The Soldier’s Wife

CHAPTER 7

I put together a meal with some food that hasn’t been touched by the burglars—a loaf of bread I forgot to throw out, a tin of corned beef. After we’ve eaten, I walk up to Les Ruettes to bring Evelyn back home. Millie comes with me. The rain has stopped and the sky is starting to clear. There are still great banks of cloud that look as solid as far countries, but now between the heaps of cloud, there are depths and reaches of blue. The hedgebanks are drenched, and the air is rich with musky, polleny scents—wild garlic, wet earth, violets. I breathe in gratefully. The foxgloves brush against us like hands, and there are pale briar roses, each holding a drop of clear water. The little ferns that love the damp flicker like green tongues of flame.

As we near the door of Les Ruettes, Alphonse slinks out from behind a glasshouse and circles around Millie, arching, purring resonantly.

Frank le Brocq comes to the door, a cigarette clamped between his lips. He’s wearing his check cloth cap; he takes it off when he sees me. A splinter of amusement floats in his eye.

‘We saw you come back. Cold feet?’ he says.

‘Yes. You could put it like that.’

I feel awkward. There’s something shameful about returning like this: it suddenly feels like an act of cowardice—not a reasoned decision, more a failure of nerve.

He takes a long drag on his cigarette and looks me up and down, in his appraising way that I don’t quite like.

‘That cat of yours wouldn’t settle,’ he tells me. ‘He kept going back to your house. Cats are like that, cats are territorial creatures. A bit like you lot.’ He grins.

Millie picks up Alphonse and wraps her arms around him.

‘Did you miss me?’ she says.

The cat rubs his head extravagantly against her.

‘Look, Mummy, look, he knows what I’m saying. He really missed me,’ she says.

Frank stands aside, and we go into the kitchen. Angie is kneading dough on her table; she greets us with a smile. Evelyn is on the settle where I left her, still sitting upright on the edge of the seat.

‘Vivienne.’ There’s a puzzled look in Evelyn’s face, as though her life is a knotted tangle she can’t begin to undo. ‘Well, you didn’t take long.’

‘We’re taking you back home,’ I say. ‘We changed our minds. We didn’t go in the boat.’

‘Least said, soonest mended,’ she says.

I feel a little surge of unease. She often gives me this feeling now—that the things she say sound normal, yet somehow they don’t quite make sense.

I turn to Angie.

‘Thank you so much …’

‘Don’t you worry, Vivienne. I was more than glad to help out … Let’s hope you made the right decision,’ she adds, a little doubtfully.

‘Well, time will tell,’ I say vaguely; then think that I owe her some explanation, after everything that she has done for me. ‘The thing is—it was such a little boat. And it’s such a long way …’

We walk back slowly down the lane. I take Evelyn’s arm to help her. A bird calls with a sound like a pot being scraped, and the moist air is cool on our skin. Millie tries to carry Alphonse, but the cat wriggles down and scampers off through the fields, heading for Le Colombier. Millie slips her hand in mine.

‘I’m glad we came back home,’ she says, her voice fat with contentment. ‘I didn’t really want to go. It’s nice here, isn’t it, Mummy?’

‘Yes, sweetheart.’

But even as I say it, a little tremor goes through me. Above us the clouds retreat, regroup, creating new shapes in the sky—new countries, new islands.

CHAPTER 8

On Friday I cycle up to town.

The streets are empty because so many people have gone, and some of the shops are boarded up, but otherwise St Peter Port feels much the same as always, calm and orderly in the warm June sunshine—as though the panic of the evacuation hadn’t happened at all. I buy a lamb joint, and stock up on coffee and cigarettes and tea. Such luxuries may become rather harder to buy—when they come, when it happens.

I come to Martel’s watch and clock shop, where Blanche’s friend, Celeste, has been working since she left school. I glance in through the window, wondering whether she’s gone, and she sees me and waves vigorously, her glossy dark curls dancing. I feel so happy for Blanche because her friend will still be here. In Grand Pollet, I pass the music shop that belonged to Nathan Isaacs; this is one of the shuttered shops. Nathan left a while ago, before the fall of France, saying that he could see which way the wind was blowing, a rueful smile on his clever, diffident face—talking about it so lightly. I miss him. We grew friendly because of the shop, where I’d often go to buy music. He was a good musician, a violinist, and sometimes I’d play duets with him at one of his music evenings, up at Acacia Villa, his tall, graceful house on the hill.

I go to the library, where I choose a new Elizabeth Goudge, and then on to the haberdasher’s to buy more wool for Evelyn. I can’t get her balaclavas and gloves to the Forces any more, but at least the knitting keeps her occupied. And I stop off at Boots on the High Street to buy a first lipstick for Blanche—wanting to give her a bit of glamour, something to make her happier, now I have snatched her dream of London from her.

I like chemists’ shops. I walk slowly down the aisle, past opulent silver compacts that I could never afford, moving through drifts of perfume-lavender water, and Devon Violets talcum powder, and all the lavish gorgeousness of Chanel No. 5.

The Yardley counter is right at the back of the shop. From here the land slopes steeply, and through the high arched windows you look down over russet-tiled roofs and out across the harbour; you can see the little boats bobbing, and all the glimmery blue dazzle of the sky and sea. Seagulls wheel and cry in the clear air. The day is mellowing now towards evening, the sunlight turning gold. The tomato lorries are parked in a line on the pier—there are still boats to take the crop to the mainland, though I don’t suppose this will happen for many more days. Way above the harbour, in the splendour of the sky, I notice two tiny black specks—a couple of planes that are flying there, very high, very far: they look innocuous as birds. I can’t tell if the planes are theirs or ours. Frank le Brocq would be able to tell, even from such a distance—he says he often sees German reconnaissance planes. It’s a good thing, really, that they fly over, he says: they’ll be able to tell that we’re defenceless—that there are no army camps or naval ships or anti-aircraft guns here. That we’re really not worth bothering with.

I stare at all the Yardley lipsticks, not knowing which colour to choose—maybe the rose-pink, maybe the peach. The simplest choices seem hard now, after all my hesitation about whether or not we should leave—as though I have somehow lost faith in my power to decide. In the end I choose the coral because it will match Blanche’s taffeta dress. Then I head back down the High Street: I have left my bike against a wall in the lower part of the road.

‘Vivienne! It is you!’ I feel a warm hand on my arm. ‘I called you but you didn’t turn. You looked like you were off in a dream …’

I spin around. It’s Gwen.

She smiles, a little triumphant—as though I am something she has achieved. Her gaze—chestnut-brown, vivid, shining—rests on my face. Her frock has a pattern of polka dots and little scarlet flowers. It’s so good to see her I’d like to put my arms around her.

‘I didn’t know if you’d gone or not,’ she says. ‘It was all so sudden, wasn’t it? Having to choose?’ She dumps her heavy bag of shopping down on the pavement, rubs a sore shoulder. ‘So you’ve decided to stick it out?’

I nod.

‘Cold feet, at the last moment,’ I tell her. ‘A bit pathetic really. We actually got to the pier. Then we went back home, and someone had broken in and stolen some of our things …’

She shakes her head wearily.

‘It happened to a lot of people,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t think it of islanders, would you?’

‘It was horrible,’ I say.

She puts her hand on my arm again.

‘I’m so glad, though, Vivienne,’ she tells me. ‘I’m just so glad you’re still here.’

Her warmth is so welcome.

‘Look—are you in a rush?’ she says.

‘Not at all.’

‘We’ll have tea, then?’

‘I’d love to.’

We have a favourite tea shop—Mrs du Barry’s on the High Street. We take the table we always choose—the table right at the back that has a wide view over the harbour. There’s a crisp starched tablecloth, and marigolds in a glass vase; the marigolds have a thin, peppery scent. The shop is almost empty, except for an elderly couple talking in slow, hushed voices, and a woman with eyes smudged with tiredness and a baby in her arms. As she sips her tea, the woman rests her cheek against the baby’s head. I feel a surge of nostalgia, remembering the sensation of a baby’s head against you—how fragile it feels where the bones haven’t fused, and how hot and scented and sweet.

‘Gwen—how did you decide?’ I ask.

‘Ernie wouldn’t leave,’ she tells me. Gwen and Ernie live at Elm Tree Farm, in Torteval; they have a big granite farmhouse and a lot of fertile land. ‘Not after all those years of work. “I’m damned if I’ll let them take it all away from me,” he said.’

‘Well, good for him …’

Her bright face seems to cloud over. She pushes back her hair. A haze of anxiety hangs about her.

‘How can you ever know what the right thing is? How can you ever know?’ she says.

‘You can’t. I keep wondering too. Whether I’ve made an awful mistake …’

‘Johnnie can’t bear it, of course, being stuck here, kicking his heels. Poor kid. He simply can’t bear that he was too young to join up.’

‘I can imagine that. How he would feel that …’

I think of her younger son, Johnnie—how impulsive he is, how he’d yearn for action. I’ve always been fond of Johnnie, with his exuberance, his wild brown hair, his restless, clever hands. He and Blanche would play together a lot when they were small—making mud pies and flower soup, or building dens in the Blancs Bois—until at seven or eight, as children will, they went their separate ways. Then I taught him piano for a while, though he often forgot to bring the right music, and scarcely practised at all. Until he discovered a talent for ragtime, which I could never play. He had the rhythm in him, and there was no stopping him.

‘But I wasn’t going to let Johnnie go to England on his own,’ says Gwen. ‘Not after … Well …’

She doesn’t finish her sentence. Her eyes glitter with unshed tears: the stricken look crosses her face. Brian, her elder son, was lost at Trondheim, in the Norwegian campaign. After it happened, I would panic sometimes when I was with her; afraid of the gaps in our conversations, as though they were cliffs you could fall from, afraid of saying his name. Once I told her: I’m so frightened of reminding you, I don’t want to make you upset … And she said, Vivienne, it’s not as though you’re reminding me of something I’ve forgotten. It’s not as though I don’t think of him every moment of every day. The only time I don’t think of him is when I’m fast asleep—then every morning I wake up and I have to learn it again. So let’s just get on with it …

‘I want to keep Johnnie close,’ she says now.

I put my hand on her wrist.

‘Of course you do,’ I say. ‘Of course you wouldn’t want him to go …’

Perhaps I’m lucky that both my children are girls. When I was younger, I felt I’d love to have a son, as well; but war changes everything. Even the things you hope for.

Mrs du Barry brings our tea. The quilted tea cosy is shaped like a thatched cottage, and the milk jug has a crochet cover held in place by beads. There are cakes on a silver cake stand—Battenberg, cream slices, luxurious chocolate eclairs. I take a slice of Battenberg. We sip our tea and eat our cake, and watch as the sun sinks down in the sky and spreads its gold on the sea.

Gwen sighs.

‘Johnnie’s such a worry—what he might get up to,’ she says. ‘He’s been a bit wild since it happened. It’s not really anything he’s done—just what I feel he could do …’

‘It’s such a short time,’ I tell her.

‘He worshipped his brother,’ she says.

‘Yes.’

I remember Brian’s memorial service—how Johnnie didn’t cry; how he stood to attention, his face white as wax, his body so rigid, controlled: making me think of a cello string stretched too tight, that might suddenly break. He troubled me. I know just why Gwen worries so about him.

‘He longs to do what Brian did,’ she tells me. ‘He wears Brian’s army jumper. And he’s got a box of Brian’s things—his binoculars, and his shotgun that he used for shooting rabbits, and his famous collection of Dinky cars that he kept from when he was small. The box is Johnnie’s most precious possession; he keeps it under his bed …’

I feel a tug of sadness, for Johnnie.

We’re quiet for a moment. It’s getting late, and Mrs du Barry hangs the Closed sign on her door. My hands are sticky with marzipan from the Battenberg cake, and I wipe them on my handkerchief. The spicy scent of the marigolds is all around us.

And then I ask the question that looms at the front of my mind—vivid as neon, inescapable.

‘Gwen. What will happen?’

She leans a little towards me.

‘They’ll overlook us,’ she says, too definitely. ‘Don’t you think? Like in the Great War.’

‘Do you really think so?’

‘Nobody bothered with us, during the Great War,’ she says.

‘That’s true enough. But that was then …’

‘I mean, what difference do we make to anything? What use could these little islands possibly be to Hitler?’ There’s a note of pleading in her voice: perhaps it’s herself as much as me that she’s trying to persuade. ‘Maybe he won’t think of us. That’s what I hope, anyway. You’ve got to hope, haven’t you?’

But her hand holding the teacup is shaking very slightly, so the tea shivers all across its surface.

She clears her throat, which seems suddenly thick.

‘Anyway, Vivienne—tell me more about all of you,’ she says. Moving on to safer things.

‘Blanche is unhappy,’ I tell her. ‘She terribly wanted to go.’

‘Well, she would, of course,’ says Gwen. ‘There isn’t much here for young people, you can see how she’d long for London. And Millie?’

‘She’s being ever so brave, though she doesn’t really understand.’

‘She’s a poppet,’ says Gwen.

‘And Evelyn—well, I’m not sure she’s quite right in her mind any more. Half the time she seems to forget that Eugene joined up …’ I see the shadow that rapidly moves across Gwen’s face, at the mention of Eugene, then fades away just as quickly. I wish I hadn’t eaten the Battenberg cake: the sweetness of the marzipan is making me feel slightly sick. ‘Sometimes she asks for him,’ I tell her, ‘as though he’s still at home.’

‘Poor Vivienne. Your mother-in-law was never exactly the easiest of people,’ says Gwen carefully. ‘You’ve certainly got your hands full.’

CHAPTER 9

We say goodbye. Gwen leaves, and I go to the Ladies. I wash the marzipan from my hands, push my brush through my hair, take out my compact to powder my face. My hands have a clean, astringent smell from Mrs du Barry’s carbolic soap. Then I go back to the table to pick up my cardigan that I left there.

All the china on the tables begins to rattle violently. There’s a roaring noise from outside; at first, I can’t work out what it can be, then I think it must be a plane—yet the sound is too sudden, too loud, too near, for a plane. Fear surges through me: if this is a plane, it will crash on the town. Everyone rushes to the window at the back of the shop, which looks out over the harbour. The air seems too thin, so it’s hard to breathe.

‘No no no no,’ says Mrs du Barry. She’s standing close to me; she clutches my arm.

We see the three planes that are flying over, swooping down over the harbour: we see the bombs falling, shining, catching the sun as they fall. They seem to come down so slowly. And then the crump of the impact, the looming dust, the flame—everything breaking, broken, fires leaping up, loose tyres and oil drums flung high in the air by the blast. I hear the ferocious rattle of guns. I think, stupidly, that at least there are soldiers here after all, the soldiers haven’t left us. Then I realise that the guns I hear are German guns, in the planes. They’re machine-gunning the men, the lorries: there’s a ripping sound, a flare of fire, as a petrol tank explodes. The men on the pier are scattered, running, crumpling like straw men, thrown down.

Fear floods me. My whole body is trembling. I think of my children. Will the planes fly all over the island, will they bomb my children? And Gwen—where is Gwen? How much time did she have? Could Gwen have got away?

I stand there, shaking. Someone drags me under a table. We are all under the tables now—the elderly couple, Mrs du Barry, the mother clutching her child. Someone is saying Oh God oh God oh God. There’s a shattering sound as the window blows in, shards of glass all around us in a dangerous, glittering shower. Somebody screams: it might be me, I don’t know. We crouch there, wait for the end, for the bomb that will surely land on us.

Suddenly, amid the clamour, the air-raid siren goes off.

‘About time,’ mutters Mrs du Barry beside me. ‘About bloody time.’ I hear the sob in her voice. Her fingers dig into my arm.

The elderly woman is gasping now, as though she has no breath, her husband holding her helplessly, like someone holding onto water, as though she might slip from his grasp. The young mother presses her baby tight to her chest. The sounds from the harbour assault us, the boom and crash of falling bombs, the growl and scream of plane engines, the terrible rattle of guns. More windows shatter around us. It goes on and on, it seems to last for ever, an eternity of noise and splintering glass and fear.

And then at last the sound of the planes seems to fade, receding from us. I find that I am counting, like you do in a storm—waiting for the thunderclap: expecting them to circle back, more bombs to fall. But there’s nothing.

A silence spreads around us. The tiniest sound is suddenly loud. I hear a splash of tea that spills from a table onto the floor: there’s nothing but the drip drip of tea and the pounding of blood in my ears. Within the silence, the baby starts wailing, as though this sudden stillness appals him more than the noise.

I look down, see that a piece of glass is stuck in my hand. I pull it out. My blood flows freely. I don’t feel any pain.

I crawl out from under the table, leaving the other people. Not thinking at all, just moving. I get to my feet and run out of the door and down the High Street and through the arch to the covered steps that take you down to the pier. The steps are dark and smell of fish and the damp stone is slippery under my feet. I have only one thought—to look for Gwen, to see if Gwen is alive.

At the bottom of the steps I come out into sunlight again, on the Esplanade that runs along the harbour past the pier. All the horror of it slams into me. Everything is on fire before me, I can feel the heat of it here, but the fire seems unreal, as though it couldn’t burn me. There are bodies everywhere, lying strangely, arms and legs reaching out, as though they were flung from a great height. The lorries are all burning. Tomato juice and blood run together over the stones, and there is grey smoke everywhere—smoke from the fires, and a smoke of dust—and smells of burning and blood, and a terrible rich charred smell that I know must be burning flesh. The body of a man has dropped out of the cab of his flaming lorry—it’s an ugly, broken, blackened thing. I hear a cry, and it chills me—it’s like an animal blind with anguish, not a human sound. I rub my eyes, which are stinging, as though the sight of the fire is hurting them. Everything is so bright, too bright—the red, the flames, the blood that streams on the stones.

I look up and down the Esplanade, but I can’t see Gwen, I don’t think Gwen can have been here. I’m praying she got away in time. I walk out onto the pier. Heat sears at my skin as I pass a smouldering lorry. My foot slips in a pool of blood. I have some vague thought that perhaps I could help—I can do a splint, a neat bandage, I know a little First Aid. Yet even as I think this, I know how pointless, how useless, it is—that everything here is utterly beyond me.

I come to a man who is lying on the pier beside his lorry. His face is turned away, but something draws my eye—the check cloth cap on the ground beside him. There’s some significance to this, but my thoughts are so heavy and slow.

‘Oh God,’ I say then, out loud. ‘Frank. Oh God.’

It’s Frank le Brocq.

I kneel beside him. I can see his face now. At first I think he must be dead already. But then his eyelids flicker. I cradle his head in my hands.

‘Frank. It’s Vivienne. Frank, it’s all right, I’m here …’

But I know it is not all right. The one thing I know is that he cannot live with such wounds—the blood that seeps from the side of his head, the blood that slides out of his mouth. I feel a heavy, passive helplessness: so any gesture, any word, takes all the strength I have.