Letters to the Lost (15 page)

Reaching over, Dan scooped up the watch. One of the players – the stocky one – gave a yell of indignation and threw down his cards as he leapt to his feet. ‘What the hell? Who the fuck do you think you are—?’

Beside him his friend tried to pull him down onto the seat again, muttering, ‘An officer, dumbass.’

A tense silence fell while Dan studied the watch and the men in the carriage studied him. Her voice came back to him with its note of misery.
Small, silver. Studded with marcasites.
He turned it over. Something was engraved on the back and he tilted it so that the letters caught the light.

S.T. 1942

Frowning he turned to the guy who’d challenged him.

‘Where’d you get this, buddy?’

‘Well sir, I think you could call it a souvenir from London.’

‘I said, where did you get it?’ Dan repeated, his voice soft but insistent.

The airman’s eyes slid away from his, looking for escape. Aggressively working his gum, he shrugged. ‘Some girl.’ He squared his shoulders and looked Dan challengingly in the eye. ‘Yeah, this girl I met. She was real nice. It was a gift – to remember her by.’

Dan nodded slowly, one arm braced against the doorway of the swaying train, looking down at the watch in his hand. ‘It’s a nice gift. Valuable. She must have liked you a helluva lot to give it to you.’

‘Well, naturally.’ There was a smirk in his tone. ‘I gave her a good time.’

‘Yeah? You take her to a hotel or something?’

‘No sir, nothing like that.’ He glanced around at the others, who were all sniggering in collective amusement at some private joke. ‘Why pay for a room when the city’s full of bombed-out buildings? There was this old church, right there on the main street . . . real quiet, real romantic.’

‘A church . . .’ His hand tightened around the watch. He had two alternatives – to give in to the urge to punch him and take the watch, or to pay him for it and leave without a fuss. The first was more appealing, but the second was more sensible. With the other one he let go of the doorframe and reached into the inside pocket of his tunic.

‘Here.’ He tossed a pound note down onto the fan of cards on the kitbag. ‘Next time take her to a hotel.’

He didn’t give him a chance to respond. Dropping the watch into his pocket he turned to leave the carriage. As he turned to slide the door shut behind him he saw that the slimy bastard had already grabbed the money and was stuffing it into his pocket. Aware of Dan’s eyes on him he looked up, bristling defensively.

‘What was her name?’ Dan asked abruptly.

‘Excuse me?’

Both his temper and his patience were hanging by a thread. He cleared his throat and steadied himself before repeating the question. ‘The young lady. Her name?’

‘Jeez, I—’ The airman laughed nervously and hitched up his belt, transferring his gum to the other cheek. ‘Renee?’

The Italian-looking guy in the corner of the carriage rolled his eyes. ‘Come on, Greenbaum, that was the other ones. Yours was Stella. Nice girl; classy. That was why she blew you out.’

The stocky airman turned on him in a rage. ‘Go fuck yourself, Franklin, she was frigid. I swear there was actual ice in—’

He didn’t finish the sentence. Dan’s fist connected with his jaw knocking him backwards, straight into the lap of his crewman who’d been keeping his head down, shuffling another deck of cards. They flew in all directions, like a scene from
Alice in Wonderland
.

Dan shut the door on the chaos and went back to his carriage feeling a whole lot happier.

11

2011

It had to be said, the All Saints Senior Citizens’ Lunch Club was probably not the most glamorous event Jess had ever been invited to. Even so, the prospect of turning up with grey reptilian skin, eyebrows as unkempt as the overgrown garden and no make-up was daunting enough to make her seriously consider giving it a miss.

But it was a lifeline that had been thrown to her from the outside world. If she ignored it, let it drift away from her, how would she ever get back? And there would be a free lunch. Hot food and plenty of it, that’s what the vicar in the horrible jumper had said. Her mouth filled with saliva at the thought. Her supplies of cereal, bread and cheese had not yet run out but they were getting pretty monotonous.

And bread and cheese wasn’t the only thing she was bored of. She was bored of washing in cold water and creeping around in the dark. She was fed up of silence, of not speaking to another living soul for days at a time, of feeling like a criminal and living like a fugitive because she could see no way out. She was tired of being alone with her problems. It had been a week now since she’d run away from Dodge. At first the house had been a sanctuary, but if she didn’t get herself together and move on soon it would become a prison. A tomb, even. Make-up or no make-up, she needed to get out.

Upstairs in the front bedroom she sat on the little stool in front of the dressing table and, taking a deep breath, opened the top drawer. She had avoided doing this, not only from an instinctive sense that it wasn’t right to go through someone else’s personal things, but also because there was something creepy about it. But she couldn’t afford to be squeamish or superstitious any more. Not with eyebrows like hers.

As she’d suspected, the drawer was a museum of ancient cosmetics: a bottle of perfume called ‘Flamenco’ which had aged to a deep, rancid brown colour, a can of hairspray, a pot of cold cream. (She unscrewed the lid of this and sniffed it, wondering if it would be any good for her red scaly patches.) There was a gross hairpiece, yellowed and matted, like road-kill. Shuddering she moved it aside with a comb, in whose teeth several silvery blonde hairs still clung. The bottom of the drawer was littered with hairpins, but there was no sign of any tweezers.

She shut it and opened the next one down. Dozens of pairs of tights lay coiled like shed snakeskins beside neat piles of gloves, the fingers of the leather ones still slightly curled up, giving them the ghoulish appearance of dead hands. She shut the drawer quickly and pulled open the last one, steeling herself against what she might find.

Nighties. Old-fashioned ones; slithery nylon confections in pastel colours, edged with yellowing lace, a blue quilted bed jacket with fraying pink ribbons at the collar. She went to shut the drawer but was too hasty. It snagged and jammed. Neck prickling with distaste she went to flatten down the bed jacket and felt something hard beneath it. Pushing the garments aside revealed a shoebox, the lid of which had been dislodged and was the cause of the jam.

As she set it straight again she noticed that the box contained not shoes, but papers. Stacked upright, neatly in a row, like in a filing cabinet.

‘Blimey,’ she said out loud into the mildewed silence. ‘Letters.’

6 March ’43

Dear Nancy

I hope that you’ve got as far as opening this letter, and have not just thrown it away when you worked out that it didn’t contain your watch. I think I found it, but I didn’t want to post it in case it got broken or removed by the censors or something. It’s just like you described and has the initials S.T. and a date on the back. If this sounds familiar let me know and we can work out how I can return it to you. I’m hoping to get another couple days’ leave next month. Maybe if the post isn’t such a good idea I could meet you someplace in London and give it back to you in person.

Since I saw you I’ve flown my first two missions, which is kind of a relief after all the waiting around for the weather to clear when we first arrived here. It feels like a long road to the twenty-five we have to complete before we’re done, but it’s a start.

Anyhow, I just wanted to let you know about the watch. I hope it’s the one you’re looking for, and that you’ll be happy to know it’s safe. Let me know what you’d like me to do with it.

Take care of yourself

Dan Rosinski.

*

‘Well, you’re a dark horse.’

Sitting at the table in the Vicarage kitchen Nancy folded her arms and drew her lips tightly together, looking up at Stella with eyes that positively sparked with expectation. Stella turned away from the stove where she’d just set the kettle on the gas and looked back blankly, trying for the life of her to think what she might be talking about. For some reason Alf Broughton’s pig club popped into her mind – because she’d been about to take a pail of scraps round to Ada when Nancy had arrived, she supposed – and she wondered if Nancy had found out and was cross that Stella hadn’t told her about it. She opened her mouth to make some apology but shut it again as Nancy placed an envelope on the table.

‘I think that now would be a very good time to tell me who the blinking heck Lieutenant Dan Rosinski is, and how you come to give him my name and address.’

‘Oh.’

Hearing his name caught her off-guard and she pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. She’d tried to put him – all Americans, in fact – out of her mind, and had almost succeeded, so sure was she that there was no chance he’d find the watch. The envelope lay in the middle of the table, directly in the pool of light cast by the bulb overhead, like a piece of incriminating evidence in a police interview room. It was totally flat and obviously contained nothing but paper. Had he written in spite of having found nothing? She was torn between irritation and excitement.

‘Go on then – don’t you want to know what it says?’

The sounds of the wireless drifted down the passageway from the sitting room, where Reverend Stokes was listening to Tommy Handley, loud enough to fill the Albert Hall. Across the table Nancy was practically self-combusting with curiosity. She had called on her way home from the salon and the sulphurous smell of perming solution infused the kitchen. Maybe the idea of self-combustion wasn’t actually so far-fetched. Dumbly Stella picked up the envelope and turned it over. Nancy must have opened it in a hurry and the back was jaggedly torn, revealing a glimpse of the writing on the page underneath. It was nice writing, the same as on the front, sloping and slightly spiky and in black ink. Without warning she remembered his blue, blue eyes, and felt a jolt inside her, like she sometimes got from the lamp in the sitting room.

She didn’t want to read the letter there, in front of Nancy, but there was no choice. Her face tingled with the effort of keeping it expressionless, but she was aware of the colour mounting in her cheeks and was powerless to stop it. It was a short note, just a few lines, but reading it made her blood sing.

‘Well?’

Nancy, impatient with waiting, prodded her for a response. Very carefully Stella folded the letter again and tucked it back into its shredded envelope.

‘Well what? You know what it says. You’ve read it.’

‘Stella! If you don’t stop being so bloody mysterious I’m going to come round there and shake you till the truth falls out! I might have read it but that don’t mean I’ve got the foggiest idea what it’s all about.’

‘My watch. I lost it, when we were in that church – St Clements.’

‘You never said.’

‘I meant to – it slipped my mind, that’s all.’ Beneath the table Stella crossed her fingers against the lie. The reason she hadn’t mentioned the lost watch was because that would have meant talking about that night, and she’d been afraid that if they did she might not be able to hide her hurt that Nancy hadn’t come after her. It was unreasonable, she knew, but she couldn’t quite shake off the childish feeling that Nancy had let her down, and a small but significant crack had appeared in the fortress of their friendship. ‘I went back the next morning, as soon as I realized, but I couldn’t find it. There was this man there – an American, taking pictures with a fancy camera – and he said he’d have a proper look. I had to get back, see? To get Reverend Stokes’s breakfast before church. He said if I gave him my address he could let me know if he found it but . . . I don’t know, it didn’t seem right somehow, with Charles being away.’

Nancy’s carefully plucked eyebrows shot up and she laughed. ‘So you gave him mine? Thanks very much! He could have turned out to be a right nutter!’

Stella shook her head, her shoulders hunched. ‘He wasn’t.’ She smiled faintly. ‘But I didn’t think for a second that he’d find the watch.’

‘But he has, and now he wants to give it back.’ Nancy sat back and narrowed her eyes. ‘So, what’s he like then, this American?’

‘What do you mean?’

She shrugged. ‘Short or tall? Blond or dark? Nice or a bit creepy?’

On the stove the kettle had begun a muted, sibilant hiss. Stella got up and turned off the gas. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Well, since it’s me he’s written to, I reckon it’s me who’ll be replying,’ Nancy said archly. ‘And it’s me who’ll be meeting him to get your precious watch back, won’t it? So, what’s he like? Worth using good lipstick for?’

‘No.’ The word came out sounding sharper than she’d intended and it bounced off the green gloss-painted walls. Stella felt the heat seep back into her cheeks. ‘I mean, it’s fine – that won’t be necessary. I’ll write back myself. And I’ll meet him to get it back. It’s only fair.’

There was a burst of uproarious studio laughter from the sitting room. Nancy tapped her fingertips on the table. ‘What about Charles?’

‘Charles isn’t here. I’m not doing anything wrong, and it’s only polite to go myself when he’s gone to all the trouble of looking for it and getting in touch.’

‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’

Nancy was now wearing her long-suffering expression. It was the one she always used when Stella expressed an opinion that didn’t quite fit with hers, and it usually made Stella doubt herself enough to reconsider whatever it was they had disagreed on. But as she set the teapot on the table she found that she was able to meet Nancy’s eye and say quite calmly, ‘I am. I’ll write to him tomorrow.’

Spring had arrived, but it was a cheap and shabby version of previous years, as if daffodils and blossom and bright yellow sunshine were on ration along with everything else. Stella gazed out of the dining-room window at the rows of ragged kale and onion leaves, and Reverend Stokes’s surplice flapping on the washing line like some ungainly bird. In front of her on the table lay the pad of writing paper that she usually used for her letters to Charles, and her second attempt at a letter to Dan Rosinski.