them—and come off ships down in the harbor! All I could think of was
They came here on Sunday, 30th June, 1940, after bombing us two days before. They said they hadn’t meant to bomb us; they mistook our tomato lorries on the pier for army trucks. How they came to think that strains the mind. They bombed us, killing some thirty men, women, and children—one among them was my cousin’s boy. He had sheltered underneath his lorry when he first saw the planes dropping bombs, and it exploded and caught fire. They killed men in their lifeboats at sea. They strafed the Red Cross ambulances carrying our wounded. When no one shot back at them, they saw the British had left us undefended. They just flew in peaceably two days later and occupied us for five years.
At first, they were as nice as could be. They were that full of themselves for conquering a bit of England, and they were thick enough to think it would just be a hop and a skip till they landed in London. When they found out that wasn’t to be, they turned back to their natural meanness.
They had rules for everything—do this, don’t do that, but they kept changing their minds, trying to seem friendly, like they were poking a carrot in front of a donkey’s nose. But we weren’t donkeys. So they’d get harsh again.
For instance, they were always changing curfew—eight at night, or nine, or five in the evening if they felt really meanminded. You couldn’t visit your friends or even tend your stock. We started out hopeful, sure they’d be gone in six months. But it stretched on and on. Food grew hard to come by, and soon there was no firewood left. Days were grey with hard work and evenings were black with boredom. Everyone was sickly from so little nourishment and bleak from wondering if it would ever end. We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us. Elizabeth used to say a poem. I don’t remember all of it, but it began “Is it so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done, to have advanced true friends?” It isn’t. I hope, wherever she is, she has that in her mind.
Late in 1944, it didn’t matter what time the Germans set the curfew for. Most people went to bed around five o’clock anyway to keep warm. We were rationed to two candles a week and then only one. It was mighty tedious, lying up in bed with no light to read by.
After D-Day, the Germans couldn’t send any supply ships from France because of the Allied bombers. So they were finally as hungry as we were—and killing dogs and cats to give themselves something to eat. They would raid our gardens, rooting up potatoes—even eating the black, rotten ones. Four soldiers died eating handfuls of hemlock, thinking it was parsley. The German officers said any soldier caught stealing food from our gardens would be shot. One poor soldier was caught stealing a potato. He was chased by his own people and climbed up a tree to hide. But they found him and shot him down out of the tree. Still, that did not stop them from stealing food. I am not pointing a finger at those practices, because some of us were doing the same. I figure hunger makes you desperate when you wake to it every morning.
My grandson, Eli, was evacuated to England when he was seven. He is home now—twelve years old, and tall —but I will never forgive the Germans for making me miss his growing-up years.
I must go milk my cow now, but I will write to you again if you like.
My wishes for your health,
Eben Ramsey
From Miss Adelaide Addison to Juliet
1st March, 1946
Dear Miss Ashton,
Forgive the presumption of a letter from a person unknown to you. But a clear duty is imposed upon me. I understand from Dawsey Adams that you are to write a long article for the
I laugh.
Perhaps you will reconsider when you learn that their founder, Elizabeth McKenna, is not even an Islander. Despite her fine airs, she is merely a jumped-up servant from the London home of Sir Ambrose Ivers, R.A. (Royal Academy). Surely, you know of him. He is a portrait painter of some note, though I’ve never understood why. His portrait of the Countess of Lambeth as Boadicea, lashing her horses, was unforgivable. In any event, Elizabeth McKenna was the daughter of his housekeeper, if you please.
While Elizabeth’s mother dusted, Sir Ambrose let the child putter in his studio, and he kept her in school long after the normal leaving time for one of her station. Her mother died when Elizabeth was fourteen. Did Sir Ambrose send her to an institution to be properly trained for a suitable occupation? He did not. He kept her with him in his home in Chelsea. He proposed her for a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art.
Mind you, I do not say Sir Ambrose sired the girl—we know his proclivities too well to admit of that—but he doted upon her in a way that encouraged her besetting sin: lack of humility. The decay of standards is the cross of our times, and nowhere is this regrettable decline more apparent than in Elizabeth McKenna.
Sir Ambrose owned a home in Guernsey—on the cliff tops near La Bouvee. He, his housekeeper, and the girl summered here when she was a child. Elizabeth was a wild thing—roaming unkempt about the island, even on Sundays. No household chores, no gloves, no shoes, no stockings. Going out on fishing boats with rude men. Spying on decent people through her telescope. A disgrace.
When it became clear that the war was going to start in earnest, Sir Ambrose sent Elizabeth to close up his house. Elizabeth bore the brunt of his haphazard ways in this case, for, in the midst of putting up the shutters, the German army landed on her doorstep. However, the choice to remain here was hers, and, as is proven by certain subsequent events (which I will not demean myself to mention), she is not the selfless heroine that some people seem to think.
Furthermore, the so-called Literary Society is a scandal. There are those of true culture and breeding here in Guernsey, and they will take no part in this charade (even if invited). There are only two respectable people in the Society—Eben Ramsey and Amelia Maugery. The other members: a rag-and-bone man, a lapsed Alienist who drinks, a stuttering swine-herd, a footman posing as a Lord, and Isola Pribby, a practicing witch, who, by her own admission to me, distills and sells potions. They collected a few others of their ilk along the way, and one can only imagine their “literary evenings.”
