The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

lawn is growing green and lush again, covering up the wheel ruts of German cars and trucks.

Escorted at different times by Eben, Eli, Dawsey, or Isola, I have quartered the island’s ten parishes in the past five days; Guernsey is very beautiful in all its variety—fields, woods, hedgerows, dells, manors, dolmens, wild cliffs, witches’ corners, Tudor barns, and Norman cottages of stone. I have been told stories of her history (very lawless) with almost every new site and building.

Guernsey pirates had superior taste—they built beautiful homes and impressive public buildings. These are sadly dilapidated and in need of repair, but their architectural beauty shows through anyway. Dawsey took me to a tiny church—every inch of which is a mosaic of broken china and smashed pottery. One priest did this all by himself—he must have made pastoral calls with a sledgehammer.

My guides are as various as the sights. Isola tells me about cursed pirate chests bound with bleached bones washing up on the beaches and what Mr. Hallette is hiding inside his barn (he says it’s a calf, but we know better). Eben describes how things used to look, before the war, and Eli disappears suddenly and then returns with peach juice and an angelic smile on his face. Dawsey says the least, but he takes me to see wonders—like the tiny church. Then he stands back and lets me enjoy them as long as I want. He’s the most un-hurrying person I’ve ever met. As we were walking along the road yesterday, I noticed that it cut very close to the cliffs and there was a trail leading down to the beach below. “Is this where you met Christian Hellman?” I asked. Dawsey looked startled and said yes, this was the spot. “What did he look like?” I asked, for I wanted to picture the scene. I expected it was a futile request, given that men cannot describe each other, but Dawsey knew how. “He looked like the German you imagine—tall, blond hair, blue eyes—except he could feel pain.”

With Amelia and Kit, I have walked to town several times for tea. Cee Cee was right in his raptures over sailing into St. Peter Port. The harbor, with the town traipsing straight up and steeply to the sky, must be one of the most beautiful in the world. Shop windows on High Street and the Pollet are sparkling clean and are beginning to fill up with new goods. St. Peter Port may be essentially drab right now—so many buildings need refurbishing—but it does not give off the dead-tired air poor London does. It must be because of the bright light that flows down on everything and the clean, clear air and flowers growing everywhere—in fields, on verges, in crannies, between paving stones.

You really have to be Kit’s height to see this world properly. She’s grand at pointing out certain things I would otherwise miss—butterflies, spiders, flowers growing tiny and low to the ground—they’re hard to see when you are faced with a blazing wall of fuchsias and bougainvillea. Yesterday, I came upon Kit and Dawsey crouched in the brush beside the gate, quiet as thieves. They weren’t stealing, though; they were watching a blackbird tug a worm out of the ground. The worm put up a good fight, and the three of us sat there in silence until the blackbird finally got it down his gullet. I’d never really seen the entire process before. It’s revolting.

Kit carries a little box with her sometimes when we go to town—a cardboard box, tied up tight with cord and a red yarn handle. Even when we have tea, she holds it on her lap and is very protective of it. There are no air holes in the box, so it can’t be a ferret. Or, oh Lord, maybe it’s a dead ferret. I’d love to know what’s in it, but of course I can’t ask.

I do like it here, and I’m settled in well enough to start work now. I will, as soon as I come back from fishing with Eben and Eli this afternoon.

Love to you and Piers,

Juliet

From Juliet to Sidney

30th May, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Do you remember when you sat me down for fifteen sessions of the Sidney Stark School of Perfect Mnemonics? You said writers who sat scribbling notes during an interview were rude, lazy, and incompetent and you were going to make sure I never disgraced you. You were unbearably arrogant and I loathed you, but I learned your lessons well—and now you can see the fruits of your hard work:

I went to my first meeting of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society last night. It was held in Clovis and Nancy Fossey’s living room (with spill-over into the kitchen). The speaker of the evening was a new member, Jonas Skeeter, who was to talk about The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

Mr. Skeeter strode to the front of the room, glared at us all, and announced he didn’t want to be there and had only read Marcus Aurelius’s silly book because his oldest, his dearest, and his former friend, Woodrow Cutter, had shamed him into it. Everyone turned to look at Woodrow, and Woodrow sat there, obviously shocked and his mouth agape.

“Woodrow,” Jonas Skeeter went on, “came across my field where I was busy, building up my compost. He was holding this little book in his hands and he said he’d just finished reading it. He’d like me to read it too, he said—it was very profound.

“‘Woodrow, I’ve got no time to be profound,’ I said.

“He said, ‘You should make time, Jonas. If you’d read it, we’d have better things to talk about at Crazy Ida’s. We’d have more fun over a pint.’

“Now, that hurt my feelings, no good saying it didn’t. My childhood friend had been holding himself above me for some time—all because he read books for you people and I didn’t. I’d let it pass before—to each his own, as my Mum always said. But now he had gone too far. He had insulted me. He put himself above me in conversation.

“‘Jonas,’ he said, ‘Marcus was a Roman emperor—and a mighty warrior. This book is what he thought about, down there among the Quadi. They were barbarians who was waiting in the woods to kill all the Romans. And Marcus, hard-pressed as he was by those Quades, he took the time to write up this little book of his thoughts. He had long, long thoughts, and we could use some of those, Jonas.’

“So I pushed down my hurt and took the damned book, but I came here tonight to say before all, Shame, Woodrow! Shame on you, to put a book above your boyhood friend!

“But I did read it and here is what I think. Marcus Aurelius was an old woman— forever taking his mind’s temperature—forever wondering about what he had done, or what he had not done. Was he right—or was he wrong? Was the rest of the world in error? Could it be him instead? No, it was everybody else who was wrong, and he set matters straight for them. Broody hen that he was, he never had a tiny thought that he couldn’t turn into a sermon. Why, I bet the man couldn’t even take a piss—”