‘You know what I mean. I don’t go on dates, well, not many.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know. No time. I work a lot. Don’t meet that many new people I guess. And if I do go to friends’ parties, they’re mostly frequented by the kind of people I wouldn’t want to date.’
‘People like Simon?’ Will teased.
‘Not even close. Simon looks like a god compared to some of the idiots I meet.’
Will didn’t reply, simply smiled. Was she digging herself into some kind of strange hole? This was the perfect time for him to admit that he, too, didn’t date all that often. Maybe he did. Maybe he spent his evenings, not in front of the latest crime drama, but on his phone, manically swiping right on Tinder.
‘Shall we?’ Will asked with a smile as he walked towards the museum.
Inside they paid and the museum, narrow at the start, opened up like a Tardis with rooms spanning off from rooms and small nooks and crannies dotted around.
The museum was a treasure trove of wartime memorabilia, rooms laid out as they would have looked inside individual houses, complete with illicit wireless sets and mannequins looking out of curtained windows to check no one was coming. A whole street scene with shops was laid out and Will and Lucy walked down the indoor street, marvelling at the old-fashioned wares available for ‘sale’ inside each of the shop windows. Anti-aircraft guns and mannequins in German uniforms made Lucy swallow down an eerie feeling. And then there were display cases in small rooms that led off other small rooms in the winding and fascinating museum.
A Box Brownie camera sat in one of the display cases, its owner identified as a German soldier who’d left it behind at the end of the Occupation when the islands had been liberated and the Germans taken off the island by British forces with only what they could carry.
‘What have you done with your Box Brownie, by the way?’ Will asked.
‘It’s still in the house. What do you think I should do with it?’
‘You could sell it if you don’t want to keep it. Collectors will buy it. You could see if there’s a specialist or antique shop while you’re here, to sell it. Or there’s always eBay.’ He shuddered. ‘I’llhelp if you like? I know a thing or two about cameras,’ he said. ‘Although admittedly more about the modern ones.’
She replied with thanks as they looked at the black and white photographs of Germans languishing on Guernsey’s beaches, local girls who had been photographed looking coy, embarrassed or far too happy in the arms of a German soldier.
‘This one’s a bit brave, isn’t it?’ Will said, pointing to a picture of a Luftwaffe officer, his mouth firmly pressed against that of a civilian woman.
‘I think there was a lot of that going on, I’m afraid,’ Lucy said.
‘I’m surprised. Island men off fighting and some of the women in the arms of the enemy.’
Lucy nodded. ‘People do strange things in times of war. It’s not really for us to judge now from a modern perspective, is it?’
Will looked unsure.
‘Plus,’ Lucy said, unsure quite why she was springing to this woman’s defence. ‘You try resisting the advances of a six-foot-tall blond pilot and then we’ll talk.’
Will laughed. ‘The heart wants what the heart wants, I suppose. But it does just seem to me that a lot of this was excitement-based.’
‘Excitement-based?’ Lucy mocked. ‘Is that a technical term? You’re not a romantic?’
‘I thought I was. But even I can’t get past this …’ He gestured towards the photo. ‘Sleeping with the enemy. However you look at it, even over seventy years after the event, it’s wrong then and it’s wrong now.’
‘But you can’t know what it was like for them, these women. You can’t know how lonely they were. You can’t know how much they wanted someone to love and someone to love them in return. The Germans were here for five years. That’s a long time to be lonely, a long time to resist the charms of good-looking men in uniform.’
‘I’ve been single for five long years,’ Will said. ‘It’s not that bad.’
‘Have you?’ Her voice, when she asked, was far too shrill. ‘Why? What’s wrong with you?’
‘I’ve dated,’ he clarified.
But that wasn’t an answer and Lucy stayed quiet, waiting for him to fill the silence.
‘I keep dating unsuitable women.’
Lucy raised an eyebrow and pointed to the photograph. ‘Pot, kettle, black.’
