Page 46 of Last Letter Home
The nights were worrying at first, for Derek heard the air raid sirens in his dreams and would wake crying. One morning he was found asleep under the kitchen table cuddling his pillow, but gradually a normal sleep pattern resumed. Still, he looked every Monday for the postman and when his mother’s letter came would run with it up to his room and remain there quietly until someone went up to find him.
His presence made a difference to the household, giving meaning to the daily routine, and making everyone try harder for ‘my little man’, as Mrs Allman called him. She took him once on her day off to visit her younger nephew in Ipswich and he returned home excited with tales of the marshes and bearing a bird’s egg he’d found. ‘Reg said I gotta leave the others or it’d upset the mum,’ he declared solemnly when he showed them the speckled white egg and explained how he’d learned to blow out the contents through the holes he’d made at either end. The sad idea of the mother bird losing all her chicks had clearly struck home. He had a sweetness to him, a tenderness, to which Mrs Bailey in particular responded. Sarah watched him at the tea table as he tried to remember to close his mouth when he chewed his bread and couldn’t help but think of the little, damaged boy the Baileys had lost in India whom their mother would never mention, but whom, it seemed after all, she carried in her heart.
Twenty-four
Briony was woken by a text arriving from an unknown number. When, tentatively, she clicked on it, she realized that Greg Richards must have picked up her number from the automatic reply message she’d set on her personal email. To that he’d been directed by the similar automatic reply on her college email, an address that was freely available on the college website. She had a moment’s panic, cursing herself for how stupid she’d been to leave this trail to her very bedside. It would have been so easy for some internet troll to find her, except thankfully, she comforted herself, they didn’t seem interested in her any more. She recovered herself and read Greg’s message again, more carefully this time. In London, it said, but coming back Westbury Thursday 7-ish. Drink or dinner? Cheers, Greg.
She lay back on the pillows and considered for a moment. His face rose in her mind, the classic dark good looks, the easy manner, his lively expression. She could probably stand to have a drink with him, and, if that went well, dinner. Above all, she was curious as to what he might have found out from his father about her family’s past. So she texted back to say, OK, where shall we go? I hear The Dragon is good.
She contemplated the day’s tasks, glancing through the kitchen window at the overcast sky as she ate breakfast. Drive into Cockley Market for supplies and a potter, she decided, and then home for more editing. If the rain held off, perhaps a walk along the river later on. She’d noticed a footpath sign by the bridge. First of all, though, she wrote a note to old Mrs Clare at the Hall, tucked it into an envelope she found in a drawer and dropped it with Kemi on her way out. She was asking when it might be convenient to visit again.
It was market day in town. Two rows of brightly coloured stalls ran down the centre of the long street with its gracious Georgian shops, and Briony enjoyed choosing fruit and vegetables before queuing at the baker’s for freshly baked bread, where she listened to the gossip. Then, her shopping bag now heavy, she was waiting for a gap in the traffic to nip over to the butcher’s when she spotted Aruna on the other side of the street. Her friend was standing outside an old, whitewashed coaching inn, its sign of a heraldic bear swaying overhead in the breeze.
Briony couldn’t see Aruna’s face because she stood head down, her sunglasses pushed into her hair, reading something on her phone. She’d just raised her arm to hail her when Aruna stowed her phone in her bag and crossed the road, apparently not seeing Briony at all, and disappearing into a little bistro before Briony had a chance to attract her attention. She must be meeting Luke, Briony decided, and hurried up the pavement thinking she’d surprise them, but when she stared past the golden letters on the smoked glass of the bistro into the gloomy interior, she saw that the hazy figure who had risen from his seat at the back to greet Aruna wasn’t Luke. She received the impression of a heavy, powerful man wearing a suit. He looked up and she stepped away, suddenly afraid of being seen, then dithered on the pavement arguing with herself. Aruna was her best friend. She knew her through and through. But something furtive about her behaviour just now suggested she didn’t wish to be seen. Finally Briony lost courage and walked slowly on by.
It couldn’t have been Aruna, she concluded as she stared into a gift shop window at the garish flowerpots and tea towels within. Lots of women had glossy black hair and that style of sunglasses, a tasselled leather bag swinging from their shoulder. What a silly mistake she might have made, barging in to greet her. Her face grew hot at the thought. She stopped at a newsagent to buy a paper and couldn’t resist adding a tub of expensive ice cream from a freezer cabinet to her purchases. She walked slowly back past the bistro on her return to the car, but a party of people had gathered inside the door, blocking her view.
Twenty-five
October 1940
Sarah had finished mending a puncture on an upside-down bicycle late one afternoon when she heard footsteps on the gravel path. She glanced up to see a familiar uniformed figure.
‘Ivor, good heavens,’ she said, holding out oily hands. ‘I didn’t know you were coming home.’ He took off his cap and crossed the grass to hug her and kiss her cheek.
‘I thought I’d surprise you.’
‘You certainly did that.’ His admiring gaze as ever left her flustered. ‘Where have you popped up from?’
‘Today, London. Before that, Scotland. I’ve a week’s pass. How are you? You look . . .’
‘A mess, I know, but I’ve looked worse. Straw in my hair and dust in my throat a few weeks back.’
‘But it was a good harvest, my pa says. That’s marvellous. And what I was going to say was that you look as beautiful as ever.’
‘Ivor, you’re very flattering, but I’m afraid it’s simply not true.’ Sarah began to rub the grime off her hands with a rag, ashamed of her callouses and broken nails.
‘What needs doing here?’ He bent over the machine.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve done it. I rode over some barbed wire on a footpath. Stupid, really.’
He flipped the bicycle up onto its wheels and tested the handlebars with his weight. ‘You’ve done a good job.’
‘Thank you, kind sir. Don’t sound so surprised.’ She wheeled it into the shelter of the veranda, then invited him inside for a drink.
‘Mummy is over at the Bulldocks. Mrs C. has put on a benefit – something to do with India, so she wasn’t allowed to say no. And Diane’s in Dundee. She’s joined the Wrens, I expect you know.’
‘Yes, so I heard from Mother.’
‘We were astonished when she told us. I don’t think she likes it much. She’s a coder, whatever that means. Says the work is tiresome and they haven’t received their uniforms yet. Pour yourself a whisky, if you want one. I shan’t be long.’
Sarah flew upstairs to the bathroom, where she washed her hands and face. As she changed in her bedroom, she caught her reflection in the wardrobe mirror and was horrified at how Ivor must have seen her. Freckles on her face and arms, a long bramble scratch along her collarbone and sun-bleached hair as frizzy as a furze bush. Still, her eyes were bright enough and it was nice to step into a frock for a change. She attacked the furze bush with a hairbrush and went back downstairs.
Ivor was sitting flicking through the evening paper, but threw it aside when she entered. He handed her a whisky and soda that she didn’t want and once again she was aware of his admiring gaze as she sat down beside him and sipped the drink politely.
‘I can’t offer you much to eat, I’m afraid,’ she sighed. ‘Nothing nice, that is. Mrs Allman’s left us a rather fearful-looking cold collation.’
‘It doesn’t matter. I’m expected home for supper. My mother’s killing the fatted calf. Or the fatted chicken, rather.’
