Letters to the Lost (14 page)

‘It’s OK – I got you.’

She felt his hand on the back of her head, very gently pushing it down. Then the ground rushed up towards her, and everything dissolved into darkness.

‘Sugar?’

The woman in the WVS van outside Bush House pressed her lips together as her eyes darted between Stella and the American. It wasn’t difficult to work out what she was thinking, why she thought they were out together so early in the morning. Stella turned away, thrusting her hands deeply into the pockets of her coat and trying to disappear down into the collar. She wasn’t sure what was more embarrassing – being taken for a tart, or almost fainting and throwing up in front of a complete stranger.

‘Two please.’

Stella wanted to say that she didn’t take sugar at all, but the words stuck in her dry throat. The WVS woman gave a snort.

‘You’ll be lucky. It don’t grow on trees over here, you know. Rationing – you might not have heard of it.’

‘Oh, I’ve heard of it, ma’am, but the young lady is feeling unwell. I was hoping you might be kind enough to spare a little extra for her. If it helps, I won’t have any in mine.’

‘Well . . . when you put it like that . . .’ The woman was smirking now, looking up at him from under her lashes as she poured tea into a second cup. ‘I expect she’s tired out. Needs to get her strength back. Spoon’s down there, on the end of that string.’

‘Thanks.’ Stella took the tea from him without meeting his eye and carried it over to the steps. One of the massive fluted columns that supported Bush House’s impressive façade towered above her and she sat down, leaning back against it and taking a tentative sip of steaming tea. It was stewed and made with dried milk, but was so welcome that she didn’t care. The American sat down too, a little distance from her. She appreciated that – the distance. His legs seemed too long to fold up comfortably on the shallow steps so he stretched them out in front of him, and put his camera down between them.

‘Better?’ he said at last, as she drank her tea, cradling the cup with her hands for warmth. She nodded stiffly, grateful for the tea and his kindness but wishing he would go now.

‘Perfectly fine now, thank you. If you need to—’

‘I’m in no hurry. All the guys I came here with are snoring their heads off back at the hotel and hungover to the back teeth.’

His voice was low and husky, and as he spoke he took a packet of Lucky Strikes from the top pocket of his tunic and held it out to her. She shook her head. ‘We’re headed back to base today.’ Lighting his cigarette he looked up at the soaring columns and arched dome above them. ‘Seemed crazy to waste time sleeping when all of this was on the doorstep. I’m with the Air Force, based in East Anglia. You ever been there?’ She shook her head again. ‘Nothing for miles around but tin huts and mud.’ He exhaled a plume of smoke that merged with the steam from his tea. ‘Makes quite a change to see proper buildings, I can tell you.’

She could feel the chill of the marble through her coat, but the tea had warmed her from the inside. He was nothing like the Americans from last night. She risked a look at him.

‘That church wasn’t exactly a proper building.’

‘Ah, but it was once,’ he said softly. ‘St Clement Danes is one of the fifty or so churches built by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London.’

‘Really?’ She hadn’t even known its name.

‘Sure. In its day I guess it would’ve represented the best in modern design. It’s good to know that it’s come back from ruin before. Makes you just about believe that one day it can be rebuilt into something beautiful again.’

They sat in silence for a while as the street in front of them became busier. The dawn’s rosy golden magic was fading fast and the city was putting on its working grey to begin another day. Stella’s cup was empty. At the WVS van another woman had arrived on a bike to take over the shift and was untying the patterned headscarf she’d worn under her hat.

‘Was it one of our guys?’ he said in a low voice. ‘Last night? I don’t want to pry, but if—’

‘I must go.’ Flustered, she put the cup down and made to stand up. In one smooth movement he was on his feet, holding out his hand to help her. She took it, blushing as his fingers closed around hers. He didn’t let go immediately and for a moment they stood, hands clasped, looking at each other. His eyes were the clear blue-green of old glass, tinged darker around the edges.

‘Th-thank you. Really. You’ve been very kind.’

‘You’re welcome. It’s a shame we didn’t find your watch. I’m not quite done with taking pictures so I’ll take another look around now. You could give me your name and address, and if I find it I’ll put it in the post to you.’

‘Oh . . .’ She was caught off-guard, torn. On the one hand, if there was any chance of getting the watch back it would be sensible to take it, but on the other she instinctively resisted the idea of telling this man that she was Mrs Charles Thorne of The Vicarage, Church Road, King’s Oak, though she wasn’t sure whether that was for the right reasons or the wrong ones. ‘Do you have something to write on?’

He pulled the cigarette packet from his pocket again, along with a pencil. Heart thudding she turned away and leaned against the pillar to write, then gave them both back to him. He looked at what she’d written before putting the cigarettes back into his pocket.

‘Nancy. Pretty name. I’m Dan. Daniel Rosinski – 2nd Lieutenant. It’s been nice meeting you.’

She kept her hands in the pockets of her coat and looked past him up the street, in the direction she should be going. ‘Thank you again, Lieutenant.’ She said it in the American way, as he had. ‘For the tea and everything. Best of luck when you get back to duty.’

It sounded brisk and flippant and wrong, and she was suddenly struck by a sense of what he was going back to. While for her the war meant queuing at Fairacre’s, making up Red Cross parcels, waiting for Charles’s letters and putting up with Reverend Stokes, for him it meant – what? Flying into enemy territory? Being shot at? Coping with the knowledge that he might not see another sunrise?

She stood, rooted to the pavement as these thoughts went through her head, wanting to say something but unable to put it into words. He’d already begun to move away, his eyes still fixed to hers.

‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said quietly with a little mock-salute, and then he turned and walked away.

Liverpool Street Station was one of those flamboyantly grand Victorian buildings the British did so well. Its rows of arched windows and delicate filigree ironwork spoke of Victorian self-assurance; a nation that was wealthy and powerful enough to insist that its public buildings combined function with beauty. It was easy to imagine gentlemen in top hats and tailcoats striding along its wide platforms, although today every inch was covered by a flood tide of American khaki.

It seemed like half the USAAF had been given leave and were now pouring back out of London into the flat fenlands, hungover and subdued, aware that they had had their last taste of freedom and hedonism for a long time, perhaps forever. A Red Cross canteen, distributing much-needed coffee and doughnuts, had done such a roaring trade that it had run out of both and was reduced to handing out cups of water and cheerful smiles, which were almost as gratefully received.

Sitting on his kitbag amid the swarm of men Dan Rosinski felt a little lightheaded from lack of sleep but a hell of a lot better than the three other officers from his crew. Louis Johnson, Jimmy Morgan and Sam Adelman were slumped around him in various stages of recovery. The cloud of alcohol fumes hanging over them was enough to fell an elephant.

‘Jeez,’ Morgan moaned, without lifting his head from his hands. ‘This wasn’t supposed to happen. I thought English beer was just about the same as English tea – undrinkable and totally non-alcoholic.’

‘It is,’ Dan remarked, pointing his camera at Morgan, his co-pilot. ‘It was the bottle of whisky that you bought from that guy in Trafalgar Square that did the damage. Tasted like he’d siphoned it out of a fortress’s fuel tank.’

Morgan moaned again. ‘Next time, stop me.’ He looked up with bloodshot eyes. ‘Where did you get to this morning, anyway? Some chick from last night that I don’t remember?’

Dan shook his head and held up the camera. ‘Wanted to get some photographs of the city before I left.’

‘Photographs? What was there to photograph at that time in the morning?’

‘You’d be surprised.’

He thought of the shot he’d taken of the girl in the church, kneeling down in the ruins with her eyes closed. He felt bad for taking it without asking, but the moment, the picture, was too perfect to miss.

‘Hey, look up there boys,’ said Louis Johnson, the crew’s navigator, tilting his head back. ‘Whaddya see?’

A neat bit of cast iron, Dan thought; delicate and decorative, but strong enough to support the whole damn roof. He guessed that wasn’t the answer Johnson was looking for.

‘I dunno. Sun’s too bright, it’s hurting my eyes,’ grumbled Adelman.

‘Exactly. The cloud cover’s lifted. What’s the betting
Ruby Shoes
gets her first run tomorrow?’

A groan went up from the small group. Since they’d arrived in East Anglia thick layers of cloud had hung heavily over the flat landscape, making flying impossible and meaning that after two weeks they hadn’t clocked up a single mission. The waiting around put a strain on everyone, which was why leave passes were being given out like chewing gum. But Johnson was right. It looked like the endless games of poker and soccer were now at an end and their work as a crew was about to begin.

‘I wonder where the other guys are?’ Morgan said, looking around as if he’d had the same thought. On the ground a distinction was made between officers and enlisted men, with separate living quarters at the base and different accommodation arrangements for leave in the city, but in the air they would be a unit, close as brothers.

A distant rumbling roar gathered beneath the canopy of the station and there was a surge towards the tracks as the train swung into view. Dan got to his feet and hefted his kitbag onto his shoulder, then hauled Morgan up and shoved him forwards into the crush. Johnson, who had a pregnant wife back home and had already taken on the role of father figure to the whole crew, dodged to the front and claimed a carriage. Adelman and Morgan sank onto the plush seats, moaning.

It wasn’t long before they were joined by men from another crew, jostling and squeezing into the carriage, hauling their kitbags onto the overhead luggage racks. By the colour of their faces it was clear they too had taken full advantage of the city’s nightlife. The carriage was unheated and it was way too cold to open a window, so by the time the train sighed and slid out of the station the small space was already filled with the smell of stale alcohol, sweat and cheap aftershave.

Dan watched the grimy backs of the city houses slide by, the gaps between them inflicted by the Luftwaffe back in 1940 now overgrown with weeds and wildflowers. By the time the houses had given way to allotments and fields, Morgan’s moans had given way to snores and Adelman’s head had come to rest on Dan’s shoulder. Awkwardly he took the cigarettes from his pocket and lit one, more to burn away the stink of second-hand beer than because he wanted to smoke. Then he turned the pack over.

Nancy
. He said the name silently to himself, watching the faint movement of his lips reflected in the glass of the window. It didn’t really suit her. Sure, it was pretty, but too brash somehow. Too pert for the bruised, ethereal girl who had knelt in the ruins of Wren’s church wearing her unhappiness like a cloak. He’d gone back to the church afterwards to look for the lost watch and, searching amongst the dirt and rubble he’d decided that if he found it, it was a sign that he was meant to see her again.

He hadn’t. There were four cigarettes left in the pack, and the rate this train was moving he’d smoke them all before they reached Cambridge. Then he would throw the carton away.

Adelman shifted position on Dan’s shoulder, his mouth wide open, emitting guttural snores and the breath of Frankenstein. Clamping his cigarette into the corner of his mouth Dan nudged him over so that his head lolled onto Johnson on his other side, and got to his feet.

‘Fresh air,’ he muttered to Johnson with a grimace, climbing over legs and kitbags to get to the door.

It was even colder out in the corridor, but at least the air was clean. The train was so crowded that there were guys crouched by the doors, so he walked along the passageway a little and stopped beside an open window, watching the smoke from his cigarette get sucked out into the chilly afternoon. The wintry sun was small and mean and couldn’t warm the endless miles of flat grey earth that unfolded on both sides of the train. At intervals the grey was broken up by a field of scrubby green – cabbages perhaps, or maybe the Brussels sprouts that kept appearing on their plates in the mess hall, much to everyone’s disgust – and every now and then a great whooping and cheering went up from further down the train as they passed a field with land girls working in it. Dan finished his cigarette and flicked the roach out of the window, then turned away from the uninspiring view.

Behind the glass partition of the compartment opposite more airmen were playing poker. They’d piled their kitbags in the space between the seats to make a flat surface on which to deal and were crouched over it, slapping cards down, jaws working furiously on gum. As he watched one of the men threw his hand down and fell back against the seat, leaving only two of them in. Dan was about to move away, back to his own carriage, when something caught his eye.

The stakes they were playing for had been placed at the end of their makeshift table nearest the glass: a pile of English coins nestling dully in a fold in the canvas, and on top of them something shinier. Something silver.

He backtracked, looked again, but he hadn’t imagined it. A delicate ladies’ watch lay on top of the coins. Without thinking he slid back the door of the carriage and leaned in. Everyone looked up, except the two poker players who remained intent on their game.

‘Excuse me, gentlemen.’