Dawsey and I, not the mad wife.)

I meant to have done with Dawsey in a terse sentence or two, but I see that he's taken several sheets. Now I must rush to make myself presentable for tonight's meeting of the Society. I have one decent skirt to my name, and I have been feeling dowdy. Remy, for all she's so frail and thin, manages to look stylish at every turn. What is it about French women?

More anon.

Love,

Juliet

From Juliet to Sidney
11th August 1946

Dear Sidney,

I am happy that you are happy with my progress on Elizabeth's biography. But more about that later—because I have something to tell you that simply cannot wait. I hardly
dare believe it myself, but it's true. I saw it with my own eyes! If, and mind you only if, I am correct, Stephens & Stark will have the publishing coup of the century. Papers will be written, degrees granted, and Isola will be pursued by every scholar, university, library, and filthy-rich private collector in the Western hemisphere.

Here are the facts—Isola was to speak at last night's Society meeting on
Pride and Prejudice
, but Ariel ate her notes just before supper. So, in lieu of Jane, and in a desperate hurry, she grabbed some letters written to her dear Granny Pheen (short for Josephine). They, the letters, made up a kind of story.

She pulled them out of her pocket, and Will Thisbee, seeing them swathed in pink silk and tied with a satin bow, cried out, ‘Love letters, I'll be bound! Will there be secrets? Intimacies? Should gentlemen leave the room?'

Isola told him to be quiet and sit down. She said they were letters to her Granny Pheen from a very kind man—a stranger—received when she was but a little girl. Granny had kept them in a biscuit tin and had often read them to Isola as a bedtime story. Sidney, there were eight letters, and I'm not going to attempt to describe their contents to you—I'd fail miserably.

Isola told us that when Granny Pheen was nine years old, her father drowned her cat. Muffin had apparently climbed on to the table and licked the butter dish. That was enough for Pheen's beastly father—he thrust Muffin into a sack, added some rocks, tied up the sack, and flung Muffin into the sea. Then, meeting Pheen walking home from school, he told her what he'd done—and good riddance, too. He then toddled off to the tavern and left Granny sitting in the middle of the road, sobbing her heart out.

A carriage, driving far too fast, came within a whisker of running her down. The coachman rose from his seat and began to curse her, but his passenger, a very big man in a dark coat with a fur collar, jumped out. He told the driver to be quiet, leaned over Pheen, and asked if he could help her. Granny Pheen said no, no—she was beyond help. Her cat was gone! Her dad had drowned Muffin, and now Muffin was dead—dead and gone for ever.