The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society: A Novel by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

Author:Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows [Shaffer, Mary Ann & Barrows, Annie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction, Historical, Literary, United States, Women's Fiction, Contemporary Women, Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
ISBN: 0440297001
Amazon: B0015DWJX2
Publisher: The Dial Press
Published: 2008-07-29T05:00:00+00:00

From Sally Ann Frobisher to Juliet

15th May, 1946

Dear Miss Ashton,

Miss Pribby told me you would be coming to Guernsey to hear about the war. I hope we will meet then, but I am writing now because I like to write letters. I like to write anything, really.

I thought you’d like to know how I was personally humiliated during the war—in 1943, when I was twelve. I had scabies.

There wasn’t enough soap on Guernsey to keep clean—not our clothes, our houses, or ourselves. Everyone had skin diseases of one sort or another—scales or pustules or lice. I myself had scabies on top of my head—under my hair—and they wouldn’t go away.

Finally, Dr. Ormond said I must go to Town Hospital and have my head shaved, and cut the tops of the scabs off to let the pus out. I hope you will never know the shame of a seeping scalp. I wanted to die.

That is where I met my friend Elizabeth McKenna. She helped the nurses on my floor. The nurses were always kind, but Miss McKenna was kind and funny. Her being funny helped me in my darkest hour. When my head had been shaved, she came into my room with a basin, a bottle of Dettol, and a sharp scalpel.

I said, “This isn’t going to hurt, is it? Dr. Ormond said it wouldn’t hurt.” I tried not to cry.

“He lied,” Miss McKenna said, “it’s going to hurt like hell. Don’t tell your mother I said ‘hell.’ ”

I started to giggle at that, and she made the first slice before I had time to be afraid. It did hurt, but not like hell. We played a game while she cut the rest of the tops off—we shouted out the names of every woman who had ever suffered under the blade. “Mary, Queen of Scots—Snip-snap!” “Anne Boleyn—Whap!” “Marie Antoinette—Thunk!” And we were done.

It hurt, but it was fun too because Miss McKenna had turned it into a game.

She swabbed my bald head with Dettol and came in to visit me that evening—with a silk scarf of her own to wrap round my head as a turban. “There,” she said, and handed me a mirror. I looked in it—the scarf was lovely, but my nose looked too big for my face, just as it always did. I wondered if I’d ever be pretty, and asked Miss McKenna.

When I asked my mother the same question, she said she had no patience with such nonsense and beauty was only skin-deep. But not Miss McKenna. She looked at me, considering, and then she said, “In a little more time, Sally, you’re going to be a stunner. Keep looking in the mirror and you’ll see. It’s bones that count, and you’ve got them in spades. With that elegant nose of yours, you’ll be the new Nefertiti. You’d better practice looking imperious.”

Mrs. Maugery came to visit me in hospital and I asked her who Nefertiti was, and if she was dead. It sort of sounded like it. Mrs.

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