The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Read Online Free PDF Page B

weddings.
    There was so much we wanted to know during the war, but we weren’t allowed letters or papers from England—or anywhere. In 1942, the Germans called in all the wireless sets—of course, there were hidden ones, listened to in secret, but if you were caught listening, you could be sent to the camps. That’s why we don’t understand so many things we can read about now.
    I enjoy the wartime cartoons, but there is one that bewilders me. It was in a 1944
Punch
and shows about ten people walking down a London street. The chief figures are two men in bowler hats, holding briefcases and umbrellas, and one man is saying to the other, ‘It is ridiculous to say these Doodlebugs have affected people in any way.’ It took me several seconds to realise that every person in the cartoon had one normal ear and one
very large
ear on the other side of his head. Perhaps you could explain it to me.
    Yours sincerely,
    Dawsey Adams
    From Juliet to Dawsey
3rd February 1946
    Dear Mr Adams,
    I am so glad you are enjoying Lamb’s letters and the copy of his portrait. He did fit the face I had imagined for him, so I’m glad you agree.
    Thank you very much for telling me about the roast pig, but don’t think I didn’t notice that you only answered one of my questions. I’m hankering to know more about the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and not merely to satisfy my idle curiosity—I now have a professional duty to pry.
    Did I tell you I am a writer? I wrote a weekly column for the
Spectator
during the war, and Stephens & Stark collected them together into a single volume and published them under the title
Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War
. Izzy was the nom-de-plume the
Spectator
chose for me, and now, thank heavens, the poor thing has been laid to rest, and I can write under my own name again. I would like to write a book, but I am having trouble thinking of a subject I could live happily with for several years.
    In the meantime,
The Times
has asked me to write an article for the literary supplement. They want to address the practical, moral, and philosophical value of reading—spread out over three issues and by three different authors. I am to cover the philosophical side of the debate and so far my only thought is that reading keeps you from going gaga. You can see I need help.
    Do you think your literary society would mind being included in such an article? I know that the story of the society’s founding would fascinate
Times
readers, and I’d love to learn more about your meetings. But if you’d rather not,please don’t worry—I will understand either way, and either way, would like to hear from you again.
    I remember the
Punch
cartoon you described very well and think it was the word
Doodlebug
that confused you. That was the name coined by the Ministry of Information; it was meant to sound less terrifying than ‘Hitler’s V-1 rockets’ or ‘pilotless bombs’.
    We were all used to bombing raids at night and the sights that followed, but these were unlike any bombs we had seen before. They came in the daytime, and they came so fast there was no time for an air-raid siren or to take cover. You could see them; they looked like slim, black, slanted pencils and made a dull, strangled sound above you—like a motor-car running out of petrol. As long as you could hear them coughing and put-putting, you were safe. You could think, Thank God, it’s going past me.
    But when their noise stopped, it meant there was only thirty seconds before the thing plummeted. So, you listened for them. Listened hard for the sound of their motors cutting out. I did see a Doodlebug fall once. I was quite some distance away when it hit, so I threw myself down in the gutter and hugged the kerb. Some women, in the top storey of a tall office building down the street, had gone to an open window to watch. They were sucked out by the force of the blast.
    It