find them all. I’ll bet you did and I don’t know how to thank you for that. They came at just the right time too. Kit’s favorite animal was a snake she saw in a book, and he was easy to carve, being so long and thin. Now she’s gone on ferrets. She says she won’t ever touch my whittling knife again if I’ll carve her a ferret. I don’t think it will be too hard to make one, for they are pointy, too. Because of your gift, I have wood to practice with.
Is there an animal you would like to have? I want to carve a present for you, but I’d like it to be something you’d favor. Would you like a mouse? I am good with mice.
Yours truly,
Eli
From Eben to Juliet
22nd April, 1946
Dear Miss Ashton,
Your box for Eli came Friday—what a kindness of you. He sits and studies the blocks of wood—as if he sees something hidden inside them, and he can make it come out with his knife.
You asked if all the Guernsey children were evacuated to England. No—some stayed, and when I missed Eli, I looked at the little ones around me and was glad he had gone. The children here had a bad time, for there was no food to grow on. I remember picking up Bill LePell’s boy—he was twelve but weighed no more than a child of seven.
It was a terrible thing to decide—send your kiddies away to live among strangers, or let them stay with you? Maybe the Germans wouldn’t come, but if they did—how would they behave to us? But, come to that, what if they invaded England, too—how would the children manage without their own families beside them?
Do you know the state we were in when the Germans came? Shock is what I’d call it. The truth is, we didn’t think they’d want us. It was England they were after, and we were of no use to them. We thought we’d be in the audience like, not up on the stage itself.
Then in the spring of 1940 Hitler got himself going through Europe like a hot knife through butter. Every place fell to him. It was so fast—windows all over Guernsey shook and rattled from the explosions in France, and once the coast of France was gone, it was plain as day that England could not use up her men and ships to defend us. They needed to save them for when their own invasion began in earnest. So we were left to ourselves.
In the middle of June, when it became pretty certain we were in for it, the States got on the telephone to London and asked if they would send ships for our children and take them to England. They could not fly, for fear of being shot down by the Luftwaffe. London said yes, but the children had to be ready at once. The ships would have to hurry here and back again while there was still time. It was such a desperate time for folks and there was such a feel of Hurry, Hurry.
Jane had no more strength than a cat then, but she knew her mind. She wanted Eli to go. Other ladies were in a dither—go or stay?—and they were wild to talk it over, but Jane told Elizabeth to keep them away. “I don’t want to hear them fuss,” she said. “It’s bad for the baby.” Jane had an idea that babies knew everything that happened around them, even before they were born.
The time for dithering was soon over. Families had one day to decide, and five years to abide with it. School- age children and babies with their mothers went first on the 19th and 20th of June. The States gave out pocket money to the kiddies, if their parents had none to spare. The littlest children were all excited about the sweets they could buy with it. Some thought it was like a Sunday School outing, and they’d be back by nightfall. They were lucky in that. The older children, like Eli, knew better.
Of all the sights I saw the day they left, there is one picture I can’t get out of my mind. Two little girls, all dressed up in pink party dresses, stiff petticoats, shiny strap shoes—like their Ma thought they’d be going to a party. How cold they must have been crossing the Channel.
All the children were to be dropped off at their school by their parents. It was there we had to say our good- byes. Buses came to take the children down to the pier. The boats that had just been to Dunkirk came back across the Channel for the children. There was no time to get a convoy together to escort them. There was no time to get enough lifeboats on board—or life jackets.
That morning we stopped first at the hospital for Eli to bid his mother good-bye. He couldn’t do it. His jaw was clamped shut so tight, he could only nod. Jane held him for a bit, and then Elizabeth and me walked him down to the schoolyard. I hugged him hard and that was the last time I saw him for five years. Elizabeth stayed because she had volunteered to help get the children inside ready.
I was walking back to Jane in the hospital, when I recalled something Eli had once said to me. He was about five years old, and we were walking down to La Courbiere to see the fishing boats come in. There was an old canvas bathing shoe left lying right in the middle of the path. Eli walked around it, staring.
Finally, he said, “That shoe is all alone, Grandpa.” I answered that yes it was. He looked at it some more, and then we walked on by. After a bit, he said, “Grandpa, that’s something I never am.” I asked him, “What’s that?” And he said, “Lonesome in my spirits.”
There! I had something happy to tell Jane after all, and I prayed it would stay true for him.
Isola says she wants to write you herself of the doings inside the school. She says she was witness to a scene you will want to know about as an authoress: Elizabeth smacked Adelaide Addison in the face and made her leave. You do not know Miss Addison, and you are fortunate in that—she is a woman too good for daily wear.
Isola told me you might come to visit Guernsey. I would be glad to offer you hospitality with me and Eli.
Yours,
Eben Ramsey
Telegram from Juliet to Isola
DID ELIZABETH REALLY SLAP ADELAIDE ADDISON? IF ONLY I HAD BEEN THERE! PLEASE SEND DETAILS. LOVE, JULIET
