The Soldier's Wife

by Margaret Leroy

  Chapter 66

  SATURDAY. I WAKE with a surge of happiness, the shiny festive feeling rushing in before the thought, before I know why I am happy. Then I remember why I feel this: Gunther is back from leave today. And with the realization comes a little apprehension, misting over the gleaming surface of my mood, like breath that blurs a mirror. What would he do if he knew about me feeding Kirill? Would he betray us—Kirill and Millie and me? What would he do? I tell myself, Of course he wouldn’t betray us. He is a good man. I know him to be a kind man. . . . But I hear Blanche’s voice in my mind: How can you ever really know someone? How can you ever be sure?

  When I’m out in my yard, I glance up at the big bay window of Les Vinaires, hoping for a glimpse of him. And now and then I go up to my bedroom and look out over their front garden. The world is bright and glittery, washed clean by last night’s storm, everything radiant, hopeful. But I don’t see him.

  A good while before curfew, I take some food to Peter Mahy’s barn—bread and ham and apples, wrapped in a tea towel in a basket. Kirill is waiting. He takes the food from me.

  “Thank you, Vivienne. Thank you so much.”

  I don’t wait with him while he eats: it’s too risky being out here with him. What if someone saw me, wondered where I was going—followed me, even? But I feel a little tug of sadness, leaving him there.

  I hear Millie’s prayers and tuck her blankets in. She reaches up, pulls my head down urgently toward her. She presses her mouth to my ear; her soft breath feathers my skin.

  “Kirill didn’t come,” she says.

  “No, sweetheart. But I’ve fed him. I took his food to the barn. From now on, I’m going to have to do that.”

  Lamplight bright as marigolds spills across her. As I bend down toward her, my shadow blots out her face.

  “Can’t he come here anymore?”

  “No, I don’t think he can. It isn’t safe here now. And I don’t want you to come with me when I go to the barn, just in case somebody sees us.” Moving on quickly, because I’m afraid of what she will ask.

  “But I really want to come with you.” She’s outraged. “He’s my friend too. He was my friend first, Mummy.”

  “I know. But we have to be careful—you know that. We could be in danger, Millie. You have to do as I say.”

  She frowns. She’s wondering whether it’s worth protesting—wondering if I’ll give in.

  “Anyway, your cold’s better now,” I tell her. “You’ll be able to play with Simon again, after school.”

  Doubt swims in the dark of her eye like a little fish. I feel my blood flow faster. I’m waiting for her to ask, But why, Mummy? Why can’t Kirill come here?

  “I wish he could still come to our kitchen,” she says.

  “I know, sweetheart. So do I. But the thing is, we don’t want to put him in danger,” I say.

  She accepts this. She yawns as wide as a cat, stretches extravagantly, settles back on her pillows. She pulls her blanket up to her face.

  “Well, see you take good care of him, Mummy,” she says.

  AT TEN O’CLOCK I hear a soft knock on the door. My heart pounds.

  I open the door. Gunther is dark against the moonlight outside.

  He has a bottle of brandy for us. I go to my kitchen to find glasses. He follows me. I feel suddenly awkward with him. It’s as though we’ve forgotten how to be with each other, as though there’s a rhythm we used to know that we have to learn over again.

  “So how was everything in Berlin?” I ask him.

  It’s the kind of question you ask when someone has been away. But the question is fraught, complicated. My body feels clumsy, a bit too big for the room.

  “Berlin was much as usual. But in Cologne and Lübeck the bombing has been terrible. So much destroyed. I can’t talk about it,” he says.

  I don’t know what to think. Isn’t this what I should want? For German cities to be destroyed? But I see the distress in his face and I can’t feel any triumph—just a confused sadness. I don’t say anything.

  “This is a terrible world we live in, Vivienne,” he says.

  “Yes.”

  That, at least, I can agree with.

  I ask about Ilse, his wife.

  “She is the same as ever,” he says. “She always keeps the house well. Though daily life is difficult, of course.”

  I think how strange it is to be asking these things. Our love had seemed so natural before he went on leave—easy as air, as though it were the element I lived in. Now there’s a shift, a disruption.

  “Did you see Hermann?” I ask him.

  His face softens, hearing his son’s name. But he shakes his head.

  “No,” he tells me. “He is in Africa, with Rommel.”

  There’s a thread of fear wrapped around his voice. He turns from me, to hide the feeling, and his gaze falls on the flowers that Kirill picked for me. The flowers are almost dead now, the petals crinkled like scraps of brown paper; but they were such a precious gift I can’t bear to throw them away.

  “Someone gave you flowers?” he says.

  There’s a slight edge to his voice. I realize he might think that I have another admirer.

  “Oh, that was just Millie,” I tell him, with a little throwaway laugh.

  But it comes out wrong: the laugh sounds forced. A shiver goes through me, cold crawling over my skin. For a brief, panicked moment, I fear he will read my secret in my face.

  But then his mouth is on mine and his arms are all around me, and I feel myself open up to him as I always do. I have been so hungry for him.

  I take him up to my bedroom. He has a bag of gifts for me. He shows me what he has brought: silk stockings, French cigarettes, and Guerlain L’Heure Bleue, in a cut-glass bottle that dazzles and catches the light. I open the perfume and breathe in deeply: the scent is wonderful, profound, smelling of almonds and melancholy. I touch the stockings delicately, feel their cobwebby fragility, afraid that they’ll be laddered by the calluses on my hands. I’ll have to wear gloves to pull them on. I wonder if these gifts are all too glamorous for me—if I’m too worn out, too used up for such luxury now.

  In his arms, I think of nothing but him. I feel the rightness, the sweetness, of having him here in my bed, where he should be. But afterward the questions are there, insistent wings that beat at the darkened windowpanes of my mind.

  He can tell, of course.

  “You seem preoccupied, darling,” he says. “Is something the matter?”

  “Don’t worry, it’s nothing,” I say.

  He traces out the side of my face with one warm finger.

  “I know there’s something,” he says.

  “Well, just the usual things. You know—keeping everything going. With all the shortages. With Evelyn not quite right in her head. . . .”

  Kirill’s story is in my mind—the villagers tied together in the forest. I want to ask him how such things could happen, how people could be treated as nothing—used, discarded, thrown away. To see whether Gunther has ever heard of such inhumanity. But I can’t ask, because if I asked, he would wonder at once where I had heard this story.

  “And what about young Millie? Are you still worried about her?” he says.

  I wish he hadn’t said that. It’s too close to the things that weigh on me. I turn a little away from him, so he can’t quite see my face.

  “No, she seems fine. She’s settled down,” I tell him.

  “No more ghosts?” he asks me.

  “No, she doesn’t talk about all those things anymore.”

  “It was just a stage. All children go through stages,” he says.

  “Yes, I expect so.”

  He exhales deeply, stretches, wraps his arms around me again. I rest my head on his chest. I can feel his heart beating.

  “It’s so good to be home,” he tells me.

  I can’t believe he meant that—when he called my bedroom “home.” I tell myself it’s just a slip of the tongue. But I still feel happy that he sai
d it.

  Chapter 67

  EVERY EVENING THAT week, I take some food to the barn. Kirill is there, waiting for me. We speak briefly, but it doesn’t feel safe to talk like we did when he sat at my kitchen table. This saddens me: I feel that we’re withdrawing from each other a little, and I’m so glad we had that time together, safe in my house. I no longer feel afraid when I do this, though I am always wary. It becomes a routine with me, something I grow accustomed to. To take the food to the barn, to speak to Kirill; then to come back home and wait for Gunther. Moving from one world to another.

  On Friday evening I go as usual, but Kirill isn’t there. I sit in the barn doorway, feeling the soft dull thuds of my heart. At last, I think I hear a quiet footfall and relief swims through me. I turn quickly. But there is nothing behind me—only rustling grasses and leaves and the shadows of leaves. I wait for a long time. I don’t like leaving Evelyn and Millie, but I can’t go till I’ve seen him. The sun begins to set in a blaze of pink and amber and gold. I sit so still that rabbits come right up to me, moving utterly silently through the pale ruffled grass. There’s a chalky crescent moon in the deepening sky, like a nail paring. When it’s almost curfew time, I head back home.

  I tell myself that anything could have happened. Perhaps the prisoners have been forced to mend the hole in the fence. There could be a different guard on, who doesn’t turn a blind eye. I tell myself he will be there tomorrow. But I have a cold, sick feeling.

  “You have that little frown,” says Gunther. He runs one finger down between my eyebrows, as though to wipe the frown away. “Is it Millie?”

  “No, it isn’t Millie. It’s nothing. Really,” I tell him.

  I can tell he doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t say anything more, and that worries me, that he doesn’t question me further. As though he knows I may not tell him the truth. I wonder if he suspects me.

  The next day, when I go to the barn, the things I left are still there under the tractor, the basket and tea towel scattered, the food strewn around and gnawed at. It looks as though rats have been there.

  I feel a chill. I think of the horror of what I saw by Harry Tostevin’s land, all those months ago now—the man who was beaten and kicked to death. I can’t bear to think what might have happened, in the hell that Kirill inhabits.

  I return every evening, hoping, but Kirill isn’t there, and the food is untouched where I left it, or has been spoiled by animals. I know I will have to stop doing this. I can’t really spare the food, if nobody is eating it. So I only go on alternate days, and then I stop going at all.

  I don’t know what to tell Millie. I decide to say nothing. She inhabits the present tense of childhood; she’s always out with Simon, battling with conkers, roaming the Blancs Bois, fishing for sticklebacks in the streams. Maybe she scarcely thinks about Kirill now.

  One day I make a treat for tea—some apple charlotte with apples from our orchard, Bramleys that are good for cooking. I sweeten them with Gwen’s honey and make a crunchy topping from some precious crusts of stale bread. Millie watches. She loves to see me prepare the apples, how I cut from each a single gleaming spiraling ribbon of peel.

  She comes back into the kitchen as I take the pudding out of the oven. Delicious scents float on the air—caramel, apples, toasted bread.

  “Mmm. That smells really nice. Kirill will like that,” she says.

  I don’t say anything. I have my back to her. I feel her questioning gaze on me.

  “What’s the matter, Mummy? Is Kirill all right?” she asks me.

  I know I have to tell her, to be honest. I owe her that. He was her friend first, as she said.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. I’m worried about him. He hasn’t been to the barn. I haven’t seen him for a while.”

  Her small face darkens. She says nothing for a moment. A crane fly skitters across the window, gangly, gray as rain. Outside, there’s a blustering wind that scuffs at the drifts of colored leaves, and more leaves fall past our window—the season ending, everything falling apart.

  “What’s happened to him?” she asks me.

  “Maybe he hasn’t been able to leave the work camp in the evening. Or maybe they’ve moved him somewhere else. He might even be in a different country,” I say.

  But I don’t know if that can happen, whether they move the slave workers from one country to another, or whether once they’re here on Guernsey, they stay.

  “Has he died?” she asks me.

  The words shake me, coming from her.

  I have such an urge to reassure her, as you do when a child has a nightmare—soothing her, telling her all is well with the world. But it feels wrong to do that.

  “I don’t know, Millie. . . . Sweetheart, you will always remember this has to be a secret, won’t you? Kirill being our friend. That we fed him.” I take her face in my hands, look into her eyes, see the gold flecks in the darkness of them. “We musn’t tell anyone, ever. Even if we never see him again.”

  She looks straight back at me. Her gaze is sepia-brown and luminous.

  “I know that, Mummy. You’ve told me.” She’s a bit cross, impatient, because I keep repeating this. “I promised. It’s our secret, isn’t it?”

  Yes, I think, with a little lurch of the heart.

  Chapter 68

  WINTER COMES, THE third winter of the Occupation: everything closed down, retreating, my garden full of barren white stalks like little bones. It’s cold. We rarely have frosts on Guernsey, but a vicious wind blows, which chills everywhere it touches. From the lane past Harry Tostevin’s fields, you can see the sea, pale and ferocious, how it beats and batters the land, the plumes of white spray flying. I ration our wood very carefully. When a fire has been lit in our living room, I tell the girls off severely if they forget to shut the door and let a little heat escape. If the war goes on for another year, I don’t know where our fuel will come from. I may have to fell the trees in my orchard—though whenever I think this, sadness tugs at my sleeve.

  Gwen tells me that hundreds of people have been deported to Germany. They’ve been sent to internment camps there, just as Gunther had said. She’s angry.

  “They say the Guernsey government didn’t make any protest. I know their hands are tied. But they didn’t have to be quite so obliging,” she says.

  She doesn’t ask why my name didn’t appear on the list.

  I feel so grateful to Gunther, because no one came for me, and I am still here with my children.

  One day, Blanche comes to find me in my bedroom. Vivid spots of embarrassment flare in her cheeks. I feel a flicker of apprehension.

  “Mum.” Her voice is hushed and ashamed. “I wanted to ask you something. . . . The thing is . . . It’s the curse. It hasn’t come.”

  “Blanche. No.” I’m appalled. Our hunger, the shortages, and now this: another mouth to feed.

  She flinches.

  “Don’t be cross, Mum. Please.”

  “Why on earth shouldn’t I be? How many months have you missed?”

  “Just one. Mum, you don’t understand. I haven’t . . .” She can’t quite say it. “I mean, honestly, it’s not that. You know that, Mum, you know I don’t even have a boyfriend. The thing is, I wouldn’t think of going out with one of the island boys. They’re all so boring. . . . And even if I did—of course I wouldn’t—you know . . . Mum, I do as the Bible says. Why don’t you trust me?”

  I look into the summer blue of her eyes. She doesn’t flinch from my gaze.

  “You’re really telling the truth?”

  “Yes. I promise.”

  My anger seeps away.

  “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I was worried. . . .”

  She doesn’t say anything. I know she won’t readily forgive me for doubting her.

  “I think it could be happening because you’re hungry,” I tell her. “If you get too thin, your system closes down. I’ve read that somewhere.”

  “Oh. Are you absolutely sure?”

  “Yes. It doesn’t
mean that there’s anything wrong,” I tell her.

  I think how my own cycle has been erratic too. I feel bad that I was so cross with her.

  “Will I still be able to be a mother when I get married?” she says.

  “Yes, of course,” I tell her. “It’ll all go back to normal when we have a bit more to eat.”

  I put my arm around her. Her body is stiff, resisting. She’s still cross that I didn’t trust her.

  OUR CLOTHES ARE all worn through. It’s not so bad for Millie: she’s able to wear all Blanche’s old things, so she still has plenty of clothes—a tartan kilt, a Fair Isle jumper, a dress of white organdy with a sash of cherry-red ribbon. Anyway, she’s still only six—she doesn’t care what she wears. But Blanche is desperate. She stares at the pictures in her magazines and yearns for glamorous clothes.

  One day I’m using my sewing machine; some of our sheets are wearing through, and I’m turning them sides to middle. Blanche watches me thoughtfully.

  “Mum. Could I do some sewing? Could I make myself something new? I look so frumpy nowadays.”

  “Of course you don’t, sweetheart, you always look lovely.”

  “You’re only saying that because you’re my mother,” she says. “Really. I mean it.”

  “I could have a look in St. Peter Port. But there’s hardly any material in the shops now,” I tell her. “Only the ends of rolls that nobody wants.”

  “Celeste made a skirt from old curtains,” she says. “She looks so stylish in it. She really looks the part. . . . There must be a bit of material in the house I could use.”

  I go up to the back attic, determined to find her something.

  The attic feels separate, sequestered, the only sound the shuffle and murmur of pigeons up on the roof, which seem loud in here, as though the air is breathing. Through the dormer windows you can see the high winter sky, as gray as tin and shining.

  I open a big old blanket chest, the camphor smell tickling my nose. I find pillow slips and tablecloths that I brought here when I was married—linens too good for everyday use, and so somehow never used. I’d forgotten all about them. At the bottom of the chest, I find a green velvet curtain that used to hang inside the front door to keep out the drafts. I shake it out, hold it up. It’s a rich jade color, like deep seawater on a hot summer’s day, like the sea at Petit Bôt where it laps at the foot of the cliffs. The shade would be perfect for Blanche. I’m sure she could make this into something. Myself, I’m hopeless at sewing: any length of fabric will feel recalcitrant in my hand, as though it has a life of its own. But Blanche is a natural seamstress.