The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Thank God we were at his flat by then—he began shouting about Sidney and godforsaken islands and women who care more about a passel of strangers than men who are right in front of them (that’s Guernsey and my new friends there). I kept trying to explain and he kept shouting until I began to cry from frustration. Then he felt remorseful, which was so unlike him and endearing that I almost changed my mind and said yes. But then I imagined a lifetime of having to cry to get him to be kind, and I went back to no again. We argued and he lectured and I wept a bit more because I was so exhausted, and eventually he called his chauffeur to take me home. As he shut me into the back seat, he leaned in to kiss me and said, “You’re an idiot, Juliet.”

And maybe he’s right. Do you recall those awful, awful Cheslayne Fair novels we read the summer we were thirteen? My favorite was The Master of Blackheath. I must have read it twenty times (and so did you, don’t pretend you didn’t). Do you remember Ransom—how he manfully hid his love for the girlish Eulalie so that she could choose freely, little knowing that she had been mad for him ever since she fell off her horse when she was twelve? Here’s the thing, Sophie—Mark Reynolds is exactly like Ransom. He’s tall and handsome, with a crooked smile and a chiseled jaw. He shoulders his way through the crowd, careless of the glances that follow him. He’s impatient and magnetic, and when I go to powder my nose, I overhear other women talking about him, just like Eulalie did in the museum. People notice him. He doesn’t try to make them—they can’t help it.

I used to get shivers about Ransom. Sometimes I do about Mark, too—when I look at him—but I can’t get over the nagging feeling that I’m no Eulalie. If I were ever to fall off a horse, it would be lovely to be picked up by Mark, but I don’t think I’m likely to fall off a horse any time soon. I’m much more likely to go to Guernsey and write a book about the Occupation, and Mark can’t abide the thought. He wants me to stay in London and go to restaurants and theaters and marry him like a reasonable person.

Write and tell me what to do.

Love to Dominic—and you and Alexander as well.

Juliet

From Juliet to Sidney

3rd May, 1946

Dear Sidney,

I may not be as distraught as Stephens & Stark is without you, but I do miss you and want you to advise me. Please drop everything you are doing and write to me at once.

I want to get out of London. I want to go to Guernsey. You know I’ve grown very fond of my Guernsey friends, and I’m fascinated by their lives under the Germans—and afterward. I’ve visited the Channel Islands Refugee Committee and read their files. I have read the Red Cross reports. I’ve read all I can find on Todt slave workers— there hasn’t, so far, been much. I’ve interviewed some of the soldiers who liberated Guernsey and talked to Royal Engineers who removed the thousands of mines from their beaches. I’ve read all of the “unclassified” government reports on the state of the Islanders’ health, or lack of it; their happiness, or lack of it; their food supplies, or lack of them. But I want to know more. I want to know the stories of the people who were there, and I can never learn those by sitting in a library in London.

For example—yesterday I was reading an article on the liberation. A reporter asked a Guernsey Islander, “What was the most difficult experience you had during the Germans’ rule?” He made fun of the man’s answer, but it made perfect sense to me.

The Islander told him, “You know they took away all of our wireless sets? If you were caught having a hidden radio, you’d get sent off to prison on the continent. Well, those of us who had secret radios, we heard about the Allies landing in Normandy. Trouble was, we weren’t supposed to know it had happened! Hardest thing I ever did was walk around St. Peter Port on June 7, not grinning, not smiling, not doing anything to let those Germans know that I KNEW their end was coming. If they’d caught on, someone would be in for it—so we had to pretend. It was very hard to pretend not to know D-Day had happened.”

I want to talk to people like him (though he’s probably off writers now) and hear about their war, for that’s what I’d like to read, instead of statistics about grain. I’m not sure what form a book would take, or if I could even write one at all. But I would like to go to St. Peter Port and find out.

Do I have your blessing?

Love to you and Piers,

Juliet

Cable from Sidney to Juliet

10th May, 1946

HEREWITH MY BLESSING! GUERNSEY IS A WONDERFUL IDEA, BOTH FOR YOU AND FOR A BOOK. BUT WILL REYNOLDS ALLOW IT? LOVE, SIDNEY

Cable from Juliet to Sidney

11th May, 1946

BLESSING RECEIVED. MARK REYNOLDS IS NOT IN A POSITION TO FORBID OR ALLOW. LOVE, JULIET

From Amelia to Juliet

13th May, 1946

My dear,

It was a delight to receive your telegram yesterday and learn that you are coming to visit us!

I followed your instructions and spread the news at once—you have sent the Society into a whirlwind of excitement. The members instantly offered to provide you with anything you might need: bed, board, introductions, a supply of electric clothes-pins. Isola is over the moon that you are coming and is already at work on behalf of your book. Though I cautioned her that it was only an idea as yet, she is bound and determined to find material for you. She has asked (perhaps threatened) everyone she knows in the market to send you letters about the Occupation; she thinks you’ll need them to persuade your publisher that the subject is book-worthy. Don’t be surprised if you are