The Soldier's Wife

by Margaret Leroy

  The girls come down to the kitchen, bleary, smelling of warm bedclothes, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Alphonse sidles up to Millie and walks in small circles around her. She bends down to stroke him, the morning sun shining on her dark silk hair, so you can see all the reddish colors in it.

  “Right, girls. We’re going,” I tell them. “We’ll get the boat today. It’ll take us to Weymouth and from there we’ll take the train to London.”

  Blanche’s face is like a light switched on.

  “Yes.” There’s a thrill in her voice. “But you could have decided earlier, Mum, then I could have washed my hair.”

  “You’ll have to pack quickly,” I tell them. “As soon as you’ve finished breakfast. You’ll need underwear and your toothbrushes, and all the clothes you can fit in.”

  I’ve put out a carpetbag for Millie, and for Blanche a little leather suitcase that was Eugene’s. Blanche looks at the suitcase, appalled.

  “Mum, you’re joking.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “But how can I possibly get everything in there?”

  London to Blanche is glamour—I know that. We went to stay with Iris for a holiday once, when Blanche was six, four years before Millie was born. Ever since that holiday, London has been a promised land to her, a dream of how life ought to be. Once it was a dream of Trafalgar Square, with its dazzling fountains and pigeons, of the Tower of London, of seeing the chimps’ tea party at the zoo. But now that she’s almost a woman, it’s a dream of men in uniform—resolute, square-jawed, masterful—and tea in the Dorchester tearoom under a glittery chandelier, a dream of cakes and flirtation, with maybe a swing band playing “Anything Goes.” She wants to take all her very best things, her nylons, her coral taffeta frock, her very first pair of high heels that I bought for her fourteenth birthday, just before she left school. I understand, but I feel a flicker of impatience with her.

  “You’ll have to, Blanche. I’m sorry. There won’t be much room on the boat. Just put in as many clothes as you can. And you’ll need to wear your winter coats.”

  “But it’s hot, Mum.”

  “Just do your best,” I say. “And, Blanche, when you’ve finished, you can give Millie a hand.”

  “No, she can’t. I can do it myself,” says Millie.

  She’s been drinking her breakfast mug of milk, and her mouth is rimmed with white. She bites languidly into her toast and honey.

  “Of course you can, sweetheart. You’re a big girl now,” I tell her. “But Blanche will help you. Just be as quick as you can, both of you. If we’re going to go, it has to be today. . . .”

  I watch them for an instant, Blanche with her sherbet-fizz of excitement, Millie still fogged with sleep. We’ve come to the moment I’ve been dreading.

  “There’s one thing that’s very sad, though,” I say. “We’ll have to take Alphonse to the vet’s.”

  Millie is suddenly alert, the drowsiness all gone from her. Her eyes harden. She gives me a wary, suspicious look.

  “But there’s nothing wrong with him,” she says.

  “I’m afraid he needs to be put to sleep.”

  “What d’you mean, put to sleep?” says Millie. There’s an edge of threat in her voice.

  “We have to have him put down,” I say.

  “No, we don’t,” she says. Her face blazes bright with anger.

  “Alphonse can’t come with us. And we can’t just leave him here.”

  “No. You’re a murderer, Mummy. I hate you.”

  “We can’t take him, Millie. We can’t take a cat on the boat. Everyone’s taking their cats and dogs to the vet. Everyone. Mrs. Fitzpatrick from church was taking their terrier yesterday. She told me. It was terribly sad, she said, but it had to be done.”

  “Then they’re all murderers,” she says. Her small face is dark as thunderclouds. Her eyes spark. She snatches Alphonse up in her arms. The cat struggles against her.

  “Millie. He can’t come with us.”

  “He could live with someone else then, Mummy. It isn’t his fault. He doesn’t want to die. I won’t let him. Alphonse didn’t ask to be born now. This war is stupid,” she says.

  Suddenly, it’s impossible. All my breath rushes out in a sigh. I can’t bear to distress her like this.

  “Look—I’ll speak to Mrs. le Brocq,” I say wearily, defeated. It’s as though the room breathes out as well, when I say that. But I know what Evelyn would say—the thing she’s said so often before: You’re too soft with those girls, Vivienne. “I’ll see what I can do,” I tell them. “Just get yourselves packed up and ready to leave.”

  Chapter 4

  I WALK WITH EVELYN to Angie’s house, up one of the narrow lanes that run the length and breadth of Guernsey, their labyrinthine routes scarcely changed since the Middle Ages. High, wet hedgebanks press in on either side of the lane; red valerian grows there, and toadflax, and slender, elegant foxgloves, their petals of a flimsy, washed-out purple, as though they’ve been soaked too long in water. I have Alphonse in a basket, and a bag of Evelyn’s clothes.

  The climb exhausts Evelyn. We stop at the bend in the lane, where there’s a stone cattle trough, and I seat her on the rim of the trough to catch her breath for a moment. Sunlight splashes through leaves onto the surface of the water, making patterns that hide whatever lies in its depths.

  “Is it much farther, Vivienne?” she asks me, as a child might.

  “No. Not much farther.”

  We come to the stand of thorn trees, turn in at the track to Les Ruettes. It’s a solid whitewashed farmhouse that’s been here for hundreds of years. There’s an elder tree by the door: islanders used to plant elder as a protection against evil, lest a witch fly into the dairy and the butter wouldn’t form. Behind the house are the greenhouses where Frank le Brocq grows his tomatoes. Chickens scratch in the dirt; their bubbling chatter is all about us. Alphonse is frenzied at the sight and smell of the chickens, writhing and mewing in his basket. I knock at the door.

  Angie answers. She has a head scarf over her curlers, a cigarette in her hand. She sees us both there, and a gleam of understanding comes to her eyes. Her smile is warm and wide and softens the lines in her face.

  “So. You’ve made your mind up, Vivienne.”

  “Yes.”

  I’m so grateful to Angie, for helping me out yet again. She’s always been so good to me—she makes my marmalade, smocks Millie’s dresses, ices my Christmas cake—and I know she’ll be welcoming to Evelyn. There’s such generosity in her.

  She puts out a hand to Evelyn.

  “Come in then, Mrs. de la Mare,” she says. “We’ll take good care of you, I promise.”

  She takes Evelyn to the settle by the big open hearth. Evelyn sits on the edge of the seat—tentative, as though she fears it won’t quite take all her weight, her hands precisely folded.

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Angie,” I say.

  She shakes her head a little.

  “It’s the least I could do. And never doubt that you’re doing the right thing, Vivienne. With those two young daughters of yours, you don’t know what might happen.” Then, lowering her voice a little, “When they come,” she says.

  “No. Well . . .”

  She leans close to whisper to me. Her skin is thickened by sunlight and brown as a ripening nut. I feel her warm nicotine-scented breath on my cheek.

  “I’ve heard such terrible things,” she says. “I’ve heard that they crucify girls. They rape them and crucify them.”

  “Goodness,” I say.

  A thrill of horror goes through me. But I tell myself that this is probably just a story. Angie will believe anything. She loves to tell of witchcraft, hauntings, curses: she says that hair will grow much quicker if cut when the moon is waxing, that gulls gathering at a seafarer’s house may presage a death. Anyway, I ask myself—how could such atrocities happen here, amid the friendly scratching of chickens, the scent of ripening tomatoes, the summer wind caressing the leaves? It’s
beyond imagining.

  Maybe Angie sees the doubt in my eyes.

  “Trust me, Vivienne. You’re right to want to get those girls of yours away. She’s right about that, isn’t she, Frank?”

  I turn. Frank, her husband, is standing in the doorway to the hall, half-dressed, his shirt undone and hanging loose. I can see the russet blur of hair on his chest. I’m never quite sure if I like him. He’s a big man, and a drinker. Sometimes Angie has black eyes, and I wonder if they’re from his fists.

  He nods in response to her question.

  “We were saying that only last night,” he says. “That you’d want to keep an eye on your girls, if you’d decided to stay. You’d want to watch your Blanche. She’s looking quite womanly now. I don’t like to think what might happen—if she was still here when they came.”

  He’s looked at Blanche, noticed her—noticed her body changing. I don’t like this.

  “It would be a worry,” I say vaguely.

  He steps into the kitchen, buttoning up his shirt.

  “Vivienne, look, I was thinking. If it would help, I could give you a lift to the boat.”

  I feel an immediate surge of gratitude for his kindness. I’m ashamed of my ungracious thought.

  “Thank you so much, that would be so helpful,” I say.

  “My pleasure.”

  He tucks in his shirt. A faint sour smell of sweat comes off him.

  “The other thing is . . . ,” I say, and stop. I’m embarrassed to be asking more: they’re already doing so much. “I was wondering if you could maybe look after Alphonse? I ought to have had him put down, but Millie was distraught.”

  “Bless her tender heart. Of course she would be,” says Angie. “Of course we’ll take poor Alphonse in. He’ll be company for Evelyn, with all of her family gone.”

  “Thank you so much. You’re a saint, Angie. Well, I’d better be off. . . .”

  I go to kiss Evelyn.

  “You look after yourself,” I say.

  “And you, Vivienne,” she says, rather formally. She’s sitting there so stiffly, as if she has to concentrate or she might fall apart. “Give my love to the girls.” As though she didn’t say good-bye to them just before we left. As though she hasn’t seen them for weeks.

  I pat her hand, and thank Angie again, and hurry back down the hill. I can’t help thinking about what she said, about what the Germans could do. I tell myself she’s wrong—that it’s just a salacious story. In the Great War we heard that the Germans were cutting the hands off babies, but it proved to be just a terrible rumor.

  Yet the pictures are there in my mind and I can’t push them away.

  Chapter 5

  THE STREETS OF St. Peter Port are quiet. Some of the shops are boarded up, and there’s a lot of litter lying, and shifting slightly in little eddies of air. The sky has clouded over, so it has a smudged, bleary look, like window glass that needs cleaning. It’s a gray, dirty, rather disconsolate day.

  Frank drops us at the harbor, wishing us luck.

  We see at once why the streets were empty: all the people are here. There’s already a very long queue of silent, anxious islanders, snaking back from the pier and all along the Esplanade. We go to a desk set up on the pavement, where a flustered woman ticks our names off a list. She has a pink, mottled face, and disordered hair that she keeps distractedly pushing out of her eyes.

  We join the queue. People are sweating in woolen coats too cumbersome to pack up: they take out their handkerchiefs, wipe the damp from their skin. On this clammy summer day, the winter colors of the coats look somber, almost funereal. Some people don’t have suitcases and have tied up their belongings in neat brown-paper parcels. A bus arrives, and children spill down the steps. Most of them have labels carefully pinned to their coats. They have a lost, dazed look in their eyes. Older children officiously clutch at younger brothers and sisters, responsibility weighing on them, clasping at a coat collar or the cuff of a sleeve.

  Millie stares at the children. She frowns. She holds very tight to my hand.

  Blanche is wearing her coral taffeta dress beneath her winter coat. She unbuttons her coat and runs her hand over her skirt, trying to smooth out the creases in the glossy fabric.

  “Oh no, Mum,” she says suddenly.

  Her voice is full of drama; my heart pounds, hurting my chest.

  “What is it?” I say sharply.

  “I think I’ve forgotten my Vaseline. My skin will get all chapped.”

  I feel a little cross with her, that she frightened me like that.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “We’re all sure to have forgotten something.”

  “It does matter, Mum. It does.”

  We stand there for what seems like a very long time. The queue is orderly, subdued. Nobody talks very much. Seagulls scream in the empty air above us, and there are many boats at anchor; you can hear the nervous slap and jostle of water around their hulls. The sun comes briefly out from the cloud, throwing light at everything, then rapidly snatching it back; where the sun isn’t shining on it, the sea looks black and unspeakably cold. I can’t see the boat that will take us to Weymouth—it must be moored out of sight. The only vessel that’s moored to this part of the pier is quite a small boat, not much bigger than the fishermen use, tied up where stone steps lead down from the pier to the sea. I wonder vaguely who it belongs to.

  More and more people come, with their coats, their suitcases, their bulging parcels of precious belongings; with the fear that seems to seep like sweat from their pores.

  “Will I have my own room at Auntie Iris’s?” Blanche asks me.

  “No, sweetheart. It’ll be a crush. You’ll probably have to sleep in the back bedroom with the boys.”

  “Oh,” she says, digesting this. It isn’t quite what she’d hoped for. “Well, I don’t mind. It might be quite fun, really, sharing a room.”

  “What does London look like?” says Millie.

  “You’ll love it,” says Blanche. She relishes being asked this, being the expert on London. “The women have beautiful clothes, and the trains go under the ground, and there’s a park with pelicans. . . .”

  I understand Blanche’s yearning for London: sometimes I long for it too, even after all these years away. I remember the sense of possibility—of a world that’s freer, wider, more open than this island. I share her excitement for a moment, allowing myself a spark of hope—that there could be good things about this, in spite of the war. A new freedom.

  “Can we go and see Buckingham Palace?” says Millie.

  She has a Buckingham Palace jigsaw that Evelyn gave her for Christmas.

  “I’m sure we will,” I say.

  To my relief, the queue begins to edge forward. Then I see that the people at the front are going down the steps from the pier and over a gangplank onto the boat. The small boat. It can’t be. They can’t expect us to go in that, all the way to England.

  “What is it, Mum?” says Blanche, urgently. She’s heard my quick inbreath.

  “Nothing, sweetheart.”

  She follows my gaze.

  “It isn’t a very big boat, Mum.” A little uncertain.

  “No. But I’m sure it will be fine. I’m sure they know what they’re doing.”

  She hears the apprehension in my voice. She gives me a questioning look.

  The queue inches forward, silently.

  In front of me is a solid middle-aged woman. Around her neck she wears a fox fur, which has a glass-bead eye, a predatory mouth, a lush russet tail hanging down. Millie is intrigued: she stares at the fox. A smell of mothballs hangs about the woman; she will have taken her best winter clothes out of storage. Next to her is her husband, who seems rather passive and cowed. You can tell she’s the one who makes the decisions.

  “Sorry to bother you,” I say.

  She turns and gives a slight smile, approving of my children.

  “It was just that I was wondering—is that the boat?” I say.

  “Well, that’
s what it looks like,” she says.

  She obviously takes trouble over her appearance; she has plucked her eyebrows out then penciled them carefully in, and her face is heavily powdered. Her hat is fixed with a silver hat pin like a pansy flower.

  “We’ll never all get on that,” I say. “They should have sent something bigger. Didn’t they realize how many of us there would be?”

  The woman shrugs.

  “To be honest—excuse my language—I don’t think they give a damn about us, in England,” she says.

  “But—you’d think they’d have sent some soldiers. I mean, there’s no protection for us. We could meet anything on the journey.”

  “We’re expendable, let’s face it,” says the woman. “They’ve given us up for lost. Well, I suppose Mr. Churchill’s got an awful lot of things on his mind.”

  She’s sardonic, resigned. I wish I could be like that—perhaps it’s a good way to be: not to expect very much, not to struggle against what is happening. But she doesn’t have children with her.

  She pulls out the hat pin and fans her face with her hat. Sweat has made thin runnels in the powder on her face. She turns back to her husband.

  Panic moves through me. Everything feels so unguessably fragile, so opened up to disaster—the bodies of my children, the flimsy little boat. I have to protect my children, I have to keep them safe; but I don’t know how to do that. I think of the boat, packed tight with all these people, edging its way across the wideness of sea, all that shining waste of water between us and Weymouth; of the dark secret threat that lurks in the depths of the sea.

  I’m scarcely aware of the moment of decision, as though I perform the action almost before I think the thought. I find myself pulling Millie out of the queue, dumping the bags down beside her.