Exclusive extract from The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, the Great Read in the August issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
From Juliet to Sidney
22 May 1946
There’s so much to tell you. I’ve been in Guersney only twenty hours, but each one has been so full of new faces and ideas that I’ve got reams to write. You see now conducive to writing island life is? Look at Victor Hugo – I may grow prolific if I stay here for any length of time.
The voyage from Weymouth was ghastly, with the mail boat groaning and creaking and threatening to break to pieces in the waves. I almost wished it would, to put me out of my misery, except that I wanted to see Gurnsey before I died. And as soon as we came in sight of the island, I gave up the notion altogether because the sun broke beneath the clouds and set the cliffs shimmering into silver.
As the mail boat lurched into the harbour, I saw St Peter Port rising up from the sea, with a church at the top like a cake decoration, and I realised that my heart was galloping. However much as I tried to persuade myself it was the thrill of the scenery, I knew better. All those people I’ve come to know and even love a little, waiting to see – me. And I, without any paper to hide behind. Sidney, in these past two or three years, I have become better at writing for a living – and think what you do to my writing. On the page, I am perfectly charming, but that’s just a trick I’ve learnt. It has nothing to do with me. At least that’s what I was thinking as the boat approached the pier. I had a cowardly impulse to throw my red cape overboard and pretend I was someone else.
I could see the faces of the people waiting – and there was no going back. I knew them by their letters. There was Isola in a mad hat and a purple shawl pinned with a glittering brooch. She was smiling fixedly in the wrong direction and I loved her instantly.
Next to her stood a man with a lined face, and at his side, a boy, all height and angles. Eben and his grandson Eli. I waved to Eli and he smiled like a beam of light and nudged his grandfather – and then I went shy and lost myself in the crowd that was pushing down the gangplank.
Isola reached me first by leaping over a crate of lobsters and pulled me up in a fierce hug that swung me off my feet. ‘Ah, lovely!’ she cried while I dangled. Wasn’t that sweet? All my nervousness was squeezed out of me along with my breath. The others came towards me more quietly, but with n less warmth. Eben shook my hand and smiled. You can tell me was broad and hardy once, but he is too thin now. He manages to look grave and friendly at the same time. How does he do that? I found myself wanting to impress. Eli swung Kit up on his shoulders, and they came forward together. Kit has chubby little legs – dark curls, big grey eyes – and she didn’t take to me at all. Eli’s jersey was speckled with wood shavings, and he had a present for me in his pocket – an adorable little mouse with crooked whiskers, carved from walnut. I gave him a kiss on the cheek and survived Kit’s malevolent glare. She has a very forbidding way about her for a four-year-old.
The Dawsey held out his hands. I had been expecting him to look like Charles Lamb, and he does, a little – he has the same steady gaze. He presented me with a bouquet of carnations from Booker, who couldn’t be present; he had concussed himself during rehearsal and was in hospital overnight for observation. Dawsey is dark and wiry, and his face has a quiet, watchful look about it – until he smiles. Except for a certain sister of yours, he was the sweetest smile I’ve ever, and I remember Amelia writing that he has a rare gift for persuasion – I can believe it. Like Eben – like everyone here – he is too thin. His hair is going grey, and he has deep-set brown eyes, so dark they look black. The lines around his eyes make him seem to be starting a smile even when he’s not. I don’t think he’s more than forty. He is only a little taller than I am and limps slightly, but he’s strong – he loaded all my luggage, me, Amelia and Kit into his cart with no trouble, I shook hands with him (I can’t remember if he said anything) and then he stepped aside for Amelia. She’s one of those women who are more beautiful at sixty than they could possibly have been at twenty (oh, how I hope someone says that about me one day!). Small, thin-face, lovely smile, grey hair in plaits wound round he head, she gripped my hand tightly and said, ‘Juliet, I am glad you are here at last. Let’s get your things and go home.’ It sounded wonderful, as though it really was my home.
As we stood there on the pier, some glint of light kept flashing in my eyes, and then around the dock. Isola snorted and said it was Adelaide Addison, at her window with her opera glasses, watching every move we made. Isola waved vigorously at the gleam and it stopped. While we were laughing about that, Dawsey was gathering up my luggage and ensnaring that Kit didn’t fall off the pier and generally making himself useful. I began to see that this is what he does – and that everyone depends on him to do it.
Off we went out into the countryside. There are rolling fields, but they end suddenly in cliffs, and all around is the moist salt small of the sea. As we drove, the sun set and the mist rose. You know how sounds become magnified by fog? Well, it was like that – even bird’s cry was weighty and symbolic. Clouds boiled up over the cliffs, and the fields were swathed in grey by the time we reached the manor house, but I saw ghostly shapes that I think were the cement bunkers built by the Todt workers.
Kat sat beside me in the cart and sent me many sideways glances. I was not so foolish as to try and talk to her, but I played my severed thumb trick – you know, the one that makes your thumb look as though it’s been sliced in two. I did it over and over again, casually, not looking at her, while she watched me like a baby hawk. She was intent and fascinated but not gullible enough to break into giggles. She just said at last, ‘Show me how you do that.’
She sat opposite me at supper and refused her spinach with a thrust-out arm, hand straight like a policeman. ‘Not for me,’ she said, and I, for one, couldn’t disobey her. She pulled her chair close to Dawsey’s and ate with one elbow planted firmly on his arm, pinning him in his place. He didn’t seem to mind, even if it did make cutting his chicken difficult, and when supper was over, she climbed on to his lap. It is obviously her rightful throne, and though Dawsey seemed to be listening to the conversation, I spied him poking out a napkin-rabbit while we talked about food shortages during the Occupation. Did you know that the Islanders ground bird-seed for flour until they ran out of it?
I must have passed some test I didn’t know I was being given, because Kit asked me to tuck her up in bed. She wanted to hear a story about a ferret. She liked vermin. Did I? Would I kiss a rat on the lips? I said, ‘Never’ and that seemed to win her over – I was plainly a coward, but not a hypocrite. I told her the story and she presented her cheek an infinitesimal quarter of an inch to be kissed. What a long letter – and it only contains the first four hours of the twenty. You’ll have to wait for the other sixteen.
Love, Juliet.
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