Margaret Leroy - The Soldier’s Wife

She’s been drinking her breakfast mug of milk, and her mouth is rimmed with white. She bites languidly into her toast and honey.

‘Of course you can, sweetheart. You’re a big girl now,’ I tell her. ‘But Blanche will help you. Just be as quick as you can, both of you. If we’re going to go, it has to be today …’

I watch them for a moment, Blanche with her sherbet-fizz of excitement, Millie still fogged with sleep. We’ve come to the moment I’ve been dreading.

‘There’s one thing that’s very sad, though,’ I say. ‘We’ll have to take Alphonse to the vet’s.’

Millie is suddenly alert, the drowsiness all gone from her. Her eyes harden. She gives me a wary, suspicious look.

‘But there’s nothing wrong with him,’ she says.

‘No. But I’m afraid he needs to be put to sleep.’

‘What d’you mean, put to sleep ?’ says Millie. There’s an edge of threat in her voice.

‘We have to have him put down,’ I say.

‘No, we don’t,’ she says. Her face blazes bright with anger.

‘Millie, we have to. Alphonse can’t come with us. And we can’t just leave him here.’

‘ No. You’re a murderer, Mummy. I hate you.’ Her voice is shrill with outrage.

‘We can’t take him, Millie. You know we can’t. We can’t take a cat on the boat. Nobody will. Everyone’s taking their cats and dogs to the vet. Everyone. Mrs Fitzpatrick from church was taking their terrier yesterday. She told me. It was terribly sad, she said, but it had to be done …’

‘Then they’re all murderers,’ she says. ‘I hate them.’ Her small face is dark as thunderclouds. Her eyes spark. She snatches Alphonse up in her arms. The cat struggles against her.

‘Millie. He can’t come with us.’

‘He could live with someone else, then, Mummy. It isn’t his fault. He doesn’t want to die. I won’t let him. Alphonse didn’t ask to be born now. This war is stupid ,’ she says.

Suddenly, it’s impossible. All my breath rushes out in a sigh. I can’t bear to distress her like this.

‘Look—I’ll speak to Mrs le Brocq,’ I say wearily, defeated. It’s as though the room breathes out as well, when I say that. But I know what Evelyn would say—the thing she’s said so often before: You’re too soft with those girls, Vivienne … ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I tell them. ‘Just get yourselves packed up and ready to leave.’

I walk with Evelyn to Angie’s house, up one of the narrow lanes that run the length and breadth of Guernsey, their labyrinthine routes scarcely changed since the Middle Ages. High, wet hedgebanks press in on either side of the lane; red valerian grows there, and toadflax, and slender, elegant foxgloves, their petals of a flimsy, washed-out purple, as though they’ve been soaked too long in water. I have Alphonse in a basket, and a bag of Evelyn’s clothes.

The climb exhausts Evelyn. We stop at the bend in the lane, where there’s a stone cattle-trough, and I seat her on the rim of the trough to catch her breath for a moment. Sunlight splashes through leaves onto the surface of the water, making patterns that hide whatever lies in its depths.

‘Is it much further, Vivienne?’ she asks me, as a child might.

‘No. Not much further.’

We come to the stand of thorn trees, turn in at the track to Les Ruettes. It’s a solid whitewashed farmhouse that’s been here for hundreds of years. There’s an elder tree by the door: islanders used to plant elder as a protection against evil, lest a witch fly into the dairy and the butter wouldn’t form. Behind the house are the glasshouses where Frank le Brocq grows his tomatoes. Chickens scratch in the dirt; their bubbling chatter is all about us. Alphonse is frenzied at the sight and smell of the chickens, writhing and mewing in his basket. I knock at the door.

Angie answers. She has a headscarf over her curlers, a cigarette in her hand. She sees us both there, and a gleam of understanding comes in her eyes: she knows I have made my decision. Her smile is warm and wide and softens the lines in her face.

‘So. You’ve made your mind up, Vivienne.’

‘Yes.’

I’m so grateful to Angie, for helping me out yet again. She’s always been so good to me—she makes my marmalade, smocks Millie’s dresses, ices my Christmas cake—and I know she’ll be welcoming to Evelyn. There’s such generosity in her.

She puts out a hand to Evelyn.

‘Come in, then, Mrs de la Mare,’ she says. ‘We’ll take good care of you, I promise.’

We enter the cool dark of her kitchen. Angie takes Evelyn to the settle by the big open hearth. Evelyn sits on the edge of the seat—tentative, as though she fears it won’t quite take all her weight, her hands precisely folded.

I put her bag on the floor. A chicken scuttles in and starts to peck at the bag. I keep tight hold of Alphonse’s basket.

‘I don’t know how to thank you, Angie,’ I say.

She shakes her head a little.

‘It’s the least I could do. And never doubt that you’re doing the right thing, Vivienne. With those two young daughters of yours, you don’t know what might happen.’ Then, lowering her voice a little, ‘When they come,’ she says.

‘No. Well …’

She leans close to whisper to me. Her skin is thickened by sunlight and brown as a ripening nut. I feel her warm nicotine-scented breath on my cheek.

‘I’ve heard such terrible things,’ she says. ‘I’ve heard that they crucify girls. They rape them and crucify them.’

‘Goodness,’ I say.

A thrill of horror goes through me. But I tell myself that this is probably just a story. Angie will believe anything. She loves to tell of witchcraft, hauntings, curses: she says that hair will grow much quicker if cut when the moon is waxing, that seagulls gathering at a seafarer’s house may presage a death … Anyway, I ask myself, how could such atrocities happen here, amid the friendly scratching of chickens, the scent of ripening tomatoes, the summer wind caressing the leaves—in this peaceful orderly place? It’s beyond imagining.

Maybe Angie sees the doubt in my eyes.

‘Trust me, Vivienne. You’re right to want to get those girls of yours away. She’s right about that, isn’t she, Frank?’ I turn. Frank, her husband, is standing in the doorway to the hall, half dressed, his shirt undone and hanging loose. I can see the russet blur of hair on his chest. I’m never quite sure if I like him. He’s a big man, and a drinker. Sometimes she has black eyes, and I wonder if it’s his fists.

He nods in response to her question.

‘We were saying that only last night,’ he says. ‘That you’d want to keep an eye on your girls, if you’d decided to stay. You’d want to watch your Blanche. She’s looking quite womanly now. I don’t like to think what might happen—if she was still here when they came.’

He’s looked at Blanche, noticed her—noticed her body changing. I don’t like this.

‘It would be a worry,’ I say vaguely.

He steps into the kitchen, buttoning up his shirt.

‘Vivienne, look, I was thinking. If it would help, I could give you a lift to the boat.’

I feel an immediate surge of gratitude for his kindness. This will make everything more straightforward. I’m ashamed of my ungracious thought.

‘Thank you so much, that would be so helpful,’ I say.

‘My pleasure.’

He tucks in his shirt. A faint sour smell of sweat comes off him.

‘The other thing is …’ I say, and stop. I’m embarrassed to be asking more: they’re already doing so much. ‘I was wondering if you could maybe look after Alphonse? I ought to have had him put down, but Millie was distraught.’