I hadn’t noticed that he had a stiff shoulder and arm, but between those, my limp, and the loose scree, we slipped coming back up and fell against the hillside, losing our grip on the barrel. It tumbled down, splintered against the rocks, and soaked us. God knows why it struck us both as funny, but it did. We sagged against the cliff- side, unable to stop laughing. That was when Elia’s essays slipped from my pocket, and Christian picked it up, sopping wet. “Ah, Charles Lamb,” he said, and handed it to me. “He was not a man to mind a little damp.” My surprise must have showed, because he added, “I read him often at home. I envy you your portable library.”
We climbed back up to his car. He wanted to know if I could find another barrel. I said I could and explained my water-delivery route. He nodded, and I started out with my pram. But then I turned back and said, “You can borrow the book, if you’d like to.” You would have thought I was giving him the moon. We exchanged names and shook hands.
After that, he would often help me carry up water, and then he’d offer a cigarette, and we’d stand in the road and talk—about Guernsey’s beauty, about history, about books, about farming, but never about the present time— always things far away from the war. Once, as we were standing, Elizabeth rattled up the road on her bicycle. She had been on nursing duty all that day and probably most of the night before, and like the rest of us, her clothes were more patches than cloth. But Christian, he broke off in mid-sentence to watch her coming. Elizabeth drew up to us and stopped. Neither said a word, but I saw their faces, and I left as soon as I could. I hadn’t realized they knew each other.
Christian had been a field surgeon, until his shoulder wound sent him from Eastern Europe to Guernsey. In early 1942, he was ordered to a hospital in Caen; his ship was sunk by Allied bombers and he was drowned. Dr. Lorenz, the head of the German Occupation Hospital, knew we were friends and came to tell me of his death. He meant for me to tell Elizabeth, so I did.
The way that Christian and I met may have been unusual, but our friendship was not. I’m sure many Islanders grew to be friends with some of the soldiers. But sometimes I think of Charles Lamb and marvel that a man born in 1775 enabled me to make two such friends as you and Christian.
Yours,
4th April, 1946
Dear Mrs. Maugery,
The sun is out for the first time in months, and if I stand on my chair and crane my neck, I can see it sparkling on the river. I’m averting my eyes from the mounds of rubble across the street and pretending London is beautiful again.
I’ve received a sad letter from Dawsey Adams, telling me about Christian Hellman, his kindness and his death. The war goes on and on, doesn’t it? Such a good life—lost. And what a grievous blow it must have been to Elizabeth. I am thankful she had you, Mr. Ramsey, Isola, and Dawsey to help her when she had her baby.
Spring is nearly here. I’m almost warm in my puddle of sunshine. And down the street—I’m not averting my eyes now—a man in a patched jumper is painting the door to his house sky blue. Two small boys, who have been walloping one another with sticks, are begging him to let them help. He is giving them a tiny brush apiece. So— perhaps there is an end to war.
Yours,
April 5, 1946
Dear Juliet—
You’re being elusive and I don’t like it. I don’t want to see the play with someone else—I want to go with you. In fact, I don’t give a damn about the play. I’m only trying to rout you out of that apartment. Dinner? Tea? Cocktails? Boating? Dancing? You choose, and I’ll obey. I’m rarely so docile—don’t throw away this opportunity to improve my character.
Yours,
Dear Mark,
Do you want to come to the British Museum with me? I’ve got an appointment in the Reading Room at two o’clock. We can look at the mummies afterward.
To hell with the Reading Room and the mummies. Come have lunch with me.
You consider that docile?
To hell with docile.
7th April, 1946
Dear Miss Ashton,
I am a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I am an antiquarian ironmonger, though it pleases some to call me a rag-and-bone man. I also invent labor-saving devices—my latest being an electric clothes-pin that wafts the laundry gently on the breeze, saving the laundress’s wrists.
Did I find solace in reading? Yes, but not at first. I’d just go and eat my pie in quietude in a corner. Then Isola got ahold of me and said I had to read a book and talk about it like the others did. She gave me a book called
Off I’d go, like a bee among blossoms, from church to chapel to church again. But I was never able to get a grip on Faith—till Mr. Carlyle posed religion to me in a different way. He was walking among the ruins of the Abbey at Bury St. Edmunds, when a thought came to him, and he wrote it down thus:
Does it ever give thee pause, that men used to have a soul—not by hearsay alone, or as a figure of speech; but as a truth that they knew, and acted upon! Verily it was another world then … but yet it is a pity we have lost the tidings of our souls… we shall have to go in search of them again, or worse in all ways shall befall us.
Isn’t that something—to know your own soul by hearsay, instead of its own tidings? Why should I let a preacher tell me if I had one or not? If I could believe I had a soul, all by myself, then I could listen to its tidings all by myself.
I gave my talk on Mr. Carlyle to the Society, and it stirred up a great argument about the soul. Yes? No? Maybe? Dr. Stubbins yelled the loudest, and soon everyone stopped arguing and listened to him.
Thompson Stubbins is a man of long, deep thoughts. He was a psychiatrist in London until he ran amok at the annual dinner of the Friends of Sigmund Freud Society in 1934. He told me the whole tale once. The Friends were great talkers and their speeches went on for hours—while the plates stayed bare. Finally they served up, and silence fell upon the hall as the psychiatrists bolted their chops. Thompson saw his chance: he beat his spoon upon his glass and shouted from the floor to be heard.
“Did any of you ever think that along about the time the notion of a SOUL gave out, Freud popped up with the EGO to take its place? The timing of the man! Did he not pause to reflect? Irresponsible old coot! It is my belief that men must spout this twaddle about egos, because they fear they have no soul! Think upon it!”
Thompson was barred from their doors forever, and he moved to Guernsey to grow vegetables. Sometimes he rides with me in my cart and we talk about Man and God and all the In-between. I would have missed all this if I had not belonged to the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
