The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

She held it in her hand and explained to him that it was a magic badge, that nothing bad could happen to him while he wore it. Then she had Eli spit on it twice to call up the charm. Isola saw Eli’s face over Elizabeth’s shoulder and told Eben that it had that beautiful light children have before the Age of Reason gets at them.

Of all the things that happened during the war, this one—making your children go away to try to keep them safe—was surely the most terrible. I don’t know how they endured it. It defies the animal instinct to protect your young. I see myself becoming bearlike around Kit. Even when I’m not actually watching her, I’m watching her. If she’s in any sort of danger (which she often is, given her taste in climbing), my hackles rise—I didn’t even know I had hackles before—and I run to rescue her. When her enemy, the parson’s nephew, threw plums at her, I roared at him. And through some queer sort of intuition, I always know where she is, just as I know where my hands are—and if I didn’t, I should be sick with worry. This is how the species survives, I suppose, but the war threw a wrench in all that. How did the mothers of Guernsey live, not knowing where their children were? I can’t imagine.

Love,

Juliet

P.S. How about a flute?

From Juliet to Sophie

9th August, 1946

Darling Sophie,

What lovely news—a new baby! Wonderful! I do hope you won’t have to eat dry biscuits and suck lemons this time. I know you two don’t care which/what/who you have, but I would love a girl. To that end, I am knitting a tiny matinee jacket and cap in pink wool. Of course Alexander is delighted, but what about Dominic?

I told Isola your news, and I’m afraid she may send you a bottle of her Pre-Birthing Tonic. Sophie—please don’t drink it and don’t dispose of it where the dogs might find it. There may not be anything actually poisonous in her tonics, but I don’t think you should take any chances.

Your inquiries about Dawsey are misdirected. Send them to Kit—or Remy. I scarcely see the man anymore, and when I do, he is silent. Not silent in a romantic, brooding way, like Mr. Rochester, but in a grave and sober way that indicates disapproval. I don’t know what the trouble is, truly I don’t. When I arrived in Guernsey, Dawsey was my friend. We talked about Charles Lamb and we walked all over the Island together—and I enjoyed his company as much as that of anyone I’ve ever known. Then, after that appalling night on the headlands, he stopped talking—to me, at any rate. It’s been a terrible disappointment. I miss the feeling that we understood one another, but I begin to think that was only my delusion all along.

Not being silent myself, I am wildly curious about people who are. Since Dawsey doesn’t talk about himself— doesn’t talk at all, to me—I was reduced to questioning Isola about his head bumps to get information about his past life. But Isola is beginning to fear that the lumps may lie after all, and she offered as proof the fact that Dawsey’s Violence-Prone Node isn’t as big as it should be, given he almost beat Eddie Meares to death!!!!

Those exclamations are mine. Isola seemed to think nothing at all of it.

It seems Eddie Meares was big and mean and gave/traded/sold information to the German authorities for favors from them. Everyone knew, which didn’t seem to bother him, since he’d go to a bar to brag and show off his new wealth: a loaf of white bread, cigarettes, and silk stockings—which, he said, any girl on the Island would surely be plenty grateful for.

A week after Elizabeth and Peter were arrested, he was showing off a silver cigarette case, hinting it was a reward for reporting some goings-on he’d seen at Peter Sawyer’s house.

Dawsey heard of it and went to Crazy Ida’s the next night. Apparently, he went in, walked up to Eddie Meares, grabbed him by the shirt collar, lifted him up off his bar stool, and began banging his head on the bar. He called Eddie a lousy little shit, pounding his head down between each word. Then he yanked Eddie off the stool and they set to it on the floor.

According to Isola, Dawsey was a mess: nose, mouth bleeding, one eye puffed shut, one rib cracked—but Eddie Meares was a bigger mess: two black eyes, two ribs broken, and stitches. The Court sentenced Dawsey to three months in the Guernsey jail, though they let him out in one. The Germans needed their jail space for more serious criminals—like Black Marketeers and the thieves who stole petrol from army lorries.

“And to this day, when Eddie Meares spies Dawsey coming through the door of Crazy Ida’s, his eyes go shifty and his beer spills and not five minutes later, he’s sidling out the back door,” Isola concluded.

Naturally, I was agog and begged for more. Since she’s disillusioned with bumps, Isola moved on to actual facts.

Dawsey did not have a very happy childhood. His father died when he was eleven, and Mrs. Adams, who’d always been poorly, grew odd. She became fearful, first of going into town, then of going into her own yard, and finally, she wouldn’t leave the house at all. She would just sit in the kitchen, rocking and staring out at nothing Dawsey could ever see. She died shortly before the war began.

Isola said that what with all of this—his mother, farming, and stuttering so bad at one time—it came to pass that Dawsey was always shy and never, except for Eben, had any ready-made friends. Isola and Amelia were acquainted with him, but that was about all.

That was how matters stood until Elizabeth came—and made him be friends. Forced him, really, into the Literary Society. And then, Isola said, how he did blossom! Now he had books to talk about instead of swine fever —and friends to talk with. The more he talked, says Isola, the less he stuttered.

He’s a mysterious creature, isn’t he? Perhaps he is like Mr. Rochester, and has a secret sorrow. Or a mad wife down in his cellar. Anything is possible, I suppose, but it would have been difficult to feed a mad wife on one ration book during the war. Oh dear, I wish we were friends again (Dawsey and I, not the mad wife).

I meant to dispatch Dawsey in a terse sentence or two, but I see that he has taken several sheets. Now I must rush to make myself presentable for tonight’s meeting of the Society.

I have exactly one decent skirt to my name, and I have been feeling dowdy. Remy, for all she’s so frail and thin, manages to look stylish at every turn. What is it about French women?

More anon.