The Postcard (29 page)

He didn’t understand how it felt to be grounded, unable to converse and walk in a straight line. She’d hardly had a day’s illness in her life. The worst bit was it seemed hard
to concentrate on much except wireless programmes, but then she found herself falling asleep at odd times and missing the gist of the discussion or the play.

Thank goodness for Mima and Jessie holding the fort at Dalradnor, but for how much longer? What on earth was she going to do with Desmond? And still there was no news of Caroline.
Oh,
Caroline, where are you? Are you still alive?
She must be dead and they were delaying telling her until she was strong enough to bear bad news. There was no other explanation for her
disappearance.

It looked as if her grandson was her sole responsibility. How could she cope now with a lively six-year-old boy? He needed someone younger in his life, like Jessie, but she was planning her exit
as soon as her permits came through with her ticket to sail. There was nothing for it: he’d have to go to a good boarding school, but closer to home than she’d been planning, but what
to do with him in the long holidays . . .?

She lay trying to sort out his future. It gave her something to think about other than her own aches and pains. Perhaps it was time to find his father and make him take on his paternal duties,
or at least find his family in Wales. They might take Desmond off her hands while she convalesced. But Caroline had never had anything to do with them, and with his father’s criminal history
it was probably better not stir up that hornets’ nest.

Worrying about all of this was not helping her get back on her feet. If she could just find Desmond a placement for a few months – a year at most, she reckoned – it might give her a
chance to recover enough to pick up her career. This stroke had ruined all her plans for the future. Nothing had gone smoothly in her life, so why be surprised at another knock-back? What must be
borne must be borne. There must be a way forward, Phoebe knew, but at this very moment whatever might lie ahead was covered by mist and darkness.

As she grew in strength, Callie found peace and comfort in the convent routine, a quiet refuge for her confused thoughts. The chapel was a sanctuary where she could smell the
incense soothing her troubled mind, take time to listen to the music and voices and calm her fevered brain. It was here she had that first glimmer of recollection, seeing the decorated ceiling and
the angels looking down on her, recalling crawling up those tortuous steps to the belfry like an act of penance.

When the old priest, the one they called Father Bernhardt, came to check on her progress, he told her everything he knew about the two girls who had saved her life.

‘You are a Belgian prisoner from the camps. May God in His mercy forgive all those who perpetrated such inhumanity on helpless women and children. At least they made the villagers walk
through the camp to see the horrors that now the world knows we are capable of when a mad man . . .’ He broke off to wipe the tears from his eyes. ‘But that is our shame, not yours.
They called you Lotte and said you were arrested in Brussels.’

‘Thank you for saving us. My friends — are they still here?’ Callie asked, beginning to picture them in her mind. Madeleine and Marie — their names suddenly popped into
her head and she smiled.

Father Bernhardt shook his head. ‘When the American troops took over the city, they were shipped back with many other prisoners and labourers. It was those girls who saved you, and someone
they called Celine.’

Celine — the name pierced her like sunlight burning through mist and suddenly she saw that poor woman in that last dance of death before the guards. She saw the dogs and heard them snarl,
she smelled the fear and shame as it all came flooding back, and she shielded her eyes to block out the images. ‘Celine, we couldn’t save,’ Callie whispered. She told him
everything she could recall and he wept with her in silence.

‘You are remembering now.’

‘Yes, I remember, but I wish I didn’t. How do I live with such horror in my heart?’ she cried.

‘God will give you the strength to find your way back into the past. It looks like the journey is beginning now you are stronger. He makes the back for the burden, they say, but where was
He in those terrible places?’ The old man rose from his chair with a heavy sigh. ‘We will have to live with our shameful part for the rest of history, I fear. I wish you well, pilgrim,
Lotte, whoever you are . . . May God be with you, child.’

In the weeks that followed, she recalled more and more of the pain, but when she tried to recall just why she was in the camp, it was as if a great iron door shut in her face. It loomed and
towered over her like a giant’s face, padlocked, with no key. She kept searching for the key but there was nothing. In her dreams came strange pictures she couldn’t quite reach: a house
with a pitched roof, water shimmering on a lake, an old horse in a field. There were faces darting into her sight and disappearing before she could recognize them. She woke trying to clasp onto the
fading dreams, chasing those fleeting images that were calling out to her until they made her head ache with longing.

At least she could now make herself useful, helping other patients, fetching and carrying, saving the legs of the older nuns. She liked mending anything in the linen baskets, hems and sheets,
learning the intricate embroidery stitches the sisters did so well. She sat with the lace makers, fascinated as they twisted their bobbins, making little items to sell. Soon she sensed her time
with the nuns was coming to an end. They couldn’t support her for ever. She was not a Roman Catholic, she had no instinct for their worship, no knowledge of their rituals or of the Mass,
although she found solace sitting at the back, letting the sounds of the services soothe her wounded spirit.

Her dreams grew more persistent, more vivid, and that prison door barrier began to shrink into a wooden gate and then a stone wall with a stile so she could climb over into a landscape full of
hills and lakes. One dawn, late in November, somewhere between waking and sleeping, she saw a child running towards her, racing a brown dog over green grass, a boy with a mop of dark curls.
‘Sing it again, Mummy,’ he called out to her, and Callie sat bolt upright. ‘Desmond? Is that you?’ She was calling out in English. ‘Desmond, come back, Desmond,’
she screamed, bringing a nun running to see what the noise was.

‘Lotte, what is it? Another bad dream?’

‘Look!’ Callie pointed to the bare wall. ‘I have a son . . . see. Desmond. He was here just now. I have to go home to him.’ She reached out to hold him but he had
vanished. ‘Desmond!’ she kept calling. ‘Wait for me.’

A nun brought camomile tea to calm her anxiety as the sisters gathered round, hearing her speak her native tongue for the first time. She lay back exhausted but smiling with relief. The locked
door had opened, the gate was ajar and she was free to follow the path home. ‘I must write a letter. I need a postcard and a stamp. I have to tell them I am coming home, please,’ she
begged as she smiled. ‘Please help me find my way back to England.’

Sister Berenice was too astonished not to comply. ‘This is a miracle,’ she whispered to the other nuns.

‘Not a miracle, Sister,’another nurse replied, smiling down at Callie. ‘Just a mother’s instinct. She must find her son.’

They found an old postcard of the city, one of the cathedral, and she scribbled down a note in shaky handwriting: ‘Darling boy, Mummy is safe and coming home to you soon.’. She
addressed it in full to Dalradnor Lodge in Scotland. One of the novices took it to the post office.

In that strange post-war winter of 1945, when Europe was still in turmoil with opposing forces fighting for the control of the country, armed disaffected ex-soldiers and refugees roamed through
the country, searching out cash and valuables, bonds, anything to steal and pawn for food and weapons. In one of these desperate robberies and raids, the Leipzig mail sacks were ransacked and
letters were scattered to the four winds. Callie’s postcard lay rotting along the trackside, sodden and unread.

‘Now this is to be our wee secret, Desmond.’ Jessie pressed her finger to her lips as she sat him on her knee. ‘You have to promise not to tell a soul what
we’re doing. Do you understand me, hen?’

‘Can I come with you then?’ Desmond curled into her body.

‘Yes, I know you want to, but I’m not sure if your granny wants you to go so far away. It’s a very long way and we’ll never get back again. I won’t be able to buy
more tickets.’

Desmond nodded. Jessie had her serious face on and he was listening very hard. If he was a good boy and didn’t get into trouble at school, she would take him to see Uncle Bob in Australia
for a holiday on a big ship far away. He would live with them and be their little boy and he wouldn’t see Granny Phee any more. It was a very big secret. Poor Granny hobbled with a stick and
her left arm didn’t work, and he sometimes couldn’t understand what she said to him. She didn’t like noise in the house and had to sleep a lot. She would be pleased to be quiet
when they were gone.

Jessie was busy packing her clothes and wedding presents: the china tea set with roses all over it, a silver candlestick and leather photo albums of the farm and all her sisters, along with her
wedding portrait in a frame. All this stuff was going in the big trunk for the journey and she had a new suitcase for the rest of their clothes. She kept slipping in his shirts and trousers,
pyjamas and socks. ‘It’ll be summer when we get there and it gets very hot.’

She had a book she kept reading to him,
The English Brides’ Guide to Australia.
It told her what to expect and how to get used to the climate, what insects to look out for. Uncle
Bob was no longer in uniform , not since he fell off his motor bike and injured himself. He had been in hospital and his mother wrote saying Jessie must come and help him get back to normal again.
She had got permission to be on one of the first ships making the crossing.

Granny Phee was not happy about her leaving so soon before Christmas and suggested Desmond would have to go to Grove Park Preparatory School after the holidays. They’d had a row about
that. ‘You can’t put a wee boy in a place like that,’ Jessie argued, while he sat listening at the top of the stairs.

‘What else can I do?’

‘Let me take him with me,’ Jessie said. ‘He’ll love the outdoor life and all that sunshine. They have oranges there all year round. It’s a new country for young
people.’

‘That wouldn’t be suitable, not with his mother . . . until there’s word . . .’ Granny always stopped when her name was mentioned.

‘Miss Faye, we both know she’s never coming back now. Better to face facts and make plans.’ Desmond had never heard Jessie talk back to his granny before.

‘We can’t be certain. If I was sure, it might be a different matter. You can’t just take a boy to the other side of the world. He is my grandson. He has a father
somewhere.’

‘And a fat lot of good that’s done him. I look on him as my own. I know he wants to come with me. It’s worth consideration.’

Desmond slid down the steps one by one to hear what Granny said next. ‘I want to go with Jessie,’ he yelled, just so she knew what he thought.

‘Don’t be silly, young man. She’s only your nursemaid, not your mother. I won’t have it. You must stay with your own kind,’ she shouted back in an angry voice.

He hated school. He hated Dalradnor since Granny Phee came back from hospital. It smelled of bedpans and school dinners, not like it used to do. He didn’t want to live with an old lady any
more.

As the time grew closer for Jessie to leave for Southampton, no one was speaking, and it was then that Jessie told him their big secret. ‘You will have to be my nephew. We’ll not use
your first name on your papers but your second name, Louis, and I will call you Lou. You have to remember this when the gentlemen ask why you are travelling with me. I’m your aunt Jessie and
you must never tell anyone anything else or they’ll send you back and I’ll be in trouble.’

Desmond nodded and hugged all this to himself. If only the rough boys who plagued him in the playground realized just what a wonderful time he was going to have on a real warship called HMS
Stirling Castle,
but no one must ever know.

There was a farewell supper for Jessie. Mima made steak pie and tatties with a special trifle to follow, and ice cream. All Jessie’s friends came to wish her well and give her presents.
Granny gave her precious clothing coupons to buy something pretty for her to meet Uncle Bob. Mima and Mr Burrell gave her an album of postcards of the district. Desmond made a card and wrote
‘Bon Voyage’,
which Granny made him spell out on the back. It meant ‘safe journey’, she told him. For one second he felt sad never to see her again, but he knew she
was tired of having him around all the time.

The next day Jessie woke him at dawn. It was pitch-black and she helped him dress quietly, slipping down the stairs with her suitcase out through the back door. They walked to the station to
catch the milk train into Glasgow Central and were in Southampton in time to go through customs and board the ship.

‘How will Granny know where I am?’ he asked, aware that the porter had seen them boarding the local train.

‘I left her a letter explaining everything. She never wakes until lunchtime. She won’t stop us, I just know it. So don’t worry, she’ll be much better off now we’re
gone.’

Phoebe kept reading Jessie’s note over and over again in disbelief; the sheer cheek of her to take this decision out of her hands. By the time she was
compos
mentis
and found the letter on the drawing-room mantelpiece, it had been far too late to catch up with them. She knew she ought to call the police but something held her back. Perhaps at last
she’d have some peace and quiet and time to herself, time to do those exercises and contact her agent. There might be something she could do to revive her career. She might write her memoirs,
as other Gaiety Girls were doing. Life wasn’t over yet. She’d had a lucky escape, a warning to take things easier. Perhaps Jessie had done her a favour – only time would tell
– and she could always take the long sea voyage trip and fetch Desmond back home. She sat back, letting Mima wait on her.