Page 55 of Last Letter Home
‘It’s all too late,’ she gulped. ‘Because you’re going again.’
‘But there will be leave. We will see each other.’
‘You promise me?’
‘I promise.’
Beside them the train doors were closing. ‘I must go,’ he said, forcing her away and shouldering his knapsack. ‘Here, don’t forget your book.’ He rescued the brown paper parcel from the ground and pushed it into her hand.
‘Goodbye.’ He kissed her once more, then reached to catch a door before it closed. ‘Take care, my Sarah!’ he cried, leaning from the open window. She stepped forward and grasped his hand, then the moving train tore them apart.
‘Goodbye, goodbye.’
She waited until the train was a puff of black smoke in the distance then turned and walked slowly away in a daze. What had just happened she could not properly gauge. Just that her feelings had performed a volte-face and she realized it was Paul she’d wanted all along, Paul, not Ivor at all. Then came anger, anger at herself for not recognizing this sooner. Now Paul had gone and she did not know when she’d see him again.
Two days later young Derek distributed the morning post, which arrived just as he was leaving for school. Seeing Paul’s neat hand on the letter he handed her, Sarah slipped upstairs to read it, her fingers shaking with eagerness as she slit open the envelope. She stood at the window where cold lemony sunshine cast diamond shapes across the page. As she read, she heard Paul’s voice in her mind, his soft consonants like a caress.
My dearest Sarah, he’d written and her heart gave a flutter of joy.
I hope you will allow me to call you this. It is certainly how I have come to think of you, but because of what happened yesterday I now have the courage to say it. Dearest Sarah. Yes, I’ve said it again. It sounds very good.
I trust this letter is not unwelcome. Oh, how my hopes have risen and fallen in these few hours since we parted. Do you regret what happened in the moment of our farewell? If you do you must tell me at once. I shall be miserable for a while, but recover and we shall return to being friends. I fear so much that I’ve damaged our friendship, which is the most valuable thing in my life.
Dearest Sarah (there, I cannot stop saying it), I beg you to write to me as soon as you can. I know you will be kind, but you must tell me the truth. I am strong enough to bear it. It would be worse to go on without knowing, or believing in a lie.
Goodnight, my dearest Sarah (ah, the pleasure in writing these words),
Your Paul
Sarah lay down on the bed, reread the letter more slowly, and for a long time smiled unseeingly up at the ceiling as she mulled over its contents. He loved her. But he was far away. He loved her. She might not see him for weeks. Or months. He loved her. He might be sent somewhere dangerous, he might be killed. He loved her . . .
She sat up. He didn’t know that she loved him. She must write to him at once. And maybe send him a photograph. There was a recent one she had. Harry had taken it at that afternoon tea party at Westbury Hall in 1939, a day that seemed so long ago now, but was in reality hardly any time at all. It was in a drawer in the writing desk, she was sure it was. She almost flew down the stairs to find it, catching sight of the hands on the sober old grandfather clock as she sped through the hall. She was late for work, well hang work, there were more important things to do today! She found the photograph under an old cigar box of her father’s in which she kept Paul’s letters. She looked so serious in it, the photo made her smile.
‘Sarah, is that you?’ Her mother appeared in the doorway to the dining room, an envelope in hand. It was late on a Friday afternoon in the middle of February.
Sarah, who was sorting buttons, stopped still at the queer expression on Mrs Bailey’s face.
‘It’s from Diane. She says she’s coming home. Something’s wrong. Here, what do you make of it?’
Sarah took the letter from her with a sense of foreboding. It was a bravely written little note, quite unlike Diane’s usual desultory, wooden style. Her fingers brushed the smudges on the paper. Were those tears? Did Diane ever cry?
Dearest Mummy
I’m afraid I’ve done a very silly thing and have been discharged. I’ll tell you both why when I get home, but I’m not too cut up about it so don’t go worrying that I am. I’m cross at myself if anything. Don’t go telling anyone either. I won’t be able to stand the likes of Aunt Margo and La Bulldock gushing over me. I’ve made my own bed and I’m jolly well going to lie on it. Simply dying to see you and Sarah. Tell Mrs Allman a lovely Dutch officer has given me half a pound of sugar and maybe she will make a cake with it. I long for proper sponge cake, really sweet and buttery and moist. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Tons of love from your bad daughter, Diane.
The following afternoon as the light was fading from the sky, it was a small, sad-eyed figure that stepped down from the publican’s dray that had brought her from the station. But Diane’s chin lifted bravely and she gave coins to the lad who’d driven her with the air of a great, but doomed, lady, so that he tipped his cap to her in due deference and struggled gallantly up the path with her trunk without being asked.
After he’d gone, Sarah and her mother hugged her, at which her bright red lips twisted and she burst into weeping such as they’d never known of her, not even after she’d found her father dying. They were horrified. Sarah led her into the drawing room and tried to comfort her, while their mother called to Mrs Allman to bring them tea right away and to give Derek his meal in the kitchen when he came in.
The tea revived Diane enough for her to exclaim that she was glad she was home and that she never wanted to go back, even if they’d have her, which to Sarah didn’t seem likely after her sister told them what had happened.
Mrs Bailey had been right in one respect – there had been plenty of parties for Diane. At one impromptu gathering at the dockyard before Christmas, she’d drunk more gin than was good for her and had gone stumbling out in search of fresh air when she’d almost bumped into a distinguished-looking officer who was passing on the quay and who spoke to her with annoyance, at which point she’d promptly been sick. He had softened enough to assist this Wren in distress by offering his handkerchief and escorting her safely back to her quarters.
When she next encountered him, it was in the high street and when she stopped him to thank him, she was surprised to learn that he was a senior officer on a destroyer that had recently docked. One thing led to another, and before long she became his mistress – yes of course he was married, Mummy, or it wouldn’t be as bad, would it? Then somehow his wife found out and she had arrived and complained to Diane’s commanding officer. The scandal that threatened to engulf the guilty couple could only have one outcome. The officer kept his post. Diane was discharged in disgrace.
There was one crucial strand of this sad but all too common tale that Diane omitted to tell her mother and sister, but she confided in Sarah the next day.
