The Guernsey Saga Box Set

by Diana Bachmann

  Sue checked into a guest house in the town nearest to the farm, and from there she took a long taxi ride. She had written to Stephanie that she was coming but was unsure of the exact time she would arrive, finally turning up unannounced.

  “Stephanie’s outside, I think,” said the dreamy-eyed girl who answered the door. “Probably over there beyond that wall, in the vegetable plot.”

  Wales was obviously having a damp summer. Sue picked her way around the worst of the mud in the yard and peered over a grey stone wall to where a plump girl was bent over a row of greenery. “Excuse me!” she called. “Can you tell me if . . .” The girl stood up and Sue gasped. “Stephanie!”

  She was largely pregnant.

  “Hello Mum! What are you doing here?”

  “Didn’t you get my letter?”

  “The one about Debs working in a flower shop?”

  “No, later than that. It should have arrived last week.”

  “The postmen don’t deliver here anymore. Not since one got bitten by one of our dogs.” She stretched her back to ease some discomfort.

  “You didn’t tell me about the baby,” Sue remarked.

  “Didn’t think you’d want to know. Can you wait a minute while I finish pulling these carrots?”

  “Of course. Have you grown them?”

  “Yes. My only success. Everything else I’ve tried always gets eaten by slugs or rabbits before it’s ready to pick.” She pulled half a dozen more and put them in a plastic bag.

  “I haven’t seen any dogs.” It was just something to say.

  “They’re probably with the boys who have gone fishing. And in answer to your next question, no, I’m not married.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” Sue assured her. “Who is the father?”

  Stephanie hesitated before saying “Does it matter?”

  Sue tried to smile. “Where will you have the baby?”

  “Here. Melanie had her’s here; a midwife came up from the town. It was fine.”

  Sue attempted to sound open-minded. “You could always come home to have it if you want to.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Or I could come here to help out till you feel, well, you know . . .”

  “Don’t worry, Mum. I’ll be okay. Truly.”

  How can you say that? How do you know? Supposing it is a difficult birth and you end up with a string of stitches and can’t walk for a week? Sue felt quite panicky as the thoughts raced through her mind, but she resisted the temptation to voice any of them, asking instead, “Is Caroline Patterson still here with you?” At least she was another Guernsey girl and might call if Stephanie needed help.

  “No. She left ages ago for the fleshpots of the Mediterranean.” They reached the farmhouse door. “Is this your bag?”

  “Yes. I’ve brought some things I thought might be useful. Mainly food.”

  “That was clever of you. Very useful. Come on in.” The place smelled of animals: cats, dogs and goats. “Sorry about the pong. Marcus has been trying to make goat cheese. He’s not very good at it.”

  The rooms were a shambles. Clothes and rugs and cooking pots were scattered amongst books and papers. A bunch of wild flowers had died a natural death in a vase, some weeks earlier. Dirty mugs and overflowing ashtrays littered the tables, miscellaneous cats littered the chairs. Every room appeared to be used for a multitude of purposes, excepting for the kitchen which was comparatively tidy.

  “This is my domain,” Stephanie announced. “Here I reign supreme, mainly because no one else wants to cook. Not, Mummy dear, that I want the role of chief cook and bottle washer. But I do like to eat.” She gave a rare smile. “In fact right now I could eat a horse, if it was well cooked.”

  “Why don’t you keep me company for dinner tonight?” Sue suggested. The girl might have a large appetite but she didn’t look as though she was eating much. “The taxi is coming back for me in an hour. You could come with me and return when we have eaten.” The outlay in fares would be astronomical, but so what?

  Stephanie frowned and bit her lip. “Oh, I don’t know, Mum. I don’t think I’d better. The boys will be wanting a meal when they get back. I might have to cook fish, if they’ve caught any.”

  The temptation was to argue but Stephanie was being quite nice and friendly at the moment, not at all her old aggressive self, and Sue did not want to upset her. Spoil the atmosphere. “It’s up to you, darling. Now let’s get these things out of my bag.”

  That evening in her room, Sue starting scratching, first a leg, them her stomach. Armed with a cake of damp soap she undressed very carefully, caught the flea on the soap and crushed it between her fingernails. Then cried herself to sleep.

  Next day, when the initial shock had worn off, Sue felt a bit better. She and Stephanie spent the whole day together, talking quite normally, as though the girl’s weird, drop-out lifestyle was not an insurmountable barrier between them.

  But of course it was, and Sue spent the whole journey back to London trying to compose herself so that her despondency didn’t spoilt the next few days with Stephen.

  They both enjoyed the Tutankhamen Exhibition enormously. It was exquisite, exciting, exhilarating and they both exceeded their budgets on souvenirs.

  Stephen was aware that Sue had something on her mind, but it was not till they were back home in Guernsey that she told him about Stephanie’s baby.

  *

  “Hallo, Dad. Have a good game?” Sue reached up to kiss Greg’s cheek.

  “No. Had a disaster every time I took a wood out of my bag. Finished up using an iron off every tee.” He sagged into an armchair. “Dunno why I go on playing. Getting too old.”

  “Better not let Uncle George hear you. He’ll crow for a week.”

  “He wasn’t much better. Said he was going home to bury his putter six feet deep in his potato patch.”

  They both laughed.

  “Lunch won’t be long. Stephen has just taken Bobbie to stay with his friend for the weekend. Will you have a drink?”

  “Yes. A G and T would be nice. Tell me, do you hear much from young Stephanie?”

  Sue poured them both an aperitif. “Yes indeed. In fact, strangely enough, she seems to be writing a lot more frequently than last year. Why do you ask?”

  Greg stared up at her as she passed him his glass. “I worry about her. One hears things about these communes.”

  “Like what?” Sue asked, though she guessed what was coming.

  “Drugs. And people sharing each other’s beds in haphazard fashion. Flower power and all that.” He raised his glass. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers. Though you certainly don’t sound very cheerful.”

  “I can’t help thinking what your mother would say about it all, if she was alive today.”

  Sue moved over to the window. “I hope she doesn’t know, Dad.”

  “Makes me so sad. Is there nothing we can do?”

  “Not a thing. You know I’ve been to see her three times. I’ve tried desperately hard not to show my disapproval, or ask her to come home. She knows how we all feel without me saying anything.”

  “Do you think she’s happy?”

  Sue didn’t answer immediately, wondering whether or not to add to his misery by telling him the whole truth. That Stephanie had given birth to a beautiful baby daughter and either wouldn’t or couldn’t name the father. That the girl was looking thin and ill; thoroughly under-nourished. And that behind her false calm she looked restless and unhappy. “Hard to say, Dad. She seems to take life very seriously. She has done some beautiful art work. They all do, there, and sell some of it in tourist shops.”

  Greg watched the tonic bubbles in his glass. “And what about her sister? Such a shame she has given up her ambitions re tennis.”

  “I thought so at first. But maybe she just wasn’t mentally cut out to drive herself through all the stress and strain. And the unsporting attitudes were getting her down, badly.”

  “How do you mean?”

&n
bsp; Sue told him of her conversation on the subject with Debbie.

  Greg screwed up his face in horror. “Well those cheats and thugs don’t behave like that for honour and glory! It’s all money. That’s the effect that money has on people . . . and on sport.” Sue had seldom seen her placid, easy-going father get so heated. “It destroys the whole meaning of sport! Unfortunately it seems to be happening more and more in every walk of life. Moral standards have dropped out of sight. Politics and business were the first to go.”

  “Come on, Dad! That’s as ever was, right back to ancient Egypt!” She remembered the relevant history she had learned on her trip with Stephen to the Tutankhamen Exhibition.

  “But we are supposed to be a modern and civilised society,” Greg argued.

  “That doesn’t alter the nature of Homo sapiens, does it? It just means he is that much craftier and more devious.”

  “Things weren’t like that when your mother and I were young. Anyone caught cheating at sport was ostracised for life! Did that apply only in Guernsey? Or did the same standards exist in England, then?” Suddenly he looked up at her. “By the way, What is her relationship with that young man?”

  “You mean Justin?” Sue shrugged. “They appear very fond of each other.”

  “Yes. But that’s been going on a long time. Isn’t he going to propose?”

  She turned to her father, feigning horror. “Debbie is only nineteen, Dad! There is plenty of time.”

  Greg gave her an old-fashioned look. “Not unless she is acceding to his requirements, I imagine.”

  Sue flushed. It was so unlike her father to refer to such matters! “Well stop imagining, Dad. It won’t do you a ha’p’orth of good! Now I’d better go and put the carrots on.” And she escaped to the kitchen. It was bad enough worrying one’s self sick about one’s children, without the older generation putting their oar in as well.

  *

  While at university, Roderick had had a nodding acquaintanceship with a young man named Alex Grolinski who was reading Economics and Social Sciences. Roderick, with his career clearly mapped out before going to college, had no idea what Alex meant to do when and if he got his degree, but then neither had Alex himself. Until he came to Guernsey.

  One day Roderick received a telephone call from Alex. “I’ve come to work over here,” he announced.

  “Doing what?”

  “Real estate.”

  “Oh! How long have you been doing that?”

  “I haven’t, over here. I start on Monday. Meanwhile, I wondered if we might meet up for a drink.”

  Roderick chose the upstairs bar at the Kosy Korner during the lunch hour because it was reasonably close to the office and easy for Alex to find following his directions.

  The latter was there first. “What will you have?”

  “Er . . .” Roderick did not normally drink during working days and seldom went into a pub, “What are you drinking?”

  “Whisky dry.”

  “Er . . . no thanks. I’ll have a half of mild.”

  “So, tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself since graduating,” Alex demanded when he returned to the table with the beer.

  “What I always planned to do. Architecture.”

  “Go on.”

  Roderick elaborated for a few minutes then asked, “What about you?”

  “My father wanted me to go into the business with him.”

  “What sort of business?”

  “Producing farm machinery. But you know what these family businesses are,” Alex smote his forehead dramatically. “Degree or no degree, it is decided that you know nothing and must start at the very bottom, on a pittance of course, and work your way very slowly to the top by the age of sixty.”

  Roderick laughed. “I know what you mean. We have some firms like that here in the island.”

  “And do they go broke and get sold up through lack of modernisation?”

  “Most of them, yes! So how long did you stick it out?”

  “Nearly six months. Then Dad asked me to deliver some heavy machinery to a firm in Nassau, in the Bahamas. Marvellous place. Met some super people and sent Dad a telegram giving him my notice with immediate effect.”

  “Crickey! So what did you live on?”

  “Not a lot! But as you may remember I had done a fair amount of yachting. One of these people I met needed to have a sloop delivered to a Miami broker’s yard and its replacement brought back to the island. He couldn’t go himself and offered me a handsome sum to do it for him.”

  Roderick gave him a sidelong glance. “Are you sure it was only the ketch you were delivering?”

  “No, in retrospect. At the time I was totally innocent about the drug-running activities between the islands and Florida. Wasn’t until I delivered a third boat, for one of his ‘friends’, and was handed a briefcase full of cash by way of payment on delivery that I finally smelled a rat. Never went back! Boxed up the money and sent it to the bloke by courier and got on the first flight back to London. Didn’t draw a decent breath till I was home!”

  “So then what?”

  “I had a serious chat with an uncle of mine in the real estate business in the south of England and have been working for him for three months. Boy, that’s where the money is.”

  “You can say that again! There is a hell of a boom in the market over here at the moment.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m here. And that’s what I want to talk to you about. You see, uncle has the basic know-how and wants me to be his agent over here, but I have no local knowledge. Now there are three options. One, you and I could set up business together working for uncle. Two, I would open up under my own steam and pay you a consultancy fee. Three, you can tell me to bugger off and forget it.”

  Walking back up High Street towards the office, Roddy couldn’t stop grinning to himself. Of all the wild, impetuous propositions in the world, this had to be the most audacious. Dammit, he hardly knew the guy! And for that matter the guy hardly knew him! Of course he hadn’t wanted to be rude so he’d told Alex he would think about it . . . but naturally there was no way he’d give it a second thought. The only decision he had to make was how to tell him he was taking the third option!

  Throughout the afternoon as he leaned over sets of plans his mind drifted back to the lunchtime conversation . . . and recalled the fact that he had thought about the property market several times, as an alternative to the much harder work and less lucrative job of architecting. He had accepted the status quo most of his life, but there had been times, especially more recently, when he had felt the urge for more and better. He hoped that within the next five years or so he would meet a girl he would want to marry. But what were the prospects? Years of saving up for a down payment for a mortgage, followed by twenty or more years trying to pay off the darned thing. Twenty years of counting every penny, whilst raising a family. Restricting the size of family to what they hoped they could afford. What standard of home could he hope for? What kind of lifestyle? No doubt Mum and Stephen would want to help a bit, financially, but they could do no more for him than they could afford to do for for the other three as well. Stephen and his father paid him a decent salary, and no doubt his prospects in the firm were excellent, but he never saw himself becoming . . . rich, or even well off.

  By the time he and Stephen headed home that evening, Roderick had calculated that if he sold one hundred thousand pounds worth of real estate in a week at two percent commission, he could make one hundred thousand pounds in a year . . . allowing for taking two weeks holiday off.

  Next morning Roderick made a telephone call to Alex Grolinski, suggesting they have another drink at lunchtime at the Kosy Korner.

  *

  Piped jazz greeted the guests as they drove up to Cy and Carol Blaydon’s new place, jarring with the otherwise peaceful ambience of the old granite house.

  “Maybe the noise is in keeping with the grosser garden ornaments,” Sue suggested to Stephen, as they got out of the car. It wa
s not her first visit, but it was still hard to resist comparing the end result with the way it might have been had she been in charge. She thanked Heaven she was not in Stephen’s shoes, being paid to design the alterations and then forced to accede to such fearful examples of bad taste. But this was to be a garden party and, apart from the addition of gnomes, frogs and other plaster and stone object d’art the hosts had shown little interest in the layout of the garden, leaving it to hired professionals.

  “Stevie, boy!” Cy called as they crossed the lawn to the gathering. “Suzy! So nice to see you. Hey you,” he turned to a temporary barman, “give these people a drink,” and he wandered off to greet more newcomers.

  “Oh look, there’s Richard,” Sue noted. “But I don’t see Anne anywhere.”

  “She’s at home with the children,” Richard explained. “She thinks little George has measles. Derek is just recovering from it. His whole class went down with it at school.”

  Amanda, yards of thigh emerging from microscopic short-pants which failed to cover the curves of her bottom, pranced up on very high heels which served well for aereating the lawn. “There you are, Dickie. Come on, I want to introduce you to some friends who are staying with us. Excuse us, won’t you?” she smiled sweetly at his sister, slid a possessive arm through his and dragged him away.

  Stephen and Sue watched in amazement. “What an incongruous pair!” the latter exclaimed.

  Roderick joined them. “I still think Richard was crazy not to go on to university. You know, he really does have a brain.”

  “He is so happy doing what he does,” Sue argued. “He loves his life.”

  “But he could have so much more. That house of theirs is so tiny, and his car is totally delapidated. He could have a decent job . . .”

  “I wouldn’t say as much to him if I were you,” Stephen suggested. “I’ve never seen a man happier in his work.”

  “I already have,” Roderick grinned sheepishly.