The Soldier's Wife (10 page)

Chapter 16

B
LANCHE HAS LAID
the table for tea. Everything is immaculate. She's put out the best linen napkins, with the silver napkin rings that she and Millie were given as Christening gifts. There are roses from the garden in a cut-glass vase.

“So what's all this about?” I ask her. “I mean, it's a sweet thing to do, but it doesn't happen all that often. . . .”

“Don't you like it, Mum?”

“Yes, it looks lovely,” I say. “Thank you.”

She has an eager, hopeful smile.

“Actually, there
is
something,” she tells me. Her voice is a little ingratiating—smooth as Vaseline. “I wanted to ask if I could maybe go out tonight.”

“
Out?
Of course you can't go out. Not after the curfew. Of course not, Blanche. What on earth were you thinking?” I say.

“The thing is . . .” She hesitates. “There's going to be a party at Les Brehauts,” she says. I hear a little uncertainty creeping into her voice. “Celeste and me have been invited.”

I think of Les Brehauts, the Gouberts' big whitewashed house near the church. It's double-fronted, rather splendid, with wide sleek lawns and abundant borders and whispering poplar trees. Recently, when I've cycled past, I've seen German officers on its grounds.

“So, who's giving this party, exactly?” I say. “I thought that Mr. and Mrs. Goubert had gone on the boat. I thought Les Brehauts had been requisitioned.”

Blanche draws in a breath, like someone about to dive into deep water.

“The thing is, Mum, it
has
been . . . Somebody invited us. He said it would be a good evening. There's going to be dancing. You know how I love dancing. What could happen to us exactly?” she says.

“Who is this somebody, Blanche?”

I see her throat move as she swallows. Pink spots come to her cheeks.

“He's called Tomas Kreutzer,” she says.

“Kreutzer?”

“He likes Celeste,” she goes on rapidly. “He came to the shop where she works. He wanted to get his watch mended.”

I stare at her, not quite believing what I'm hearing.

“So, the
Germans
are giving this party?”

“Celeste says Tomas is ever so polite. Really, Mum. He doesn't agree with the war. He thinks Great Britain and Germany should be allies, because we're so alike. He says we aren't like other races.”

I don't say anything.

“He was going to be an English teacher,” she says. “Well, there's nothing wrong with that, is there? That's good, isn't it? To want to be a teacher? It's not
his
fault this happened, Mum.”

I'm amazed that we're having this conversation.

“Blanche. You'd be out after curfew. You could be shot,” I say.

“Of course we won't be.” She has all the blithe certainty of youth, when you believe that nothing can touch you. “Tomas will give us a lift,” she tells me. “Tomas says it will be fine.” She comes close to me, clasps my wrist with urgent fingers. “Mum. It's just some boys and girls wanting to have a good time. It's just a party. What could be wrong with a party?”

“
No,
Blanche. You can't go.”

“The thing is, Celeste won't go without me.” She clears her throat. “I
promised
her, Mum.” She suddenly sees a new argument to try, appealing to the morality of promises. “I should keep my promises, shouldn't I? You've always said that's important. . . .”

“And what does Celeste's mother say to all this?” I ask.

“
Yes
. Definitely,” says Blanche. “I
know
she'll say yes. I mean, it's not as though there's all that much fun in our lives nowadays, is it?”

“Blanche. Of course you can't go. I'm amazed you asked. You'd be putting yourself in danger. That's the end of it.”

She can tell now that I'm not giving in. I see the bright blaze of anger in her.

“You never let me do anything.” Her voice is shrill. “You treat me like a baby.”

“Things are difficult, Blanche. You know that. We can't just do what we want.”

“I've got a job now, Mum. You can't treat me as though I'm still
three
.”

“Blanche. We're at war, for goodness' sake.”

“It's
your
war,” she says. “It's not
our
war. This stupid, stupid war . . .”

“Well, that's what we have to live with,” I say.

I glimpse Millie open-mouthed in the doorway—fascinated, appalled.

Blanche's eyes spark.

“We didn't
have
to live with it.” She's spitting out the words. “It didn't have to be like this—we could have gone on the boat. It would all have been different if only we'd gone on the boat. I would have a life then.” Bitterly.

It hurts, because there's truth in it. Probably we should have gone. Everyone got to Weymouth safely. Perhaps I was a coward. Perhaps I should have been braver. It all seemed to happen so rapidly—that sudden fork in the road when you choose one path above the other, and then there's no going back.

“Blanche, I made the best decision I could.” Wanting her to understand, wanting to justify myself to her.

“Well, it wasn't the right one, Mum. What kind of life is this, cooped up here on Guernsey?”

“I'm trying to keep us all safe,” I say.

“That's all you care about, isn't it? Keeping safe,” she says. Her eyes flare like blue gas flames. “You don't care about
living.
. . . You can't keep me shut away here forever. I've got my own life to lead.”

“Blanche—”

“I hate this stupid, stupid war.” Tears are streaming down her face. “It was just a party,” she says.

She runs off up the stairs.

TEA IS READY,
on the immaculately laid table, but Blanche stays up in her room. I knock on her door, but she says, “Go away.” She sounds as though she's still crying; there's a choke of tears in her voice. I decide to leave her for now and let her come down when she's ready.

“Blanche isn't here,” says Evelyn.

“She's not feeling well,” I tell her.

I'm glad Evelyn didn't overhear the quarrel. I know if she had she'd be giving me lots of advice: how that girl needs a good talking-to, how I shouldn't put up with her backchat, how children need plenty of discipline, they need to know where you stand.

Millie gives me a conspiratorial look from under her eyelashes. Tonight, her table manners are perfect; she has a rapt, Goody Two-shoes expression. She's relishing this unfamiliar role of being the better-behaved daughter.

After tea, I read her a bedtime story that tells of a girl who married a creature as ugly as a hedgehog, and at night he took off his coat of spines and became a handsome man. I've always loved this story, but I'm reading mechanically, not very aware of the words. The thing Blanche said is in my mind:
That's all you care about, isn't it? Keeping safe. You don't care about living.
. . . I wonder if she is right—if this is a flaw in me—remembering how when I first came to Guernsey, I embraced the restriction, the simplicity, of life here, content to live in the quiet of these secluded valleys, with my roses and my piano and my poetry books. There has always been something in me that is drawn to seclusion, to life in a small enclosed room. I'm so shy, so wary of strangers—it's as though I need to protect myself against other people, defend myself against them. Yet deep inside I know that a cloistered room, however willingly entered, will soon become a prison.

Blanche doesn't come down as she usually does, to half listen to the story and flick through old copies of
Vogue
.

Once I've heard Millie's prayers and tucked her in, I go to Blanche's door. This time I will walk in and speak to her, whatever she says. I hate it when there's trouble between us. I'm longing to patch up the quarrel, now she's had time to calm down.

I knock, but there's no answer.

“Blanche?”

I half open the door, say her name again. My voice falls into silence.

I walk right into the room.

Oh God. No
.

The room is empty, and I see with a thud of my heart that her window is flung wide. You could climb out there and clamber down onto the roof of the shed, and from there down into the garden, and leave without being seen.

I can't believe she's defied me like this. I'm so angry with her, so frightened for her.

Chapter 17

M
Y PULSE RACES
off; I'm full of a desperate energy. All I can think is that I have to find her and bring her back and keep her here, where she's safe. Evelyn and Millie are both in bed; I can leave them. The light is thickening already, sepia shadows gathering in the corners of the house, and I remember what Captain Richter said:
You know about the curfew. Don't put us in a difficult position.
. . . I can see his stern mouth, as thin as the gash of a razor. But I push the thought away. I can walk through the fields to Les Brehauts, and nobody will see me. I will find her and bring her home again.

I cross the lane, walk through my orchard, along the hem of the wood. On the other side of the wood, the fields belong to Peter Mahy. I walk along the narrow track that leads across his land. The sky is a lavish ultramarine, and the unshadowed parts of the fields are bleached and colorless in the twilight. The rabbits that dart and skitter there are absolutely black, as though they are made of darkness, and shadow laps at the foot of Peter's broken-down barn, like a pool of deep water.

When I come to the field below Les Brehauts, I can hear music from the party, spooling out over the quiet land like a roll of bright silk flung out. “I've Got You Under My Skin.” I'm startled that they listen to the exact same music as we do, these people we are at war with. Somehow I hadn't expected that.

Down below Les Brehauts, there's a wrought-iron gate in the hedge that opens into their garden. I look up the long slope of lawn that leads to the back of the house, where there are graceful French windows and a terrace. I slip through the gate, walk silently up the garden between the herbaceous borders; dahlias hang their heavy heads, paled to the color of milk in the dusk. The perfumes of the garden wrap themselves around me.

I stop at the foot of the terrace. From here I can see in: the blackout curtains have been rather carelessly pulled. I stare into the lighted room. This is the big drawing room across the back of the house. Mrs. Goubert used to invite the whole congregation in here after the carol service at Christmas, to eat apple gâche and drink mulled wine and talk about island affairs. The room has been utterly changed—the carpet rolled up, all the furniture pushed to the sides—to make a dance floor. On the sideboard there are bottles of claret, and delicate crystal glasses that have an opulent gleam. Several couples are dancing. The men are all Germans in uniform, the girls all island girls. One of the men is winding up the gramophone. Celeste is there, dancing the Charleston with a tall German boy: I imagine this must be Tomas, her boyfriend. She is wearing a dress that is the rich, extravagant blue of cornflowers; it's made of some glossy fabric that swings out with her movement and catches the light. There's a faint gleam of sweat on her forehead; everything about her is gleaming. For a moment I can't see Blanche, then I spot her by the piano, which has been pushed to the side. She's talking to a solid young man, who is looking at her intently. She's wearing her taffeta dress, and one of her two good pairs of stockings, and her favorite coral necklace, and her lips are very red: she has put on the lipstick I bought for her. She's holding a glass of wine, though she isn't used to drinking. Now and then she drinks the wine in small, hurried sips, running a finger up and down the stem of the glass. She looks flushed and scared and happy. She makes me think of a fawn that might startle and skitter away.

I try to imagine walking in there, to tell her she has to come home. I see I was wrong, to think I could do that—that it was
right
to do that. I realize that all the anger and fear have left me. I feel a little foolish, that I ever thought such things. I watch her a moment longer, and a feeling falls over me like a fisherman's net, captures me—a confused emotion, bittersweet, a little like grief, yet not that. My eyes fill up. I hear her words in my mind:
You can't keep me here forever. I've got my own life to lead
. I know what this moment is—the moment every mother faces. This is when my daughter leaves me, when she steps out into the stream, steps into her own life. And so much about it is wrong: this setting—the Occupation, the war. But it still has to happen. She has to make her own choices now. I know that I have to let her go, that I can't stop her, shouldn't stop her.

In the room, the man beside the gramophone kneels down to change the record. More Cole Porter: “Night and Day.” More couples take to the floor, though Blanche is still talking to the young man by the piano. I watch the dancers a little longer. If I half close my eyes, the room is just a hectic, glamorous blur, a kaleidoscope of color. I can't make out the enemy uniforms, all the things that jar—it's just young men and women dancing.

I walk silently back through the darkening meadows, the music singing in my mind. Above me, the moon is rising, and the night wind in the leaves of the wood is one long indrawn breath.

Chapter 18

I
PASS INTO MY
orchard between the quiet old trees, whose branches are bending already with the weight of swelling fruit. I am safe at last: no one will find me here. I only have to cross the lane, and I will be home.

“Mrs. de la Mare.”

A sudden voice in the darkness behind me. No footfall.

I'm so frightened. All the fear that I try to keep tamped down leaps up at me out of the night.

I spin around.

“Mrs. de la Mare,” he says again.

It's one of the men from Les Vinaires. Not Captain Richter, who warned me about the curfew. It's the other man, the one I saw in the lane, the one with the scar. His face is shadowed, and I can't see his expression. He's standing now, but he must have been sitting on a tree stump when I passed him; that's why I didn't see him. All the detail of his uniform is blotted out by the dark.

“Oh,” I say.

I bite my lip to stop it trembling. I hope he didn't see my fear. I desperately don't want him to see it.

“You shouldn't be out, Mrs. de la Mare. It's ten o'clock. It's after the curfew,” he says.

“I know. I'm really sorry. But there was something I needed to do,” I say.

I'm shaking. I think, Why is he here in my orchard? Was he waiting for me? These questions frighten me. I force myself to breathe, drawing all the chill sweetness of the night air into me.

“Whatever it was could have waited,” he says. “There are penalties. You shouldn't forget that.”

I dig my fingernails into my palms to try to keep myself from trembling. I think, Perhaps if I explain, perhaps then he won't be angry.

“I walked over to Les Brehauts,” I say. “To the party. My daughter's there.”

He doesn't say anything. He waits. I can hear the distant murmuring of water, from the little stream in the Blancs Bois and the stream that runs down the lane. And I can hear his breathing, and the quiet click as he clears his throat.

“I walked through the fields,” I tell him, “and I thought that no one would see.” I won't—maybe
couldn't
—explain what happened. “I wanted to see where she was. I wanted to know she was safe.” The words come tumbling out; my voice is shaky and shrill.

“Your daughter Blanche?” he says.

“Yes.”

I'm disconcerted that he knows her name, as though it is something he has stolen from us. But of course he must have noticed us, must have heard me talk to her, looking out over our yard from the window of Les Vinaires. The thought of him watching us troubles me. I wonder what else he has learned about us.

The white raw moonlight falls around us; the darkness under the trees is deep, and fretted at the edges with the cut-paper shadows of leaves. I can't see his expression, and I don't think he can see mine. When he turns toward me, his face is entirely in shadow.

“You don't need to worry about her. One of the boys will give her a lift at the end of the evening,” he says.

I feel his eyes on me.

“The thing is—she's only fourteen,” I say. “I wasn't happy with her going. She shouldn't have gone.” Then I wonder why I said that. Showing him my weakness, that my daughter has defied me. “I just wanted to see that she was all right. . . .” My voice trails off, feebly.

“And what did you see, at Les Brehauts?” he asks me.

I think, What did I see? I think of Celeste in her cornflower dress, with all the shine spilling from it; of Blanche leaning on the piano, flushed, a little scared; of all the young men in their uniforms. Of the loveliness, and all the wrongness, of it. All these thoughts are muddled up in my head, confusing me. I don't say anything.

“I hope it wasn't too alarming,” he says. There's a thread of amusement in his voice.

“They were dancing,” I say stupidly.

“Stefan has a lot of gramophone records,” he says. “Stefan likes Cole Porter.”

I notice the way he calls the man by his Christian name, to me. Not calling him by his surname and rank. It isn't casual: I know that this is some kind of concession he's making.

“Perhaps a cigarette?” he says.

He takes out a packet of Gauloises and offers me one. This startles me. Then I think, If I were in trouble, would he be offering this to me? Perhaps he isn't going to do anything too dreadful.

I hesitate. I know I shouldn't accept anything from him. But here in the dark of the orchard it doesn't seem to matter. It's just a cigarette. My hands are still trembling as I take it, and I know he sees this.

He takes out his lighter and leans in toward me; his face is close to mine. He has a faint scent of the day—of leather, sweat, of the smoky rooms he has been in. He cups his hand against the night breeze. In the flare of the flame, his skin is briefly, startlingly red. I see the knotted veins, the pale hairs on the backs of his hands.

I usually smoke Craven A. I inhale and cough like a girl. I'm embarrassed.

“It is too strong for you?” he says.

“No. It's all right,” I tell him.

I'm grateful for the taste of tobacco on my lips, on my tongue. The smoke rises up between us, like breath on a white morning.

“Your husband is fighting, Mrs. de la Mare?” he says.

“Yes.”

“I also am married, and I have one son,” he tells me. “Hermann.” His voice smudges, softens. I hear the tenderness in it. I'm surprised that he's telling me so much. “He is fighting. He is in the Luftwaffe. He is seventeen, just three years older than Blanche.”

“He seems so young to be fighting. I always feel that—seventeen is so young,” I say.

“Yes, it is young,” he says.

“You must be very proud of him,” I go on, unthinkingly. It's how you always respond when someone speaks of a son at war. Then all the crassness of my remark slams into me. This son of his—the son that he loves so deeply that his voice is softened as he speaks his name—this son is bombing our airfields. I feel I have betrayed something.

He's watching me, as if he's trying to read my thoughts in my face. “Yes, I am proud of him,” he says. “We are all proud of our children, are we not, Mrs. de la Mare?”

“Yes.”

He shifts a little. I hear the creak of his boots as he moves, and the crunch of dried-out apple leaves under his feet. A bat flits around us, too small to be properly seen, elusive as a half-formed thought.

“When did you last see your husband?” he asks me.

“He joined up last September,” I say. “He was home on leave a few months ago. But I don't suppose I'll see him again now—until the war is over.”

“You must miss him.”

“Yes.”

I take a breath, as though to say more, then stop.

I feel him reading something into my hesitation. The silence spills over between us and scares me. I want to, have to, break it; but I don't know what to say. Nothing feels safe to me.

“These are complicated times,” he says. “For all of us.”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, they are.” Grateful.

The moonlight falls on him briefly, and I can see the scar on his face. A thought sneaks into my head—a startling curiosity, wondering how that scar would feel to the touch. Thinking that, it's as though I can feel it, under the tips of my fingers, the different texture where the skin is frail and glossy and stretched. I feel a jolt of desire—so out of place, it makes me breathless, all the wrongness of it. Around us, the streams cry out with a hundred little voices.

“My name is Gunther Lehmann. You should call me Gunther,” he says.

As though we may speak again. But we won't, I tell myself. It will never happen again.

I know he expects me to tell him my name. But I have given too much away already.

“I must go in now,” I tell him.

“Yes. Of course,” he says.

I leave him there with his cigarette, under my apple trees. I feel his eyes on me as I walk across the lane, which is shining like a river in the moonlight. My body feels clumsy, strange, as though it's fixed together wrongly. I pass through my gate and, gratefully, into the familiar gloom of my house.

I SIT IN
the kitchen and wait for Blanche. I don't turn on the light, just sit there. The moonlight slides into the room, and the ordinary things look changed, unreal, in its cool whiteness.

After a while, I hear the man's slow footsteps crossing the road, then on around the corner to the gate to Les Vinaires. I wonder what he was thinking, all the time he stayed there smoking in my moonlit orchard.

At last, I hear a car pull up in the lane. I hear Blanche's cheery “Good night” and the banging of the car door. She comes in, silently, takes off her shoes at the door, puts them down softly. She doesn't see me.

“Blanche.”

She turns; she's flinching. It's as though she's afraid I will hit her, though that's something I've never done.

I switch on the light. She blinks, dazed by the sudden brightness.

“You shouldn't have gone when I told you you couldn't,” I say. “That was wrong of you.”

She nods. She says nothing. She has a puzzled look. Things are not happening quite as she expected them to happen.

“Was it a good party?” I ask her.

“It was quite nice,” she says carefully. I can smell the wine on her breath, and the hazy scent of French cigarettes that hangs about her. Her gestures are loose and fluid, her eyes very bright, her lips and teeth stained mulberry dark with wine. “It felt a bit funny, talking to the German boys,” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes. I can see that it would.”

“Though I think you could get used to it,” she tells me. “After a while, you wouldn't think it was odd.”

I don't say anything.

“I met a friend of Tomas's, his name was Karl,” she tells me. “He comes from Berlin. It was sad, he told me how his little sister died. It was in a bombing raid. He showed me her picture and I couldn't believe she was dead. She had little pigtails. . . .” She moves her hand over her face, cautiously, as though her features might surprise her. “He was trying not to cry when he told me,” she says.

“Blanche, you are never to go out again without telling me,” I say.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I know. I'm sorry.”

“I need to know where you are. If you want to go to one of those parties again, we'll talk about it.”

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, of course.”

She turns to go, anxious to reach the safety of her bedroom while I'm still conciliatory.

I TAKE EVELYN
her morning tea and toast. She's sitting up in bed, waiting, in her tea-rose silk bedjacket, her back as straight as a reed. She has an air of triumph; there's something she's longing to tell me.

“Someone came in late last night. A little bird told me,” she says.

Immediately I imagine that she saw me and Captain Lehmann in the orchard. Guilt washes through me.

“Someone came in late. I heard the car in the lane. . . . I'm not surprised you look worried, Vivienne.”

I feel a rush of relief. Evelyn's room looks out over the lane; perhaps the car would have woken her.

“Blanche went out,” I tell her. “There was a party. She's young, she needs to get out.”

“I hope she wasn't doing what she shouldn't,” she says.

I smile at the old-fashioned phrase.

“I'm sure she wasn't,” I say. “She went with Celeste, her friend. You know how Blanche loves dancing.”

Evelyn is quiet for a moment. Then her eyes seem to glaze over. The thread of the conversation has slipped from her grasp.

“Someone came in late,” she says, looping back.

“Yes. But everything's fine,” I tell her.

“It's all such a muddle. It's so confusing, Vivienne. I don't like it being confusing.”

“Try not to worry,” I tell her.

She picks up her teacup. Her hand is unsteady: the tea in the teacup trembles.

“What are we coming to, Vivienne? Where will it end?”

To that I have no answer.