Page 93 of Last Letter Home
Then, without looking back, Harry took up his case and left, closing the door quietly behind him. All the warmth of the room went with him.
The very same evening, Paul was faced by the furious proprietress when he came back to the hotel after his meal. ‘So your friend’s gone now, has he? Well I want you out too in the morning. We didn’t go through six years of hell to have one of you living here. If my sister ever hears I took in a Jerry, I’d never know the last of it, what with my nephew dead and gone. Out, I say, out.’
It was the venom in her voice that was worse than the words themselves. Paul opened his mouth to say that he too had fought for this country, he’d risked his life time and time again, but the expression of hatred in her eyes told him it would be no good, she wouldn’t listen.
Hamburg. It was that simple word in his identity documents together with the soft consonants of his accent that held him back here. He had no family who wanted him, his home city lay in ruins, he had no job and, worst of all, he feared he’d been abandoned by the woman he loved.
Reaching his room, he threw himself down on his bed in the gathering darkness and struggled against despair. Not everyone was like the woman downstairs, he told himself. There would be somewhere he could go to live and find work, he simply wasn’t sure where it was yet. If only he could speak to Sarah. Never had he felt so lost, not even in the dark days after his mother’s death. Despite all attempts to keep it at bay, deep loneliness overwhelmed him. It seemed that the whole world had rejected him. Eventually he did the only thing he could think of, something he hadn’t done for years. He got down on his knees by the bed, folded his hands and tried to pray, whispering the old words from his childhood. He waited, but there came no answer and he wondered if anyone was up there listening anyway. Still, he felt more calm.
After a moment, he became aware of a hardness digging into his knee, the head of a nail, he saw, and in shifting painfully, almost lost his balance. He shot out a hand to steady himself and it hit something solid under the bed. His suitcase. He dragged it out, thinking at least he could pack and be ready for the morning.
It was a cheap affair that they’d given him at the demob centre, made of a material akin to thick cardboard. He set it down onto the bed, sprang the catches and opened the lid. His few possessions were there, a couple of books, the framed photograph of his parents that had accompanied him across continents among them. He wrapped the photo up safely in a sweater, then went to the wardrobe and began transferring the few clothes he had; socks, spare underwear, a shirt he’d bought using a few precious tokens. He jammed the wardrobe door shut then opened a drawer, took out his hairbrushes and shaving kit, felt for his notebook and sat down hard on the bed in surprise.
There was a wad of paper caught between the pages of the notebook, an identity card, he discovered, and a folded document. Puzzled, he opened the card to see Harry’s photograph staring out at him. He’d left them behind. Why? An uncomfortable feeling began to grow inside him. He examined the passport and found a slip of paper tucked in it like a bookmark. The scrawled writing was unmistakably Harry’s.
I won’t need these any more, so make what use of them you can. Sorry, old man, I’m not as tough as you are. Harry.
Sarah’s taxi was crawling west along the King’s Road before she realized that she’d left her canvas bag with Derek and a bolt of dismay shot through her. The letters, her precious box of letters! Since she’d planned to stay with her aunt for several nights, she’d brought them with her for comfort. She leaned forward to tell the driver to turn back, then checked herself. They’d be long gone now, Derek and his father. Her mind whirled, then she sat back in her seat, trying to calm herself by smoothing out the note that Harry had left for her; according to what it said, the unknown man at the station had been Harry. It should be possible to get her letters back, surely someone would know the Jenkins’ new address. She had visions of herself walking the streets of the East End trying to find them. A few days, that was how long Paul said in the note he would be at the hotel, and the date on it was two days before. Suppose she missed him? The traffic was moving so slowly. She refolded the note and tried to relax.
Paul. She hadn’t heard from him for several months, and now Ivor had come home with a horrible tale. There had been rumours and in the end she’d confronted him about them. Paul had disobeyed Ivor, his senior officer, and ended up getting them both into deep trouble with the authorities. The people in the little Italian town where they’d been stationed had risen up against the garrison, refused to cooperate with them any longer. There was a story about a boy who’d got shot, and Ivor was vague about this. Paul might have been to blame. To be honest, Sarah didn’t entirely understand Ivor’s story, there was some false note to it, but he’d refused to discuss it any further. The war was behind them now, over, and everyone was trying to pretend that things could go back to normal. Normal, pah. She’d been glad to have an excuse to get away for a night or two. Her mother was fidgety, Diane was fidgety. But Paul was back safe in England. Her heart soared.
She leaned and tapped on the glass and the driver slid back his square of window. ‘Can’t you go by a side street or something?’ she asked.
‘Sorry, lady, not till after the next junction.’
She sat back and closed her eyes, trying to stay calm, then opened them and glanced at Paul’s note once more. He mentioned a letter he’d sent her a few days ago. She’d never received it, which was odd, but then the post was odd sometimes.
Inch by inch they moved forward, past the roadworks, then finally they were through and the driver was swinging the car right down a long shadowy street. Sarah’s heartbeat quickened and she felt light-headed with anticipation.
The hotel was a shabby place crushed between a flyblown café and a boarded-up shop. A sign that read vacancies swung on its nail as she pushed the door open, somewhat gingerly. Her shoes scraped on dirty floorboards and the odour of cabbage added to her disgust. This was a place of a different order to the hotel in South Kensington where she’d stayed with Paul all that time ago. At least that had been clean.
An old harridan with gimlet eyes glanced up from behind the narrow desk where she was adding up a column of figures on a scrap of paper and fixed on Sarah in disbelief. ‘Yes?’ she said suspiciously.
‘I’m looking for a friend who’s staying here.’
‘A friend, is it? What’s the name of this friend?’ She brought out a grimy guestbook from a drawer and began to leaf through it.
‘Hartmann, Paul Hartmann.’
‘Hartmann . . . ?’ The woman folded her arms and leaned forward over the book, her expression disdainful. ‘Yes, he was here, but I asked him to leave. I put up with him when the English gentl’man was with him, but I wasn’t having any fingers pointed at me, so I sent him on his way.’
‘Where did he go? Did he leave an address?’ She barely understood what the woman was saying, but caught her hostility all right.
‘What’s a nice young lady like you want with a Jerry?’
‘He may be German, but he fought for this country,’ Sarah said hoarsely. She’d lost him. Her legs felt weak, her mind was reeling and she put a hand on the wall for support. Then she picked up her case and headed for the door. She’d wrenched it open when the woman called:
‘Hang about, love, I didn’t say he had left an address.’ Sarah’s shoulders sagged and she looked back at the woman, wearily. The proprietress shot her a mutinous glare as she pulled her cardigan more tightly round her shoulders. Then she ducked down and fished about to a sound of rustling paper. ‘But I didn’t say he hadn’t, neither.’ She popped back up and held out a scrumpled envelope. Sarah snatched it from her and smoothed it out, saw with a soaring relief her name on it in that familiar handwriting. A circle of damp had made the pencil fade, and a scent of rotten apple confirmed her suspicion that it had been consigned to a waste-paper basket.
‘I didn’t think anyone was coming for it,’ the woman mumbled.
‘You didn’t wait long to find out.’ As Sarah turned away, the woman sniffed and muttered, what were things coming to.
Once outside she crossed the road and sat on the steps of a sooty brick chapel in the shade of a tree and tore open the letter. It was written hastily and bits were faint because of the apple core, but she could just about make out the words. Dearest Sarah, I’m to go in search of new lodgings. There’s a small park up the road, towards the underground, on the right, just before the bombed-out houses. I’ll try to be there in the afternoon at 4 in case you come.
Which afternoon? There was no date on the letter. She glanced at her watch, brushed an earwig from her case and set off up the street, thinking she saw the ruined houses he meant. It was a quarter to four. She passed a butcher’s shop where a tow-headed lad in a striped apron was placing a sign in the empty window. Ominously, it read, Sorry, no meet.
Cursing the weight of her case, Sarah broke out into a clumsy run.
