The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

PART TWO

22nd May, 1946

Dear Sidney,

There’s so much to tell you. I’ve been in Guernsey only twenty hours, but each one has been so full of new faces and ideas that I’ve reams to write. You see how conducive to working island life is? Look at Victor Hugo—I may grow prolific if I stay here for any length of time.

The voyage from Weymouth was ghastly, with the mail boat groaning and creaking and threatening to break to pieces in the waves. I almost wished it would, to put me out of my misery, except I wanted to see Guernsey before I died. And as soon as we came in sight of the island, I gave up the notion altogether because the sun broke beneath the clouds and set the cliffs shimmering into silver.

As the mail boat lurched into the harbor, I saw St. Peter Port rising up from the sea on terraces, with a church on the top like a cake decoration, and I realized that my heart was galloping. As much as I tried to persuade myself it was the thrill of the scenery, I knew better. All those people I’ve come to know and even love a little, waiting to see—me. And I, without any paper to hide behind. Sidney, in these past two or three years, I have become better at writing than living—and think what you do to my writing. On the page, I’m perfectly charming, but that’s just a trick I learned. It has nothing to do with me. At least, that’s what I was thinking as the mail boat came toward the pier. I had a cowardly impulse to throw my red cape overboard and pretend I was someone else.

When we drew right alongside the pier, I could see the faces of the people waiting—and then there was no going back. I knew them by their letters. There was Isola in a mad hat and a purple shawl pinned with a glittering brooch. She was smiling fixedly in the wrong direction and I loved her instantly. Next to her stood a man with a lined face, and at his side, a boy, all height and angles. Eben and his grandson, Eli. I waved to Eli and he smiled like a beam of light and nudged his grandfather—and then I got shy and lost myself in the crowd that was pushing down the gangplank.

Isola reached me first by leaping over a crate of lobsters and grabbed me up in a fierce hug that swung me off my feet. “Ah, lovey!” she cried while I dangled.

Wasn’t that dear? All my nervousness was squeezed right out of me along with my breath. The others came toward me more quietly, but with no less warmth. Eben shook my hand and smiled. You can tell he was broad and hardy once, but he is too thin now. He somehow looks both grave and friendly at the same time. How does he manage to do that? I found myself wanting to impress him.

Eli swung Kit up on his shoulders, and they came forward together. Kit has chubby little legs and a stern face—dark curls, big grey eyes—and she did not take to me one bit. Eli’s jersey was speckled in wood shavings, and he had a present for me in his pocket—an adorable little mouse with crooked whiskers, carved from walnut. I gave him a kiss on the cheek and survived Kit’s malevolent glare. She has a very forbidding way about her for a four-year-old.

Then Dawsey held out his hands. I had been expecting him to look like Charles Lamb, and he does, a little—he has the same even gaze. He presented me with a bouquet of carnations from Booker, who couldn’t be present; he had concussed himself during a rehearsal and was in hospital overnight for observation. Dawsey is dark and wiry, and his face has a quiet, watchful look about it—until he smiles. Saving a certain sister of yours, he has the sweetest smile I’ve ever seen, and I remembered Amelia writing that he has a rare gift for persuasion—I can believe it. Like Eben—like everyone here—he is too thin, though you can tell he was more substantial once. His hair is going grey, and he has deep-set brown eyes, so dark they look black. The lines around his eyes make him seem to be starting a smile even when he’s not, but I don’t think he’s over forty. He is only a little taller than I am and limps slightly, but he’s strong—he hefted all my luggage, me, Amelia, and Kit into his wagon with no trouble.

I shook hands with him (I can’t remember if he said anything) and then he stepped aside for Amelia. She’s one of those ladies who is more beautiful at sixty than she could possibly have been at twenty (oh, how I hope someone says that about me someday!). Small, thin-faced, lovely smile, with grey hair in coronet braids, she gripped my hand tightly and said, “Juliet, I am glad you are here at last. Let’s get your things and go home.” It sounded wonderful, as though it really were my home.

As we stood there on the pier, some glint of light kept flashing in my eyes, and then around the dock. Isola snorted and said it was Adelaide Addison, at her window with opera glasses, tracking every move we made. Isola waved vigorously at the gleam and it stopped.

While we were laughing about that, Dawsey was seeing to my bags and making sure that Kit didn’t fall off the pier and generally making himself useful. I began to see that this is what he does—and that everyone depends upon him to do it.

The four of us—Amelia, Kit, Dawsey, and I—rode to Amelia’s farm in Dawsey’s cart, while everyone else walked. It wasn’t far except in terms of landscape, for we moved from St. Peter Port out into the countryside. There are rolling pasturelands, but they end suddenly at cliffs, and all around is the moist salt smell of the sea. As we drove, the sun set and the mist rose. You know how sounds become magnified in the fog? Well, it was like that—every bird’s chirp was weighty and symbolic. Clouds boiled up over the cliff-sides, and the fields were swathed in grey by the time we reached the manor house, but I saw ghostly shapes that I think were the cement bunkers built by the Todt workers.

Kit sat beside me in the wagon and sent me many sideways glances. I was not so foolish as to try to talk to her, but I played my severed-thumb trick—you know, the one that makes your thumb look like it has been sliced apart.

I did it over and over, casually, not looking at her, while she watched me like a baby hawk. She was intent and fascinated but not gullible enough to break into giggles. She just said at last, “Show me how you do that.”

She sat across from me at supper and turned down her spinach with a thrust-out arm, hand straight up like a policeman. “Not for me,” she said, and I, for one, would not care to disobey her. She pulled her chair close to Dawsey’s and ate with one elbow planted firmly on his arm, pinning him in his place. He didn’t appear to mind, even if it did make cutting his chicken difficult, and when supper was over, she immediately climbed into his lap. It is obviously her rightful throne, and though Dawsey seemed to be attending to the conversation, I spied him poking out a napkin-rabbit while we talked of food-shortages during the Occupation. Did you know that the Islanders ground bird-seed for flour until they ran out of it?

I must have passed some test I didn’t know I was being given, because Kit asked me to tuck her into bed. She wanted to hear a story about a ferret. She liked vermin, did I? Would I kiss a rat on the lips? I said “Never” and that apparently won her favor—I was plainly a coward, but not a hypocrite. I told her a story and she presented her cheek an infinitesimal quarter of an inch to be kissed.

What a long letter—and it only contains the first four hours of the twenty. You’ll have to wait for the other sixteen.

Love,

Juliet

24th May, 1946

Dearest Sophie,

Yes, I’m here. Mark did his best to stop me, but I resisted him mulishly, right to the bitter end. I’ve always considered doggedness one of my least appealing characteristics, but it was valuable last week.

It was only as the boat pulled away, and I saw him standing on the pier, tall and scowling—and somehow wanting to marry me—that I began to think maybe he was right. Maybe I am a complete idiot. I know of three women who are mad for him—he’ll be snapped up in a trice, and I’ll spend my declining years in a grimy bed-sit, with my teeth falling out one by one. Oh, I can see it all now: No one will buy my books, and I’ll ply Sidney with tattered, illegible manuscripts, which he’ll pretend to publish out of pity. Doddering and muttering, I’ll wander the streets carrying my pathetic turnips in a string bag, with newspaper tucked into my shoes. You’ll send me affectionate cards at Christmas (won’t you?) and I’ll brag to strangers that I was once nearly engaged to Markham Reynolds, the publishing tycoon. They’ll shake their heads—The poor old thing’s crazy as a bedbug, of course, but harmless.

Oh God. This way lies insanity.

Guernsey is beautiful and my new friends have welcomed me so generously, so warmly, that I haven’t doubted I’ve done right to come here—until just a moment ago, when I started thinking about my teeth. I’m going to stop thinking about them. I’m going to step into the meadow of wildflowers right outside my door and run to the cliff as fast as I can. Then I’m going to fall down and look at the sky, which is shimmering like a pearl this afternoon, and breathe in the warm scent of grass and pretend that Markham V. Reynolds doesn’t exist.

I’ve just come back indoors. It’s hours later—the setting sun has rimmed the clouds in blazing gold and the sea is moaning at the bottom of the cliffs. Mark Reynolds? Who’s he?

Love always,

Juliet

27th May, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Elizabeth’s cottage was plainly built for an exalted guest to stay in, because it’s quite spacious. There is a big sitting room, a bathroom, a larder, and a huge kitchen downstairs. There are three bedrooms and a bath upstairs. And best of all, there are windows everywhere, so the sea air can sweep into every room.

I’ve shoved a writing table by the biggest window in my sitting room. The only flaw in this arrangement is the constant temptation to go outside and walk over to the cliff ’s edge. The sea and the clouds don’t stay the same for five minutes running and I’m scared I’ll miss something if I stay inside. When I got up this morning, the sea was full of sun pennies—and now it all seems to be covered in lemon scrim. Writers ought to live far inland or next to the city dump, if they are ever to get any work done. Or perhaps they need to be stronger-minded than I am.

If I needed any encouragement to be fascinated by Elizabeth, which I don’t, her possessions would do it for me. The Germans arrived to take over Sir Ambrose’s house and gave her only six hours to remove her belongings to the cottage. Isola said Elizabeth brought only a few pots and pans, some cutlery and kitchen china (the Germans kept the good silver, crystal, china, and wine for themselves), her art supplies, an old wind-up phonograph, some records, and the rest were armloads of books.

So many books, Sidney, that I haven’t had time to really look at them—they fill the living-room shelves and overflow into the kitchen hutch. She even set a stack at the end of the sofa to use for a table—wasn’t that brilliant?

In every nook, I find little things that tell me about her. She was a noticer, Sidney, like me, for all the shelves are lined with shells, bird feathers, dried sea grasses, pebbles, eggshells, and the skeleton of something that might be a bat. They’re just bits that were lying on the ground, that anyone else would step over or on, but she saw they were beautiful and brought them home. I wonder if she used them for still-lifes? I wonder if her sketch-books are here somewhere? There’s prowling to be done. Work first, but the anticipation is like Christmas Eve seven days a week.

Elizabeth also carried down one of Sir Ambrose’s paintings. It is a portrait of her, painted I imagine when she was about eight years old. She is sitting on a swing, all ready to pump up and away—but having to sit still for Sir Ambrose to paint. You can tell by her eyebrows that she doesn’t like it. Glares must be inheritable, because she and Kit have identical ones.

My cottage is right inside the gates (honest three-barred farm gates). The meadow surrounding the cottage is full of scattered wildflowers until you get to the cliff ’s edge where rough grass and gorse take over.

The Big House (for want of a better name) is the one that Elizabeth came to close up for Ambrose. It is just up the drive from the cottage and is a wonderful house. Two-storied, L-shaped, and made of beautiful blue-grey stone. It’s slate-roofed with dormer windows and a terrace stretching from the crook of the L down its length. The top of the crooked end has a windowed turret and faces the sea. Most of the huge old trees had to be cut down for firewood, but Mr. Dilwyn has asked Eben and Eli to plant new trees—chestnuts and oaks. He is also going to have peach trees espaliered next to the brick garden walls—as soon as they are rebuilt too.

The house is beautifully proportioned with wide tall windows that open straight out onto the stone terrace. The lawn is growing green and lush again, covering up the wheel ruts of German cars and trucks.

Escorted at different times by Eben, Eli, Dawsey, or Isola, I have quartered the island’s ten parishes in the past five days; Guernsey is very beautiful in all its variety—fields, woods, hedgerows, dells, manors, dolmens, wild cliffs, witches’ corners, Tudor barns, and Norman cottages of stone. I have been told stories of her history (very lawless) with almost every new site and building.

Guernsey pirates had superior taste—they built beautiful homes and impressive public buildings. These are sadly dilapidated and in need of repair, but their architectural beauty shows through anyway. Dawsey took me to a tiny church—every inch of which is a mosaic of broken china and smashed pottery. One priest did this all by himself—he must have made pastoral calls with a sledgehammer.

My guides are as various as the sights. Isola tells me about cursed pirate chests bound with bleached bones washing up on the beaches and what Mr. Hallette is hiding inside his barn (he says it’s a calf, but we know better). Eben describes how things used to look, before the war, and Eli disappears suddenly and then returns with peach juice and an angelic smile on his face. Dawsey says the least, but he takes me to see wonders—like the tiny church. Then he stands back and lets me enjoy them as long as I want. He’s the most un-hurrying person I’ve ever met. As we were walking along the road yesterday, I noticed that it cut very close to the cliffs and there was a trail leading down to the beach below. “Is this where you met Christian Hellman?” I asked. Dawsey looked startled and said yes, this was the spot. “What did he look like?” I asked, for I wanted to picture the scene. I expected it was a futile request, given that men cannot describe each other, but Dawsey knew how. “He looked like the German you imagine—tall, blond hair, blue eyes—except he could feel pain.”

With Amelia and Kit, I have walked to town several times for tea. Cee Cee was right in his raptures over sailing into St. Peter Port. The harbor, with the town traipsing straight up and steeply to the sky, must be one of the most beautiful in the world. Shop windows on High Street and the Pollet are sparkling clean and are beginning to fill up with new goods. St. Peter Port may be essentially drab right now—so many buildings need refurbishing—but it does not give off the dead-tired air poor London does. It must be because of the bright light that flows down on everything and the clean, clear air and flowers growing everywhere—in fields, on verges, in crannies, between paving stones.

You really have to be Kit’s height to see this world properly. She’s grand at pointing out certain things I would otherwise miss—butterflies, spiders, flowers growing tiny and low to the ground—they’re hard to see when you are faced with a blazing wall of fuchsias and bougainvillea. Yesterday, I came upon Kit and Dawsey crouched in the brush beside the gate, quiet as thieves. They weren’t stealing, though; they were watching a blackbird tug a worm out of the ground. The worm put up a good fight, and the three of us sat there in silence until the blackbird finally got it down his gullet. I’d never really seen the entire process before. It’s revolting.

Kit carries a little box with her sometimes when we go to town—a cardboard box, tied up tight with cord and a red yarn handle. Even when we have tea, she holds it on her lap and is very protective of it. There are no air holes in the box, so it can’t be a ferret. Or, oh Lord, maybe it’s a dead ferret. I’d love to know what’s in it, but of course I can’t ask.

I do like it here, and I’m settled in well enough to start work now. I will, as soon as I come back from fishing with Eben and Eli this afternoon.

Love to you and Piers,

Juliet

30th May, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Do you remember when you sat me down for fifteen sessions of the Sidney Stark School of Perfect Mnemonics? You said writers who sat scribbling notes during an interview were rude, lazy, and incompetent and you were going to make sure I never disgraced you. You were unbearably arrogant and I loathed you, but I learned your lessons well—and now you can see the fruits of your hard work:

I went to my first meeting of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society last night. It was held in Clovis and Nancy Fossey’s living room (with spill-over into the kitchen). The speaker of the evening was a new member, Jonas Skeeter, who was to talk about The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

Mr. Skeeter strode to the front of the room, glared at us all, and announced he didn’t want to be there and had only read Marcus Aurelius’s silly book because his oldest, his dearest, and his former friend, Woodrow Cutter, had shamed him into it. Everyone turned to look at Woodrow, and Woodrow sat there, obviously shocked and his mouth agape.

“Woodrow,” Jonas Skeeter went on, “came across my field where I was busy, building up my compost. He was holding this little book in his hands and he said he’d just finished reading it. He’d like me to read it too, he said—it was very profound.

“‘Woodrow, I’ve got no time to be profound,’ I said.

“He said, ‘You should make time, Jonas. If you’d read it, we’d have better things to talk about at Crazy Ida’s. We’d have more fun over a pint.’

“Now, that hurt my feelings, no good saying it didn’t. My childhood friend had been holding himself above me for some time—all because he read books for you people and I didn’t. I’d let it pass before—to each his own, as my Mum always said. But now he had gone too far. He had insulted me. He put himself above me in conversation.

“‘Jonas,’ he said, ‘Marcus was a Roman emperor—and a mighty warrior. This book is what he thought about, down there among the Quadi. They were barbarians who was waiting in the woods to kill all the Romans. And Marcus, hard-pressed as he was by those Quades, he took the time to write up this little book of his thoughts. He had long, long thoughts, and we could use some of those, Jonas.’

“So I pushed down my hurt and took the damned book, but I came here tonight to say before all, Shame, Woodrow! Shame on you, to put a book above your boyhood friend!

“But I did read it and here is what I think. Marcus Aurelius was an old woman—forever taking his mind’s temperature—forever wondering about what he had done, or what he had not done. Was he right—or was he wrong? Was the rest of the world in error? Could it be him instead? No, it was everybody else who was wrong, and he set matters straight for them. Broody hen that he was, he never had a tiny thought that he couldn’t turn into a sermon. Why, I bet the man couldn’t even take a piss—”

Someone gasped, “Piss! He said piss in front of ladies!”

“Make him apologize!” cried another.

“He doesn’t have to apologize. He’s supposed to say what he thinks, and that’s what he thinks. Like it or not!”

“Woodrow, how could you so hurt your friend?”

“For shame, Woodrow!”

The room fell quiet when Woodrow stood up. The two men met in the middle of the floor. Jonas held out his hand to Woodrow, and Woodrow clapped Jonas on the back, and the two of them left, arm in arm, for Crazy Ida’s. I hope that’s a pub and not a woman.

Love,

Juliet

P.S. Dawsey was the only Society member who seemed to find last night’s meeting at all funny. He’s too polite to laugh out loud, but I saw his shoulders shaking. I gathered from the others that it had been a satisfying but by no means extraordinary evening.

Love again,

Juliet

31st May, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Please read the enclosed letter—I found it slipped under my door this morning.

Dear Miss Ashton,

Miss Pribby told me you wanted to know about our recent Occupation by the German Army—so here is my letter.

I am a small man, and though Mother says I never had a prime, I did. I just didn’t tell her about it. I am a champion whistler. I have won contests and prizes for my whistling. During the Occupation, I used this talent to unman the enemy.

After Mother was asleep, I would creep out of the house. I’d make my silent way down to the Germans’ brothel (if you’ll pardon the term) on Saumarez Street. I’d hide in the shadows until a soldier emerged from his tryst. I do not know if ladies are aware of this, but men are not at their peak of fitness after such an occasion. The soldier would start walking back to his quarters, often whistling. I’d start slowly walking, whistling the same tune (but much better). He’d stop whistling, but I would not stop whistling. He’d pause a second, thinking that what he had taken for an echo was actually another person in the dark—following him. But who? He would look back, I’d have slipped into a doorway. He’d see no one—he’d start on his way again, but not whistling. I’d start to walk again and to whistle again. He’d stop—I’d stop. He’d hurry on, but I’d still whistle, following him with hard footsteps. The soldier would rush toward his quarters, and I’d return to the brothel to wait for another German to stalk. I do believe I made many a soldier unfit to perform his duties well the next day. Do you see?

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I will speak more about brothels. I do not believe those young ladies were there because they wanted to be. They were sent from the Occupied territories of Europe, same as the Todt slave workers. It could not have been nice work. To the soldiers’ credit, they demanded the German authorities give the women an extra food allowance, same as given to the island’s heavy workers. Furthermore, I saw some of these same ladies share their food with the Todt workers, who were sometimes let out of their camps at night to hunt for food.

My mother’s sister lives on Jersey. Now that the war is over, she can come visit us—more’s the pity. Being the sort of woman she is, she told a nasty story.

After D-Day the Germans decided to send their brothel ladies back to France, so they put them all on a boat to St. Malo. Now those waters are very wayward, broiled-up, and ugly. Their boat was swept onto the rocks and all aboard were drowned. You could see those poor drowned women—their yellow hair (bleached hussies, my aunt called them) spread out in the water, washing against the rocks. “Served them right, the whores,” my aunt said—she and my mother laughed.

It was not to be borne! I jumped up from my chair and knocked the tea table over on them deliberately. I called them dirty old bats.

My aunt says she will never set foot in our house again, and Mother hasn’t spoken to me since that day. I find it all very peaceful.

Yours truly,

Henry A. Toussant

6th June, 1946

Mr. Sidney Stark

Stephens & Stark Ltd.

21 St. James’s Place

London S.W.1

Dear Sidney,

I could hardly believe it was you, telephoning from London last night! How wise of you not to tell me you were flying home; you know how planes terrify me—even when they aren’t dropping bombs. Wonderful to know you are no longer five oceans away, but only across the Channel. Will you come to see us as soon as you can?

Isola is better than a stalking horse. She has brought seven people over to tell me their Occupation stories—and I have a growing packet of interview notes. But for now, notes are all they are. I don’t know yet if a book is possible—or, if possible, what form it should take.

Kit has taken to spending some of her mornings here. She brings rocks or shells and sits quietly—well, moderately quietly—on the floor and plays with them while I work. When I am finished, we take a picnic lunch down to the beach. If it’s too foggy, we play indoors; either Beauty Parlor—brushing each other’s hair until it crackles—or Dead Bride.

Dead Bride is not a complicated game like Snakes and Ladders; it’s quite simple. The bride veils herself in a lace curtain and stuffs herself into the laundry hamper, where she lies as though dead while the anguished bridegroom hunts for her.

When he finally discovers her entombed in the laundry hamper, he breaks into loud wails. Then and only then does the bride jump up, yell “Surprise!” and clutch him to her. Then it is all joy and smiles and kisses. Privately, I don’t give that marriage much of a chance.

I knew that all children were gruesome, but I don’t know whether I’m supposed to encourage them in it. I’m afraid to ask Sophie if Dead Bride is too morbid a game for a four-year-old. If she says yes, we’ll have to stop playing, and I don’t want to stop.

I love Dead Bride.

So many questions arise when you are spending your days with a child. For instance, if one likes to cross one’s eyes a lot, might they get stuck that way forever—or is that a rumor? My mother said they would, and I believed her, but Kit is made of sterner stuff and doubts it.

I am trying hard to remember my parents’ ideas about childraising, but, as the child raised, I’m scarcely a good judge. I know I got spanked for spitting my peas across the table at Mrs. Morris, but that’s all I can recall. Perhaps she deserved it. Kit seems to show no ill-effects from having been brought up piecemeal by Society members. It certainly hasn’t made her fearful and retiring. I asked Amelia about it yesterday. She smiled and said there was no hope that a child of Elizabeth’s would be fearful and retiring. Then she told me a lovely story about her son, Ian, and Elizabeth when they were children. He was to be sent to school in England, and he was not at all happy about it, so he decided to run away from home. He consulted Jane and Elizabeth, and Elizabeth persuaded him to buy her boat for his escape. The trouble was, she had no boat—but she didn’t tell him that.

Instead, she built one herself in three days. On the appointed afternoon, they hauled it down to the beach, and Ian set off, with Elizabeth and Jane waving their hankies from the shore. About half a mile out, the boat began to sink—fast. Jane was all for running to get her father, but Elizabeth said there wasn’t time and since it was all her fault, she would have to save him. She took off her shoes, dove into the waves, and swam out to Ian. Together, they pulled the wreckage to shore, and she brought the boy to Sir Ambrose’s house to dry off. She returned his money, and as they sat steaming before the fire, she turned to him and said gloomily, “We’ll just have to steal a boat, that’s all.” Ian told his mother that he decided it would be simpler to go to school after all.

I know it will take a prodigious amount of time to catch up on your work. If you do have a moment to spare, could you find a book of paper dolls for me? One full of glamorous evening gowns, please.

I know Kit is growing fond of me—she pats my knee in passing.

Love,

Juliet

10th June, 1946

Dear Sidney,

I’ve just received a wonderful package from your new secretary. Is her name really Billee Bee Jones? Never mind, she’s a genius anyway. She found Kit two books of paper dolls—and not just any old paper dolls either. She found Greta Garbo and Gone with the Wind paper dolls—pages of lovely gowns, furs, hats, boas—oh, they are wonderful. Billee Bee also sent a pair of snubnosed scissors, a piece of thoughtfulness that would never have occurred to me. Kit is using them now.

This is not a letter, but a thank-you note. I’m writing one to Billee Bee, too. However did you find such an efficient person? I hope she’s plump and motherly, because that’s how I’m imagining her. She enclosed a note saying eyes do not stay crossed permanently—it’s an old wives’ tale. Kit is thrilled and plans to cross her eyes until supper.

Love to you,

Juliet

P.S. I would like to point out that contrary to certain insinuating remarks in your last, Mr. Dawsey Adams makes no appearance in this letter. I haven’t seen Mr. Dawsey Adams since Friday afternoon, when he came to pick up Kit. He found us decked in our finest jewels and marching about the room to the stirring strains of Pomp and Circumstance on the gramophone. Kit made him a dishtowel cape, and he marched with us. I think he has an aristocrat lurking in his genealogy; he can gaze benevolently into the middle distance just like a duke.

To: “Eben” or “Isola” or Any Member of a Book Society

on Guernsey, Channel Islands, Great Britain

(Delivered to Eben 14th June, 1946)

Dear Guernsey Book Society,

I greet you as those dear to my friend Elizabeth McKenna. I write to you now so that I may tell you of her death in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. She was executed there in March of 1945.

In those days before the Russian Army arrived to free the camp, the SS carried truck loads of papers to the crematorium and burned them in the furnaces there. Thus I feared you might never learn of Elizabeth’s imprisonment and death.

Elizabeth spoke often to me of Amelia, Isola, Dawsey, Eben, and Booker. I recall no surnames but believe the names Eben and Isola to be unusual Christian names and thus hope you may be found easily on Guernsey.

I know also that she cherished you as her family, and she felt gratitude and peace that her daughter, Kit, was in your care. Therefore, I write so you and the child will know of her and the strength she showed to us in the camp. Not strength only, but a métier she had for making us forget where we were for a small while. Elizabeth was my friend, and in that place friendship was all that aided one to remain human.

I reside now at the Hospice La Forêt in Louviers in Normandy. My English is yet poor, so Sister Touvier is improving my sentences as she writes them down.

I am now twenty-four years of age. In 1944, I was caught by the Gestapo at Plouha in Brittany, with a packet of forged ration cards. I was questioned, beaten only, and sent to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. I was put in Block Eleven, and it was here I met Elizabeth.

I will tell you how we met. One evening she came to me and said my name, Remy. I had a joy to hear my name spoken. She said, “Come with me. I have a wonderful surprise to show you.” I did not understand her meaning, but I ran with her to the back of the barracks. A broken window there was stuffed with papers, and she pulled them out. We climbed out and ran toward the Lagerstrasse.

There I saw fully what she had meant by a wonderful surprise. The sky showing above the walls looked to be on fire—lowflying clouds of red and purple, lit from below with dark gold. They changed shapes and shades as they raced together across the sky. We stood there, hand in hand, until the darkness came. I do not think that anyone outside such a place could know how much that meant to me, to spend such a quiet moment together.

Our home, Block Eleven, held almost four hundred women. In front of each barracks was a cinder path where roll call was held twice a day, at 5:30 a.m., and in the evening after work. The women from each barracks stood in squares of one hundred women each—ten women in ten rows. The squares would stretch so far to the right and left of ours, we could often not see the end of them in the fog.

Our beds were on wooden shelves, built in platforms of three. There were pallets of straw to sleep upon, sour smelling and alive with fleas and lice. There were large yellow rats which ran over our feet at night. This was a good thing, for the overseers hated the rats and stench, so we would have freedom from them in the late nights.

Then, Elizabeth told me about your island of Guernsey and your book society. These things seemed like Heaven to me. In the bunks, the air we breathed was weighted with sickness and filth, but when Elizabeth spoke, I could imagine the good, fresh sea air and the smell of fruit in the hot sun. Though it cannot be true, I do not remember the sun shining one day on Ravensbrück.

I loved to hear, too, about how your book society came to be. I almost laughed when she told of the roasted pig, but I didn’t. Laughter made trouble in the barracks.

There were several standpipes with cold water for us to wash in. Once a week we were taken for showers and given a piece of soap. This was necessary for us, for the thing we feared most was to be dirty, to fester. We dared not become ill, for then we could not work. We would be of no further use to the Germans and they would have us put to death.

Elizabeth and I walked with our group each morning at 6:00, to reach the Siemens factory where we worked. It was outside the walls of the prison. Once there, we pushed handcarts to the railroad siding and unloaded heavy metal plates onto the carts. We were given wheat paste and peas at noon, and returned to camp for roll call at 6:00 p.m. and a supper of turnip soup.

Our duties changed according to need, and one day we were ordered to dig a trench to store potatoes in for winter. Our friend Alina stole a potato but dropped it on the ground. All digging stopped until the overseer could discover the thief.

Alina had ulcerated corneas, and it was necessary that the overseers not notice this—for they might think her to be going blind. Elizabeth said quickly she had taken the potato, and was sent to the punishment bunker for one week.

The cells in this bunker were very small. One day, while Elizabeth was there, a guard opened the door to each cell and turned high-pressure water hoses on the prisoners. The force of the water pushed Elizabeth to the floor, but she was fortunate that the water never reached her folded blanket. She was eventually able to rise and lie under her blanket until the shivering stopped. But a young pregnant girl in the next cell was not so fortunate or so strong as to get up. She died that night, frozen to the floor.

I am perhaps saying too much, things you do not wish to hear. But I must do this to tell you how Elizabeth lived—and how she held on hard to her kindness and her courage. I would like her daughter to know this also.

Now I must tell you the cause of her death. Often, within months of being in camp, most women stopped menstruation. But some did not. The camp doctors had made no provision for the prisoners’ hygiene during this time—no rags, no sanitary towels, no soap. The women who were menstruating just had to let the blood run down their legs.

The overseers liked this, this oh so unsightly blood, it gave them the excuse to scream, to hit. A woman named Binta was the overseer for our evening roll call and she began to rage at a bleeding girl. Rage at her, and threaten her with her upraised rod. Then she began to beat the girl.

Elizabeth broke out of our line fast—so fast. She grabbed the rod from Binta’s hand and turned it upon her, hitting her over and over. Guards came running and two of them struck Elizabeth to the ground with their rifles. They threw her into a truck and took her again to the punishment bunker.

One of the guards told me that on the next morning soldiers formed a guard around Elizabeth and took her from her cell.

Outside the camp walls there was a grove of poplar trees. The branches of the trees formed an allée and Elizabeth walked down this by herself, unaided. She knelt on the ground and they shot her in the back of her head.

I will stop now. I know that I often felt my friend beside me when I was ill after the camp. I had fevers, and I imagined that Elizabeth and I were sailing to Guernsey in a little boat. We had planned this in Ravensbrück—how we would live together in her cottage with her baby, Kit. It helped me to sleep.

I hope you will come to feel Elizabeth by your side as I do. Her strength did not fail her, nor her mind, not ever—she just saw one cruelty too many.

Please accept my best wishes,

Remy Giraud

Sister Cecile Touvier, Nurse, writing to you. I have made Remy go to rest now. I do not approve of this long letter. But she insisted on writing it.

She will not tell you how sick she has been, but I will. In the few days before the Russians arrived at Ravensbrück, those filthy Nazis ordered anyone who could walk to leave. Opened the gates and turned them loose upon the devastated countryside. “Go,” they ordered. “Go—find any Allied troops that you can.”

They left those exhausted, starving women to walk miles and miles without any food or water. There were not even any gleanings left in the fields they walked past. Was it any wonder their walk became a death march? Hundreds of the women died on the road.

After several days, Remy’s legs and body were so swollen with famine edema, she could not continue to walk. So she just laid herself down in the road to die. Fortunately, a company of American soldiers found her. They tried to give her something to eat, but her body would not receive it. They carried her to a field hospital, where she was given a bed and quarts of water were drained from her body. After many months in hospital, she was well enough to be sent to this hospice in Louviers. I will tell you she weighed less than sixty pounds when she arrived here.

Otherwise, she would have written you sooner. It is my belief that she will get her strength back properly once she has written this letter and she can set about laying her friend to rest. You may, of course, write to her, but please do not ask her questions about Ravensbrück. It will be best for her to forget.

Yours truly,

Sister Cecile Touvier

16th June, 1946

Mlle. Remy Giraud

Hospice La Forêt

Louviers

France

Dear Mlle. Giraud,

How good you were to write to us—how good and how kind. It could not have been an easy task to call up your own terrible memories in order to tell us of Elizabeth’s death. We had been praying that she would return to us, but it is better to know the truth than to live in uncertainty. We were grateful to learn of your friendship with Elizabeth and to think of the comfort you gave to one another.

May Dawsey Adams and I come visit you in Louviers? We would like to, very much, but not if you would find our visit too disturbing. We want to know you and we have an idea to propose. But again, if you’d prefer that we didn’t, we will not come.

Always, our blessings for your kindness and courage.

Sincerely,

Amelia Maugery

16th June, 1946

Dear Sidney,

How comforting it was to hear you say “God damn, oh God damn.” That’s the only honest thing to say, isn’t it? Elizabeth’s death is an abomination and it will never be anything else.

It’s odd, I suppose, to mourn so for someone you’ve never met. But I do. I have felt Elizabeth’s presence all along; she lingers in every room I enter, not just in the cottage, but in Amelia’s library, which she stocked with books, and Isola’s kitchen, where she stirred up potions. Everyone always speaks of her—even now—in the present tense, and I had convinced myself that she would return. I wanted so much to know her.

It’s worse for everyone else. When I saw Eben yesterday, he seemed older than ever before. I’m glad he has Eli by him. Isola has disappeared. Amelia says not to worry; she does that when she’s sick at heart.

Dawsey and Amelia have decided to go to Louviers to try to persuade Mlle. Giraud to come to Guernsey. There was a heartrending moment in her letter—Elizabeth used to help her go to sleep in the camp by planning their future in Guernsey. She said it sounded like Heaven. The poor girl is due for some Heaven; she has already been through Hell.

I am to take care of Kit while they are gone. I am so sad for her—she will never know her mother—except by hearsay. I wonder about her future, too, as she is now—officially—an orphan. Mr. Dilwyn told me there is plenty of time to make a decision. “Let us leave well enough alone at the moment.” He doesn’t sound like any other banker or trustee I’ve ever heard of, bless his heart.

All my love,

Juliet

17th June, 1946

Dear Mark,

I’m sorry that our conversation ended badly last night. It’s very difficult to convey shades of meaning while roaring into the telephone. It’s true—I don’t want you to come this weekend. But it has nothing whatever to do with you. My friends have just been dealt a terrible blow. Elizabeth was the center of the circle here, and the news of her death has shaken us all. How strange—when I picture you reading that sentence, I see you wondering why this woman’s death has anything to do with me or you or your plans for the weekend. It does. I feel as though I’d lost someone very close to me. I am in mourning.

Do you understand a little better now?

Yours,

Juliet

21st June, 1946

Miss Juliet Ashton

Grand Manoir, Cottage

La Bouvée

St. Martin’s, Guernsey

Dear Juliet,

We are here in Louviers, though we have not been to see Remy yet. The trip has tired Amelia very much and she wants to rest for a night before we go to the hospice.

It was a direful journey across Normandy. Piles of blasted stone walls and twisted metal line the roads in towns. There are big gaps between buildings, and the ones left look like black, broken-off teeth. Whole fronts of houses are gone and you can see in, to the flowered wallpaper and the tilted bedsteads clinging somehow to the floors. I know now how fortunate Guernsey really was in the war.

Many people are still in the streets, hauling away bricks and stone in wheelbarrows and carts. They’ve made roads of heavy wire netting placed over rubble, and tractors are moving along them. Outside the towns are ruined fields with huge craters and torn-up land and hedges.

It is grievous to see the trees. No big poplars, elms, and chestnuts— what’s left is pitiful, charred black, and stunted—sticks without shade.

Mr. Piaget, the innkeeper here, told us that the German engineers ordered hundreds of soldiers to chop down trees—whole woods and coppices. Then they stripped off the branches, smeared the trunks with creosote, and stuck them upright in holes they had dug in the fields. The trees were called Rommel’s Asparagus and were meant to keep Allied gliders from landing and soldiers from parachuting.

Amelia went to bed right after supper, so I walked through Louviers. The town is pretty in spots, though much of it was bombed and the Germans set fire to it when they retreated. I cannot see how it will become a living town again.

I came back and sat on the terrace till full dark, thinking about tomorrow.

Give Kit a hug from me.

Yours ever,

Dawsey

23rd June, 1946

Dear Juliet,

We met Remy yesterday. I felt unequal somehow to meeting her. But not, thank Heavens, Dawsey. He calmly pulled up lawn chairs, sat us down under a shade tree, and asked a nurse if we could have tea.

I wanted Remy to like us, to feel safe with us. I wanted to learn more about Elizabeth, but I was frightened of Remy’s fragility and Sister Touvier’s admonitions. Remy is very small and is far too thin. Her dark curly hair is cut close to her head, and her eyes are enormous and haunted. You can see that she was a beauty in better times, but now—she is like glass. Her hands tremble a good deal, and she is careful to hold them down in her lap. She welcomed us as much as she was able, but she was very reserved until she asked about Kit—had she gone on to Sir Ambrose in London?

Dawsey told her of Sir Ambrose’s death and how we are raising Kit. He showed her the photograph of you and Kit that he carries. She smiled then and said, “She is Elizabeth’s child. Is she strong?” I couldn’t speak, thinking of our lost Elizabeth, but Dawsey said yes, very strong, and told her about Kit’s passion for ferrets. That made her smile again.

Remy is alone in the world. Her father died long before the war; in 1943, her mother was sent to Drancy for harboring enemies of the government and later died in Auschwitz. Remy’s two brothers are missing; she thought she saw one of them in a German train station as she was on her way to Ravensbrück, but he did not turn when she screamed his name. The other she has not seen since 1941. She believes that they, too, must be dead. I was glad Dawsey had the courage to ask her questions—Remy seemed to find relief in speaking of her family.

I finally broached the subject of Remy coming to stay awhile with me in Guernsey. She grew reserved again and explained that she was going to leave the hospice very soon. The French government is offering pensions to concentration-camp survivors: for time lost in camps, for permanent injuries, and for recognition of suffering. They also give a small stipend to those who wish to resume their education.

In addition to the government stipend, the Association Nationale des Anciennes Déportées et Internées de la Résistance will help Remy pay the rent of a room or share a flat with other survivors, so she has decided to go to Paris and seek an apprenticeship in a bakery.

She was adamant about her plans, so I left the matter there, but I don’t believe Dawsey is willing to do so. He thinks that sheltering Remy is a moral debt we owe to Elizabeth—perhaps he is right, or perhaps it is simply a way to relieve our sense of helplessness. In any case, he has arranged to go back tomorrow and take Remy for a walk along the canal and to visit a certain patisserie he saw in Louviers. Sometimes, I wonder where our old, shy Dawsey has gone.

I feel well, though I am unusually tired—perhaps it is seeing my beloved Normandy so devastated. I will be glad to be home, my dear.

A kiss for you and Kit,

Amelia

28th June, 1946

Dear Sidney,

What an inspired present you sent Kit—red satin tap shoes covered with sequins. Wherever did you find them? Where are mine?

Amelia has been tired since her return from France, so it seems best for Kit to stay with me, especially if Remy decides to come to Amelia’s when she leaves the hospice. Kit seems to like the idea too—Heaven be thanked. Kit knows her mother is dead now; Dawsey told her. I’m not sure what she feels about it. She hasn’t said anything, and I wouldn’t dream of pressing her. I try not to hover unduly or make her special treats. After Mother and Father died, Mr. Simpless’s cook brought me huge slices of cake and then stood there, watching me mournfully while I tried to swallow. I hated her for thinking that cake would somehow make it up to me for losing my parents. Of course, I was a wretched twelve-year-old, and Kit is only four—she would probably like some extra cake—but you understand what I mean.

Sidney, I am in trouble with my book. I have much of the data from the States’ records and a slew of personal interviews to start the story of the Occupation—but I can’t make them come together in a structure that pleases me. Straight chronology is too tedious. Shall I pack my pages up and send them to you? They need a finer and more impersonal eye than mine. Would you have time to look them over now or is the backlog from your Australian trip still so heavy?

If it is, don’t worry—I am working anyway and something brilliant may yet come to me.

Love,

Juliet

P.S. Thank you for the lovely clipping of Mark dancing with Ursula Fent. If you were hoping to send me into a jealous rage, you failed. Especially as Mark had already telephoned to tell me that Ursula follows him about like a lovesick bloodhound. You see? The two of you do have something in common: you both want me to be miserable. Perhaps you could start a club.

1st July, 1946

Dear Juliet,

Don’t pack up your pages—I want to come to Guernsey myself. Will this weekend suit you?

I want to see you, Kit, and Guernsey—in that order. I have no intention of reading your pages while you pace up and down in front of me—I’ll bring the ms back to London.

I can arrive Friday afternoon on the five o’clock plane and stay until Monday evening. Will you book a hotel room for me? Can you also manage a small supper party? I want to meet Eben, Isola, Dawsey, and Amelia. I’ll bring the wine.

Love,

Sidney

Wednesday

Dear Sidney,

Wonderful! Isola won’t hear of you staying at the inn (she hints of bedbugs). She wants to put you up herself and needs to know if noises at dawn are apt to bother you? That is when Ariel, her goat, arises. Zenobia, the parrot, is a late sleeper.

Dawsey and I and his cart will meet you at the airfield. May Friday hurry up and get here.

Love,

Juliet

Friday—close to dawn

Lovey, I can’t stop, I must hurry to my Market stall. I am glad your friend will be staying with me. I’ve put lavender sprigs in his sheets. Is there one of my elixirs you’d like me to slip in his coffee? Just nod to me at Market and I’ll know which one you mean.

XXX

Isola

6th July, 1946

Dear Sophie,

I am, at last, on Guernsey with Juliet and am ready to tell you three or four of the dozen things you asked me to find out.

First and foremost, Kit seems as fond of Juliet as you and I are. She is a spirited little thing, affectionate in a reserved way (which is not as contradictory as it sounds) and quick to smile when she is with one of her adoptive parents from the Literary Society.

She is adorable, too, with round cheeks, round curls, and round eyes. The temptation to cuddle her is nearly overwhelming, but it would be a slight upon her dignity, and I am not brave enough to try it. When she sees someone she doesn’t like, she has a stare that would shrivel Medea. Isola says she reserves it for cruel Mr. Smythe, who beats his dog, and evil Mrs. Guilbert, who called Juliet a Nosy Parker and told her she ought to go back to London where she belonged.

I’ll tell you one story of Kit and Juliet together. Dawsey (more about him later) came by to pick Kit up and go see Eben’s fishing boat come in. Kit said good-bye, flew out, then flew back in, ran up to Juliet, lifted her skirt a quarter of an inch, kissed her kneecap, and flew back out again. Juliet looked dumbfounded—and then as happy as you or I have ever seen her.

I know you think Juliet seemed tired, worn, frazzled, and pale when you saw her last winter. I don’t think you realize how harrowing those teas and interviews can be; she looks as healthy as a horse now and is full of her old zest. So full, Sophie, I think she may never want to live in London again—though she doesn’t realize it yet. Sea air, sunshine, green fields, wildflowers, the everchanging sky and ocean, and most of all, the people seem to have seduced her from City life.

I can easily see how they could. It’s such a homey, welcoming place. Isola is the kind of hostess you always wished you’d come across on a country visit—but never do. She rousted me out of bed the first morning to help her dry rose petals, churn butter, stir up something (God knows what) in a big pot, feed Ariel, and go to the fish market to buy her an eel. All of this with Zenobia the parrot on my shoulder.

Now, about Dawsey Adams. I have inspected him, as per instructions. I liked what I saw. He’s quiet, capable, trustworthy—oh Lord, I’ve made him sound like a dog—and he has a sense of humor. In short, he is completely unlike any of Juliet’s other swains—praise indeed. He did not say much at our first meeting—nor at any of our meetings since, come to think of it—but let him walk into a room, and everyone in it seems to breathe a little sigh of relief. I have never in my life had that effect on anyone, can’t imagine why not. Juliet seems a bit nervous around him—his silence is slightly daunting—and she made a dreadful mess of the tea things when he came by for Kit yesterday. But Juliet has always shattered teacups—remember what she did to Mother’s Spode?—so that may not signify. As for him, he watches her with dark, steady eyes—until she looks at him and then he glances away (I do hope you’re appreciating my observational skills).

One thing I can say unequivocally: he’s worth dozens of Mark Reynoldses. I know you think I’m unreasonable about Reynolds, but you haven’t met him. He’s all charm and oil, and he gets what he wants. It’s one of his few principles. He wants Juliet because she’s pretty and “intellectual” at the same time, and he thinks they’ll make an impressive couple. If she marries him, she’ll spend the rest of her life being shown to people at theaters and clubs and weekends and she’ll never write another book. As her editor, I’m dismayed by that prospect, but as her friend, I’m horrified. It will be the end of our Juliet.

It’s hard to say what Juliet is thinking about Reynolds, if anything. I asked her if she missed him, and she said, “Mark? I suppose so,” as if he were a distant uncle, and not a favorite one at that. I’d be delighted if she forgot all about him, but I don’t think he’ll allow it.

To return to minor topics like the Occupation and Juliet’s book, I was invited to accompany her on calls to several Islanders this afternoon. Her interviews were to be about Guernsey’s Day of Liberation on May 9 last year.

What a morning that must have been! The crowds were lined up along St. Peter Port’s harbor. Silent, absolutely silent, masses of people looking at the Royal Navy ships sitting just outside their harbor. Then when the Tommies landed and marched ashore, all hell broke loose. Hugs, kisses, crying, yelling. So many of the soldiers landing were Guernseymen themselves. Men who hadn’t seen or heard a word from their families in five years. You can imagine their eyes searching the crowds for family members as they marched—and the joy of their reunions.

Mr. LeBrun, a retired postman, told us the most unusual story of all. Some British ships took leave of the fleet in St. Peter Port and sailed a few miles north to St. Sampson’s Harbor. Crowds had gathered there, waiting to see the landing craft crash through the German anti-tank barriers and come up onto the beach. When the bay doors opened, out came not a platoon of uniformed soldiers, but one lone man, got up as a caricature English gent in striped trousers, a morning coat, top hat, furled umbrella, and a copy of yesterday’s Times clasped in his hand.

There was a split-second of silence before the joke sank in, and then the crowd roared—he was mobbed, clapped on the back, kissed, and put up on the shoulders of four men to be marched down the street. Someone screamed, “News—news from London herself,” and snatched the Times out of his hand! Whoever that soldier was, he was brilliant and deserves a medal.

When the rest of the soldiers emerged, they were carrying chocolates, oranges, cigarettes, tea bags to toss to the crowd. Brigadier Snow announced that the cable to England was being repaired, and soon they could be talking to their evacuated children and families in England. The ships also brought in food, tons of it, and medicines, paraffin, animal feed, clothes, cloth, seeds, and shoes!

There must be enough stories to fill three books—it may be a matter of culling. But don’t worry if Juliet sounds nervous from time to time—she should. It’s a daunting task.

I must stop now and get dressed for Juliet’s supper party. Isola is swathed in three shawls and a lace dresser scarf—and I want to do her proud.

Love to you all,

Sidney

7th July, 1946

Dear Sophie,

Just a note to tell you Sidney is here and we can stop worrying about him—and his leg. He looks wonderful: tanned, fit, and without a noticeable limp. In fact, we threw his cane in the ocean—I’m sure it’s half-way to France by now.

I had a small supper party for him—cooked by me alone, and edible, too. Will Thisbee gave me The Beginner’s Cook-Book for Girl Guides. It was just the thing; the writer assumes you know nothing about cookery and writes useful hints—“When adding eggs, break the shells first.”

Sidney is having a grand time as Isola’s houseguest. They apparently sat up late talking last night. Isola doesn’t approve of small talk and believes in breaking the ice by stomping on it.

She asked him if we were engaged to be married. If not, why not? It was plain to everyone that we doted on one another.

Sidney told her that indeed he did dote on me; always had, always would, but we both realized we could never marry—he was a homosexual.

Sidney told me that Isola neither gasped, fainted, nor blinked—just gave him her good old fish eye and asked, “And Juliet knows?”

When he told her yes, I had always known, Isola jumped up, swooped down, kissed his forehead, and said, “How nice—just like dear Booker. I’ll not tell a soul; you can rely on me.”

Then she sat back down and began to talk about Oscar Wilde’s plays. Weren’t they a stitch? Sophie, wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall? I would.

Sidney and I are going shopping now for a hostess gift for Isola. I said she would love a warm, colorful shawl, but he wants to get her a cuckoo clock. Why???

Love,

Juliet

P.S. Mark doesn’t write, he telephones. He rang me up just last week. It was one of those terrible connections that forced us perpetually to interrupt one another and bellow “WHAT?” but I managed to get the gist of the conversation—I should come home and marry him. I politely disagreed. It upset me much less than it would have a month ago.

8th July, 1946

Dear Sidney,

You are a very nice house guest. I like you. So did Zenobia, else she would not have flown onto your shoulder and cuddled there so long.

I’m glad you like to sit up late and talk. I favor that myself of an evening. I am going to go to the manor now to find the book you told me about. How is it that Juliet and Amelia never made mention of Miss Jane Austen to me?

I hope you will come visit Guernsey again. Did you like Juliet’s soup? Wasn’t it tasty? She will be ready for pie crust and gravy soon—you must go at cooking slowly, else you’ll just make slops.

I was lonesome for company after you left, so I invited Dawsey and Amelia to take tea yesterday. You should have seen how I didn’t utter a word when Amelia said she thought you and Juliet were going to marry. I even nodded and slitted my eyes, like I knew something they didn’t, to throw them off the scent.

I do like my cuckoo clock. How cheery it is! I run in the kitchen to watch it. I am sorry Zenobia bit the little bird’s head off, she has a jealous nature—but Eli said he could carve me another one, as good as new. His little perch still pops out on the hour.

With fondness, your hostess,

Isola Pribby

9th July, 1946

Dear Sidney,

I knew it! I knew you’d love Guernsey. The next-best thing to being here myself was having you here—even for such a short visit. I’m happy that you know all my friends now, and they you.

I’m particularly happy you enjoyed Kit’s company so much. I regret to tell you that some of her fondness for you is due to your present, Elspeth the Lisping Bunny. Her admiration for Elspeth has caused her to take up lisping, and I am sorry to say, she is very good at it.

Dawsey just brought Kit home—they have been visiting his new piglet. Kit asked if I was writing to Thidney. When I said yes, she said, “Thay I want him to come back thoon.” Do you thee what I mean about Elspeth?

That made Dawsey smile, which pleased me. I’m afraid you didn’t see the best of Dawsey this weekend; he was extra-quiet at my supper party. Perhaps it was my soup, but I think it more likely that he is preoccupied with Remy. He seems to think that she won’t get better until she comes to Guernsey to recuperate.

I am glad you took my pages home to read. God knows I am at a loss to divine just what exactly is wrong with them—I only know something is.

What on earth did you say to Isola? She stopped in on her way to pick up Pride and Prejudice and to berate me for never telling her about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Why hadn’t she known there were better love stories around? Stories not riddled with ill-adjusted men, anguish, death, and graveyards! What else had we kept from her?

I apologized for such a lapse and said you were perfectly right, Pride and Prejudice was one of the greatest love stories ever written—and she might actually die of suspense before she finished it.

Isola said Zenobia is saddened by your leaving—she’s off her feed. So am I, but I’m so grateful you could come at all.

Love,

Juliet

12th July, 1946

Dear Juliet,

I’ve read your chapters several times, and you are right—they won’t do. Strings of anecdotes don’t make a book.

Juliet, your book needs a center. I don’t mean more in-depth interviews. I mean one person’s voice to tell what was happening all around her. As written now, the facts, as interesting as they are, seem like random, scattered shots.

It would hurt like hell to write this letter to you, except for one thing. You already have the core—you just don’t know it yet.

I am talking about Elizabeth McKenna. Didn’t you ever notice how everyone you interviewed sooner or later talked about Elizabeth? Lord, Juliet, who painted Booker’s portrait and saved his life and danced down the street with him? Who thought up the lie about the Literary Society—and then made it happen? Guernsey wasn’t her home, but she adapted to it and to the loss of her freedom. How? She must have missed Ambrose and London, but she never, I gather, whined about it. She went to Ravensbrück for sheltering a slave worker. Look how and why she died.

Juliet, how did a girl, an art student who had never held a job in her life, turn herself into a nurse, working six days a week in the hospital? She did have dear friends, but in reality she had no one to call her own at first. She fell in love with an enemy officer and lost him; she had a baby alone during war time. It must have been fearful, despite all her good friends. You can only share responsibilities up to a point.

I’m sending back the ms and your letters to me—read them again and see how often Elizabeth is spoken of. Ask yourself why. Talk to Dawsey and Eben. Talk to Isola and Amelia. Talk to Mr. Dilwyn and to anyone else who knew her well.

You live in her house. Look around you at her books, her belongings.

I think you should write your book around Elizabeth. I think Kit would greatly value a story about her mother—it would give her something to hang on to, later. So, either quit altogether—or get to know Elizabeth well.

Think long and hard and tell me if Elizabeth could be the heart of your book.

Love to you and Kit,

Sidney

15th July, 1946

Dear Sidney,

I don’t need more time to think about it—the minute I read your letter, I knew you were right. So slow-witted! Here I’ve been, wishing that I had known Elizabeth, missing her as if I had—why did I never once think of writing about her?

I’ll begin tomorrow. I want to talk to Dawsey, Amelia, Eben, and Isola first. I feel that she belongs to them more than the others, and I want their blessing.

Remy wants to come to Guernsey, after all. Dawsey has been writing to her, and I knew he could persuade her to come. He could talk an angel out of Heaven if he chose to speak, which is not often enough to suit me. Remy will stay with Amelia, so I get to keep Kit with me.

Undying love and gratitude,

Juliet

P.S. You don’t suppose Elizabeth kept a diary, do you?

17th July, 1946

Dear Sidney,

No diary, but the good news is she did draw while her paper and pencil lasted. I found some sketches stuffed into a large art folio on the bottom shelf of the sitting-room bookcase. Quick line drawings that seem marvelous portraits to me: Isola caught unaware, hitting at something with a wooden spoon; Dawsey digging in a garden; Eben and Amelia with their heads together, talking.

As I sat on the floor, turning them over, Amelia dropped by for a visit. Together we pulled out several large sheets of paper, covered with sketch after sketch of Kit. Kit asleep, Kit on the move, on a lap, being rocked by Amelia, hypnotized by her toes, delighted with her spit bubbles. Maybe every mother looks at her baby that way—with that intense focus—but Elizabeth put it on paper. There was one shaky drawing of a wizened little Kit, made the day after she was born, according to Amelia.

Then I found a sketch of a man with a good, strong, rather broad face; he’s relaxed and appears to be looking over his shoulder, smiling at the artist. I knew at once it was Christian—he and Kit have a cowlick in exactly the same place. Amelia took the paper into her hands; I had never heard her speak of him before and asked if she had liked him.

“Poor boy,” she said. “I was so set against him. It seemed insane to me that Elizabeth had chosen him—an enemy, a German—and I was frightened for her. For the rest of us, too. I thought that she was too trusting, and he would betray her and us—so I told her that I thought she should break off with him. I was very stern with her.

“Elizabeth just stuck out her chin and said nothing. But the next day, he came to visit me. Oh, I was appalled. I opened the door and there was an enormous, uniformed German standing before me. I was sure my house was about to be requisitioned and I began to protest when he thrust forward a bunch of flowers—limp from being clutched. I noticed he was looking very nervous, so I stopped scolding and demanded to know his name.

‘Captain Christian Hellman,’ he said, and blushed like a boy. I was still suspicious—what was he up to?—and asked him the purpose of his visit. He blushed more and said softly, ‘I’ve come to tell you my intentions.’

“‘For my house?’ I snapped.

“‘No. For Elizabeth,’ he said. And that’s what he did—just as if I were the Victorian father and he the suitor. He perched on the edge of a chair in my drawing room and told me that he intended to come back to the Island the moment the war was over, marry Elizabeth, raise freesias, read, and forget about war. By the time he was finished speaking, I was a little in love with him myself.”

Amelia was half in tears, so we put the sketches away and I made her some tea. Then Kit came in with a shattered gull’s egg she wanted to glue together, and we were thankfully distracted.

Yesterday Will Thisbee appeared at my door with a plate of cakes iced with prune whip, so I invited him to tea. He wanted to consult with me about two different women; and which one of the two I’d marry if I were a man, which I wasn’t. (Do you have that straight?)

Miss X has always been a ditherer—she was a ten-month baby and has not improved in any material way since then. When she heard the Germans were coming, she buried her mother’s silver teapot under an elm tree and now can’t remember which tree.

She is digging holes all over the Island, vowing she won’t stop till she finds it. “Such determination,” said Will. “Quite unlike her.” (Will was trying to be subtle, but Miss X is Daphne Post. She has round vacant eyes like a cow’s and is famous for her trembling soprano in the church choir.)

And then there is Miss Y, a local seamstress. When the Germans arrived, they had only packed one Nazi flag. This they needed to hang over their headquarters, but that left them with nothing to run up a flag pole to remind the Islanders they’d been conquered.

They visited Miss Y and ordered her to make a Nazi flag for them. She did—a black, nasty swastika, stitched onto a circle of dingy puce. The surrounding field was not scarlet silk, but babybottom-pink flannel. “So inventive in her spite,” said Will. “So forceful!” (Miss Y is Miss Le Roy, thin as one of her needles, with a lantern jaw and tight-folded lips.)

Which did I think would make the best companion for a man’s nether years, Miss X or Miss Y? I told him that if one had to ask which, it generally meant neither.

He said, “That’s exactly what Dawsey said—those very words. Isola said Miss X would bore me to tears, and Miss Y would nag me to death.

“Thank you, thank you—I shall keep up my search. She is out there somewhere.”

He put on his cap, bowed, and left. Sidney, he may have been polling the entire Island, but I was so flattered to have been included—it made me feel like an Islander instead of an Outlander.

Love,

Juliet

P.S. I was interested to learn that Dawsey has opinions on marriage. I wish I knew more about them.

19th July, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Stories of Elizabeth are everywhere—not just among the Society members. Listen to this: Kit and I walked up to the churchyard this afternoon. Kit was off playing among the tombstones, and I was stretched out on Mr. Edwin Mulliss’s tombstone—it’s a table-top one, with four stout legs—when Sam Withers, the cemetery’s ancient groundskeeper, stopped beside me. He said I reminded him of Miss McKenna when she was a young girl. She used to take the sun right there on that very slab—brown as a walnut she’d get.

I sat up straight as an arrow and asked Sam if he had known Elizabeth well.

Sam said, “Well—not as to say real well, but I liked her. She and Eben’s girl, Jane, used to come up here together to that very tombstone. They’d spread a cloth and eat their picnic—right on top of Mr. Mulliss’s dead bones.”

Sam went on about what catbirds those two little girls were, always up to some mischief—they tried to raise a ghost one time and scared the daylights out of the vicar’s wife. Then he looked over at Kit, who’d reached the church gate by then and said, “That’s surely a sweet little girl of hers and Captain Hellman’s.”

I pounced on that. Had he known Captain Hellman? Had he liked him?

He glared at me and said, “Yes, I did. He was a fine fella, for all he was a German. You’re not going to throw off on Miss McKenna’s little girl because of that, are you?”

“I wouldn’t dream of it!” I said.

He waggled a finger at me. “You’d better not, missy! You’d best learn the truth of certain matters, before you go trying to write any book about the Occupation. I hated the Occupation, too. Makes me mad to think of it. Some of those blighters was purely mean—come right into your house without knocking—push you around. They was the sort to like having the upper hand, never having had it before. But not all of them was like that—not all, by a long shot.”

Christian, according to Sam, was not. Sam liked Christian. He and Elizabeth had come upon Sam in the churchyard once, trying to dig out a grave when the ground was ice-hard and as cold as Sam himself. Christian picked up the shovel and threw his back into it. “He was a strong fella, and he was done as soon as he started,” Sam said. “Told him he could have a job with me anytime, and he laughed.”

The next day, Elizabeth came out with a thermos jug full of hot coffee. Real coffee from real beans Christian had brought to her house. She gave him a warm sweater too that had belonged to Christian.

Sam said, “Truth to tell, as long as the Occupation was to last, I met more than one nice German soldier. You would, you know, seeing some of them as much as every day for five years. Greetings were bound to happen.

“You couldn’t help but feel sorry for some of them—there at the last—stuck here and knowing their folks back home were being bombed to pieces. Didn’t matter then who started it in the first place. Not to me, anyway.

“Why, there’d be soldiers riding guard in the back of potato lorries going to the army’s mess hall—children would follow them, hoping potatoes would fall off into the street. Soldiers would look straight ahead, grim-like, and then flick potatoes off the pile—on purpose.

“They did the same thing with oranges. Same with lumps of coal—my, those were precious when we didn’t have no fuel left. There was many such incidents. Just ask Mrs. Godfray about her boy. He had the pneumonia and she was worried half to death because she couldn’t keep him warm nor give him good food to eat. One day there’s a knock on her door and when she opens up, she sees an orderly from the German hospital on the step. Without a peep, he hands her a vial of that sulfonamide, tips his cap, and walks away. He had stolen it from their dispensary for her. They caught him later, trying to steal some again, and they sent him off to prison in Germany—maybe hung him. We’d not be knowing which.”

He glared at me again suddenly. “And I say that if some toffee-nosed Brit wants to call being human Collaboration, they’ll need to talk to me and Mrs. Godfray first!”

I tried to protest, but Sam turned his back and walked away. I gathered Kit up and we came on home. Between the wilted flowers for Amelia and the coffee beans for Sam Withers, I felt I was beginning to know Kit’s father—and why Elizabeth must have loved him.

Next week will bring Remy to Guernsey. Dawsey leaves for France on Tuesday to fetch her.

Love,

Juliet

22nd July, 1946

Dear Sophie,

Burn this letter; I would not care to have it appear among your collected papers.

I’ve told you about Dawsey, of course. You know that he was the first here to write me; that he is fond of Charles Lamb; that he is helping to raise Kit; that she adores him.

What I haven’t told you is that on the very first evening that I arrived on the Island, the moment Dawsey held out both his hands to me at the bottom of the gangplank, I felt an unaccountable jolt of excitement. Dawsey is so quiet and composed that I had no idea if it was only me, so I’ve struggled to be reasonable and casual and usual for the last two months. And I was doing very nicely—until tonight.

Dawsey came over to borrow a suitcase for his trip to Louviers—he is going to collect Remy and bring her here. What kind of man doesn’t even own a suitcase? Kit was sound asleep, so we put my case in his cart and walked up to the headlands.

The moon was coming up and the sky was colored in mother-of-pearl, like the inside of a shell. The sea for once was quiet, with only silvery ripples, barely moving. No wind. I have never heard the world be so silent before, and it dawned on me that Dawsey himself was exactly that silent too, walking beside me. I was as close to him as I’ve ever been, so I began to take particular note of his wrists and hands. I was wanting to touch them, and the thought made me light-headed. There was a knife-edgy feeling—you know the one—in the pit of my stomach.

All at once, Dawsey turned. His face was shadowed, but I could see his eyes—very dark eyes—watching me, waiting. Who knows what might have happened next—a kiss? A pat on the head? Nothing?—because in the next second we heard Wally Beall’s horse-drawn carriage (that’s our local taxi) pull up to my cottage, and Wally’s passenger called out, “Surprise, darling!”

It was Mark—Markham V. Reynolds, Junior, resplendent in his exquisitely tailored suit, with a swath of red roses over his arm.

I truly wished him dead, Sophie.

But what could I do? I went to greet him—and when he kissed me all I could think of was Don’t! Not in front of Dawsey! He deposited the roses on my arm and turned to Dawsey with his steely smile. So I introduced the two of them, wishing all the time I could crawl into a hole—I don’t know why, exactly—and watched dumbly as Dawsey shook his hand, turned to me, shook my hand, said, “Thank you for the suitcase, Juliet. Good-night,” climbed in his cart, and left. Left, without another word, without a backward glance.

I wanted to cry. Instead I invited Mark indoors and tried to seem like a woman who had just received a delightful surprise. The wagon and the introductions had awakened Kit, who looked suspiciously at Mark and wanted to know where Dawsey had gone—he hadn’t kissed her good-night. Me neither, I thought to myself.

I put Kit back to bed and persuaded Mark that my reputation would be in tatters if he didn’t go to the Royal Hotel at once. Which he did, with a very bad grace and many threats to appear on my doorstep this morning at six.

Then I sat down and chewed my fingernails for three hours. Should I take myself over to Dawsey’s house and try to pick up where we left off ? But where did we leave off ? I’m not sure. I don’t want to make a fool of myself. What if he looked at me with polite incomprehension—or worse yet, with pity?

And besides—what am I thinking? Mark is here. Mark, who is rich and debonair and wants to marry me. Mark, whom I was doing very well without. Why can’t I stop thinking about Dawsey, who probably doesn’t give a hoot about me. But maybe he does. Maybe I was about to find out what’s on the other side of that silence.

Damn, damn, and damn.

It’s two in the morning, I have not a fingernail to my name, and I look at least a hundred years old. Maybe Mark will be repulsed by my haggard mien when he sees me. Maybe he will spurn me. I don’t know that I will be disappointed if he does.

Love,

Juliet

23rd July, 1946

Dear Juliet,

My raspberries have come in with a vengeance. I am picking this morning and making pies this afternoon. Would you and Kit like to come for tea (pie) this afternoon?

Love,

Amelia

23rd July, 1946

Dear Amelia—

I’m terribly sorry, I can’t come. I have a guest.

Love,

Juliet

P.S. Kit is delivering this in hopes of getting some pie. Can you keep her for the afternoon?

24th July, 1946

Dear Sophie,

You should probably burn this letter as well as the last one. I’ve refused Mark finally and irrevocably, and my elation is indecent. If I were a properly brought-up young lady, I’d draw the curtains and brood, but I can’t. I’m free! Today I bounced out of bed feeling frisky as a lamb, and Kit and I spent the morning running races in the pasture. She won, but that’s because she cheats.

Yesterday was a horror. You know how I felt when Mark appeared, but the next morning was even worse. He turned up at my door at seven, radiating confidence and certain that we’d have a wedding date set by noon. He wasn’t the least bit interested in the Island, or the Occupation, or Elizabeth, or what I’d been doing since I arrived—didn’t ask a single question about any of it. Then Kit came down to breakfast. That surprised him—he hadn’t really registered her the night before. He had a nice way with her—they talked about dogs—but after a few minutes, it was obvious he was waiting for her to clear off. I suppose in his experience, nannies whisk the children away before they can annoy their parents. Of course, I tried to ignore his irritation and made Kit her breakfast as usual, but I could feel his displeasure billowing across the room.

At last Kit went outside to play, and the minute the door closed behind her, Mark said, “Your new friends must be damned smart—they’ve managed to saddle you with their responsibilities in less than two months.” He shook his head—pitying me for being so gullible.

I just stared at him.

“She’s a cute kid, but she’s got no claim on you, Juliet, and you’re going to have to be firm about it. Get her a nice dolly or something and say good-bye, before she starts thinking you’re going to take care of her for the rest of her life.”

Now I was so angry I couldn’t talk. I stood there, gripping Kit’s porridge bowl with white knuckles. I didn’t throw it at him, but I was close to it. Finally, when I could speak again, I whispered,

“Get out.”

“Sorry?”

“I never want to see you again.”

“Juliet?” He really had no idea what I was talking about. So I explained. Feeling better by the minute, I told him that I would never marry him or anyone else who didn’t love Kit and Guernsey and Charles Lamb.

“What the hell does Charles Lamb have to do with anything?” he yelped (as well he might).

I declined to elucidate. He tried to argue with me, then to coax me, then to kiss me, then to argue with me again, but—it was over, and even Mark knew it. For the first time in ages—since February, when I met him—I was completely sure that I had done the right thing. How could I ever have considered marrying him? One year as his wife, and I’d have become one of those abject, quaking women who look at their husbands when someone asks them a question. I’ve always despised that type, but I see how it happens now.

Two hours later, Mark was on his way to the airfield, never (I hope) to return. And I, disgracefully un-heartbroken, was gobbling raspberry pie at Amelia’s. Last night, I slept the sleep of the innocent for ten blissful hours, and this morning I feel thirty-two again, instead of a hundred.

Kit and I are going to spend this afternoon at the beach, hunting for agates. What a beautiful, beautiful day.

Love,

Juliet

P.S. None of this means anything with regard to Dawsey. Charles Lamb just popped out of my mouth by coincidence. Dawsey didn’t even come to say good-bye before he left. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that he turned on the cliff to ask if he could borrow my umbrella.

27th July, 1946

Dear Sidney,

I knew that Elizabeth had been arrested for sheltering a Todt worker, but I hadn’t known she had an accomplice until a few days ago, when Eben happened to mention Peter Sawyer, “who was arrested with Elizabeth.” “WHAT?” I screeched, and Eben said he’d let Peter tell me about it.

Peter is living now in a nursing home near Le Grand Havre in Vale, so I telephoned him, and he said he’d be very glad to see me—especially if I had a tot of brandy about me.

“Always,” I said.

“Lovely. Come tomorrow,” he replied, and rang off.

Peter is in a wheelchair, but what a driver he is! He races it around like a madman, cuts round corners and can turn on a sixpence. We went outside, sat under an arbor, and he tippled while he talked. This one time, Sidney, I took notes—I couldn’t bear to lose a word.

Peter was already in the wheelchair, but still living in his home in St. Sampson’s, when he found the Todt worker, Lud Jaruzki, a sixteen-year-old Polish boy.

Many of the Todt workers were permitted to leave their pens after dark to scrounge for food—as long as they came back. They were to return for work the next morning—and if they didn’t, a hunt went up for them. This “parole” was one way the Germans had to see the workers didn’t starve—without wasting too much of their own foodstuffs on them.

Almost every Islander had a vegetable garden—some had hen houses and rabbit hutches—a rich harvest for foragers. And that is what the Todt slave workers were—foragers. Most Islanders kept watch over their gardens at night—armed with sticks or poles to defend their vegetables.

Peter stayed outside at night too, in the shadows of his hen house. No pole for him, but a big iron skillet and metal spoon to bang it with and sound the alarm for neighbors to come.

One night he heard—then saw—Lud crawl through a gap in his hedgerow. Peter waited; the boy tried to stand but fell down, he tried to get up again, but couldn’t—he just lay there. Peter wheeled over and stared down at the boy.

“He was a child, Juliet. Just a child—lying faceup in the dirt. Thin, my God he was thin, wasted and filthy, in rags. He was covered with vermin; they came out from under his hair, crawled across his face, crawled over his eyelids. That poor boy didn’t even feel them—no flicker, no nothing. All he’d wanted was a goddamned potato—and he didn’t even have the strength to dig it up. To do this to boys!

“I tell you, I hated those Germans with all my heart. I couldn’t bend down to see if he was breathing, but I got my feet off my chair pedals and managed to prod and poke him until I got his shoulders turned near me. Now, my arms are strong, and I pulled the boy halfway onto my lap. Somehow, I got us both up my ramp and into the kitchen—there, I let the boy fall on the floor. I built up my fire, got a blanket, heated water; I wiped his poor face and hands and drowned every louse and maggot I picked off him.”

Peter couldn’t ask his neighbors for help—they might report him to the Germans. The German Commandant had said anyone who sheltered a Todt worker would be sent to a concentration camp or shot where they stood.

Elizabeth was coming to Peter’s house the next day—she was his Nursing Aid and she visited once a week, sometimes more. He knew Elizabeth well enough to be pretty certain that she’d help him keep the boy alive and she’d keep quiet about it.

“She arrived around mid-morning next day. I met her by the door and said I had trouble waiting inside and if she didn’t want trouble she shouldn’t come in. She knew what I was trying to say, and she nodded and stepped right in. Her jaw clenched when she knelt by Lud on the floor—he smelled something fierce—but she got down to business. She cut off his clothes and burned them. She bathed him, shampooed his hair with tar soap—that was a jolly mess, we did laugh, if you can believe it. Either that or the cold water woke him up some. He was startled—scared till he saw who we were. Elizabeth, she kept speaking softly, not that he could understand a word she said, but he was soothed. We hauled him into my bedroom—we couldn’t keep him in my kitchen, neighbors might come in and see him. Well, Elizabeth nursed him. There wasn’t any medicine she could get—but she got soup bones for broth and real bread, on the Black Market. I had eggs, and bit by bit, day by day, he got his strength back. He slept a lot. Sometimes Elizabeth had to come after dark, but before curfew. It wouldn’t do for anyone to see her coming to my house too often. People told on their neighbors, you know—trying to curry favor, or food, from the Germans.

“But someone did notice, and someone did tell—I don’t know who it was. They told the Feldpolizei, and they came on that Tuesday night. Elizabeth had bought some chicken meat, stewed it, and was feeding Lud. I sat by his bedstead.

“They surrounded the house, all quiet until they busted in. Well—we was caught, fair and square. Taken that night, all of us, and God knows what they did to that boy. There wasn’t any trial, and we was put on a boat to St. Malo the next day. That’s the last I saw of Elizabeth, led into the boat by one of the guards from the prison. She looked so cold. I didn’t see her after, when we got to France, and I didn’t know where they sent her. They sent me to the federal prison in Coutances, but they didn’t know what to do with a prisoner in a wheelchair, so they sent me home again after a week. They told me to be grateful for their leniency.”

Peter said he knew Elizabeth had left Kit with Amelia whenever she came to his house. Nobody knew Elizabeth was helping with the Todt worker. He believes she let everyone think she had hospital duty.

Those are the bare bones, Sidney, but Peter asked if I would come back again. I said, yes, I’d love to—and he told me not to bring brandy—just myself. He did say he would like to see some picture magazines if I had any to hand. He wants to know who Rita Hayworth is.

Love,

Juliet

27th July, 1946

Dear Juliet,

It will soon be time for me to gather Remy from the hospice, but as I have a few minutes, I will use them to write to you.

Remy seems stronger now than she was last month, but she is very frail yet. Sister Touvier drew me aside to caution me—I must see to it that she gets enough to eat, that she stays warm, that she’s not upset. She must be around people—cheerful people, if possible.

I’ve no doubt that Remy will get nourishing food, and Amelia will see to it that she’s warm enough, but how am I to serve up good cheer? Joking and such is not natural to me. I didn’t know what to say to the Sister, so I just nodded and tried to look jolly.

I think I was not a success, for Sister glanced at me sharply. Well, I will do my best, but you, blessed as you are with a sunny nature and light heart, would make a better companion for Remy than I. I don’t doubt she will take to you as we all have, these last months, and you will do her good.

Give Kit a hug and kiss for me. I will see you both on Tuesday.

Dawsey

29th July, 1946

Dear Sophie,

Please ignore everything I have ever said about Dawsey Adams.

I am an idiot.

I have just received a letter from Dawsey praising the medicinal qualities of my “sunny nature and light heart.”

A sunny nature? A light heart? I have never been so insulted. Light-hearted is a short step from witless in my book. A cackling buffoon—that’s what I am to Dawsey.

I am also humiliated—while I was feeling the knife-edge of attraction as we strolled through the moonlight, he was thinking about Remy and how my light-minded prattle would amuse her.

No, it’s clear that I was deluded and Dawsey doesn’t give two straws for me.

I am too irritated to write more now.

Love always,

Juliet

1st August, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Remy is here at last. She is petite and terribly thin, with short black hair and eyes that are nearly black too. I had imagined that she would look wounded, but she doesn’t, except for a little limp, which shows itself as a mere hesitancy in her walk, and a rather stiff way of moving her neck.

Now I’ve made her sound waiflike, and she isn’t, really. You might think so from a distance, but never up close. There is a grave intensity in her that is almost unnerving. She is not cold and certainly not unfriendly, but she seems to be leery of spontaneity. I suppose if I had been through her experience, I would be the same—a bit removed from daily life.

You can cross out all of the above when Remy is with Kit. At first, she seemed inclined to follow Kit around with her eyes instead of talking to her, but that changed when Kit offered to teach her how to lisp. Remy looked startled, but she agreed to take lessons and they went off to Amelia’s greenhouse together. Her lisp is hampered by her accent, but Kit doesn’t hold that against her and has generously given her extra instructions.

Amelia had a small dinner party the evening Remy arrived. Everyone was on their best behavior—Isola arrived with a big bottle of tonic under her arm, but she thought better of it once she had a look at Remy. “Might kill her,” she muttered to me in the kitchen, and stuffed it in her coat pocket. Eli shook her hand nervously and then retreated—I think he was afraid he’d hurt her accidentally. I was pleased to see that Remy was comfortable with Amelia—they will enjoy each other’s company—but Dawsey is her favorite. When he came into the sitting room—he was a little later than the rest—she relaxed visibly and even smiled at him.

Yesterday was cold and foggy, but Remy and Kit and I built a sandcastle on Elizabeth’s tiny beach. We spent a long time on its construction, and it was a fine, towering specimen. I had made a thermos of cocoa, and we sat drinking and waiting impatiently for the tide to come in and knock the castle down.

Kit ran up and down the shoreline, inciting the waters to rush in farther and faster. Remy touched my shoulder and smiled. “Elizabeth must have been like that once,” she said, “the Empress of the seas.” I felt as if she had given me a gift—even such a tiny gesture as a touch takes trust—and I was glad she felt safe with me.

While Kit danced in the waves, Remy spoke about Elizabeth. She had intended to keep her head down, conserve the strength she had left, and come home as quickly as she could after the war. “We thought it would be possible. We knew of the invasion, we saw all the Allied bombers flying over the camp. We knew what was happening in Berlin. The guards could not keep their fear from us. Each night we lay sleepless, waiting to hear the Allied tanks at the gates. We whispered that we could be free the next day. We did not believe we would die.”

There didn’t seem to be anything else to say after that—though I was thinking, if only Elizabeth could have held on for a few more weeks, she could have come home to Kit. Why, why, so close to the end, did she attack the overseer?

Remy watched the sea breathe in and out. Then she said, “It would have been better for her not to have such a heart.”

Yes, but worse for the rest of us.

The tide came in then: cheers, screams, and no more castle.

Love,

Juliet

1st August, 1946

Dear Sidney,

I am the new Secretary of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I thought you might like to see a sample of my first minutes, being as how you are interested in anything Juliet is interested in. Here they are:

30th July–1946–7:30 p.m.

Night cold. Ocean noisy. Will Thisbee was host. House dusted, but curtains need washing.

Mrs. Winslow Daubbs read a chapter from her autobiography, The Life and Loves of Delilah Daubbs. Audience attentive—but silent afterwards. Except for Winslow, who wants a divorce.

All were embarrassed, so Juliet and Amelia served the dessert they’d made earlier—a lovely ribbon cake, on real china plates—which we don’t usually run to.

Miss Minor then rose to ask if we were going to start being our own authors, could she read from a book of her very own thoughts? Her text is called The Common Place Book of Mary Margaret Minor.

Everybody already knows what Mary Margaret thinks about everything, but we said “Aye” because we all like Mary Margaret. Will Thisbee ventured to say that perhaps Mary Margaret will edit herself in writing, as she has never done in talking, so it might not be so bad.

I moved we have a specially called meeting next week so I don’t have to wait to talk about Jane Austen. Dawsey seconded! All said, “Aye.” Meeting adjourned.

Miss Isola Pribby,

Official Secretary to the Guernsey Literary

and Potato Peel Pie Society

Now that I’m Official Secretary, I could swear you in for a member if you’d like to be one. It’s against the rules, because you’re not an Islander, but I could do it in secret.

Your friend,

Isola

3rd August, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Someone—and I can’t imagine who—has sent Isola a present from Stephens & Stark. It was published in the mid-1800s and is named The New Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Psychiatry: with Size and Shape Tables and Over One-Hundred Illustrations. If that is not enough, there’s a sub-title: Phrenology: the Science of Interpreting Bumps on the Head.

Eben had Kit and me, Dawsey, Isola, Will, Amelia, and Remy over for supper last night. Isola arrived with tables, sketches, graph paper, a measuring tape, calipers, and a new notebook. Then she cleared her throat and read the advertisement on the first page: “You too can learn to read Head Bumps! Stun Your Friends, Confound Your Enemies with Indisputable Knowledge of Their Human Faculties or Lack of Them.”

She thumped the book onto the table. “I’m going to become an adept,” she announced, “in time for the Harvest Festival.”

She has told Pastor Elstone she will no longer dress up in shawls and pretend to read palms. No, from now on she will see the future in a Scientific way, by reading head bumps! The church will make far more money from head bumps than Miss Sybil Beddoes does with her booth, WIN A KISS FROM SYBIL BEDDOES.

Will said she was exactly right; Miss Beddoes wasn’t a good kisser and he for one was tired of kissing her, even for Sweet Charity’s sake.

Sidney, do you realize what you have unleashed on Guernsey? Isola’s already read the lumps on Mr. Singleton’s head (his stall is next to hers at market) and told him his Love of Fellow Creatures Bump had a shallow trench right down the middle—which was probably why he didn’t feed his dog enough.

Do you see where this could lead? Someday she’ll find someone with a Latent Killer Knot, and he’ll shoot her—if Miss Beddoes doesn’t get her first.

One wonderful, unexpected thing did come from your present. After dessert Isola began to read the bumps on Eben’s head—dictating the measurements for me to write down. I glanced over at Remy, wondering what she would make of Eben’s hair standing on end, and Isola rummaging through it. Remy was trying to stifle a smile, but she couldn’t manage it and burst out laughing. Dawsey and I stopped dead and stared at her!

She is so quiet, not a one of us could imagine such a laugh. It was like water. I hope I’ll hear it again.

Dawsey and I have not been as easy with one another as we once were, though he still comes often to visit Kit, or to walk Remy over to see us. Hearing Remy laugh is the first time we’ve caught eyes for a fortnight. But perhaps he was only admiring how my sunny nature had rubbed off on her. I do, according to some people, have a sunny nature, Sidney. Did you know that?

Billee Bee sent a copy of Screen Gems magazine to Peter. There was a photo essay on Rita Hayworth—Peter was delighted, though surprised to see Miss Hayworth posing in her nightdress! Kneeling on a bed! What was the world coming to? Sidney, isn’t Billee Bee tired of being sent on personal errands for me?

Love,

Juliet

5th August, 1946

Dear Juliet,

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

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

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

All my best to you and Kit,

Susan

5th August,1946

Dear Sidney,

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

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

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

Will cackles up, “Your Mr. Stark will be a lucky man, Juliet!” Juliet blushed red as a tomato, and I was tempted to say he didn’t know much because Mr. Stark is a homosexual, but I recollected myself and kept your secret like I promised.

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

Thank you again for the fine book.

Your friend,

Isola

6th August, 1946

BOUGHT A SMALL BAGPIPE FOR DOMINIC AT GUNTHERS YESTERDAY. WOULD KIT LIKE ONE? LET ME KNOW SOONEST AS THEY ONLY HAVE ONE LEFT. HOW’S THE WRITING? LOVE TO YOU AND KIT. SIDNEY

7th August, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Kit would love a bagpipe. I would not.

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

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

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

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

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

She said the room was full of children, and Elizabeth was buttoning up Eli’s coat, when he told her he was scared about getting on the boat—going away from his mother and his home. If their ship was bombed, he asked, who would he say good-bye to? Isola said that Elizabeth took her time, like she was studying his question. Then she pulled up her sweater and took a pin off her blouse. It was her father’s medal from the first war, and she always wore it.

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

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

Love,

Juliet

P.S. How about a flute?

9th August, 1946

Darling Sophie,

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

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

Your inquiries about Dawsey are misdirected. Send them to Kit—or Remy. I scarcely see the man anymore, and when I do, he is silent. Not silent in a romantic, brooding way, like Mr. Rochester, but in a grave and sober way that indicates disapproval. I don’t know what the trouble is, truly I don’t. When I arrived in Guernsey, Dawsey was my friend. We talked about Charles Lamb and we walked all over the Island together—and I enjoyed his company as much as that of anyone I’ve ever known. Then, after that appalling night on the headlands, he stopped talking—to me, at any rate. It’s been a terrible disappointment. I miss the feeling that we understood one another, but I begin to think that was only my delusion all along.

Not being silent myself, I am wildly curious about people who are. Since Dawsey doesn’t talk about himself—doesn’t talk at all, to me—I was reduced to questioning Isola about his head bumps to get information about his past life. But Isola is beginning to fear that the lumps may lie after all, and she offered as proof the fact that Dawsey’s Violence-Prone Node isn’t as big as it should be, given he almost beat Eddie Meares to death!!!!

Those exclamations are mine. Isola seemed to think nothing at all of it.

It seems Eddie Meares was big and mean and gave/traded/sold information to the German authorities for favors from them. Everyone knew, which didn’t seem to bother him, since he’d go to a bar to brag and show off his new wealth: a loaf of white bread, cigarettes, and silk stockings—which, he said, any girl on the Island would surely be plenty grateful for.

A week after Elizabeth and Peter were arrested, he was showing off a silver cigarette case, hinting it was a reward for reporting some goings-on he’d seen at Peter Sawyer’s house.

Dawsey heard of it and went to Crazy Ida’s the next night. Apparently, he went in, walked up to Eddie Meares, grabbed him by the shirt collar, lifted him up off his bar stool, and began banging his head on the bar. He called Eddie a lousy little shit, pounding his head down between each word. Then he yanked Eddie off the stool and they set to it on the floor.

According to Isola, Dawsey was a mess: nose, mouth bleeding, one eye puffed shut, one rib cracked—but Eddie Meares was a bigger mess: two black eyes, two ribs broken, and stitches. The Court sentenced Dawsey to three months in the Guernsey jail, though they let him out in one. The Germans needed their jail space for more serious criminals—like Black Marketeers and the thieves who stole petrol from army lorries.

“And to this day, when Eddie Meares spies Dawsey coming through the door of Crazy Ida’s, his eyes go shifty and his beer spills and not five minutes later, he’s sidling out the back door,” Isola concluded.

Naturally, I was agog and begged for more. Since she’s disillusioned with bumps, Isola moved on to actual facts.

Dawsey did not have a very happy childhood. His father died when he was eleven, and Mrs. Adams, who’d always been poorly, grew odd. She became fearful, first of going into town, then of going into her own yard, and finally, she wouldn’t leave the house at all. She would just sit in the kitchen, rocking and staring out at nothing Dawsey could ever see. She died shortly before the war began.

Isola said that what with all of this—his mother, farming, and stuttering so bad at one time—it came to pass that Dawsey was always shy and never, except for Eben, had any ready-made friends. Isola and Amelia were acquainted with him, but that was about all.

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

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

I meant to dispatch Dawsey in a terse sentence or two, but I see that he has taken several sheets. Now I must rush to make myself presentable for tonight’s meeting of the Society.

I have exactly one decent skirt to my name, and I have been feeling dowdy. Remy, for all she’s so frail and thin, manages to look stylish at every turn. What is it about French women?

More anon.

Love,

Juliet

11th August, 1946

Dear Sidney,

I am happy that you are happy with my progress on Elizabeth’s biography. But more about that later—for I have something to tell you that simply cannot wait. I hardly dare believe it myself, but it’s true. I saw it with my own eyes!

If, and mind you only if, I am correct, Stephens & Stark will have the publishing coup of the century. Papers will be written, degrees granted, and Isola will be pursued by every scholar, university, library, and filthy-rich private collector in the Western Hemisphere.

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

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

Isola told him to hush up and sit down. She said they were letters to her Granny Pheen from a very kind man—a stranger—when she was but a little girl. Granny had kept them in a biscuit tin and had often read them to her, Isola, as a bedtime story.

Sidney, there were eight letters, and I’m not going to attempt to describe their contents to you—I’d fail miserably.

Isola told us that when Granny Pheen was nine years old, her father drowned her cat. Muffin had apparently climbed onto the table and licked the butter dish. That was enough for Pheen’s beastly father—he thrust Muffin into a burlap bag, added some rocks, tied up the sack, and flung Muffin into the ocean. Then, meeting Pheen walking home from school, he told her what he’d done—and good riddance, too.

He then toddled off to the tavern and left Granny sitting plumb in the middle of the road, sobbing out her heart.

A carriage, driving far too fast, came within a whisker of running her down. The coachman rose from his seat and began to curse her, but his passenger—a very big man, in a dark coat with a fur collar, jumped out. He told the driver to be quiet, leaned over Pheen, and asked if he could help her.

Granny Pheen said no, no—she was beyond help. Her cat was gone! Her Pa had drowned Muffin, and now Muffin was dead—dead and gone forever.

The man said, “Of course Muffin’s not dead. You do know cats have nine lives, don’t you?” When Pheen said yes, she had heard of such before, the man said, “Well, I happen to know your Muffin was only on her third life, so she has six lives left.”

Pheen asked how he knew. He said he just did, He Always Knew—it was a gift he’d been born with. He didn’t know how or why it happened, but cats would often appear in his mind and chat with him. Well, not in words of course, but in pictures.

Then he sat down in the road beside her and said for them to keep still—very still. He would see if Muffin wanted to visit with him. They sat in silence for several minutes, when suddenly the man grabbed Pheen’s hand!

“Ah—yes! There she is! She’s being born this minute! In a mansion—no, a castle. I think she’s in France—yes, she’s in France. There’s a little boy petting her—stroking her fur. He loves her already, and he’s going to name her—how strange, he is going to name her Solange. That’s a strange name for a cat, but still. She is going to live a long, lovely venturesome life. This Solange has great spirit, great verve, I can tell already!”

Granny Pheen told Isola she was so rapt by Muffin’s new fate, she quit crying. But she told the man she would still miss Muffin so much. The man lifted her to her feet and said of course she would—she should mourn for such a fine cat as Muffin had been and she would grieve for some time yet.

However, he said, he would call on Solange every once in a while and find out how she was faring and what she was up to. He asked Granny Pheen’s name and the name of the farm where she lived. He wrote her answers down in a small notebook with a silver pencil, told her she’d be hearing from him, kissed her hand, got back into the carriage, and left.

Absurd as all this sounds, Sidney, Granny Pheen did receive letters. Eight long letters over a year—all about Muffin’s life as the French cat Solange. She was, apparently, something of a feline Musketeer. She was no idle cat, lolling about on cushions, lapping up cream—she lived through one wild adventure after another—the only cat ever to be awarded the red rosette of the Legion of Honor.

What a story this man made up for Pheen—lively, witty, full of drama and suspense. I can only tell you the effect it had on me—on all of us. We sat enchanted—even Will was left speechless.

But here, at last, is why I need a sane head and sober counsel. When the program was over (and much applauded), I asked Isola if I could see the letters, and she handed them to me.

Sidney, the writer had signed his letters with a grand flourish:

Sidney, do you suppose? Could it possibly be that Isola has inherited eight letters written by Oscar Wilde? Oh God, I am beside myself.

I believe it because I want to believe it, but is it recorded anywhere that Oscar Wilde ever set foot on Guernsey? Oh, bless Speranza, for giving her son such a preposterous name as Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde.

In haste and love and please advise at once—I’m having difficulty breathing.

Juliet

13th August, 1946

Let’s believe it! Billee did some research and discovered that Oscar Wilde visited Jersey for a week in 1893, so it’s possible he went to Guernsey then. The noted graphologist Sir William Otis will arrive on Friday, armed with some borrowed letters of Oscar Wilde’s from his university’s collection. I’ve booked rooms for him at the Royal Hotel. He’s a very dignified sort, and I doubt he’d want Zenobia roosting on his shoulder.

If Will Thisbee finds the Holy Grail in his junkyard, don’t tell me. My heart can’t stand much more.

Love to you and Kit and Isola,

Sidney

14th August, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Juliet says you’re sending a hand-writing fellow to look at Granny Pheen’s letters and decide if Mr. Oscar Wilde wrote them. I’ll bet he did, and even if he didn’t, I think you will admire Solange’s story. I did, Kit did, and I know Granny Pheen did. She would twirl, happy in her grave, to have so many others know about that nice man and his funny ideas.

Juliet told me if Mr. Wilde did write the letters, many teachers and schools and libraries would want to own them and would offer me sums of money for them. They would be sure and keep them in a safe, dry, properly cooled place.

I say no to that! They are safe and dry and chilly now. Granny kept them in her biscuit tin, and in her biscuit tin they’ll stay. Of course anyone who wants to come see them can visit me here, and I’ll let them have a look. Juliet said lots of scholars would probably come, which would be nice for me and Zenobia—as we like company.

If you’d like the letters for a book, you can have them, though I hope you will let me write what Juliet calls the preface. I’d like to tell about Granny Pheen, and I have a picture of her and Muffin by the pump. Juliet told me about royalties and then I could buy me a motorcycle with a sidecar—there is a red one, second-hand, down at Lenoux’s Garage.

Your friend,

Isola Pribby

18th August, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Sir William has come and gone. Isola invited me to be present for the inspection, and of course I jumped at the chance.

Promptly at nine, Sir William appeared on the kitchen steps; I panicked at the sight of him in his sober black suit—what if Granny Pheen’s letters were merely the work of some fanciful farmer? What would Sir William do to us—and you—for wasting his time?

He settled grimly among Isola’s sheaves of hemlock and hyssop, dusted his fingers with a snowy handkerchief, fitted a little glass into one eye, and slowly removed the first letter from the biscuit tin.

A long silence followed. Isola and I looked at one another. Sir William took another letter from the biscuit tin. Isola and I held our breath. Sir William sighed. We twitched. “Hmmmm,” he murmured. We nodded at him encouragingly, but it was no good—there was another silence. This one stretched on for several weeks.

Then he looked at us and nodded.

“Yes?” I said, hardly daring to breathe.

“I’m pleased to confirm that you are in possession of eight letters written by Oscar Wilde, madam,” he said to Isola with a little bow.

“GLORY BE!” bellowed Isola, and she reached round the table and clutched Sir William into a hug. He looked somewhat startled at first, but then he smiled and patted her cautiously on the back.

He took one page back with him to get the corroboration of another Wilde scholar, but he told me that was purely for “show.” He was certain he was correct.

He may not tell you that Isola took him for a test drive in Mr. Lenoux’s motorcycle—Isola at the wheel, he in the sidecar, Zenobia on his shoulder. They got a citation for reckless driving, which Sir William assured Isola he would be “privileged to pay.” As Isola says, for a noted graphologist, he’s a good sport.

But he’s no substitute for you. When are you going to come see the letters—and, incidentally, me—for yourself ? Kit will do a tap dance in your honor and I will stand on my head. I still can, you know.

Just to torment you, I won’t tell any news. You’ll have to come and find out for yourself.

Love,

Juliet

20th August, 1946

DEAR MR. STARK CALLED SUDDENLY TO ROME. ASKED ME TO COME AND COLLECT LETTERS THIS THURSDAY. PLEASE WIRE IF THIS SUITS; LONGING FOR PETITE VACANCE ON DARLING ISLAND. BILLEE BEE JONES

I’D BE DELIGHTED. PLEASE LET ME KNOW ARRIVAL TIME, AND I’LL MEET YOU. JULIET.

22nd August, 1946

Dear Sophie,

Your brother is becoming altogether too august for my taste—he has sent an emissary to retrieve Oscar Wilde’s letters for him! Billee Bee arrived on the morning mail boat. It was a very rough voyage so she was shaky-legged and green-faced—but game! She couldn’t manage lunch, but she rallied for dinner and made a lively guest at tonight’s Literary Society meeting.

One awkward moment—Kit doesn’t seem to like her. She backed away and said, “I don’t kiss,” when Billee attempted one. What do you do when Dominic is rude—chastise him on the spot, which seems embarrassing for everyone, or wait until later for privacy? Billee Bee covered beautifully, but that shows her good manners, not Kit’s. I waited, but I’d like your opinion.

Ever since I learned that Elizabeth was dead and Kit an orphan, I have worried about her future—and about my own future without her. I think it would be unbearable. I’m going to make an appointment with Mr. Dilwyn when he and Mrs. Dilwyn return from their holiday. He is her legal guardian, and I want to discuss my possible guardianship/adoption/fosterparenting of Kit. Of course, I want outright adoption, but I’m not sure Mr. Dilwyn would consider a spinster lady of flexible income and no fixed abode a desirable parent.

I haven’t said a word about this to anyone here, or to Sidney. There is so much to dither over—What would Amelia say? Would Kit like the idea? Is she old enough to decide? Where would we live? Can I take her away from the place she loves for London? A restricted city life instead of going about in boats and playing tag in cemeteries? Kit would have you, me, and Sidney in England, but what about Dawsey and Amelia and all the family she has here? It would be impossible to replace or replicate them. Can you imagine a London nursery-school teacher with Isola’s flair? Of course not.

I argue myself all the way to one end of the question and back again several times a day. One thing I am sure of, though, is that I want to take care of Kit forever.

Love,

Juliet

P.S. If Mr. Dilwyn says no, not possible—I might just grab Kit up and come hide out in your barn.

23rd August, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Called suddenly to Rome, were you? Have you been elected Pope? It had better be something at least that pressing, to excuse your sending Billee Bee to collect the letters in your stead. And I don’t know why copies won’t do; Billee says you insist on seeing the originals. Isola would not countenance such a request from any other person on earth, but for you, she’ll do it. Please do be awfully careful with them, Sidney—they are the pride of her heart. And see that you return them in person.

Not that we don’t like Billee Bee. She’s a very enthusiastic guest—she’s outdoors sketching wildflowers this minute. I can see her little cap among the grasses. She thoroughly enjoyed her introduction to the Literary Society last night. She made a little speech at the end of the meeting and even asked Will Thisbee for the recipe of his delicious Apple Puff. This may have been carrying good manners too far—all we could see was a blob of dough that didn’t rise, covering a yellowish substance in the middle and all peppered through with seeds.

I am sorry you weren’t in attendance, for the evening’s speaker was Augustus Sarre, and he spoke on your favorite book, The Canterbury Tales. He chose to read “The Parson’s Tale” first because he knew what a Parson did for a living—not like those other fellows in the book: a Reeve, a Franklin, or a Summoner. “The Parson’s Tale” disgusted him so much he could read no more.

Fortunately for you, I made careful mental notes, so I can give you the gist of his remarks. To wit: Augustus would never let a child of his read Chaucer, it would turn him against Life in general and God in particular. To hear the Parson tell it, life was a cesspool (or as near as), where a man must wade through the muck as best he could; evil ever seeking him out, and evil ever finding him. (Don’t you think Augustus has a touch of the poet about him? I do.)

Poor old man must forever be doing penance or atoning or fasting or lashing himself with knotted ropes. All because he was Born in Sin—and there he’d stay until the last minute of his life, when he would receive God’s Mercy.

“Think of it, friends,” Augustus said, “a lifetime of misery with God not letting you draw one easy breath. Then in your last few minutes—POOF!—you’d get Mercy. Thanks for nothing, I say.

“That’s not all, Friends: man must never think well of himself—that is called the sin of Pride. Friends, show me a man who hates himself, and I’ll show you a man who hates his neighbors more! He’d have to—you’d not grant anyone else something you can’t have for yourself—no love, no kindness, no respect! So I say, Shame on the Parson! Shame on Chaucer!” Augustus sat down with a thump.

Two hours of lively discussion on Original Sin and Predestination followed. Finally, Remy stood to speak—she’d never done so before, and the room fell silent. She said softly, “If there is Predestination, then God is the devil.” No one could argue with that—what kind of God would intentionally design Ravensbrück?

Isola is having several of us to supper tonight, with Billee Bee as guest of honor. Isola said that though she doesn’t like rifling through a stranger’s hair, she will read Billee Bee’s bumps, as a favor to her dear friend Sidney.

Love,

Juliet

24th August, 1946

DEAR JULIET: AM APPALLED BILLEE BEE ON GUERNSEY TO COLLECT LETTERS. STOP! DO NOT—I REPEAT—DO NOT TRUST HER. DO NOT GIVE HER ANYTHING. IVOR, OUR NEW SUB-EDITOR, SAW BILLEE BEE AND GILLY GILBERT (HE OF THE LONDON HUE AND CRY AND LATE VICTIM OF YOUR TEAPOT THROWING) EXCHANGING LONG, LOOSE-LIPPED KISSES IN THE PARK. THE TWO OF THEM TOGETHER BODES ILL. SEND HER PACKING, WITHOUT THE WILDE LETTERS. LOVE, SUSAN

25th August, 1946

2:00 a.m.

Dear Susan,

You are a heroine! Isola herewith grants you an honorary membership in the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and Kit is making you a special present that involves sand and paste (you’ll want to open that parcel outdoors).

The telegram came in the nick of time. Isola and Kit had gone out early to collect herbs, and Billee Bee and I were alone in the house—I thought—when I read your telegram. I bolted up the stairs and into her room—she was gone, her suitcase was gone, her handbag was gone, and the letters were gone!

I was terrified. I ran downstairs and telephoned Dawsey to come quick and help hunt for her. He did, but first he called Booker and asked him to check the harbor. He was to stop Billee Bee from leaving Guernsey—at any cost!

Dawsey arrived quickly and we hurried down the road toward town.

I was half-trotting along behind him, looking in hedgerows and behind bushes. We had drawn even with Isola’s farm when Dawsey suddenly stopped short and began to laugh.

There, sitting on the ground in front of Isola’s smokehouse, were Kit and Isola. Kit was holding her new quilted ferret (a gift from Billee Bee) and a big brown envelope. Isola was sitting on Billee Bee’s suitcase—a Portrait of Innocence, the both of them—while an awful squawking was coming from inside the smokehouse.

I rushed to hug Kit and the envelope to me, while Dawsey undid the wooden peg from the smokehouse hasp. There, crouched in a corner, cursing and flailing, was Billee Bee—Isola’s parrot, Zenobia, flapping around her. She had already snatched off Billee Bee’s little cap, and pieces of angora wool were floating through the air.

Dawsey lifted her up and brought her outside—Billee Bee screaming all the while. She’d been set upon by a crazed witch. Assaulted by her Familiar, a child—clearly one of the Devil’s Own! We’d regret it! There’d be lawsuits, arrests, prison for the lot of us! We’d not see daylight again!

“It’s you who won’t see daylight, you sneak! Robber! Ingrate!” shouted Isola.

“You stole those letters,” I screamed. “You stole them from Isola’s biscuit tin and tried to sneak off with them! What were you and Gilly Gilbert going to do with them?”

Billee Bee shrieked, “None of your business! Wait till I tell him what you’ve done to me!”

“You do that little thing!” I snapped. “Tell the world about you and Gilly. I can see the headlines now—‘Gilly Gilbert Seduces Girl to Life of Crime!’ ‘From Love-Nest to Lock-up! See Page Three!’ ”

That shushed her for a moment and then, with the exquisite timing and presence of a great actor, Booker arrived, looking huge and vaguely official in an old army coat. Remy was with him, carrying a hoe! Booker viewed the scene and glared so fiercely at Billee Bee, I was almost sorry for her.

He took her arm and said, “Now, you’ll collect your rightful belongings and take your leave. I’ll not arrest you—not this time! I will escort you to the harbor and personally put you aboard the next boat to England.”

Billee Bee stumbled forward and gathered up her suitcase and handbag—then she made a lunge for Kit and yanked the quilted ferret out of her arms. “I’m sorry I ever gave it to you, you little brat.”

How I wanted to slap her! So I did—and I feel sure it jarred her back teeth loose. I don’t know but what island living is getting to me.

My eyes are falling shut on me, but I must tell you the reason for Kit and Isola’s early-morning herb collecting. Isola felt Billee Bee’s head bumps last night and didn’t like her reading at all. B.B.’s Duplicitous Bump was big as a goose egg. Then—Kit told her she’d seen Billee Bee in her kitchen, prowling through the shelves. That was enough for Isola, and they set their surveillance plan in motion. They would shadow Billee Bee today and see what they would see!

They rose early, skulked behind bushes, and saw Billee Bee tiptoeing out of my back door with a big envelope. They followed her a bit, until she passed by Isola’s farm. Isola pounced and manhandled her into the smokehouse. Kit gathered all of Billee Bee’s possessions from the dirt, and Isola went to get her claustrophobic parrot, Zenobia, and threw her into the smokehouse with Billee Bee.

But, Susan, what on earth were she and Gilly Gilbert going to do with the letters? Weren’t they worried about being arrested for thieving?

I am so grateful to you and Ivor. Please thank him for everything: his keen eyesight, his suspicious mind, and his good sense. Better yet, kiss him for me. He’s wonderful! Shouldn’t Sidney promote him from Sub-Editor to Editor-in-Chief ?

Love,

Juliet

26th August, 1946

Dear Juliet,

Yes, Ivor is wonderful and I have told him so. I kissed him for you, and then again for myself! Sidney did promote him—not to Editor-in-Chief, but I imagine he’s well on his way.

What did Billee Bee and Gilly plan to do? You and I weren’t in London when the “teapot incident” broke into the headlines—we missed the uproar it caused. Every journalist and publisher who loathes Gilly Gilbert and The London Hue and Cry—and there are plenty—was delighted.

They thought it was hilarious and Sidney’s statement to the press didn’t do much to soothe matters—just whipped them into fresh fits of laughter. Well, neither Gilly nor the LH&C believes in forgiveness. Their motto is get even—be quiet, be patient, and wait for the day of vengeance to come, as it surely will!

Billee Bee, poor besotted booby and Gilly’s mistress, felt the shame even more keenly. Can’t you see Billee Bee and Gilly huddled together, plotting their revenge? Billee Bee was to insinuate herself into Stephens & Stark, and find anything, anything at all, that would hurt you and Sidney, or better yet, turn you into laughingstocks.

You know how rumors run like wildfire around the publishing world. Everyone knows you’re in Guernsey writing a book about the Occupation, and in the last two weeks, people have begun to whisper that you’ve discovered a new Oscar Wilde work there (Sir William may be distinguished, but he’s not discreet).

It was too good for Gilly to resist. Billee Bee was to steal the letters, The London Hue and Cry would publish them, and you and Sidney would be scooped. What fun they’d have! They’d worry about lawsuits later. And of course, never mind what it would do to Isola.

It makes me sick to my stomach to think how close they came to succeeding. Thank God for Ivor and Isola—and Billee Bee’s Duplicitous Bump.

Ivor will fly over to copy the letters on Tuesday. He has found a yellow velvet ferret, with emerald-green feral eyes and ivory fangs, for Kit. I think she’ll want to kiss him for it. You can too—but keep it short. I make no threats, Juliet—but Ivor is mine!

Love,

Susan

26th August, 1946

I’LL NEVER LEAVE TOWN AGAIN. ISOLA AND KIT DESERVE A MEDAL, AND SO DO YOU. LOVE, SIDNEY

29th August, 1946

Dear Sophie,

Ivor has come and gone, and Oscar Wilde’s letters are back safe in Isola’s biscuit tin. I’ve settled down as much as I can until Sidney reads them—I’m wild to know what he thinks of them.

I was very calm on the day of our adventure. It was only later, after Kit was in bed, that I started to feel skittish and nervous—and began to pace.

Then there was a knock at the door. I was amazed—and a little flustered—to see Dawsey through the window. I threw the door open to greet him—and found him and Remy on my front step. They had come to see how I was. How kind. How flat.

I wonder if Remy shouldn’t be getting homesick for France by now? I have been reading an article by a woman named Giselle Pelletier, a political prisoner held at Ravensbrück for five years. She writes about how difficult it is for you to get on with your life as a camp survivor. No one in France—not friends, not family—wants to know anything about your life in the camps, and they think that the sooner you put it out of your mind—and out of their hearing—the happier you’ll be.

According to Miss Pelletier, it is not that you want to belabor anyone with details, but it did happen to you and you cannot pretend it didn’t. “Let’s put everything behind us” seems to be France’s cry. “Everything—the war, the Vichy, the Milice, Drancy, the Jews—it’s all over now. After all, everyone suffered, not just you.” In the face of this institutional amnesia, she writes, the only help is talking with fellow survivors. They know what life in the camps was. You speak, and they can speak back. They talk, they rail, they cry, they tell one story after another—some tragic, some absurd. Sometimes they can even laugh together. The relief is enormous, she says.

Perhaps communication with other survivors would be a better cure for Remy’s distress than bucolic island life. She is physically stronger now—she’s not so shockingly thin as she was—but she still seems haunted.

Mr. Dilwyn is back from his holiday, and I must make an appointment to talk to him about Kit soon. I keep putting it off—I’m so dreadfully afraid that he’ll refuse to consider it. I wish I looked more motherly—perhaps I should buy a fichu. If he requests character witnesses, will you be one? Does Dominic know his letters yet? If so, he can print out this:

I didn’t tell you, did I, about Mr. Dilwyn’s plans for Kit’s heritage on Guernsey? He has engaged Dawsey, and a crew Dawsey is to select, to restore the Big House: banisters replaced; graffiti removed from the walls and paintings; torn-out plumbing replaced with new; windows replaced; chimneys and flues cleaned; wiring checked and terrace paving stones repointed—or whatever it is you do to old stones. Mr. Dilwyn is not yet certain what can be done with the wooden paneling in the library—it had a beautiful carved frieze of fruit and ribbons, which the Germans used for target practice.

Since no one will want to go on holiday to Europe itself for the next few years, Mr. Dilwyn is hoping the Channel Islands might become a tourist haven again—and Kit’s house could make a wonderful holiday house for families to rent.

But on to stranger events: the Benoit sisters asked me and Kit for tea this afternoon. I had never met them, and it was quite an odd invitation; they asked if Kit had “a steady eye and good aim? Does she like rituals?”

Bewildered, I asked Eben if he knew of the Benoit sisters. Were they sane? Was it safe to take Kit there? Eben roared with laughter and said yes, the sisters were safe and sane. He said Jane and Elizabeth had visited them every summer for five years; the girls always wore starched pinafores, polished court shoes, and little lace gloves. We would have a fine time, he said, and he was glad to see the old traditions were coming back. We would have a lavish tea, with entertainment afterwards, and we should go.

None of which told me what to expect. They are identical twins, in their eighties. So very prim and ladylike, dressed in ankle-length gowns of black georgette, larded with jet beads at bosom and hem, their white hair piled like swirls of whipped cream atop their heads. So charming, Sophie. We did have a sinful tea, and I’d barely put my cup down when Yvonne (older by ten minutes) said, “Sister, I do believe Elizabeth’s child is too small yet.” Yvette said, “I believe you’re right, Sister. Perhaps Miss Ashton would favor us?”

I think it was very brave of me to say, “I’d be delighted,” when I had no idea what they were proposing.

“So kind if you would, Miss Ashton. We denied ourselves during the war—so disloyal to the Crown, somehow. Our arthritis has grown very much worse: we cannot even join you in the rites. It will be our pleasure to watch!”

Yvette went to a drawer in the sideboard, while Yvonne slid out one side of the pocket doors between their drawing room and dining room. Taped to the previously hidden panel was a fullpage, full-length newspaper rotogravure portrait in sepia of the Duchess of Windsor, Mrs. Wallis Simpson as was. Cut out, I gather, from the society pages of the Baltimore Sun in the late ’30s.

Yvette handed me four silver-tipped, finely balanced, evillooking darts.

“Go for the eyes, dear,” she said. So I did.

“Splendid! Three-for-four, Sister. Almost as good as dear Jane! Elizabeth always fumbled at the last moment! Shall you want to try again next year?”

It’s a simple story, but sad. Yvette and Yvonne adored the Prince of Wales. “So darling in his little plus fours.” “How the man could waltz!” “How debonair in evening dress!” So fine, so royal—until that hussy got hold of him. “Snatched him from the throne! His crown—gone!” It broke their hearts. Kit was enthralled with it all—as well she might be. I am going to practice my aim—four-for-four being my new goal in life.

Don’t you wish we had known the Benoit sisters while we were growing up?

Love and XXX,

Juliet

2nd September, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Something happened this afternoon; while it ended well, it was disturbing, and I am having trouble going to sleep. I am writing to you, instead of Sophie, because she’s pregnant and you’re not. You don’t have a delicate condition to be upset in, and Sophie does—I am losing my grip on grammar.

Kit was with Isola, making gingerbread men. Remy and I needed some ink and Dawsey needed some kind of putty for the Big House, so we all walked together into St. Peter Port.

We took the cliff walk by Fermain Bay. It’s a beautiful walk, with a rugged path that wanders up and around the headlands. I was a little ahead of Remy and Dawsey because the path had narrowed.

A tall red-headed woman walked around the large boulder at the path’s turning and came toward us. She had a dog with her, an Alsatian, and a big one. He was not on a leash and he was overjoyed to see me. I was laughing at his antics and the woman called out, “Don’t worry. He never bites.” His paws came up on my shoulders, attempting a big, slobbering kiss.

Then, behind me, I heard a noise—an awful gulping gasp: a deep gagging that went on and on. I can’t describe it. I turned and saw that it was Remy; she was bent over almost double and vomiting. Dawsey had caught her and was holding her as she kept on vomiting, deep spasms of it, over both of them. It was terrible to see and hear.

Dawsey yelled, “Get that dog away, Juliet! Now!”

I frantically pushed the dog away. The woman was crying and apologizing, almost hysterical herself. I held on to the dog’s collar and kept saying, “It’s all right! It’s all right! It’s not your fault. Please go. Go!” She finally did, hauling her poor, confused pet along by his collar.

Remy was quiet then, only gasping for breath. Dawsey looked over her head and said, “Let’s get her to your house, Juliet. It’s closest.” He picked her up and carried her—me trailing behind, helpless and scared.

Remy was cold and shaking, so I drew a bath for her, and after she was warm again, put her into bed. She was already half-asleep, so I gathered her clothes into a bundle, and went downstairs.

Dawsey was standing by the window, looking out. Without turning, he said, “She told me once that those guards used big dogs. Riled them up and loosed them deliberately on the lines of women standing for roll call—just to watch the fun. Christ! I’ve been ignorant, Juliet. I thought being here with us could help her forget.

“Good will isn’t enough, is it, Juliet? Not nearly enough.”

“No,” I said, “it isn’t.” He didn’t say anything more; he just nodded to me and left. I telephoned Amelia to tell her where Remy was and why and started the laundry. Isola returned Kit; we had supper and played Snap till bedtime.

But I can’t sleep.

I am so ashamed of myself. Had I actually thought Remy well enough to return home—or did I just want her to go? Did I think it was past time for her to go back to France—to just get on with IT, whatever IT might be? I did—and it’s sickening.

Love,

Juliet

P.S. As long as I’m confessing, I might as well tell you something else. Bad as it was to stand there holding Remy’s awful clothes and smelling Dawsey’s ruined ones, all I could think of was, he said “good will… good will isn’t enough, is it?” Does that mean that is all he feels toward her? I’ve chewed over that errant thought all evening.

4th September, 1946

Dear Juliet, All that errant thought means is that you’re in love with Dawsey yourself. Surprised? I’m not. Don’t know what took you so long to fall to it—sea air is supposed to clear your head. I want to come and see you and Oscar’s letters for myself, but I can’t get away till the 13th. All right?

Love,

Sidney

5th September, 1946

DEAR SIDNEY—YOU’RE INSUFFERABLE, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU’RE RIGHT. LOVELY TO SEE YOU ANYHOW ON THE 13TH. LOVE, JULIET

6th September, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Juliet says you’re going to come look at Granny Pheen’s letters with your own eyes, and I say it’s about time. Not that I minded Ivor; he was a nice fellow, though he should leave off wearing those little hairbow ties. I told him they didn’t do much for him, but he was more interested to hear about my suspicions of Billee Bee Jones, how I shadowed her and locked her up in the smokehouse.

He said it was a fine piece of detective work and Miss Marple couldn’t have done better herself !

Miss Marple is not a friend of his, she is a lady detective in fiction books, who uses all she knows about HUMAN NATURE to figure out mysteries and solve crimes that the police can’t.

He set me to thinking about how fine it would be to solve mysteries myself. If only I knew of any.

Ivor said skullduggery is everywhere, and with my fine instincts, I could train myself to become another Miss Marple.

“You clearly have excellent observation skills. All you need now is practice. Note everything and write it down.”

I went to Amelia’s and borrowed a few books with Miss Marple in them. She’s a caution, isn’t she? Just sitting there quietly, knitting away; seeing things everybody else misses. I could keep my ears open for what doesn’t listen right, see things from the sides of my eyes. Mind you, we don’t have any unsolved mysteries on Guernsey, but that’s not to say we won’t one day—and when we do, I’ll be ready.

I still savor the head bump book you sent me and I hope your feelings are not hurt that I want to turn to another calling. I still trust the truth of lumps; it’s just that I’ve read the head bumps of everyone I care for, except yours, and it can get tedious.

Juliet says you’ll come next Friday. I can meet your plane and ride you to Juliet’s. Eben is having a beach party the next night, and he says you are most welcome. Eben hardly ever gives parties, but he said this one is to make a happy announcement to us all. A celebration! But of What? Does he mean to announce nuptials? But whose? I hope he is not getting married hisself; wives don’t generally let husbands out by themselves of an evening and I would miss Eben’s company.

Your friend,

Isola

7th September, 1946

Dear Sophie,

Finally, I mustered my courage and told Amelia that I wanted to adopt Kit. Her opinion means a great deal to me—she loved Elizabeth so dearly; she knows Kit so well—and me, almost well enough. I was anxious to have her approval—and terrified that I wouldn’t get it. I choked on my tea but in the end managed to get the words out. Her relief was so visible, I was shocked. I hadn’t realized how worried she’d been about Kit’s future.

She started to say, “If I could have one—” then stopped and started again, “I think it would be a wonderful thing for both of you. It would be the best possible thing—” Then she broke off and pulled out her handkerchief. And then, of course, I pulled out my handkerchief.

After we were finished crying, we plotted. Amelia will go with me to see Mr. Dilwyn. “I have known him since he was in short pants,” she said. “He won’t dare refuse me.” Having Amelia on your side is like having the Third Army at your back.

But something wonderful—even more wonderful than having Amelia’s approval—has happened. My last doubt has shrunk to less than pinpoint size.

Do you remember my telling you about the little box Kit often carried with her, all tied up in string? The one I thought might hold a dead ferret? She came into my room this morning, and patted my face until I woke up. She was carrying her box.

Without a word, she began undoing the string and took the lid off—parted the tissue paper and gave the box to me. Sophie—she stood back and watched my face as I turned the things in the box over, and then lifted them all out on the coverlet. The articles were: a tiny, eyelet-covered baby pillow; a small snapshot of Elizabeth, digging in her garden and laughing up at Dawsey; a woman’s linen handkerchief, smelling faintly of jasmine; a man’s signet ring; and a small leather book of Rilke’s poetry with the inscription, For Elizabeth—who turns darkness into light, Christian.

Tucked into the book was a much-folded scrap of paper. Kit nodded, so I carefully opened it and read, “Amelia—Kiss her for me when she wakes up. I’ll be back by six. Elizabeth. P.S. Doesn’t she have the most beautiful feet?”

Underneath this was Kit’s grandfather’s WWI medal, the magic badge Elizabeth had pinned on Eli when he was being evacuated to England. Bless Eli’s heart—he must have given it to her.

She was showing me her treasures, Sophie—her eyes did not leave my face once. We were both so solemn, and I, for once, didn’t start crying; I just held out my arms. She climbed right into them, and under the covers with me—and went sound asleep. Not me! I couldn’t. I was too happy planning the rest of our lives. I don’t care about living in London—I love Guernsey and want to stay here, even after finishing Elizabeth’s book. I can’t imagine Kit living in London, having to wear shoes all the time, having to walk instead of run, having no pigs to visit. No fishing with Eben and Eli, no visits with Amelia, no potion-mixing with Isola, and most of all, no walks, no days, no visits, with Dawsey.I think, if I become Kit’s guardian, we can continue to live in Elizabeth’s cottage and save the Big House as a holiday home for the idle rich. I could take my vast profits from Izzy and buy a flat for Kit and me to stay in when we visit London.

Her home is here, and mine can be. Writers can write on Guernsey—look at Victor Hugo. The only thing I’d truly miss about London are Sidney and Susan, the nearness to Scotland, new plays, and Harrods Food Hall.

Pray for Mr. Dilwyn’s good sense. I know he has it, I know he likes me, I know he knows Kit is happy living with me, and that I am solvent enough for two at the moment—and who can say better than that in these decadent times? Amelia thinks that if he does say no adoption without a husband, he will still gladly grant her guardianship to me.

Sidney is coming to Guernsey again next week. I wish you were coming too—I miss you.

Love,

Juliet

8th September, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Kit and I took a picnic out to the meadow to watch Dawsey start to rebuild Elizabeth’s fallen-down stone wall. It was a wonderful excuse to spy on Dawsey and his way of going at things.

He studied each rock, felt the heft of it, brooded, and placed it on the wall. Smiled if it accorded with the picture in his head.

Took it off if it didn’t and searched out a different stone. He is very calming to the spirit.

He grew so accustomed to our admiring gazes that he issued an unprecedented invitation to supper. Kit had a prior engagement—with Amelia—but I accepted with unbecoming haste and then fell into an absurd twitter about being alone with him.

We were both a bit awkward when I arrived, but he, at least, had the cooking to occupy him and retired to the kitchen, refusing

help. I took the opportunity to snoop through his books. He hasn’t very many, but his taste is superior—Dickens, Mark Twain, Balzac, Boswell, and dear old Leigh Hunt. The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, Anne Brontë’s novels (I wonder why he had those) and my biography of her. I didn’t know he owned that; he never said a word—maybe he loathed it.

Over supper, we discussed Jonathan Swift, pigs, and the trials in Nuremberg. Doesn’t that reveal a breathtaking range of interests?

I think it does. We talked easily enough, but neither of us ate much—even though he made a delicious sorrel soup (much better than I could). After coffee, we strolled down to his barn for a pig viewing. Grown pigs don’t improve upon acquaintance, but piglets are a different matter—Dawsey’s are spotted and frisky and sly. Each day they dig a new hole under his fence, ostensibly to escape, but really just for the amusement of watching Dawsey fill in the gap. You should have seen them grin as he approached the fence.

Dawsey’s barn is exceedingly clean. He also stacks his hay beautifully.

I believe I am becoming pathetic.

I’ll go further. I believe that I am in love with a flower-growing, wood-carving quarry-man/carpenter/pig farmer. In fact, I know I am. Maybe tomorrow I will become entirely miserable at the thought that he doesn’t love me back—may, even, care for Remy—but right this very moment, I am succumbing to euphoria. My head and stomach feel quite odd.

See you on Friday—you may go ahead and give yourself airs for discovering I love Dawsey. You may even preen in my presence—this one time, but never again.

Love and XXXX

Juliet

11th September, 1946

AM ENTIRELY MISERABLE. SAW DAWSEY IN ST. PETER PORT THIS AFTERNOON, BUYING SUITCASE WITH REMY ON HIS ARM, BOTH WREATHED IN SMILES. IS IT FOR THEIR HONEYMOON? WHAT A FOOL I AM. I BLAME YOU. WRETCHEDLY, JULIET

Private: Not to be read, even after death!

Sunday

This book with lines in it is from my friend Sidney Stark. It came to me in the mail yesterday. It had PENSÉES written in gold on the cover, but I scratched it off, because that’s French for Thoughts and I am only going to write down FACTS. Facts gleaned from keen eyes and ears. I don’t expect too much of myself at first—I must learn to be more observant.

Here are some of the observations I made today. Kit loves to be in Juliet’s company—she looks peaceful when Juliet comes in the room and she doesn’t make faces behind people’s backs anymore. Also she can wiggle her ears now—which she couldn’t before Juliet came.

My friend Sidney is coming to read Oscar’s letters. He will stay with Juliet this time, because she’s cleaned out Elizabeth’s storage room and put a bed in it for him.

Saw Daphne Post digging a big hole under Mr. Ferre’s elm tree. She always does it by the dark of the moon. I think we should all go together and buy her a silver teapot so she can quit and stay home nights.

Monday

Mrs. Taylor has a rash on her arms. What, or who, from? Tomatoes or her husband? Look into further.

Tuesday

Nothing noteworthy today.

Wednesday

Nothing again.

Thursday

Remy came to see me today—she gives me the stamps from her French letters—they are more colorful than English ones, so I paste them up. She had a letter in a brown envelope with a little open window in it, from the FRENCH GOVERNMENT. This is the fourth one she’s gotten—what do they want of her? Find out.

I did start to observe something today—behind Mr. Salles’s market stall, but they stopped when they saw me.

Never mind, Eben is having his beach picnic on Saturday—so I am sure to have something to observe there.

I have been looking at a book about artists and how they size up a picture they want to paint. Say they want to concentrate on an orange—do they study the shape direct? No, they don’t. They fool their eyes and stare at the banana beside it, or look at it upside down, between their legs. They see the orange in a brand-new way. It’s called getting perspective. So, I am going to try a new way of looking—not upside down between my legs, but by not staring at anything direct or straight ahead. I can move my eyes slyly if I keep my lids lowered a bit. Practice this!!!

Friday

It works—not staring head-long works. I went with Dawsey, Juliet, Remy, and Kit in Dawsey’s cart to the airfield to meet dear Sidney.

Here is what I observed: Juliet hugged him to her, and he swung her around like a brother would. He was pleased to meet Remy, and I could tell he was watching her sideways, like I was doing. Dawsey shook Sidney’s hand, but he did not come in for apple cake when we got to Juliet’s house. It was a little sunk in the middle, but tasted fine.

I had to put drops in my eyeballs before bed—it is a strain, always having to skitter them sideways. My lids ache from having to keep them half-way down too.

Saturday

Remy, Kit, and Juliet came with me down to the beach to gather firewood for this evening’s picnic. Amelia was out in the sun too. She looks more rested and I am happy to see her so. Dawsey, Sidney, and Eli carried Eben’s big iron cauldron down between themselves. Dawsey is always nice and polite to Sidney, and Sidney is pleasant as can be to Dawsey, but he seems to stare at him in a wondering sort of way. Why is that?

Remy left the firewood and went over to talk to Eben, and he patted her on the shoulder. Why? Eben was never one to pat much. Then they talked awhile—but sadly out of my earshot.

When it was time to go home for lunch, Eli went off beach-combing. Juliet and Sidney each took ahold of one of Kit’s hands, and they walked her up the cliff path, playing that game of “One Step. Two Step. Three Steps—LIFT UP!”

Dawsey watched them go up the path, but he did not follow. No, he walked down to the shore and just stood there, looking out over the water. It suddenly struck me that Dawsey is a lonesome person. I think it may be that he has always been lonely, but he didn’t mind before, and now he minds. Why now?

Saturday Night

I did see something at the picnic, something important—and like dear Miss Marple, I must act upon it. It was a brisk night and the sky looked moody. But that was fine—all of us bundled up in sweaters and jackets, eating lobster, and laughing at Booker. He stood on a rock and gave an oration, pretending to be that Roman he’s so crazy about. I worry about Booker, he needs to read a new book. I think I will lend him Jane Austen.

I was sitting, senses alert, by the bonfire with Sidney, Kit, Juliet, and Amelia. We were poking sticks in the fire, when Dawsey and Remy walked together toward Eben and the lobster pot. Remy whispered to Eben, he smiled, and picked up his big spoon and banged on the pot.

“Attention All,” Eben yelled, “I have something to tell you.”

All were silent, except for Juliet, who drew in her breath so hard I heard her. She didn’t let it out again, and went all over rigid—even her jaw. What could be the matter? I was so worried for her, having once been toppled by appendix myself, that I missed Eben’s first few words.

“…and so tonight is a farewell party for Remy. She is leaving us next Tuesday for her new home in Paris. She will share rooms with friends and is apprenticed to the famous confectioner Raoul Guillemaux, in Paris. She has promised that she will come back to Guernsey and that her second home will be with me and Eli, so we may all rejoice in her good fortune.”

What an outpouring of cheers from the rest of us!

Everyone ran to gather around Remy and congratulate her.

Everyone except Juliet—she let out her breath in a whoosh and flopped backward onto the sand, like a gaffed fish!

I peered around, thinking I should observe Dawsey. He wasn’t hovering over Remy at all—but how sad he looked.

All of a sudden, IT CAME TO ME! I HAD IT! Dawsey didn’t want Remy to go, he feared she’d never come back. He was in love with Remy, and too shy in his nature to tell her so.

Well, I’m not. I could tell her of his affections, and then she, being French, would know what to do. She would let him know she’d find favor in his suit. Then they could marry, and she would not need to go off to Paris and live.

What a blessing that I have no imagination and am able to see things clearly.

Sidney came up to Juliet and prodded her with his foot. “Feel better?” he asked, and Juliet said yes, so I quit worrying about her. Then he walked her over to make her manners to Remy. Kit was asleep in my lap, so I stayed where I was by the fire and thought carefully.

Remy, like most Frenchwomen, is practical. She would want evidence of Dawsey’s feelings for her, before she changed her plans willy-nilly. I would have to find the proof she’d need.

A bit later, when wine was opened and drunk in toasts, I walked up to Dawsey and said, “Daws, I noticed your kitchen floor is dirty. I want to come and scrub it for you. Will Monday suit?”

He looked a little surprised, but he said yes. “It’s an early Christmas present,” I said. “So you mustn’t think of paying me. Leave the door open for me.”

And so it was settled, and I said good-night to all.

Sunday

I laid my plans for tomorrow. I am nervous.

I will sweep and scrub Dawsey’s house, keeping a watch out for evidence that he cares for Remy. Maybe a poem “Ode to Remy,” all scrunched up and in his wastepaper basket? Or doodles of her name, scribbled all over his grocery list? Proof that Dawsey cares for Remy must (or almost must) be in plain sight. Miss Marple never really snooped so I won’t either—I will not force locks.

But once I give proof of his devotion to Remy, she’ll not get on the aeroplane to Paris on Tuesday morning. She will know what to do, and then Dawsey will be happy.

All Day Monday:

A Serious Error, A Joyous Night

I woke up too early and had to fiddle around with my hens till the hour I knew Dawsey had left for work up at the Big House. Then, I cut along to his farm, checking every tree trunk for carved hearts. None.

With Dawsey gone, I went in his back door with my mop, bucket, and rags. For two hours I swept, scrubbed, dusted, and waxed—and found nothing. I was beginning to despair, when I thought of books—the books on his shelves. I began to clap dust out of them, but no loose papers fell to the floor. I was fair along when suddenly I saw his little red book on Charles Lamb’s life. What was it doing here? I had seen him put it in the wooden treasure box Eli carved for his birthday present. But if the red book was here on the shelf, what was in his treasure box? And where was it? I tapped the walls. No hollow sounds anywhere. I thrust my arm down his flour bin—nothing but flour. Would he keep it in the barn? For rats to chew on? Never. What was left? His bed, under his bed!

I ran to his bedroom, fished under the bed, and pulled the treasure box out. I lifted the lid and glanced inside. Nothing met my eye, so I was forced to dump everything out on the bed—still nothing: not a note from Remy, not a photograph of her, no cinema ticket stubs for Gone With the Wind, though I knew he’d taken her to see it. What had he done with them? No handkerchief with the initial R in the corner. There was one, but it was one of Juliet’s scented ones and had a J embroidered on it. He must have forgotten to return it to her. Other things were in there, but nothing of Remy’s.

I put everything back in the box and straightened up the bed. My mission had failed! Remy would get on that aeroplane tomorrow, and Dawsey would stay lonely. I was heart-sore. I gathered up my mops and bucket.

I was trudging home when I saw Amelia and Kit—they were going bird-watching. They asked me to come along, but I knew that not even bird-song could cheer me up.

But I thought Juliet could cheer me—she usually does. I’d not stay long and bother her writing, but maybe she would ask me in for a cup of coffee. Sidney had left this morning, so maybe she’d be feeling bereft too. I hurried down the road to her house.

I found Juliet at home, papers awhirl on her desk, but she wasn’t doing anything, just sitting there, staring out the window.

“Isola!” she said. “Just when I’ve been wanting company!” She started to get up when she saw my mops and pails. “Have you come to clean my house? Forget that and come have some coffee with me.”

Then, she got a good look at my face and said, “Whatever is the matter? Are you ill? Come sit down.”

The kindness was too much for my broken spirits, and I—I admit it—I started to bawl. I said, “No, no, I’m not sick. I have failed—failed in my mission. And now Dawsey will stay unhappy.”

Juliet took me over to her sofa. She patted my hand. I always get the hiccups when I cry, so she ran and got me a glass of water for her fail-safe cure—you pinch your nose shut with your two thumbs, and plug up both ears with your fingers, while a friend pours a glass of water down your throat without let. You stomp your foot when you are close to drowning, and your friend takes the glass away. It works every time—a miracle—no more hiccups.

“Now tell me, what was your mission? And why do you think you failed?”

So I told her all about it—my idea that Dawsey was in love with Remy, and how I’d cleaned his house, looking for proof. If I’d have found any I’d have told Remy he loved her, and then she’d want to stay—maybe even confess her love for him first, to soothe the way.

“He is so shy, Juliet. He always has been—I don’t think anybody’s ever been in love with him, or him with anybody before, so he’d not know the right thing to do about it. It’d be just like him to hide away mementos and never say a word. I despair for him, I do.”

Juliet said, “A lot of men don’t keep mementos, Isola. Don’t want keepsakes. That doesn’t necessarily mean a thing. What on earth were you looking for?”

“Evidence, like Miss Marple does. But no, not even a picture of her. There’s lots of pictures of you and Kit, and several of you by yourself. One of you wrapped up in that lace curtain, being a Dead Bride. He’s kept all your letters, tied up in that blue hair ribbon—the one you thought you’d lost. I know he wrote Remy at the hospice, and she must have written him back—but no, nary a letter from Remy. Not even her handkerchief—oh, he found one of yours. You might want it back, it’s a pretty thing.”

She got up and went over to her desk. She stood there awhile, then she picked up that crystal thing with Latin, Carpe Diem, or some such, etched on the top. She studied it. “‘Seize the Day,’” she said. “That’s an inspiring thought, isn’t it, Isola?”

“I suppose so,” I said, “if you like being goaded by a bit of rock.”

Juliet did surprise me then—she turned around to me and gave me that grin she has, the one that made me first like her so much. “Where is Dawsey? Up at the Big House, isn’t he?”

At my nodding, she bounded out the door, and raced up the drive to the Big House.

Oh wonderful Juliet! She was going to give Dawsey a piece of her mind for shirking his feelings for Remy.

Miss Marple never runs anywhere, she follows after slowly, like the old lady she is. So I did too. Juliet was inside the house by the time I got there.

I went on tippy-toes to the terrace and pressed myself into the wall by the library. The French windows were open.

I heard Juliet open the door to the library. “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said. I could hear Teddy Heckwith (he’s a plasterer) and Chester (he’s a joiner) say, “Good morning, Miss Ashton.”

Dawsey said, “Hello, Juliet.” He was on top of the big stepladder. I found that out later when he made so much noise coming down it.

Juliet said she would like a word with Dawsey, if the gentlemen could give her a minute.

They said certainly, and left the room. Dawsey said, “Is something wrong, Juliet? Is Kit all right?”

“Kit’s fine. It’s me—I want to ask you something.”

Oh, I thought, she’s going to tell him not to be a sissy. Tell him he must stir himself up and go propose to Remy at once.

But she didn’t. What she said was, “Would you like to marry me?”

I liked to die where I stood.

There was quiet—complete quiet. Nothing! And on and on it went, not a word, not a sound.

But, Juliet went on undisturbed. Her voice steady—and me, I could not get so much as a breath of air into my chest.

“I’m in love with you, so I thought I’d ask.”

And then, Dawsey, dear Dawsey, swore. He took the Lord’s name in vain. “My God, yes,” he cried, and clattered down that stepladder, only his heels hit the rungs, which is how he sprained his ankle.

I kept to my scruples and did not look inside the room, tempted though I was. I waited. It was quiet in there, so I came on home to think.

What good was training my eyes if I could not see things rightly? I had got everything wrong. Everything. It came out Happy, so happy, in the end, but no thanks to me. I don’t have Miss Marple’s insight into the cavities of the human mind. That is sad, but best to admit it now.

Sir William told me there were Motorcycle Races in England—silver cups given for speed, rough riding, and not falling off. Perhaps I should train for that—I already have my bike. All I’d need would be a helmet—maybe goggles.

For now, I will ask Kit over for supper and to spend the night with me so that Juliet and Dawsey can have the freedom of the shrubbery—just like Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet.

17th September, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Terribly sorry to make you turn around and come right back across the Channel, but I require your presence—at my wedding. I have seized the day, and the night too. Can you come and give me away in Amelia’s back garden on Saturday? Eben to be Best Man, Isola to be Maid of Honor (she is manufacturing a gown for the occasion), Kit to throw rose petals. Dawsey to be Groom.

Are you surprised? Probably not—but I am. I am in a constant state of surprise these days. Actually, now that I calculate, I’ve been betrothed only one full day, but it seems like my whole life has come into being in the last twenty-four hours. Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.

Is it unseemly to get married so quickly? I don’t want to wait—I want to begin at once. All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged—after all, what’s good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it’s a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot. Perhaps my next book will be about a fascinating married couple and all the things they learn about one another over time. Are you impressed by the beneficial effect of engagement on my writing?

Dawsey has just come down from the Big House and is demanding my immediate attention. His much-vaunted shyness has evaporated completely—I think it was a ploy to arouse my sympathies.

Love,

Juliet

P.S. I ran into Adelaide Addison in St. Peter Port today. By way of congratulation, she said “I hear you and that pig-farmer are going to regularize your connection. Praise the Lord!”