The Soldier’s Wife
But from our very first night together, it wasn’t as I’d imagined. I didn’t feel the way I knew I was meant to feel. I thought it must be my fault—that there was something wrong with me, something missing. Or, to put it more precisely, something misplaced. Because I knew I could feel these things—just not in bed with Eugene. I’d see a man—a stranger—loosen his tie, unbutton his cuffs, push up the sleeves of his shirt, and my stomach would tighten, I’d feel the thrill go through me. Or I’d dream a dream in which a man who stood behind me was brushing my hair, and I’d lean against him and feel the warmth of him pressing into my back, and I’d wake in a haze of longing.
Maybe he felt something similar—that sense of something missing. Because we made love only rarely, and, once I was pregnant with Millie, never again. We never talked about it—well, how could you possibly talk about such a thing? Slowly, insidiously, with a little shake of the heart, I became aware that there were rumours. Eugene loved amateur dramatics, and he joined a society that rehearsed in St Peter Port: he had a pleasant, eloquent voice, he loved to play a role. There was a woman there—Monica Charles—who sometimes played opposite him. Red hair, an abundant cleavage, pointy lacquered nails; and the plush velvet scent of Shalimar, which she always wore. She was rather outspoken—the sort of woman who seems to use up all the air in the room: she always made me feel somehow small and faded.
Gwen said once—carefully, with a slight anxious frown, not quite looking at me: ‘Does it worry you—Eugene being so friendly with Monica Charles?’
My heart lurched. ‘No. Why should it?’
‘I just wondered,’ she said.
‘He loves the theatre, he’s passionate about it,’ I said. Putting the words down with such care, like little stones, between us. ‘It’s good that he has something to do that he enjoys so much …’
‘You’re very strong—I admire you,’ said Gwen, and moved the conversation on. I closed my mind to what she’d said, careful never to touch on that conversation again—as though her words were sharp things that could cut me.
There was an evening when I took the girls to see him backstage. He’d been starring in Private Lives opposite Monica Charles. Millie was two; she was tired out after the performance, and heavy and warm in my arms. I knocked, he didn’t answer, I pushed at the door. The scent of Shalimar brushed against me, darkly velvet, insidious. Eugene was there with Monica Charles. She was standing with one foot on a chair, her skirt bunched up round her thighs: he was easing down her stocking, very slowly. There was a sensuousness in the caressing movement of his hand that was entirely unfamiliar to me. They looked up, saw me, moved apart. I saw the shock—then all the excuses, forming, hardening, in his eyes. I didn’t stay to hear them. Blanche was behind me, Millie was dozing. ‘He isn’t here,’ I said. ‘We must have missed him.’ I bundled the girls away, I don’t think they saw anything.
We never talked about it, just carried on as we were. But something closed in me then, irrevocable as the sound of the dressing-room door that I’d slammed shut behind me. Something was over for me.
Sometimes I’ve wondered about it—this thing that was so lacking in my marriage—this part of me that it seemed could never be expressed, yet could be stirred up so suddenly, randomly almost, by a dream or a glance at a stranger, or a stranger glancing at me.
I remember a moment from long before, from when I first knew Eugene, when I was still in London. There was a man who looked at me as I walked along the Embankment by the Thames—who turned around to look at me. It wasn’t long before the wedding—I was on my way to meet Iris at the Lyons Corner House in Tottenham Court Road. She was going to be the maid of honour at my wedding, and I wanted to show her some fabric samples for her dress. I was wearing a neat navy suit, my high-heeled strappy suede shoes, my best silk stockings, the seams exact, a hat in dusty-pink felt with a petersham ribbon around it. I was a little late for our meeting—probably off in a dream as usual, perhaps with a line of poetry running through my mind—and I must have been flushed from walking in the chill autumn air. The man was older than me, and tall, with a rather worn, lived-in face. He had a serious look, no smile: a look that required something of me, a look beyond approbation or flattery. His glance felt as real to me as the touch of a hand. I felt the heat go through me, the bright thread of sensation passing down through my body, and all around the brown leaves fluttering, falling, the shining river surging: everything fluid, dancing.
I still sometimes think of that moment. If he had asked, I’d have gone with him.
CHAPTER 13
Thursday. I go up the hill to see Angie. I’m wearing one of my two best dresses—the everyday dress that I’d normally wear isn’t fit to be seen. It’s the one I wore on the day of the bombing, and I’ve soaked it again and again, but I still can’t get the bloodstains out.
This morning there’s no sign of the Germans at Les Vinaires: they must have gone to their work already. Though I can’t imagine what occupies them: it can’t be very strenuous, keeping our island under control. The weather lifts my spirits a little. It’s a bright, breezy day, the summer wind smelling of salt and earth and flowers. The hedgebanks are gorgeous with foxgloves and purple woundwort, and the stream that runs beside the lane is overgrown with green harts’ tongue fern, little cresses, mother-of-thousands. The thread of water that runs through the ferns squirms in the light like a live thing. Just for a moment I can dream that all is as it always was, that the Occupation hasn’t happened.
I’ve brought Angie a cake, and some blackberry jelly left from last year’s batch. Though I wonder if I’m bringing these gifts for myself as much as for her—feeling helpless, needing to feel I’m doing something for her. But she’s so grateful. ‘Oh, Vivienne, you’re always so thoughtful … And don’t you look lovely today? You’re a sight for sore eyes in that dress,’ she says.
‘Oh. Thanks, Angie.’
I smooth down the skirt. As she says, it’s pretty: the cotton has a pattern of flowers of many colours, yellow and cream and forget-me-not blue, like a blowing wildflower meadow. I don’t tell her why I’m wearing it.
She makes tea for us, in her big brown pottery teapot. Chickens scratch and bustle outside the open door.
‘So, have you seen much of them?’ she asks me.
I know she means the Germans.
‘They’ve requisitioned Connie’s place next door. There are four of them living there now,’ I tell her.
Angie snorts.
‘Requisitioned? They use all these fancy words, just to confuse us,’ she says. ‘Stole is what they really mean … But that’s rather close, isn’t it, Vivienne? You’ll be living in one another’s pockets. I wouldn’t like that at all.’
‘Well—at least they didn’t take our house …’
It’s her wash day. Her kitchen has a wholesome smell of laundry soap and damp linen. She’s nearly come to the end of her wash, she’s putting her clothes through the mangle before she hangs them out on the line. I see that she’s washing some shirts of Frank’s.
‘You wouldn’t mind if I just finished this off, Vivienne?’ she asks me.
‘No, of course not.’
She sees me noticing the shirts.
‘I thought I’d clear out his clothes,’ she says. ‘There’s plenty of wear left in them. I’m going to give them to Jack, my brother. He’s always grateful for hand-me-downs. They’re a bit hard-pressed, him and Mabel, with all those children to feed.’
I sip my tea, and watch as she moves the heavy arm of the mangle. Water flurries into the tray that catches the drips, in little spurts that fall in time with the rhythm of her movement.
‘So, Angie—are you …?’ The words are solid things in my mouth. ‘I mean—how is everything?’
She fixes me with her sad, steady gaze.
‘Not so good, to be honest, Vivienne,’ she tells me, very matter-of-fact. ‘But I know I shouldn’t complain. So many people have lost someone.’
‘That doesn’t make it any easier though,’ I say.
We are silent for a moment. From outside, you can hear the bubbling sound of chickens, and the bright whistle of a blackbird in the elder tree by her door.
Her appearance troubles me. Her face has an eroded look, as though years have passed since Frank died; as though those years like a river have washed over her and started to wear her away.
‘You must say if there’s anything I can do,’ I tell her, rather helplessly. ‘Just anything at all. I could bring you some meals, or something …’
She looks up at me. She pushes her hand through her hair, which is a wiry dark mass round her head—she hasn’t bothered with her curlers.
‘You’ve got a kind heart, Vivienne. And—seeing as you’ve offered—well, there is something,’ she says. She flushes, a little embarrassed, and I wonder why. ‘I need to choose some hymns. For his funeral tomorrow. The thing is—I don’t have much book-learning.’
She’s telling me she can’t read; it surprises me that I never knew this before.
‘Just tell me what to do,’ I say.
‘There’s a hymn book in the cabinet in the parlour,’ she says. ‘I wonder if you could bring it for me? Just while I finish my wash.’
I go to her parlour across the passage. When her house was built hundreds of years ago, this room would have served as the byre—people and animals all sleeping under one roof. It doesn’t feel homely like her kitchen. There’s a lumbering three-piece suite that’s shrouded in dust sheets, and the air is stale, with a thick sweet scent of lavender polish and damp: you can tell she doesn’t often open the windows in here. I find the hymn book, take it to her.
‘Is there a list of hymns in the book?’ she asks me.
I turn to the front, to the contents list.
‘Could you read through the first lines for me?’ she asks. ‘Just to remind me—so I can choose my favourites?’
I read the first lines of the hymns, with a little pause after each, while she considers it, all the time turning the handle, so the water from the mangled clothes splutters down into the tray. She listens scrupulously, with an intent expression.
At last we come to one that she likes.
‘There. Stop there, Vivienne. “Rocked in the cradle of the deep.”’ She rolls the phrase round her mouth, as though it is succulent, like some sun-warmed fruit. ‘I’ve always been fond of that one,’ she says.
‘Yes. Me too. Would Frank have liked it?’ I say.
She considers this.
‘Frank didn’t think all that much of religion, to be honest,’ she says. ‘He didn’t have much time for religious folk at all. God-botherers, he called them. Bible-thumpers. What he always said was—they’re just as bad as the rest of us … But I like a bit of religion myself. I think it helps you through.’
‘Yes, it can do,’ I say.
‘Are you a believer, Vivienne?’
The direct question unnerves me. I think how, right through my life, I’ve always liked going to church: how I adored the church Nativity play when I was a child—being an angel, with wings of frail muslin fixed to my fingers with curtain-rings, and a halo of Christmas tinsel; how I love the stained glass and the singing; how I can still find comfort in the familiar, resonant words; how I still pray sometimes. But I’m not sure how much I believe now.
‘Well, I suppose so,’ I say.
The drip of the water seems too loud in the stillness of Angie’s kitchen—louder than her voice, which is confiding, nicotine-stained.
‘When I was a child, my mother taught me a prayer,’ she says. ‘The prayer of the Breton fisherman, she said it was. It was the only prayer you ever needed, she said. Oh, Lord, help me, for Your ocean is so great, and my boat is so small. That’s a good prayer, isn’t it? Do you like that prayer, Vivienne?’
I think of waiting at the harbour. Of the little boat that I couldn’t trust, wouldn’t go in. Of the perilous, shining, unguessable immensity of the sea.
‘Yes, I like it,’ I say.
She nods.
‘I always thought that was a good prayer.’ A little rueful smile. ‘Except He didn’t help me, really, did He? He didn’t help me at all. Not this time.’
I leave her wringing out her dead husband’s clothes.
CHAPTER 14
I walk home through the summer morning, feeling so sad for Angie, thinking how lost she seems, how much she has aged. Wondering what I can do to help her. I’m not really looking around me: I’m in a trance, abstracted, like when I was a child and didn’t come when I was called, and Aunt Aggie would shake her head at me: ‘You’re such a dreamer, Vivienne. You’re always off in cloud cuckoo land. You think too much, you need to live in this world …’
If I hadn’t been so preoccupied, maybe I would have noticed the car in the lane: maybe I would have turned in time, and made for the track through the fields, and come home by the back way. But I’ve almost reached the car before I really take it in. It’s not an army vehicle, but a big black Bentley, drawn up on the verge outside the gate of Les Vinaires. I recognise the car. It used to belong to the Gouberts; they lived at Les Brehauts, an imposing whitewashed house near the church, before they went on the boat. The Germans must have requisitioned the car—which, as Angie says, means stealing.
The bonnet is open. One of the men from Les Vinaires is there, the scarred man I saw in the window, peering under the bonnet. I see him too late. I’d have done anything to avoid him, but I can’t turn back now: I know it would look like cowardice, and I’d hate him to think I was scared. He’s tinkering with the engine, muttering under his breath; then he opens the door, climbs in and tries the ignition—still with the bonnet up. The engine turns once, splutters, dies. He gets out, kicks a tyre, and swears, a rushed volley of German expletives. With a part of my mind, I’m thinking, Good—he may have stolen the car, but at least he can’t make it go … But I’m frightened too, and the prayer that Angie quoted to me slides into my mind. Oh, Lord, help me … I stand there, uncertain, apprehensive. I have to walk past him to reach the gate to my yard. I’m wishing more than ever that I’d thought to come back through the fields.
He turns, sees me. He has a shocked look: he stares, as if I am a ghost or apparition. As though I am the one who is out of place, who shouldn’t be there. The scented wind blows about us; it billows my skirt, then wraps it back against my body and pushes a strand of unruly hair into my mouth. My face feels hot, I know I’ve gone red, and I hate this. My heart stutters. I think he is going to shout at me or threaten me.
‘I apologise,’ he says. His English accent is very good, as good as Captain Richter’s. His face flushes slightly, almost as though he’s ashamed.
I don’t know what to say. I feel stupid, wrong-footed—clumsy, as though I use up too much space, as though my feet and hands are too big for my body.
‘That’s all right, it doesn’t matter,’ I say—the automatic response. Then I feel my hand fly to my mouth, as if to stop myself from talking.
He inclines his head in a little bow, and turns and goes into the house.
There’s a small scolding voice in my head: You’re letting the side down, you handled everything wrong. You shouldn’t have said it didn’t matter—you shouldn’t have spoken at all. Everything matters, nothing’s all right. It comes to me that this will be the shape of it, of our new life under the Occupation: always these troubling, frightening encounters—leaving you feeling that you’ve transgressed, and given something away.
Later, from my bedroom window, I watch as the scarred man comes out with one of the younger men, the one who has the kind of skin that peels in the sun. The young man has a tool box. He mends the car—deftly, with no fuss. The scarred man climbs in and turns the ignition: I hear the car start up. Through the car window, I can see the ironic smile on his face. The thought ripples in me that I know certain things about him. How he loathes machines, feels they oppose him, will never do his will: how this helplessness makes him angry. How he can lose himself in reading a book or a letter—frowning, running a finger absently over his brow. I know the look he has when he thinks that nobody is watching: how he will light a cigarette and leave it lying there, and roll up his shirtsleeves, doing these things unthinkingly, unaware of what he is doing. This knowledge makes me uneasy. It’s as though I am party to a secret that I never asked to be told.
Before the man drives off, he glances up at my bedroom window. Almost as if he knows I am looking, expects me to be looking. My heart thuds. I draw back into my room.
CHAPTER 15
August. The island has never been lovelier, all our gardens lavishly flowering, the sky high and bright, a fresh salt wind off the sea. The Belle de Crécy roses are blooming in my back garden, drowsy with bumble bees, the flowers opening helplessly wide and spreading out their perfume.
Before the war, on such beautiful days I’d have taken the girls to the beach—perhaps to Petit Bôt with a picnic, Millie perched in my bicycle basket. Blanche and I would cycle down the lane that leads to the shore, a lane that is shadowed and secret with branches that meet overhead, and musical with the singing of the streams that run down to the water there; and then suddenly coming out into light at the end of the lane, to the beach that is held between tall cliffs like a jewel cradled between cupped palms, to the sleek wet sand and the glistening jade-green clarity of the sea. Or perhaps we’d go to Roquaine Bay, where the soft sand is perfect for sandcastles, or up to the north, to Vazon, with its wide clean air, all its spaciousness, or to the Forts Roques, the savage black rocks that rise from the water like broken teeth. You could always find a sheltered spot there, a patch of sandy grass where you could spread a rug for a picnic. There’d be crickets, and rock pools with emerald crabs, and delicate tamarisk flowers.
But we can’t do these things any more. The beaches are forbidden to us. They’re mined by the Germans, in case our army comes to take our island back—something that none of us thinks will happen. Our island is a prison.
Every evening I turn on the BBC news on the wireless, listening with a weight of lead in my chest—the news is all terrible. The Luftwaffe are bombing English airfields. Churchill calls it the Battle of Britain: he says that the Battle of France is over, the Battle of Britain has begun. Evelyn listens with me, though I don’t know whether she understands—whether what she hears makes sense to her. Sometimes as she listens her face seems to melt and tears spill over her face. Her emotions are always so near—as though with the passing of the years some defence she had, some outer protective shell, has been scoured and worn away in her.
‘That’s terrible, Vivienne,’ she’ll say.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ I tell her. ‘But we mustn’t give up hope.’
I don’t know why I say that, when I have given up hope myself. Sometimes in the evening we hear the Nazi bombers coming over from France, and then their fighter planes going up from the Guernsey airfield, to escort the bombers over England. When we hear them, I think we all send up a quick, fervent prayer for our aircrews who will meet them—even those of us who’d never normally pray. Will they hold off the Luftwaffe? How long can they hold out against the invasion of England? How long before Hitler crosses the Channel? We know it must happen sooner or later. It’s only a matter of time.
Often I think about Eugene—wondering where his division is, praying that he’ll be kept safe. But at these times when I think of him, he feels almost a stranger to me. I tell myself it’s because he’s so far away now, and because we don’t receive any letters or any news of our men. Most women with husbands at war must feel this—the sense of distance, of separation. I don’t entirely acknowledge, even in the deeps of my mind, that it was like that when he lived here too. When he’d sit at the breakfast table fenced off behind his newspaper, as though I was nothing to him, as though I didn’t exist. When he’d say, We’re rehearsing tonight, don’t wait up, I could be home on the late side … Sounding so easy and casual, yet I’d sense the sharks darkly circling under the surfaces of his words. When he’d lie in our bed, turned away from me, never touching. I don’t admit that we were strangers long before he left.
Millie seems mostly unbothered by the Occupation, though sometimes I hear her reprimanding her ragdoll: ‘If you’re naughty, I’m going to tell the Nazis. And when I tell them they’ll come and bomb you to bits …’ But Blanche is still unhappy that we didn’t go on the boat. She spends too much time in her room. Mostly she listens to her Irving Berlin records, but one day I go in and she’s just sitting there, pulling at a fraying thread on her cuff: not doing anything, staring blankly in front of her. A sudden sadness tugs at me, grief for the things she is missing out on because of the Occupation—dressing up, being taken to dinner, being bought flowers—that whole gorgeous charade of courtship, the gilded time of a woman’s life. She worries me. Sometimes I almost wish she were little again, like Millie. When they’re small, it’s so simple: you only have to buy them a bun or some aniseed balls, and they’ll be content.
One day at the end of August, she does some shopping for me, at Mrs Sebire’s grocery shop, up on the main road near the airfield. She comes home bright-eyed, hair flying, a smile unfurling over her face: everything about her is smiling.
‘Mum. You’ll never guess what happened. Mrs Sebire wanted to know if I’d like a job in her shop!’
‘What did you say?’ I ask her.
‘Yes. I said yes, of course. That’s all right, isn’t it? She was really pleased. Since her daughter left on the boat, she said it’s been a struggle, and she’s sure I’ll be good at the job.’
‘That’s wonderful,’ I tell her.
It’s not what I’d once have hoped for. When Blanche was younger, before the war began, I’d hoped she’d go to the mainland to study—perhaps to train as a teacher. But for now, with everything in turmoil, this offer of work is a gift.
Her face is lit up: her hyacinth-blue eyes dazzle.
‘I’ll be like Celeste now, won’t I, Mum?’ she says.
Blanche has always seen Celeste’s job at Mr Martel’s watch shop as the height of glamour.
I’ll miss having her round the house in the day—Evelyn seems so fragile now, so confused, that I sometimes worry about leaving her and Millie together. But it’s lovely to see Blanche happy again—and her money will certainly help. We’re just about managing for the moment—I have a little money saved, and Evelyn pays some of the bills. But every penny matters.
She starts work on Monday. She gets up early, puts on a crisp gingham Sunday-best frock and some of the lipstick I bought for her. She comes home tired but pleased with herself, with a bag of over-ripe peaches that Mrs Sebire had decided were a little too bruised to sell. We eat the peaches: they are delicious.
‘I’m glad you got that job,’ says Millie, the sweet juice dripping down her chin.
We are all glad.
Through August, I don’t see much of the Germans at Les Vinaires. I tell myself, Maybe they won’t bother with us. Maybe they scarcely think of us at all. They want a quiet life here, as Captain Richter said. But I’m wary. I never go out after curfew. When I come back from Angie’s, I’m careful always to take the track through the fields. If I’m cleaning my bedroom, I try not to look out into the lane. I don’t see the scarred man any more—not in the lane, not in the lighted window. Now, they always draw the blackout curtains early, at Les Vinaires.
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