I let him eat. I don’t talk.
As he eats, I’m startled by a sensation I didn’t expect. A warm elation floods me. That his need is so great and I can fulfill that need—that I can feed him. It’s like the way you can feel when a child is sick and needing you completely, this perfect, simple imperative—all conflict wiped away, your purpose clear as ink on white paper.
Millie has heard us. She slips into the room with us; she has a slight pleased smile.
He looks up from the soup.
“Millie,” he says, and a little light comes in his face.
She sits beside him, folds her hands fastidiously in front of her. She’s on her best behavior for him.
I refill the bowl. He eats that too. He sits back with a sigh.
“Thank you. Thank you,” he says.
I find a clean towel for him.
“You can wash your face if you want,” I say.
He turns on the tap, lets the water splash on his hands. The water drops glitter, holding the gilded evening light that falls all over the room. He watches the swollen radiant droplets for a moment, as though this is a miracle unfolding between his hands, then he lowers his head and plunges it under the tap. As the water sluices the dirt from his face, he becomes himself again, emerging from his cocoon of grime, so we can see who he is. He’s young, not much older than Blanche—so young, he could be my son. His youthfulness catches at my heart. His hair and beard and eyebrows are dark, and his skin is brown and weather-beaten under the dust and the dirt. You can see all the scars and cuts on his skin that were hidden by the cement dust.
When he has washed, he sits at my table again. I take out two cigarettes, light them, pass one to him. He takes a deep, grateful drag, the glowing tip reflecting redly in the dark of his eyes. The illusory brightness makes him seem more vividly alive, more present.
“Kirill. How do you get out of the camp?” I ask him.
“There is a hole in the wire,” he says. “There are guards who will not notice if we leave the camp at night. They look in the other direction. If we are there for the morning roll-call, some of them turn a blind eye. There is little food in the camp. They give us only water with a bit of turnip in it.”
“You can’t possibly live on that,” I say.
“I think they let us go out so they don’t have to feed us,” he says. “We steal. There is no other way. Before the children fed me, I had to steal to survive.”
“Yes. Of course,” I say.
“And we know where the rubbish tips are. We eat off the rubbish tips.”
“That’s terrible,” I say.
“No, it is good,” he tells me. “I can say, the rubbish tips are life to us. It is the camp that is terrible. The work is hard, and we are beaten. Many people have died there. For those of us who still live, it is our hatred that keeps us alive.”
His clever, sloe-dark eyes on mine.
“You can eat here for this week,” I tell him. “But we will have to be careful. There are German soldiers living in the house next door. You must wait in the barn tomorrow and I’ll come and meet you there.”
It’s nearly time for curfew—I know I have to take him back.
“Millie, Kirill is going now,” I tell her. “You have to say good-bye.”
She waves to him, happily.
I take him out through the back door.
“Thank you, Vivienne. You are very kind.”
Under the hedgebank the shadows are dark as wet walnuts. He crosses to my orchard, and vanishes in the sepia gloom on the other side of the lane, as silent as the night breeze.
“HE LIKED THE soup, didn’t he?” says Millie, when I get back.
“Yes.”
Her face shines.
“He really, really liked it,” she says. “Can he always come to our house?”
“He can come here for a few days,” I tell her. “After that, I don’t know, sweetheart. I’ll have to work something out.”
“Yes. You’ll have to, Mummy.”
I notice she doesn’t talk about him as a ghost anymore, that it didn’t surprise her to see him in the everydayness of our kitchen. Perhaps it’s just as Gunther said—she lives at once in this world and a world of her own, moving easily between these worlds.
“Millie, we have to be very secret,” I say. “Nobody must know. Nobody. Can you do that—be very secret?”
“Yes, of course,” she says.
I wash the bowl he ate from. There’s a sifting of pale cement dust under the table, and dirt in the sink from when he washed his face and his hair. I clean the sink and sweep up all the cement dust very meticulously.
“Vivienne.”
I jump. Dust from the dustpan spills like a gritty gray flour on the floor. It gets everywhere.
Evelyn is there, in the doorway.
Thank God, I think. Thank God she didn’t come down before.
“I need my Bible, Vivienne. I want to read my Bible. I can’t find my Bible, Vivienne.”
The towel Kirill used is lying on the draining board. He couldn’t wash off all the dirt, and the fabric holds smudges of grime, in a blurry photographer’s negative, tracing the lines of his face. I fold it up quickly.
“Your Bible is on your bedside table,” I say.
“Is it, Vivienne?”
“Yes. I saw it there.”
But she has a perplexed look, as though she still feels that something is lost or taken away.
Her eyes fall on Millie.
“You shouldn’t be up, young lady.” This at least she is certain about. “It’s long past your bedtime.”
Millie darts a complicit look at me. I give her a slight warning frown. To my relief, she doesn’t try to explain.
“I’m going to bed now, Grandma,” she says, demurely.
“Come back upstairs,” I say to Evelyn.
But Evelyn stands there, unmoving.
“You’ve got dirty hands, Vivienne.”
“Yes. I’ve been sweeping up.”
This doesn’t satisfy her. Her puzzlement gathers between her eyes, in a faint, perplexed fleur-de-lis.
“Vivienne. Somebody’s been here. Something smells different. I can smell it.”
“Don’t worry, Evelyn, it’s nothing.”
“Somebody’s been here. A stranger’s been here. Someone who doesn’t belong.”
“No, Evelyn. Not a stranger.”
“Is it one of your friends, then, Vivienne?”
“Yes. Just one of my friends,” I say. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
“You and your friends. So many comings and goings.” She shakes her head, disapproving. “Why can’t we have a bit of peace?” she says.
“These aren’t peaceful times we live in,” I tell her, vaguely.
I take her up to her room and find her Bible for her. But she’s too tired to read now. She lies in her bed, and I tuck her up like a child. Her head is so small on her pillow, her scalp pink and vulnerable through the frail white fuzz of her hair. Her eyes gleam in the light of her bedside lamp. She’s staring over my shoulder and I wonder what she sees.
I find myself wondering what it is like to be old, as old as Evelyn—to look back over your lifetime, to reflect on the choices you made. I think of the words of the Confession. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done. . . . I wonder what causes you most regret, in the final years of your life: the undone things—or the things you did that you ought not to have done.
I turn off her lamp and leave her.
Chapter 61
VIVIENNE.” RUTHIE DUQUEMIN smiles warmly at me. “How lovely to see you,” she says.
But I can tell she’s anxious, wondering what’s brought me. Her eyes, gentle, full of inquiry, green as hart’s-tongue fern, rest on me. She pushes her hand through her mass of pale disorderly hair.
She ushers me into her kitchen, which is cluttered and busy and cheerful, with lots of children’s drawings pi
nned to the walls—sketches of Hurricanes and Spitfires. It must be very different, having boys: Millie only ever draws cats and beribboned princesses. I think briefly, as I sometimes do, how I’d love to have a son. The room has a scent of laundry soap; dishcloths are boiling on the stove, and a slippery froth is slithering down the side of the pan. Ruthie stirs the pan with a wooden spoon.
“I haven’t got anything to offer you. Well, only water,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”
“Water will be fine,” I say.
I sit at her well-scrubbed table. She fills two glasses at the tap. I don’t know how to begin.
“I’ve come about Simon—well, Millie and Simon, really,” I say.
“I thought it might be something like that.” She smiles a rueful smile. “The thing is, with Simon, I never know what he’ll do next. You know, I love my boys to bits. But girls aren’t so much trouble. Sometimes I really envy mothers like you who only have girls.”
“It’s nothing bad at all,” I say quickly, wanting to reassure her. “It’s just this thing I found out. . . .” Then, seeing how anxious she looks, “Simon’s such a good friend to Millie. They’re so sweet together.”
“Simon loves Millie,” she tells me.
Her voice is tentative, uncertain. Standing there, she’s caught in the sunlight that streams through the window behind her: she’s a disheveled, harassed angel with a golden halo of hair.
“Has he told you what they’ve been doing?” I ask.
“He never tells me anything.” She smiles. “Just that he’s going to marry Millie. . . .”
“Did he tell you about the ghost?” I say.
She goes very still. The smile is wiped from her face.
“No, he didn’t,” she says.
“Millie was talking about a ghost, in Peter Mahy’s barn,” I say. “That they had met a ghost there.”
Ruthie’s eyes widen. I know she understands at once. She sits down abruptly at the table.
“And you went to look, and he wasn’t a ghost? He was one of those poor, poor men?” she says.
I nod.
I see all the warring feelings that pass rapidly over her face—curiosity, fear; perhaps a kind of wonder.
“They’ve been befriending him, giving him food,” I tell her.
“Oh my God. I had no idea. . . . Oh my God. I did have to tell Simon off, though, because some bread went missing. But I thought he was eating it himself.” She looks remorseful. “I wouldn’t have scolded him if I’d known. That makes me feel so awful, that he was trying to do something good, and all he got was a smack. . . .”
“I’ve told Millie they mustn’t do it again,” I say. “And I’ve told her to tell Simon that. I’m feeding the man myself now. It isn’t safe for children.”
A shadow moves over her face.
“Or for you, come to that,” she says. She reaches across the table, touches my arm with one warm finger. “Be careful, Vivienne. I mean, don’t you have Germans next door? Simon told me.”
“Yes.”
“Watch your back. For goodness’ sake . . .”
It enters my mind that her warning is just like the warnings I give to Johnnie. Thinking this, I feel a little creep of cold on my skin.
“I’ll do my best,” I say lightly.
“Well, thanks so much for coming to see me,” says Ruthie. “I’ll speak to him about it. To be honest, I was ever so worried when I saw you here. I thought you’d say you didn’t want them playing anymore.” She moves her hand abstractedly through her bright aureole of hair. “Simon would have been heartbroken.”
“Well, he doesn’t need to be. . . .”
“I never know what he’ll get up to next,” she tells me. “He used to be friends with little Jenny Le Page. She was always really nicely turned out, and she managed to fall in the soot pile wearing her Sunday-best frock.” A slight grin sneaks into her face. “He tried to clean up her frock by washing it under the tap. Well, that was that, of course. Her mother wouldn’t let them ever play together again.”
“I love them playing together,” I say.
“You know,” she says, thoughtfully, “I feel a little proud of them, don’t you? For trying to help like that. Their hearts must be in the right place. We’ve tried to teach Simon to be kind. That’s the best you can do really, don’t you think? The world is so full of terrible things. All you can do is be kind. . . . Now just you be careful, Vivienne.”
Chapter 62
HE IS WAITING for me: he stands up as he sees me.
“Vivienne. You came.”
“Yes.” I put my hand on his arm. “Of course I did,” I say.
We walk silently through the fields to Le Colombier. There’s an operatic sunset, the backdrop of the sky painted over with scarlet and gilt, but darkness is gathering in the wood and in the hidden places under the hedge.
He washes his face and hands at my sink and eats the soup I have made, while Millie and I sit with him.
When he’s almost finished his second serving, he picks up the bowl and puts his head back and tips it into his mouth, so as not to waste a single drop. He puts the bowl down, sighing deeply.
“Thank you. Thank you, Vivienne.”
I light two cigarettes, give him one. There’s still a little time to talk, before he has to go back.
“Where do you come from, Kirill? Where is your home?” I ask him.
“I come from far away,” he says. “My country is called Belorussia. It has a border with Russia. Perhaps you have heard of it?”
I haven’t, but it wouldn’t be polite to say so. I nod.
“I lived in a village there. I dream of it always,” he says.
We sit for a while in silence, the sunset light falling over us. Little sounds brush at the edge of the stillness—a gauzy-winged fly at the window, the insistent tick of the clock.
“What is your country like? Tell us about it,” I say.
“There is a forest with many birch trees.” He speaks slowly, searching for the words, in that strange, high, hungry voice he has. “There are birch trees and little rivers. It is very quiet there. Our houses are all made of wood and storks nest on the roofs of the houses.” There is a distant look in his eyes, as though he can see these things as he talks. “There my heart is always,” he says.
“It sounds like a lovely place,” I say.
He nods.
“But, I can say, this was not a perfect life,” he tells us. “When I was a child, we were often hungry.” He blows out smoke, remembering. “February was a difficult month. Sometimes we only had old potatoes to eat for a week at a time. The first sign of spring was the coming up of the sorrel. My mother would send me and my brother to gather the sorrel for soup. The next sign was the new potatoes, and only then did you start living again. . . .”
He is silent for a moment.
“Leaving that place was like darkness to me,” he says.
“Yes,” I say.
“Sometimes the pictures fade for me. But talking to you I can see it so clearly,” he says.
The thought comes to me that he is talking only about his childhood—rather like Gunther and me, when Gunther first came to my bed. And perhaps for the very same reason: the past, whatever its rigors, is a safer place than today.
“Tell us about your mother and brother,” I say. “Tell us about your family.”
“My family all play music,” he tells us. “I was a violin maker, in the life that I had. By day I would work on the farm, but at night I would make my violins. My father also did this. He taught me.”
This startles me. I didn’t expect him to have such a rich life, such a skill. Perhaps I’d believed that his rags, his hunger, said something that mattered about him—that his wretchedness could tell me about the person he was. But I was wrong: his wretchedness tells me nothing.
“When I was a child, the party encouraged all music,” he says. “The music for weddings and festivals, the costumes and the dancing. All those good things that were always p
art of our life. . . . In these last few years, under Stalin, these things were not encouraged. But I went on making my violins, in a little workshop I had, in a room at the back of my house.”
I’m trying to understand. What does he mean by the party? Is Belorussia ruled by Stalin, by Russia? Was it part of the Bolshevik republic before the Germans marched in? I think as so often how little I understand about the world. And I’m curious about this music they played. Wondering whether it has that wildness of much East European folk music—rather like the melancholic Chopin Mazurkas I love.
I glance at Millie. She’s listening intently, scarcely blinking: it’s the look she has when I read from her fairy-tale books.
“I loved my violins,” Kirill tells us. Pride briefly fattens his voice. “I loved them too much, perhaps. My wife would say that I was married to them. . . . My wife would complain about it. Other women might say that their husbands drink too much vodka. But my wife would complain that I spent too long at that work. . . .”
“You’re married?” I’m surprised. He seems too young to have a wife.
There’s just a sliver of quiet. His face darkens.
“Her name was Danya,” he says.
I hear the past tense: a little current of fear moves through me. I’m scared to ask more about her. Later, perhaps. Not today.
“I had a friend here on Guernsey who played the violin,” I say. “We used to play duets. He went on the boat to England. I’ve always loved the violin. . . .”
There’s a gleam in his face, when I say that.
“To make a violin is a beautiful thing,” he tells us.
“Yes. It must be.”
“So much care goes into the making of it. It is such a small thing, so fragile, so easy to break. But it sings out so clearly,” he says.
I think of Nathan Isaacs and the music we played—Beethoven’s “Spring Sonata,” the clear high notes, like a human voice, but truer.
“It must be wonderful—to have such a skill,” I say.
The shadows are black in the hollows under his eyes.
“Even if I return to my home, I will never make my violins again. That life is over for me.”
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