The Soldier’s Wife. Margaret Leroy
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She’s breathless, the words tumbling out of her; she’s flushed and thrilled with the drama of this. ‘We saw the German soldiers, me and Celeste.’
‘I hate the Germans,’ says Millie, staunchly.
‘Yes, sweetheart. We all hate them,’ I say.
‘They’re ever so tall, Mum,’ says Blanche. ‘Much taller than island men. One of them bought an ice cream and tried to give it to me. I didn’t take it, of course. It was a strawberry cornet.’
Millie stares at Blanche, a little frown deepening in her forehead. I can tell her opinion of the Germans is being slightly modified.
‘I like strawberry cornets,’ she says.
‘They were very polite,’ says Blanche. ‘There was one who had his picture taken with a policeman. He said he wanted to send it back home to his wife …’
She pulls The Guernsey Press from her bag. We open the newspaper out on the table and read. There are a lot of new rules. There will be a curfew: no islander should be out of doors after nine o’clock at night. All weapons must be handed in … Reading this, I think with a prickling of fear of Johnnie, of his brother’s shotgun that he kept in a box beneath his bed: I wonder what he has done with it. The use of boats and motorcars is banned, and all our clocks must be put forward one hour.
As I read, I’m seized by a feeling I didn’t expect. It’s shame—a dirty, contaminated feeling. That this is happening to us. That we have allowed it to happen. I try to reason with myself, to tell myself that we can live with these regulations, and now at least the girls can sleep in their rooms, because with the Germans here, there won’t be any more bombing. But still the shame seeps through me.
I go to talk to Evelyn. I put my hand on her arm.
‘Evelyn, I need to tell you something important. I’m afraid that the Germans have landed on Guernsey,’ I say gently.
She looks up at me, her mouth pursed and tight. She puts her knitting down in her lap.
‘I don’t like cowardly talk,’ she says. ‘We mustn’t give in. We mustn’t ever give in.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I tell her. As though it’s my fault. ‘But it’s happened. The Germans are here. That’s what we have to live with now.’
She stares at me. Suddenly, there’s a flicker of understanding in her face. She starts to cry soundlessly, slow tears trickling down from her eyes, that she doesn’t try to wipe away. The sight tugs at my heart.
‘Evelyn, I’m so sorry,’ I say again.
I find her handkerchief for her, and she rubs at her face.
‘Does that mean we’ve lost the war, Vivienne?’
‘No. No, it doesn’t mean that,’ I say, with all the conviction I can manage.
Then suddenly her tears stop. She folds her handkerchief precisely and puts it away in her pocket. There’s a sudden purposefulness to her.
‘We ought to tell Eugene at once,’ she says. ‘Eugene will know what to do.’
I put my hand around her; her body feels at once stiff and brittle.
‘Evelyn—Eugene isn’t here, remember? Eugene’s away with the army.’
‘Well, find him, Vivienne,’ she says. ‘We can’t manage without Eugene.’
She picks up her knitting again; like dandelion seeds on the air, the memory of her sorrow has drifted away.
I change the time on our clocks. Then Blanche and I drag the mattresses back up the stairs.
Once Millie is tucked up in bed, Blanche comes to find me, in her dressing gown and pyjamas. She says she wants me to plait her hair, so it will curl in the morning.
She sits on the sofa beside me, with her back towards me. I start to plait her hair, which is silky and cool in my hands. The lamplight shines on its different colours—caramel-blonde, with pale buttery streaks where the summer sun has bleached it. I love doing this: it’s a way of touching that still feels comfortable for her. We don’t touch very often now—she’s withdrawn from me a little, being fourteen. I breathe in the scent of her—soap, and rose-geranium talc, and the sweet, particular, musky smell of her hair.
‘D’you know what it’ll be like, Mum?’ Her voice rather small and uncertain. ‘It’ll all be different, won’t it?’
I should be able to tell her: it’s what a mother should do—prepare her children, warn them. But I don’t know, can’t imagine. There is nothing I have ever been through that could prepare me for this.
‘Yes, it’ll be different. Well, a lot of things will be different.’
‘Will it be like that for ever?’
She has her back towards me and I can’t see her expression.
I don’t say anything.
‘Mum. I want to know. Will the Germans be here for ever? Is that what it’ll be like now?’
‘I don’t know, Blanche. Nobody knows what will happen.’
‘I’ve been praying about it,’ she says.
‘Oh. Have you, sweetheart?’
There’s a streak of religious devotion in Blanche, that I always find a surprise. We go to church every Sunday; for me, it’s mostly out of habit. But Blanche is devout, like Evelyn: she reads the Bible and prays. There’s a part of her that’s frivolous, loving dancing and stylish clothes, and a part that I only see sometimes, that’s reflective, rather serious.
‘It’s hard, though, isn’t it, Mum?’ she says now. ‘To know what to pray for—with everything that’s happening.’
‘Yes. It’s hard.’
‘I prayed that we’d go on the boat, and then we didn’t,’ she says.
There’s an edge of accusation in her voice. I know she’s still angry with me.
‘Sweetheart—that was a hard thing too. When I had to decide.’
She ignores this.
‘And sometimes I pray that we’ll win. But I expect the Germans do that too …’
‘Yes, I suppose so …’
‘Celeste reckons we’re going to win the war,’ she tells me. ‘She told me that. She said we mustn’t give up hope. But how can we, Mum? How can we possibly win?’
There are pictures in my mind: Hitler’s Victory March up the Champs Elysées in Paris, which we saw on a newsreel at the Gaumont in town. The massed ranks of Nazi soldiers surging onwards, like a force of nature, like a storm or flood—utterly invincible.
I fix a rubber band around the end of her plait.
‘You ought to go to bed,’ I say.
She stands and turns to face me. With her hair in a plait she looks younger, her cheeks full and flushed, like a child’s—like when she was only seven, and still played in the Blancs Bois with Johnnie. Her face is troubled. She turns and goes up the stairs.
The next morning I clean my bedroom. It isn’t long since I last cleaned it—I just need something to occupy me. The work isn’t very vigorous, but my heart is beating too fast.
My bedroom is a pleasant room. The wallpaper has a pattern of cabbage roses, and there’s a taffeta eiderdown on the big double bed, and on my dressing table, all the special things I’ve collected: a perfume bottle that has a dragonfly glass stopper; my silver hairbrush and comb; a music box that I’ve had since I was a child. The music box was my mother’s. It has an Impressionist painting on it, two girls at a piano in a hazy, pretty room, all the colours running together as though they are melting and wet. It plays Für