Page 39 of Last Letter Home
‘Where did you go with Ivor today?’ Diane said. She was looking down at a petal on her palm and running her thumb lightly over its soft hollow.
‘He showed me an old path that led to a rather desolate spot, Westbury’s old stew pond, you know, where the lords of the manor kept their fish stocks, though they don’t use it any more. Don’t ever go there, dear. I found it rather creepy.’ She decided against telling the story of the drowned Kelling boy. Instead she asked suddenly, ‘Di, do you remember anything much about Peter?’
Diane looked up, her eyes troubled, then a serenity came into them. ‘Our brother? Not really, no; I was only three, wasn’t I? There was something wrong with him. That’s why he died, wasn’t it?’
‘I think he wasn’t . . . like other babies.’
‘He didn’t sit up or crawl, did he?’
‘No. Poor little chap.’ She recalled touching his silky brown hair, the way he stared up at her from his pram as if in silent wonder, and grief twisted deep inside her.
‘So I expect it was a good thing that he died really.’
‘Oh, Diane! You are . . . surprising.’ Perhaps Diane was right. That might have been why their parents had appeared to accept his death. She tried to imagine her mother with an older Peter. Adult even. And couldn’t. Of course, there were institutions that would have had him. In England, anyway. She didn’t know what would have happened in India, didn’t like to think about it. There were so many appalling things the people there had to endure.
Diane let the petal fall. ‘I’ll go and lay out the cards,’ she said. ‘Don’t be long, Saire, will you?’ and Sarah watched her walk lightly away through the evening light, puzzled as ever by the changing surfaces of her sister’s moods.
‘It’s only a matter of time.’ Early August and once again Ivor was visiting. It was a Saturday afternoon, and he and Sarah were lounging on chairs in the shade, drinking Mrs Allman’s excellent lemonade. Diane was over at the Bulldocks’ and Mrs Bailey was upstairs helping Ruby deal with a moth infestation in a clothes chest. Ivor had found Sarah picking blackcurrants and assisted until she scolded him for eating too many and it had grown too hot anyway so she decided they had enough for supper and packed it in.
Ivor had been away for nearly a month and as he wasn’t much of a letter writer this was the first time they’d really exchanged news for a while.
‘Anyone who thinks war can be avoided is deluding themselves. Look at the overtures Hitler’s making to Russia. It’s obvious that they’ll make their move on Poland and then we’ll be obliged to honour our promises. Believe me, these rehearsals with blackout curtains and whatnot are only the start of it. It’ll be the real thing soon.’
‘Jennifer’s father is still adamant it won’t happen. He thinks Hitler doesn’t want to go to war with us at all, that he doesn’t view us as an enemy.’
‘In which case the Führer’s putting up the wrong signals. What was his Graf Zeppelin doing off the coast at Lowestoft? Visiting the beach for the day?’
Sarah laughed, then was sober again. If there were to be war . . . she knew she shouldn’t think selfishly of her own life, but she wouldn’t go away to college. She’d be a land girl, she thought suddenly. That would suit her best. Somewhere near home it would have to be.
When she surfaced from her thoughts it was to see Ivor studying her, a round-eyed expression on his face as though he was working himself up to something.
‘What is it, Ivor?’ She wondered whether she’d offended him. It was difficult to be natural with him sometimes. She couldn’t simply say what came into her head as she had been able to do with her father. Was that the kind of girl she was, the type who would never marry because she was in love with her father? She smiled privately at her own nonsense.
Ivor started to speak, checked himself, then as she watched, fascinated, he blew out his cheeks and resolution came into his face. ‘I was thinking, Sarah, simply this. That if there is a war and I have to go away then, well, I’d like to think that I had a girl at home who was waiting for me. And if that girl were you then, well, I don’t know, but I’d be the happiest man alive.’ The resolution had quite gone and Sarah was struck instead by the naked vulnerability of his expression. His eyes were bright with emotion and his brow crumpled with tension. She didn’t want to hurt him, but nor, she realized, did she want what he offered.
‘Ivor,’ she said, trying to be gentle, ‘we’re not at war yet and there’s no need for any rush. We haven’t known each other very long and . . . I don’t know that it feels right yet.’
‘You haven’t been long here in Westbury, no, but we’ve known of each other all our lives. Our families being so close . . . And my parents approve. In fact they would like it very much.’
‘My mother would too,’ Sarah conceded with a sigh, ‘but we can’t always do what our parents want.’ Impatience was constricting her chest and shortening her breath.
‘Sarah, please, just listen . . .’
‘No, Ivor, don’t.’ She rose with a flounce of her skirt and began to pace the terrace, trying to control the feelings of frustration. Just as she’d been planning to govern her own destiny, duty to family always closed in again, smothering her attempts at independence.
She tired of pacing and returned to her seat, where she drew up her knees and clasped her arms around them. ‘I need time,’ she said to put him off, but she could hardly bear to look at him, knowing there would be disappointment in his eyes.
War came despite what anyone said. Each day in August the people of Westbury felt it grow inexorably closer. One morning stacks of sandbags appeared outside the village hall. The Bailey household’s gas masks hung in the hall like harbingers of doom. Strangers with brisk voices came knocking at all hours of the day, asking impertinent questions about their circumstances, ticking off items on lists. In shops and in bus queues the air was thick with rumour of air raids and spies.
Then came a Sunday in early September when the church was full of grave country faces. Mr Tomms prayed for peace, but when they went home in the beautiful sunshine it was to hear on their wirelesses that Britain was at war with Germany.
Twenty
In the Sandbrooks’ garden, the gentle undulating lines of the sleeping goddess drew Briony’s touch. The calm face of the reclining sculpture spoke to something deep inside her, loosening her habitual knot of anxiety.
‘She makes me feel happy,’ she said, turning to its creator. Tina Sandbrook was completely different from Briony’s idea of what Luke’s mother would be like. She thought she’d be, well, motherly-looking and conventionally dressed and Tina was neither of those things.
‘Good, she’s supposed to.’ Tina Sandbrook’s wise blue eyes were like her son’s, but otherwise she had the fine-boned appearance of her daughter, Luke’s younger sister Cherry, whose laughing face adorned the Sandbrooks’ fridge in a series of snapshots with her partner Tristan and their toddler twin sons. Tina was of medium height, light-framed, with shoulder-length hair coloured ash blonde with a streak of pink down one side. Despite her age, her loose cotton vest-top, dirndl skirt and the strappy sandals on her narrow, tanned feet put Briony in mind of a sixties flower child. When she moved, her beads and bangles tinkled pleasantly like wind chimes. There were one or two of those hanging from the eaves of the tiny cottage, Briony noticed as she wandered the maze of paths in the back garden, admiring Tina’s small bronze statues, half a dozen different versions of calm, happy womanhood. They were deep in the countryside here. Swifts darted through the early evening air, and in the garden hedgerow where blackberries were ripening a robin was singing his heart out.
