The Soldier's Wife

by Margaret Leroy

  “No, he hasn’t,” she says. “I saw the ghost with my own eyes.”

  She points to her eyes with an air of triumph, as though this is conclusive proof.

  “Mum,” says Blanche, “why does it matter so much? She’s only a baby really. Babies believe in everything. Babies believe in the tooth fairy,” she says, with fraudulent tenderness. She puts down her book, gets up, gives Millie an extravagant hug. “Who’s my ickle baby?”

  “Blanche—leave her alone,” I say. “Don’t be horrible.”

  Millie wriggles away from her sister.

  “You’re all horrible. No one believes me,” she says. Her voice blazes with impotent anger.

  She squeezes her eyes tight shut, but tears leak from her eyelids.

  Chapter 51

  OUR LIVES BECOME more constricted. There are new laws and regulations: we read about them in the Guernsey Press. Civilian wirelesses have been banned. The Germans are searching people’s houses, and if you have kept a wireless, they will send you to prison in France.

  Everyone grumbles: it’s so frustrating to be deprived of news.

  But Johnnie is encouraged.

  “It’s because the war isn’t going so well for them now,” he tells me. His eyes gleam, brown and bright as autumn. He doesn’t tell me directly, but I suspect they have a wireless hidden somewhere at Elm Tree Farm. “They don’t want us to know. It’s all about morale, Auntie.”

  Johnnie amazes me, the way he can find reasons for hopefulness in anything.

  The pattern of our days changes a little. Blanche rarely listens to our story in the evenings now. After tea, she likes to go up to Celeste’s house, where she and Celeste will lie on the bed and flick through their copies of Vogue, dreaming kaleidoscope dreams of the future—a future gorgeous with pearls and lipstick and ruby-red suede court shoes.

  “Mum, you’ll never guess what Celeste told me,” she says one day, her voice quiet, full of secrets. “Her mum has hidden her wireless. She hasn’t handed it in.”

  This immediately worries me. What if the Germans find it? If the Germans come and Blanche is there, will Blanche be blamed as well? Nightmare scenes spool out in my mind, with a horrible vividness—Blanche and Celeste arrested and sent away to prison.

  “But, Blanche—that’s terribly dangerous, surely.”

  Blanche grins.

  “Not where she’s keeping it,” she says. “She hides it in a coffin at Mr. Ozanne’s.” Mr. Ozanne runs the funeral parlor. “Well, they’re not exactly going to look there, are they?”

  So now it’s Blanche who keeps us up to date with the war. We hear about the battles in the desert in North Africa, and in Russia the Germans have crossed the River Don and are advancing on the great city of Stalingrad. I’m not sure that Johnnie is right: I can’t find much reason for hopefulness in any of this news.

  I MAKE SOME bean flour cake with runner beans from the garden, using a recipe from the parish magazine. You dry bean pods in a slow oven, pass them through a mincer, sift them, and mince them again until they’ve all been turned into flour. You seem to need a lot of beans for very little flour. Then you rub fat into the flour and mix it up with milk and a little honey and sultanas, and bake it in a cake tin. The process seems to take forever.

  Before the war, the girls loved the times when I took out my big yellow bowl to make cupcakes or sponge cakes. They’d help me stir the mixture, and loved to scrape out any uncooked mixture left in the bowl and to eat it as a luxurious treat. Later we’d make icing, blush-pink with cochineal, and Millie was always thrilled to hear how the color was made from crushed spiders. But neither of them is interested in the bean flour cake.

  We have it for tea, after a plateful of vegetables from the garden: boiled potatoes and peas and cabbage. The cake is bland and rather grainy.

  “It tastes like sawdust,” says Millie.

  “You don’t even know what sawdust tastes like,” says Blanche.

  “I do. I do know. It tastes like this,” she says.

  Blanche shrugs.

  “Don’t listen to her, Mum. It isn’t that bad, really. . . . Well, not when you’re famished, anyway. There are days when I feel so hungry I could eat my hair,” she says.

  I know what Millie means. The cake is a bit like blotting paper: it seems to soak up all the moisture in your mouth. Perhaps I was impatient and didn’t mince the beans for long enough. You chew and chew, but it takes a long time to go down. At least it’s filling.

  Blanche pushes her plate away and gives a little sigh.

  “Sometimes I dream about food,” she says. “I had a dream about jam roll—that lovely steamed roll you used to make, the one with strawberry jam in. I could taste the jam in the dream. And sherbet—sometimes I dream of sherbet. . . .” Her voice is yearning, nostalgic. “And toffee crumble and licorice and humbugs and peppermint sticks . . .”

  “I had a dream about treacle pudding,” says Millie, not to be outdone. “With a big, big dollop of custard.”

  “What about you, Evelyn?” I ask her. “Do you dream about food?”

  “I don’t know really, Vivienne,” she says. “Though I do like a good roast dinner. When will we have a good roast dinner again, Vivienne?”

  “It’s difficult,” I tell her. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

  “What do you dream about, Mum?” says Blanche. “What was your best food ever?”

  I think of that first bar of chocolate Gunther brought me, the velvety smoothness on my tongue, the rush of sweetness.

  “I like jam roll as well,” I tell her.

  When we’ve finished our tea, there are four slices left of the cake, and I put them in my food safe. It’s in the coolest place at the very back of my larder; it has a wire-mesh door, to let in the air and keep out the flies. I keep food that has to be covered there, and my butter and milk. We’ll finish the cake tomorrow.

  THE NEXT EVENING, Blanche does the ironing while I make a vegetable stew. I have spread my ironing blankets on the kitchen table for her; you can hear the hiss of the fabric, and the friendly smell of hot clean linen fills the room. Blanche irons one of her pin-tucked blouses, then shakes out the fabric and folds it, very exact. She’s meticulous: I know that she’ll be a much better housewife than me. She will put the blouse on after tea, to go up to Celeste’s house.

  When the stew is simmering, I go to the larder to fetch the slices of bean flour cake.

  “No.”

  The plate is empty.

  “What is it, Mum?” says Blanche, alarmed.

  I’m briefly afraid that my mind is going—that I’m becoming confused like Evelyn, forgetting things that I’ve done.

  “I thought there was some of that cake left. I know there was,” I tell her.

  There’s an edge of rage in my voice. I feel a sudden surge of self-pity, my eyes filling up with hot tears. I try so hard, work so hard. And then this. I know it’s the sudden, helpless anger that comes from being always a little too hungry, always tired. I try to push it away from me.

  Blanche looks at me warily, afraid she is being accused.

  “Mum, you know it wasn’t me, don’t you? You know I’d never do that.”

  “I’m not blaming you,” I tell her.

  “I know how careful we have to be, with the war and everything,” she says. “I know we can’t just eat what we want.”

  “Really, Blanche, I know it’s not you. It’s just odd, that’s all. I don’t understand it,” I say.

  Millie, hearing our urgent voices, slips into the room.

  “What’s the matter, Mummy?” Her eyes are wide and curious.

  “It’s the bean flour cake. It’s gone,” I say.

  “But nobody liked it,” she says to me. “Why do you look so upset?”

  “I just don’t understand what’s happened.”

  Briefly I wonder about Millie. But she had really hated the cake. Then it enters my mind that someone might have broken into our house. That whoever broke in on that long-ago d
ay when we nearly went on the boat—Bernie Dorey, or whoever it was—has come back and raided our larder. Though even as I think this, I know it’s a crazy notion. No one has broken into our house. Nothing else is gone.

  Chapter 52

  I WALK UP THE lane to Les Ruettes. It’s a languorous August day; the meadows are drowsy, hazy with summer, and the air is rich with mingled scents, and there’s a carnival of color in all the gardens I pass. Just for a moment I don’t believe in the war.

  We sit outside Angie’s kitchen door, in two fold-up chairs she has put there. A warm breeze caresses our skin and ruffles the leaves of the elder, whose branches are heavy with berries, black and enticing as licorice. I wonder if Angie will pick them for wine, as she used to do when Frank was alive; but perhaps she won’t have the energy, perhaps she’ll just leave them to drop.

  She has her knitting basket.

  “Would you help me ball this wool up, Vivienne?” she asks me.

  I hold out my hands, and she stretches a skein of wool between them and starts to wind the wool into a ball, expertly, very evenly. In the whispering elm trees around her farmhouse, hidden wood pigeons are idly turning over their song.

  There’s something new in Angie’s eyes, something veiled and remote.

  “You seem very quiet, Angie,” I say, hesitantly.

  She smiles a small rueful smile.

  “You notice things, Vivienne, don’t you, now? You’re right—there’s something on my mind. Something Jack told me,” she says.

  I feel a flicker of apprehension.

  “He’s still working on Alderney?” I ask.

  She hears the uneasiness in my voice: she misinterprets me, thinks I don’t approve.

  “It’s good money, that’s the thing, Vivienne. You mustn’t blame him,” she says.

  “Of course I understand that,” I say. “I don’t blame him, Angie.”

  “There are some that say he shouldn’t do it,” she says. “He’s had a lot of trouble for it—people who think they can tell other people how to behave.”

  “Well, people love to find fault,” I say.

  She stops winding the wool for a moment, nestling the ball of wool in her hand, as though it is a fragile thing that has to be protected. I lower my arms, which are starting to ache. When she speaks again her voice is hoarse and hushed and secret: I have to lean a little toward her to hear. A slight movement of air shivers the leaves of the elder tree.

  “They sent Jack diving down in the harbor,” she says. “They’ve got an anti-submarine boom there, in Alderney harbor. Jack says it’s like a big net. It had got all tangled up, they needed Jack to sort it out. Well, there’s nothing he can’t turn his hand to. He’s good at diving, is Jack. . . .”

  Her face is very close to mine; her warm breath brushes my skin.

  “He said the water was full of bones. Bones and rotting bodies. He can’t sleep now, he told me.”

  A thrill of cold goes through me. I don’t say anything.

  “They kill the poor wretches, they beat them or maybe they die at their work, the terrible work that they have to do, and they tip them into the harbor. It’s all death down there, Jack told me—death and bones. All skeletons, and the bodies that the crabs and lobsters were eating. He can’t get a wink of sleep at night for seeing the bones.”

  We ball up the rest of the wool in silence.

  Chapter 53

  JOHNNIE COMES TO see me, with a bag of potatoes and some of Gwen’s clover honey, and I show him around my garden. He lingers by my chicken run, looking over my chickens with a critical eye.

  “Tell you what, Auntie. That one’s a goner.” He points to one of my chickens that’s been lurking in the corner, looking dejected, not eating.

  “Yes, I’d noticed,” I say.

  “Looks like it’s getting pecked by the others,” he says. “There’ll be carnage, Auntie. Chickens can be vicious. You need to get a move on. I’ll do it if it would help.”

  “Thanks, Johnnie. I know you would. But I’m going to do it myself. It’s like you once told me, remember? You do what you have to do.”

  His nose wrinkles up as he smiles.

  “Well, Auntie, I’m impressed. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  I’m happy when he says that: I like impressing Johnnie.

  I give him a jar of my bottled plums for Gwen. He rides off, wobbling perilously, the glass jar rattling in one of the panniers slung from the back of his bike.

  I choose a time when Millie’s out playing—not wanting her to see. The chicken is tricky to catch. I don’t like the feel of it on my skin, at once feather-soft and scratchy, and each time I think I’ve caught it, it fights its way out of my hands, as though it senses its imminent fate. The other chickens squawk and make a lot of frantic noise. Finally I corner it. I hold it in my left hand, grasp its head with my right. I close my eyes as I do it, hear the neat snap of the bone. Its wings go on flapping even after its neck is broken, and I feel a little rush of nausea, which I swallow down. Then finally it lets go of life and is limp and sad in my hand.

  Later, I pluck and gut it, the way Angie taught me, feeling a quiet satisfaction that I have learned to do all these things.

  I roast the chicken with some of the potatoes Johnnie brought.

  “Mmm,” says Blanche, when she comes home from work. “That smells more like it. That smells good.”

  “We’re having a proper meal tonight,” I tell her.

  She gives a knowing grin.

  “Rapunzel?” she says. “She’s been looking rather peaky.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell Millie,” she says. “I know she doesn’t like eating things that have names.”

  I thicken the pan juices with a little bean flour I have left, to make a rich dark gravy. I lay the table properly, with napkins, the silver napkin rings, and some of our best china. I bring the bird to the table. The smell of the succulent meat hangs in the air like a benediction and fills our mouths with water.

  “Here we are, Evelyn. It’s that good roast dinner you wanted,” I say.

  But Evelyn is staring at me. Her mouth is narrow, disapproving.

  “Why are you carving, Vivienne? Carving’s a man’s job,” she says.

  “It’s a woman’s job if there isn’t a man here to do it,” I say.

  A frown moves over her face and away, ephemeral as a trail of smoke.

  “Mum, we ought to say Grace,” says Blanche.

  So I ask Evelyn to say Grace for us, and she clears her throat, pleased to be asked.

  “For what we are about to receive . . .” She hesitates, her face mists over. The girls join in and help her finish the prayer. May the Lord make us truly thankful.

  We have such a happy mealtime, full of laughter and talk—like Christmas, like a festival. It’s so wonderful to feel satisfied: there’s a kind of peace that comes to you only when your stomach is full.

  Evelyn puts her cutlery contentedly down on her plate. Her lips are shiny with grease. She blots her mouth decorously on her napkin.

  “We ought to have chicken more often. Why don’t we have more chicken, Vivienne?” she asks me.

  “There’s a war on, remember?” I say.

  “Oh,” she says. “Oh. Is there, Vivienne?”

  Once Evelyn has gone to her room, I clear the table. I put the remains of the chicken carcass in my food safe. I’ll make a good filling stew with the scraps of meat that are left, and I’ll boil the bones with sage and onions for a nourishing soup. It’s so good to know where our next few meals will come from.

  I sit in the living room with my darning basket. Blanche is staying in tonight; she has one of Celeste’s magazines. She riffles through the fashion pages, gazing at the glossy, imperious women in the photographs, yearning for their ruched satin gloves, their flirtatious little veiled hats.

  “Look at this, Mum. It’s so lovely. . . .”

  It’s a Schiaparelli evening gown, extravagantly bac
kless, clinging caressingly to the hips, then flaring full to the floor. I tell Blanche a story I once heard about Schiaparelli—how she made a hat like a birdcage, with canaries inside.

  Blanche giggles.

  “Mum, you’re having me on.”

  “No. It’s true, I promise.”

  Millie is kneeling on the floor, playing with her dollhouse. The gilded light of evening falls into our room, and the scent of lavender floats in, and a drift of rich, lingering perfume from the roses under my window. A sudden pride opens out in me like a flower in the warmth of the sun—pride in what I have achieved here: keeping my family fed and safe, my girls still smiling. I think, We are surviving. Somehow—in spite of everything—we are getting through.

  Millie is busily rearranging the little dolls in the rooms.

  “I saw the ghost again,” she announces, out of nowhere. The words fall into the quiet room like pebbles dropped in a pond, sending ripples through its stillness. “Ghosts are very, very scary.”

  She has her head down. Her hair is untied, and swings forward and shadows her face.

  Blanche exhales noisily.

  “For goodness’ sake. Not that again,” she says.

  “They are, too,” says Millie.

  Blanche raises her eyebrows. Millie can tell she isn’t being taken seriously.

  “They are,” she says again.

  She fiddles with one of her dolls, trying to make it stand up, but the doll keeps tipping over. She’s cross. She bangs the doll on the floor.

  I kneel beside her and hold her head in my hands, wanting to get her full attention. Her face is very close to mine. I see the gold flecks that swim in the dark of her eyes.

  “Millie, there aren’t any ghosts. Ghosts don’t exist. There’s nothing to be frightened of.”

  “But I’m not frightened. I’m not afraid of anything. I’m six now, and I’m not even afraid of the dark.” She slips like water from my hands. “The ghosts are very, very scary, but I’m not frightened at all. But you’d be scared,” she says to Blanche.