Page 91 of Last Letter Home
‘They were in Miss Sarah’s bag, but we didn’t find them till months later. Dad washed out the thermos, but the bag hung behind the door of our room till we got used to it being there. We kept meaning to get it back to her, but somehow it never happened. Then one day when we were on the move again, I took a proper look inside. Found the box wrapped up in the cardigan, but it was all too late then.’
‘Too late?’
‘Time had sorter passed on. You remember being fourteen.’
‘Yes,’ Briony sighed. She did remember, but not in the way he meant. She’d been that age when she’d lost her mother.
‘It was years and years before I went back to Westbury. And by then the Baileys were long gone from Flint Cottage. There is one thing, though, that always puzzled me. That bloke at the station. When he went off, he threw something away on the ground. I picked it up.’
‘What was it?’
‘A train ticket. To Westbury.’
Briony was silent for a moment. ‘Why is that important?’ she said finally.
‘He’d bought a ticket, but didn’t use it.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She was still puzzled. Then she opened her bag and said, ‘Mr Jenkins, I know it’s a long time ago, but do you recognize any of these Westbury men?’ And she handed him the photograph of Ivor, Paul and her grandfather Harry that she had brought with her from her grandfather’s box.
Mr Jenkins peered at it frowning, changed his spectacles and examined it again. He started to speak, then paused and looked up at her with a shrewd expression. ‘I can’t be certain,’ he said, pointing to one of the men, ‘but I think that’s him. The gent I met on the station that day.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Paul Hartmann?’
‘No, my dear. That one’s Hartmann. I remember him all right, but it wasn’t him that day.’
Briony took the photograph back, examined it and stared up at the old man, unable for a moment to understand what this meant.
‘You’d better keep clear of Westbury. You’re not wanted there, do I make myself clear?’ Ivor’s last words to him at the demob station still rang in Paul’s mind as he watched the passing English countryside through the grimy window of the train.
‘What did you say?’ he asked Harry, who had finally stirred from the stupor into which he’d fallen as soon as the train had started. Paul had noticed with compassion how the rays of sunlight playing on his friend’s face emphasized the lines around his eyes, the shadows of exhaustion. Then, ignoring the high-spirited banter of the others in the carriage, he had retired into his own thoughts as the train bore them on towards London.
‘Have you decided?’ Harry’s bleary eyes were on him. ‘What’ll you do.’
‘You heard our friend Richards,’ Paul said, leaning back in his seat. ‘I don’t see much point in returning to Westbury. It would only cause trouble.’ They’d send on his mother’s paltry possessions if he asked, he supposed. Once he had an address for them to be sent to. Otherwise his pay would keep him going for a short while until he found a job.
‘You’ll have a hard time here being a Jerry. No references from Sir Henry after what happened. Go home to Germany, Hartmann.’ Ivor’s voice sneered inside Paul’s head.
To some extent Ivor was bluffing, he sensed that, but there was a strong likelihood of truth in everything he said, too. He wouldn’t feel comfortable going back to Westbury, but he didn’t know where else to go. And if Sarah’s feelings about him had changed after what had happened . . . although even Ivor hadn’t been so low as to make such a judgement . . . then he’d be on his own. A German on his own in London after a bitter war, especially with all the shocking news coming out of his homeland now . . . how could they, his own countrymen . . . ?
‘I’ll find some digs in London,’ he told Harry. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
Harry studied him without emotion. His hand went to his chest, feeling for a front pocket that wasn’t there in this new suit, then he rolled his eyes and searched inside the jacket instead, finally locating his cigarettes. Paul took one from the proffered packet and for a while they both smoked in silence.
‘I tell you what,’ Harry said finally. ‘I’ll stay in London a few days. We’ll go about together, shall we? Have a few drinks. I don’t feel ready to go home yet.’
‘I don’t mind if we do that,’ Paul said, though the pain and desperation in the other man’s eyes disturbed him. The war had changed Harry more than any of them.
They shared a gloomy room in a cheap hotel in Earl’s Court. It wasn’t much with its view of the back of another building, its bare floorboards and the ever-present smell of boiled cabbage wafting up the stairs, but it would do.
‘We won’t be here much, look at it that way,’ Harry said as he dumped his bag onto one of the rickety beds. ‘Shall we try that club round the corner first?’
Paul remembered the suspicious way the proprietress had glanced at him with her darting eyes and pursed lips, and he gave the wardrobe door, which fell open all the time, another kick. He couldn’t help comparing the room with the humble attic he and Sarah had shared in Kensington and his heart ached for that night of happiness that seemed so long ago. ‘I’ll meet you there in an hour,’ he told Harry, ‘I have something to do here first’.
When Harry had left, he went down and bought some writing paper, envelopes and a stamp from a very old lady who answered when he rang the bell on the desk. Upstairs, he borrowed the bulb from the ceiling light, fitted it into the bedside lamp and in its circle of meagre light wrote to Sarah. It was so long since he’d heard from her and he had no way of knowing whether she’d received his letters, so he was unsure what to say; then after much thought he whittled the pencil end to a new sharpness with his penknife and decided to keep it simple.
My dearest Sarah,
I hope I’m right to send this to Westbury as I’m not sure where you are now. I hope that your mother might forward it. As you can see from the address I’m back in London and would very much like to see you. I will be here for a few days at least, but after that letters can be sent poste restante in the usual way. Needless to say, I feel exactly the same about you as ever (and dare to hope you still feel the same about me!). I think of you with love every day.
