From Isola to Juliet
24th April, 1946
Dear Juliet,
Yes, she did—slapped her right across the face. It was lovely. We were all at the St. Brioc School to help the children get ready for the buses to take them down to the ships. The States didn’t want the parents to come into the school itself—too crowded and too sad. Better to say good-byes outside. One child crying might set them all off.
So it was strangers who tied up shoelaces, wiped noses, put a nametag around each child’s neck. We did up buttons and played games with them until the buses could come.
I had one bunch of kiddies trying to touch their tongues to their noses, and Elizabeth had another bunch playing that game that teaches them how to lie with a straight face—I forget what it’s called—when Adelaide Addison came in with that doleful mug of hers, all piety and no sense.
She gathered a circle of children around her and commenced singing “For Those in Peril on the Sea” over their little heads. But no, “safety from storms”
I tell you, Juliet, she had those children crying and sobbing fit to die. I was too shocked to move, but not Elizabeth. No, quick as an adder’s tongue, she had ahold of Adelaide’s arm and told her to SHUT UP.
Adelaide cried, “Let me go! I am speaking the Word of God!”
Elizabeth, she got a look on her that would turn the devil to stone, and then she slapped Adelaide right across the face—nice and sharp, so her head wobbled on her shoulders—and hauled her over to the door, shoved her out, and locked it. Old Adelaide kept a-pounding on the door, but no one paid her any heed. I lie—silly Daphne Post did try to open it, but I got her round the neck and she stopped.
It is my belief that the sight of a good fight shocked the fear right out of those babies, and they stopped crying, and the buses all came and we loaded the children on. Elizabeth and me, we didn’t go home, we stood in the road and waved till the buses was out of sight.
I hope I never live to see another such day, even with Adelaide getting slapped. All those little children bereft in the world—I was glad I did not have any.
Thank you for your life story. You have had such sadness with your Ma and Pa and your home by the river, for which things I am sorry. But me, I am glad you have dear friends like Sophie and her Ma and Sidney. As to that Sidney, he sounds a very fine man—but bossy. It’s a failing common in men.
Clovis Fossey has asked if you would send the Society a copy of your prize-winning essay on chickens. He thinks it would be nice to read aloud at a meeting. Then we could put it in our archives, if we ever have any.
I’d like to read it too, chickens being the reason I fell off a hen-house roof—they’d chased me there. How they all came at me—with their razor lips and back-to-back eyeballs! People don’t know how chickens can turn on you, but they can—just like mad dogs. I didn’t keep hens until the war came—then I had to, but I am never easy in their company. I would rather have Ariel butt me on my bottom—that’s open and honest and not like a sly chicken, sneaking up to jab you.
I would like it if you would come to see us. So would Eben and Amelia and Dawsey—and Eli, too. Kit is not so sure, but you needn’t mind that. She might come round. Your newspaper article will be printed soon, so you could come here and rest up. It may be that you could find a story here you’d like to tell about.
Your friend,
Isola
From Dawsey to Juliet
26th April, 1946
Dear Juliet,
My temporary job at the quarry is over, and Kit is staying with me for a bit. She is sitting beneath the table I’m writing upon, whispering. What’s that you’re whispering, I asked, and there was a long quiet. Then she commenced whispering again, and I can make out my own name mixed into the other sounds.
This is what generals call a war of nerves, and I know who is going to win.
Kit doesn’t resemble Elizabeth very much, except for her grey eyes and a look she gets when she is concentrating hard. But she is like her mother inside—fierce in her feelings. Even when she was a tiny creature, it was so. She howled until the glass shivered in the windows, and when she gripped my finger in her little fist, it turned white. I knew nothing of babies, but Elizabeth made me learn. She said I was fated to be a father and she had a responsibility to make sure I knew more than the usual run of them.
She missed Christian, not just for herself, for Kit, too. Kit knows her father is dead. Amelia and I told her that, but we didn’t know how to speak of Elizabeth. In the end, we said that she’d been sent away and we hoped she’d return soon. Kit looked from me to Amelia and back, but she didn’t ask any questions. She just went out and sat in the barn. I don’t know if we did right.
Some days I wear myself out with wishing for Elizabeth to come home. We have learned that Sir Ambrose Ivers was killed in one of the last bombing raids in London, and, as Elizabeth inherited his estate, his solicitors have begun a search for her. They must have better ways to find her than we have, so I am hopeful that Mr. Dilwyn will get some word from her—or about her—soon. Wouldn’t it be a blessed thing for Kit and for all of us if Elizabeth could be found?
The Society is having an outing on Saturday. We are attending the Guernsey Repertory Company’s showing of
Just thinking of the way Clovis hisses it has kept her awake for three nights, she says. Isola exaggerates, but
