Letters to the Lost (33 page)

‘Dan, look!’

Tucked inside the teapot in their own little nest of straw were two speckled brown eggs.

‘Well I’ll be . . . If she didn’t think I was already married I’d be heading down to Dorset to tell Mrs Violet Nichols that I love her.’

Stella settled herself back on her bed of straw and laughed delightedly.

‘Instead you can head downstairs to make me breakfast.’

In the early afternoon she took the bus back to King’s Oak. Praying not to bump into anyone she knew she hurried along the street from the bus stop and let herself into the Vicarage. The boiled vegetable smell enveloped her as soon as she closed the door.

In the kitchen she collected her ration book from the drawer and went outside to grub up a few potatoes and a lettuce for dinner, then picked some raspberries. They were almost too ripe, and oozed dark crimson juice into the bowl, which helped to assuage the nagging guilt she felt about taking them. Although she’d be coming back tomorrow and staying until everything was resolved, it felt like in some fundamental way the Vicarage had already ceased to be her home.

Perhaps it never was, she thought, leaving the kitchen and going back along the silent passageway to the hall. I’ve only ever been the housekeeper. She stood for a moment looking around as the Virgin Mary gazed at her with hooded, blaming eyes from the wall. What had Violet Nichols said to Dan?
A house filled with love
. The Vicarage had never been that, no matter how much she’d tried.

The air was warmer outside. She walked the familiar route to the row of shops on Oak Street with a new vitality in her step. In the butcher’s shop Mr Fairacre commented that she was looking very chipper.
Oh dear
, Stella thought,
Charles has just left and I’m supposed to be miserable
. She tried to look appropriately grave as she asked for two lamb chops.

Mr Fairacre gave a low whistle as he weighed them out. ‘Special dinner, is it?’

Nosy old bugger. She wished she could use her coupons somewhere else. ‘Just Nancy coming over to keep me company. The house seems very empty on my own.’

As she left the shop she bit the corners of her mouth to stop herself from smiling. How easy it had become to lie.

In her absence Dan had knocked on the door of the next house but one and introduced himself to the neighbour – an elderly man called Mr Chapman with a bristling white moustache and a pronounced limp ‘from fighting the Boers’ – in the hope of borrowing something to cut the lawn. In the end, seeing the unkempt state of his lawn too, Dan had offered to cut that one as well, in repayment for the loan of the mower.

It was a tiny push-along thing, like a tin toy, and essentially unequal to the lush meadow of a lawn. When Stella got home he was still battling with it. Stripped to the waist, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip, his golden skin glistened and his damp hair was untidy where he’d pushed it back from his forehead. When she kissed him he smelt of fresh sweat and fresh grass.

While he returned the lawnmower she ran him a bath and he lay in it with the door open, talking to her as she moved about the kitchen, assembling their supper. The simple domesticity of it gave her a sense of profound, serene joy.

There was no towel. He came into the kitchen wearing only his shorts, with droplets of water beading his chest and back. In his hands he carried, miraculously, two bottles of beer.

Stella’s jaw dropped. ‘Where did you get those?’

He looked very pleased with himself. ‘I was passing the pub this afternoon. I left them in water in the sink, so they should be good and cold. I never can get used to the way you drink it warm over here.’

He had an alchemist’s gift for conjuring up treats from thin air, making magic from the mundane. They took them outside and sat on the damp, freshly cut grass in the evening sunlight while the swallows performed their aerial acrobatics in the warm blue air above. Then, while Stella cooked the lamb chops Dan carried the gateleg table out into the centre of the lawn and laid it with the plates and cutlery Violet Nichols had sent.

‘All that’s missing is a silver candelabra,’ he said when they’d finished eating and the sky had turned to deep blue velvet above them.

Stella tipped her head back and looked up into the indigo infinity. ‘ We couldn’t risk it. Apparently the Luftwaffe can see you strike a match on the ground.’

‘Load of baloney.’

‘Is it? I often wondered. It seemed unlikely somehow. What can you see?’

His sigh melted into the soft evening. ‘I don’t know much about night missions, but I guess they’re kinda the same as daytime ones, which means you can see pretty much nothing at all. Cloud. Smoke. Flak. Tracer fire. No one’s going to notice some guy standing on a street corner lighting a cigarette with all that going on. The night flyers get to see the pretty lights when the bombs hit, but I don’t suppose they have any more idea than we do whether it’s the target that’s on fire or a bunch of houses.’

He turned away, but even in the dissolving light Stella could see the set of his jaw and the muscle flickering above it. A little silence fell, but it was tainted with the bitterness of his words, which lingered between them. Leaning across the table she took his hand.

‘Dan, I’m sorry.’

‘Me too.’ His voice cracked, letting the despair seep out. ‘Me too.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘About what?’

‘About whatever happened that made them send you to that place. The flak farm.’

For a moment she thought he was going to brush her off. He sighed again, a sigh of bone-weary resignation and hopelessness, but then he began to speak. ‘They send most of us there at some point – or those of us that live long enough to need it. We had a run of bad missions, long range into Germany. Those are the most dangerous ones; all those miles on our own over enemy territory once the fighter escorts have waved goodbye and turned back for home. They’re the most tiring too. I love our fort, but she’s heavy to hold for eight, nine hours at a time. There were big losses; forts falling from the sky with whole crews gone. We . . . we lost one of our men. Just one, which is probably pretty damn lucky.’

‘Who was it?’

‘Our navigator. Johnson.’

Instantly, automatically, she felt her eyes fill with tears. ‘Oh Dan, I’m so sorry . . . His wife had just had a little boy. He was your friend.’

‘Yeah. He was a good guy. Good navigator, good friend, and he would have been a damn good father too, if he’d had the chance.’ He closed his eyes and his face, veiled in twilight, wore an expression of profound pain. ‘The thing is,’ he said softly, ‘I can’t imagine going up there without him.’

Stella’s fingers tightened around his. ‘How many more?’

‘Six.’

‘You’re nearly there.’ She said it almost pleadingly. ‘Nearly through.’

‘Maybe. It doesn’t feel like that. I’ve been lucky so far – Christ knows why – but luck changes in an instant. Think about it. Six missions; that’s maybe thirty-six hours in a rattling tin can loaded with enough fuel and ammunition to go up like a firework on the fourth of July, and the Luftwaffe’s finest spraying you with incendiary fire, and all it takes is a second – one second – to end it all.’

He pulled his fingers from between hers and dropped his head into his hands.

‘I’m sorry. At the base I never think about this stuff. Nobody does. It’s kind of easier to accept it there, somehow – I guess because it’s so normal. It’s only when you get away that you realize what a screwed-up world we live in. But you don’t need to know all of that stuff. I shouldn’t be saying—’

‘You
should
.’ Her voice was low, certain. ‘I’m not a soldier and I’m not fighting in this bloody awful war, but I’m not a child either. I don’t want to be protected, Dan. I want to know what you have to go through, and if there was anything –
anything
– I could do or give up or suffer to make it even the tiniest bit more bearable I’d do it in a heartbeat. But there’s nothing I can do, except listen. And love you. And tell you that it’s all right to be scared and it’s good to talk about it.’

His shoulders heaved, and he looked at her with eyes that were wide and darker than the evening sky. ‘I am scared, Stella. Scared of dying. Scared of leaving you. Scared . . .
so
scared that this is all we’re ever going to have. And I want more.
Years
more with you . . .’

She got up and went to him, cradling his head against her as she soothed. ‘Shhh . . . we’ll have that, we have to believe it. What we have is too big to be destroyed in a second. Whatever happens, this is it – for life. Every day, every hour, I’ll go on loving you whether you’re with me or not.’

‘No.’ He shook his head, detaching himself so he could look at her. ‘I wouldn’t want that. If I don’t come through it I’d want you to move on. Not with Charles, but with someone else. Someone who’ll take care of you and love you like you deserve to be loved. Promise me?’

She didn’t want to argue, so she tilted his chin upwards and bent to kiss him, deeply and with infinite, aching tenderness. The future lay beyond the inky garden, unformed and impossible to know. The only certainty was now, and this precious, magical summer’s night. The warmth of his mouth against hers.

‘I don’t want to think about it,’ she said quietly. ‘And I don’t want anyone but you – not now, not
ever
.’

He got slowly to his feet, and she felt his hands circle her waist; his long, strong fingers spanning across her back as he pulled her against him.

‘I love you. Jeez, Stella –
I love you
.’

The jagged edge of panic was still there in his voice, and so she captured his mouth again and kissed him, on and on, stroking her fingers through his hair, massaging the rigid, corded muscles of his neck and shoulders until she felt it warm into urgency of a different kind. His breath was uneven as he pulled away and rested his forehead against hers, drawing her into the moonlit pool of his gaze. The moment of crisis had passed and she had pulled him back from the edge of the abyss.

‘Dan . . .’ It was a sigh. A surrender.

‘You ever made love outside?’ he murmured.

Her lips blossomed into a smile. ‘You know I haven’t.’

‘Want to try it?’

‘ We can’t! The neighbours . . .’

‘The blackout. The whole city has closed its eyes. Nobody’s watching.’

It was true. All around the houses were dark and shuttered, their occupants oblivious inside. They could do anything. Standing in the middle of the lawn he unbuttoned her dress and slipped it off her shoulders.

25

2011

Of course, he was late.

By the time Will had gone home, ransacked his wardrobe for a decent, ironed shirt and tried to tame his hair it was quarter to three. It took him another ten minutes to choose something to take for her in the mini-supermarket at the end of the road, and he had just got into the car and driven to the end of the street when he remembered what a nightmare it was to find a parking space. He reversed all the way back to his house (the Spitfire’s engine screeching in protest) and abandoned the car, then sprinted to the bus stop and had to wait fifteen minutes for a bus.

It was almost half past three when he walked up the corridor to the ward, carrying the shoebox of letters and a giant bar of chocolate. He was already regretting his choice of gift. In the shop he had picked up boxes of chocolates, but put them back again on the grounds that they were too clichéd, too hopefully romantic. He’d briefly considered more flowers, but what use were they, really? Remembering her pale, pinched face he’d settled on chocolate in bulk, but now it seemed ridiculously cheap and crass. He dropped it onto an empty trolley as he passed, and hurried on. After the cold outside it felt blastingly hot in the hospital, and his shirt was sticking to his back by the time the nurse at the desk directed him to Jess’s bed. He almost turned round and went home.

But then he saw her. She was in the bed at the end, sitting back against the bank of pillows with her knees tucked up and her arms wrapped around them, and was easy to spot because she was the only patient not surrounded by chattering visitors. There was a drip stand beside her, to which she was tethered by a plastic tube taped to the back of her hand. Her head was turned to look out of the window, but as Will approached she looked round. When she saw him, a faint tint of pink washed her pale cheeks.

‘Hi . . . Jess? I hope you don’t mind me barging in on you like this. I’m Will. We’ve met before but you probably don’t remember.’

‘Oh . . . Yeah. Yeah, I do.’ She was blushing properly now, her eyes downcast as she made nervous pleats in the hospital sheet. Her voice was hoarse and a little raspy, as if it hurt to talk. ‘Sorry about being in the house. I know it was out of order but it was just until I sorted something else out, and I really tried not to do any harm or touch anything that wasn’t mine.’

‘Oh God – I’m not here about that! Honestly, it couldn’t matter less to me – except, of course, that you’re OK.’ Since she obviously almost wasn’t, he rushed on. ‘I’ve been back to the house. I’m trying to sort it out for her neighbour, and hopefully find out if Nancy Price has any living relatives who’d be heirs to her estate. While I was looking for information I came across these.’

He put the shoebox on the bed. She stared at it, and a fresh wave of pink infused her cheeks. When she looked up at him her eyes were troubled.

‘They were hidden at the back of a drawer. I found them by accident. I shouldn’t have been looking, but I—’

‘Thank goodness you did. You saved me a whole lot of time and bother.’ Her eyes were grey, he noticed. They reflected her mood like the weather. ‘Somewhere in all this lot might be exactly the information I need. I don’t suppose you’ve read them by any chance?’

It was like approaching a nervous horse. One wrong move and he sensed he wouldn’t see her for dust. Not that she could actually go anywhere this time, but even so. He wanted to win her trust.

‘Some,’ she said cautiously. ‘I know I shouldn’t have, but . . .’ Nervously she moistened her lips and rubbed at the cannula in the back of her hand. ‘But they’re not really Nancy’s letters. After the first one, they’re addressed to someone called Stella Thorne, see?’