“Ta-ra.” Mrs Evans didn’t look up from the sink.
Suzanne coughed. “Er . . . have you got anything for me?”
“Eh? You still here? What you talkin’ about?” It was quite obvious she had no idea of the importance of the date.
The evacuee’s heart sank. “Nothing. ‘Bye.” Never mind, there’d be plenty of post when she came back for lunch. Correction, dinner.
But there wasn’t. Not one card or letter, let alone a parcel. And it was the same at school: Meggie might have remembered if she hadn’t been absent with a cold, but no one else knew it was her birthday and one simply couldn’t go round telling people, it would look as though she was asking for presents.
The house was empty when she got back to Llewellyn’s Lane that evening. There were no cards or parcels waiting, but still she dared to hope that something would materialise when the Evanses returned.
They had had a successful visit to Elwyn’s sister in St Asaph and tea was delayed while Rhiannon was told all about it when she came in from work. In Welsh.
It was the first time that Suzanne had received no card or present, no good wishes on her birthday. She had never felt so lonely, lost and unloved.
Sleep was impossible that night in her trough of misery and self-pity. Trying to distract her mind she immersed herself once more in Exmoor Lass, her favorite pony book. It was a lovely story with especially good pen and ink illustrations which she liked to copy. Twice she closed the book and turned out the light, but still sleep wouldn’t come; so twice she sat up again, school cardigan on over her nightie to fend off the cold in the icy room.
Suddenly the door was flung open and Mrs Evans stormed in, furious. “Do you know what the time is? It’s gone ’leven o’clock and here you are still readin’ an’ burnin’ my electricity.”
“You never told me I wasn’t to . . .”
“Tell you! Haven’ you got any sense? You should know better! Well, we’ll make sure it doesn’ happen again.” She grabbed the chair, stood it under the light and using Suzanne’s towel to avoid burning her fingers she twisted the bulb from its socket. “There. That’ll remove temptation, won’t it?”
*
Now, in retrospect, Suzanne reckoned that was the day she grew up. She had been too angry that night to cry, but lying in the darkness, boiling with rage, a vague realisation developed that she was totally alone: no one in her life gave any indication that they cared a jot about her, whether or not she was happy, healthy, or even existed. She was on her own.
Though she was not aware of it at the time, that day had marked the beginning of her independence – mentally, physically and emotionally; an independence she might have hoped, subconsciously, to be temporary, just to help her survive till she returned to her loving family. Till life regained its pre-war normality.
Unfortunately that ‘normality’ was a long time coming; she would have to extend her independence a little longer.
*
It was not too difficult.
Joseph Gallienne had run a taxi service in Guernsey until the Germans overran the island and commandeered all the cars and petrol supplies. However, having been born with the stubbornness of the traditional Guernsey Donkey, far from going out of business, he acquired a number of horses and ponies, and a weird collection of antique traps, gigs, broughams and landaus and carried on as near normal as possible. Unfortunately, apart from weddings and funerals, trade was not brisk and by the time the Germans were finally persuaded to depart the animals had eaten all his capital leaving nothing with which to buy new motorised taxis. Nor was he able to liquidate his antique assets. Undaunted, he put up a sign on his gate announcing Gallienne’s Riding Stables. Horses for hire. Lessons charged by the hour. Quiet ponies for beginners.
Sue was thrilled when her father took her to the stables in the Axce Lanes, a short cycle ride from home, and introduced her to his old schoolfriend, Joe. The latter agreed he had far more work to do than he could handle and was pleased to offer her a job as part-time stable hand, on a month’s trial. A month that stretched indefinitely. Joe and Mrs Joe liked Sue, she liked them and the job, and she loved all the horses and ponies. Sarah had no need to call her in the mornings: Sue was at the stables by six every morning, mucking out before changing for school. Likewise she worked in the evenings, and for much longer on Saturdays and Sundays. A happy and satisfying arrangement all round.
Meanwhile, there were lots of new girls at school, as well as those who had been evacuated or joined the school in Wales during the war. Sue maintained friendships with the latter and made some new friends amongst the former, but no one quite replaced Meggie. She missed her a lot . . .
*
She would never forget the day when, returning for the summer term in 1943 after a miserably boring Easter listening to Gran and Auntie’s endless grumbles and criticisms of everyone with whom they came in contact, she met Meggie on the train from Chester to Denbigh.
“Had a good time?” Meggie asked, happily.
“Super!” Suzanne lied, valiantly. “How about you?”
“Lovely. Mummy and Daddy have moved to a nice big house. There’s a gazebo in the garden where we all played when it was raining.”
All! “You mean you and your little sister?”
“And the boys next door. In fact there was a whole gang of us about the same age. I’ll be leaving at the end of this term to go to their school with them.”
Suzanne was dumbfounded. When she found her breath again she said, “Going! You won’t be coming back?”
Meggie shook her head. “I’ll miss you, but it will be nice to live with my parents again. And I’ll be with a super crowd of friends.”
Already depressed at the prospect of returning to Llewellyn’s Lane, the news could have reduced the old Suzanne to tears. Not any more. Stiff upper lip, girl! She swallowed, smiled and said, “I’m so pleased for you, Meggie. Though I will miss you, too.” A massive understatement.
However, she was met at the station by one good bit of news: “You are not going back to the Evanses, Suzanne. They found you didn’t fit in very well,” Miss Watson told her. “I don’t know what you’ve been up to but you must try not to be difficult.”
“The only trouble was I couldn’t speak Welsh . . .”
“That’s not the impression Mrs Evans gave the billeting officer. And we don’t want to hear excuses, just an assurance that you’ll try to behave better in future.”
The unfairness of it! The girl boiled. There were so many angry answers waiting to erupt that in the end she was speechless. Emerging into Station Road she eventually asked, “Where am I to go now?”
“To the hostel, until another place can be found for you.”
Anything had to be better than the Evanses, especially if there were other girls for company; the only pity was she had not had a chance to tell those Evanses how horrible, bad-mannered and unkind they were.
Suzanne had a quick, furious temper but she had never been able to maintain it for more than a few minutes, even when she felt it necessary to make a stand. Long before she reached the hostel her anger had evaporated.
And within a few days she was thoroughly enjoying herself. When Kathy Welbeck moved in a week later, the matron forgot to ask her for her ration book. So five of them pooled their pocket money and used the week’s coupons to buy Spam, bread and other goodies for a midnight feast. Lacking plates and cutlery, they dug the Spam out of the tin with knitting-needles, making a dreadful, sticky mess, while smothering hysterical giggles in their pillows. All a great improvement on Llewellyn’s Lane.
Ordinary friends, in general, were fun, but of course nothing quite made up for the loss of one’s best friend, like Meggie.
*
Watching the demonstrative affection between her parents, Sue was reminded of David: dear, darling David. If only he was here, with her. If only she had someone to confide in, share secrets with, enjoy similar interests. Mummy and Daddy were keen for her to play tennis, wh
ich she had done with enthusiasm in Wales. But she saw the disappointment on their faces when she attempted to demonstate her skills! They made no effort to conceal their opinion that she’d never play a ‘decent’ game. Yet partnering David, had been such fun. They had won countless friendlies together.
The States of Guernsey, the island parliament, well aware that commerce and industry in the island had ground to a halt during the Occupation and that few islanders had the financial capital to re-start, decided that past and prospective businessmen should apply for States’ grants: offices must be bought or rented, plus furniture and equipment, rolling stock for hauliers and buses for public transport. Many greenhouses had become derelict, or were destroyed during the war for firewood. Hotels had been commandeered by the Germans for administration offices.
Greg immediately applied for money to repair Les Marettes greenhouses, the heating boilers and piping, and cash would be needed for sterilising and feeding the soil before next season’s tomato seedlings were planted. The application was granted shortly after Greg’s brother, Andrew and his wife Maureen returned from Scotland where they had spent the war years. They stayed at Les Marettes with Alice, his mother, because their bungalow had been gutted by the Organisation Todt slave workers who had squatted there. Those poor devils who survived the starvation and ill-treatment had been returned to their own countries, France, Russia and Poland mostly, leaving the concrete shell without windows, doors or frames. Floorboards had been ripped up and ceilings torn down as firewood; who could blame them as they shivered in their rags? Except Andrew.
“Why the devil didn’t you put padlocks on to keep them out?” he stormed at Greg, having been told several times that his brother had done so, and been obliged to replace them twice before finally giving up and rescuing and storing all the contents before the squatters moved in.
When Greg told him that the States had notified him that a grant had been made available to restart the business, Andrew breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Thank goodness. I’ll get hold of Mr Rabey straight away to repair our bungalow.”
“But . . . I thought I’d explained; the money is for the vinery. For repairing the greenhouses and starting us off next season.”
“Fine,” Andrew smiled. “We’ll use what’s left over when our place is finished.”
“No! If you can’t afford to fix the bungalow yourself, now, then you’ll have to remain at Les Marettes with Ma till you can do it out of income.” Greg was adamant.
So was Andrew. “Look here, young Gregory. I am the elder and if I say that my home needs are more important, then so be it. Where is the money? How do I get hold of it?”
Greg had lost several stones in weight during the Occupation, living on starvation rations, while his brother had become quite stout, but he still towered over Andrew by several inches. He had already regained some weight, though his face remained gaunt and lined. Gazing down with tired eyes at the older man, he shook his head. “This grant is purely for the business – to use it for anything else would be breaking the law.”
“Rubbish. Anyway, at least half the money is mine by right.”
Greg frowned. “I don’t follow your reasoning. You had an excellent, well-paid job throughout the war, along with free housing. Surely you must have saved enough at least to make a start on your place?”
“What I may or may not have in the way of assets is none of your business. But I’m warning you—”
“And I’m warning you,” Greg cut in. “If you attempt to use any of this grant for anything but our tomato business, I shall report you to the authorities,” and he turned away to continue his list of necessary repairs.
Andrew’s colour went from pink to purple, then he stamped out of the office slamming the door, viciously.
“What was all that about?” Sue had just cycled up the drive to visit her grandmother.
Greg thought a moment, then decided to confide in her as an adult.
Sue listened to yet another tale of family discord and was puzzled. What was the matter with everybody? It was never like this before the war . . . was it?
The following weekend, Aunt Aline and Grandma asked her out to Val du Douit for lunch; having invited her to spend some of the school holidays with them in England during the war, they wanted to maintain the affinity they felt they had established with her. After all, had they not played an important part in her upbringing, in the absence of her parents?
They would have been amazed to learn Sue’s thoughts on that ‘affinity’. True, the fact that members of her family were within reach had relieved the emotional isolation she had felt in Denbigh; to be able to talk about ‘going to spend Christmas with family’ at school, and receive post and pocket-money from them, helped. But the fact was that during those holidays her aunt and grandparents seemed almost too involved with their own problems to notice her. Grandpa was never very well and his health was a constant topic of conversation, punctuated by endless complaints about their landlords – who always seemed to Sue to be quite charming – the neighbours and other more distant family members. Listening to their grumbles was a source of constant irritation to the girl. And worst of all was when they were entertaining friends and Aunt Aline would put on a demonstration of cloying affection for her, silently demanding that Sue show the audience how much she loved her aunt. She had responded as required, for the sake of politeness and peace, but with her fingers crossed behind her back. Fortunately, her rapid maturing brought understanding and acceptance; it became easier to see how devastating their situation was at their age: the thought of the home they had spent their lives building being overrun by Nazis, and Grandpa’s herd of pedigree Guernsey cows probably being slaughtered to feed them. So that gradually, over the five years, she had learned to excuse them, especially after Grandpa died. And now, not yet sixteen years old, she had a tolerant affection for them, and made the double bus journey out to St Saviour’s quite happily.
Sue loved the old pink granite farmhouse and the rambling garden, remembering how it all used to be when she was a child: the horses nuzzling her hair with velvet noses, the smell of saddle-soap in the stables. She loved the walk from the bus which took her past the fields where, for generations, the Ozanne family had held hay picnics. The fact that the fields were full of weeds went unnoticed, but she grimaced at the monstrous concrete gun-emplacements and towers the Germans had had erected by their Todt slave-workers, to defend the prized, sole piece of British territory they had ‘won’.
“Hallo, here you are. We expected you earlier.” Marie Ozanne greeted her granddaughter in the kitchen.
“I just walked down past the top fields. It’s lovely up there.”
“Hmm. Don’t tell me you’ve inherited your mother’s habit of daydreaming,” Aline remarked as she joined them. “It was her way of dodging the chores,” she added with a forced laugh.
Sue gritted her teeth and changed the subject. “What’s for lunch?”
“Freddie Batiste brought us some mackerel, luckily. The meat ration this week was such a pathetic little square. Bah! I could hardly be bothered to cook it.” Marie opened an oven door and peered inside. “They’re nearly done.”
“I was saying to Grandma, we ought to change butchers. I don’t think we’re getting our proper share,” Aline said.
A constant stream of criticism followed the baked mackerel and vegetable dishes into the dining room, and across the table Aline prompted her mother every time Marie appeared to run out of victims. Sue was convinced the pair of them were getting worse. Over coffee, they started on Uncle John and ‘that baggage’, then Uncle William and his family were slated.
Sue tried hard not to react but when, having demolished all other members of the family plus a few ‘friends’, they attempted to coerce her into agreeing that her parents had had no right to steal the clothes they left in the wardrobes at Val du Douit when they evacuated, her good resolutions snapped. “That’s enough,” she said sternly. “I love coming up to see you, b
ut if you’re going to spend the time accusing my parents, and all the family, of all sorts of wickedness, then I’m not coming any more.”
“Well!” Marie huffed.
“Fancy speaking to your grandmother like that!” Aline looked pained. “We only feel you ought to know the truth of the matter.”
“As you see it. Not as anyone else does!”
The inevitable argument finally ended with Aline saying “Well really. After all we did for you throughout the war,” and Marie refusing to speak to her at all.
Sue was aware that she was the only person in the world that Aline cared a fig about, other than herself, and before leaving was able to wring out of her aunt a reluctant promise not to criticise any of the family, when and if she visited them again.
Wind tore across the top fields as Sue climbed the hill back to the bus stop, and clouds threatened a drenching, all matching her mood. Naturally gregarious, she enjoyed people and was quick to forgive and forget, as she had done with Auntie and Gran during the war. And would again. After all, they had been bricks when she became ill from living in that awful billet . . .
She shuddered at the memory.
*
There were not many people Suzanne avoided except Melanie. Not that she actively disliked her, but the tall, gangly girl had no go: she was limp and insipid, her only conversation a continuous attempt to make people laugh by telling dirty jokes learned from her older brother. So Suzanne was not amused to learn she was to be billeted with the girl. Mrs Hughes was very short, very fat and very proud of her little semi-detached. The front parlour, which was never used except to impress a teacher making a once-per-term inspection, was immaculate with its pristine three-piece suite, neat half-moon hearth rug and three china ducks flying across one wall in perfect formation. The lino shone in the hallway and stairs, leading to the three bedrooms and the gleaming bathroom . . . well, as Mrs Hughes proudly boasted to her neighbours, she only went on payin’ the extra two shillings and sixpence on the rent for a bath after her husband died, for the evacuees to use. She couldn’t fit into it herself.
The Guernsey Saga Box Set Page 32