great talkers and their speeches went on for hours—while the plates stayed bare. Finally they served up, 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 along about the time the notion of a SOUL gave out, 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 soul! Think upon it!”
Thompson was barred from their doors forever, and he moved to Guernsey to grow vegetables. Sometimes he rides 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.
Tell me, Miss Ashton, what are your views on the matter? Isola thinks you should come to visit Guernsey, and if you do, you could ride in my cart with us. I’d bring a cushion.
Best wishes for your continued health and happiness.
Will Thisbee
From Mrs. Clara Saussey to Juliet
8th April, 1946
Dear Miss Ashton,
I’ve heard about you. I once belonged to that Literary Society, though I’ll wager none of them ever told you about me. I didn’t read from any book by a dead writer, no. I read from a work I wrote myself—my book of cookery recipes. I venture to say my book caused more tears and sorrow than anything Charles Dickens ever wrote.
I chose to read about the correct way to roast a suckling pig. Butter its little body, I said. Let the juices run down and cause the fire to sizzle. The way I read it, you could smell the pig roasting, hear its flesh crackle. I spoke of my five-layer cakes—using a dozen eggs—my spun-sugar sweets, chocolate-rum balls, sponge cakes with pots of cream. Cakes made with good white flour—not that cracked grain and bird-seed stuff we were using at the time.
Well, miss, my audience couldn’t stand it. They was pushed over the edge, hearing of my tasty recipes. Isola Pribby, that never had a manner to call her own, she cried out I was tormenting her and she was going to hex my saucepans. Will Thisbee said I would burn like my cherries jubilee. Then Thompson Stubbins swore at me, and it took both Dawsey and Eben to get me away safely.
Eben called the next day to apologize for the Society’s bad manners. He asked me to remember that most of them had come to the meeting directly from a supper of turnip soup (with nary a bone in it to give pith), or parboiled potatoes scorched on a hot iron—there being no cooking fat to fry them up in. He asked me to be tolerant and forgive them.
Well, I’ll not do it—they called me bad names. There wasn’t a one of them who truly loved literature. Because that’s what my cookery book was—sheer poetry in a pan. I believe they was made so bored, what with the curfew and other nasty Nazi laws, they only wanted an excuse to get out of an evening, and reading is what they chose.
I want the truth of them told in your story. They’d never have touched a book, but for the OCCUPATION. I stand by what I say, and you can quote me direct.
My name is—Clara S-A-U-S-S-E-Y. Three esses, in all.
Clara Saussey (Mrs.)
From Amelia to Juliet
10th April, 1946
My dear Juliet,
I, too, have felt that the war goes on and on. When my son, Ian, died at El Alamein—side by side with Eli’s father, John—visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said “Life goes on.” What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn’t. It’s death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and next year and forever. There’s no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it. Sorrow has rushed over the world like the waters of the Deluge, and it will take time to recede. But already, there are small islands of—hope? Happiness? Something like them, at any rate. I like the picture of youstanding upon your chair to catch a glimpse of the sun, averting your eyes from the mounds of rubble.
My greatest pleasure has been in resuming my evening walks along the cliff tops. The Channel is no longer framed in rolls of barbed wire, the view is unbroken by huge
This summer, gorse will begin to grow around the fortifications, and by next year, perhaps vines will creep over them. I hope they are soon covered. For all I can look away, I will never be able to forget how they were made.
The Todt workers built them. I know you have heard of Germany’s slave workers in camps on the continent, but did you know that Hitler sent over sixteen thousand of them here, to the Channel Islands?
Hitler was fanatic about fortifying these islands—England was never to get them back! His generals called it Island Madness. He ordered large-gun emplacements, anti-tank walls on the beaches, hundreds of bunkers and batteries, arms and bomb depots, miles and miles of underground tunnels, a huge underground hospital, and a railroad to cross the island to carry materials. The coastal fortifications were absurd—the Channel Isles were better fortified than the Atlantic Wall built against an Allied invasion. The installations jutted out over every bay. The Third Reich was to last one thousand years—in concrete.
So, of course, he needed thousands of slave workers; men and boys were conscripted, some were arrested, and some were just picked up off the streets—out of cinema queues, from cafes, from the country lanes and fields of any German Occupied territory. There were even political prisoners from the Spanish Civil War. The Russian prisoners of war were treated the worst, perhaps because of their victory over the Germans on the Russian
