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‘Evelyn, if we’re going, it has to be today. They’re sending a boat from Weymouth. But after today there may not be any more boats. It’s too dangerous.’
‘It’s not very helpful of them, is it? To rush us all like this? They have no consideration, Vivienne.’
‘The soldiers have left,’ I tell her. ‘There’s no one here to defend us …’
I don’t say the rest of the sentence: And the Germans could walk straight in.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Oh.’ And then, with a light coming suddenly into her face, the look of one who has found the answer: ‘Eugene should be here,’ she says.
‘Eugene’s away fighting, remember?’ I say, as gently as I can. ‘He went to join the army. He’s being very brave.’
She shakes her head.
‘I wish he were here. Eugene would know what to do.’
I put my hand on her wrist, in a gesture of comfort that’s empty, utterly futile—because what solace can I offer her when the son she adores has gone? I feel how frail she is, her limbs thin and brittle as twigs. I don’t say anything.
I make the girls their breakfast toast. I’m looking around me, aware of all the detail of my kitchen—the tea-towels drying in front of the stove, the jars of raisins and flour. On the wall there’s a print by Margaret Tarrant, a Christening present from Evelyn for Blanche—the Christ Child in his crib, with angels all around. It’s a little sentimental, yet I like it, for the still reverence of the angels, and the wonderful soft colour of their tall fretted wings that are the exact smoky blue of rosemary flowers. I wonder if I will ever see these things again—and if I do, what our life will be like, in that unguessable future. I say a quick prayer to the angels.
The girls come down to the kitchen, bleary, smelling of warm bedclothes, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Alphonse sidles up to Millie and walks in small circles round her. She bends down to stroke him, the morning sun shining on her dark silk hair, so you can see all the reddish colours in it.
‘Right, girls. We’re going,’ I tell them. ‘We’ll get the boat today. It’ll take us to Weymouth and from there we’ll take the train to London and stay with Auntie Iris. I put our names on the list last night.’
Blanche’s face is like a light switched on.
‘Yes.’ There’s a thrill in her voice. ‘But you could have decided earlier, Mum, then I could have washed my hair.’
‘You’ll have to pack quickly,’ I tell them. ‘As soon as you’ve finished breakfast. You’ll need underwear and your toothbrushes, and all the clothes you can fit in.’
I’ve put out a carpet bag for Millie, and for Blanche a little leather suitcase that was Eugene’s. Blanche looks at the suitcase, appalled.
‘Mum, you’re joking.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘But how can I possibly get everything in there?’
London to Blanche is glamour—I know that. We went to stay with Iris for a holiday once—when Blanche was six, four years before Millie was born. Ever since that holiday, London has been a promised land to her, a dream of how life could be, ought to be. Once it was a dream of Trafalgar Square, with its dazzling fountains and pigeons, of the Tower of London, of seeing the chimps’ tea-party at the zoo. But now that she’s almost a woman, it’s a dream of men in uniform—resolute, square-jawed, masterful—and tea in the Dorchester tea-room under a glittery chandelier: a dream of cakes and flirtation, with maybe a swing band playing Anything Goes. She wants to take all her very best things, her nylons, her coral taffeta frock, her very first pair of high heels that I bought for her fourteenth birthday, just before she left school. I understand, but I feel a flicker of impatience with her.
‘You’ll have to, Blanche. I’m sorry. There won’t be much room on the boat. Just put in as many clothes as you can. And you’ll need to wear your winter coats.’
‘But it’s hot, Mum.’
‘Just do your best,’ I say. ‘And, Blanche, when you’ve finished, you can give Millie a hand …’
‘No, she can’t. I can do it myself,’ says Millie.
She’s been drinking her breakfast mug of milk, and her mouth is rimmed with white. She bites languidly into her toast and honey.
‘Of course you can, sweetheart. You’re a big girl now,’ I tell her. ‘But Blanche will help you. Just be as quick as you can, both of you. If we’re going to go, it has to be today …’
I watch them for a moment, Blanche with her sherbet-fizz of excitement, Millie still fogged with sleep. We’ve come to the moment I’ve been dreading.
‘There’s one thing that’s very sad, though,’ I say. ‘We’ll have to take Alphonse to the vet’s.’
Millie is suddenly alert, the drowsiness all gone from her. Her eyes harden. She gives me a wary, suspicious look.
‘But there’s nothing wrong with him,’ she says.
‘No. But I’m afraid he needs to be put to sleep.’
‘What d’you mean, put to sleep?’ says Millie. There’s an edge of threat in her voice.
‘We have to have him put down,’ I say.
‘No, we don’t,’ she says. Her face blazes bright with anger.
‘Millie, we have to. Alphonse can’t come with us. And we can’t just leave him here.’
‘No. You’re a murderer, Mummy. I hate you.’ Her voice is shrill with outrage.
‘We can’t take him, Millie. You know we can’t. We can’t take a cat on the boat. Nobody will. Everyone’s taking their cats and dogs to the vet. Everyone. Mrs Fitzpatrick from church was taking their terrier yesterday. She told me. It was terribly sad, she said, but it had to be done …’
‘Then they’re all murderers,’ she says. ‘I hate them.’ Her small face is dark as thunderclouds. Her eyes spark. She snatches Alphonse up in her arms. The cat struggles against her.
‘Millie. He can’t come with us.’
‘He could live with someone else, then, Mummy. It isn’t his fault. He doesn’t want to die. I won’t let him. Alphonse didn’t ask to be born now. This war is stupid,’ she says.
Suddenly, it’s impossible. All my breath rushes out in a sigh. I can’t bear to distress her like this.
‘Look—I’ll speak to Mrs le Brocq,’ I say wearily, defeated. It’s as though the room breathes out as well, when I say that. But I know what Evelyn would say—the thing she’s said so often before: You’re too soft with those girls, Vivienne … ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I tell them. ‘Just get yourselves packed up and ready to leave.’
CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_471504e8-a848-537c-84b1-a3be895dab99)
I walk with Evelyn to Angie’s house, up one of the narrow lanes that run the length and breadth of Guernsey, their labyrinthine routes scarcely changed since the Middle Ages. High, wet hedgebanks press in on either side of the lane; red valerian grows there, and toadflax, and slender, elegant foxgloves, their petals of a flimsy, washed-out purple, as though they’ve been soaked too long in water. I have Alphonse in a basket, and a bag of Evelyn’s clothes.
The climb exhausts Evelyn. We stop at the bend in the lane, where there’s a stone cattle-trough, and I seat her on the rim of the trough to catch her breath for a moment. Sunlight splashes through leaves onto the surface of the water, making patterns that hide whatever lies in its depths.
‘Is it much further, Vivienne?’ she asks me, as a child might.
‘No. Not much further.’
We come to the stand of thorn trees, turn in at the track to Les Ruettes. It’s a solid whitewashed farmhouse that’s been here for hundreds of years. There’s an elder tree by the door: islanders used to plant elder as a protection against evil, lest a witch fly into the dairy and the butter wouldn’t form. Behind the house are the glasshouses where Frank le Brocq grows his tomatoes. Chickens scratch in the dirt; their bubbling chatter is all about us. Alphonse is frenzied at the sight and smell of the chickens, writhing and mewing in his basket. I knock at the door.
Angie answers. She has a headscarf over her curlers, a cigarette in her hand. She sees us both there, and a gleam of understanding comes in her eyes: she knows I have made my decision. Her smile is warm and wide and softens the lines in her face.
‘So. You’ve made your mind up, Vivienne.’
‘Yes.’
I’m so grateful to Angie, for helping me out yet again. She’s always been so good to me—she makes my marmalade, smocks Millie’s dresses, ices my Christmas cake—and I know she’ll be welcoming to Evelyn. There’s such generosity in her.
She puts out a hand to Evelyn.
‘Come in, then, Mrs de la Mare,’ she says. ‘We’ll take good care of you, I promise.’
We enter the cool dark of her kitchen. Angie takes Evelyn to the settle by the big open hearth. Evelyn sits on the edge of the seat—tentative, as though she fears it won’t quite take all her weight, her hands precisely folded.
I put her bag on the floor. A chicken scuttles in and starts to peck at the bag. I keep tight hold of Alphonse’s basket.
‘I don’t know how to thank you, Angie,’ I say.
She shakes her head a little.
‘It’s the least I could do. And never doubt that you’re doing the right thing, Vivienne. With those two young daughters of yours, you don’t know what might happen.’ Then, lowering her voice a little, ‘When they come,’ she says.
‘No. Well …’
She leans close to whisper to me. Her skin is thickened by sunlight and brown as a ripening nut. I feel her warm nicotine-scented breath on my cheek.
‘I’ve heard such terrible things,’ she says. ‘I’ve heard that they crucify girls. They rape them and crucify them.’
‘Goodness,’ I say.
A thrill of horror goes through me. But I tell myself that this is probably just a story. Angie will believe anything. She loves to tell of witchcraft, hauntings, curses: she says that hair will grow much quicker if cut when the moon is waxing, that seagulls gathering at a seafarer’s house may presage a death … Anyway, I ask myself, how could such atrocities happen here, amid the friendly scratching of chickens, the scent of ripening tomatoes, the summer wind caressing the leaves—in this peaceful orderly place? It’s beyond imagining.
Maybe Angie sees the doubt in my eyes.
‘Trust me, Vivienne. You’re right to want to get those girls of yours away. She’s right about that, isn’t she, Frank?’ I turn. Frank, her husband, is standing in the doorway to the hall, half dressed, his shirt undone and hanging loose. I can see the russet blur of hair on his chest. I’m never quite sure if I like him. He’s a big man, and a drinker. Sometimes she has black eyes, and I wonder if it’s his fists.
He nods in response to her question.
‘We were saying that only last night,’ he says. ‘That you’d want to keep an eye on your girls, if you’d decided to stay. You’d want to watch your Blanche. She’s looking quite womanly now. I don’t like to think what might happen—if she was still here when they came.’
He’s looked at Blanche, noticed her—noticed her body changing. I don’t like this.
‘It would be a worry,’ I say vaguely.
He steps into the kitchen, buttoning up his shirt.
‘Vivienne, look, I was thinking. If it would help, I could give you a lift to the boat.’
I feel an immediate surge of gratitude for his kindness. This will make everything more straightforward. I’m ashamed of my ungracious thought.
‘Thank you so much, that would be so helpful,’ I say.
‘My pleasure.’
He tucks in his shirt. A faint sour smell of sweat comes off him.
‘The other thing is …’ I say, and stop. I’m embarrassed to be asking more: they’re already doing so much. ‘I was wondering if you could maybe look after Alphonse? I ought to have had him put down, but Millie was distraught.’
‘Bless her tender heart. Of course she would be,’ says Angie. ‘Of course we’ll take poor Alphonse in. He’ll be company for Evelyn, with all of her family gone.’
‘Thank you so much. You’re a saint, Angie. Well, I’d better be off …’
I go to kiss Evelyn.
‘You look after yourself,’ I say.
‘And you, Vivienne,’ she says, rather formally. She’s sitting there so stiffly, as if she has to concentrate or she might fall apart. ‘Give my love to the girls.’ As though she didn’t say goodbye to them just before we left. As though she hasn’t seen them for weeks.
I pat her hand, and thank Angie again, and hurry back down the hill. I can’t help thinking about what she said, about what the Germans could do. I tell myself she’s wrong—that it’s just a salacious story. In the Great War we heard that the Germans were cutting the hands off babies, but it proved to be just a terrible rumour.
Yet the pictures are there in my mind and I can’t push them away.
CHAPTER 5 (#ulink_4efd8e95-2022-5ad6-a1be-197cfb7fb727)
The streets of St Peter Port are quiet. Some of the shops are boarded up, and there’s a lot of litter lying and shifting slightly in little eddies of air. The sky has clouded over, so it has a smudged, bleary look, like window-glass that needs cleaning. It’s a grey, dirty, rather disconsolate day.
Frank drops us at the harbour, wishing us luck.
We see at once why the streets were empty: all the people are here. There’s already a very long queue of silent, anxious islanders, snaking back from the pier and all along the Esplanade. We go to a desk set up on the pavement, where a flustered woman ticks off our names on a list. She has a pink, mottled face, and disordered hair that she keeps distractedly pushing out of her eyes.
We join the queue. People are sweating in woollen coats too cumbersome to pack up: they take out their handkerchiefs, wipe the damp from their skin. On this clammy summer day, the winter colours of the coats look sombre, almost funereal. Some people don’t have suitcases, and have tied up their belongings in neat brown-paper parcels. A bus arrives, and children spill down the steps; most of them have labels carefully pinned to their coats. They have a lost, dazed look in their eyes. Older children officiously clutch at younger brothers and sisters, responsibility weighing on them, clasping at a coat collar or the cuff of a sleeve.
Millie stares at the children. She frowns. She holds very tight to my hand.
Blanche is wearing her coral taffeta dress beneath her winter coat. She unbuttons her coat and runs her hand over her skirt, trying to smooth out the creases in the glossy fabric.
‘Oh, no, Mum,’ she says suddenly.
Her voice is full of drama; my heart pounds, hurting my chest.
‘What is it?’ I say sharply.
‘I think I’ve forgotten my Vaseline. My skin will get all chapped.’
I feel a little cross with her, that she frightened me like that.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘We’re all sure to have forgotten something.’
‘It does matter, Mum. It does.’
We stand there for what seems like a very long time. The queue is orderly, subdued: nobody talks very much. Seagulls scream in the empty air above us, and there are many boats at anchor; you can hear the nervous slap and jostle of water round their hulls. The sun comes briefly out from the cloud, throwing light at everything, then rapidly snatching it back; where the sun isn’t shining on it, the sea looks black and unspeakably cold. I can’t see the boat that will take us to Weymouth—it must be moored out of sight. The only vessel that’s moored to this part of the pier is quite a small boat, not much bigger than the fishermen use, tied up where stone steps lead down from the pier to the sea. I wonder vaguely who it belongs to.
More and more people come, with their coats, their suitcases, their bulging parcels of precious belongings: with the fear that seems to seep like sweat from their pores.
