The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Sidney in days, so I went to Stephens & Stark to demand attention and found he’d flown the coop. That new secretary of his is a fiend. To every one of my questions, she said, “I really can’t divulge information of a personal nature, Miss Ashton.” How I wanted to smack her.

Just as I was concluding that Sidney had been tapped by MI6 and was on a mission in Siberia, horrible Miss Tilley admitted that he’d gone to Australia. Well, it all came clear then, didn’t it? He’s gone to get Piers. Teddy Lucas seemed quite certain that Piers was going to drink himself steadily to death in that rest home unless someone came and stopped him. I can hardly blame him, after what he’s been through—but Sidney won’t allow it, thank God.

You know I adore Sidney with all my heart, but there’s something terrifically liberating about Sidney in Australia. Mark Reynolds has been what your Aunt Lydia would have called persistent in his attentions for the last three weeks, but, even as I’ve gobbled lobster and guzzled champagne, I’ve been looking furtively over my shoulder for Sidney. He’s convinced that Mark is trying to steal me away from London in general and Stephens & Stark in particular, and nothing I said could persuade him otherwise. I know he doesn’t like Mark—I believe aggressive and unscrupulous were the words he used last time I saw him—but really, he was a bit too King Lear about the whole thing. I am a grown woman—mostly—and I can guzzle champagne with whomever I choose.

When not checking under tablecloths for Sidney, I’ve been having the most wonderful time. I feel as though I’ve emerged from a black tunnel and found myself in the middle of a carnival. I don’t particularly care for carnivals, but after the tunnel, it’s delicious. Mark gads about every night—if we’re not going to a party (and we usually are), we’re off to the cinema, or the theater, or a night club, or a gin house of ill-repute (he says he’s trying to introduce me to democratic ideals). It’s very exciting.

Have you noticed there are some people—Americans especially—who seem untouched by the war, or at least, un-mangled by it? I don’t mean to imply that Mark was a shirker—he was in their Air Corps—but he’s simply not sunk under it. And when I’m with him, I feel untouched by the war, too. It’s an illusion, I know it is, and truthfully, I’d be ashamed of myself if the war hadn’t touched me. But it’s forgivable to enjoy myself a little—isn’t it?

Is Dominic too old for a jack-in-the-box? I saw a diabolical one in a shop yesterday. It pops out, leering and weaving, its oily black mustache curling above pointed white teeth, the very picture of a villain. Dominic would adore it, after he had got over his first shock.

Love,

Juliet

From Juliet to Isola

28th February, 1946

Miss Isola Pribby

Pribby Homestead

La Bouvee

St. Martin’s, Guernsey

Dear Miss Pribby,

Thank you so much for your letter about yourself and Emily Bronte. I laughed when I read that Emily had caught you by the throat the second poor Cathy’s ghost knocked at the window. She got me at the exact same moment. Our teacher had assigned Wuthering Heights to be read over the Easter holiday. I went home with my friend Sophie Stark, and we whined for two days over the injustice of it all. Finally her brother, Sidney, told us to shut up and get on with it. I did, still fuming, until I got to Cathy’s ghost at the window. I have never felt such dread as I did then. Monsters or vampires have never scared me in books—but ghosts are a different matter.

Sophie and I did nothing the rest of our holiday but move from bed to hammock to armchair, reading Jane Eyre, Agnes Grey, Shirley, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. What a family they were—but I chose to write about Anne Bronte because she was the least known of the sisters, and, I think, just as fine a writer as Charlotte. Lord knows how Anne managed to write any books at all, influenced by such a strain of religion as her Aunt Branwell possessed. Emily and Charlotte had the good sense to ignore their bleak aunt, but not poor Anne. Imagine preaching that God meant women to be Meek, Mild, and Gently Melancholic. So much less trouble around the house—pernicious old bat!

I hope you will write to me again.

Yours,

Juliet Ashton

From Eben Ramsey to Juliet

28th February, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

I am a Guernsey man and my name is Eben Ramsey. My fathers before me were tombstone-cutters and carvers—lambs a specialty. These are the things I like to do of an evening, but for my livelihood, I fish.

Mrs. Maugery said you would like to have letters about our reading during the Occupation. I was never going to talk—or think, if I could help it—about those days, but Mrs. Maugery said we could trust to your judgment in writing about the Society during the war. If Mrs. Maugery says you can be trusted, I believe it. Also, you had such kindness to send my friend Dawsey a book—and he all but unknown to you. So I am writing to you and hope it will be a help to your story.

Best to say we weren’t a true literary society at first. Aside from Elizabeth, Mrs. Maugery, and perhaps Booker, most of us hadn’t had much to do with books since our school years. We took them from Mrs. Maugery’s shelves fearful we’d spoil the fine papers. I had no zest for such matters in those days. It was only by fixing my mind on the Commandant and jail that I could make myself to lift up the cover of the book and begin.

It was called Selections from Shakespeare. Later, I came to see that Mr. Dickens and Mr. Wordsworth were thinking of men like me when they wrote their words. But most of all, I believe that William Shakespeare was. Mind you, I cannot always make sense of what he says, but it will come.

It seems to me the less he said, the more beauty he made. Do you know what sentence of his I admire the most? It is “The bright day is done, and we are for the dark.”

I wish I’d known those words on the day I watched those German troops land, plane-load after plane-load of