The Soldier's Wife (3 page)

Chapter 5

T
HE STREETS OF
St. Peter Port are quiet. Some of the shops are boarded up, and there's a lot of litter lying, and shifting slightly in little eddies of air. The sky has clouded over, so it has a smudged, bleary look, like window glass that needs cleaning. It's a gray, dirty, rather disconsolate day.

Frank drops us at the harbor, wishing us luck.

We see at once why the streets were empty: all the people are here. There's already a very long queue of silent, anxious islanders, snaking back from the pier and all along the Esplanade. We go to a desk set up on the pavement, where a flustered woman ticks our names off a list. She has a pink, mottled face, and disordered hair that she keeps distractedly pushing out of her eyes.

We join the queue. People are sweating in woolen coats too cumbersome to pack up: they take out their handkerchiefs, wipe the damp from their skin. On this clammy summer day, the winter colors of the coats look somber, almost funereal. Some people don't have suitcases and have tied up their belongings in neat brown-paper parcels. A bus arrives, and children spill down the steps. Most of them have labels carefully pinned to their coats. They have a lost, dazed look in their eyes. Older children officiously clutch at younger brothers and sisters, responsibility weighing on them, clasping at a coat collar or the cuff of a sleeve.

Millie stares at the children. She frowns. She holds very tight to my hand.

Blanche is wearing her coral taffeta dress beneath her winter coat. She unbuttons her coat and runs her hand over her skirt, trying to smooth out the creases in the glossy fabric.

“Oh
no,
Mum,” she says suddenly.

Her voice is full of drama; my heart pounds, hurting my chest.

“What is it?” I say sharply.

“I think I've forgotten my Vaseline. My skin will get all chapped.”

I feel a little cross with her, that she frightened me like that.

“It doesn't matter,” I say. “We're all sure to have forgotten something.”

“It
does
matter, Mum. It
does
.”

We stand there for what seems like a very long time. The queue is orderly, subdued. Nobody talks very much. Seagulls scream in the empty air above us, and there are many boats at anchor; you can hear the nervous slap and jostle of water around their hulls. The sun comes briefly out from the cloud, throwing light at everything, then rapidly snatching it back; where the sun isn't shining on it, the sea looks black and unspeakably cold. I can't see the boat that will take us to Weymouth—it must be moored out of sight. The only vessel that's moored to this part of the pier is quite a small boat, not much bigger than the fishermen use, tied up where stone steps lead down from the pier to the sea. I wonder vaguely who it belongs to.

More and more people come, with their coats, their suitcases, their bulging parcels of precious belongings; with the fear that seems to seep like sweat from their pores.

“Will I have my own room at Auntie Iris's?” Blanche asks me.

“No, sweetheart. It'll be a crush. You'll probably have to sleep in the back bedroom with the boys.”

“Oh,” she says, digesting this. It isn't quite what she'd hoped for. “Well, I don't mind. It might be quite fun, really, sharing a room.”

“What does London look like?” says Millie.

“You'll love it,” says Blanche. She relishes being asked this, being the expert on London. “The women have beautiful clothes, and the trains go under the ground, and there's a park with pelicans. . . .”

I understand Blanche's yearning for London: sometimes I long for it too, even after all these years away. I remember the sense of possibility—of a world that's freer, wider, more open than this island. I share her excitement for a moment, allowing myself a spark of hope—that there could be good things about this, in spite of the war. A new freedom.

“Can we go and see Buckingham Palace?” says Millie.

She has a Buckingham Palace jigsaw that Evelyn gave her for Christmas.

“I'm sure we will,” I say.

To my relief, the queue begins to edge forward. Then I see that the people at the front are going down the steps from the pier and over a gangplank onto the boat. The small boat. It can't be. They can't expect us to go in that, all the way to England.

“What is it, Mum?” says Blanche, urgently. She's heard my quick inbreath.

“Nothing, sweetheart.”

She follows my gaze.

“It isn't a very big boat, Mum.” A little uncertain.

“No. But I'm sure it will be fine. I'm sure they know what they're doing.”

She hears the apprehension in my voice. She gives me a questioning look.

The queue inches forward, silently.

In front of me is a solid middle-aged woman. Around her neck she wears a fox fur, which has a glass-bead eye, a predatory mouth, a lush russet tail hanging down. Millie is intrigued: she stares at the fox. A smell of mothballs hangs about the woman; she will have taken her best winter clothes out of storage. Next to her is her husband, who seems rather passive and cowed. You can tell she's the one who makes the decisions.

“Sorry to bother you,” I say.

She turns and gives a slight smile, approving of my children.

“It was just that I was wondering—is that the boat?” I say.

“Well, that's what it looks like,” she says.

She obviously takes trouble over her appearance; she has plucked her eyebrows out then penciled them carefully in, and her face is heavily powdered. Her hat is fixed with a silver hat pin like a pansy flower.

“We'll never all get on that,” I say. “They should have sent something bigger. Didn't they realize how many of us there would be?”

The woman shrugs.

“To be honest—excuse my language—I don't think they give a damn about us, in England,” she says.

“But—you'd think they'd have sent some soldiers. I mean, there's no protection for us. We could meet anything on the journey.”

“We're expendable, let's face it,” says the woman. “They've given us up for lost. Well, I suppose Mr. Churchill's got an awful lot of things on his mind.”

She's sardonic, resigned. I wish I could be like that—perhaps it's a good way to be: not to expect very much, not to struggle against what is happening. But she doesn't have children with her.

She pulls out the hat pin and fans her face with her hat. Sweat has made thin runnels in the powder on her face. She turns back to her husband.

Panic moves through me. Everything feels so unguessably fragile, so opened up to disaster—the bodies of my children, the flimsy little boat. I have to protect my children, I have to keep them safe; but I don't know how to do that. I think of the boat, packed tight with all these people, edging its way across the wideness of sea, all that shining waste of water between us and Weymouth; of the dark secret threat that lurks in the depths of the sea.

I'm scarcely aware of the moment of decision, as though I perform the action almost before I think the thought. I find myself pulling Millie out of the queue, dumping the bags down beside her.

“Stay there,” I tell her.

I go to grab Blanche's arm.

“Mum. What on earth are you doing?”

“We're going back home,” I tell her.

“Mum.” Her voice is splintered with panic. “We'll lose our place in the queue.”

“We're going home,” I say again.

“But, Mum—you said we had to go
now,
or we couldn't go at all.” Her eyes are wide, afraid.

Millie tries to pick up her carpet bag, but she's only holding one handle. The bag falls open and all her things tumble out: her knickers and liberty bodices, her candy-stripe pajamas, her beloved rag doll—all her possessions, intimate, lollipop-bright, spewing out all over the grubby stone of the pier. She starts to cry, shuddery, noisy sobs. She's frightened and cross, and ashamed that she made the things spill.

“Shut up, Millie. You're such a crybaby,” says Blanche.

Millie, outraged, sobs more loudly. There's a slight cold drizzle of rain.

I gather up Millie's things and try to brush the dirt off them. Everyone's eyes are on us.

“Mum, you can't do this,” hisses Blanche, in an intense whisper. She's torn—desperate to make me listen, yet mortified at being involved in such a public scene. “We've got to get to England.”

“The boat's too small. It isn't safe,” I say.

The rain comes on more heavily. Rainwater soaks my hair, runs down my part, runs down my face like tears.

“But nothing's safe anymore,” she says.

I have nothing to say to that.

“And I want to go. I want to go to London.” Her voice is shrill. “You
said
we were going to go. You
said
.”

I'm trying to gather up Millie's things.

“Blanche, for God's sake, just grow up. This isn't all about you. Can't you think of somebody else for once?”

Immediately I've said it, I regret it. I shouldn't have told her off like that. I have snatched her dream away from her: I know she's upset, and afraid. But the words hang between us, sharp as blades, and I can't take them back.

I straighten up, put my hand on her shoulder. She shakes me off and stands a little aside, as though she is nothing to do with us. Her face is a papier-mâché mask: it's set and white and looks about to dissolve.

I usher the girls past the queue of people. I don't know how to get home, I haven't thought this through, haven't thought beyond this moment—just wanting to turn my back on the boat, the journey, the treacherous heave and shine of the sea.

We walk along the Esplanade, heading away from the pier. I don't know if there are any buses going to St. Pierre du Bois. Maybe all the buses are busy bringing the children here, to the harbor. The mist and rain are blowing in so you can't see far over the water, the horizon edging nearer, everything closing in, closing down. They'll have a wet, choppy crossing.

And then, with a rush of relief, I see a vehicle I recognize: it's Angie's brother, Jack Bisson, in his ramshackle van. Jack works as a handyman; like Angie, he's resourceful, he can fix anything—burst pipes, loose slates, a cow that's struggling to calve. I wave, and he comes to a stop beside us and winds his window down.

“We were going to go and then we decided not to,” I say.

“
She
decided not to,” Blanche mutters behind me. “Not us.
Her
.”

Jack has quick dark eyes like a sparrow and Angie's warm wide smile. His birdlike gaze flits over us. He nods, accepting what I've said.

“Mr. Bisson—I know it's an awful lot to ask—but I don't suppose you're going our way? You couldn't give us a lift?”

“Of course I could do that, Mrs. de la Mare. Just you hop in,” he tells us.

He drops us in the lane just above Le Colombier.

Chapter 6

A
LL I CAN
think is how much I want to get home.

We come to the wide five-bar gate that opens into our yard. The gate is unfastened. I must have left it like that—not noticing that I hadn't fastened it in our rush to leave. But I'm surprised I was so careless.

I go to the door: it's half ajar. I feel my pulse skittering off.

“What's the matter, Mummy?” says Millie.

“I'm not sure. You two can wait out here for a moment,” I tell them.

“Why?” says Blanche. “It's our home. And it's raining, Mum, in case you hadn't noticed.”

“Just do as you're told,” I say.

Blanche flinches.

I step cautiously into the passage, then into the kitchen. Fear rushes through me. Someone has broken into our house. My kitchen is wrecked, the cupboard doors flung open, my pottery jars broken, flour and raisins and biscuits all over the floor.

“Hello?”

My shrill voice echoes.

I stand silently for a moment and listen for running footsteps, my heart thudding. But the house has an empty, frail stillness: whoever did this has gone. I step warily into the living room. All my precious music is scattered, the sheets of paper like white petals from some great blossoming tree that a wind has shaken. The cabinet is open, and they've taken some of the china, and the Staffordshire dogs and the eggcups from the mantelpiece have gone.

The girls come cautiously into the house to find me.

“No.”
Blanche's voice is freighted with tears. “I told you, Mum. We did the wrong thing. We should never have come back,” she says.

“The Germans are thieves,” says Millie severely. “I hate them.”

“This wasn't the Germans,” I tell her. “The Germans haven't come.” I only just manage not to add
yet
. I swallow down the word.

“It
was
the Germans,” says Millie. It's so simple for her. “They're robbers. They've taken our china dogs. They shouldn't have.”

“No, sweetheart. It must have been someone who lives around here who did this.”

There's the crunch of something broken, splintering under my feet. I kneel, pick up a china shard. It's from one of the flowered teacups I brought all the way from London, that I always kept for best and only used for Sunday tea, because I was scared they might get damaged. Now I see I was wrong. I should have made the most of the flowery cups while I could.

“I bet it was Bernie Dorey,” says Blanche. “I've seen him and his gang around here sometimes. He was in the same class as me at school, his family are all horrible. He used to nick my satchel and he never brushed his teeth.”

“We don't know who it was,” I say.

The thought appalls me—that somebody was just waiting for us to leave, watching the house and scheming and taking their chance. Seeking a way to profit from the anarchy of war. And I'm upset by the destructiveness of it, all the spilt flour and the breakage, as though it was just a game to them.

Blanche is seized with anger—that nothing has happened as she dreamed it.

“You see, Mum? I was right, we should have gone to England. We could be on the boat by now. We could be sailing.” Her eyes are hard as blue flints. “It's going to be awful here. Worse than ever,” she says.

“We'll be all right, sweetheart,” I say. “It doesn't matter that much. We can manage without the china dogs, and the silver eggcups were such a nuisance to clean. At least they haven't taken our books. . . .”

“So why do you sound so unhappy, Mummy?” says Millie.

I don't say anything.

Blanche rips off her winter coat and flings it onto a chair. She stares down at herself, at the hem of her taffeta dress, which is crumpled and dark with rainwater.

“Look. It's all
ruined,
” she says.

Her eyes are shiny with tears.

“Blanche—your dress will be fine. We'll hang it up so it doesn't crease. It's only water,” I say.

But I know she isn't talking only about the taffeta frock.

I go upstairs and look around, in the girls' bedrooms, and Evelyn's, and mine. Nothing has been disturbed here; it looks as though the burglars didn't come this far. But I have to be certain. Le Colombier is a big old rambling house, a labyrinth. The many people who have lived here have built onto it over the years: there are rooms leading into one another, twisty passages, places where you could hide. I hunt around everywhere—open up all the cupboards, explore all the secrets and hidden ways of my house. I climb right up to the attics, to the big front attic we use as a spare bedroom, and the little one at the back, which you reach by a separate stair. All is as it should be. At last I come down to the girls again and send them off to unpack their bags.

I clear up the mess, the shards of china crunching under my feet. A feeling like grief washes through me, and not only because of the things that are broken or lost. This doesn't feel like our home now: it feels wrong, smells wrong, in that indefinable way of a place where someone unwelcome has been. Everything is falling apart—all the intricate warp and weft of the peaceful life we have lived here, everything unraveling. They haven't come yet, but it has already begun.