Just as the last picture was being hung on the wall, the German planes flew over and bombed St Peter Port. Lord Tobias, panicking at all the racket, called the captain of his yacht and ordered him, ‘Get ready the ship!’ We were to load the boat with his silver, his paintings, his bibelots, and, if enough room, Lady Tobias, and set sail at once for England I was the last one up the gangway, with Lord Tobias screaming, ‘Hurry up, man! Hurry up, the Huns are coming!’
My true destiny struck me at that moment, Miss Ashton. I still had the key to his Lordship’s wine cellar. I thought of all those bottles of wine, champagne, brandy, cognac that had been left behind—and pictured myself alone with them. I thought of no more bells, no more livery, no more Lord Tobias. In fact, no more being in service at all.
I turned my back on him and quickly walked down the gangway. I ran up the road to La Fort and watched the yacht sail away, Lord Tobias still screaming. Then I went inside, laid a fire, and stepped into the wine cellar. I took down a bottle of claret and drew my first cork. I let the wine breathe. Then I returned to the library, sipped, and began to read The Wine-Lover’s Companion. I read about grapes, tended the garden, slept in silk pyjamas—and drank wine. And so it went until September when Mrs Maugery and Elizabeth McKenna came to call on me. Elizabeth I knew slightly—she and I had chatted several times at the market—but Mrs Maugery was a stranger to me. Were they going to turn me in to the constable? I wondered.
No. They were there to warn me. The Commandant of Guernsey had ordered all Jews to report to the Grange Lodge Hotel and register. According to the Commandant, our ID cards would merely be marked Juden and then we were free to go home. Elizabeth knew my mother was Jewish; I had mentioned it once. They had come to tell me that I must not, under any circumstances, go to the Grange Lodge Hotel.
But that wasn’t all. Elizabeth had considered my predicament thoroughly (more thoroughly than I) and made a plan. As all Islanders were to have identity cards anyway, why couldn’t I declare myself to be Lord Tobias Penn-Piers himself? I could claim that, as a visitor, all my documents had been left behind in my London bank. Mrs Maugery was sure Mr Dilwyn would be happy to back up my impersonation, and he was. He and Mrs Maugery went with me to the Commandant’s Office, and we all swore that I was Lord Tobias Penn-Piers.
It was Elizabeth who came up with the finishing touch. The Germans were taking over all Guernsey’s grand houses for their officers to live in, and they wouldn’t ignore a residence like La Fort—it was too good to miss. And when they came, I must be ready for them as Lord Tobias Penn-Piers. I must look like a lord of leisure and act at ease. I was terrified.
‘Nonsense,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You have presence, Hooker. You’re tall, dark, handsome, and all valets know how to look down their noses.’
She decided that she would quickly paint my portrait as a sixteenth-century Penn-Piers. So I posed in a velvet cloak and ruff, seated against a background of dark tapestries and dim shadows, fingering my dagger. I looked Noble, Aggrieved and Treasonous.
It was a masterly stroke, for, not two weeks later, a body of German officers (six in all) appeared in my library—without knocking. I received them there, sipping a Chateau Margaux 1893 and bearing an uncanny resemblance to the portrait of my ‘ancestor’ hanging above me over the mantelpiece.
They bowed to me and were all politeness, which did not prevent them from taking over the house and moving me into the gatekeeper’s cottage the very next day. Eben and Dawsey slipped over after curfew that night and helped me carry most of the wine down to the cottage, where we cleverly hid it behind the woodpile, down the well, up the chimney, under the haystack and above the rafters. But even so, I still ran out of wine by early 1941. A sad day, but I had friends to help distract me—and then, then I found Seneca.
I came to love our book meetings—they helped to make the Occupation bearable. Some of their books sounded all right, but I stayed true to Seneca. I came to feel that he was talking to me—in his funny, biting way—but talking only to me. His letters helped to keep me alive in what was to come later.
I still go to all our Society meetings. Everyone is sick of Seneca, and they are begging me to read someone else. But I won’t do it I also act in plays that one of our repertory companies puts on—impersonating Lord Tobias gave me a taste for acting, and besides, I am tall, loud and can be heard in the back row.
I am glad the war is over, and I am John Booker again.
Yours truly,
John Booker
From Juliet to Sidney and Piers
Mr Sidney Stark
Monreagle Hotel
Broadmeadows Avenue, 79
Melbourne
Victoria
Australia
31st March 1946
Dear Sidney and Piers,
No life’s blood—just sprained thumbs from copying out the enclosed letters from my new friends in Guernsey. I love their letters and could not bear the thought of sending the originals to the bottom of the earth where they would undoubtedly be eaten by wild dogs.
I knew the Germans occupied the Channel Islands, but I barely gave them a thought during the war. I have since scoured The Times for articles and anything I can cull from the London Library on the Occupation. I also need to find a good travel book on Guernsey—one with descriptions, not timetables and hotel recommendations—to give me the feel of the island.
Quite apart from my interest in their interest in reading, I have fallen in love with two men: Eben Ramsey and Dawsey Adams. Clovis Fossey and John Booker, I like. I want Amelia Maugery to adopt me; and I want to adopt Isola Pribby. I will leave you to discern my feelings for Adelaide Addison (Miss) by reading her letters. The truth is, I am living more in Guernsey than I am in London at the moment—I pretend to work with one ear cocked for the sound of the post dropping in the box, and when I hear it, I scramble down the stairs, breathless for the next piece of the story. This must be how people felt when they gathered around the publisher’s door to seize the latest instalment of David Copperfield as it came off the printing press.
I know you’re going to love the letters, too—but would you be interested in more? To me, these people and their wartime experiences are fascinating and moving. Do you agree? Do you think there could be a book here? Don’t be polite—I want your opinion (both of your opinions) unvarnished. And you needn’t worry—I’ll continue to send you copies of the letters even if you don’t want me to write a book about Guernsey. I am (mostly) above petty vengeance.
Since I have sacrificed my thumbs for your amusement, you should send me one of Piers’s latest in return. So glad you are writing again, my dear.
My love to you both,
Juliet
From Daiosey to Juliet
2nd April 1946
Dear Miss Ashton,
Having fun is the biggest sin in Adelaide Addison’s bible (lack of humility following close on its heels), and I’m not surprised she wrote to you about Jerry-bags. Adelaide lives on her wrath.
There were few eligible men left in Guernsey and certainly no one exciting. Many of us were tired, scruffy, worried, ragged, shoeless and dirty—we were defeated and looked it. We didn’t have the energy, time or money for fun. Guernsey men had no glamour—and the German soldiers did. They were, according to a friend of mine, tall, blond, handsome and tanned—like gods. They gave lavish parties, were jolly and zestful company, had cars and money and could dance all night long.
But some of the girls who went out with soldiers gave the cigarettes to their fathers and the bread to their families. They would come home from parries with rolls, pate, fruit, meat pies and jellies stuffed into their bags, and their families would have a full meal the next day. I don’t think some Islanders ever credited the boredom of those years. Boredom is a powerful reason to befriend the enemy, and the prospect of fun is a powerful draw—especially when you are young. There were many people who would have no dealings with the Germans—if you said so much as good morning you were abetting t
he enemy, according to their way of thinking. But circumstances were such that I could not abide by that with Captain Christian Hellman, a doctor in the Occupation forces and my good friend.
In late 1941 there wasn’t any salt on the Island, and none was coming to us from France. Root vegetables and soups are listless without salt, so the Germans got the idea of using seawater to supply it. They carried it up from the bay and poured it into a big tanker set in the middle of St Peter Port. Everyone was to walk to town, fill up their buckets, and carry them home again. Then we were to boil the water away and use the sludge in the bottom of the pan as salt That plan failed—there wasn’t enough wood to waste building up a fire hot enough to boil the pot of water dry. So we decided to cook all our vegetables in the seawater itself.
That worked well enough for flavour, but there were many older people who couldn’t manage the walk into town or haul heavy buckets home. No one had much strength left for such chores. I have a slight limp from a badly set leg, and though it kept me from army service, it has never been bad enough to bother me. I was very hale, and so I began to deliver water to some cottages. I exchanged a spare spade and some twine for Madame LePell’s old pram, and Mr Soames gave me two small oak wine casks, each with a spigot I sawed off the barrel tops to make moveable lids and fitted them into my pram—so now I had transport Several of the beaches weren’t mined, and it was easy to climb down the rocks, fill a cask with seawater, and carry it back up.
The November wind is bleak, and one day my hands were numb after I climbed up from the bay with the first barrel of water. I was standing by my pram, trying to limber up my fingers, when Christian drove by. He stopped his car, backed up and asked if I wanted any help. I said no, but he got out of his car anyway and helped me lift the barrel into my pram. Then, without a word, he went down the cliff with me, to help with the second barrel.
I hadn’t noticed that he had a stiff shoulder and arm, but between those, my limp, and the loose scree, we slipped coming back up and fell against the hillside, losing our grip on the barrel. It tumbled down, splintered against the rocks and soaked us. God knows why it struck us both as funny, but it did. We sagged against the cliffside, unable to stop laughing. That was when Elia’s essays slipped out of my pocket, and Christian picked the book up, sopping wet. ‘Ah, Charles Lamb,’ he said, and handed it to me. ‘He was not a man to mind a little damp.’ My surprise must have shown, because he added, ‘I read him often at home. I envy you your portable library.’
We climbed back up to his car. He wanted to know if I could find another barrel. I said I could and explained my water-delivery route. He nodded, and I started out with the pram. But then I turned back and said, ‘You can borrow the book, if you like.’ You would have thought I was giving him the moon. We exchanged names and shook hands.
After that, he would often help me carry up water, and then he’d offer me a cigarette, and we’d stand in the road and talk—about Guernsey’s beauty, about history, about books, about farming, but never about the present—always things far away from the war. Once, as we were standing, Elizabeth rattled up the road on her bicycle. She had been on nursing duty all day and probably most of the night before, and like the rest of us her clothes were more patches than cloth. But Christian broke off in mid-sentence to watch her coming. Elizabeth drew up to us and stopped. Neither said a word, but I saw their faces, and I left as soon as I could. I hadn’t realised they knew each other.
Christian had been a field surgeon, until his shoulder wound sent him from Eastern Europe to Guernsey. In early 1942, he was ordered to a hospital in Caen; his ship was sunk by Allied bombers and he was drowned. Dr Lorenz, the head of the German Occupation hospital, knew we were friends and came to tell me of his death. He meant for me to tell Elizabeth, so I did.
The way that Christian and I met may have been unusual, but our friendship was not I’m sure many Islanders grew to be friends with some of the soldiers. But sometimes I think of Charles Lamb and marvel that a man born in 1775 enabled me to make two such friends as you and Christian.
Yours truly,
Dawsey Adams
From Juliet to Amelia
4th April 1946
Dear Mrs Maugery,
The sun is out for the first time for months, and if I stand on my chair and crane my neck, I can see it sparkling on the river. I’m averting my eyes from the mounds of rubble across the road and pretending London is beautiful again.
I’ve received a sad letter from Dawsey Adams, telling me about Christian Hellman, his kindness and his death. The war goes on and on, doesn’t it? Such a good life—lost And what a grievous blow it must have been to Elizabeth. I am thankful she had you, Mr Ramsey, Isola Pribby and Mr Adams to help her when she had her baby.
Spring is nearly here. I’m almost warm in my puddle of sunshine. And down the street—I’m not averting my eyes now—a man in a patched jumper is painting the door to his house sky blue. Two small boys, who have been walloping one another with sticks, are begging him to let them help. He is giving them a tiny brush each. So—perhaps there is an end to war.
Yours sincerely,
Juliet Ashton
From Mark to Juliet
5th April 1946
Dear Juliet,
You’re being elusive and I don’t like it. I don’t want to see the play with someone else—I want to go with you. In fact, I don’t give a damn about the play. I’m only trying to rout you out of that apartment. Dinner? Tea? Cocktails? Boating? Dancing? You choose, and I’ll obey. I’m rarely so docile—don’t throw away this opportunity to improve my character.
Yours,
Mark
From Juliet to Mark
Dear Mark,
Do you want to come to the British Museum with me? I’ve got an appointment in the Reading Room at two o’clock. We can look at the mummies afterwards.
Juliet
From Mark to Juliet
To hell with the Reading Room and the mummies. Come have lunch with me.
Mark
From Juliet to Mark
You consider that docile?
Juliet
From Mark to Juliet
To hell with docile.
M.
From Will Thisbee to Juliet
7th April 1946
Dear Miss Ashton,
I am a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I am an antiquarian ironmonger, though it pleases some to call me a rag-and-bone man. I also invent labour-saving devices—my latest being an electric clothes peg that wafts the washing on the breeze, saving the wrists.
Did I find solace in reading? Yes, but not at first I’d just go and eat my pie quietly in a corner. Then Isola got hold of me and said I had to read a book and talk about it like the others. She gave me a book called Past and Presently Thomas Carlyle, and a tedious thing he was—he gave me shooting pains in my head—until I came to a bit on religion. I was not a religious man, though not for want of trying. Off I’d go, like a bee among blossoms, from church to chapel to church again. But I was never able to get hold of faith—until Mr Carlyle put religion to me in a different way. He was walking among the ruins of the Abbey at Bury St Edmunds, when a thought came to him, and he wrote it down thus:
Does it ever give thee pause that men used to have a soul—not by hearsay alone, or as a figure of speech; but as a truth that they knew, and acted upon! Verily it was another world then…but yet it is a pity we have lost the tidings of our souls…we shall have to go in search of them again, or worse in all ways shall befall us.
Isn’t that something? To know your own soul by hearsay, instead of its own tidings? Why should I let anyone tell me whether I had one or not? If I could believe I had a soul, all by myself, then I could listen to its tidings all by myself I gave my talk on Mr Carlyle to the Society, and it stirred up a great argument about the soul. Yes? No? Maybe? Dr Stubbins shouted the loudest, and soon everyone stopped arguing and listened to him.
Thompson Stubbins is a man
of long, deep thoughts. He was a psychiatrist in London until he ran amok at the annual dinner of the Friends of Sigmund Freud Society in 1934. He told me the whole tale once. The Friends were great talkers and their speeches went on for hours—while their plates stayed bare. At last, dinner was served, and silence fell upon the hall as the psychiatrists bolted their chops.
Thompson saw his chance: he beat his spoon upon his glass and shouted from the floor to be heard. ‘Did any of you ever think that around the time the notion of a SOUL disappeared, Freud popped up with the EGO to take its place? The timing of the man! Did he not pause to reflect? Irresponsible old coot! It is my belief that men must spout this twaddle about egos because they fear they have no souls! Think upon it!’
Thompson was barred from their doors for ever, and he moved to Guernsey to grow vegetables. Sometimes he drives around with me in my cart and we talk about Man and God and all the In-between. I would have missed all this if I had not belonged to the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.