I don’t think I was in there for long. Auntie Aggie realized what had happened, scolded Iris, came and unlocked the door. But I don’t remember that clearly at all—the moment when she let me out into the cheerful day again. It’s the darkness I remember.
HOW MUCH DID that loss of my mother shape the course of my life? Hugely, I can see that now, though it’s taken me years to learn this. Now I even wonder if that was why I married the very first man I went out with—whether my decision had something to do with that loss. Wanting to have something settled, longing for safety, wanting to keep things the same—so frightened of change and uncertainty.
I was nineteen when I met Eugene, and still living in the house in Evington Road. I was working as a secretary in an insurance firm in Clapham. I met Eugene at a church social; he was a bank clerk, living in digs in Streatham that always smelled of broccoli. He’d been excited to move to London, but had hoped for something from it that it had somehow failed to give. He was already longing to go back to Guernsey when I met him. There was a faint mothball scent of disappointment that hung about him, though at first I wasn’t aware of it. He was a good-looking man—clear eyes, symmetrical features, sleeked-down hair, a clean-cut face that made him seem much younger than his years. Our daughters have that face as well, that open, candid look. And he was always very well turned out—his business suits pressed with a razor-sharp edge, his shoes as shiny as mirror glass. “He’s so handsome,” everyone said. “He looks just like Jack Pickford. Well, haven’t you done well for yourself?” There was something reassuring about his effortless, practiced courtship of me—the yellow roses, the boxes of New Berry Fruits—a feeling that I could leave it to him, that he would take control, make the decisions. What did he see in me? I wonder. I don’t know, can’t imagine now—though he would always be very flattering about my looks, my clothes. He knows how to flatter a woman. Maybe my rather French-sounding name reassured him in some way, suggested I would fit in on his island. That may sound rather fanciful, yet people will often let themselves be guided by such things, making a weighty decision because some small hand beckons. I’ve seen this. Whatever the reason, he couldn’t wait to gather me up and bring me back to Guernsey.
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 rumors. 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, 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 theater, 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 around 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 honor 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’d have 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—hart’s-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 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.
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“Oh. Thanks, Angie.”
I smooth down the skirt. As she says, it’s pretty; the cotton has a pattern of flowers of many colors, 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 around 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 parlor,” she says. “I wonder if you could bring it for me? Just while I finish my wash.”
I go to her parlor 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 hymnbook, 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 favorites?”
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 around 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,” 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 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 fishermen, 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 harbor. 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 recognize 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 hood is open. One of the men from Les Vinaires is there, the scarred man I saw in the window, peering under the hood. I see him too late. I’d have done anything to avoid him, but I can’t turn back now. 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 hood up. The engine turns once, splutters, dies. He gets out, kicks a tire, 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 t
o 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 here. 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 apologize,” 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: the engine starts 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.
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