Margaret Leroy - The Soldier’s Wife

Praise forMARGARET LEROY

‘Utterly beguiling …’

—Rosamund Lupton, bestselling author of Sister

‘Margaret Leroy writes with candour and intelligence, capturing the menace of suddenly finding the world may not be at all as you’ve thought it’

—Helen Dunmore

‘Leroy handles … domestic life with the same graceful, precise, rueful style as [Richard Yates] the late novelist did, though with a warmer, more hopeful intelligence’

—Washington Post

‘Engrossing and affecting’

—Eve

‘Brilliant at portraying the slow, steady disintegration of a seemingly ordinary life when secrets are unearthed and dark suspicions spread’

—Baltimore Sun

‘Powerful and haunting’

—Daily Mirror

‘What a storyteller Leroy is and what an eye she has for contemporary life’

—Fay Weldon

‘[Leroy’s] quiet, self-assured narrative voice delivers tremendous psychological depth and emotional resonance’

—Kirkus Reviews

‘Leroy expertly draws a picture of a woman and a family in crisis and the moral questions one sometimes has to face’

—Toronto Sun

MARGARET LEROYstudied music at Oxford. She has written four novels, one of which was televised by Granada and reached an audience of eight million. Margaret has appeared on numerous radio and TV programmes, and her articles and short stories have been published in The Observer, The Sunday Express and The Mail on Sunday. Her books have been translated into ten languages. Margaret is married with two daughters and lives in London.

www.mirabooks.co.uk

‘Qui veurt apprendre a priaïr, qu’il aouche en maïr.’

He who wishes to learn to pray, let him go to sea.

—Guernsey proverb

My thanks are due to my wonderfully thoughtful and perceptive editor, Maddie West, and the whole talented team at MIRA; I am especially grateful to Kim Young, Oliver Rhodes and Sue Smith, my meticulous copyeditor. Thank you as well to Brenda Copeland and Elisabeth Dyssegard at Hyperion in New York. I am also deeply grateful to my agents, Kathleen Anderson, and Laura Longrigg in London, who are so committed to my writing and who have supported me in so many ways. And thank you as always to Mick and Izzie, who shared Guernsey with me, and Becky and Steve, for so much love and encouragement.

Among the books that I read while researching this story, two deserve special mention—Madeleine Bunting’s fascinating history, The Model Occupation , and Marie de Garis’s enchanting volume, Folklore of Guernsey.

Cover

Praise

Author the Author

Title Page

Epigraph

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PART I: JUNE 1940

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

PART II: JULY – OCTOBER 1940

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

PART III: OCTOBER 1940 – SEPTEMBER 1941

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

PART IV: SEPTEMBER 1941 – NOVEMBER 1942

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

CHAPTER 46

CHAPTER 47

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 49

CHAPTER 50

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 52

CHAPTER 53

CHAPTER 54

CHAPTER 55

CHAPTER 56

CHAPTER 57

CHAPTER 58

CHAPTER 59

CHAPTER 60

CHAPTER 61

CHAPTER 62

CHAPTER 63

CHAPTER 64

CHAPTER 65

CHAPTER 66

CHAPTER 67

CHAPTER 68

PART V: DECEMBER 1942 – NOVEMBER 1943

CHAPTER 69

CHAPTER 70

CHAPTER 71

CHAPTER 72

CHAPTER 73

CHAPTER 74

CHAPTER 75

CHAPTER 76

CHAPTER 77

CHAPTER 78

CHAPTER 79

CHAPTER 80

CHAPTER 81

CHAPTER 82

CHAPTER 83

EPILOGUE: APRIL 1946

CHAPTER 84

Extract

Endpages

Copyright

JUNE 1940

‘“Once upon a time there were twelve princesses …”’

My voice surprises me. It’s perfectly steady, the voice of a normal mother on a normal day—as though everything is just the same as it always was.

‘“Every night their door was locked, yet in the morning their shoes were all worn through, and they were pale and very tired, as though they had been awake all night …”’

Millie is pressed up against me, sucking her thumb. I can feel the warmth of her body: it comforts me a little.

‘They’d been dancing, hadn’t they, Mummy?’

‘Yes, they’d been dancing,’ I say.

Blanche sprawls out on the sofa, pretending to read an old copy of Vogue , twisting her long blonde hair in her fingers to try and make it curl. I can tell that she’s listening. Ever since her father went to England with the army, she’s liked to listen to her sister’s bedtime story. Perhaps it gives her a sense of safety. Or perhaps there’s something in her that yearns to be a child again.

It’s so peaceful in my house tonight. The amber light of the setting sun falls on all the things in this room—all so friendly and familiar: my piano and heaps of sheet music, the Staffordshire dogs and silver eggcups, the many books on their shelves, the flowered tea set in the glass-fronted cabinet. I look around and wonder if we will be here this time tomorrow—if after tomorrow I will ever see this room again. Millie’s cat Alphonse is asleep in a circle of sun on the sill, and through the open window that looks out over our back garden you can hear only the blackbird’s song and the many little voices of the streams: there is always a sound of water in these valleys. I’m so grateful for the quiet—you could almost imagine that this was the end of an ordinary sweet summer day. Last week, when the Germans were bombing Cherbourg, you could hear the sound of it even here in our hidden valley, like thunder out of a clear sky, and up at Angie le Brocq’s farm, at Les Ruettes on the hill, when you touched your hand to the window pane, you could feel the faint vibration of it, just a tremor, so you weren’t quite sure if it was the window shaking or your hand. But for the moment, it’s tranquil here.

I turn back to the story. I read how there was a soldier coming home from the wars, who owned a magic cloak that could make him completely invisible. How he sought to discover the princesses’ secret. How he was locked in their bedroom with them, and they gave him a cup of drugged wine, but he only pretended to drink.

‘He was really clever, wasn’t he? That’s what I’d have done, if I’d been him,’ says Millie.

I have a sudden vivid memory of myself as a child, when she says that. I loved fairytales just as she does—enthralled by the transformations, the impossible quests, the gorgeous significant objects—the magic cloaks, the satin dancing shoes; and, just like Millie, I’d fret about the people in the stories, their losses and reversals and all the dilemmas they faced. So sure that if I’d been in the story, it would all have been clear to me: that I’d have been wise and brave and resolute. I’d have known what to do.