Juliet, your book needs a center. I don’t mean more in-depth interviews. I mean one person’s voice to tell what was happening all around her. As written now, the facts, as interesting as they are, seem like random, scattered shots.
It would hurt like hell to write this letter to you, except for one thing. You already have the core—you just don’t know it yet.
I am talking about Elizabeth McKenna. Didn’t you ever notice how everyone you interviewed sooner or later talked about Elizabeth? Lord, Juliet, who painted Booker’s portrait and saved his life and danced down the street with him? Who thought up the lie about the Literary Society—and then made it happen? Guernsey wasn’t her home, but she adapted to it and to the loss of her freedom. How? She must have missed Ambrose and London, but she never, I gather, whined about it. She went to Ravensbruck for sheltering a slave worker. Look how and why she died.
Juliet, how did a girl, an art student who had never held a job in her life, turn herself into a nurse, working six days a week in the hospital? She did have dear friends, but in reality she had no one to call her own at first. She fell in love with an enemy officer and lost him; she had a baby alone during war time. It must have been fearful, despite all her good friends. You can only share responsibilities up to a point.
I’m sending back the ms and your letters to me—read them again and see how often Elizabeth is spoken of. Ask yourself why. Talk to Dawsey and Eben. Talk to Isola and Amelia. Talk to Mr. Dilwyn and to anyone else who knew her well.
You live in her house. Look around you at her books, her belongings.
I think you should write your book around Elizabeth. I think Kit would greatly value a story about her mother—it would give her something to hang on to, later. So, either quit altogether—or get to know Elizabeth well.
Think long and hard and tell me if Elizabeth could be the heart of your book.
Love to you and Kit,
Sidney
From Juliet to Sidney
15th July, 1946
Dear Sidney,
I don’t need more time to think about it—the minute I read your letter, I knew you were right. So slow-witted! Here I’ve been, wishing that I had known Elizabeth, missing her as if I had—why did I never once think of writing about her?
I’ll begin tomorrow. I want to talk to Dawsey, Amelia, Eben, and Isola first. I feel that she belongs to them more than the others, and I want their blessing.
Remy wants to come to Guernsey, after all. Dawsey has been writing to her, and I knew he could persuade her to come. He could talk an angel out of Heaven if he chose to speak, which is not often enough to suit me. Remy will stay with Amelia, so I get to keep Kit with me.
Undying love and gratitude,
Juliet
P.S. You don’t suppose Elizabeth kept a diary, do you?
From Juliet to Sidney
17th July, 1946
Dear Sidney,
No diary, but the good news is she did draw while her paper and pencil lasted. I found some sketches stuffed into a large art folio on the bottom shelf of the sitting-room bookcase. Quick line drawings that seem marvelous portraits to me: Isola caught unaware, hitting at something with a wooden spoon; Dawsey digging in a garden; Eben and Amelia with their heads together, talking.
As I sat on the floor, turning them over, Amelia dropped by for a visit. Together we pulled out several large sheets of paper, covered with sketch after sketch of Kit. Kit asleep, Kit on the move, on a lap, being rocked by Amelia, hypnotized by her toes, delighted with her spit bubbles. Maybe every mother looks at her baby that way— with that intense focus—but Elizabeth put it on paper. There was one shaky drawing of a wizened little Kit, made the day after she was born, according to Amelia.
Then I found a sketch of a man with a good, strong, rather broad face; he’s relaxed and appears to be looking over his shoulder, smiling at the artist. I knew at once it was Christian—he and Kit have a cowlick in exactly the same place. Amelia took the paper into her hands; I had never heard her speak of him before and asked if she had liked him.
“Poor boy,” she said. “I was so set against him. It seemed insane to me that Elizabeth had chosen him—an enemy, a German—and I was frightened for her. For the rest of us, too. I thought that she was too trusting, and he would betray her and us—so I told her that I thought she should break off with him. I was very stern with her.
“Elizabeth just stuck out her chin and said nothing. But the next day, he came to visit me. Oh, I was appalled. I opened the door and there was an enormous, uniformed German standing before me. I was sure my house was about to be requisitioned and I began to protest when he thrust forward a bunch of flowers—limp from being clutched. I noticed he was looking very nervous, so I stopped scolding and demanded to know his name.
‘Captain Christian Hellman,’ he said, and blushed like a boy. I was still suspicious—what was he up to?—and asked him the purpose of his visit. He blushed more and said softly, ‘I’ve come to tell you my intentions.’
“‘For my house?’ I snapped.
“‘No. For Elizabeth,’ he said. And that’s what he did—just as if I were the Victorian father and he the suitor. He perched on the edge of a chair in my drawing room and told me that he intended to come back to the Island the moment the war was over, marry Elizabeth, raise freesias, read, and forget about war. By the time he was finished speaking, I was a little in love with him myself.”
