Page 131 of The Girl from the Island
‘I’m happier right now than I’ve been in such a long time,’ Lucy admitted as they walked into the garden to the bench that Lucy had painted a glorious shade of racing green. ‘I just think it took until now for me to realise it.’
‘Me too,’ Will said.
Both Dido and Persephone had lost so much during the Occupation. Their freedom had been taken, Dido had been imprisoned, but Persephone’s sacrifice had ultimately been her life, dying when others had lived. And by helping two people escape, it had eventually resulted in Will being born, in Will being here, in Guernsey. He threaded his fingers through hers, lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it gently.
They looked back at Deux Tourelles bathed in the last of the evening sunlight. It would be a happy house again, filled with children and a family. Deprived of her sister for so long, Dido’s legacy had been to bring Lucy back to Guernsey, to bridge the divide that had formed between Lucy and Clara and bequeathing them this house. The house deserved a new start, to be lived in loudly, joyously and to once again be a family home.
Lucy rested her head against Will, moving calmly with the rise and fall of his breathing. She thought of Dido and prayed that she had not always been alone. That at some point she had found love. She thought of Persephone and Stefan, their relationship cut so tragically short, here on this island, a love that had ended too soon, lives that had ended too young.
Lucy looked up at Will, lifted her head and kissed him. A new start. As they watched the sun dip behind the house Lucy knew that if there was a chance of happiness to be had, no matter how fleeting it may be, she had to reach out and take it.
Epilogue
Letter from Werner Graf to Dido Le Roy, spring 1949
To my darling Dido,
I do not know if this letter will reach you. I am guessing your address from what you mentioned to me six years ago. There cannot be more than one house on your beautiful island with a name such as Deux Tourelles. Do you like the description I added for your postman on the envelope? ‘It is a large house with two turrets, surrounded by trees, near the airport.’ I remembered how you described it to me. With a note like that, this letter cannot fail to reach you. I think. I hope.
Will you excuse my bad English the way you used to? It has been a long time since I have written in English.
I write to you now because after you were sent away from me I did not immediately know what had happened to you or where you had gone. When you did not meet me as usual I admit I took it personally and believed it was something I had done wrong. Even though the previous week I had told you I loved you and you had told me you loved me. I worried. Did you perhaps regret saying it afterwards? Long after, I found out that you had been sent tothe continent to a prison for hiding a wireless and I hated myself for sulking when I should have been fighting for you. I was too late.
I too have been in a prison. The last time I saw Guernsey I was standing in line, boarding a boat to take me to a POW camp. The British soldiers were very kind. Would you believe me if I told you that was the first time I had seen an enemy soldier? I had been in a lucky war where I had not fired a single bullet and no one had fired one at me, but in the end, like the rest of the population of Guernsey, we Germans were dying of malnutrition and starvation. To be taken prisoner and to be fed was a relief. But through it all I thought of you.
I was released in 1947 and I had the choice to stay in England or to return to Germany. I confess to you that I did not like England as much I liked being in the Channel Islands, but knowing a German would not be welcome back so soon on the island that we had just occupied, instead of coming to find you and risk endangering you to the same kind of treatment you received when we were seen out together before, I returned home to Germany to help my father on the farm. He was alone and it was too much for him to do by himself. He was distraught. My older brother who I spoke to you about did not return home. He died on the Eastern front.
My sister and her husband lost their home during a raid and now they live with us. They help on the farm and so I am able to leave for a time. Although it has been so long and you may not want to see me again. You may not love me anymore. It has been so long and war changes everything, but so does peacetime. So I ask, may I visit you for a short while? Has it been too long? I will post this now with a smile on my face and my fingers crossed that it reaches you and that you forgive me for taking until now towrite. I have thought of nothing but you and you may not feel the same but I must take the risk.
Yours now as I was then,
Werner xx
Letter from Dido to Werner Graf’s parents, summer 1950
Dear Mr and Mrs Graf,
Werner says I should call you mother and father in this letter, but I’m sure you’ll appreciate that might be a little strange as we have, as yet, not met. Although he’s spoken to me about you so often I feel I know you so well.
I hope to meet you, and Werner’s sister Marta, this summer when we visit you as part of our honeymoon.
I think he has already written to you to tell you that we are now engaged. We cannot tell anyone here we intend to marry for what I hope are obvious reasons. (Werner has been pretending he’s Swiss the entire time he’s been here. I’m not entirely sure people believe him.) So we may go over to the English mainland to marry in secret so no one here will know. And no one here can judge. I believe they think he’s just the gardener! A fib that we may keep up with much longer than originally intended to keep us both out of reach of prying enquiries.
While we are in England we intend to visit my friends Jack and Lise for a time. Our housekeeper, Jack’s mother, is overjoyed at the thought of seeing Jack again. She no longer likes boats and has already switched allegiance from me and asked Werner if he’ll hold her hand on the crossing this time. Werner has also suggested the idea of marrying in Germany. I’m not sure when or where we’ll marry. For now we are very happy just as we are. I’m not very good at sorting paperwork. Neither is he, by all accounts. But we are very good at being in love and I think, for us, that’senough. War here has changed everything and while it’s not the done thing to live with a man and be unmarried, it’s also not the done thing to be in love with a German so soon after the Occupation. I feel the rest of the world may have to modernise around us.
I cannot tell you how much I love your kind, considerate, caring son. He has been a balm in my world, which has been turned upside down even more so since his surprise arrival at my front door last summer. He professed he had written a letter to ask me if he could visit and when I did not reply to confirm that I wanted to see him, he waited for a while and then came anyway.
In a way, I’m glad I never received the letter. When he turned up at my door it was the best surprise I’d ever had and I cried. (I’d just been weeding the hateful vegetable patch and am sure I looked a fright although Werner says not.) But also it’s a shame his letter went astray as he says he’s not one for letters so I might not get another from him.
Never mind, I have something better, I have him. And for that I feel I must apologise to you because I don’t think you intended for your son to disappear for such a long period of time with a girl from an island so far away. But I promise, as long as we are together we will look after each other and love each other and try to visit you as often as we can. I don’t have any family left, you see, so I’m looking forward to meeting you and Werner’s sister.
Werner is hovering over my shoulder and says he’s going to have to write my letter out in German for you, which is prompting me to pop into St Peter Port tomorrow to buy a German phrase book. The next time I write to you, I shall attempt it in your native tongue.
He’s trying, unsuccessfully, to teach me and I have hours of fun teasing him by getting myDer,DieandDascompletely the wrong way round until we fall into fits ofgiggles. If we are all to meet one day soon I had better brush up, hadn’t I?
That’s it from me for now. Werner sends his love but he can write that much more eloquently when he translates this for you in a moment.
While he gets to work, I’m going off to make supper for us all. It’s such a beautiful evening here in Guernsey and tonight I think Werner, Mrs Grant and I will eat with the doors thrown open and the last of the day’s sun streaming into the kitchen to warm us.
With love, until we meet,
Dido
x
