The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I am writing to reassure you about Billee Bee’s errand-running. Sidney doesn’t ask her. She begs to perform any little service she can for him, or you, or “that dear child.” She all but coos at him and I all but gag at her. She wears a little angora cap with a chin bow—the kind that Sonja Henie skates in. Need I say more?

Also, contrary to what Sidney thinks, she isn’t an angel straight from Heaven, she’s from an employment agency. Meant to be temporary, she has dug herself in—and is now indispensable and permanent. Can’t you think of some living creature Kit would like to have from the Galapagos? Billee Bee would sail on the next tide for it—and be gone for months. Possibly forever, if some animal there would just eat her.

All my best to you and Kit,

Susan

From Isola to Sidney

5th August,1946

Dear Sidney,

I know it was you who sent The New Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Psychiatry: with Size and Shape Tables and Over One-Hundred Illustrations. It is a very useful book and I thank you for it. I’ve been studying hard, and I’ve got so I can finger through a whole headful of bumps without peeking into the book more than three or four times. I hope to make a mint for the church at the Harvest Festival, as who would not desire to have their innermost workings—good and rotten—revealed by the Science of Phrenology? No one, that’s who.

It’s a real lightning bolt, this Science of Phrenology. I’ve found out more in the last three days than I knew in my whole life before. Mrs. Guilbert has always been a nasty one, but now I know that she can’t help it—she’s got a big pit in her Benevolence spot. She fell in the quarry when she was a girl, and my guess is she cracked her Benevolence and was never the same since.

Even my own friends are full of surprises. Eben is Garrulous! I never would have thought it of him, but he’s got bags under his eyes and there’s no two ways about it. I broke it to him gently. Juliet didn’t want to have her bumps read at first, but she agreed when I told her that she was standing in the way of Science. She’s awash in Amativeness, is Juliet. Also Conjugal Love. I told her it was a wonder she wasn’t married, with such great mounds.

Will cackles up, “Your Mr. Stark will be a lucky man, Juliet!” Juliet blushed red as a tomato, and I was tempted to say he didn’t know much because Mr. Stark is a homosexual, but I recollected myself and kept your secret like I promised.

Dawsey up and left then, so I never got to his lumps, but I’ll pin him down soon. I think I don’t understand Dawsey sometimes. For a while there, he was downright chatty, but these days he doesn’t have two words to rub together.

Thank you again for the fine book.

Your friend,

Isola

Telegram from Sidney to Juliet

6th August, 1946

BOUGHT A SMALL BAGPIPE FOR DOMINIC AT GUNTHERS YESTERDAY. WOULD KIT LIKE ONE? LET ME KNOW SOONEST AS THEY ONLY HAVE ONE LEFT. HOW’S THE WRITING? LOVE TO YOU AND KIT. SIDNEY

From Juliet to Sidney

7th August, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Kit would love a bagpipe. I would not.

I think the work is going splendidly, but I’d like to send you the first two chapters—I won’t feel settled until you’ve read it. Do you have the time?

Every biography should be written within a generation of its subject’s life, while he or she is still in living memory. Think what I could have done for Anne Bronte if I’d been able to speak to her neighbors. Perhaps she wasn’t really meek and melancholy—perhaps she had a screaming temper and dashed the crockery to the floor regularly once a week.

Each day I learn something new about Elizabeth. How I wish I had known her myself! As I write, I catch myself thinking of her as a friend, remembering things she did as though I’d been there—she’s so full of life that I have to remind myself she’s dead, and then I feel the wrench of losing her again.

I heard a story about her today that made me want to lie down and weep. We had supper with Eben this evening, and afterward Eli and Kit went out to dig for earthworms (a chore best done by the light of the moon). Eben and I took our coffee outside, and for the first time he chose to talk about Elizabeth to me.

It happened at the school where Eli and the other children were waiting for the Evacuation ships to come. Eben was not there, because the families were not allowed, but Isola saw it happen, and she told him about it that night.

She said the room was full of children, and Elizabeth was buttoning up Eli’s coat, when he told her he was scared about getting on the boat—going away from his mother and his home. If their ship was bombed, he asked, who would he say good-bye to? Isola said that Elizabeth took her time, like she was studying his question. Then she pulled up her sweater and took a pin off her blouse. It was her father’s medal from the first war, and she always wore it.