The Book of Lies (3 page)

Nic liked my little story of shameful lies and death and licked her Boots
17
Cherry Pie-coated lips.

‘Where do you go with your boyfriend then?'

Vicky said I'd never had much luck with lads since I'd always so closely resembled one. (Ha. Ha.)

My supposed-to-be best friend then explained how, on our last outing to Beau Sejour Leisure Complex, I'd been stuck in the turnstiles until someone had given me a push, saying: ‘There you go, young man.'

My hair was Evidently (good word) too short back then. I hate my hair. It's very fine and straw-like.

Nic chuckled. ‘Some people go for pale and interesting. That's what you are: pale and interesting.'

She winked at me then, and it felt warm and light, like in photosynthesis.

That was all it took, really: the drink, the smile, the wink. I was different and Nicolette liked different.

Maybe she sensed the cosmic and magnetic connection between us.

Maybe she guessed I was ocean-full of deep-sea depths.

Or maybe she wanted someone fat and frumpy to make her feel better than she already was.

The plain fact is, I didn't care – it felt better than the Yellow Sash of Excellence, which I'd already worn three terms on the trot – so I decided not to think too much about it. Nic was like the sister I'd never had but always wanted.

And remember: two sisters, like two brothers, can be completely different.

13
th December
1965

Tape:
1
(A side) ‘The testimony of C.A. Rozier'
[Transcribed by E.P. Rozier]

P'tit Emile, man buoan fraire
.
You are my dear and only brother, but how can two brothers be so different, eh? You got the good stuff: the brains, the looks, our mother's love, whilst I, bian sûr, was poisoned. Nothing is equal between us or ever will be, but I should find some comfort in the fact we do not look alike.
1940
wasn't a good year for a little blonde boy. They'd started to call me Fritz and would frogmarch around me. I have our mother's delicate build and colouring, whereas you, Emile, you are more like our father with your steely eyes and wave of coal-black hair. Would that I had your dark and too-good looks! That might've saved me some of my troubles.

I wanted a brother badly, me, and when you came along I was so proud. Had there been less years between us we could've been copains, things might've turned out different. But you were still a baby when the War broke out and I had no time for playing nursemaid. I was puffing out my pigeon chest and thinking big. I wanted Ray for my brother.

A damned stupid idea, if ever there was one. Ray Le Poidevoin was two years older and already a strutting cock. Didn't I know that he was trouble? He was a born fighter, with beady eyes glinting at any opportunity. That day when he plucked me off the boat he'd been collecting all the stuff people had left behind. The wealthy had abandoned their big cars on the docks before running for the boats, the poorest had bundled up their belongings into sheets. No wonder Ray thought it was a party, it was his Christmases and birthdays all rolled into one.

‘What's your name?' he asked of me.

I told him it was Charlie and he ruffled my hair.

‘Well, Charlie, when the Hun come they'll think you're one of them. How comes you're so pale? You cannot be an island boy. Perhaps you are a spy.'

I was so pent-up from the excitement I jumped to my feet, tears of fury in my eyes. But he easily held me back.

‘At ease, soldier! I'm kidding.'

Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out a hipflask.

‘How old are you?'

I told him I was a month off thirteen and grabbed at it quickly, taking a greedy slug.

Mon Dju
, I thought, this is how evil tastes!

Ray was laughing now. ‘We'll make a man of you yet. Are you ready to kill for your country?'

‘I shall be ready,' I squawked, still feeling the fire in my throat.

Ray crouched back down and I followed suit.

‘You got a weapon?'

I shook my head and he narrowed his eyes like he was thinking deeply, then he dug into his jacket and pulled out a pocket knife. He'd flicked it open and was jabbing at the air.

‘It might not look like much but the blade's sharp and could slit a man's throat. You know how to use it? You can have it. I've another.'

He placed it in the palm of my hand and as I turned it over it twinkled like a jewel.

I thought that meant I was like him, Emile, I thought that meant I was in his gang. Happens I thought a lot of things that day which never quite proved true. As the sun sank into the horizon I was back to the little kid I'd ever been, too scared to go home and face the wrath of our mother. Au yous, back then she had a tongue as sharp as any knife. You know why we called her La Duchesse? She didn't just act like she was royalty but she made her word the law. The youngest out of seven children, she'd had to fight for everything. Now she was always fighting me.

I see her standing in the hallway with her hands on her hips, still wearing her fancy coat with lace about the collar. She'd waited two hours to give me a good lamming.

‘Why do you test me so?' she asked, twisting my ear this way and that. ‘Making a scene in front of our neighbours. As if I haven't got enough on my plate with a baby to look after and your father working all hours to keep the business going!'

Hé bian, the business. Our parents had decided to stay on the island to keep their livelihood. Our father had started his own printing firm, called The Patois Press. It was everything to him and I'm glad you mean to continue. You, Emile, and you alone, can prove it was worth all the trouble and pain. Back then, we only printed posters for the Odeon, local advertisements and parish newsletters – nothing fancy like what you have planned. Pop was a quiet soul, wanting a quiet life. Arlette was the firecracker, always going off. Of course, she came from a lesser family so she had more to prove, and as for Pop, well, he was much changed from his time in France, fighting in that ‘war to end all wars'. It must've cut him to the quick to see another coming.

Not a day passed when we didn't see German planes circling in the skies. We knew something bad was coming our way. Boatloads of refugees arrived from France, telling tales of the barbarous Hun. At every street corner I gobbled up gossip, making notes in my little pocket pad. And the stories I heard!

‘They slice the arms off little kids for sport. They are man-eaters. They use women and babies as cannon fodder.'

The French are a race prone to exaggeration, as I now know, and they never stopped stoking my fevered imaginings. If only I'd stayed in school and listened to my teachers, eh? But the schools were all closed down, so I was on the loose.

Hubert would shake his head at me, like he saw the bad things stewing in my brain.

‘Si nous pale du guiabye nous est saure d'l'y'vais les caurnes' is what he said . . . ‘Speak of the devil and you shall see horns'. He was always talking in patois to me.

Hé bian, that language has been dying for longer than I've been living. I miss hearing it spoke and I miss hearing him speak it.

He'd make me sit with him in the office so as to keep me out of trouble. Of course, with half the island gone our business had gone with it. There were signs on every hedgerow saying ‘Why Go Mad? There's No Place Like Home', but by then we were going mad being stuck at home. Pop turned to his Bible and I hid my head in stupid comics, losing myself in cartoon adventures. What I knew of the War came from
Rover
or
Wizard
, and of course our father had no time for it. I caught him flicking through them once, mumbling to himself.

‘It won't be like that,' he said, his long arms hanging limply at his sides.

‘So,' I placed myself squarely in front of him, ‘tell me what it will be like.'

He shook his head. ‘There aren't words to describe the horror.'

It wasn't the first time I'd asked him, nor the first time he'd refused.

‘Who wants the truth, eh? What I've seen, Charlie, it won't make a good adventure story for little boys like you.'

How it made my young blood boil! Now, though, I understand it all too well. If you have seen something so terrible why tell of it, since words give it fresh life and substance? Bury the past. Deny it as long as you can. The only trouble is, the more you deny something the more power it will have. Look what has happened with our Occupation: our States deputies want it tidied into a tourist guide and treated like a day trip, but there are dead and rotting bodies buried in the tunnels and lying at the bottom of our cliffs. Can't you smell death? It is a travesty and it is a whitewash!

Vère dja, j'pourrais t'encaöntair d'pis maïr haôute jusqu'a bass iaôue . . . Emile, I am your big brother, I am your bad brother, and that's how I'll be remembered. I'll admit I did wrong and that I've got blood on my hands, but I'll not stand here alone. There are people on this island who have got away with murder. I've been shelled out enough times on this, but I'll not be silent no more. You write down what I tell you, word for word, and remember it's all true. Then I'll die easy.

You do it for me, Emile, let your pen be my revenge.

13TH DECEMBER 1985
,
5
p.m.

[Dad's study]

I know I shouldn't call this Dad's study anymore – he's been dead a lot longer than Nic – but this is still my favourite room. I do all my best thinking in here, and I like to remember how it used to look. There was a huge desk with paper stacked up all around it, just like the walls of a fortress, and books and box files were jammed onto every spare shelf, or scattered all over the sofa. Dad said he had a system but I never worked out what it was. (Not that I was allowed in here, or could even make it through the door.)

Today it's clean and empty: Dad's books have gone, plus all the files and shelves, and Mum's painted the whole room white. She said Dad had let things get outof-hand, so what he called his LIFE'S BLOOD was actually mostly scrap paper. There's a lot more space and light now, and you can even see the carpet, and that definitely makes Mum happy. She's finally got her own office. People were shocked by how quickly she sprang into action, how she took over the business and turned it around, but she needed a fresh start, and I suppose she had a lot to prove.

You see, when Dad was alive, our ye olde family business, The Patois
¹⁰
Press, wasn't much of a business at all. Dad's books never sold as brilliantly as we'd hoped, and we were always tripping over them. Even his magazine,
The Occupation Today
, which had real-life subscribers and contributors, was running at a loss. Without Mum's common sense we'd have definitely gone bankrupt. Dad couldn't accept the trouble we were in because he didn't care about money/my schooling. Mum said that he was so wrapped up in the past that he couldn't think about the future. She said you can't change History – the things that have already happened – but the future is wide open.

Now, Mum reckons what's ahead makes her happy and I should want her to be happy. Isn't that what all children want for their parents?

And yes, I do admire her, because she kept up appearances and pretended things were fine, when they really weren't. It was a bit like when the Germans invaded Guernsey: most islanders tried to ignore them and carry on like normal. This is called
sang froid
, which sounds better in French, because in English it's cold blood. I wouldn't call Mum cold-blooded, but she is a pragmatist, and it's a shame Dad won't see how she's transformed the business. A third of Guernsey's advertising flyers are now produced by The Patois Press, and we've (trumpets, please) just launched our first-ever Escape to Guernsey Calendar.

Mum, it turns out, is an excellent businesswoman.

Which is why she wasn't around much after Dad died, and why she never noticed when Nic started to come over. I'm not blaming her (really, I'm not), but because she was always working Nic and I could please ourselves. Nic really liked our house – I thought it was shabby compared to Les Paradis but she called it ‘real'. She snooped in every room and Dad-filled cupboard and decided that this room, Dad's study, was the best place to sit. It was seven months and eleven days since he'd died and not much had changed. I thought she'd find it creepy but I remember her sinking onto some cushions on the floor and looking right at-home. After that the study became our den, and nobody noticed the mess we made because it was a mess already.

At first Nic made me nervous. She was the expert in sex and boys and make-up, none of which I knew about. I usually hate it when someone knows more than me, but Nic had this way of talking. She was so honest and I felt like we could tell each other (almost) everything. She actually listened to me, as well. She couldn't believe it when I told her Mum and Dad had slept in different rooms, and that we weren't allowed a TV, and that Dad's fingers had turned black and died before he did. I remember feeling so proud when she lifted up her head, scanned the dusty shelves and said: ‘. . . and I thought
my
parents were fucked.'

I was the only girl in our class with a dead dad and it made me demi-exotic. Nic wasn't scared of death, like some people. Is that why she liked me? I don't know. I just don't know! She definitely liked Dad's study, though, and in between plucking off my eyebrows/trying to pierce my ears I told her grisly stories about the German Occupation.
¹¹
They were much better than the brainless trash you read in
Jackie
or
Just
Seventeen
.

But the one story I couldn't tell her was the one she most wanted to know. I had this huge pile of papers that I'd been carefully putting in order. I'd labelled it ‘The Whole Grim Truth' (very catchy, I know), because it was the story of Uncle Charlie, Dad's older brother, who got in trouble with the Germans and ended up being starved and tortured and driven mad. He only just survived the War and he was the reason Dad made himself an expert on said German Occupation.