Page 28 of Last Letter Home
‘Thanks, that would be brilliant.’
After she’d shown him out, Briony arranged his flowers in a vase and placed it on the kitchen windowsill. It pleased her that she would see them every time she entered the room.
She made a mug of tea and, with a deep breath, went into the dining room, where she’d set up a working space in the window looking out at the front. She sat down, brought up her manuscript on her laptop and began to scroll down until the editor’s first comment appeared. Evidence? it said.
A movement outside made her glance up to see an old, very stooped lady walk slowly past the house tugging an equally ancient pug dog on a lead. For a moment she watched their agonizing progress, the dog swaying like a barrel on its stiff little legs, then she addressed herself again to the screen in front of her.
The Auxiliary Territorial Service was by far the biggest of the women’s services, she read in her introduction, and had its origins in the First World War. She supposed it was a bit vague. She moved the cursor to the beginning of the sentence and inserted: Totalling 200,000 by 1945.
She worked solidly for an hour and a half, stopping frequently to consult one or other of the books and paperwork she’d brought with her or to find a reference online, but when she stopped to remove her reading glasses and rub her tired eyes she saw she had addressed only the comments in the first three-quarters of the introduction. Beyond the window the slanting sun was making shadows of the trees across the lane. She felt hungry.
In the kitchen she filled a roll with ham and salad, arranged it with a slab of carrot cake on a plate, made another mug of tea and carried the whole lot outside. She went to the front this time, and through the door into the walled garden, picking the bench where she’d seen the old man.
It was a calm, sunny place, sheltered from the breeze. From the few gnarled fruit trees espaliered against the crumbling walls and the patches of lawn, it was possible to imagine how the layout might once have been in the glory days of the hall. When had it stopped being a proper garden? she wondered as she licked the icing off the cake. Years and years ago, she supposed. She drank her tea, then sat for a while with her eyes half closed, enjoying the peace of the evening, trying to be in the moment as her counsellor had advised. Beyond the walls a gentle breeze ruffled the tresses of the poplar trees, where pigeons warbled. Near her bench a fat bee zigzagged low over the daisies. For a moment she thought she heard footsteps on the gravel path, but when she looked there was no one. I’m going barmy, she told herself, and stood up briskly, brushing the crumbs from her lap.
Back inside, she tidied the kitchen and checked her phone for messages. Aruna had posted a happy selfie on Facebook of herself and Luke on Brighton Beach, which she smiled at, but it made her feel lonely and restless. Perhaps she’d made a mistake coming here on her own. In the twilight gloom the place took on the mantle of another age. It was something about the cramped rooms, the pungency of old wood and old fabric, of lingering smoke from long-ago wood fires. She switched on a table lamp which cast the living room in a cosy glow, so she settled herself on the sofa with a mint tea and the tin containing Sarah’s letters and laid them out on the coffee table before her, trying to ensure they were in date order. Her eyes widened as she read the address on a white envelope she hadn’t noticed before. ‘Paul Hartmann, esq., Westbury Lodge, Westbury’. For a moment her mind couldn’t function for surprise. Paul Hartmann had lived here in this very cottage where she was staying! She looked about her. The stone fireplace, that was surely the original, but the heavy chintz sofa and armchair, how old were they? Still, the view from the window must be much the same, and she could imagine Paul walking across the lane to the walled garden every day to work, as another of Sarah’s letters had intimated.
Inside the envelope were several short notes of only a few lines each. None was properly dated. The first one she unfolded made her smile.
Tuesday
Dear Mr Hartmann,
I trust this finds you well. My mother would be glad if you would call at your convenience to advise us on a tree that is worrying her. She fears a dead branch will fall on our heads. I hope you don’t mind this intrusion on your time. It will at any rate be nice to see you. My regards to your mother.
Yours sincerely,
Sarah Bailey
Another note asked him if he’d mind buying her some raspberry canes on his visit to Askey’s on Saturday. How very touching, Briony thought, that Paul had kept a scribbled note from Sarah on a matter as small and inconsequential as this.
The next one she examined was neatly written and far more considered. The light spirit of the first notes was missing entirely. Dear Paul, it began.
Thank you for your letter. I was glad to have your explanation as I was worried that I’d offended you this afternoon, and I had no intention of doing that. The truth is that I worry I will never find what I’m to do with my life if I don’t take this opportunity now. I am quite sure that your time will come . . .
As she read on, she began to understand something of what had drawn Sarah and Paul together. They were both keen gardeners, both fatherless, but it was more than that. They were both restless souls whose futures were hampered by a strong sense of family duty.
Fifteen
March 1939
Warm sunshine and little tugs of breeze accompanied Sarah on her walk up to the walled garden one morning. The boxes from India were arriving later in the week and Mrs Bailey had brought in decorators to repair the damage the Watson family had wreaked on Flint Cottage. What with the noise and the stink of paint, Sarah couldn’t bear to be in the house. There was plenty to do in the garden at this time of year, but Mrs Bailey was out of sorts with the upheaval and took every opportunity to interrupt and send Sarah off on some errand. Diane had gone to Norwich with Aunt Margo in search of dress material, so Sarah thought she would satisfy her curiosity and see properly the garden where Paul worked, for she had only seen it in its wintry state. She took a box of home-made biscuits for his mother and set off with them in a basket that also contained a cutting from a plant she was hoping he would identify, her new secateurs in case there was anything she could help with while she was up there and an envelope that had arrived in the post for her the day before.
The wooden door in the wall stood ajar and she paused to run a hand over the bright green moss growing on the pitted surface of the ancient brick. Then she slipped inside, only to stop short at the top of a flight of steps.
An extraordinary feeling came over her. It was as if she was passing from one world into another. The kitchen garden where she found herself was large enough for the needs of a manor house, but small enough to feel intimate, safe. There was no one there, but there were signs of activity, a spade dug into the freshly turned earth of a flower bed, several trays of seedlings on the path nearby. A clattering sound and she glanced up as a door in the opposite wall flew open and Paul entered, carrying a coil of hose on his shoulder and in one hand a heavy pail of water. For a moment he didn’t see her, so intent was he on his work, and she watched him shrug off the hose, sink one end in the bucket and test the handpump affixed to the other end. Then he sensed her presence. She brightened at his pleasure on seeing her and laughed as he doffed his cap and the water ran over his boots.
‘Don’t let me stop you getting on,’ she called. ‘I only came to take a look.’ She descended the steps and set her basket down. ‘What are you planting? Lettuces?’
‘Dozens of them,’ Paul wiped his face with the back of his forearm. ‘They’ll be ready to eat when the Kellings return for the summer.’
‘I’ll give you a hand if you like.’
‘No, no. Let me have a little break and I’ll show you round. These fruit trees are pretty, no, such delicate blossom?’
He spoke with knowledge and enthusiasm as they circumnavigated the garden and she duly admired the peach trees, their spread branches pinned to the south wall, and followed him into a lean-to greenhouse where a grapevine like the one at Flint Cottage grew in a latticed shape above their heads. Here, seedlings flourished in trays and pots on all surfaces and last year’s strawberry plants, safe from the frost but pale-leaved, waited in a corner to be replanted.
Outside once more, he showed her beds where the air was fragrant with herbs, flower beds pungent with manure. ‘These trenches are for the asters. Over here will be mixed annuals for the house. And sweet peas should come up over there by the dwarf plums. Lady Kelling very much likes sweet peas.’
