The Guernsey Saga Box Set

by Diana Bachmann

  The front door slammed and Nain came in. “You must be tired after your journey, my love. We’re just about to have our tea. Are you hungry?”

  Suzanne nodded. “Yes, I am.”

  The table was large, occupying most of the room, which was just as well, for more people appeared from upstairs, and Suzanne found herself wedged between two soldiers who Nain explained were also billeted in the house. Bread and butter, jam and Marmite, stewed fruit and custard were carried in from the kitchen.

  “You take sugar ’n’ milk?” Nain asked.

  “No sugar, thank you,” the newcomer replied, anticipating a nice big glass of cold milk . . . then her heart sank as a cup of tea was placed in front of her. The question had not been “sugar in milk” but “sugar and milk”, in tea. She didn’t like to say anything, she would have to force herself to drink it, unsweetened!

  The meal was a very jolly affair. Everyone was nice to each other; they asked her questions, told her about themselves and soon a warm, family atmosphere wrapped itself round her.

  That night she slept soundly in her comfy bed, in her own little room, the first time she’d slept alone since leaving Guernsey. There were drawers to put her things in, and a curtained corner to hang her uniform and overcoat. These people were so warm and friendly. Loving. Taid was head of the family, like Grandpa Ozanne had been, and everyone obeyed him. It was a proper household and felt like a home. Not her home, but a real home for all that. She felt safe and happy, belonging to a family again.

  The loneliness quickly disappeared as she was adopted into her new surroundings. The first day Bryn and Myfanwy showed her the way to her school. It was a huge, splendid school where the Guernsey girls were accommodated in their own form rooms with their own teachers. The girls compared notes, some, like Suzanne, loving their billets, others near tears with disappointment.

  During the light evenings, after school, her adopted siblings took her uptown, showed her the fish and chip shop in Back Street where you could get a bag of soft, vinegary chips for thre’pence. On Saturday mornings they went to the cinema to yell with excitement when the goodies chased the baddies out of town, and in the afternoon they explored Graig Woods. Saturday nights provided the weekly bathing novelty. A galvanised tub was set in the middle of the flagstone floor in the kitchen and filled with kettles of hot water in which the children took turns in ‘first wash’. Naturally, Bryn was not allowed in when the girls were bathing.

  Sunday mornings there was church parade in school uniform at St Mary’s Anglican Church, and after lunch she went with Bryn and Myfanwy to Sunday School.

  The only time she ever saw Taid angry was one Sunday afternoon just before tea when she had tried to catch up with her beastly stitching for needlework class next day.

  “What is that, may I ask?” he had roared.

  “My sewing!” she replied innocently.

  “Sewing! Sewing on the Sabbath! What did the Lord say? Eh?”

  She quailed.

  “He said ‘thou shalt do no manner of work on the Sabbath’!”

  “Sorry,” she whispered, and put it away. It was a good excuse to tell Miss Watson.

  She had soon discovered that Sunday was the most important day of the week in that house. It was the one day that Nain took her curlers out and put her uncomfortable false teeth in, for the evening service which they all attended at Capel Mawr. Sue didn’t understand a word of the service, but sang lustily reading phonetically from the hymn book.

  Sometimes, when extra family or friends came to stay, bed space was at a premium. Myfanwy would spend a night in Suzanne’s bed, leading to much chattering and giggles and not much sleep, and on one occasion the evacuee was ousted from her single bed for a whole week by a visiting couple, whilst she shared the big bed in the front bedroom with Nain and her daughter, Taid having been sent upstairs to share with Great Uncle Dai and Bryn.

  Christmas was approaching when Uncle Andrew, Daddy’s brother, came to visit. Suzanne had never liked him very much, but she was pleased to see him and delighted to show off her new family, so much so that she failed to notice his grim disapproval. It was disappointing in a way that she couldn’t share Christmas with the Ellises and Nain and Taid, but the thought of seeing Grandma and Grandpa Ozanne again was very exciting. She kissed and hugged her Welsh family and promised to see them again in three weeks, and Bryn helped carry her suitcase down the road to the station.

  Auntie Aline met her at the other end, after a tedious journey with several changes of trains which were all full of soldiers. Grandma and Grandpa were waiting in the little flat they were renting and there were lots more hugs and kisses, but all three seemed cross and grumpy. Everything was wrong – the rationing, the flat, Hitler, the butcher, their landlord and the government. Only Mr Churchill had their approval.

  Grandma contrived to create a Christmas cake from ingredients she had collected for months, and between them they enjoyed a sense of Christmas-in-miniature, so very different from the big family parties they were used to. The Christmas dinner Grandma declared a travesty, though it seemed perfectly all right to Suzanne, and after they had cleared away and listened to the King’s Speech on the wireless, they exchanged presents.

  “Ooh! Thank you Auntie.” Suzanne was thrilled with the pony book. She said the same to her grandparents though she didn’t feel quite so enthusiastic about the leather-bound Bible.

  Several times during the holiday Suzanne was disturbed by questions asked about her billet: they were worded in a critical way, as though her grandmother wanted her to say something was wrong with the place or the people. Then the truth came out. They had had a letter from Uncle Andrew saying the billet was totally unsuitable.

  Suzanne was furious. “It’s not true!’ she stormed, eyes flashing incredibly like her mother’s when roused. “It’s a lovely, cosy house and they are very nice, kind people. I don’t want to leave there and go somewhere else. Some of the billets are awful: my friends say so.”

  However, Marie Ozanne had the bit between her teeth and ordered a taxi to drive them all the way to North Wales to ensure that the headmistress wasn’t allowed to make the same mistake again.

  That cosy home was the last in which she would enjoy family life for the next four and a half years.

  *

  Not that home and family in Guernsey was proving in any way comparable with her dreams and yearnings during those years. And now the threat of boarding school was hanging over her head.

  Sue sat up, looked around the room and grinned. Draped over the mirror on her dressing table, the head and foot boards of her bed, and one corner of the pelmet were socks, a vest, a blouse and her face flannel, exactly where she had flung them in her fury half an hour earlier. Flinging clothes about always relieved tension and anger. Nearly five o’clock: Dad would be in soon to calm Mum down, thank goodness, but in the meantime she’d keep out of sight. Try not to think about boarding schools and babysitting. She slid off the bed and picked up a pencil from the desk to add a few more hairs to the forelock on the pony she’d drawn.

  She thought about David Morgan’s recent letter from Denbigh, the love and kisses at the bottom, remembered the real kisses they’d shared in Graig Woods and the back row of the cinema and she wondered how long they would have to wait for more. Then her mind switched back to ponies again.

  Greg came home early in answer to Sarah’s tearful summons, and listened to her alternating anguish and anger for nearly an hour. Then he stood outside Sue’s bedroom door, forcing himself to knock and commence the dreaded interview. Nothing upset him more than discord and now he was stuck in the middle of the worst he’d ever known, understanding both sides but aware that both his wife and daughter expected him to support their respective arguments.

  “Who is it?”

  “Daddy.”

  Sue unlocked the door. “You’re late today.”

  “Not really. I’ve been in the garden with your mother.”

  “Oh. So you’ve heard.
” She closed the door behind him and crossed to the window, looking out so he couldn’t see her misery.

  “Honestly, Sue, you have gone too far this time.”

  “I know. I shouldn’t have hit her back; it was just instinct. No one has ever hit me like that. Not ever.” A sob caught in her throat.

  He saw her shoulders heaving and hurried to put an arm round her, which opened the floodgates. Sue turned and buried her face in his shirt and cried.

  Dammit it! he thought. It was Sarah’s lack of understanding that was creating the trouble. The poor kid had had no one but the Welsh lad, David, to care about or care for her for years; she could not be expected to slot back immediately, emotionally and physically, into the obedient little daughter role of pre-war. He stroked her hair. “Calm down, old thing. We’ve got to talk this through.”

  “What is there to say? You and Mummy have already decided to send me away again.” She shuddered, accepted his proffered handkerchief and blew noisily.

  “We have done no such thing!”

  “Mummy said . . .”

  “I know what Mummy said in the heat of the moment, but I’m quite sure that if you were to tell her how sorry you are and that you promise to try much harder . . .”

  “I don’t know if I can!” she gasped. “I thought I was doing okay. Everything was so super this afternoon when we were sitting in the garden . . .” another noisy blow in the soggy hankie, “. . . and honestly, Dad, I had told her I was going out this evening.”

  “I’m sure you did, darling, but she had forgotten. The Martel’s are going away on holiday tomorrow, you see, and it was our last chance of a game for three weeks.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know.” Looking up at him she asked, “Do you think I might not have to go to boarding school?”

  “Let’s go down and talk to Mummy about it.”

  Sue grimaced, then smiled. “Okay.”

  Greg smiled back. “That’s my girl. But one word of advice: try to remember not to say ‘okay’ in front of you mother. You know how she hates the word.”

  “Ok . . . er . . . all right.”

  Sarah hugged her daughter, who tried to respond with as much enthusiasm as possible. Over the supper table they drew up a sitting-in rota, and decided on the limited number of times she could go out in the evenings and till what time. Everyone was making an effort to be sweet and affectionate, but it was not easy for Sue to hide her aggravation at all the new restrictions that were suddenly being introduced into her life.

  “Look at the time!” she exclaimed. “Aren’t you going to be late for your bridge?”

  “I cancelled,” Sarah told her. “We felt it was important to get this all sorted out.”

  The subject was discussed again the following evening, when Greg and Sarah went out to St Saviour’s to visit John, her brother, and Edna.

  “Maybe she’ll settle down better once school starts again,” John suggested. They had all strolled up to the top fields where Sarah had loved to wander in her youth, before marriage took her away to live in the north of the island.

  “We can only pray she does,” Greg grimaced. “How about you? How are things working out with your Ma and Aline?”

  “Appalling! Ma won’t speak to Edna, and because she and Pa had had a marriage contract, everything here belongs to her. So she, or rather Aline, has decided to sell the farm, lock, stock and barrel . . .”

  “What!” Sarah, had been walking a few yards behind with Edna. She stopped, flabbergasted, mouth hanging open. “She can’t! She wouldn’t do it!”

  Edna put a hand on Sarah’s arm. “It’s my fault, I’m afraid. John won’t tell you but there was one hell of an argument with them, Aline shouting that if he took over the farm and anything happened to him after we’d married, then their family property would pass into the hands of ‘that baggage who’s no better than she should be’! There was no way your Ma would tolerate that!” Some time after John’s sour wife, Mary, had been evacuated with their children, Edna had moved in with him, transforming the once solemn and unhappy man into a jolly, laughing one. But Marie Ozanne could not be expected to countenance an adulterous relationship, however tedious she had found her daughter-in-law.

  Sarah shook with anger. “I thought it was bad enough when they came home and accused me of stealing their clothes: I think they would have preferred that we all died of pneumonia while the stuff all rotted in their wardrobes.” She stared sadly out over the fields to the west coast, over a lively, September sea which melded into the sky on the blue horizon, a panorama that had provided her happy, contented childhood with an ever-changing, magnificently colourful backdrop. “John,” she sighed, “what has happened to our family? Why has the reunion proved so disastrous?”

  The four looked helplessly at each other, searching their minds for easy answers – but there were none.

  “Where will you go? What will you do?” Greg asked.

  John shrugged. “Edna and I haven’t had much time to discuss it, yet. But there are one or two ideas knocking around.”

  Edna smiled affectionately at him. “We might as well tell them,” and, when he nodded, went on, “I’ve been to see my advocate. I’ve got a bit of money of my own and some property my aunt left me which I could sell, and I’ve suggested that he might put in a bid for Val du Douit on my behalf.”

  “Really!” Sarah was immediately delighted at the idea, plus more than a little astounded that Edna Quevatre, sister of her late father’s herdsman, was worth that sort of money. “Well, that would be wonderful. But would Ma consider selling to you?”

  “I’m so glad you approve of the idea. The advocate said that if we set up a company to buy it, she needn’t know until after the contracts were signed.”

  Greg laughed. “Brilliant! But, isn’t the place going to be a bit big for you, or were you planning to start a large family?”

  “Not on your life!” Edna exclaimed.

  “No fear of that!” John added. “No. Edna’s dead keen to start a guest house and maybe a tea garden in the summer months. We would have plenty rooms if we use The Wing, and maybe we could expand by turning the coach house and barn into an annexe. That is if things work out well.”

  “Well that would certainly sort out your problems,” Sarah said enthusiastically.

  “But it doesn’t do much for yours! Any ideas how you are going to help Sue settle?” John asked.

  Sarah told him about the boarding school idea and Sue’s horror at the very thought of it. “We’ve all kissed and made up for the moment. Long may it last.”

  “What are her interests?”

  “Some boy she’s keen on in Wales. And horses. She longs to work with them.”

  “She’s welcome to come and help out here with ours, if she wants. She could pick up a bit of pocket money that way. Do you pay her for sitting in?”

  Sarah glanced at Greg. “No. Do you think we should? I mean, well, family and all that. Can you imagine Ethel ever getting anything from Ma and Pa?” The subject of Ethel, her adored older sister, remained a sore point. Having helped in the upbringing of her younger siblings, and much of the cooking and house chores for many years for a mere pittance, the older girl had allowed herself the luxury of a fling with the son of a neighbour, which resulted in pregnancy. The shamed couple had had a hasty wedding and, on the insistence of both mothers had been banished to New Zealand. Sarah never forgave her mother, despite the fact that Paul and Ethel adored each other and produce five healthy sons to help their father on his highly successful sheep farm.

  “Ethel was Ma’s slave!” John growled.

  “A fairly willing one, though,” Greg added. “She was always so calm and easy going. Super girl.”

  “I wonder if she’ll ever come back for a visit?” Sarah mused. “I’ve written and asked them, you know.”

  “Good. And if they all come and we have Val du Douit we can put some or all of them up here,” John raised a querying brow at Edna who nodded her approval.

 
*

  The Michaelmas Term started very late in 1945.

  Greg and Sarah were not pleased to learn that Sue was a year behind in her school work, but agreed to say nothing, for the time being. Also, they had decided to pay her one shilling and sixpence a time for sitting in.

  It was great fun to be back amongst all the girls again, comparing notes on homecomings, but Sue was disturbed. Everyone gave glowing accounts of their reunions with their families, their homes and their happiness at being back in Guernsey. Of course, she said the same, guilty at the lie, and wondering if the others were telling the truth . . . or also lying. There was no way of knowing, and no way of finding out without revealing the shameful truth. The atmosphere at home had improved, slightly, to a state of unarmed truce. But no way could it be described as happy home life, with Mum constantly complaining about something – Gran and Auntie Aline mostly, but also about the Guernsey States (the island parliament) and their political decisions; also about the wartime black-marketeers and ‘Jerrybags’, those women who had capitalised on the German soldiers’ loneliness; about the strain of looking after Richard who was indeed very lively, and, most of all, about Sue herself. Try as she may, she felt she could never be right, so inevitably there were many occasions when she made no attempt to co-operate at all.

  In her end of term school report, the only good comments were on her drawing and cooking, the latter being extremely limited by the strict food rationing.

  Greg laid the report on the supper table one night, having studied it with Sarah, and asked Sue what she wanted to do with her life. “What sort of a career do you want? There is nothing here to show any likelihood of a future in academics. Would you like to go to an Art College? Or follow up on cookery?”

  “I’d like to work with horses,” she replied.

  “You mean, be a stable girl?”

  “To begin with. But then I could become a children’s riding instructor. Perhaps go on to have my own riding school.”