Mary Shaffer: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Before I could muster a word, a woman in the back row jumped to her feet. “Oh, sit down! You can’t desecrate a person who never was! He’s not dead because he was never alive! Isaac Bickerstaff was a pseudonym for Joseph Addison’s Spectator columns! Miss Ashton can take up any pretend name she wants to—so shut up!” What a valiant defender—he left the store in a hurry.

Sidney, do you know a man named Markham V. Reynolds, Jr.? If you don’t, will you look him up for me— Who’s Who, the Domesday Book, Scotland Yard? Failing those, he may simply be in the Telephone Directory. He sent a beautiful bunch of mixed spring flowers to me at the hotel in Bath, a dozen white roses to my train, and a pile of red roses to Norwich—all with no message, only his engraved card.

Come to that, how does he know where Susan and I are staying? What trains we are taking? All his flowers have met me upon my arrival. I don’t know whether to feel flattered or hunted.

Love,

Juliet

23rd January, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Susan just gave me the sales figures for Izzy —I can scarcely believe them. I honestly thought everyone would be so weary of the war that no one would want a remembrance of it—and certainly not in a book. Happily, and once again, you were right and I was wrong (it half-kills me to admit this).

Traveling, talking before a captive audience, signing books, and meeting strangers is exhilarating. The women I’ve met have told me such war stories of their own, I almost wish I had my column back. Yesterday, I had a lovely, gossipy chat with a Norwich lady. She has four daughters in their teens, and just last week, the eldest was invited to tea at the cadet school in town. Arrayed in her finest frock and spotless white gloves, the girl made her way to the school, stepped over the threshold, took one look at the sea of shining cadet faces before her—and fainted dead away! The poor child had never seen so many males in one place in her life. Think of it—a whole generation grown up without dances or teas or flirting.

I love seeing the bookshops and meeting the booksellers—booksellers really are a special breed. No one in their right mind would take up clerking in a bookstore for the salary, and no one in his right mind would want to own one—the margin of profit is too small. So, it has to be a love of readers and reading that makes them do it—along with first dibs on the new books.

Do you remember the first job your sister and I had in London? In crabby Mr. Hawke’s secondhand bookshop? How I loved him—he’d simply unpack a box of books, hand one or two to us and say, “No cigarette ashes, clean hands—and for God’s sake, Juliet, none of your margin notes! Sophie, dear, don’t let her drink coffee while she reads.” And off we’d go with new books to read.

It was amazing to me then, and still is, that so many people who wander into bookshops don’t really know what they’re after—they only want to look around and hope to see a book that will strike their fancy. And then, being bright enough not to trust the publisher’s blurb, they will ask the book clerk the three questions: (1) What is it about? (2) Have you read it? (3) Was it any good?

Real dyed-in-the-wool booksellers—like Sophie and me—can’t lie. Our faces are always a dead giveaway. A lifted brow or curled lip reveals that it’s a poor excuse for a book, and the clever customers ask for a recommendation instead, whereupon we frog-march them over to a particular volume and command them to read it. If they read it and despise it, they’ll never come back. But if they like it, they’re customers for life.

Are you taking notes? You should—a publisher should send not just one reader’s copy to a bookshop, but several, so that all the staff can read it, too.

Mr. Seton told me today that Izzy Bickerstaff makes an ideal present for both someone you like and someone you don’t like but have to give a present to anyway. He also claimed that 30 percent of all books bought are bought as gifts. Thirty percent??? Did he lie?

Has Susan told you what else she has managed besides our tour? Me. I hadn’t known her half an hour before she told me my make-up, my clothes, my hair, and my shoes were drab, all drab. The war was over, hadn’t I heard?

She took me to Madame Helena’s for a haircut; it is now short and curly instead of long and lank. I had a light rinse, too—Susan and Madame said it would bring out the golden highlights in my “beautiful chestnut curls.” But I know better; it’s meant to cover any grey hairs (four, by my count) that have begun to creep in. I also bought a jar of face cream, a lovely scented hand lotion, a new lipstick, and an eye-lash curler—which makes my eyes cross whenever I use it.

Then Susan suggested a new dress. I reminded her that the Queen was very happy wearing her 1939 wardrobe, so why shouldn’t I be? She said the Queen doesn’t need to impress strangers—but I do. I felt like a traitor to crown and country; no decent woman has new clothes—but I forgot that the moment I saw myself in the mirror. My first new dress in four years, and such a dress! It is the exact color of a ripe peach and falls in lovely folds when I move.

The saleslady said it had “Gallic Chic” and I would too, if I bought it. So I did. New shoes are going to have to wait, since I spent almost a year’s worth of clothing coupons on the dress.

Between Susan, my hair, my face, and my dress, I no longer look a listless, bedraggled thirty-two-year-old. I look a lively, dashing, haute-couturéd (if this isn’t a French verb, it should be) thirty.

Apropos of my new dress and no new shoes—doesn’t it seem shocking to have more stringent rationing after the war than during the war? I realize that hundreds of thousands of people all over Europe must be fed, housed, and clothed, but privately I resent it that so many of them are Germans.

I am still without any ideas for a book I want to write. It is beginning to depress me. Do you have any suggestions?

Since I am in what I consider to be the North I’m going to place a trunk call to Sophie in Scotland tonight. Any messages for your sister? Your brother-in-law? Your nephew?

This is the longest letter I’ve ever written—you needn’t reply in kind.

Love,

Juliet

25th January, 1946

Dear Sidney,

Don’t believe the newspaper reports. Juliet was not arrested and taken away in handcuffs. She was merely reproved by one of Bradford’s constables, and he could barely keep a straight face.

She did throw a teapot at Gilly Gilbert’s head, but don’t believe his claim that she scalded him; the tea was cold. Besides, it was more of a skim-by than a direct hit. Even the hotel manager refused to let us compensate him for the teapot—it was only dented. He was, however, forced by Gilly’s screams to call in the constabulary.

Herewith the story, and I take full responsibility for it. I should have refused Gilly’s request for an interview with Juliet. I knew what a loathsome person he was, one of those unctuous little worms who work for The London Hue and Cry. I also knew that Gilly and the LH&C were horribly jealous of the Spectator ’s success with the Izzy Bickerstaff columns—and of Juliet.

We had just returned to the hotel from the Brady’s Booksmith party for Juliet. We were both tired—and full of ourselves—when up popped Gilly from a chair in the lounge. He begged us to have tea with him. He begged for a short interview with “our own wonderful Miss Ashton—or should I say England’s very own Izzy Bickerstaff ?” His smarm alone should have alerted me, but it didn’t—I wanted to sit down, gloat over Juliet’s success, and have a cream tea.