Last Letter Home by Rachel Hore (40)

Derek had liked it in the country well enough, though he was frightened of the noises at night, the creak of the floorboards and the strange cries, that Alf told him were devils, but which Miss Sarah said were foxes. Foxes being strangled more like.

They’d been very kindly to him when the news came. It had been 1943, just before Christmas; he’d hated Christmas for years afterwards. It had been a direct hit: his mum would have been killed at once, his dad told him when he came down to see him, as if that was a consolation to a young boy who’d lost the person he loved most in all the world. His dad told him to be a brave big boy and to stay with the Baileys because he was working nights and sleeping at his sister’s in the day, and what with her kids, too, there wasn’t room for Derek. And so he’d stayed in Westbury until the end of the war when his dad found them lodgings and wanted him home. Thirteen he was and settled in Westbury, but he hadn’t any choice. You did what your dad told you then.

Miss Sarah said she’d come up in the train with him and make sure he met up with his father. She took a small suitcase with her, said that she’d stay with her aunt, make a proper trip of it.

She hadn’t spoken much on the train, but had stared out of the window at the passing landscape, her eyes dreamy with her thoughts, some of which must have been happy ones, for then she smiled, but at other times when he glanced up from his comic she appeared troubled. He wondered what she was going to do in London, but wasn’t bold or interested enough to ask. Boring old shopping, he supposed. Women liked to shop. He remembered the battlelight in his mother’s eyes when she arrived home with a bargain, and blinked away tears at the memory.

When they reached Liverpool Street Station, his dad wasn’t there so they hung about a bit on the station concourse, then Miss Sarah said he was to look after their cases while she went to the convenience.

Derek waited with the luggage, his own holdall, Sarah’s suitcase and, over his shoulder, a long-handled cotton shopping bag of the same dull brown as his jacket. From this she’d extracted a vacuum flask and a greaseproof paper packet of sandwiches which they’d shared for their lunch on the train. He watched Sarah’s sturdy figure disappear into the ladies’ waiting room and continued to scan the crowds for a jaunty bow-legged man with his hat pushed back above an open face, but Dad was nowhere to be seen. Hanging above the concourse was a great clock with heavy roman numerals that marked the time with ponderous hands. Dad was already fifteen minutes late. Derek watched a pigeon alight on top of the clock and set about cleaning its wings.

A slurred male voice behind him made him jump: ‘Hey, young man,’ and he turned to see a stranger, some gent who must be down on his luck, for he was ill-shaven with dark circles under his eyes and wore an ill-fitting suit and cheap shoes. Derek’s nose wrinkled at the alcoholic fumes on his breath.

‘You’re with Miss Bailey. C’n you give her this?’ Despite the slurring, there was something about his voice that made him think of Westbury. He glanced at the crumpled envelope the man held out and drew back. The bloke wasn’t wearing gloves and Derek felt a shudder of revulsion at the livid scars across his hand.

‘She’ll be back in a minute, sir. You can give it to her yourself,’ but the man’s eyes darted nervously in the direction Miss Sarah had gone.

‘No, that wouldn’ do. Jus’ give it t’ her, there’s a go’ lad.’

Derek had been drilled to be polite to his elders so he accepted the envelope. When the bloke rummaged in the pocket of his trousers and brought out a coin, he received it automatically. Then the man tipped a finger to his hat brim in a clumsy salute and stumbled away.

‘Sir, who shall I say . . . ?’ Derek called, but the man merely gave a dismissive swipe of the hand before he was swallowed by the crowd. A minute later, Miss Sarah could be seen walking quickly towards him. She reached his side smelling lightly of a flowery scent as though she’d visited some foreign land.

‘Still no sign of your father then?’

He shook his head and held out the letter he’d been given.

‘Where did you get this?’ She examined her name on the front and her blue eyes rounded and her cheeks drained of colour. He thought she hardly heard his explanation. He watched her slit it open with her thumb, pinch open the scrap of paper inside and heard her sharp intake of breath as she read it. Her eyes met his, unfocused, then she craned to see the great clock where the first pigeon had been joined by another. Dad was twenty-five minutes late now and his heart fluttered like the birds’ wings.

‘Derek!’ His dad was barrelling towards him out of the crowd, a short, heavily built man in working clothes. He ran, felt Dad’s rough hand round his shoulders and pressed his face briefly against his father’s coarse cheek.

Sarah came over, a wild look in her eyes. ‘Mr Jenkins, we’re very glad to see you.’ She held out her hand and his dad shook it.

‘Much obliged to you, miss, and beggin’ pardon for the lateness. An unexploded bomb in Lime Street, and the bus weren’t goin’ nowhere. Shanks’s pony all the way and my chest ain’t too good.’

‘He walked, Miss,’ Derek explained, seeing her puzzled expression. ‘Did the bomb go off, Dad?’ he said in a nervous voice, thinking again of his mother.

‘I’m dreadfully sorry to be rude,’ Miss Sarah cut in,’ but I have to go. Derek, be a good boy, won’t you? I’m sure we’ll meet again some day.’

‘It’s very good of you to ’ave ’ad ’im,’ his dad said.

‘It was a pleasure, always a pleasure,’ she said, and bent and kissed Derek, and again, that flowery scent and he felt himself blush. Then she took up her suitcase and was off, the crowd parting for her busy figure to pass. She was gone.

‘She was in a hurry,’ his dad said, a little affronted.

‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ he whispered, glancing up at his dad and, to his shame, he felt tears flood his eyes. He dashed them away with his hand and as he did he felt the weight of the bag on his shoulder and a tremor of horror passed through him.

‘Dad, she’s forgotten her bag.’

‘That’s a shame. What’s in it?’

They opened it and peered in. There was the battered vacuum flask, something wrapped in cloth that turned out to be a pair of shoes, much repaired, and underneath, a cardigan wrapped round something that felt like a book. Nothing valuable then.

‘Women’s things. We’d better take it with us, I suppose. Come on, nipper, or I’ll be late for work.’ He seized Derek’s suitcase and laid a guiding arm around his shoulder. ‘It’s just you and me now, but we’ll do our best, eh?’

‘And he did do his best,’ the old man Derek told Briony. ‘Until the lung cancer took ’im. Just like it took King George. Dad were proud of that, strange, innit? Lived just long enough to see the Queen’s coronation on the telly. I rented it for ’im special cos ’e couldn’t make it to the Mall. We sat and watched it together.’

Briony smiled to picture this, then she said, ‘But what about the letters?’

‘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.

He read this over, altered the second ‘hope’ in the third line to ‘imagine’, breathed a brief prayer as he folded it into the envelope and licked the stamp. If he didn’t hear back over the following few days then he’d have to think about what to do next. As far as he knew, the Baileys still didn’t have a telephone.

On his way to meet Harry he dropped the letter into a postbox that leaned like the Tower of Pisa from a cratered pavement.

It was early afternoon, three days later, that he returned to the hotel from the labour exchange, where he’d spent a fruitless morning queuing only to be treated with rudeness by the matronly woman behind the desk when he reached the front of the queue. He knocked softly and opened the door of their room, to find that Harry was still sound asleep and snoring, and the room smelled rancid. Paul regarded him morosely, but then everything for him was coloured by the dismal fact that though he asked downstairs on every possible occasion if there were any letters or telephone messages, he had not heard back from Sarah.

His bed gave a monstrous creak as he sat down on it, which caused Harry to stir. He blinked in the dim daylight, then noticed Paul and pushed himself up to sitting with a groan.

‘Wha’ time is it?’ Harry’s forehead, Paul saw, gleamed with moisture.

‘Two.’

‘Have you been out?’

‘Yes. No luck. As soon as they see my papers . . .’

‘Cretins.’

‘No, I understand. It’s to be expected.’

‘You’re a better man than I am, Hartmann.’

‘No, I’m not. Listen, Harry. Last night, well. You can’t carry on like this. You’ve got to go home. Your folks will be wondering what’s happened to you.’

‘They won’t.’ This said in a distant voice.

‘Haven’t you informed them you’re back?’ Paul, who had no family now, was shocked.

Harry muttered some excuse, then rubbed his nape with a shaky hand and yawned loudly. He eased himself out of bed, pulled on his trousers, dislodged a ragged towel from the end of his bed and shambled off to the bathroom. In his absence Paul lifted open the window and stood in the welcome draught of fresh air listening to the sounds of the city and thinking of all the reasons why Sarah would not have answered his letter. One, maybe she hadn’t received it. She was away possibly. Or ill. Or . . . No, he’d have heard if it had been that. Two, she had received it but she didn’t want . . . Hell, his mind didn’t wish to go there either. He sighed sadly and turned back to survey the room. It was a horrible place, he hated it and the proprietress hated him, he could tell from her refusal to meet his eye now when he spoke to her. The sooner he moved, the better, but he didn’t dare yet in case Sarah tried to contact him. And then there was Harry.

If he stopped being obsessed with his own concerns for long enough, then he had to admit that he was worried about Harry. They’d both taken their fill of drink over the last few days. He’d followed Harry from a bar in the servicemen’s club to pub to dance palace and nightclub in his friend’s restless quest to lose himself in noisy crowds and alcohol.

Last night, he distinctly remembered sitting glumly on a bar stool in a club downstairs in Piccadilly watching Harry, tight as a butcher’s boy, count precious notes out onto the counter to buy whiskies for a load of squaddies and their girls whom he’d never met before in his life, and who would undoubtedly melt away once their benefactor’s money ran out. Paul had lost his patience before it got to that point, though, seizing Harry by the collar and marching him out. The walk home in the cool night air should have sobered him up, but he’d been too far gone for that and Paul had ended up half carrying him back to the hotel.

Harry returned from the bathroom, looking slightly the less worse for wear. Rather than hang around while he dressed, Paul took up his hat. ‘I’ll see you at the place on the corner,’ he remarked, referring to the greasy spoon they’d eaten in regularly, and left.

In the café, he ordered fish and chips and when it arrived he ate it slowly, but by the time his plate was empty Harry still hadn’t appeared, so he paid the bill and returned to the hotel. There was no one on the desk in the hall when he passed, but he was too concerned about Harry to think of ringing the bell again to ask if there was any post for him, so he took the stairs two at a time and tried the door. It opened, and he was relieved to see Harry there just sitting on the bed. He’d dressed and combed his hair and held his hat in his hand. He glanced up at Paul’s entrance and said gravely, ‘You’re right, of course. I’ve decided to go home.’

‘I’m glad,’ Paul said, surprised but relieved at the same time. As he watched Harry slowly pack, he came to a decision. ‘Would you take a letter for me?’

‘Is it for Sarah? Yes, of course.’ They hadn’t discussed the matter at all, but then they didn’t need to. Harry knew how much Paul’s mind dwelled on her.

‘I want to be sure it reaches her. If you have a chance to go to Flint Cottage and give it to her yourself . . . into her own hand, then at least I’ll know . . .’

Harry nodded, so Paul took a fresh piece of paper, thought for a moment, then quickly scribbled a few lines on it. He sealed it in an envelope. Harry rose and took it and slipped it into his inside pocket.

They smoked a final cigarette together and spoke desultorily of this and that. It was hard to part after so long a time they’d spent together, so many hardships shared, so often that each had helped the other.

‘I will see you again?’ Paul said, but when he glanced up he was surprised to see that Harry’s eyes shone bright with unshed tears.

‘Of course, old man, of course,’ Harry said. They shook hands very firmly and clapped each other on the back.

‘Convey my regards to . . . everyone,’ Paul said and Harry nodded, pressing his lips together firmly.

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.

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.