The Soldier’s Wife

I clear up the mess, the shards of china crunching under my feet. A feeling like grief washes through me, and not only because of the things that are broken or lost. This doesn’t feel like our home now, since the intrusion: it feels wrong, smells wrong, in that indefinable way of a place where someone unwelcome has been. Everything is falling apart—all the intricate warp and weft of the peaceful life we have lived here: everything unravelling. They haven’t come yet, but it has already begun.

CHAPTER 7 (#ulink_6f606bc7-88b2-55ba-a0a2-8a4ca3feec4a)

I put together a meal with some food that hasn’t been touched by the burglars—a loaf of bread I forgot to throw out, a tin of corned beef. After we’ve eaten, I walk up to Les Ruettes to bring Evelyn back home. Millie comes with me. The rain has stopped and the sky is starting to clear. There are still great banks of cloud that look as solid as far countries, but now between the heaps of cloud, there are depths and reaches of blue. The hedgebanks are drenched, and the air is rich with musky, polleny scents—wild garlic, wet earth, violets. I breathe in gratefully. The foxgloves brush against us like hands, and there are pale briar roses, each holding a drop of clear water. The little ferns that love the damp flicker like green tongues of flame.

As we near the door of Les Ruettes, Alphonse slinks out from behind a glasshouse and circles around Millie, arching, purring resonantly.

Frank le Brocq comes to the door, a cigarette clamped between his lips. He’s wearing his check cloth cap; he takes it off when he sees me. A splinter of amusement floats in his eye.

‘We saw you come back. Cold feet?’ he says.

‘Yes. You could put it like that.’

I feel awkward. There’s something shameful about returning like this: it suddenly feels like an act of cowardice—not a reasoned decision, more a failure of nerve.

He takes a long drag on his cigarette and looks me up and down, in his appraising way that I don’t quite like.

‘That cat of yours wouldn’t settle,’ he tells me. ‘He kept going back to your house. Cats are like that, cats are territorial creatures. A bit like you lot.’ He grins.

Millie picks up Alphonse and wraps her arms around him.

‘Did you miss me?’ she says.

The cat rubs his head extravagantly against her.

‘Look, Mummy, look, he knows what I’m saying. He really missed me,’ she says.

Frank stands aside, and we go into the kitchen. Angie is kneading dough on her table; she greets us with a smile. Evelyn is on the settle where I left her, still sitting upright on the edge of the seat.

‘Vivienne.’ There’s a puzzled look in Evelyn’s face, as though her life is a knotted tangle she can’t begin to undo. ‘Well, you didn’t take long.’

‘We’re taking you back home,’ I say. ‘We changed our minds. We didn’t go in the boat.’

‘Least said, soonest mended,’ she says.

I feel a little surge of unease. She often gives me this feeling now—that the things she say sound normal, yet somehow they don’t quite make sense.

I turn to Angie.

‘Thank you so much …’

‘Don’t you worry, Vivienne. I was more than glad to help out … Let’s hope you made the right decision,’ she adds, a little doubtfully.

‘Well, time will tell,’ I say vaguely; then think that I owe her some explanation, after everything that she has done for me. ‘The thing is—it was such a little boat. And it’s such a long way …’

We walk back slowly down the lane. I take Evelyn’s arm to help her. A bird calls with a sound like a pot being scraped, and the moist air is cool on our skin. Millie tries to carry Alphonse, but the cat wriggles down and scampers off through the fields, heading for Le Colombier. Millie slips her hand in mine.

‘I’m glad we came back home,’ she says, her voice fat with contentment. ‘I didn’t really want to go. It’s nice here, isn’t it, Mummy?’

‘Yes, sweetheart.’

But even as I say it, a little tremor goes through me. Above us the clouds retreat, regroup, creating new shapes in the sky—new countries, new islands.

CHAPTER 8 (#ulink_d0754fb6-ff5c-5197-b921-33daec686a6c)

On Friday I cycle up to town.

The streets are empty because so many people have gone, and some of the shops are boarded up, but otherwise St Peter Port feels much the same as always, calm and orderly in the warm June sunshine—as though the panic of the evacuation hadn’t happened at all. I buy a lamb joint, and stock up on coffee and cigarettes and tea. Such luxuries may become rather harder to buy—when they come, when it happens.

I come to Martel’s watch and clock shop, where Blanche’s friend, Celeste, has been working since she left school. I glance in through the window, wondering whether she’s gone, and she sees me and waves vigorously, her glossy dark curls dancing. I feel so happy for Blanche because her friend will still be here. In Grand Pollet, I pass the music shop that belonged to Nathan Isaacs; this is one of the shuttered shops. Nathan left a while ago, before the fall of France, saying that he could see which way the wind was blowing, a rueful smile on his clever, diffident face—talking about it so lightly. I miss him. We grew friendly because of the shop, where I’d often go to buy music. He was a good musician, a violinist, and sometimes I’d play duets with him at one of his music evenings, up at Acacia Villa, his tall, graceful house on the hill.

I go to the library, where I choose a new Elizabeth Goudge, and then on to the haberdasher’s to buy more wool for Evelyn. I can’t get her balaclavas and gloves to the Forces any more, but at least the knitting keeps her occupied. And I stop off at Boots on the High Street to buy a first lipstick for Blanche—wanting to give her a bit of glamour, something to make her happier, now I have snatched her dream of London from her.

I like chemists’ shops. I walk slowly down the aisle, past opulent silver compacts that I could never afford, moving through drifts of perfume-lavender water, and Devon Violets talcum powder, and all the lavish gorgeousness of Chanel No. 5.

The Yardley counter is right at the back of the shop. From here the land slopes steeply, and through the high arched windows you look down over russet-tiled roofs and out across the harbour; you can see the little boats bobbing, and all the glimmery blue dazzle of the sky and sea. Seagulls wheel and cry in the clear air. The day is mellowing now towards evening, the sunlight turning gold. The tomato lorries are parked in a line on the pier—there are still boats to take the crop to the mainland, though I don’t suppose this will happen for many more days. Way above the harbour, in the splendour of the sky, I notice two tiny black specks—a couple of planes that are flying there, very high, very far: they look innocuous as birds. I can’t tell if the planes are theirs or ours. Frank le Brocq would be able to tell, even from such a distance—he says he often sees German reconnaissance planes. It’s a good thing, really, that they fly over, he says: they’ll be able to tell that we’re defenceless—that there are no army camps or naval ships or anti-aircraft guns here. That we’re really not worth bothering with.

I stare at all the Yardley lipsticks, not knowing which colour to choose—maybe the rose-pink, maybe the peach. The simplest choices seem hard now, after all my hesitation about whether or not we should leave—as though I have somehow lost faith in my power to decide. In the end I choose the coral because it will match Blanche’s taffeta dress. Then I head back down the High Street: I have left my bike against a wall in the lower part of the road.

‘Vivienne! It is you!’ I feel a warm hand on my arm. ‘I called you but you didn’t turn. You looked like you were off in a dream …’

I spin around. It’s Gwen.

She smiles, a little triumphant—as though I am something she has achieved. Her gaze—chestnut-brown, vivid, shining—rests on my face. Her frock has a pattern of polka dots and little scarlet flowers. It’s so good to see her I’d like to put my arms around her.

‘I didn’t know if you’d gone or not,’ she says. ‘It was all so sudden, wasn’t it? Having to choose?’ She dumps her heavy bag of shopping down on the pavement, rubs a sore shoulder. ‘So you’ve decided to stick it out?’

I nod.

‘Cold feet, at the last moment,’ I tell her. ‘A bit pathetic really. We actually got to the pier. Then we went back home, and someone had broken in and stolen some of our things …’

She shakes her head wearily.

‘It happened to a lot of people,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t think it of islanders, would you?’

‘It was horrible,’ I say.

She puts her hand on my arm again.

‘I’m so glad, though, Vivienne,’ she tells me. ‘I’m just so glad you’re still here.’

Her warmth is so welcome.

‘Look—are you in a rush?’ she says.

‘Not at all.’

‘We’ll have tea, then?’