The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

PART ONE

8th January, 1946

Mr. Sidney Stark, Publisher

Stephens & Stark Ltd.

21 St. James’s Place

London S.W.1

England

Dear Sidney,

Susan Scott is a wonder. We sold over forty copies of the book, which was very pleasant, but much more thrilling from my standpoint was the food. Susan managed to procure ration coupons for icing sugar and real eggs for the meringue. If all her literary luncheons are going to achieve these heights, I won’t mind touring about the country. Do you suppose that a lavish bonus could spur her on to butter? Let’s try it—you may deduct the money from my royalties.

Now for my grim news. You asked me how work on my new book is progressing. Sidney, it isn’t.

English Foibles seemed so promising at first. After all, one should be able to write reams about the Society to Protest the Glorification of the English Bunny. I unearthed a photograph of the Vermin Exterminators’ Trade Union, marching down an Oxford street with placards screaming “Down with Beatrix Potter!” But what is there to write about after a caption? Nothing, that’s what.

I no longer want to write this book—my head and my heart just aren’t in it. Dear as Izzy Bickerstaff is—and was—to me, I don’t want to write anything else under that name. I don’t wantto be considered a light-hearted journalist anymore. I do acknowledge that making readers laugh—or at least chuckle—during the war was no mean feat, but I don’t want to do it anymore. I can’t seem to dredge up any sense of proportion or balance these days, and God knows one cannot write humor without them.

In the meantime, I am very happy Stephens & Stark is making money on Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War. It relieves my conscience over the debacle of my Anne Brontë biography.

My thanks for everything and love,

Juliet

P.S. I am reading the collected correspondence of Mrs. Montagu. Do you know what that dismal woman wrote to Jane Carlyle? “My dear little Jane, everybody is born with a vocation, and yours is to write charming little notes.” I hope Jane spat on her.

10th January, 1946

Miss Juliet Ashton

23 Glebe Place

Chelsea

London S.W. 3

Dear Juliet:

Congratulations! Susan Scott said you took to the audience at the luncheon like a drunkard to rum—and they to you—so please stop worrying about your tour next week. I haven’t a doubt of your success. Having witnessed your electrifying performance of “The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation” eighteen years ago, I know you will have every listener coiled around your little finger within moments. A hint: perhaps in this case, you should refrain from throwing the book at the audience when you finish.

Susan is looking forward to ushering you through bookshops from Bath to Yorkshire. And of course, Sophie is agitating for an extension of the tour into Scotland. I’ve told her in my most infuriating older-brother manner that It Remains To Be Seen. She misses you terribly, I know, but Stephens & Stark must be impervious to such considerations.

I’ve just received Izzy’s sales figures from London and the Home Counties—they are excellent. Again, congratulations!

Don’t fret about English Foibles; better that your enthusiasm died now than after six months spent writing about bunnies. The crass commercial possibilities of the idea were attractive, but I agree that the topic would soon grow horribly fey. Another subject—one you’ll like—will occur to you.

Dinner one evening before you go? Say when.

Love,

Sidney

P.S. You write charming little notes.

11th January, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Yes, lovely—can it be somewhere on the river? I want oysters and champagne and roast beef, if obtainable; if not, a chicken will do. I am very happy that Izzy’s sales are good. Are they good enough that I don’t have to pack a bag and leave London?

Since you and S&S have turned me into a moderately successful author, dinner must be my treat.

Love,

Juliet

P.S. I did not throw “The Shepherd Boy Sings in the Valley of Humiliation” at the audience. I threw it at the elocution mistress. I meant to cast it at her feet, but I missed.

12th January, 1946

Mrs. Alexander Strachan

Feochan Farm

by Oban

Argyll

Dear Sophie,

Of course I’d adore to see you, but I am a soul-less, will-less automaton. I have been ordered by Sidney to Bath, Colchester, Leeds, and several other garden spots I can’t recall at the moment, and I can’t just slither off to Scotland instead. Sidney’s brow would lower—his eyes would narrow—he would stalk. You know how nerve-racking it is when Sidney stalks.

I wish I could sneak away to your farm and have you coddle me. You’d let me put my feet on the sofa, wouldn’t you? And then you’d tuck blankets around me and bring me tea. Would Alexander mind a permanent resident on his sofa? You’ve told me he is a patient man, but perhaps he would find it annoying.

Why am I so melancholy? I should be delighted at the prospect of reading Izzy to an entranced audience. You know how I love talking about books, and you know how I adore receiving compliments. I should be thrilled. But the truth is that I’m gloomy—gloomier than I ever was during the war. Everything is so broken, Sophie: the roads, the buildings, the people. Especially the people.

This is probably the aftereffect of a horrid dinner party I went to last night. The food was ghastly, but that was to be expected. It was the guests who unnerved me—they were the most demoralizing collection of individuals I’ve ever encountered. The talk was of bombs and starvation. Do you remember Sarah Morecroft? She was there, all bones and gooseflesh and bloody lipstick. Didn’t she use to be pretty? Wasn’t she mad for that horse-riding fellow who went up to Cambridge? He was nowhere in evidence; she’s married to a doctor with grey skin who clicks his tongue before he speaks. And he was a figure of wild romance compared to my dinner partner, who just happened to be a single man, presumably the last one on earth—oh Lord, how miserably mean-spirited I sound!

I swear, Sophie, I think there’s something wrong with me. Every man I meet is intolerable. Perhaps I should set my sights lower—not so low as the grey doctor who clicks, but a bit lower. I can’t even blame it on the war—I was never very good at men, was I?

Do you suppose the St. Swithin’s furnace-man was my one true love? Since I never spoke to him, it seems unlikely, but at least it was a passion unscathed by disappointment. And he had that beautiful black hair. After that, you remember, came the Year of Poets. Sidney’s quite snarky about those poets, though I don’t see why, since he introduced me to them. Then poor Adrian. Oh, there’s no need to recite the dread rolls to you, but Sophie—what is the matter with me? Am I too particular? I don’t want to be married just to be married. I can’t think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can’t talk to, or worse, someone I can’t be silent with.

What a dreadful, complaining letter. You see? I’ve succeeded in making you feel relieved that I won’t be stopping in Scotland. But then again, I may—my fate rests with Sidney.

Kiss Dominic for me and tell him I saw a rat the size of a terrier the other day.

Love to Alexander and even more to you,

Juliet

12th January, 1946

Miss Juliet Ashton

81 Oakley Street

Chelsea

London S.W. 3

Dear Miss Ashton,

My name is Dawsey Adams, and I live on my farm in St. Martin’s Parish on Guernsey. I know of you because I have an old book that once belonged to you—the Selected Essays of Elia, by an author whose name in real life was Charles Lamb. Your name and address were written inside the front cover.

I will speak plain—I love Charles Lamb. My own book says Selected, so I wondered if that meant he had written other things to choose from? These are the pieces I want to read, and though the Germans are gone now, there aren’t any bookshops left on Guernsey.

I want to ask a kindness of you. Could you send me the name and address of a bookshop in London? I would like to order more of Charles Lamb’s writings by post. I would also like to ask if anyone has ever written his life story, and if they have, could a copy be found for me? For all his bright and turning mind, I think Mr. Lamb must have had a great sadness in his life.

Charles Lamb made me laugh during the German Occupation, especially when he wrote about the roast pig. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society came into being because of a roast pig we had to keep secret from the German soldiers, so I feel a kinship to Mr. Lamb.

I am sorry to bother you, but I would be sorrier still not to know about him, as his writings have made me his friend.

Hoping not to trouble you,

Dawsey Adams

P.S. My friend Mrs. Maugery bought a pamphlet that once belonged to you, too. It is called Was There a Burning Bush? A Defense of Moses and the Ten Commandments. She liked your margin note, “Word of God or crowd control???” Did you ever decide which?

15th January, 1946

Mr. Dawsey Adams

Les Vauxlarens

La Bouvée

St. Martin’s, Guernsey

Dear Mr. Adams,

I no longer live on Oakley Street, but I’m so glad that your letter found me and that my book found you. It was a sad wrench to part with the Selected Essays of Elia. I had two copies and a dire need of shelf-room, but I felt like a traitor selling it. You have soothed my conscience.

I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.

Because there is nothing I would rather do than rummage through bookshops, I went at once to Hastings & Sons upon receiving your letter. I have gone to them for years, always finding the one book I wanted—and then three more I hadn’t known I wanted. I told Mr. Hastings you would like a good, clean copy (and not a rare edition) of More Essays of Elia. He will send it to you by separate post (invoice enclosed) and was delighted to know you are also a lover of Charles Lamb. He said the best biography of Lamb was by E. V. Lucas, and he would hunt out a copy for you, though it may take a while.

In the meantime, will you accept this small gift from me? It is his Selected Letters. I think it will tell you more about him than any biography ever could. E. V. Lucas sounds too stately to include my favorite passage from Lamb: “Buz, buz, buz, bum, bum, bum, wheeze, wheeze, wheeze, fen, fen, fen, tinky, tinky, tinky, cr’annch!

I shall certainly come to be condemned at last. I have been drinking too much for two days running. I find my moral sense in the last stage of a consumption and my religion getting faint.” You’ll find that in the Letters (it’s on page 244). They were the first Lamb I ever read, and I’m ashamed to say I only bought the book because I’d read elsewhere that a man named Lamb had visited his friend Leigh Hunt, in prison for libeling the Prince of Wales.

While there, Lamb helped Hunt paint the ceiling of his cell sky blue with white clouds. Next they painted a rose trellis up one wall. Then, I further discovered, Lamb offered money to help Hunt’s family outside the prison—though he himself was as poor as a man could be. Lamb also taught Hunt’s youngest daughter to say the Lord’s Prayer backward. You naturally want to learn everything you can about a man like that.

That’s what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It’s geometrically progressive—all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.

The red stain on the cover that looks like blood—is blood. I got careless with my paper knife. The enclosed postcard is a reproduction of a painting of Lamb by his friend William Hazlitt.

If you have time to correspond with me, could you answer several questions? Three, in fact. Why did a roast pig dinner have to be kept a secret? How could a pig cause you to begin a literary society? And, most pressing of all, what is a potato peel pie—and why is it included in your society’s name?

I have sub-let a flat at 23 Glebe Place, Chelsea, London S.W.3. My Oakley Street flat was bombed in 1945 and I still miss it. Oakley Street was wonderful—I could see the Thames out of three of my windows. I know that I am fortunate to have any place at all to live in London, but I much prefer whining to counting my blessings. I am glad you thought of me to do your Elia hunting.

Yours sincerely,

Juliet Ashton

P.S. I never could make up my mind about Moses—it still bothers me.

18th January, 1946

Dear Sidney,

This isn’t a letter: it’s an apology. Please forgive my moaning about the teas and luncheons you set up for Izzy. Did I call you a tyrant? I take it all back—I love Stephens & Stark for sending me out of London.

Bath is a glorious town: lovely crescents of white, upstanding houses instead of London’s black, gloomy buildings or—worse still—piles of rubble that were once buildings. It is bliss to breathe in clean, fresh air with no coal smoke and no dust. The weather is cold, but it isn’t London’s dank chill. Even the people on the street look different—upstanding, like their houses, not grey and hunched like Londoners.

Susan said the guests at Abbot’s book tea enjoyed themselves immensely—and I know I did. I was able to un-stick my tongue from the roof of my mouth after the first two minutes and began to have quite a good time.

Susan and I are off tomorrow for bookshops in Colchester, Norwich, King’s Lynn, Bradford, and Leeds.

Love and thanks,

Juliet

21st January, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Night-time train travel is wonderful again! No standing in the corridors for hours, no being shunted off for a troop train to pass, and above all, no black-out curtains. All the windows we passed were lighted, and I could snoop once more. I missed it so terribly during the war. I felt as if we had all turned into moles scuttling along in our separate tunnels. I don’t consider myself a real peeper—they go in for bedrooms, but it’s families in sitting rooms or kitchens that thrill me. I can imagine their entire lives from a glimpse of bookshelves, or desks, or lit candles, or bright sofa cushions.

There was a nasty, condescending man in Tillman’s bookshop today. After my talk about Izzy, I asked if anyone had questions. He literally leapt from his seat to go nose-to-nose with me—how was it, he demanded, that I, a mere woman, dared to bastardize the name of Isaac Bickerstaff ? “The true Isaac Bickerstaff, noted journalist, nay the sacred heart and soul of eighteenth-century literature: dead now and his name desecrated by you.”

Before I could muster a word, a woman in the back row jumped to her feet. “Oh, sit down! You can’t desecrate a person who never was! He’s not dead because he was never alive! Isaac Bickerstaff was a pseudonym for Joseph Addison’s Spectator columns! Miss Ashton can take up any pretend name she wants to—so shut up!” What a valiant defender—he left the store in a hurry.

Sidney, do you know a man named Markham V. Reynolds, Jr.? If you don’t, will you look him up for me—Who’s Who, the Domesday Book, Scotland Yard? Failing those, he may simply be in the Telephone Directory. He sent a beautiful bunch of mixed spring flowers to me at the hotel in Bath, a dozen white roses to my train, and a pile of red roses to Norwich—all with no message, only his engraved card.

Come to that, how does he know where Susan and I are staying? What trains we are taking? All his flowers have met me upon my arrival. I don’t know whether to feel flattered or hunted.

Love,

Juliet

23rd January, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Susan just gave me the sales figures for Izzy—I can scarcely believe them. I honestly thought everyone would be so weary of the war that no one would want a remembrance of it—and certainly not in a book. Happily, and once again, you were right and I was wrong (it half-kills me to admit this).

Traveling, talking before a captive audience, signing books, and meeting strangers is exhilarating. The women I’ve met have told me such war stories of their own, I almost wish I had my column back. Yesterday, I had a lovely, gossipy chat with a Norwich lady. She has four daughters in their teens, and just last week, the eldest was invited to tea at the cadet school in town. Arrayed in her finest frock and spotless white gloves, the girl made her way to the school, stepped over the threshold, took one look at the sea of shining cadet faces before her—and fainted dead away! The poor child had never seen so many males in one place in her life. Think of it—a whole generation grown up without dances or teas or flirting.

I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers—booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one—the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it—along with first dibs on the new books.

Do you remember the first job your sister and I had in London? In crabby Mr. Hawke’s secondhand bookshop? How I loved him—he’d simply unpack a box of books, hand one or two to us and say, “No cigarette ashes, clean hands—and for God’s sake, Juliet, none of your margin notes! Sophie, dear, don’t let her drink coffee while she reads.” And off we’d go with new books to read.

It was amazing to me then, and still is, that so many people who wander into bookshops don’t really know what they’re after—they only want to look around and hope to see a book that will strike their fancy. And then, being bright enough not to trust the publisher’s blurb, they will ask the book clerk the three questions: (1) What is it about? (2) Have you read it? (3) Was it any good?

Real dyed-in-the-wool booksellers—like Sophie and me—can’t lie. Our faces are always a dead giveaway. A lifted brow or curled lip reveals that it’s a poor excuse for a book, and the clever customers ask for a recommendation instead, whereupon we frog-march them over to a particular volume and command them to read it. If they read it and despise it, they’ll never come back. But if they like it, they’re customers for life.

Are you taking notes? You should—a publisher should send not just one reader’s copy to a bookshop, but several, so that all the staff can read it, too.

Mr. Seton told me today that Izzy Bickerstaff makes an ideal present for both someone you like and someone you don’t like but have to give a present to anyway. He also claimed that 30 percent of all books bought are bought as gifts. Thirty percent??? Did he lie?

Has Susan told you what else she has managed besides our tour? Me. I hadn’t known her half an hour before she told me my make-up, my clothes, my hair, and my shoes were drab, all drab. The war was over, hadn’t I heard?

She took me to Madame Helena’s for a haircut; it is now short and curly instead of long and lank. I had a light rinse, too—Susan and Madame said it would bring out the golden highlights in my “beautiful chestnut curls.” But I know better; it’s meant to cover any grey hairs (four, by my count) that have begun to creep in. I also bought a jar of face cream, a lovely scented hand lotion, a new lipstick, and an eye-lash curler—which makes my eyes cross whenever I use it.

Then Susan suggested a new dress. I reminded her that the Queen was very happy wearing her 1939 wardrobe, so why shouldn’t I be? She said the Queen doesn’t need to impress strangers—but I do. I felt like a traitor to crown and country; no decent woman has new clothes—but I forgot that the moment I saw myself in the mirror. My first new dress in four years, and such a dress! It is the exact color of a ripe peach and falls in lovely folds when I move.

The saleslady said it had “Gallic Chic” and I would too, if I bought it. So I did. New shoes are going to have to wait, since I spent almost a year’s worth of clothing coupons on the dress.

Between Susan, my hair, my face, and my dress, I no longer look a listless, bedraggled thirty-two-year-old. I look a lively, dashing, haute-couturéd (if this isn’t a French verb, it should be) thirty.

Apropos of my new dress and no new shoes—doesn’t it seem shocking to have more stringent rationing after the war than during the war? I realize that hundreds of thousands of people all over Europe must be fed, housed, and clothed, but privately I resent it that so many of them are Germans.

I am still without any ideas for a book I want to write. It is beginning to depress me. Do you have any suggestions?

Since I am in what I consider to be the North I’m going to place a trunk call to Sophie in Scotland tonight. Any messages for your sister? Your brother-in-law? Your nephew?

This is the longest letter I’ve ever written—you needn’t reply in kind.

Love,

Juliet

25th January, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Don’t believe the newspaper reports. Juliet was not arrested and taken away in handcuffs. She was merely reproved by one of Bradford’s constables, and he could barely keep a straight face.

She did throw a teapot at Gilly Gilbert’s head, but don’t believe his claim that she scalded him; the tea was cold. Besides, it was more of a skim-by than a direct hit. Even the hotel manager refused to let us compensate him for the teapot—it was only dented. He was, however, forced by Gilly’s screams to call in the constabulary.

Herewith the story, and I take full responsibility for it. I should have refused Gilly’s request for an interview with Juliet. I knew what a loathsome person he was, one of those unctuous little worms who work for The London Hue and Cry. I also knew that Gilly and the LH&C were horribly jealous of the Spectator’s success with the Izzy Bickerstaff columns—and of Juliet.

We had just returned to the hotel from the Brady’s Booksmith party for Juliet. We were both tired—and full of ourselves—when up popped Gilly from a chair in the lounge. He begged us to have tea with him. He begged for a short interview with “our own wonderful Miss Ashton—or should I say England’s very own Izzy Bickerstaff ?” His smarm alone should have alerted me, but it didn’t—I wanted to sit down, gloat over Juliet’s success, and have a cream tea.

So we did. The talk was going smoothly enough, and my mind was wandering when I heard Gilly say, “… you were a war widow yourself, weren’t you? Or rather—almost a war widow—as good as. You were to marry a Lieutenant Rob Dartry, weren’t you? Had made arrangements for the ceremony, hadn’t you?”

Juliet said, “I beg your pardon, Mr. Gilbert.” You know how polite she is.

“I don’t have it wrong, do I? You and Lieutenant Dartry did apply for a marriage license. You did make an appointment to be married at the Chelsea Register Office on 13th December, 1942, at 11:00 a.m. You did book a table for luncheon at the Ritz—only you never showed up for any of it. It’s perfectly obvious that you jilted Lieutenant Dartry at the altar—poor fellow—and sent him off alone and humiliated, back to his ship, to carry his broken heart to Burma, where he was killed not three months later.”

I sat up, my mouth gaping open. I just looked on helplessly as Juliet attempted to be civil: “I didn’t jilt him at the altar—it was the day before. And he wasn’t humiliated—he was relieved. I simply told him that I didn’t want to be married after all. Believe me, Mr. Gilbert, he left a happy man—delighted to be rid of me. He didn’t slink back to his ship, alone and betrayed—he went straight to the CCB Club and danced all night with Belinda Twining.”

Well, Sidney, surprised as Gilly was, he was not daunted. Little rodents like Gilly never are, are they? He quickly guessed that he was on to an even juicier story for his paper.

“OH-HO!” he smirked, “What was it, then? Drink? Other women? A touch of the old Oscar Wilde?”

That was when Juliet threw the teapot. You can imagine the hubbub that ensued—the lounge was full of other people having tea—hence, I am sure, the newspapers learning of it.

I thought his headline, “IZZY BICKERSTAFF GOES TO WAR—AGAIN! Reporter Wounded in Hotel Bun-Fight,” was a bit harsh, but not too bad. But “JULIET’S FAILED ROMEO—A FALLEN HERO IN BURMA” was sick-making, even for Gilly Gilbert and the Hue and Cry.

Juliet is worried she may have embarrassed Stephens & Stark, but she is literally sick over Rob Dartry’s name being slung around in this fashion. All I could get her to say to me was that Rob Dartry was a good man, a very good man—none of it was his fault—and he did not deserve this!

Did you know Rob Dartry? Of course, the drink/Oscar Wilde business is pure rot, but why did Juliet call off the wedding? Do you know why? And would you tell me if you did? Of course you wouldn’t; I don’t know why I’m even asking.

The gossip will die down of course, but does Juliet have to be in London for the thick of it? Should we extend our tour to Scotland? I admit I’m of two minds about this; the sales there have been spectacular, but Juliet has worked so hard at these teas and luncheons—it is not easy to get up in front of a roomful of strangers and praise yourself and your book. She’s not used to this hoopla like I am and is, I think, very tired.

Sunday we’ll be in Leeds, so let me know then about Scotland. Of course, Gilly Gilbert is despicable and vile and I hope he comes to a bad end, but he has pushed Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War onto the Best Seller List. I’m tempted to write him a thankyou note.

Yours in haste,

Susan

P.S. Have you found out who Markham V. Reynolds is yet? He sent Juliet a forest of camellias today.

AM TERRIBLY SORRY TO HAVE EMBARRASSED YOU AND STEPHENS & STARK. LOVE, JULIET

26th January, 1946

Miss Juliet Ashton

The Queens Hotel

City Square

Leeds

Dear Juliet,

Don’t worry about Gilly—you did not embarrass S&S; I’m only sorry that the tea wasn’t hotter and you didn’t aim lower. The Press is hounding me for a statement regarding Gilly’s latest muckraking, and I am going to give them one. Don’t worry; it’s going to be about Journalism in these degenerate times—not about you or Rob Dartry.

I just spoke to Susan about going on to Scotland and—though I know Sophie will never forgive me—decided against it. Izzy’s sales figures are going up—way up—and I think you should come home.

The Times wants you to write a long piece for the supplement—one part of a three-part series they plan to publish in successive issues. I’ll let them surprise you with the subject, but I can promise you three things right now: they want it written by Juliet Ashton, not by Izzy Bickerstaff; the subject is a serious one; and the sum mentioned means you can fill your flat with fresh flowers every day for a year, buy a satin quilt (Lord Woolton says you no longer need to have been bombed out to buy new bedcovers), and purchase a pair of real leather shoes—if you can find them. You can have my coupons.

The Times doesn’t want the article until late spring, so we will have more time to think up a new book possibility for you. All good reasons to hurry back, but the biggest one is that I miss you.

Now, about Markham V. Reynolds, Junior. I do know who he is, and the Domesday Book won’t help—he’s an American. He is the son and heir of Markham V. Reynolds, Senior, who used to have a monopoly on paper mills in the States and now just owns most of them. Reynolds, Junior, being of an artistic turn of mind, does not dirty his hands in making paper—he prints on it instead. He’s a publisher. The New York Journal, the Word, View—those are all his, and there are several smaller magazines as well. I knew he was in London. Officially, he’s here to open the London office of View, but rumor has it that he’s decided to begin publishing books, and he’s here to beguile England’s finest authors with visions of plenty and prosperity in America. I didn’t know his technique included roses and camellias, but I’m not surprised. He’s always had more than his fair share of what we call cheek and Americans call can-do spirit. Just wait till you see him—he’s been the undoing of stronger women than you, including my secretary. I’m sorry to say she’s the one who gave him your itinerary and your address. The silly woman thought he was so romantic-looking, with “such a lovely suit and handmade shoes.” Dear God! She couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of breach of confidentiality, so I had to sack her.

He’s after you, Juliet, no doubt about it. Shall I challenge him to a duel? He would undoubtedly kill me, so I’d rather not. My dear, I can’t promise you plenty or prosperity or even butter, but you do know that you’re Stephens & Stark’s—especially Stark’s—most beloved author, don’t you?

Dinner the first evening you are home?

Love,

Sidney

28th January, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Yes, dinner with pleasure. I’ll wear my new dress and eat like a pig.

I am so glad I didn’t embarrass S&S about Gilly and the teapot—I was worried. Susan suggested I make a “dignified statement” to the press too, about Rob Dartry and why we did not marry. I couldn’t possibly do that. I honestly don’t think I’d mind looking like a fool, if it didn’t make Rob look a worse one. But it would—and of course, he wasn’t a fool at all. But he’d sound that way. I’d much prefer to say nothing and look like a feckless, flighty, cold-hearted bitch.

But I’d like you to know why—I’d have told you before, but you were off with the Navy in 1942, and you never met Rob. Even Sophie never met him—she was up at Bedford that fall—and I swore her to secrecy afterwards. The longer I put off saying anything, the less important it became for you to know, especially in light of how it made me look—witless and foolish for getting engaged in the first place.

I thought I was in love (that’s the pathetic part—my idea of being in love). In preparation for sharing my home with a husband, I made room for him so he wouldn’t feel like a visiting aunt. I cleared out half my dresser drawers, half my closet, half my medicine chest, half my desk. I gave away my padded hangers and brought in those heavy wooden ones. I took my golliwog off the bed and put her in the attic. Now my flat was meant for two, instead of one.

On the afternoon before our wedding, Rob was moving in the last of his clothes and belongings while I delivered my Izzy article to the Spectator. When I was through, I tore home, flew up the stairs, and threw open the door to find Rob sitting on a low stool in front of my bookcase, surrounded by cartons. He was sealing the last one up with gummed tape and string. There were eight boxes—eight boxes of my books bound up and ready for the basement!

He looked up and said, “Hello, darling. Don’t mind the mess, the porter said he’d help me carry these down to the basement.”

He nodded toward my bookshelves and said, “Don’t they look wonderful?”

Well, there were no words! I was too appalled to speak. Sidney, every single shelf—where my books had stood—was filled with athletic trophies: silver cups, gold cups, blue rosettes, red ribbons. There were awards for every game that could possibly be played with a wooden object: cricket bats, squash racquets, tennis racquets, oars, golf clubs, Ping-Pong paddles, bows and arrows, snooker cues, lacrosse sticks, hockey sticks, and polo mallets. There were statues for everything a man could jump over, either by himself or on a horse. Next came the framed certificates—for shooting the most birds on such and such a date, for First Place in footraces, for Last Man Standing in some filthy tug-of-war against Scotland.

All I could do was scream, “How dare you! What have you DONE?! Put my books back!”

Well, that’s how matters started. Eventually, I said something to the effect that I could never marry a man whose idea of bliss was to strike out at little balls and little birds. Rob countered with remarks about damned bluestockings and shrews. And it all degenerated from there—the only thought we probably had in common was, What the hell have we talked about for the last four months? What, indeed? He huffed and puffed and snorted—and left. And I unpacked my books.

Remember the night last year when you met my train to tell me my home had been bombed flat? You thought I was laughing in hysteria? I wasn’t—it was in irony—if I’d let Rob store all my books in the basement, I’d still have them, every one. Sidney, as a token of our long friendship, you do not need to comment on this story—not ever. In fact, I’d far prefer it if you didn’t.

Thank you for tracing Markham V. Reynolds, Junior, to his source. So far, his blandishments are entirely floral, and I remain true to you and the Empire. However, I do have a pang of sympathy for your secretary—I hope he sent her some roses for her trouble—as I’m not certain that my scruples could withstand the sight of handmade shoes. If I ever do meet him, I’ll take care not to look at his feet—or I’ll lash myself to a flagpole first and then peek, like Odysseus.

Bless you for telling me to come home. Am looking forward to the Times proposal for a series. Do you promise on Sophie’s head it will not be a frivolous subject? They aren’t going to ask me to write about the Duchess of Windsor, are they?

Love,

Juliet

31st January, 1946

Dear Sophie,

Thank you for your flying visit to Leeds—there are no words to express how much I needed to see a friendly face just then. I honestly was on the verge of stealing away to the Shetlands to take up the life of a hermit. It was beautiful of you to come.

The London Hue and Cry’s sketch of me taken away in chains was overdrawn—I wasn’t even arrested. I know Dominic would much prefer a godmother in prison, but he will have to settle for something less dramatic this time.

I told Sidney the only thing I could do about Gilly’s callous, lying accusations was to maintain a dignified silence. He said I could do that if I wanted to, but Stephens & Stark could not!

He called a press conference to defend the honor of Izzy Bickerstaff, Juliet Ashton, and Journalism itself against such trash as Gilly Gilbert. Did it make the papers in Scotland? If not—here are the highlights. He called Gilly Gilbert a twisted weasel (well, perhaps not in exactly those words, but his meaning was clear) who lied because he was too lazy to learn the facts and too stupid to understand the damage his lies inflicted upon the noble traditions of Journalism. It was lovely. Sophie, could two girls (now women) ever have had a better champion than your brother? I don’t think so. He gave a wonderful speech, though I must admit to a few qualms. Gilly Gilbert is such a snake-in-the-grass, I can’t believe he’ll just slither away without a hiss. Susan said that, on the other hand, Gilly is also such a frightful little coward, he would not dare to retaliate. I hope she’s right.

Love to you all,

Juliet

P.S. That man has sent me another bale of orchids. I’m getting a nervous twitch, waiting for him to come out of hiding and make himself known. Do you suppose this is his strategy?

31st January, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Your book came yesterday! You are a nice lady and I thank you with all my heart.

I have a job at St. Peter Port harbor—unloading ships, so I can read during tea breaks. It is a blessing to have real tea and bread with butter, and now—your book. I like it too because the cover is soft and I can put it in my pocket everywhere I go, though I am careful not to use it up too quickly. And I value having a picture of Charles Lamb—he had a fine head, didn’t he?

I would like to correspond with you. I will answer your questions as well as I can. Though there are many who can tell a story better than I can, I will tell you about our roast pig dinner.

I have a cottage and a farm, left to me by my father. Before the war, I kept pigs, and grew vegetables for St. Peter Port markets and flowers for Covent Garden. I often worked also as a carpenter and roofer.

The pigs are gone now. The Germans took them away to feed their soldiers on the continent, and ordered me to grow potatoes. We were to grow what they told us and nothing else. At first, before I knew the Germans as I came to later, I thought I could keep a few pigs hidden—for my own self. But the Agricultural Officer nosed them out and carried them off. Well, that was a blow, but I thought I’d manage all right, for potatoes and turnips were plentiful, and there was still flour then. But it is strange how the mind turns on food. After six months of turnips and a lump of gristle now and then, I was hard put to think about anything but a fine, full meal.

One afternoon, my neighbor, Mrs. Maugery, sent me a note. Come quick, it said. And bring a butcher knife. I tried not to get my hopes high—but I set out for the manor house at a great clip. And it was true! She had a pig, a hidden pig, and she invited me to join in the feast with her and her friends!

I never talked much while I was growing up—I stuttered badly—and I was not used to dinner parties. To tell the truth, Mrs. Maugery’s was the first one I was ever invited to. I said yes, because I was thinking of the roast pig, but I wished I could take my piece home and eat it there.

It was my good luck that my wish didn’t come true, because that was the first meeting of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, even though we didn’t know it then. The dinner was a rare treat, but the company was better. With talking and eating, we forgot about clocks and curfews until Amelia (that’s Mrs. Maugery) heard the chimes ring nine o’clock—we were an hour late. Well, the good food had strengthened our hearts, and when Elizabeth McKenna said we should strike out for our rightful homes instead of skulking in Amelia’s house all night, we agreed. But breaking curfew was a crime—I’d heard of folks being sent to prison camp for it—and keeping a pig was a worse one, so we whispered and picked our way through the fields as quiet as could be.

We would have come out all right if not for John Booker. He’d drunk more than he’d eaten at dinner, and when we got to the road, he forgot himself and broke into song! I grabbed hold of him, but it was too late: six German patrol officers suddenly rose out of the trees with their Lugers drawn and began to shout—Why were we out after curfew? Where had we been? Where were we going?

I couldn’t think what to do. If I ran, they’d shoot me. I knew that much. My mouth was dry as chalk and my mind was blank, so I just held on to Booker and hoped.

Then Elizabeth drew in her breath and stepped forward. Elizabeth isn’t tall, so those pistols were lined up at her eyes, but she didn’t blink. She acted like she didn’t see any pistols at all. She walked up to the officer in charge and started talking. You never heard such lies. How sorry she was that we had broken curfew. How we had been attending a meeting of the Guernsey Literary Society, and the evening’s discussion of Elizabeth and Her German Garden had been so delightful that we had all lost track of time. Such a wonderful book—had he read it?

None of us had the presence of mind to back her up, but the patrol officer couldn’t help himself—he had to smile back at her. Elizabeth is like that. He took our names and ordered us very politely to report to the Commandant the next morning. Then he bowed and wished us a good evening. Elizabeth nodded, gracious as could be, while the rest of us edged away, trying not to run like rabbits. Even lugging Booker, I got home quick.

That is the story of our roast pig dinner.

I’d like to ask you a question of my own. Ships are coming in to St. Peter Port harbor every day to bring us things Guernsey still needs: food, clothes, seed, plows, feed for animals, tools, medicine—and most important, now that we have food to eat, shoes. I don’t believe that there was a fit pair left on the island by the end of the war.

Some of the things being sent to us are wrapped up in old newspaper and magazine pages. My friend Clovis and I smooth them out and take them home to read—then we give them to neighbors who, like us, are eager for any news of the outside world in the past five years. Not just any news or pictures: Mrs. Saussey wants to see recipes; Mme. LePell wants fashion papers (she is a dressmaker); Mr. Brouard reads Obituaries (he has his hopes, but won’t say who); Claudia Rainey is looking for pictures of Ronald Colman; Mr. Tourtelle wants to see Beauty Queens in bathing dress; and my friend Isola likes to read about weddings.

There is so much we wanted to know during the war, but we were not allowed letters or papers from England—or anywhere. In 1942, the Germans called in all the wireless sets—of course, there were hidden ones, listened to in secret, but if you were caught listening, you could be sent to the camps. That is why we don’t understand so many things we can read about now.

I enjoy the war-time cartoons, but there is one that bewilders me. It was in a 1944 Punch and shows ten or so people walking down a London street. The chief figures are two men in bowler hats, holding briefcases and umbrellas, and one man is saying to the other man, “It is ridiculous to say these Doodlebugs have affected people in any way.” It took me several seconds to realize that every person in the cartoon had one normal-sized ear and one very large ear on the other side of his head. Perhaps you could explain it to me.

Yours sincerely,

Dawsey Adams

3rd February, 1946

Dear Mr. Adams,

I am so glad you are enjoying Lamb’s letters and the copy of his portrait. He did fit the face I had imagined for him, so I’m glad you felt that way, too.

Thank you very much for telling me about the roast pig, but don’t think I didn’t notice that you only answered one of my questions. I’m hankering to know more about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and not merely to satisfy my idle curiosity—I now have a professional duty to pry.

Did I tell you I am a writer? I wrote a weekly column for the Spectator during the war, and Stephens & Stark publishers collected them together into a single volume and published them under the title Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War. Izzy was the nom-deplume the Spectator chose for me, and now, thank heavens, the poor thing has been laid to rest, and I can write under my own name again. I would like to write a book, but I am having trouble thinking of a subject I could live happily with for several years.

In the meantime, the Times has asked me to write an article for the literary supplement. They want to address the practical, moral, and philosophical value of reading—spread out over three issues and by three different authors. I am to cover the philosophical side of the debate and so far my only thought is that reading keeps you from going gaga. You can see I need help.

Do you think your literary society would mind being included in such an article? I know that the story of the society’s founding would fascinate the Times’s readers, and I’d love to learn more about your meetings. But if you’d rather not, please don’t worry—I will understand either way, and either way, would like to hear from you again.

I remember the Punch cartoon you described very well and think it was the word Doodlebug that threw you off. That was the name coined by the Ministry of Information; it was meant to sound less terrifying than “Hitler’s V-1 rockets” or “pilotless bombs.”

We were all used to bombing raids at night and the sights that followed, but these were unlike any bombs we had seen before.

They came in the daytime, and they came so fast there was no time for an air-raid siren or to take cover. You could see them; they looked like slim, black, slanted pencils and made a dull, spastic sound above you—like a motor-car running out of petrol. As long as you could hear them coughing and putt-putting, you were safe. You could think “Thank God, it’s going past me.”

But when their noise stopped, it meant there was only thirty seconds before it plummeted. So, you listened for them. Listened hard for the sound of their motors cutting out. I did see a Doodlebug fall once. I was quite some distance away when it hit, so I threw myself down in the gutter and cuddled up against the curb. Some women, in the top story of a tall office building down the street, had gone to an open window to watch. They were sucked out by the force of the blast.

It seems impossible now that someone could have drawn a cartoon about Doodlebugs, and that everyone, including me, could have laughed at it. But we did. The old adage—humor is the best way to make the unbearable bearable—may be true.

Has Mr. Hastings found the Lucas biography for you yet?

Yours sincerely,

Juliet Ashton

4th February, 1946

Mr. Markham Reynolds

63 Halkin Street

London S.W.1

Dear Mr. Reynolds,

I captured your delivery boy in the act of depositing a clutch of pink carnations upon my doorstep. I seized him and threatened him until he confessed your address—you see, Mr. Reynolds, you are not the only one who can inveigle innocent employees. I hope you don’t sack him; he seems a nice boy, and he really had no alternative—I menaced him with Remembrance of Things Past.

Now I can thank you for the dozens of flowers you’ve sent me—it’s been years since I’ve seen such roses, such camellias, such orchids, and you can have no idea how they lift my heart in this shivering winter. Why I deserve to live in a bower, when everyone else has to be satisfied with bedraggled leafless trees and slush, I don’t know, but I’m perfectly delighted to do so.

Yours sincerely,

Juliet Ashton

February 5, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

I didn’t fire the delivery boy—I promoted him. He got me what I couldn’t manage to get for myself: an introduction to you. The way I see it, your note is a figurative hand-shake and the preliminaries are now over. I hope you’re of the same opinion, as it will save me the trouble of wangling an invitation to Lady Bascomb’s next dinner party on the off-chance you might be there. Your friends are a suspicious lot, especially that fellow Stark, who said it wasn’t his job to reverse the direction of the Lend-Lease and refused to bring you to the cocktail party I threw at the View office.

God knows, my intentions are pure, or at least, nonmercenary. The simple truth of it is that you’re the only female writer who makes me laugh. Your Izzy Bickerstaff columns were the wittiest work to come out of the war, and I want to meet the woman who wrote them.

If I swear that I won’t kidnap you, will you do me the honor of dining with me next week? You pick the evening—I’m entirely at your disposal.

Yours,

Markham Reynolds

6th February, 1946

Dear Mr. Reynolds,

I am no proof against compliments, especially compliments about my writing. I’ll be delighted to dine with you. Thursday next?

Yours sincerely,

Juliet Ashton

February 7, 1946

Dear Juliet,

Thursday’s too far away. Monday? Claridge’s? 7:00?

Yours,

Mark

P.S. I don’t suppose you have a telephone, do you?

7th February, 1946

Dear Mr. Reynolds,

All right—Monday, Claridge’s, seven.

I do have a telephone. It’s in Oakley Street under a pile of rubble that used to be my flat. I’m only sub-letting here, and my landlady, Mrs. Olive Burns, possesses the sole telephone on the premises. If you would like to chat with her, I can give you her number.

Yours sincerely,

Juliet Ashton

7th February, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

I’m certain the Guernsey Literary Society would like to be included in your article for the Times. I have asked Mrs. Maugery to write to you about our meetings, as she is an educated lady and her words will sound more at home in an article than mine could. I don’t think we are much like literary societies in London.

Mr. Hastings hasn’t found a copy of the Lucas biography yet, but I had a postcard from him saying, “Hard on the trail. Don’t give up.” He is a kind man, isn’t he?

I’m hauling slates for the Crown Hotel’s new roof. The owners are hoping that tourists may want to come back this summer. I am glad of the work but will be happy to be working on my land soon.

It is nice to come home in the evening and find a letter from you.

I wish you good fortune in finding a subject you would care to write a book about.

Yours sincerely,

Dawsey Adams

8th February, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Dawsey Adams has just been to call on me. I have never seen him as pleased with anything as he is with your gift and letter. He was so busy convincing me to write to you by the next post that he forgot to be shy. I don’t believe he is aware of it, but Dawsey has a rare gift for persuasion—he never asks for anything for himself, so everyone is eager to do what he asks for others.

He told me of your proposed article and asked if I would write to you about the literary society we formed during—and because of—the German Occupation. I will be happy to do so, but with a caveat.

A friend from England sent me a copy of Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War. We had no news from the outside world for five years, so you can imagine how satisfying it was to learn how England endured those years herself. Your book was as informative as it was entertaining and amusing—but it is the amusing tone I must quibble with.

I realize that our name, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, is an unusual one and could easily be subjected to ridicule. Would you assure me you will not be tempted to do so? The Society members are very dear to me, and I do not wish them to be perceived as objects of fun by your readers.

Would you be willing to tell me of your intentions for the article and also something of yourself ? If you can appreciate the import of my questions, I should be glad to tell you about the Society. I hope I shall hear from you soon.

Yours sincerely,

Amelia Maugery

10th February, 1946

Mrs. Amelia Maugery

Windcross Manor

La Bouvée

St. Martin’s, Guernsey

Dear Mrs. Maugery,

Thank you for your letter. I am very glad to answer your questions. I did make fun of many war-time situations; the Spectator felt a light approach to the bad news would serve as an antidote and that humor would help to raise London’s low morale. I am very glad Izzy served that purpose, but the need to be humorous against the odds is—thank goodness—over. I would never make fun of anyone who loved to read. Nor of Mr. Adams—I was glad to learn one of my books fell into such hands as his.

Since you should know something about me, I have asked the Reverend Simon Simpless, of St. Hilda’s Church near Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk, to write to you. He has known me since I was a child and is fond of me. I have asked Lady Bella Taunton to provide a reference for me too. We were fire wardens together during the Blitz and she wholeheartedly dislikes me. Between the two of them, you may get a fair picture of my character.

I am enclosing a copy of a biography I wrote about Anne Brontë, so you can see that I am capable of a different kind of work. It didn’t sell very well—in fact, not at all, but I am much prouder of it than I am of Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War.

If there is anything else I can do to assure you of my good will, I will be glad to do so.

Yours sincerely,

Juliet Ashton

12th February, 1946

Dearest Sophie,

Markham V. Reynolds, he of the camellias, has finally materialized. Introduced himself, paid me compliments, and invited me out to dinner—Claridge’s, no less. I accepted regally—Claridge’s, oh yes, I have heard of Claridge’s—and then spent the next three days fretting about my hair. It’s lucky I have my lovely new dress, so I didn’t have to waste precious fretting time on my clothes.

As Madame Helena said, “The hairs, they are a disaster.” I tried a roll; it fell down. A French twist; it fell down. I was on the verge of tying an enormous red velvet bow on the top of my head when my neighbor Evangeline Smythe came to the rescue, bless her. She’s a genius with my hair. In two minutes, I was a picture of elegance—she caught up all the curls and swirled them around in the back—and I could even move my head. Off I went, feeling perfectly adorable. Not even Claridge’s marble lobby could intimidate me.

Then Markham V. Reynolds stepped forward, and the bubble popped. He’s dazzling. Honestly, Sophie, I’ve never seen anything like him. Not even the furnace-man can compare. Tan, with blazing blue eyes. Ravishing leather shoes, elegant wool suit, blinding white handkerchief in breast pocket. Of course, being American, he’s tall, and he has one of those alarming American smiles, all gleaming teeth and good humor, but he’s not a genial American. He’s quite impressive, and he’s used to ordering people about—though he does it so easily, they don’t notice.

He’s got that way of believing his opinion is the truth, but he’s not disagreeable about it. He’s too sure he’s right to bother being disagreeable.

Once we were seated—in our own velvet-draped alcove—and all the waiters and stewards and maîtres d’hôtel were finished fluttering about us, I asked him point-blank why he had sent me those scads of flowers without including any note.

He laughed. “To make you interested. If I had written you directly, asking you to meet me, how would you have replied?” I admitted I would have declined. He raised one pointed eyebrow at me. Was it his fault if he could outwit me so easily?

I was awfully insulted to be so transparent, but he just laughed at me again. And then he began to talk about the war and Victorian literature—he knows I wrote a biography of Anne Brontë—and New York and rationing, and before I knew it, I was basking in his attention, utterly charmed.

Do you remember that afternoon in Leeds when we speculated on the possible reasons why Markham V. Reynolds, Junior, was obliged to remain a man of mystery? It’s very disappointing, but we were completely wrong. He’s not married. He’s certainly not bashful. He doesn’t have a disfiguring scar that causes him to shun daylight. He doesn’t seem to be a werewolf (no fur on his knuckles, anyway). And he’s not a Nazi on the lam (he’d have an accent).

Now that I think about it, maybe he is a werewolf. I can picture him lunging over the moors in hot pursuit of his prey, and I’m certain that he wouldn’t think twice about eating an innocent bystander. I’ll watch him closely at the next full moon. He’s asked me to go dancing tomorrow—perhaps I should wear a high collar. Oh, that’s vampires, isn’t it?

I think I am a little giddy.

Love,

Juliet

12th February, 1946

Dear Mrs. Maugery,

Juliet Ashton’s letter is at hand, and I am amazed at its contents. Am I to understand she wishes me to provide a character reference for her? Well, so be it! I cannot impugn her character—only her common sense. She hasn’t any.

War, as you know, makes strange bedfellows, and Juliet and I were thrown together from the very first when we were Fire Wardens during the Blitz. Fire Wardens spent their nights on various London roof-tops, watching out for incendiary bombs that might fall. When they did, we would rush forth with stirrup pump and buckets of sand to stifle any small blaze before it could spread. Juliet and I were paired off to work together. We did not chat, as less conscientious Wardens would have done. I insisted on total vigilance at all times. Even so, I learned a few details of her life prior to the war.

Her father was a respectable farmer in Suffolk. Her mother, I surmise, was a typical farmer’s wife, milking cows and plucking chickens, when not otherwise engaged in owning a bookshop in Bury St. Edmunds. Juliet’s parents were both killed in a motor accident when she was twelve and she went to live with her greatuncle, a renowned Classicist, in St. John’s Wood. There she disrupted his studies and household by running away—twice.

In despair, he sent her to a select boarding school. When she left school, she shunned a higher education, came to London, and shared a studio with her friend Sophie Stark. She worked by day in bookshops. By night, she wrote a book about one of those wretched Brontë girls—I forget which one. I believe the book was published by Sophie’s brother’s firm, Stephens & Stark.

Though it’s biologically impossible, I can only assume that some form of nepotism was responsible for the book’s publication.

In any event, she began to publish feature articles for various magazines and newspapers. Her light, frivolous turn of mind gained her a large following among the less intellectually inclined readers—of whom, I fear, there are many. She spent the very last of her inheritance on a flat in Chelsea. Chelsea, home of artists, models, libertines, and Socialists—completely irresponsible people all, just as Juliet proved herself to be as a Fire Warden.

I come now to the specifics of our association. Juliet and I were two of several Wardens assigned to the roof of the Inner Temple Hall of the Inns of Court. Let me say first that, for a Warden, quick action and a clear head were imperative—one had to be aware of everything going on around one. Everything.

One night in May 1941, a high-explosive bomb was dropped through the roof of the Inner Temple Hall Library. The Library roof was some distance away from Juliet’s post, but she was so aghast by the destruction of her precious books that she sprinted toward the flames—as if she could single-handedly deliver the Library from its fate! Of course, her delusions created nothing but further damage, for the firemen had to waste valuable minutes in rescuing her.

I believe Juliet suffered some minor burns in the debacle, but fifty thousand books were blown to Kingdom Come. Juliet’s name was stricken from the lists of the Fire Wardens, and rightly so. I discovered she then volunteered her services to the Auxiliary Fire Services. On the morning after a bombing raid, the AFS would be on hand to offer tea and comfort to the rescue squads. The AFS also provided assistance to the survivors: reuniting families, securing temporary housing, clothing, food, funds. I believe Juliet to have been adequate to that daytime task—causing no catastrophe among the teacups.

She was free to occupy her nights however she chose. Doubtless it included the writing of more light journalism, for the Spectator engaged her to write a weekly column on the state of the nation in war-time—under the name of Izzy Bickerstaff.

I read one of her columns and canceled my subscription. She attacked the good taste of our dear (though dead) Queen, Victoria. Doubtless you know of the huge memorial Victoria had built for her beloved consort, Prince Albert. It is the jewel in the crown of Kensington Gardens—a monument to the Queen’s refined taste as well as to the Departed. Juliet applauded the Ministry of Food for having ordered peas to be planted in the grounds surrounding that memorial—writing that no better scarecrow than Prince Albert existed in all of England.

While I question her taste, her judgment, her misplaced priorities, and her inappropriate sense of humor, she does indeed have one fine quality—she is honest. If she says she will honor the good name of your literary society, she will do so. I can say no more.

Sincerely yours,

Bella Taunton

13th February, 1946

Dear Mrs. Maugery,

Yes, you may trust Juliet. I am unequivocal on this point. Her parents were my good friends as well as my parishioners at St. Hilda’s. Indeed, I was a guest at their home on the night she was born.

Juliet was a stubborn but, withal, a sweet, considerate, joyous child—with an unusual bent toward integrity for one so young. I will tell you of one incident when she was ten years old. Juliet, while singing the fourth stanza of “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” slammed her hymnal shut and refused to sing another note. She told our choir director the lyrics cast a slur on God’s character. We should not be singing it. He (the choir director, not God) didn’t know what to do, so he escorted Juliet to my office for me to reason with her.

I did not fare very well. Juliet said, “Well, he shouldn’t have written, ‘His eye is on the sparrow’—what good was that? Did He stop the bird from falling down dead? Did He just say, ‘Oops’? It makes God sound like He’s off bird-watching, when real people need Him.”

I felt compelled to agree with Juliet on this matter—why had I never thought upon it before? The choir did not sing and has not since sung “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”

Juliet’s parents died when she was twelve and she was sent to live with her great-uncle, Dr. Roderick Ashton, in London. Though not an unkind man, he was so mired in his Greco-Roman studies he had no time to pay the girl any attention. He had no imagination, either—fatal for one engaged in child-rearing.

She ran away twice, the first time making it only as far as King’s Cross Station. The police found her waiting, with a packed canvas carry-all and her father’s fishing rod, to catch the train to Bury St. Edmunds. She was returned to Dr. Ashton—and she ran away again. This time, Dr. Ashton telephoned me to ask for my help in finding her.

I knew exactly where to go—to her parents’ former farm. I found her opposite the farm’s entrance, sitting on a little wooded knoll, impervious to the rain—just sitting there, soaked—looking at her old (now sold) home.

I wired her uncle and went back with her on the train to London the following day. I had intended to return to my parish on the next train, but when I discovered her fool of an uncle had sent his cook to fetch her home, I insisted on accompanying them.

I invaded his study and we had a vigorous talk. He agreed a boarding school might be best for Juliet—her parents had left ample funds for such an eventuality.

Fortunately, I knew of a very good school—St. Swithin’s. Academically a fine school, and with a headmistress not carved from granite. I am happy to tell you Juliet thrived there—she found her studies stimulating, but I believe the true reason for Juliet’s regained spirits was her friendship with Sophie Stark and the Stark family. She often went to Sophie’s home for half-term vacation, and Juliet and Sophie came twice to stay with me and my sister at the Rectory. What jolly times we shared: picnics, bicycle rides, fishing. Sophie’s brother, Sidney Stark, joined us once—though ten years older than the girls, and despite an inclination to boss them around, he was a welcome fifth to our happy party.

It was rewarding to watch Juliet grow up—as it is now, to know her fully grown. I am very happy she asked me to write to you of her character.

I have included our small history together so you will realize I know whereof I speak. If Juliet says she will, she will. If she says she won’t, she won’t.

Very truly yours,

Simon Simpless

17th February, 1946

Dear Juliet,

Was that possibly you I glimpsed in this week’s Tatler, doing the rumba with Mark Reynolds? You looked gorgeous—almost as gorgeous as he did—but might I suggest that you move to an air-raid shelter before Sidney sees a copy?

You can purchase my silence with torrid details, you know.

Yours,

Susan

18th February, 1946

Dear Susan,

I deny everything.

Love,

Juliet

18th February, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Thank you for taking my caveat so seriously. At the Society meeting last night, I told the members about your article for the Times and suggested that those who wished to do so should correspond with you about the books they read and the joy they found in reading.

The response was so vociferous Isola Pribby, our Sergeant-at-Arms, was forced to bang her hammer for order (I admit that Isola needs little encouragement to bang her hammer). I think you will receive a good many letters from us, and I hope they will be of some help in your article.

Dawsey has told you that the Society was invented as a ruse to keep the Germans from arresting my dinner guests: Dawsey, Isola, Eben Ramsey, John Booker, Will Thisbee, and our dear Elizabeth McKenna, who manufactured the story on the spot, bless her quick wits and silver tongue.

I, of course, knew nothing of their predicament at the time. As soon as they left, I made haste down to my cellar to bury the evidence of our meal. The first I heard about our literary society was the next morning at seven, when Elizabeth appeared in my kitchen and asked, “How many books have you got?”

I had quite a few, but Elizabeth looked at my shelves and shook her head. “We need more. There’s too much gardening here.” She was right, of course—I do like a good garden book. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” she said. “After I’m done at the Commandant’s Office, we’ll go to Fox’s Bookshop and buy them out. If we’re going to be the Guernsey Literary Society, we have to look literary.”

I was frantic all forenoon, worrying over what was happening at the Commandant’s Office. What if they all ended up in the Guernsey jail? Or, worst of all, in a prison camp on the continent? The Germans were erratic in dispensing their justice, so one never knew which sentence would be imposed. But nothing of the sort occurred.

Odd as it may sound, the Germans allowed—and even encouraged—artistic and cultural pursuits among the Channel Islanders. Their object was to prove to the British that the German Occupation was a Model Occupation. How this message was to be conveyed to the outside world was never explained, as the telephone and telegraph cable between Guernsey and London had been cut the day the Germans landed in June 1940. Whatever their skewed reasoning, the Channel Islands were treated much more leniently than the rest of conquered Europe—at first.

At the Commandant’s Office, my friends were ordered to pay a small fine and submit the name and membership list of their society. The Commandant announced that he, too, was a lover of literature might he, with a few like-minded officers, sometimes attend meetings?

Elizabeth told them they would be most welcome. And then she, Eben, and I flew to Fox’s, chose armloads of books for our newfound Society, and rushed back to the Manor to put them on my shelves. Then we strolled from house to house—looking as carefree and casual as we could—in order to alert the others to come that evening and choose a book to read. It was agonizing to walk slowly, stopping to chat here and there, when we wanted to scurry! Timing was vital, since Elizabeth feared the Commandant would appear at the next meeting, a bare two weeks away. (He did not. A few German officers did attend over the years but, thankfully, left in some confusion and did not return.)

And so it was that we began. I knew all our members, but I did not know them all well. Dawsey had been my neighbor for over thirty years, and yet I don’t believe I had ever spoken to him of anything more than weather and farming. Isola was a dear friend, and Eben, too, but Will Thisbee was only an acquaintance and John Booker was nearly a stranger, for he had only just arrived when the Germans came. It was Elizabeth we had in common. Without her urging, I would never have thought to invite them to share my pig, and the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society would never have drawn breath.

That evening when they came to my house to make their selections, those who had rarely read anything other than Scripture, seed catalogues, and The Pigman’s Gazette discovered a different kind of reading. It was here Dawsey found his Charles Lamb and Isola fell upon Wuthering Heights. For myself, I chose The Pickwick Papers, thinking it would lift my spirits—it did.

Then each went home and read. We began to meet—for the sake of the Commandant at first, and then for our own pleasure. None of us had any experience with literary societies, so we made our own rules: we took turns speaking about the books we’d read. At the start, we tried to be calm and objective, but that soon fell away, and the purpose of the speakers was to goad the listeners into wanting to read the book themselves. Once two members had read the same book, they could argue, which was our great delight. We read books, talked books, argued over books, and became dearer and dearer to one another. Other Islanders asked to join us, and our evenings together became bright, lively times—we could almost forget, now and then, the darkness outside. We still meet every fortnight.

Will Thisbee was responsible for the inclusion of Potato Peel Pie in our society’s name. Germans or no, he wasn’t going to go to any meetings unless there were eats! So refreshments became part of our program. Since there was scant butter, less flour, and no sugar to spare on Guernsey then, Will concocted a potato peel pie: mashed potatoes for filling, strained beets for sweetness, and potato peelings for crust. Will’s recipes are usually dubious, but this one became a favorite.

I would enjoy hearing from you again and learning how your article progresses.

Yours most sincerely,

Amelia Maugery

19th February, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Oh my, oh my. You have written a book about Anne Brontë, sister to Charlotte and Emily. Amelia Maugery says she will lend it to me, for she knows I have a fondness for the Brontë girls—poor lambs. To think all five of them had weak chests and died so young! What a sadness.

Their Pa was a selfish thing, wasn’t he? He paid his girls no mind at all—always sitting in his study, yelling for his shawl. He never rose up to wait on hisself, did he? Just sat alone in his room while his daughters died like flies.

And their brother, Branwell, he wasn’t much either. Always drinking and sicking up on the carpets. They were forever having to clean up after him. Fine work for lady Authoresses!

It is my belief that with two such men in the household and no way to meet others, Emily had to make Heathcliff up out of thin air! And what a fine job she did. Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.

Amelia told us you would like to know about our book society and what we talk about at our meetings. I gave a talk on the Brontë girls once when it was my turn to speak. I’m sorry I can’t send you my notes on Charlotte and Emily—I used them to kindle a fire in my cookstove, there being no other paper in the house. I’d already burnt up my tide tables, the Book of Revelation, and the story about Job.

You will want to know why I admired those girls. I like stories of passionate encounters. I myself have never had one, but now I can picture one. I didn’t like Wuthering Heights at first, but the minute that specter, Cathy, scrabbled her bony fingers on the window glass—I was grasped by the throat and not let go. With that Emily I could hear Heathcliff ’s pitiful cries upon the moors. I don’t believe that after reading such a fine writer as Emily Brontë, I will be happy to read again Miss Amanda Gillyflower’s Ill-Used by Candlelight. Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.

I will tell you now about myself. I have a cottage and small holding next to Amelia Maugery’s manor house and farm. We are both situated by the sea. I tend my chickens and my goat, Ariel, and grow things. I have a parrot in my keeping too—her name is Zenobia and she does not like men.

I have a stall at Market every week, where I sell my preserves, vegetables, and elixirs I make to restore manly ardor. Kit McKenna—daughter to my dear friend Elizabeth McKenna—helps me make my potions. She is only four and has to stand on a stool to stir my pot, but she is able to whip up big froths.

I do not have a pleasing appearance. My nose is big and was broken when I fell off the hen-house roof. One eyeball skitters up to the top, and my hair is wild and will not stay tamped down. I am tall and built of big bones.

I could write to you again, if you want me to. I could tell you more about reading and how it perked up our spirits while the Germans were here. The only time reading didn’t help was after Elizabeth was arrested by the Germans. They caught her hiding one of those poor slave workers from Poland, and they sent her to prison in France. There was no book that could lift my heart then, nor for a long time after. It was all I could do not to slap every German I saw. For Kit’s sake, I held myself in. She was only a little sprout then, and she needed us. Elizabeth hasn’t come home yet. We are afraid for her, but mind you, I say it’s early days yet and she might still come home. I pray so, for I miss her sorely.

Your friend,

Isola Pribby

20th February, 1946

Dear Mr. Adams,

How did you know that I like white lilacs above all flowers? I always have, and now here they are, pluming out over my desk. They are beautiful, and I love having them—the look, the delicious scent and the surprise of them. At first I thought, How on earth did he find these in February, and then I remembered that the Channel Islands are blessed by a warm Gulf Stream.

Mr. Dilwyn appeared at my door with your present early this morning. He said he was in London on business for his bank. He assured me it was no trouble at all to deliver the flowers—there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do for you because of some soap you gave Mrs. Dilwyn during the war. She still cries every time she thinks of it. What a nice man he is—I am sorry he didn’t have time to stop for coffee.

Due to your kind offices, I have received lovely, long letters from Mrs. Maugery and Isola Pribby. I hadn’t realized that the Germans permitted no outside news at all, not even letters, to reach Guernsey. It surprised me so much. It shouldn’t have—I knew the Channel Islands had been occupied, but I never, not once, thought what that might have entailed. Willful ignorance is all I can call it. So, I am off to the London Library to educate myself. The library suffered terrible bomb damage, but the floors are safe to walk on again, all the books that could be saved are back on the shelf, and I know they have collected all the Times from 1900 to—yesterday. I shall study up on the Occupation.

I want to find some travel or history books about the Channel Islands too. Is it really true that on a clear day, you can see the cars on the French coast roads? So it says in my Encyclopedia, but I bought it secondhand for 4 shillings and I don’t trust it. There I also learned that Guernsey is “roughly seven miles long and five miles wide, with a population of 42,000 inhabitants.” Strictly speaking, very informative, but I want to know more than that. Miss Pribby told me that your friend Elizabeth McKenna had been sent to a prison camp on the continent and has not yet returned.

It knocked the wind out of me. Ever since your letter about the roast pig dinner, I had been imagining her there among you. Without even knowing I was doing so, I depended upon one day receiving a letter from her too. I am sorry. I will hope for her early return.

Thank you again for my flowers. It was a lovely thing for you to do.

Yours ever,

Juliet Ashton

P.S. You may consider this a rhetorical question if you want to, but why did Mrs. Dilwyn weep over a cake of soap?

21st February, 1946

Dearest Sidney,

I haven’t heard from you in ages. Does your icy silence have anything to do with Mark Reynolds?

I have an idea for a new book. It’s a novel about a beautiful yet sensitive author whose spirit is crushed by her domineering editor. Do you like it?

Love always,

Juliet

23rd February, 1946

Dear Sidney,

I was only joking.

Love,

Juliet

25th February, 1946

Sidney?

Love,

Juliet

26th February, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Did you think I wouldn’t notice you were gone? I did. After three notes went unanswered, I made a personal visit to St. James’s Place, where I encountered the cast-iron Miss Tilley, who said you were out of town. Very enlightening. Upon pressing, I learned you had gone to Australia! Miss Tilley listened coolly to my exclamations. She would not disclose your exact whereabouts—only that you were scouring the Outback, seeking new authors for Stephens & Stark’s list. She would forward any letters to you, at her discretion.

Your Miss Tilley does not fool me. Nor do you—I know exactly where you are and what you are doing. You flew to Australia to find Piers Langley and are holding his hand while he sobers up. At least, I hope that’s what you are doing. He is such a dear friend—and such a brilliant writer. I want him to be well again and writing poetry. I’d add forgetting all about Burma and the Japanese, but I know that’s not possible.

You could have told me, you know. I can be discreet when I really try (you’ve never forgiven me for that slip about Mrs. Atwater in the pergola, have you? I apologized handsomely at the time).

I liked your other secretary better. And you sacked her for naught, you know: Markham Reynolds and I have met. All right, we’ve done more than meet. We’ve danced the rumba. But don’t fuss. He has not mentioned View, except in passing, and he hasn’t once tried to lure me to New York. We talk of higher matters, such as Victorian literature. He’s not the shallow dilettante you would have me believe, Sidney. He’s an expert on Wilkie Collins, of all things. Did you know that Wilkie Collins maintained two separate households with two separate mistresses and two separate sets of children? The scheduling difficulties must have been shocking. No wonder he took laudanum.

I do think you would like Mark if you knew him better, and you may have to. But my heart and my writing hand belong to Stephens & Stark.

The article for the Times has turned into a lovely treat for me—now and ongoing. I have made a group of new friends from the Channel Islands—the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Don’t you adore their name? If Piers needs distracting, I’ll write you a nice fat letter about how they came by their name. If not, I’ll tell you when you come home (when are you coming home?).

My neighbor Evangeline Smythe is going to have twins in June. She is none too happy about it, so I am going to ask her to give one of them to me.

Love to you and Piers,

Juliet

28th February, 1946

Dearest Sophie—

I am as surprised as you are. He didn’t breathe a word to me. On Tuesday, I realized I hadn’t heard from Sidney in days, so I went to Stephens & Stark to demand attention and found he’d flown the coop. That new secretary of his is a fiend. To every one of my questions, she said, “I really can’t divulge information of a personal nature, Miss Ashton.” How I wanted to smack her.

Just as I was concluding that Sidney had been tapped by MI6 and was on a mission in Siberia, horrible Miss Tilley admitted that he’d gone to Australia. Well, it all came clear then, didn’t it? He’s gone to get Piers. Teddy Lucas seemed quite certain that Piers was going to drink himself steadily to death in that rest home unless someone came and stopped him. I can hardly blame him, after what he’s been through—but Sidney won’t allow it, thank God.

You know I adore Sidney with all my heart, but there’s something terrifically liberating about Sidney in Australia. Mark Reynolds has been what your Aunt Lydia would have called persistent in his attentions for the last three weeks, but, even as I’ve gobbled lobster and guzzled champagne, I’ve been looking furtively over my shoulder for Sidney. He’s convinced that Mark is trying to steal me away from London in general and Stephens & Stark in particular, and nothing I said could persuade him otherwise. I know he doesn’t like Mark—I believe aggressive and unscrupulous were the words he used last time I saw him—but really, he was a bit too King Lear about the whole thing. I am a grown woman—mostly—and I can guzzle champagne with whomever I choose.

When not checking under tablecloths for Sidney, I’ve been having the most wonderful time. I feel as though I’ve emerged from a black tunnel and found myself in the middle of a carnival. I don’t particularly care for carnivals, but after the tunnel, it’s delicious. Mark gads about every night—if we’re not going to a party (and we usually are), we’re off to the cinema, or the theater, or a night club, or a gin house of ill-repute (he says he’s trying to introduce me to democratic ideals). It’s very exciting.

Have you noticed there are some people—Americans especially—who seem untouched by the war, or at least, un-mangled by it? I don’t mean to imply that Mark was a shirker—he was in their Air Corps—but he’s simply not sunk under it. And when I’m with him, I feel untouched by the war, too. It’s an illusion, I know it is, and truthfully, I’d be ashamed of myself if the war hadn’t touched me. But it’s forgivable to enjoy myself a little—isn’t it?

Is Dominic too old for a jack-in-the-box? I saw a diabolical one in a shop yesterday. It pops out, leering and weaving, its oily black mustache curling above pointed white teeth, the very picture of a villain. Dominic would adore it, after he had got over his first shock.

Love,

Juliet

28th February, 1946

Miss Isola Pribby

Pribby Homestead

La Bouvée

St. Martin’s, Guernsey

Dear Miss Pribby,

Thank you so much for your letter about yourself and Emily Brontë. I laughed when I read that Emily had caught you by the throat the second poor Cathy’s ghost knocked at the window. She got me at the exact same moment. Our teacher had assigned Wuthering Heights to be read over the Easter holiday. I went home with my friend Sophie Stark, and we whined for two days over the injustice of it all. Finally her brother, Sidney, told us to shut up and get on with it. I did, still fuming, until I got to Cathy’s ghost at the window. I have never felt such dread as I did then. Monsters or vampires have never scared me in books—but ghosts are a different matter.

Sophie and I did nothing the rest of our holiday but move from bed to hammock to armchair, reading Jane Eyre, Agnes Grey, Shirley, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. What a family they were—but I chose to write about Anne Brontë because she was the least known of the sisters, and, I think, just as fine a writer as Charlotte. Lord knows how Anne managed to write any books at all, influenced by such a strain of religion as her Aunt Branwell possessed. Emily and Charlotte had the good sense to ignore their bleak aunt, but not poor Anne. Imagine preaching that God meant women to be Meek, Mild, and Gently Melancholic. So much less trouble around the house—pernicious old bat!

I hope you will write to me again.

Yours,

Juliet Ashton

28th February, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

I am a Guernsey man and my name is Eben Ramsey. My fathers before me were tombstone-cutters and carvers—lambs a specialty. These are the things I like to do of an evening, but for my livelihood, I fish.

Mrs. Maugery said you would like to have letters about our reading during the Occupation. I was never going to talk—or think, if I could help it—about those days, but Mrs. Maugery said we could trust to your judgment in writing about the Society during the war. If Mrs. Maugery says you can be trusted, I believe it. Also, you had such kindness to send my friend Dawsey a book—and he all but unknown to you. So I am writing to you and hope it will be a help to your story.

Best to say we weren’t a true literary society at first. Aside from Elizabeth, Mrs. Maugery, and perhaps Booker, most of us hadn’t had much to do with books since our school years. We took them from Mrs. Maugery’s shelves fearful we’d spoil the fine papers. I had no zest for such matters in those days. It was only by fixing my mind on the Commandant and jail that I could make myself to lift up the cover of the book and begin.

It was called Selections from Shakespeare. Later, I came to see that Mr. Dickens and Mr. Wordsworth were thinking of men like me when they wrote their words. But most of all, I believe that William Shakespeare was. Mind you, I cannot always make sense of what he says, but it will come.

It seems to me the less he said, the more beauty he made. Do you know what sentence of his I admire the most? It is “The bright day is done, and we are for the dark.”

I wish I’d known those words on the day I watched those German troops land, plane-load after plane-load of them—and come off ships down in the harbor! All I could think of was damn them, damn them, over and over. If I could have thought the words “the bright day is done and we are for the dark,” I’d have been consoled somehow and ready to go out and contend with circumstance—instead of my heart sinking to my shoes.

They came here on Sunday, 30th June, 1940, after bombing us two days before. They said they hadn’t meant to bomb us; they mistook our tomato lorries on the pier for army trucks. How they came to think that strains the mind. They bombed us, killing some thirty men, women, and children—one among them was my cousin’s boy. He had sheltered underneath his lorry when he first saw the planes dropping bombs, and it exploded and caught fire. They killed men in their lifeboats at sea. They strafed the Red Cross ambulances carrying our wounded. When no one shot back at them, they saw the British had left us undefended. They just flew in peaceably two days later and occupied us for five years.

At first, they were as nice as could be. They were that full of themselves for conquering a bit of England, and they were thick enough to think it would just be a hop and a skip till they landed in London. When they found out that wasn’t to be, they turned back to their natural meanness.

They had rules for everything—do this, don’t do that, but they kept changing their minds, trying to seem friendly, like they were poking a carrot in front of a donkey’s nose. But we weren’t donkeys. So they’d get harsh again.

For instance, they were always changing curfew—eight at night, or nine, or five in the evening if they felt really meanminded. You couldn’t visit your friends or even tend your stock. We started out hopeful, sure they’d be gone in six months. But it stretched on and on. Food grew hard to come by, and soon there was no firewood left. Days were grey with hard work and evenings were black with boredom. Everyone was sickly from so little nourishment and bleak from wondering if it would ever end. We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us. Elizabeth used to say a poem. I don’t remember all of it, but it began “Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done, to have advanced true friends?” It isn’t. I hope, wherever she is, she has that in her mind.

Late in 1944, it didn’t matter what time the Germans set the curfew for. Most people went to bed around five o’clock anyway to keep warm. We were rationed to two candles a week and then only one. It was mighty tedious, lying up in bed with no light to read by.

After D-Day, the Germans couldn’t send any supply ships from France because of the Allied bombers. So they were finally as hungry as we were—and killing dogs and cats to give themselves something to eat. They would raid our gardens, rooting up potatoes—even eating the black, rotten ones. Four soldiers died eating handfuls of hemlock, thinking it was parsley. The German officers said any soldier caught stealing food from our gardens would be shot. One poor soldier was caught stealing a potato. He was chased by his own people and climbed up a tree to hide. But they found him and shot him down out of the tree. Still, that did not stop them from stealing food. I am not pointing a finger at those practices, because some of us were doing the same. I figure hunger makes you desperate when you wake to it every morning.

My grandson, Eli, was evacuated to England when he was seven. He is home now—twelve years old, and tall—but I will never forgive the Germans for making me miss his growing-up years.

I must go milk my cow now, but I will write to you again if you like.

My wishes for your health,

Eben Ramsey

1st March, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Forgive the presumption of a letter from a person unknown to you. But a clear duty is imposed upon me. I understand from Dawsey Adams that you are to write a long article for the Times’ literary supplement on the value of reading and you intend to feature the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society therein.

I laugh.

Perhaps you will reconsider when you learn that their founder, Elizabeth McKenna, is not even an Islander. Despite her fine airs, she is merely a jumped-up servant from the London home of Sir Ambrose Ivers, R.A. (Royal Academy). Surely, you know of him. He is a portrait painter of some note, though I’ve never understood why. His portrait of the Countess of Lambeth as Boadicea, lashing her horses, was unforgivable. In any event, Elizabeth McKenna was the daughter of his housekeeper, if you please.

While Elizabeth’s mother dusted, Sir Ambrose let the child putter in his studio, and he kept her in school long after the normal leaving time for one of her station. Her mother died when Elizabeth was fourteen. Did Sir Ambrose send her to an institution to be properly trained for a suitable occupation? He did not. He kept her with him in his home in Chelsea. He proposed her for a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art.

Mind you, I do not say Sir Ambrose sired the girl—we know his proclivities too well to admit of that—but he doted upon her in a way that encouraged her besetting sin: lack of humility. The decay of standards is the cross of our times, and nowhere is this regrettable decline more apparent than in Elizabeth McKenna.

Sir Ambrose owned a home in Guernsey—on the cliff tops near La Bouvée. He, his housekeeper, and the girl summered here when she was a child. Elizabeth was a wild thing—roaming unkempt about the island, even on Sundays. No household chores, no gloves, no shoes, no stockings. Going out on fishing boats with rude men. Spying on decent people through her telescope. A disgrace.

When it became clear that the war was going to start in earnest, Sir Ambrose sent Elizabeth to close up his house. Elizabeth bore the brunt of his haphazard ways in this case, for, in the midst of putting up the shutters, the German army landed on her doorstep. However, the choice to remain here was hers, and, as is proven by certain subsequent events (which I will not demean myself to mention), she is not the selfless heroine that some people seem to think.

Furthermore, the so-called Literary Society is a scandal. There are those of true culture and breeding here in Guernsey, and they will take no part in this charade (even if invited). There are only two respectable people in the Society—Eben Ramsey and Amelia Maugery. The other members: a rag-and-bone man, a lapsed Alienist who drinks, a stuttering swine-herd, a footman posing as a Lord, and Isola Pribby, a practicing witch, who, by her own admission to me, distills and sells potions. They collected a few others of their ilk along the way, and one can only imagine their “literary evenings.”

You must not write about these people and their books—God knows what they saw fit to read!

Yours in Christian Consternation and Concern,

Adelaide Addison (Miss)

March 2, 1946

Dear Juliet,

I’ve just appropriated my music critic’s opera tickets. Covent Garden at 8:00. Will you?

Yours,

Mark

Dear Mark,

Tonight?

Juliet

Yes!

M.

Wonderful! I feel sorry for your critic, though. Those tickets are scarce as hens’ teeth.

Juliet

He’ll make do with standing room. He can write about the uplifting effect of opera on the poor, etc., etc.

I’ll pick you up at 7.

M.

3rd March, 1946

Mr. Eben Ramsey

Les Pommiers

Calais Lane

St. Martin’s, Guernsey

Dear Mr. Ramsey,

It was so kind of you to write to me about your experiences during the Occupation. At the war’s end, I, too, promised myself that I had done with talking about it. I had talked and lived war for six years, and I was longing to pay attention to something—anything—else. But that is like wishing I were someone else. The war is now the story of our lives, and there’s no subtracting it.

I was glad to hear about your grandson Eli returning to you. Does he live with you or with his parents? Did you receive no news of him at all during the Occupation? Did all the Guernsey children return at once? What a celebration, if they did!

I don’t mean to inundate you with questions, but I have a few more, if you’re in an answering frame of mind. I know you were at the roast pig dinner that led to the founding of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—but how did Mrs. Maugery come to have the pig in the first place? How does one hide a pig?

Elizabeth McKenna was brave that night! She truly has grace under pressure, a quality that fills me with hopeless admiration. I know you and the other members of the Society must worry as the months pass without word, but you mustn’t give up hope.

Friends tell me that Europe is like a hive broken open, teeming with thousands upon thousands of displaced people, all trying to get home. A dear old friend of mine, who was shot down in Burma in 1943, reappeared in Australia last month—not in the best of shape, but alive and intending to remain so.

Thank you for your letter.

Yours sincerely,

Juliet Ashton

4th March, 1946

Dear Miss,

At first, I did not want to go to any book meetings. My farm is a lot of work, and I did not want to spend my time reading about people who never was, doing things they never did.

Then in 1942 I started to court the Widow Hubert. When we’d go for a walk, she’d march a few steps ahead of me on the path and never let me take her arm. She let Ralph Murchey take her arm, so I knew I was failing in my suit.

Ralph, he’s a bragger when he drinks, and he said to all in the tavern, “Women like poetry. A soft word in their ears and they melt—a grease spot on the grass.” That’s no way to talk about a lady, and I knew right then he didn’t want the Widow Hubert for her own self, the way I did. He wanted only her grazing land for his cows. So I thought—If it’s rhymes the Widow Hubert wants, I will find me some.

I went to see Mr. Fox in his bookshop and asked for some love poetry. He didn’t have many books left by that time—folks bought them to burn, and when he finally caught on, he closed his shop for good—so he gave me some fellow named Catullus.

He was a Roman. Do you know the kind of things he said in verse? I knew I couldn’t say those words to a nice lady. He did hanker after one woman, Lesbia, who spurned him after taking him into her bed. I don’t wonder she did so—he did not like it when she petted her downy little sparrow. Jealous of a bitty bird, he was. He went home and took up his pen to write of his anguish at seeing her cuddle the little birdy to her bosom. He took it hard, and he never liked women after that and wrote mean poems about them.

He was a tight one too. Do you want to see a poem he wrote when a fallen woman charged him for her favors—poor lass. I will copy it out for you.

Those are love tokens? I told my friend Eben I never saw such spiteful stuff. He said to me I had just not read the right poets. He took me into his cottage and lent me a little book of his own. It was the poetry of Wilfred Owen. He was an officer in the First World War, and he knew what was what and called it by its right name. I was there, too, at Passchendaele, and I knew what he knew, but I could never put it into words for myself.

Well, after that, I thought there might be something to this poetry after all. I began to go to meetings, and I’m glad I did, else how would I have read the works of William Wordsworth—he would have stayed unknown to me. I learned many of his poems by heart.

Anyway, I did win the hand of the Widow Hubert—my Nancy. I got her to go for a walk along the cliffs one evening, and I said, “Lookie there, Nancy. The gentleness of Heaven broods o’er the sea—Listen, the mighty Being is awake.” She let me kiss her. She is now my wife.

Yours truly,

Clovis Fossey

P.S. Mrs. Maugery lent me a book last week. It’s called The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892–1935. They let a man named Yeats make the choosings. They shouldn’t have. Who is he—and what does he know about verse?

I hunted all through that book for poems by Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon. There weren’t any—nary a one. And do you know why not? Because this Mr. Yeats said—he said, “I deliberately chose NOT to include any poems from World War I. I have a distaste for them. Passive suffering is not a theme for poetry.”

Passive Suffering? Passive Suffering! I nearly seized up. What ailed the man? Lieutenant Owen, he wrote a line, “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns.” What’s passive about that, I’d like to know? That’s exactly how they do die. I saw it with my own eyes, and I say to hell with Mr. Yeats.

Yours truly,

Clovis Fossey

10th March, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Thank you for your letter and your kind questions about my grandson, Eli. He is the child of my daughter, Jane. Jane and her new-born baby died in hospital on the day that the Germans bombed us, 28th June, 1940. Eli’s father was killed in North Africa in 1942, so I have Eli in my keeping now.

Eli left Guernsey on 20th June, along with the thousands of babies and schoolchildren who were evacuated to England. We knew the Germans were coming and Jane worried for his safety here. The doctor would not let Jane sail with them, the baby’s birth being so close.

We did not have any news of the children for six months. Then I got a postcard from the Red Cross, saying Eli was well, but not where he was situated—we never knew what towns our children were in, though we prayed not in a big city. An even longer time passed before I could send him a card in return, but I was of two minds about that. I dreaded to tell him that his mother and the baby had died. I hated to think of my boy reading those cold words on the back of a postcard. But I had to do it. And then a second time, after I got word about his father.

Eli did not come back until the war was over—and they did send all the children home at once. That was a day! More wonderful even than when the British soldiers came to liberate Guernsey. Eli, he was the first boy down the gangway—he’d grown long legs in five years—and I don’t think I could have left off hugging him to me, if Isola hadn’t pushed me a bit so she could hug him herself.

I bless God that he was boarded with a farm family in Yorkshire. They were very good to him. Eli gave me a letter they had written for me—it was full of all the things I had missed seeing in his growing up. They told of his schooling, how he helped on the farm, how he tried to be steadfast when he got my postcards.

He fishes with me and helps me tend my cow and garden, but carving wood is what he likes best—Dawsey and I are teaching him how to do it. He fashioned a fine snake from a bit of broken fence rail last week, though it’s my guess that the broken fence rail was really a rafter from Dawsey’s barn. Dawsey just smiled when I asked him of it, but spare wood is hard to find on the island now, as we had to cut down most of the trees—banisters and furniture, too—for firewood when there was no more coal or paraffin left. Eli and I are planting trees on my land now, but it is going to take a long time for them to become grown—and we do all miss the leaves and shade.

I will tell you now about our roast pig. The Germans were fussy over farm animals. Pigs and cows were kept strict count of. Guernsey was to feed the German troops stationed here and in France. We ourselves could have the leavings, if there were any.

How the Germans did favor book-keeping. They kept track of every gallon we milked, weighed the cream, recorded every sack of flour. They left the chickens alone for a while. But when feed and scraps became so scarce, they ordered us to kill off the older chickens, so’s the good layers could have enough feed to keep on laying eggs.

We fishermen had to give them the largest share of our catch. They would meet our boats in the harbor to portion out their share. Early in the Occupation, a good many Islanders escaped to England in fishing boats—some drowned, but some made it. So the Germans made a new rule, any person who had a family member in England would not be allowed in a fishing boat—they were afraid we’d try to escape. Since Eli was somewhere in England, I had to lend out my boat. I went to work in one of Mr. Privot’s glass houses, and after a time, I got so I could tend the plants well. But my, how I did miss my boat and the sea.

The Germans were especially fractious over meat because they didn’t want any to go to the Black Market instead of feeding their own soldiers. If your sow had a litter, the German Agricultural Officer would come to your farm, count the babies, give you a Birth Certificate for each one, and so mark his record book. If a pig died a natural death, you told the AO and out he’d come again, look at the dead body, and give you a Death Certificate.

They would make surprise visits to your farm, and your number of living pigs had better tally up with their number of living pigs. One pig less and you were fined, one time more and you could be arrested and sent to jail in St. Peter Port. If too many pigs went missing, the Germans figured you were selling on the Black Market, and you were sent to a labor camp in Germany. With the Germans you never knew which way they’d blow—they were a moody people.

In the beginning, though, it was easy to fool the Agricultural Officer and keep a secret live pig for your own use. Here is how Amelia came to have hers.

Will Thisbee had a sickly pig who died. The AO came out and wrote a Certificate saying the pig was truly dead and left Will alone to bury the poor animal. But Will didn’t—he hied off through the wood with the little body and gave it to Amelia Maugery. Amelia hid her own healthy pig and called the AO saying, “Come quick, my pig has died.”

The AO came out right away and, seeing the pig with its toes turned up, never knew it was the same pig he’d seen earlier that morning. He inscribed his Dead Animal Book with one more dead pig.

Amelia took the same carcass over to another friend, and he pulled the same trick the next day. We could do this till the pig turned rank. The Germans caught on finally and began to tattoo each pig and cow at birth, so there was no more dead animal switching.

But Amelia, with a live, hidden, fat, and healthy pig, needed only Dawsey to come kill it quietly. It had to be done quietly because there was a German battery by her farm, and it would not do for the soldiers to hear the pig’s death squeal and come running.

Pigs have always been drawn to Dawsey—he could come in a barnyard, and they would rush up to him and have their backs scratched. They’d set up a shindy for anyone else—squealing, snuffling, and plunging about. But Dawsey, he could soothe them down and he knew just the right spot under their chins to slip his knife in quick. There wasn’t time for the pigs to squeal; they’d just slide quietly onto the ground sheet.

I told Dawsey they only looked up once in surprise, but he said no, pigs were bright enough to know betrayal when they met it, and I wasn’t to try to pretty matters up.

Amelia’s pig made us a fine dinner—there were onions and potatoes to fill out the roast. We had almost forgotten how it felt to have full stomachs, but it came back to us. With Amelia’s curtains closed against the sight of the German battery, and food and friends at the table, we could make believe that none of it had happened.

You are right to call Elizabeth brave. She is that, and always was. She came from London to Guernsey as a little girl with her mother and Sir Ambrose Ivers. She met my Jane her first summer here, when both were ten, and they were ever staunch to one another since then.

When Elizabeth came back in the spring of 1940 to close up Sir Ambrose’s house, she stayed longer than was safe, because she wanted to stand by Jane. My girl had been feeling poorly since her husband, John, went to England to sign up—that was in December of 1939—and she had a difficult time holding on to the baby till her time could come. Dr. Martin ordered her to bed, so Elizabeth stayed on to keep company with Jane and play with Eli. Nothing Eli liked more than to play with Elizabeth. They were a threat to the furniture, but it was cheerful to hear them laugh. I went over once to collect the two of them for supper and when I stopped in, there they were—sprawled on a pile of pillows at the foot of the staircase. They had polished Sir Ambrose’s fine oak banister and come sailing down three floors!

It was Elizabeth who did the needful things to get Eli on the evacuation ship. We Islanders were given only one day’s notice when the ships were coming from England to take the children away. Elizabeth worked like a whirl-a-gig, washing and sewing Eli’s clothes and helping him to understand why he could not bring his pet rabbit with him. When we set out for the schoolyard, Jane had to turn away so as not to show Eli a tearful face at parting, so Elizabeth took him by the hand and said it was good weather for a sea-voyage.

Even after that, Elizabeth wouldn’t leave Guernsey when everyone else was trying to get away. “No,” she said. “I’ll wait for Jane’s baby to come, and, when she’s fattened up enough, then she and Jane and I will go to London. Then we’ll find out where Eli is and go get him.” For all her winning ways, Elizabeth was willful. She’d stick out that jaw of hers and you could see it wasn’t any use to argue with her about leaving. Not even when we could all see the smoke coming from Cherbourg, where the French were burning up their fuel tanks, so the Germans couldn’t have them. But, no matter, Elizabeth wouldn’t go without Jane and the baby. I think Sir Ambrose had told her he and one of his yachting friends could sail right into St. Peter Port and take them off Guernsey before the Germans came. To speak the truth, I was glad she did not leave us. She was with me at the hospital when Jane and her new baby died. She sat by Jane, holding on hard to her hand.

After Jane died, Elizabeth and me, we stood in the hallway, numb-like and staring out the window. It was then we saw seven German planes come in low over the harbor. They were just on one of the reconnaissance flights, we thought—but then they began dropping bombs—they tumbled down the sky like sticks.

We didn’t speak, but I know what we each were thinking—thank God Eli was safely away. Elizabeth stood by Jane and me in the bad time, and after. I was not able to stand by Elizabeth, so I thank God her daughter, Kit, is safe and with us, and I pray for Elizabeth to come home soon.

I was glad to hear of your friend who was found in Australia. I hope you will correspond with me and Dawsey again, as he enjoys to hear from you such as I do myself.

Yours sincerely,

Eben Ramsey

12th March, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

I am happy you liked the white lilacs.

I will tell you about Mrs. Dilwyn’s soap. Around about the middle of the Occupation, soap became scarce; families were only allowed one tablet per person a month. It was made of some kind of French clay and lay like a dead thing in the washtub. It made no lather—you just had to scrub and hope it worked.

Being clean was hard work, and we had all got used to being more or less dirty, along with our clothes. We were allowed a tiny bit of soap powder for dishes and clothes, but it was a laughable amount; no bubbles there either. Some of the ladies felt it keenly, and Mrs. Dilwyn was one of those. Before the war, she had bought her dresses in Paris, and those fancy clothes went to ruins faster than the plain kind.

One day, Mr. Scope’s pig died of milk fever. Since no one dared eat of it, Mr. Scope offered me the carcass. I remembered my mother making soap from fat, so I thought I could try it. It came out looking like frozen dish water and smelling worse. So I melted it all down and started again. Booker, who had come over to help, suggested paprika for color and cinnamon for scent. Amelia let us have some of each, and we put it in the mix.

When the soap had hardened enough, we cut it into circles with Amelia’s biscuit cutter. I wrapped the soap in cheese cloth, Elizabeth tied bows of red yarn, and we gave them as presents to all the ladies at the Society’s next meeting. For a week or two, anyway, we looked like respectable folks.

I am working several days a week now at the quarry, as well as at the port. Isola thought I looked tired and mixed up a balm for aching muscles—it’s named Angel Fingers. Isola has a cough syrup called Devil’s Suck and I pray I’ll never need it.

Yesterday, Amelia and Kit came over for supper, and we took a blanket down to the beach afterward to watch the moon rise. Kit loves to do that, but she always falls asleep before it is fully risen, and I carry her home to Amelia’s house. She is certain she’ll be able to stay awake all night as soon as she’s five.

Do you know very much about children? I don’t, and although I am learning, I think I am a slow learner. It was much easier before Kit learned to talk, but it was not so much fun. I try to answer her questions, but I am usually behind-hand, and she has moved on to a new question before I can answer the first. Also, I don’t know enough to please her. I don’t know what a mongoose looks like.

I like having your letters, but I often feel I don’t have any news worth the telling, so it is good to answer your rhetorical questions.

Yours,

Dawsey Adams

12th March, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

I see you will not be advised by me. I came upon Isola Pribby, whilst in her market stall, scribbling a letter—in response to a letter from you! I tried to resume my errands calmly, but then I came upon Dawsey Adams posting a letter—to you! Who will be next, I ask? This is not to be borne, and I seize my pen to stop you.

I was not completely candid with you in my last letter. In the interests of delicacy, I drew a veil on the true nature of that group and their founder, Elizabeth McKenna. But now, I see that I must reveal all:

The Society members have colluded amongst themselves to raise the bastard child of Elizabeth McKenna and her German Paramour, Doctor/Captain Christian Hellman. Yes, a German soldier! I don’t wonder at your shock.

Now, I am nothing if not just. I do not say that Elizabeth was what the ruder classes called a Jerry-bag, cavorting around Guernsey with any German soldier who could give her gifts. I never saw Elizabeth wearing silk stockings, clad in silk dresses (indeed, her clothing was as disreputable as ever), smelling of Parisian scent, guzzling chocolates and wine, or SMOKING CIGARETTES, like other Island hussies.

But the truth is bad enough.

Herewith, the sorry facts: in April of 1942, the UNWED Elizabeth McKenna gave birth to a baby girl—in her own cottage.

Eben Ramsey and Isola Pribby were present at the birthing—he to hold the mother’s hand and she to keep the fire going. Amelia Maugery and Dawsey Adams (An unmarried man! For shame!) did the actual work of delivering the child, before Dr. Martin could arrive. The putative father? Absent! In fact, he had left the Island a short time before. “Ordered to duty on the continent”—SO THEY SAID. The case is perfectly clear—when the evidence of their illicit connection was irrefutable, Captain Hellman abandoned his mistress and left her to her just deserts.

I could have foretold this scandalous outcome. I saw Elizabeth with her lover on several occasions—walking together, deep in talk, gathering nettles for soup, or collecting firewood. And once, facing each other, I saw him put his hand on her face and follow her cheek-bone down with his thumb.

Though I had little hope of success, I knew it was my duty to warn her of the fate that awaited her. I told her she would be cast out of decent society, but she did not heed me. In fact, she laughed. I bore it. Then she told me to get out of her house.

I take no pride in my prescience. It would not be Christian.

Back to the baby—named Christina, called Kit. A scant year later, Elizabeth, as feckless as ever, committed a criminal act expressly forbidden by the German Occupying Force—she helped shelter and feed an escaped prisoner of the German Army. She was arrested and sentenced to prison on the continent.

Mrs. Maugery, at the time of Elizabeth’s arrest, took the baby into her home. And since that night? The Literary Society has raised that child as its own—toting her around from house to house in turn. The principal work of the baby’s maintenance was undertaken by Amelia Maugery, with other Society members taking her out—like a library book—for several weeks at a time.

They all dandled the baby, and now that the child can walk, she goes everywhere with one or another of them—holding hands or riding on their shoulders. Such are their standards! You must not glorify such people in the Times!

You’ll not hear from me again—I have done my best. Let it be on your head.

Adelaide Addison

20th March, 1946

DEAR JULIET—TRIP HOME DELAYED. FELL OFF HORSE, BROKE LEG. PIERS NURSING. LOVE, SIDNEY

21st March, 1946

OH, GOD, WHICH LEG? AM SO SORRY. LOVE, JULIET

22nd March, 1946

IT WAS THE OTHER ONE. DON’T WORRY—LITTLE PAIN. PIERS EXCELLENT NURSE. LOVE, SIDNEY

22nd March, 1946

SO HAPPY IT WASN’T THE ONE I BROKE. CAN I SEND ANYTHING TO HELP YOUR CONVALESCENCE? BOOKS—RECORDINGS—POKER CHIPS—MY LIFE’S BLOOD?

23rd March, 1946

NO BLOOD, NO BOOKS, NO POKER CHIPS. JUST KEEP SENDING LONG LETTERS TO ENTERTAIN US. LOVE, SIDNEY AND PIERS

23rd March, 1946

Dear Sophie,

I only got a cable, so you know more than I do. But whatever the circumstances, it’s absolutely ridiculous for you to consider flying off to Australia. What about Alexander? And Dominic? And your lambs? They’ll pine away.

Stop and think for a moment, and you’ll realize why you shouldn’t fuss. First off, Piers will take excellent care of Sidney. Second, better Piers than us—remember what a vile patient Sidney was last time? We should be glad he’s thousands of miles away. Third, Sidney has been stretched as tight as a bow-string for years. He needs a rest, and breaking his leg is probably the only way he’ll allow himself to take one. Most important of all, Sophie: he doesn’t want us there.

I’m perfectly certain Sidney would prefer me to write a new book than to appear at his bedside in Australia, so I intend to stay right here in my dreary flat and cast about for a subject. I do have a tiny infant of an idea, much too frail and defenseless to risk describing, even to you. In honor of Sidney’s leg, I’m going to coddle it and feed it and see if I can make it grow.

Now, about Markham V. Reynolds (Junior). Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet. Am I in love with him? What kind of a question is that? It’s a tuba among the flutes, and I expect better of you. The first rule of snooping is to come at it sideways—when you began writing me dizzy letters about Alexander, I didn’t ask if you were in love with him, I asked what his favorite animal was. And your answer told me everything I needed to know about him—how many men would admit that they loved ducks? (This brings up an important point: I don’t know what Mark’s favorite animal is. I doubt it’s a duck.)

Would you care for a few suggestions? You could ask me who his favorite author is (Dos Passos! Hemingway!!). Or his favorite color (blue, not sure what shade, probably royal). Is he a good dancer? (Yes, far better than I, never steps on my toes, but doesn’t talk or even hum while dancing. Doesn’t hum at all so far as I know.) Does he have brothers or sisters? (Yes, two older sisters, one married to a sugar baron and the other widowed last year. Plus one younger brother, dismissed with a sneer as an ass.)

So—now that I’ve done all your work for you, perhaps you can answer your own ridiculous question, because I can’t. I feel addled around Mark, which might be love but might not. It certainly isn’t restful. I’m rather dreading this evening, for instance. Another dinner party, very brilliant, with men leaning across the table to make a point and women gesturing with their cigarette holders. Oh dear, I want to nuzzle into my sofa, but I have to get up and put on an evening dress. Love aside, Mark is a terrible strain on my wardrobe.

Now, darling, don’t fret about Sidney. He’ll be stalking around in no time.

Love,

Juliet

25th March, 1946

Dear Mr. Adams,

I have received a long letter (two, in fact!) from a Miss Adelaide Addison, warning me not to write about the Society in my article. If I do, she will wash her hands of me forever. I will try to bear that affliction with fortitude. She does work up quite a head of steam about “Jerry-bags,” doesn’t she?

I have also had a long letter from Clovis Fossey about poetry, and one from Isola Pribby about the Brontë sisters. Aside from delighting me—they gave me brand-new thoughts for my article. Between them, you, Mr. Ramsey, and Mrs. Maugery, Guernsey is virtually writing my article for me. Even Miss Adelaide Addison has done her bit—defying her will be such a pleasure.

I don’t know as much about children as I would like to. I am godmother to a wonderful three-year-old boy named Dominic, the son of my friend Sophie. They live in Scotland, near Oban, and I don’t get to see him often. I am always astonished, when I do, at his increasing personhood—no sooner had I gotten used to carrying about a warm lump of baby than he stopped being one and started scurrying around on his own. I missed six months, and lo and behold, he learned how to talk! Now he talks to himself, which I find terribly endearing since I do, too.

A mongoose, you may tell Kit, is a weaselly-looking creature with very sharp teeth and a bad temper. It is the only natural enemy of the cobra and is impervious to snake venom. Failing snakes, it snacks on scorpions. Perhaps you could get her one for a pet.

Yours,

Juliet Ashton

P.S. I had second thoughts about sending this letter—what if Adelaide Addison is a friend of yours? Then I decided no, she couldn’t possibly be—so off it goes.

27th March, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Amelia Maugery has asked me to write to you, for I am a founding member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—though I only read one book over and over. It was The Letters of Seneca: Translated from Latin in One Volume, with Appendix. Seneca and the Society, betwixt them, kept me from the direful life of a drunk.

From 1940 to 1944, I pretended to the German authorities that I was Lord Tobias Penn-Piers—my former employer, who had fled to England in a frenzy when Guernsey was bombed. I was his valet and I stayed. My true name is John Booker, and I was born and bred in London.

With the others, I was caught out after curfew on the night of the pig roast. I can’t remember it with any clarity. I expect I was tipsy, because I usually was. I recall soldiers shouting and waving guns about and Dawsey holding me upright. Then came Elizabeth’s voice. She was talking about books—I couldn’t fathom why. After that, Dawsey was pulling me through a pasture at great speed, and then I fell into bed. That’s all.

But you want to know about the influence of books on my life, and as I’ve said, there was only one. Seneca. Do you know who he was? He was a Roman philosopher who wrote letters to imaginary friends telling them how to behave for the rest of their lives. Maybe that sounds dull, but the letters aren’t—they’re witty. I think you learn more if you’re laughing at the same time.

It seems to me that his words travel well—to all men in all times. I will give you a living sample: take the Luftwaffe and their hairdos. During the Blitz, the Luftwaffe took off from Guernsey and joined in with the big bombers on their way to London. They only flew at night so their days were their own, to spend in St. Peter Port as they liked. And how did they spend them? In beauty parlors: having their nails buffed, their faces massaged, their eyebrows shaped, their hair waved and coiffed. When I saw them in their hairnets, walking five abreast down the street, elbowing Islanders off the sidewalk, I thought of Seneca’s words about the Praetorian Guard. He’d written—“who of these would not rather see Rome disordered than his hair.”

I will tell you how I came to pretend to be my former employer. Lord Tobias wanted to sit out the war in a safe place, so he purchased La Fort manor on Guernsey. He had spent World War I in the Caribbean but had suffered greatly from prickly heat there.

In the spring of 1940, he moved to La Fort with most of his possessions, including Lady Tobias. Chausey, his London butler, had locked himself in the pantry and refused to come. So I, his valet, came in Chausey’s stead, to supervise the placing of his furniture, the hanging of his draperies, the polishing of his silver, and the stocking of his wine cellar. It was there I bedded each bottle, gentle as a baby to its crib, in its little rack.

Just as the last picture was being hung on the wall, the German planes flew over and bombed St. Peter Port. Lord Tobias, panicking at all the racket, called the captain of his yacht and ordered him to “Redd up the ship!” We were to load the boat with his silver, his paintings, his bibelots, and, if enough room, Lady Tobias, and set sail at once for England.

I was the last one up the gangway, with Lord Tobias screaming, “Hurry up, man! Hurry up, the Huns are coming!”

My true destiny struck me in that moment, Miss Ashton. I still had the key to his Lordship’s wine cellar. I thought of all those bottles of wine, champagne, brandy, cognac that didn’t make it back to the yacht—and me all alone amongst them. I thought of no more bells, of no more livery, of no more Lord Tobias. In fact, of no more being in service at all.

I turned my back on him and quickly walked back down the gangway. I ran up the road to La Fort and watched the yacht sail away, Lord Tobias still screaming. Then I went inside, laid a fire, and stepped down to the wine cellar. I took down a bottle of claret and drew my first cork. I let the wine breathe. Then I returned to the library, sipped, and began to read The Wine-Lover’s Companion.

I read about grapes, tended the garden, slept in silk pajamas—and drank wine. And so it went until September when Amelia Maugery and Elizabeth McKenna came to call on me. Elizabeth I knew slightly—she and I had chatted several times among the market stalls—but Mrs. Maugery was a stranger to me. Were they going to turn me in to the constable? I wondered.

No. They were there to warn me. The Commandant of Guernsey had ordered all Jews to report to the Grange Lodge Hotel and register. According to the Commandant, our ID cards would merely be marked “Juden” and then we were free to go home. Elizabeth knew my mother was Jewish; I had mentioned it once. They had come to tell me that I must not, under any circumstances, go to the Grange Lodge Hotel.

But that wasn’t all. Elizabeth had considered my predicament thoroughly (more thoroughly than I) and made a plan. Since all Islanders were to have identity cards anyway, why couldn’t I declare myself to be Lord Tobias Penn-Piers himself ? I could claim that, as a visitor, all my documents had been left behind in my London bank. Amelia was sure Mr. Dilwyn would be happy to back up my impersonation, and he was. He and Amelia went with me to the Commandant’s Office, and we all swore that I was Lord Tobias Penn-Piers.

It was Elizabeth who came up with the finishing touch. The Germans were taking over all of Guernsey’s grand houses for their officers to live in, and they would never ignore such a residence as La Fort—it was too good to miss. And when they came I must be ready for them as Lord Tobias Penn-Piers. I must look like a Lord at Leisure and act at my ease. I was terrified.

“Nonsense,” said Elizabeth. “You have presence, Booker. You’re tall, dark, handsome, and all valets know how to look down their noses.”

She decided that she would quickly paint my portrait as a sixteenth-century Penn-Piers. So I posed as such in a velvet cloak and ruff, seated against a background of dark tapestries and dim shadows, fingering my dagger. I looked Noble, Aggrieved, and Treasonous.

It was a brilliant stroke, for, not two weeks later, a body of German officers (six in all) appeared in my library—without knocking. I received them there, sipping a Château Margaux ’93 and bearing an uncanny resemblance to the portrait of my “ancestor” hanging above me over the mantel.

They bowed to me and were all politeness, which did not prevent them from taking over the house and moving me into the gatekeeper’s cottage the very next day. Eben and Dawsey slipped over after curfew that night and helped me carry most of the wine down to the cottage, where we cleverly hid it behind the woodpile, down the well, up the chimney, under a haystack, and above the rafters. But even with all this toting of bottles, I still ran out of wine by early 1941. A sad day, but I had friends to help distract me—and then, then I found Seneca.

I came to love our book meetings—they helped to make the Occupation bearable. Some of their books sounded fine, but I stayed true to Seneca. I came to feel that he was talking to me—in his funny, biting way—but talking to me alone. His letters helped to keep me alive in what was to come later.

I still go to all our Society meetings. Everyone is sick of Seneca, and they are begging me to read someone else. But I’ll not do it. I also act in plays that one of our repertory companies puts on—impersonating Lord Tobias gave me a taste for acting, and besides that, I am tall, loud, and can be heard in the last row.

I am happy the war is over, and I am John Booker again.

Yours truly,

John Booker

31st March, 1946

Mr. Sidney Stark

Monreagle Hotel

Broadmeadows Avenue, 79

Melbourne

Victoria

Australia

Dear Sidney and Piers,

No life’s blood—just sprained thumbs from copying out the enclosed letters from my new friends on Guernsey. I love their letters and could not bear the thought of sending the originals to the bottom of the earth where they would undoubtedly be eaten by wild dogs.

I knew the Germans occupied the Channel Islands, but I barely gave them a thought during the war. I have since scoured the Times for articles and anything I can cull from the London Library on the Occupation. I also need to find a good travel book on Guernsey—one with descriptions, not timetables and hotel recommendations—to give me the feel of the island.

Quite apart from my interest in their interest in reading, I have fallen in love with two men: Eben Ramsey and Dawsey Adams. Clovis Fossey and John Booker, I like. I want Amelia Maugery to adopt me; and me, I want to adopt Isola Pribby. I will leave you to discern my feelings for Adelaide Addison (Miss) by reading her letters. The truth is, I am living more in Guernsey than I am in London at the moment—I pretend work with one ear cocked for the sound of the post dropping in the box, and when I hear it, I scramble down the stairs, breathless for the next piece of the story. This must be how people felt when they gathered around the publisher’s door to seize the latest installment of David Copperfield as it came off the printing press.

I know you’re going to love the letters, too—but would you be interested in more? To me, these people and their war-time experiences are fascinating and moving. Do you agree? Do you think there could be a book here? Don’t be polite—I want your opinion (both of your opinions) unvarnished. And you needn’t worry—I’ll continue to send you copies of the letters even if you don’t want me to write a book about Guernsey. I am (mostly) above petty vengeance.

Since I have sacrificed my thumbs for your amusement, you should send me one of Piers’s latest in return. So glad you are writing again, my dear.

My love to you both,

Juliet

2nd April, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Having fun is the biggest sin in Adelaide Addison’s bible (lack of humility following close on its heels), and I’m not surprised she wrote to you about Jerry-bags. Adelaide lives on her wrath.

There were few eligible men left in Guernsey and certainly no one exciting. Many of us were tired, scruffy, worried, ragged, shoeless, and dirty—we were defeated and looked it. We didn’t have the energy, time, or money left over for fun. Guernsey men had no glamour—and the German soldiers did. They were, according to a friend of mine, tall, blond, handsome, and tanned—like gods. They gave lavish parties, were jolly and zestful company, possessed cars, had money, and could dance all night long.

But some of the girls who dated soldiers gave the cigarettes to their fathers and the bread to their families. They would come home from parties with rolls, pâtés, fruit, meat patties, and jellies stuffed in their purses, and their families would have a full meal the next day.

I don’t think some Islanders ever credited the boredom of those years as a reason to befriend the enemy. Boredom is a powerful reason, and the prospect of fun is a powerful draw—especially when you are young.

There were many folks who would have no dealings with the Germans—if you said so much as good morning, you were abetting the enemy, according to their way of thinking. But circumstances were such that I could not abide by that with Captain Christian Hellman, a doctor in the Occupation forces and my good friend.

In late 1941 there wasn’t any salt on the Island, and none was coming to us from France. Root vegetables and soups are listless without salt, so the Germans got the idea of using seawater to supply it. They carried it up from the bay and poured it into a big tanker set in the middle of St. Peter Port. Everyone was to walk to town, fill up their buckets, and carry them home again. Then we were to boil the water away and use the sludge in the bottom of the pan as salt. That plan failed—there wasn’t enough wood to waste building up a fire hot enough to boil the pot of water dry.

So we decided to cook all our vegetables in the seawater itself. That worked well enough for flavor, but there were many older people who couldn’t make the walk into town or haul heavy buckets home. No one had much strength left over for such chores. I have a slight limp from a badly set leg, and though it kept me from army service, it has never been bad enough to bother me. I was very hale, and so I began to deliver water around to some cottages.

I traded an extra spade and some twine for Mme. LePell’s old baby pram, and Mr. Soames gave me two small oak wine casks, each with a spigot. I sawed off the barrel tops to make moveable lids and fitted them into my pram—so now I had transport. Several of the beaches weren’t mined, and it was an easy thing to climb down the rocks, fill a cask with seawater, and tote it back up.

The November wind is bleak, and one day my hands were near numb after I climbed up from the bay with the first barrel of water. I was standing by my pram, trying to limber up my fingers, when Christian drove by. He stopped his car, backed up, and asked if I wanted any help. I said no, but he got out of his car anyway and helped me lift the barrel into my pram. Then, without a word, he went down the cliff with me, to help with the second barrel.

I hadn’t noticed that he had a stiff shoulder and arm, but between those, my limp, and the loose scree, we slipped coming back up and fell against the hillside, losing our grip on the barrel. It tumbled down, splintered against the rocks, and soaked us. God knows why it struck us both as funny, but it did. We sagged against the cliff-side, unable to stop laughing. That was when Elia’s essays slipped from my pocket, and Christian picked it up, sopping wet. “Ah, Charles Lamb,” he said, and handed it to me. “He was not a man to mind a little damp.” My surprise must have showed, because he added, “I read him often at home. I envy you your portable library.”

We climbed back up to his car. He wanted to know if I could find another barrel. I said I could and explained my water-delivery route. He nodded, and I started out with my pram. But then I turned back and said, “You can borrow the book, if you’d like to.” You would have thought I was giving him the moon. We exchanged names and shook hands.

After that, he would often help me carry up water, and then he’d offer a cigarette, and we’d stand in the road and talk—about Guernsey’s beauty, about history, about books, about farming, but never about the present time—always things far away from the war. Once, as we were standing, Elizabeth rattled up the road on her bicycle. She had been on nursing duty all that day and probably most of the night before, and like the rest of us, her clothes were more patches than cloth. But Christian, he broke off in mid-sentence to watch her coming. Elizabeth drew up to us and stopped. Neither said a word, but I saw their faces, and I left as soon as I could. I hadn’t realized they knew each other.

Christian had been a field surgeon, until his shoulder wound sent him from Eastern Europe to Guernsey. In early 1942, he was ordered to a hospital in Caen; his ship was sunk by Allied bombers and he was drowned. Dr. Lorenz, the head of the German Occupation Hospital, knew we were friends and came to tell me of his death. He meant for me to tell Elizabeth, so I did.

The way that Christian and I met may have been unusual, but our friendship was not. I’m sure many Islanders grew to be friends with some of the soldiers. But sometimes I think of Charles Lamb and marvel that a man born in 1775 enabled me to make two such friends as you and Christian.

Yours,

Dawsey Adams

4th April, 1946

Dear Mrs. Maugery,

The sun is out for the first time in months, and if I stand on my chair and crane my neck, I can see it sparkling on the river. I’m averting my eyes from the mounds of rubble across the street and pretending London is beautiful again.

I’ve received a sad letter from Dawsey Adams, telling me about Christian Hellman, his kindness and his death. The war goes on and on, doesn’t it? Such a good life—lost. And what a grievous blow it must have been to Elizabeth. I am thankful she had you, Mr. Ramsey, Isola, and Dawsey to help her when she had her baby.

Spring is nearly here. I’m almost warm in my puddle of sunshine. And down the street—I’m not averting my eyes now—a man in a patched jumper is painting the door to his house sky blue. Two small boys, who have been walloping one another with sticks, are begging him to let them help. He is giving them a tiny brush apiece. So—perhaps there is an end to war.

Yours,

Juliet Ashton

April 5, 1946

Dear Juliet—

You’re being elusive and I don’t like it. I don’t want to see the play with someone else—I want to go with you. In fact, I don’t give a damn about the play. I’m only trying to rout you out of that apartment. Dinner? Tea? Cocktails? Boating? Dancing? You choose, and I’ll obey. I’m rarely so docile—don’t throw away this opportunity to improve my character.

Yours,

Mark

Dear Mark,

Do you want to come to the British Museum with me? I’ve got an appointment in the Reading Room at two o’clock. We can look at the mummies afterward.

Juliet

To hell with the Reading Room and the mummies. Come have lunch with me.

Mark

You consider that docile?

Juliet

To hell with docile.

M.

7th April, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

I am a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I am an antiquarian ironmonger, though it pleases some to call me a rag-and-bone man. I also invent labor-saving devices—my latest being an electric clothes-pin that wafts the laundry gently on the breeze, saving the laundress’s wrists.

Did I find solace in reading? Yes, but not at first. I’d just go and eat my pie in quietude in a corner. Then Isola got ahold of me and said I had to read a book and talk about it like the others did. She gave me a book called Past and Present by Thomas Carlyle, and a tedious thing he was—he gave me shooting pains in my head—until I came to a bit on religion. I was not a religious man, though not for want of trying.

Off I’d go, like a bee among blossoms, from church to chapel to church again. But I was never able to get a grip on Faith—till Mr. Carlyle posed religion to me in a different way. He was walking among the ruins of the Abbey at Bury St. Edmunds, when a thought came to him, and he wrote it down thus:

Does it ever give thee pause, that men used to have a soul—not by hearsay alone, or as a figure of speech; but as a truth that they knew, and acted upon! Verily it was another world then … but yet it is a pity we have lost the tidings of our souls… we shall have to go in search of them again, or worse in all ways shall befall us.

Isn’t that something—to know your own soul by hearsay, instead of its own tidings? Why should I let a preacher tell me if I had one or not? If I could believe I had a soul, all by myself, then I could listen to its tidings all by myself.

I gave my talk on Mr. Carlyle to the Society, and it stirred up a great argument about the soul. Yes? No? Maybe? Dr. Stubbins yelled the loudest, and soon everyone stopped arguing and listened to him.

Thompson Stubbins is a man of long, deep thoughts. He was a psychiatrist in London until he ran amok at the annual dinner of the Friends of Sigmund Freud Society in 1934. He told me the whole tale once. The Friends were great talkers and their speeches went on for hours—while the plates stayed bare. Finally they served up, and silence fell upon the hall as the psychiatrists bolted their chops. Thompson saw his chance: he beat his spoon upon his glass and shouted from the floor to be heard.

“Did any of you ever think that along about the time the notion of a SOUL gave out, Freud popped up with the EGO to take its place? The timing of the man! Did he not pause to reflect? Irresponsible old coot! It is my belief that men must spout this twaddle about egos, because they fear they have no soul! Think upon it!”

Thompson was barred from their doors forever, and he moved to Guernsey to grow vegetables. Sometimes he rides with me in my cart and we talk about Man and God and all the In-between. I would have missed all this if I had not belonged to the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Tell me, Miss Ashton, what are your views on the matter? Isola thinks you should come to visit Guernsey, and if you do, you could ride in my cart with us. I’d bring a cushion.

Best wishes for your continued health and happiness.

Will Thisbee

8th April, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

I’ve heard about you. I once belonged to that Literary Society, though I’ll wager none of them ever told you about me. I didn’t read from any book by a dead writer, no. I read from a work I wrote myself—my book of cookery recipes. I venture to say my book caused more tears and sorrow than anything Charles Dickens ever wrote.

I chose to read about the correct way to roast a suckling pig. Butter its little body, I said. Let the juices run down and cause the fire to sizzle. The way I read it, you could smell the pig roasting, hear its flesh crackle. I spoke of my five-layer cakes—using a dozen eggs—my spun-sugar sweets, chocolate-rum balls, sponge cakes with pots of cream. Cakes made with good white flour—not that cracked grain and bird-seed stuff we were using at the time.

Well, miss, my audience couldn’t stand it. They was pushed over the edge, hearing of my tasty recipes. Isola Pribby, that never had a manner to call her own, she cried out I was tormenting her and she was going to hex my saucepans. Will Thisbee said I would burn like my cherries jubilee. Then Thompson Stubbins swore at me, and it took both Dawsey and Eben to get me away safely.

Eben called the next day to apologize for the Society’s bad manners. He asked me to remember that most of them had come to the meeting directly from a supper of turnip soup (with nary a bone in it to give pith), or parboiled potatoes scorched on a hot iron—there being no cooking fat to fry them up in. He asked me to be tolerant and forgive them.

Well, I’ll not do it—they called me bad names. There wasn’t a one of them who truly loved literature. Because that’s what my cookery book was—sheer poetry in a pan. I believe they was made so bored, what with the curfew and other nasty Nazi laws, they only wanted an excuse to get out of an evening, and reading is what they chose.

I want the truth of them told in your story. They’d never have touched a book, but for the OCCUPATION. I stand by what I say, and you can quote me direct.

My name is—Clara S-A-U-S-S-E-Y. Three esses, in all.

Clara Saussey (Mrs.)

10th April, 1946

My dear Juliet,

I, too, have felt that the war goes on and on. When my son, Ian, died at El Alamein—side by side with Eli’s father, John—visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said “Life goes on.” What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn’t. It’s death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and next year and forever. There’s no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it. Sorrow has rushed over the world like the waters of the Deluge, and it will take time to recede. But already, there are small islands of—hope? Happiness? Something like them, at any rate. I like the picture of youstanding upon your chair to catch a glimpse of the sun, averting your eyes from the mounds of rubble.

My greatest pleasure has been in resuming my evening walks along the cliff tops. The Channel is no longer framed in rolls of barbed wire, the view is unbroken by huge VERBOTEN signs. The mines are gone from our beaches, and I can walk when, where, and for as long as I like. If I stand on the cliffs and turn out to face the sea, I don’t see the ugly cement bunkers behind me, or the land naked without its trees. Not even the Germans could ruin the sea.

This summer, gorse will begin to grow around the fortifications, and by next year, perhaps vines will creep over them. I hope they are soon covered. For all I can look away, I will never be able to forget how they were made.

The Todt workers built them. I know you have heard of Germany’s slave workers in camps on the continent, but did you know that Hitler sent over sixteen thousand of them here, to the Channel Islands?

Hitler was fanatic about fortifying these islands—England was never to get them back! His generals called it Island Madness. He ordered large-gun emplacements, anti-tank walls on the beaches, hundreds of bunkers and batteries, arms and bomb depots, miles and miles of underground tunnels, a huge underground hospital, and a railroad to cross the island to carry materials. The coastal fortifications were absurd—the Channel Isles were better fortified than the Atlantic Wall built against an Allied invasion. The installations jutted out over every bay. The Third Reich was to last one thousand years—in concrete.

So, of course, he needed thousands of slave workers; men and boys were conscripted, some were arrested, and some were just picked up off the streets—out of cinema queues, from cafés, from the country lanes and fields of any German Occupied territory. There were even political prisoners from the Spanish Civil War. The Russian prisoners of war were treated the worst, perhaps because of their victory over the Germans on the Russian Front.

Most of these slave workers came to the islands in 1942. They were kept in open sheds, dug-out tunnels, in pens, some of them in houses. They were marched all over the island to their work sites: thin to the bone, dressed in ragged trousers with bare skin showing through, often no coats to protect them from the cold. No shoes or boots, their feet tied up in bloody rags. Young lads, fifteen and sixteen, were so weary and starved they could scarcely put one foot in front of another.

Guernsey Islanders would stand by their gates to offer them what little food or warm clothing they could spare. Sometimes the Germans guarding the Todt work columns would let the men break ranks to accept these gifts—other times they would beat them to the ground with rifle butts.

Thousands of those men and boys died here, and I have recently learned that their inhuman treatment was the intended policy of Himmler. He called his plan Death by Exhaustion, and he implemented it. Work them hard, don’t waste valuable foodstuffs on them, and let them die. They could, and would, always be replaced by new slave workers from Europe’s Occupied countries.

Some of the Todt workers were kept down on the Common, behind a wire fence—they were white as ghosts, covered in cement dust; there was only one water standpipe for over a hundred men to wash themselves.

Children sometimes went down to the green to see the Todt workers behind the wire fences. They would poke walnuts and apples, sometimes potatoes, through the wire for them. There was one Todt worker who did not take the food—he came to see the children. He would put his arm through the wire just to hold their faces in his hands, to touch their hair.

The Germans did give the Todt workers one-half day a week off—on Sunday. That was the day when the German Sanitary Engineers emptied all the sewage into the ocean—by way of a big pipe. Fish would swarm for the offal, and the Todt workers would stand in that feces and filth up to their chests—trying to catch the fish in their hands, to eat them.

No flowers or vines can cover over such memories as these, can they?

I have told you the most hateful story of the war. Juliet, Isola thinks you should come and write a book about the German Occupation. She told me she did not have the skill to write such a book herself, but, as dear as Isola is to me, I am terrified she might buy a notebook and begin anyway.

Yours ever,

Amelia Maugery

11th April, 1946

Dear Mr. Adams,

After promising never to write to me again, Adelaide Addison has sent me another letter. It is devoted to all the people and practices she deplores, and you are one of them, along with Charles Lamb.

It seems she called on you to deliver the April issue of the parish magazine—and you were nowhere to be found. Not milking your cow, not hoeing your garden, not washing your house, not doing anything a good farmer should be doing. So she entered your barnyard, and lo—what did she see? You, lying up in your hay-loft, reading a book by Charles Lamb! You were “so enraptured with that drunkard,” you failed to notice her presence.

What a blight that woman is. Do you happen to know why? I lean toward a malignant fairy at her christening.

In any event, the picture of you lolling in the hay, reading Charles Lamb, pleased me very much. It made me recall my own childhood in Suffolk. My father was a farmer there, and I helped out at the farm; though admittedly all I did was jump out of our car, open the gate, close it and jump back in, gather eggs, weed our garden, and flail at the hay when I was in the mood.

I remember lying in our hay-loft reading The Secret Garden with a cowbell beside me. I’d read for an hour and then ring the bell for a glass of lemonade to be brought to me. Mrs. Hutchins, the cook, finally grew weary of this arrangement and told my mother, and that was the end of my cowbell, but not my reading in the hay.

Mr. Hastings found the E. V. Lucas biography of Charles Lamb. He decided not to quote a price to you, but just to send it along to you at once. He said, “A lover of Charles Lamb ought not to have to wait.”

Yours ever,

Juliet Ashton

11th April, 1946

Dear Sidney,

I’m as tender-hearted as the next girl, but dammit, if you don’t get back here soon, Charlie Stephens is going to have a nervous breakdown. He’s not cut out for work; he’s cut out for handing over large wads of cash and letting you do the work. He actually turned up at the office before ten o’clock yesterday, but the effort annihilated him. He was deathly white by eleven, and had a whiskey at eleven-thirty. At noon, one of the innocent young things handed him a jacket to approve—his eyes bulged with terror and he began that disgusting trick with his ear—he’s going to pull it right off one day. He went home at one, and I haven’t seen him yet today (it’s four in the afternoon).

In other depressing developments, Harriet Munfries has gone completely berserk; she wants to “color-coordinate” the entire children’s list. Pink and red. I kid you not. The boy in the mail-room (I don’t bother learning their names anymore) got drunk and threw away all letters addressed to anyone whose name started with an S. Don’t ask why. Miss Tilley was so impossibly rude to Kendrick that he tried to hit her with her telephone. I can’t say I blame him, but telephones are hard to come by and we can’t afford to lose one. You must sack her the minute you come home.

If you need any further inducement to buy an aeroplane ticket, I can also tell you that I saw Juliet and Mark Reynolds looking very cozy at Café de Paris the other night. Their table was behind the velvet cordon, but from my seat in the slums, I could spy all the telltale signs of romance—he murmuring little nothings in her ear, her hand lingering in his beside the cocktail glasses, his touching her shoulder to point out an acquaintance.

I considered it my duty (as your devoted employee) to break it up, so I elbowed my way past the cordon to say hello to Juliet. She seemed delighted and invited me to join them, but it was apparent from Mark’s smile that he didn’t want company, so I retreated. He’s not a man to cross, that one, with his thin smile, no matter how beautiful his ties are, and it would break my mum’s heart if my lifeless body was found bobbing in the Thames.

In other words, get a wheelchair, get a crutch, get a donkey to tote you, but come home now.

Yours,

Susan

12th April, 1946

Dear Sidney and Piers,

I’ve been ransacking the libraries of London for background on Guernsey. I even got a ticket to the Reading Room, which shows my devotion to duty—as you know, I’m petrified of the place.

I’ve found out quite a lot. Do you recall a wretched, goofy series of books in the 1920s called A-Tramp in Skye … or A-Tramp in Lindisfarne … or in Sheepholm—or whatever port the author happened to sail his yacht into? Well, in 1930 he sailed into St. Peter Port, Guernsey, and wrote a book about it (with day trips to Sark, Herm, Alderney, and Jersey, where he was mauled by a duck and had to return home).

Tramp’s real name was Cee Cee Meredith. He was an idiot who thought he was a poet, and he was rich enough to sail anywhere, then write about it, then have it privately printed, and then give a copy to any friend who would take it. Cee Cee didn’t trouble himself with dull fact: he preferred to scamper off to the nearest moor, beach, or flowery field, and go into transports with his Muse. But bless him anyhow; his book A-Tramp in Guernsey was just what I needed to get the feel of the island.

Cee Cee went ashore at St. Peter Port, leaving his mother, Dorothea, to bob about the adjacent waters, retching in the wheel-house. In Guernsey, Cee Cee wrote poems to the freesias and the daffodils. Also to the tomatoes. He was agog with admiration for the Guernsey cows and the blooded bulls, and he composed a little song in honor of their cowbells (“tinkle, tinkle, such a merry sound…”). Directly beneath the cows, in Cee Cee’s estimation, were “the simple folk of the country parishes, who still speak the Norman patois and believe in fairies and witches.” Cee Cee entered into the spirit of the thing and saw a fairy in the gloaming.

After carrying on about the cottages and hedgerows and the shops, Cee Cee at last reached the sea, or, as he has it, “The SEA! It is everywhere! The waters: azure, emerald, silver-laced, when they are not as hard and dark as a bag of nails.”

Thank God Tramp had a co-author, Dorothea, who was made of sterner stuff and loathed Guernsey and everything about it. She was in charge of delivering the history of the island, and she was not one to gild the lily:

…As to Guernsey’s history—well, the least said, soonest mended. The Islands once belonged to the Duchy of Normandy, but when William, Duke of Normandy, became William the Conqueror, he took the Channel Islands along with him in his back pocket and he gave them to England—with special privileges. These privileges were later increased by King John, and added to yet again by Edward III. WHY? What did they do to deserve the preference? Nary a thing! Later, when that weakling Henry VI managed to lose most of France back to the French, the Channel Islands elected to stay a Crown Possession of England, as who would not?

The Channel Islands freely owe their allegiance and love to the English Crown, but heed this, dear reader—THE CROWN CANNOT MAKE THEM DO ANYTHING THEY DO NOT WANT TO DO!

…Guernsey’s ruling body, such as it is, is named the States of Deliberation but called the States for short. The real head of everything is the President of the States, who is elected by the STATES, and called the Bailiff. In fact, everyone is elected, not appointed by the King. Pray, what is a monarch for, if NOT TO APPOINT PEOPLE TO THINGS?

…The Crown’s only representative to this unholy mélange is the Lieutenant Governor. While he is welcome to attend the meetings of the States, and he may talk and advise all he wants, he does NOT HAVE A VOTE. At least he is allowed to live in Government House, the only mansion of any note on Guernsey—if you don’t count Sausmarez Manor, which I don’t.

…The Crown cannot impose Taxes on the Islands—or Conscription. Honesty forces me to admit the Islanders don’t need Conscription to make them go to war for dear, dear England. They volunteered and made very respectable, even heroic, soldiers and sailors against Napoleon and the Kaiser. But be advised—these selfless acts do not make amends for the fact THAT THE CHANNEL ISLANDS PAY NO INCOME TAX TO ENGLAND. NOT ONE SHILLING. IT MAKES ONE WANT TO SPIT!

Those are her kindest words—I will spare you the rest, but you get her general drift.

One, or better yet, both of you write to me. I want to hear how both the patient and the nurse are doing. What does your doctor say about your leg, Sidney—I swear you’ve had time to grow a new one.

XXXXXX,

Juliet

15th April, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

I don’t know what ails Adelaide Addison. Isola says she is a blight because she likes being a blight—it gives her a sense of destiny. Adelaide did me one good turn, though, didn’t she? She told you, better than I could, how much I was enjoying Charles Lamb.

The biography came. I’ve read fast—too impatient not to. But I’ll go back and start over again—reading more slowly this time, so I can take everything in. I did like what Mr. Lucas said about him—“he could make any homely and familiar thing into something fresh and beautiful.” Lamb’s writings make me feel more at home in his London than I do here and now in St. Peter Port.

But what I cannot imagine is Charles, coming home from work and finding his mother stabbed to death, his father bleeding, and his sister Mary standing over both with a bloody knife. How did he make himself go into the room and take the knife away from her? After the police had taken her off to the madhouse, how did he persuade the Judge in Court to release her to his care and his care alone? He was only twenty-one years old then—how did he talk them into it?

He promised to take care of Mary for the rest of her life—and, once he put his foot on that road, he never stepped off it. It is sad he had to quit writing poetry, which he loved, and instead write criticism and essays, which he did not honor much, to make money.

I think of all his life, working as a clerk at the East India Company, so he could save money for the day, and it always came, when Mary would grow mad again, and he would have to place her in a private home.

And even then he did seem to miss her—they were such friends. Picture them: he had to watch her like a hawk for the awful symptoms, and she herself could tell when the madness was coming on and could do nothing to stop its coming—that must have been worst of all. I imagine him sitting there, watching her on the sly, and her sitting there, watching him watching her. How they must have hated the way the other one was forced to live.

But doesn’t it seem to you that when Mary was sane there was no one saner—or better company? Charles certainly thought so, and so did all their friends: Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and, above all, Coleridge. On the day Coleridge died they found a note he had scribbled in the book he was reading. It said, “Charles and Mary Lamb, dear to my heart, yes, as it were, my heart.”

Perhaps I’ve written over-long about him, but I wanted you and Mr. Hastings to know how much your books have given me to think about and the pleasure I find in them.

I like the story from your childhood—the bell and the hay. I can see it in my mind. Did you like living on a farm—do you ever miss it? You are never really away from the countryside in Guernsey, not even in St. Peter Port, so I cannot imagine the difference living in a big city like London would make.

Kit has taken against mongooses, now she knows they eat snakes. She is hoping to find a boa constrictor under a rock. Isola stopped by this evening and said to tell you hello—she will write to you as soon as she gets her crops in—rosemary, dill, thyme, and henbane.

Yours,

Dawsey Adams

18th April, 1946

Dear Dawsey,

I am so glad you want to talk about Charles Lamb on paper. I have always thought Mary’s sorrow made Charles into a great writer—even if he had to give up poetry and clerk for the East India Company because of it. He had a genius for sympathy that not one of his great friends could touch. When Wordsworth chided him for not caring enough about nature, Charles wrote, “I have no passion for groves and valleys. The rooms where I was born, the furniture which has been before my eyes all my life, a book case which has followed me about like a faithful dog wherever I have moved—old chairs, old streets, squares where I have sunned myself, my old school—have I not enough, without your Mountains? I do not envy you. I should pity you, did I not know, that the Mind will make friends of any thing.” A Mind that can make friends of any thing—I thought of that often during the war.

By chance, I came upon another story about him today. He often drank too much, far too much, but he was not a sullen drunk. Once, his host’s butler had to carry him home, slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold. The next day Charles wrote his host such a hilarious note of apology, the man bequeathed it to his son in his will. I hope Charles wrote the butler too.

Have you ever noticed that when your mind is awakened or drawn to someone new, that person’s name suddenly pops up everywhere you go? My friend Sophie calls it coincidence, and Mr. Simpless, my parson friend, calls it Grace. He thinks that if one cares deeply about someone or something new one throws a kind of energy out into the world, and “fruitfulness” is drawn in.

Yours ever,

Juliet

18th April, 1946

Dear Juliet,

Now that we are corresponding friends, I want to ask you some questions—they are highly personal. Dawsey said it would not be polite, but I say that’s a difference twixt men and women, not polite and rude. Dawsey’s never asked me a personal question in fifteen years. I’d take it kindly if he would, but Dawsey’s got quiet ways. I don’t expect to change him, nor myself either. I see it that you cared to know about us, so I guess you would like us to know about you—only you just didn’t happen to think of it first.

First of all, I saw a picture of you on the dust jacket of your book about Anne Brontë, so I know you are below forty years of age—how far below? Was the sun in your eyes, or does it happen that you have a squint? Is it permanent? It must have been a windy day because your curls are blowing all about. I couldn’t quite make out the color of your hair, though I can tell it isn’t blonde—for which I am glad. I don’t like blondes very much.

Do you live by the river? I hope so, because people who live near running water are much nicer than people who don’t. I’d be mean as a scorpion if I lived inland. Do you have a serious suitor? I do not.

Is your flat cozy or grand? Be fulsome, as I want to be able to picture it in my mind. Do you think you would like to visit us on Guernsey? Do you have a pet? What kind?

Your friend,

Isola

20th April, 1946

Dear Isola,

I am glad you want to know more about me and am only sorry I didn’t think of it myself, and sooner.

Present-day first: I am thirty-three years old, and you were right—the sun was in my eyes. In a good mood, I call my hair Chestnut with Gold Glints. In a bad mood, I call it mousy brown. It wasn’t a windy day; my hair always looks that way. Naturally curly hair is a curse, and don’t ever let anyone tell you different. My eyes are hazel. While I am slender, I am not tall enough to suit me.

I don’t live by the Thames anymore and that is what I miss the most about my old home—I loved the sight and sound of the river at all hours. I live now in a borrowed flat in Glebe Place. It is small and furnished within an inch of its life, and the flat owner won’t be back from the United States until November, so I have the run of his house until then. I wish I had a dog, but the building management does not allow pets! The Kensington Gardens aren’t so very far, so if I begin to feel cooped up I can walk to the park, rent a deck chair for a shilling, loll about under the trees, watch the passers-by and children play, and I am soothed—somewhat.

Eighty-one Oakley Street was demolished by a random V-1 just over a year ago. Most of the damage was to the row of houses behind mine, but three floors of Number 81 were sheared off, and my flat is now a pile of rubble. I hope Mr. Grant, the owner, will rebuild—for I want my flat, or a facsimile of it, back again, just as it was—with Cheyne Walk and the river outside my windows.

Luckily, I was away in Bury when the V-1 hit. Sidney Stark, my friend and now publisher, met my train that evening and took me home, and we viewed the huge mountain of rubble and what was left of the building.

With part of the wall gone, I could see my shredded curtains waving in the breeze and my desk, three-legged and slumped on the slanting floor that was left. My books were a muddy, sopping pile and although I could see my mother’s portrait on the wall—half gouged out and sooty—there was no safe way to recover it.

The only intact possession left was my large crystal paperweight—with Carpe Diem carved across its top. It had belonged to my father—and there it sat, whole and unchipped, atop a pile of broken bricks and splintered wood. I could not do without it so Sidney clambered over the rubble and retrieved it for me.

I was a fairly nice child until my parents died when I was twelve. I left our farm in Suffolk and went to live with my greatuncle in London. I was a furious, bitter, morose little girl. I ran away twice, causing my uncle no end of trouble—and at the time, I was very glad to do so. I am ashamed now when I think about how I treated him. He died when I was seventeen so I was never able to apologize.

When I was thirteen, my uncle decided I should go away to boarding school. I went, mulish as usual, and met the Headmistress, who marched me into the Dining Room. She led me to a table with four other girls. I sat; arms crossed, hands tucked under my armpits, glaring like a molting eagle, looking around for someone to hate. I hit upon Sophie Stark, Sidney’s younger sister.

Perfect, she had golden curls, big blue eyes, and a sweet, sweet smile. She made an effort to talk with me. I didn’t answer until she said, “I hope you will be happy here.” I told her I wouldn’t be staying long enough to find out. “As soon as I find out about the trains, I am gone!” said I.

That night I climbed out onto the dormitory roof, meaning to sit there and have a good brood in the dark. In a few minutes, Sophie crawled out—with a railway timetable for me.

Needless to say, I never ran away. I stayed—with Sophie as my new friend. Her mother would often invite me to their house for holidays, which was where I met Sidney. He was ten years older than me and was, of course, a god. He later changed into a bossy older brother, and later still, one of my dearest friends.

Sophie and I left school and—wanting no more of academic life, but LIFE instead—we went to London and shared rooms Sidney had found for us. We worked together for a while in a bookshop, and I wrote—and threw away—stories at night.

Then the Daily Mirror sponsored an essay contest—five hundred words on “What Women Fear Most.” I knew what the Mirror was finagling for, but I’m far more afraid of chickens than I am of men, so I wrote about that. The judges, thrilled at not having to read another word about sex, awarded me first prize.

Five pounds and I was, at last, in print. The Daily Mirror received so many fan letters, they commissioned me to write an article, then another one. I soon began to write feature stories for other newspapers and magazines. Then the war broke out, and I was invited to write a semi-weekly column for the Spectator, called “Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War.” Sophie met and fell in love with an airman, Alexander Strachan. They married and Sophie moved to his family’s farm in Scotland. I am godmother to their son, Dominic, and though I haven’t taught him any hymns, we did pull the hinges off his cellar door last time I saw him—it was a Pictish ambush.

I suppose I do have a suitor, but I’m not really used to him yet. He’s terribly charming and he plies me with delicious meals, but I sometimes think I prefer suitors in books rather than right in front of me. How awful, backward, cowardly, and mentally warped that will be if it turns out to be true.

Sidney published a book of my Izzy Bickerstaff columns and I went on a book tour. And then—I began writing letters to strangers in Guernsey, now friends, whom I would indeed like to come and see.

Yours ever,

Juliet

21st April, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Thank you for the blocks of wood. They are beautiful. I could not believe what I saw when I opened your box—all those sizes and shades, from pale to dark.

How did you happen to find the different kinds and shapes of wood? You must have gone to so many places to find them all. I’ll bet you did and I don’t know how to thank you for that. They came at just the right time too. Kit’s favorite animal was a snake she saw in a book, and he was easy to carve, being so long and thin. Now she’s gone on ferrets. She says she won’t ever touch my whittling knife again if I’ll carve her a ferret. I don’t think it will be too hard to make one, for they are pointy, too. Because of your gift, I have wood to practice with.

Is there an animal you would like to have? I want to carve a present for you, but I’d like it to be something you’d favor. Would you like a mouse? I am good with mice.

Yours truly,

Eli

22nd April, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Your box for Eli came Friday—what a kindness of you. He sits and studies the blocks of wood—as if he sees something hidden inside them, and he can make it come out with his knife.

You asked if all the Guernsey children were evacuated to England. No—some stayed, and when I missed Eli, I looked at the little ones around me and was glad he had gone. The children here had a bad time, for there was no food to grow on. I remember picking up Bill LePell’s boy—he was twelve but weighed no more than a child of seven.

It was a terrible thing to decide—send your kiddies away to live among strangers, or let them stay with you? Maybe the Germans wouldn’t come, but if they did—how would they behave to us? But, come to that, what if they invaded England, too—how would the children manage without their own families beside them?

Do you know the state we were in when the Germans came? Shock is what I’d call it. The truth is, we didn’t think they’d want us. It was England they were after, and we were of no use to them. We thought we’d be in the audience like, not up on the stage itself.

Then in the spring of 1940 Hitler got himself going through Europe like a hot knife through butter. Every place fell to him. It was so fast—windows all over Guernsey shook and rattled from the explosions in France, and once the coast of France was gone, it was plain as day that England could not use up her men and ships to defend us. They needed to save them for when their own invasion began in earnest. So we were left to ourselves.

In the middle of June, when it became pretty certain we were in for it, the States got on the telephone to London and asked if they would send ships for our children and take them to England. They could not fly, for fear of being shot down by the Luftwaffe. London said yes, but the children had to be ready at once. The ships would have to hurry here and back again while there was still time. It was such a desperate time for folks and there was such a feel of Hurry, Hurry.

Jane had no more strength than a cat then, but she knew her mind. She wanted Eli to go. Other ladies were in a dither—go or stay?—and they were wild to talk it over, but Jane told Elizabeth to keep them away. “I don’t want to hear them fuss,” she said. “It’s bad for the baby.” Jane had an idea that babies knew everything that happened around them, even before they were born.

The time for dithering was soon over. Families had one day to decide, and five years to abide with it. School-age children and babies with their mothers went first on the 19th and 20th of June. The States gave out pocket money to the kiddies, if their parents had none to spare. The littlest children were all excited about the sweets they could buy with it. Some thought it was like a Sunday School outing, and they’d be back by nightfall. They were lucky in that. The older children, like Eli, knew better.

Of all the sights I saw the day they left, there is one picture I can’t get out of my mind. Two little girls, all dressed up in pink party dresses, stiff petticoats, shiny strap shoes—like their Ma thought they’d be going to a party. How cold they must have been crossing the Channel.

All the children were to be dropped off at their school by their parents. It was there we had to say our good-byes. Buses came to take the children down to the pier. The boats that had just been to Dunkirk came back across the Channel for the children. There was no time to get a convoy together to escort them. There was no time to get enough lifeboats on board—or life jackets.

That morning we stopped first at the hospital for Eli to bid his mother good-bye. He couldn’t do it. His jaw was clamped shut so tight, he could only nod. Jane held him for a bit, and then Elizabeth and me walked him down to the schoolyard. I hugged him hard and that was the last time I saw him for five years. Elizabeth stayed because she had volunteered to help get the children inside ready.

I was walking back to Jane in the hospital, when I recalled something Eli had once said to me. He was about five years old, and we were walking down to La Courbière to see the fishing boats come in. There was an old canvas bathing shoe left lying right in the middle of the path. Eli walked around it, staring.

Finally, he said, “That shoe is all alone, Grandpa.” I answered that yes it was. He looked at it some more, and then we walked on by. After a bit, he said, “Grandpa, that’s something I never am.” I asked him, “What’s that?” And he said, “Lonesome in my spirits.”

There! I had something happy to tell Jane after all, and I prayed it would stay true for him.

Isola says she wants to write you herself of the doings inside the school. She says she was witness to a scene you will want to know about as an authoress: Elizabeth smacked Adelaide Addison in the face and made her leave. You do not know Miss Addison, and you are fortunate in that—she is a woman too good for daily wear.

Isola told me you might come to visit Guernsey. I would be glad to offer you hospitality with me and Eli.

Yours,

Eben Ramsey

DID ELIZABETH REALLY SLAP ADELAIDE ADDISON? IF ONLY I HAD BEEN THERE! PLEASE SEND DETAILS. LOVE, JULIET

24th April, 1946

Dear Juliet,

Yes, she did—slapped her right across the face. It was lovely. We were all at the St. Brioc School to help the children get ready for the buses to take them down to the ships. The States didn’t want the parents to come into the school itself—too crowded and too sad. Better to say good-byes outside. One child crying might set them all off.

So it was strangers who tied up shoelaces, wiped noses, put a nametag around each child’s neck. We did up buttons and played games with them until the buses could come.

I had one bunch of kiddies trying to touch their tongues to their noses, and Elizabeth had another bunch playing that game that teaches them how to lie with a straight face—I forget what it’s called—when Adelaide Addison came in with that doleful mug of hers, all piety and no sense.

She gathered a circle of children around her and commenced singing “For Those in Peril on the Sea” over their little heads. But no, “safety from storms” wasn’t enough for her. God had to keep them from being blown up too. She set about ordering the poor things to pray for their parents every night—who knew what the German soldiers might do to them? Then she said to be especially good little boys and girls so that Mama and Daddy could look down on them from Heaven and BE PROUD OF THEM.

I tell you, Juliet, she had those children crying and sobbing fit to die. I was too shocked to move, but not Elizabeth. No, quick as an adder’s tongue, she had ahold of Adelaide’s arm and told her to SHUT UP.

Adelaide cried, “Let me go! I am speaking the Word of God!”

Elizabeth, she got a look on her that would turn the devil to stone, and then she slapped Adelaide right across the face—nice and sharp, so her head wobbled on her shoulders—and hauled her over to the door, shoved her out, and locked it. Old Adelaide kept a-pounding on the door, but no one paid her any heed. I lie—silly Daphne Post did try to open it, but I got her round the neck and she stopped.

It is my belief that the sight of a good fight shocked the fear right out of those babies, and they stopped crying, and the buses all came and we loaded the children on. Elizabeth and me, we didn’t go home, we stood in the road and waved till the buses was out of sight.

I hope I never live to see another such day, even with Adelaide getting slapped. All those little children bereft in the world—I was glad I did not have any.

Thank you for your life story. You have had such sadness with your Ma and Pa and your home by the river, for which things I am sorry. But me, I am glad you have dear friends like Sophie and her Ma and Sidney. As to that Sidney, he sounds a very fine man—but bossy. It’s a failing common in men.

Clovis Fossey has asked if you would send the Society a copy of your prize-winning essay on chickens. He thinks it would be nice to read aloud at a meeting. Then we could put it in our archives, if we ever have any.

I’d like to read it too, chickens being the reason I fell off a hen-house roof—they’d chased me there. How they all came at me—with their razor lips and back-to-back eyeballs! People don’t know how chickens can turn on you, but they can—just like mad dogs. I didn’t keep hens until the war came—then I had to, but I am never easy in their company. I would rather have Ariel butt me on my bottom—that’s open and honest and not like a sly chicken, sneaking up to jab you.

I would like it if you would come to see us. So would Eben and Amelia and Dawsey—and Eli, too. Kit is not so sure, but you needn’t mind that. She might come round. Your newspaper article will be printed soon, so you could come here and rest up. It may be that you could find a story here you’d like to tell about.

Your friend,

Isola

26th April, 1946

Dear Juliet,

My temporary job at the quarry is over, and Kit is staying with me for a bit. She is sitting beneath the table I’m writing upon, whispering. What’s that you’re whispering, I asked, and there was a long quiet. Then she commenced whispering again, and I can make out my own name mixed into the other sounds.

This is what generals call a war of nerves, and I know who is going to win.

Kit doesn’t resemble Elizabeth very much, except for her grey eyes and a look she gets when she is concentrating hard. But she is like her mother inside—fierce in her feelings. Even when she was a tiny creature, it was so. She howled until the glass shivered in the windows, and when she gripped my finger in her little fist, it turned white. I knew nothing of babies, but Elizabeth made me learn. She said I was fated to be a father and she had a responsibility to make sure I knew more than the usual run of them.

She missed Christian, not just for herself, for Kit, too. Kit knows her father is dead. Amelia and I told her that, but we didn’t know how to speak of Elizabeth. In the end, we said that she’d been sent away and we hoped she’d return soon. Kit looked from me to Amelia and back, but she didn’t ask any questions. She just went out and sat in the barn. I don’t know if we did right.

Some days I wear myself out with wishing for Elizabeth to come home. We have learned that Sir Ambrose Ivers was killed in one of the last bombing raids in London, and, as Elizabeth inherited his estate, his solicitors have begun a search for her. They must have better ways to find her than we have, so I am hopeful that Mr. Dilwyn will get some word from her—or about her—soon. Wouldn’t it be a blessed thing for Kit and for all of us if Elizabeth could be found?

The Society is having an outing on Saturday. We are attending the Guernsey Repertory Company’s showing of Julius Caesar—John Booker is to be Marc Antony and Clovis Fossey is going to play Caesar. Isola has been reading Clovis his lines, and she says we will all be astonished at his performance, especially when, after he’s dead, he hisses, “Thou shalt see me at Philippi!”

Just thinking of the way Clovis hisses it has kept her awake for three nights, she says. Isola exaggerates, but only enough to enjoy herself.

Kit’s stopped whispering. I’ve just peered under the table, and she’s asleep. It’s later than I thought.

Yours ever,

Dawsey

April 30, 1946

Darling,

Just got in—the entire trip could have been avoided if Hendry had telephoned, but I smacked a few heads together and they’ve cleared the whole shipment through customs. I feel as though I’ve been away for years. Can I see you tonight? I need to talk to you.

Love,

M.

Of course. Do you want to come here? I have a sausage.

Juliet

A sausage—how appetizing.

Suzette, at 8:00?

Love,

M.

Say please.

J.

Pleased to see you at Suzette at 8:00.

Love,

M.

1st May, 1946

Dear Mark,

I didn’t refuse, you know. I said I wanted to think about it. You were so busy ranting about Sidney and Guernsey that perhaps you didn’t notice—I only said I wanted time. I’ve known you two months. It’s not long enough for me to be certain that we should spend the rest of our lives together, even if you are. I once made a terrible mistake and almost married a man I hardly knew (perhaps you read about it in the papers)—and at least in that case, the war was an extenuating circumstance. I won’t be such a fool again.

Think of it: I’ve never seen your home—I don’t even know where it is, really. New York, but which street? What does it look like? What color are your walls? Your sofa? Do you arrange your books alphabetically? (I hope not.) Are your drawers tidy or messy? Do you ever hum, and if so, what? Do you prefer cats or dogs? Or fish? What on earth do you eat for breakfast—or do you have a cook?

You see? I don’t know you well enough to marry you.

I have one other piece of news that may interest you: Sidney is not your rival. I am not now nor have I ever been in love with Sidney, nor he with me. Nor will I ever marry him. Is that decisive enough for you?

Are you absolutely certain you wouldn’t rather be married to someone more tractable than I?

Juliet

1st May, 1946

Dearest Sophie,

I wish you were here. I wish we still lived together in our lovely little studio and worked in dear Mr. Hawke’s shop and ate crackers and cheese for supper every night. I want so much to talk to you. I want you to tell me whether I should marry Mark Reynolds.

He asked me last night—no bended knee, but a diamond as big as a pigeon egg—at a romantic French restaurant. I’m not certain he still wants to marry me this morning—he’s absolutely furious because I didn’t give him an unequivocal yes. I tried to explain that I hadn’t known him long enough and I needed time to think, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He was certain that I was rejecting him because of a secret passion—for Sidney! They really are obsessed with one another, those two.

Thank God we were at his flat by then—he began shouting about Sidney and godforsaken islands and women who care more about a passel of strangers than men who are right in front of them (that’s Guernsey and my new friends there). I kept trying to explain and he kept shouting until I began to cry from frustration. Then he felt remorseful, which was so unlike him and endearing that I almost changed my mind and said yes. But then I imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again. We argued and he lectured and I wept a bit more because I was so exhausted, and eventually he called his chauffeur to take me home. As he shut me into the back seat, he leaned in to kiss me and said, “You’re an idiot, Juliet.”

And maybe he’s right. Do you recall those awful, awful Cheslayne Fair novels we read the summer we were thirteen? My favorite was The Master of Blackheath. I must have read it twenty times (and so did you, don’t pretend you didn’t). Do you remember Ransom—how he manfully hid his love for the girlish Eulalie so that she could choose freely, little knowing that she had been mad for him ever since she fell off her horse when she was twelve? Here’s the thing, Sophie—Mark Reynolds is exactly like Ransom. He’s tall and handsome, with a crooked smile and a chiseled jaw. He shoulders his way through the crowd, careless of the glances that follow him. He’s impatient and magnetic, and when I go to powder my nose, I overhear other women talking about him, just like Eulalie did in the museum. People notice him. He doesn’t try to make them—they can’t help it.

I used to get shivers about Ransom. Sometimes I do about Mark, too—when I look at him—but I can’t get over the nagging feeling that I’m no Eulalie. If I were ever to fall off a horse, it would be lovely to be picked up by Mark, but I don’t think I’m likely to fall off a horse any time soon. I’m much more likely to go to Guernsey and write a book about the Occupation, and Mark can’t abide the thought. He wants me to stay in London and go to restaurants and theaters and marry him like a reasonable person.

Write and tell me what to do.

Love to Dominic—and you and Alexander as well.

Juliet

3rd May, 1946

Dear Sidney,

I may not be as distraught as Stephens & Stark is without you, but I do miss you and want you to advise me. Please drop everything you are doing and write to me at once.

I want to get out of London. I want to go to Guernsey. You know I’ve grown very fond of my Guernsey friends, and I’m fascinated by their lives under the Germans—and afterward. I’ve visited the Channel Islands Refugee Committee and read their files. I have read the Red Cross reports. I’ve read all I can find on Todt slave workers—there hasn’t, so far, been much. I’ve interviewed some of the soldiers who liberated Guernsey and talked to Royal Engineers who removed the thousands of mines from their beaches. I’ve read all of the “unclassified” government reports on the state of the Islanders’ health, or lack of it; their happiness, or lack of it; their food supplies, or lack of them. But I want to know more. I want to know the stories of the people who were there, and I can never learn those by sitting in a library in London.

For example—yesterday I was reading an article on the liberation. A reporter asked a Guernsey Islander, “What was the most difficult experience you had during the Germans’ rule?” He made fun of the man’s answer, but it made perfect sense to me.

The Islander told him, “You know they took away all of our wireless sets? If you were caught having a hidden radio, you’d get sent off to prison on the continent. Well, those of us who had secret radios, we heard about the Allies landing in Normandy. Trouble was, we weren’t supposed to know it had happened! Hardest thing I ever did was walk around St. Peter Port on June 7, not grinning, not smiling, not doing anything to let those Germans know that I KNEW their end was coming. If they’d caught on, someone would be in for it—so we had to pretend. It was very hard to pretend not to know D-Day had happened.”

I want to talk to people like him (though he’s probably off writers now) and hear about their war, for that’s what I’d like to read, instead of statistics about grain. I’m not sure what form a book would take, or if I could even write one at all. But I would like to go to St. Peter Port and find out.

Do I have your blessing?

Love to you and Piers,

Juliet

10th May, 1946

HEREWITH MY BLESSING! GUERNSEY IS A WONDERFUL IDEA, BOTH FOR YOU AND FOR A BOOK. BUT WILL REYNOLDS ALLOW IT? LOVE, SIDNEY

11th May, 1946

BLESSING RECEIVED. MARK REYNOLDS IS NOT IN A POSITION TO FORBID OR ALLOW. LOVE, JULIET

13th May, 1946

My dear,

It was a delight to receive your telegram yesterday and learn that you are coming to visit us!

I followed your instructions and spread the news at once—you have sent the Society into a whirlwind of excitement. The members instantly offered to provide you with anything you might need: bed, board, introductions, a supply of electric clothes-pins. Isola is over the moon that you are coming and is already at work on behalf of your book. Though I cautioned her that it was only an idea as yet, she is bound and determined to find material for you. She has asked (perhaps threatened) everyone she knows in the market to send you letters about the Occupation; she thinks you’ll need them to persuade your publisher that the subject is book-worthy. Don’t be surprised if you are inundated with mail in the next weeks.

Isola also went to see Mr. Dilwyn at the bank this afternoon and asked him to offer you the rental of Elizabeth’s cottage for your visit. It is a lovely site, in a meadow below the Big House, and it is small enough for you to manage easily. Elizabeth moved there when the German officers confiscated the larger house for their use. You would be very comfortable there, and Isola assured Mr. Dilwyn that he need only stir himself to draw up a lease for you. She herself will tend to everything else: airing out rooms, washing windows, beating rugs, and killing spiders.

I hope you won’t feel burdened by all these arrangements, as Mr. Dilwyn had planned to assess the property soon for its rental possibilities. Sir Ambrose’s solicitors have begun an inquiry into Elizabeth’s whereabouts. They have found there is no record of her arrival in Germany, only that she was put on a transport in France, with Frankfurt as the intended destination of the train.

There will be further investigations, and I pray that they will lead to Elizabeth, but in the meantime, Mr. Dilwyn wants to rent the property left to Elizabeth by Sir Ambrose, to provide income for Kit.

I sometimes think that we are morally obliged to begin a search for Kit’s German relations, but I cannot bring myself to do it. Christian was a rare soul, and he detested what his country was doing, but the same cannot be true for many Germans, who believed in the dream of the Thousand-Year Reich. And how could we send our Kit away to a foreign—and destroyed—land, even if her relations could be found? We are the only family she’s ever known.

When Kit was born, Elizabeth kept her paternity a secret from the authorities. Not out of shame, but because she was afraid that the baby would be taken from her and sent to Germany to be raised. There were dreadful rumors of such things. I wonder if Kit’s heritage could have saved Elizabeth if she had made it known when she was arrested. But as she didn’t, it is not my place to do so.

Excuse my unburdening myself. My worries travel about my head on their well-worn path, and it is a relief to put them on paper. I will turn to more cheerful subjects—such as last evening’s meeting of the Society.

After the uproar about your visit had subsided, the Society read your article about books and reading in the Times. Everyone enjoyed it—not just because we were reading about ourselves, but because you brought us views we’d never thought to apply to our reading before. Dr. Stubbins pronounced that you alone had transformed “distraction” into an honorable word—instead of a character flaw. The article was delightful, and we were all so proud and pleased to be mentioned in it.

Will Thisbee wants to have a welcome party in your honor. He will bake a Potato Peel Pie for the event and has devised a cocoa icing for it. He made a surprise dessert for our meeting last night—Cherries Flambé, which fortunately burned down to the pan, so we did not have to eat it. I wish Will would leave cookery alone and go back to ironmongery.

We all look forward to welcoming you. You mentioned that you have to finish several reviews before you can leave London—but we will be delighted to see you whenever you come. Just let us know the date and time of your arrival. Certainly, an aeroplane flight to Guernsey would be faster and more comfortable than the mail boat (Clovis Fossey said to tell you that air hostesses give gin to passengers—and the mail boat doesn’t). But unless you are bedeviled by sea-sickness, I would catch the afternoon boat from Weymouth. There is no more beautiful approach to Guernsey than the one by sea—either with the sun going down, or with gold-tipped, black storm clouds, or the Island just emerging through the mist. This is the way I first saw Guernsey, as a new bride.

Fondly,

Amelia

14th May, 1946

Dear Juliet,

I have been getting your house all ready for you. I asked several of my friends at Market to write to you of their experiences, so I hope they do. If Mr. Tatum writes and asks for money for his recollections, don’t pay him a penny. He is a big fat liar.

Would you like to know of my first sight of the Germans? I will use adjectives to make it more lively. I don’t usually—I favor stark facts.

Guernsey seemed quiet that Tuesday—but we knew they were there! Planes and ships carrying soldiers had come in the day before. Huge Junkers thumped down, and after unloading all their men, they flew off again. Being lighter now and more frolicsome, they hedgehopped, swooping up and swooping down, all over Guernsey, scaring the cows in the fields.

Elizabeth was at my house, but we couldn’t summon up the spirit to make hair tonic, even though my yarrow was in. We just drifted around like a couple of ghouls. Then Elizabeth gathered herself up. “Come on,” she says. “I’m not going to sit inside waiting for them. I’m going to town to seek out my enemy.”

“And what are you going to do after you’ve found him?” I asks, sort of snappish.

“I’m going to look at him,” she says. “We’re not animals in a cage—they are. They’re stuck on this island with us, same as we’re stuck with them. Come on, let’s go stare.”

I liked that idea, so we put on our hats and went. But you would never believe the sights we saw in St. Peter Port.

Oh, there were hundreds of German soldiers—and they were SHOPPING! Arm in arm they went strolling along Fountain Street—smiling, laughing, peering into store windows, going in shops and coming out with their arms filled with packages, calling out to one another. North Esplanade was filled with soldiers too. Some were just lolling about, others touched their caps to us and bowed, polite-like. One man said to me, “Your island is beautiful. We will be fighting in London soon, but now we have this—a holiday in the sun.”

Another poor idiot actually thought he was in Brighton. They were buying ice lollies for the streams of children following them. Laughing and having a fine time they were. If it weren’t for those green uniforms, we’d have thought the tour boat from Weymouth was in!

We started to go by Candie Gardens, and there everything changed—carnival to nightmare. First, we heard noise—the loud steady rhythm of boots coming down heavy on hard stones.

Then a troop of goose-stepping soldiers turned onto our street; everything about them gleamed; buttons, boots, those metal coal-scuttle hats. Their eyes didn’t look at anyone or anything—just stared straight ahead. That was scarier than the rifles slung over their shoulders, or the knives and grenades stuck in their boot-tops.

Mr. Ferre, who’d been in back of us, grabbed my arm. He’d fought on the Somme. Tears were running down his face, and not knowing it, he was twisting my arm, wringing it, saying, “How can they be doing this again? We beat them and here they are again. How did we let them do this again?”

Finally, Elizabeth said, “I’ve seen enough. I need a drink.”

I keep a good supply of gin in my cupboard, so we came on home.

I will close now, but I will be able to see you soon and that gives me joy. We all want to come meet you—but a new fear has struck me. There could be twenty other passengers on the mail boat, and how will I know which one is you? That book photo is a blurry little thing, and I don’t want to go kissing the wrong woman. Could you wear a big red hat with a veil and carry lilies?

Your friend,

Isola

Wednesday evening

Dear Miss,

I too am a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—but I never wrote to you about my books, because I only read two—kiddies’ tales about dogs, loyal, brave, and true.

Isola says you are coming to maybe write about the Occupation, and I think you should know the truth of what our States did to animals! Our own government, mind, not the dirty Germans!

They would be ashamed to tell of it, but I am not. I don’t much care for people—never have, never will. I got my reasons. I never met a man half so true as a dog. Treat a dog right and he’ll treat you right—he’ll keep you company, be your friend, never ask you no questions. Cats is different, but I never held that against them.

You should know what some Guernsey folks did to their pets when they got scared the Germans was coming. Thousands of them quit the island—flew off to England, sailed away, and left their dogs and cats behind. Deserted them, left them to roam the streets, hungry and thirsty—the swine!

I took in as many dogs as I could gather up, but it wasn’t enough. Then the States stepped in to take care of the problem—and did worse, far worse. The States warned in the newspapers that, because of the war, there might not be enough food for humans, much less for animals. “You may keep one family pet,” they said, “but the States will have to put the rest to sleep. Feral cats and dogs, roaming the island, will be a danger to the children.”

And that is what they did. The States gathered them animals into trucks, and took them to St. Andrews Animal Shelter, and those nurses and doctors put them all to sleep. As fast as they could kill one truck load of pets, another truck load would arrive. I saw it all—the collecting, the unloading at the shelter, and the burying.

I saw one nurse come out of the shelter and stand in the fresh air, gulping it down. She looked sick enough to die herself. She had herself a cigarette and then she went back on in to help with the killing. It took two days to kill all the animals.

That’s all I want to say, but put it in your book.

An Animal Lover

15th May, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Miss Pribby told me you would be coming to Guernsey to hear about the war. I hope we will meet then, but I am writing now because I like to write letters. I like to write anything, really.

I thought you’d like to know how I was personally humiliated during the war—in 1943, when I was twelve. I had scabies. There wasn’t enough soap on Guernsey to keep clean—not our clothes, our houses, or ourselves. Everyone had skin diseases of one sort or another—scales or pustules or lice. I myself had scabies on top of my head—under my hair—and they wouldn’t go away.

Finally, Dr. Ormond said I must go to Town Hospital and have my head shaved, and cut the tops of the scabs off to let the pus out. I hope you will never know the shame of a seeping scalp. I wanted to die.

That is where I met my friend Elizabeth McKenna. She helped the nurses on my floor. The nurses were always kind, but Miss McKenna was kind and funny. Her being funny helped me in my darkest hour. When my head had been shaved, she came into my room with a basin, a bottle of Dettol, and a sharp scalpel.

I said, “This isn’t going to hurt, is it? Dr. Ormond said it wouldn’t hurt.” I tried not to cry.

“He lied,” Miss McKenna said, “it’s going to hurt like hell. Don’t tell your mother I said ‘hell.’ ”

I started to giggle at that, and she made the first slice before I had time to be afraid. It did hurt, but not like hell. We played a game while she cut the rest of the tops off—we shouted out the names of every woman who had ever suffered under the blade. “Mary, Queen of Scots—Snip-snap!” “Anne Boleyn—Whap!” “Marie Antoinette—Thunk!” And we were done.

It hurt, but it was fun too because Miss McKenna had turned it into a game.

She swabbed my bald head with Dettol and came in to visit me that evening—with a silk scarf of her own to wrap round my head as a turban. “There,” she said, and handed me a mirror. I looked in it—the scarf was lovely, but my nose looked too big for my face, just as it always did. I wondered if I’d ever be pretty, and asked Miss McKenna.

When I asked my mother the same question, she said she had no patience with such nonsense and beauty was only skin-deep. But not Miss McKenna. She looked at me, considering, and then she said, “In a little more time, Sally, you’re going to be a stunner. Keep looking in the mirror and you’ll see. It’s bones that count, and you’ve got them in spades. With that elegant nose of yours, you’ll be the new Nefertiti. You’d better practice looking imperious.”

Mrs. Maugery came to visit me in hospital and I asked her who Nefertiti was, and if she was dead. It sort of sounded like it. Mrs. Maugery said she was indeed dead in one way, but immortal in another way. Later on, she hunted up a picture of Nefertiti for me to see. I wasn’t exactly sure what imperious was, so I tried to look like her. As yet, I haven’t grown into my nose, but I’m sure it will come—Miss McKenna said so.

Another sad story about the Occupation is my Aunt Letty. She used to have a big, gloomy old house out on the cliffs near La Fontenelle. The Germans said it lay in their big guns’ line of fire and interfered with their gun practice. So they blew it up. Aunt Letty lives with us now.

Yours sincerely,

Sally Ann Frobisher

15th May, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Isola gave me your address because she is sure you would like to see my list for your book.

If you was to take me to Paris today, and set me down in a fine French restaurant—the kind of place what has white lace tablecloths, candles on the walls, and silver covers over all the plates—well, I tell you it would be nothing, nothing compared to my Vega box.

In case you don’t know of it, the Vega was a Red Cross ship that come first to Guernsey on 27 December, 1944. They brought food to us then, and five more times—and it kept us alive until the end of the war.

Yes, I do say it—kept us alive! Food had not been so plentiful for several years by then. Except for the devils in the Black Market, not a spoonful of sugar was left on the Island. All the flour for bread had run out about the first of December of ’44. Them German soldiers was as hungry as we was—with bloated bellies and no body warmth from food.

Well, I was tired to death of boiled potatoes and turnips, and I would have soon turned up my toes and died, when the Vega came into our port.

Mr. Churchill, he wouldn’t let the Red Cross ships bring us any food before then because he said the Germans would just take it, and eat it up themselves. Now that may sound like smart planning to you—to starve the villains out! But to me it said he just didn’t care if we starved along with them.

Well, something shoved his soul up a notch or two, and he decided we could eat. So in December, he says to the Red Cross, “Oh, all right, go ahead and feed them.”

Miss Ashton, there were TWO BOXES of food for every man, woman, and child on Guernsey—all stored up in the Vega’s hold. There was other stuff too: nails, seed for planting, candles, oil to cook with, matches to light a fire, some clothing, and some shoes. Even a few layettes for any new babies around.

There was flour and tobacco—Moses can talk about manna all he wants, but he never seen anything like this! I am going to tell you everything in my box, because I wrote it all down to paste in my memory book.

I gave my prunes away—but wasn’t that something? When I die I am going to leave all my money to the Red Cross. I have written to tell them so.

There is something else I should say to you. It may be about those Germans, but honor due is honor due. They unloaded all those boxes of food for us from the Vega, and they didn’t take none, not one box of it, for themselves. Of course, their Commandant had told them, “That food is for the Islanders, it is not yours. Steal one bit and I’ll have you shot.” Then he gave each man unloading the ship a teaspoon, so’s he could scrape up any flour or grain that spilled on the roadway. They could eat that.

In fact, they were a pitiful sight—those soldiers. Stealing from gardens, knocking on doors asking for scraps. One day I saw a soldier catch up a cat, and slam its head against a wall. Then he cut it off, and hid the cat in his jacket. I followed him—till he come to a field. That German skinned that cat and boiled him up in his billy can, and ate it right there.

That was truly, truly a sorrowful sight to see. It made me sick, but underneath my sick, I thought, “There goes Hitler’s Third Reich—dining out,” and then I started laughing, fit to die. I am ashamed of that now, but that is what I did.

That is all I have to say. I wish you well with your book writing.

Yours truly,

Micah Daniels

16th May, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Amelia told us you are coming to Guernsey to gather stories for your book. I will welcome you with all my heart, but I won’t be able to tell you about what happened to me because I get the shakes when I talk about it. Maybe if I write it down, you won’t need me to say it out loud. It isn’t about Guernsey anyway—I wasn’t here. I was in Neuengamme Concentration Camp in Germany.

You know how I pretended I was Lord Tobias for three years? Peter Jenkins’s daughter, Lisa, was dating German soldiers. Any German soldier, so long as he would give her stockings or lipsticks. This was so until she took up with Sgt. Willy Gurtz. He was a mean little runt. The two of them together benasties the mind. It was Lisa who betrayed me to the German Commandant.

In March of 1944, Lisa was having her hair done in an upsweep at the beauty parlor, where she found an old, pre-war copy of Tatler magazine. There, on page 124, was a colored picture of Lord and Lady Tobias Penn-Piers. They were at a wedding in Sussex—drinking champagne and eating oysters. The words under the picture told all about her gown, her diamonds, her shoes, her face, and his money. The magazine mentioned that they were owners of an estate, called La Fort, on the island of Guernsey.

Well, it was pretty plain—even to Lisa, who’s thick as a post—that Lord Tobias Penn-Piers was not me. She did not wait for her hair to be combed out, but left at once to show the picture to Willy Gurtz, who took it straight to the Commandant.

It made the Germans feel like fools, bowing and scraping all that time to a servant—so they were extra spiteful and sent me to the camp at Neuengamme.

I did not think I would live out the first week. With other prisoners, I was sent out to clear unexploded bombs during air raids. What a choice—to run into a square with the bombs raining down or to be killed by the guards for refusing. I ran and scuttled like a rat and tried to cover myself when I heard bombs whistle past my head and somehow I was alive at the end of it.

That’s what I told myself—Well, you’re still alive. I think all of us said the same each morning when we woke up—Well, I’m still alive. But the truth is, we weren’t. What we were—it wasn’t dead, but it wasn’t alive either. I was a living soul only a few minutes a day, when I was in my bunk. Those times, I tried to think of something happy, something I’d liked—but not something I loved, for that made it worse. Just a small thing, like a school picnic or bicycling downhill—that’s all I could stand.

It felt like thirty years, but it was only one. In April of ’45, the Commandant at Neuengamme picked out those of us who were still fit enough to work and sent us to Belsen. We rode for several days in a big, open truck—no food, no blankets, no water, but we were glad we weren’t walking. The mud-puddles in the road were red.

I imagine you already know of Belsen and what happened there. When we got off the truck, we were handed shovels. We were to dig great pits to bury the dead. They led us through the camp to the spot, and I feared I’d lost my mind because everyone I saw was dead. Even the living looked like corpses, and the corpses were lying where they’d dropped. I didn’t know why they were bothering to bury them. The fact was, the Russians were coming from the east, and the Allies were coming from the west—and those Germans were terrified of what they’d see when they got there.

The crematorium could not burn the bodies fast enough—so after we dug long trenches, we pulled and dragged the bodies to the edges and threw them in. You’ll not believe it, but the SS forced the prisoners’ band to play music as we lugged the corpses—and for that, I hope they burn in hell with polkas blaring. When the trenches were full, the SS poured petrol over the bodies and set fire to them. Afterwards, we were supposed to cover them with dirt—as if you could hide such a thing.

The British got there the next day, and dear God, but we were glad to see them. I was strong enough to walk down the road, so I saw the tanks crash down the gates and I saw the British flag painted on their sides. I turned to a man sitting against a fence nearby and called out “We’re saved! It’s the British!” Then I saw he was dead. He had only missed it by minutes. I sat down in the mud and sobbed as though he’d been my best friend.

When the Tommies came down out of the tanks, they were weeping, too—even the officers. Those good men fed us, gave us blankets, saw us to hospitals. And bless them, they burned Belsen to the ground a month later.

I read in the newspaper that they’ve put up a war refugee camp in its place now. It gives me the shivers to think of new barracks being built there, even for a good purpose. To my mind, that land should be a blank forever.

I’ll write no more of this, and I hope you’ll understand if I do not care to speak of it. As Seneca says, “Light griefs are loquacious, but the great are dumb.”

I do recall something you might like to know for your book. It happened in Guernsey, when I was still pretending to be Lord Tobias. Sometimes of an evening Elizabeth and I would walk up to the headlands to watch the bombers flying over—hundreds of them, on their way to bomb London. It was terrible to watch and know where they were headed and what they meant to do. The German radio had told us London was leveled—flattened, with nothing left but rubble and ashes. We didn’t quite believe them, German propaganda being what it was, but still—

We were walking through St. Peter Port on one such night when we passed the McLaren House. That was a fine old house taken over by German officers. A window was open and the wireless was playing a beautiful piece of music. We stopped to listen, thinking it must be a program from Berlin. But, when the music ended, we heard Big Ben strike and a British voice said, “This is the BBC—London.” You can never mistake Big Ben’s sound! London was still there! Still there. Elizabeth and I hugged, and we started waltzing up the road. That was one of the times I could not think about while I was in Neuengamme.

Yours sincerely,

John Booker

16th May, 1946

Dear Juliet,

There’s nothing left to do for your arrival except wait. Isola has washed, starched, and ironed Elizabeth’s curtains, looked up the chimney for bats, cleaned the windows, made up the beds, and aired all the rooms.

Eli has carved a present for you, Eben has filled your woodshed, and Clovis has scythed your meadow—leaving, he says, the clumps of wildflowers for you to enjoy. Amelia is planning a supper party for you on your first evening.

My only job is to keep Isola alive until you get here. Heights make her giddy, but nevertheless she climbed to the roof of Elizabeth’s cottage to stomp for loose tiles. Fortunately, Kit saw her before she reached the eaves and ran for me to come talk her down.

I wish I could do more for your welcome—I hope it may be soon. I am happy you are coming.

Yours,

Dawsey

19th May, 1946

Dear Dawsey,

I’ll be there the day after tomorrow! I am far too cowardly to fly, even with the inducement of gin, so I shall come by the evening mail boat.

Would you give Isola a message for me? Please tell her that I don’t own a hat with a veil, and I can’t carry lilies—they make me sneeze—but I do have a red wool cape and I’ll wear that on the boat.

Dawsey, there isn’t one thing you could do to make me feel more welcome in Guernsey than you already have. I’m having trouble believing that I am going to meet you all at last.

Yours ever,

Juliet

May 20, 1946

Dear Juliet,

You asked me to give you time, and I have. You asked me not to mention marriage, and I haven’t. But now you tell me that you’re off to bloody Guernsey for—what? A week? A month? Forever? Do you think I’m going to sit back and let you go?

You’re being ridiculous, Juliet. Any half-wit can see that you’re trying to run away, but what nobody can understand is why. We’re right together—you make me happy, you never bore me, you’re interested in the things I’m interested in, and I hope I’m not deluded when I say I think the same is true for you. We belong together. I know you loathe it when I tell you I know what’s best for you, but in this case, I do.

For God’s sake, forget about that miserable island and marry me. I’ll take you there on our honeymoon—if I must.

Love,

Mark

20th May, 1946

Dear Mark,

You’re probably right, but even so, I’m going to Guernsey tomorrow and you can’t stop me.

I’m sorry I can’t give you the answer you want. I would like to be able to.

Love,

Juliet

P.S. Thank you for the roses.

Oh for God’s sake. Do you want me to drive you down to Weymouth?

Mark

Will you promise not to lecture me?

Juliet

No lectures. However, all other forms of persuasion will be employed.

Mark

Can’t scare me. What can you possibly do while driving?

Juliet

You’d be surprised. See you tomorrow.

M