Come indoors at once.’
She doesn’t move.
‘Millie!’
‘But my ball just went over the hedge. It was my best ball, Mummy …’
‘Do as I say,’ I tell her. ‘Go to the den we made under the stairs. Go this minute.’
‘Is it the Germans? Will they kill us?’
‘Just do as you’re told, Millie.’
I call to Blanche from the passageway but she doesn’t seem to hear. I rush upstairs. Music spools down from her bedroom: she’s playing Irving Berlin on her gramophone. Cheek to cheek. I rush straight in, without knocking. She’s standing in the middle of her bedroom floor, startled, slightly shame-faced. I briefly wonder if she’s been dancing in front of her mirror, practising moves, as I would do at her age: conjuring up a shiny, scented future, and a louchely handsome partner to hold you close in the dance.
‘There are German planes coming over,’ I say. ‘Go to the den with Millie. Now.’
‘But my record …’
‘Blanche, just go,’ I tell her.
She hears the edge in my voice. She leaves the gramophone, races downstairs. As I follow, I hear the disconsolate sound as the music slows and runs down.
Evelyn is in her armchair in the living room, knitting.
‘You should go and shelter with the girls. You’d be safer there,’ I tell her.
She doesn’t get up. Her sherry-brown gaze flicks briefly over my face.
‘There’s no need to worry, Vivienne. You always were a worrier …’ She speaks so slowly, each word precisely enunciated. I’m frantic with impatience. ‘You always did get yourself in a state over every little thing.’
‘This isn’t a little thing, Evelyn …’
She ignores this, goes on knitting. Her face is still, unmoved, as though nothing I’ve said has touched her. There’s a sound like screaming in my head.
She clears her throat.
‘Eugene always says as much. Worry, worry, worry.’
I tell myself that she doesn’t mean to criticise. That she doesn’t really mean some of the things she says any more.
‘Just come and shelter,’ I say.
‘I’m not going to hide away, Vivienne. I’m hurt that you thought that I would. Somebody’s got to make a stand.’
‘Please, Evelyn. Just in case something happens …’
‘I’m not going to let the Hun move me about,’ she tells me. ‘Where would we be if everyone did that?’
There’s nothing more I can say to persuade her. I leave her in her chair.
I watch the planes from the window. They fly low, towards the airfield, and vanish beyond the wooded brow of the hill. They must have landed. I watch the sky for a long time, as the west flares red with sunset, then deepens to a lingering indigo dark; but they don’t take off again.
In the end I tell the girls to come out from under the stairs. I wonder if it has happened: the world cracked open.
Monday afternoon. There’s a commotion from outside the door—Blanche jumping off her bicycle, flinging it down. She’s been to town to see Celeste. She bursts through the door, her blonde hair shimmering, flying out like a flag.
‘Mum, Mum. We saw them. They’re here.’ She’s breathless, the words tumbling out of her; she’s flushed and thrilled with the drama of this. ‘We saw the German soldiers, me and Celeste.’
‘I hate the Germans,’ says Millie, staunchly.
‘Yes, sweetheart. We all hate them,’ I say.
‘They’re ever so tall, Mum,’ says Blanche. ‘Much taller than island men. One of them bought an ice cream and tried to give it to me. I didn’t take it, of course. It was a strawberry cornet.’
Millie stares at Blanche, a little frown deepening in her forehead. I can tell her opinion of the Germans is being slightly modified.
‘I like strawberry cornets,’ she says.
‘They were very polite,’ says Blanche. ‘There was one who had his picture taken with a policeman. He said he wanted to send it back home to his wife …’
She pulls The Guernsey Press from her bag. We open the newspaper out on the table and read. There are a lot of new rules. There will be a curfew: no islander should be out of doors after nine o’clock at night. All weapons must be handed in … Reading this, I think with a prickling of fear of Johnnie, of his brother’s shotgun that he kept in a box beneath his bed: I wonder what he has done with it. The use of boats and motorcars is banned, and all our clocks must be put forward one hour.
As I read, I’m seized by a feeling I didn’t expect. It’s shame—a dirty, contaminated feeling. That this is happening to us. That we have allowed it to happen. I try to reason with myself, to tell myself that we can live with these regulations, and now at least the girls can sleep in their rooms, because with the Germans here, there won’t be any more bombing. But still the shame seeps through me.
I go to talk to Evelyn. I put my hand on her arm.
‘Evelyn, I need to tell you something important. I’m afraid that the Germans have landed on Guernsey,’ I say gently.
She looks up at me, her mouth pursed and tight. She puts her knitting down in her lap.
‘I don’t like cowardly talk,’ she says. ‘We mustn’t give in. We mustn’t ever give in.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I tell her. As though it’s my fault. ‘But it’s happened. The Germans are here. That’s what we have to live with now.’
She stares at me. Suddenly, there’s a flicker of understanding in her face. She starts to cry soundlessly, slow tears trickling down from her eyes, that she doesn’t try to wipe away. The sight tugs at my heart.
‘Evelyn, I’m so sorry,’ I say again.
I find her handkerchief for her, and she rubs at her face.
‘Does that mean we’ve lost the war, Vivienne?’
‘No. No, it doesn’t mean that,’ I say, with all the conviction I can manage.
Then suddenly her tears stop. She folds her handkerchief precisely and puts it away in her pocket. There’s a sudden purposefulness to her.
‘We ought to tell Eugene at once,’ she says. ‘Eugene will know what to do.’
I put my hand around her; her body feels at once stiff and brittle.
‘Evelyn—Eugene
