Letters to the Lost (32 page)

He opened drawers in the sideboard and half-heartedly sifted through their contents; instruction manuals for long-defunct appliances, tattered paper poppies, a scattering of old Spanish coins. In a drawer in the kitchen he discovered a hoard of money-off coupons and a Post Office savings book. Turning the pages to find the last entry he discovered that it was made in 1968, and that the balance of the account was seven pounds, four shillings and sixpence.

He left the kitchen and went back to the stairs. They were in darkness; both doors at the top closed. Going up he tried to open the one on the left, but it remained firmly shut – even when he leaned his shoulder against it and shoved. He briefly considered ramming it harder, splintering the wood, but dismissed the idea almost in the same second it came to him. It was the kind of thing people did in police dramas on TV, not in real life, and aside from Albert Greaves’s say-so he had no authority to be there. Besides, the chances of finding a stack of gold bullion and a couple of Van Goghs hanging on the wall seemed pretty remote.

Instead he turned and pushed open the other door, into the room where he’d discovered Jess. Hesitating on the threshold, he looked at the bed, then went across and sat down heavily. The pink counterpane was pulled back, the sheets creased from where they’d twisted around her hot body. The pillow still bore the imprint of her head, and he smoothed his hand over it, remembering how her dark hair had clung to her face in damp strands. With a shuddering sigh he thrust his fingers into his hair.

He liked her. He couldn’t even say why, because God alone knew she hadn’t given him any grounds to. But something about her touched him. Maybe because he sensed she needed looking after and it awoke in him some primitive masculine instinct. Maybe because she’d held his hand and looked right into his eyes like she felt the same connection he did.

‘Because she was ill, you idiot,’ he groaned into the silence. ‘She was delirious. I could have been anyone. She looked at me and probably saw David Beckham, or the Pope.’

Or
Dan,
whoever he was. Her boyfriend, presumably. The love of her life.

He hauled himself to his feet and straightened the pink cover. As he did so his foot struck something, half pushed under the bed. He pulled it out.

It was a box. A shoebox, filled with letters. From way back, by the looks of them, all stacked neatly, and possibly holding exactly the kind of clues to Nancy Price’s family and past he’d been hoping for. His pulse stepped up a pace. One of the letters was out of its envelope and had fallen down between the bed and the nightstand, as if someone had dropped it while they were reading it. He picked it up.

Sweetheart, sorry this is going to be a short one. It’s late and I’m on standby again for tomorrow, though it seems we only just got back from today’s mission . . .

Will’s jaw dropped. He checked the date at the top. He might not have finished his history degree but he knew that in July 1943 the Allies had been stepping up their bombing campaign over Germany. He’d chosen Twentieth Century Conflict as one of his subjects in the second year, and would have gone on to do his dissertation on the Second World War if he hadn’t cracked up first.

Our target was
████
and when we got there we could see that the RAF boys had been there before us. The city was pretty much on fire. Even from 10,000 feet up we could feel the heat.

Hamburg. Their target must have been Hamburg, where firestorms had rampaged through the city and devoured it. Will read on avidly, his heart thudding properly now. And then, as he reached the signature at the bottom, it stopped.

Dan
.

Dan?

The same Dan as—? Did that mean—?

He looked at his watch. Afternoon visiting hours started at three. Picking up the box he left the room and clattered down the narrow stairs, two at a time.

24

1943

It was like a dream; surely it must be. As he opened the front door and turned to scoop her up into his arms to carry her over the threshold Stella half expected Winston Churchill or the King to appear, in the illogical way of dreams. But they didn’t. It was just her and Dan, his strong arms holding her as he carefully manoeuvred her through the narrow doorway.

‘Aren’t you supposed to do this when you get married?’ she murmured.

‘I’ll do it again then.’

He led her through the rooms. Dazed with disbelief she loved it all, from the worn green-and-cream chequered linoleum in the kitchen stuck onto the back of the house, to the poppies that bloomed on the fireplace tiles in the bedroom at the front. They crossed over the little square landing at the top of the stairs and Dan ducked through the doorway into the back bedroom. Sunlight sloped across its bare floorboards and gilded the faded violets on the wallpaper. A big, old-fashioned brass bed with a bare ticking mattress stood against the wall and the scent of roses drifted in through the open window.

Stella reached for him and buried her face in his shirt, too overwhelmed to speak. After a while she looked up at him through her tears.

‘I can’t believe it. Is it really ours?’

‘Yours. All yours, forever – or for as long as you want it. It’s a safe place, if you need it, and someplace we can be together whenever we get a chance. And if Charles is home, I can write you here, so we don’t have to rely on Nancy to act as go-between.’

‘It’s perfect.’

He grinned lopsidedly. ‘With a few minor exceptions. We can fix it up, make it nice, though it’s not easy with everything in short supply. The landlady at the pub lent me a whole lot of things to get it cleaned up yesterday.’

She left the circle of his arms and went over to the bed, running her fingers wonderingly along its tarnished rail. ‘Where did you get the furniture?’

‘All part of the sale. The lady who lived here left in the Blitz to go work as a housekeeper in Dorset. She got a furnished house with the job so she left it all here. No sheets though. That’s why I asked you to bring some.’

‘I didn’t forget. They’re in my suitcase.’

He came to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her neck, below her ear.

‘How about we put them on now?’

*

Later they dressed again and, their appetites awoken, Dan went out to queue up for fish and chips from the shop on the high street. Left alone, with the evening sunlight sloping through the open back door Stella felt like a little girl playing house. She wiped down the gateleg table beneath the window of the back room and folded out one of its leaves, then went out into the tangled jungle of garden in the hope of finding some flowers to put into the milk bottle that had been left on the kitchen windowsill.

It was immediately obvious why the rose perfume upstairs was so strong: a rambling plant massed with yellow blooms smothered the back of the house, the weight of the flowers pulling it away from the wall. Bees browsed in the wildflowers that had sprung up in the tiny patch of meadow that must once have been a lawned garden. Thistledown drifted on the still, evening air, like sunlit summer snow.

She snapped off stems of dandelions and buttercups and some delicate, papery poppies that she found beside the hedge. Returning to the kitchen she looked wistfully at the roses, but their stems were too thorny and tough to pick with her bare hands. Instead she leaned against the windowsill and breathed in their perfume. She held her breath, as if by doing so she could preserve the perfect, pure happiness of the moment inside herself, forever.

The sound of his key in the front door took her back into the kitchen, blinking in the sudden gloom. He was bearing greasy newspaper-wrapped parcels which they ate, in the end, sitting cross-legged at either end of the deep horsehair sofa in the front room, with the milk bottle vase of flowers in front of them on the mantelpiece.

Shadows gathered in the corners of the room and it grew cooler. There were no curtains at the windows so they couldn’t switch on the light. Lying against his chest, Stella was glad.

‘How did you find this place?’

‘Same way I found you. By chance, or fate, or because it was all part of some great plan that was written in the stars. Buying it was a little more of a problem though. Luckily the lady who owned it was real nice. She moved in here as a young bride in the summer of 1914 and lived here with her husband until he went away to war. And then he got killed and she lived here by herself until the Luftwaffe came along and scared the daylights out of her. She answered an advertisement for a housekeeper at some big old house in the country and ended up marrying the guy she was working for. She’s no spring chicken but she’s one serious romantic. She was happy to think of the house being filled with love again.’

A shiver had run down Stella’s spine at the thought of the young bride who’d so quickly become a young widow. To banish her unease she stretched up and kissed him, slowly and deeply. ‘In that case, we mustn’t let her down,’ she murmured against his lips.

Then she took his hand and led him up the darkling stairs to the bedroom.

They woke the next morning to the sound of birdsong and the sun streaming across the rumpled sheet. Being used to the blackout it felt astonishingly bright and precious, like liquid gold. They lay together, drifting gently into wakefulness.

‘I guess today we have to go shopping.’

She turned her head to kiss his bare chest. ‘There’s bread, and a tin of Spam. And since you cleverly managed to get tea and milk I think we have everything we need . . .’

He laughed throatily. ‘Except cups to drink it from. And plates, and knives and forks, and a pan to make fried eggs for breakfast.’

‘We don’t have any eggs.’

She said it happily, as if that settled the matter. He laughed again. ‘I thought women were supposed to love picking out new stuff?’

‘I love being with you more.’

‘You will be with me.’

‘But not like this.’ She sat up and stretched her spine luxuriously, then went to the door, naked, aware of his eyes following her.

‘Point taken.’

The stone-floored bathroom at the end of the kitchen was as cool as a cave. There was no mirror so she couldn’t see her face, but she pressed her fingers over her cheekbone experimentally and found that it felt better. She felt better inside too. She’d been worried that Charles had damaged her, that what he’d done to her would sour the sweetness of how it was with Dan, but it hadn’t. A tingle of warmth spread across her skin as she remembered last night. It really hadn’t.

She was brushing her teeth at the tiny basin in the corner when there was a banging on the front door. Her heart gave an uneven thud; thinking about Charles had made her jumpy. She heard Dan’s feet on the stairs and peered cautiously around the door to see him hastily fastening his trousers before he went to open the door.

‘Morning sir.’ The voice reached her faintly; cheery, impersonal, unfamiliar. ‘Delivery for you.’

Emerging from the bathroom once she’d heard the front door close again, Stella saw that he was carrying an enormous wooden crate, almost the size of a tea chest. ‘For us? Who on earth is it from?’

‘The guy who delivered it had
F. Carter, Dorset
painted on the side of his wagon.’

‘Mrs Nichols? The lady who lived here? What would she be sending to us?’

‘Let’s take it upstairs to find out.’

Stella climbed back onto the bed and hugged her knees as she watched Dan lever off the lid. There, lying on the packing straw, was a note. He handed it to her and she read it out with increasing wonder.

My dear Lieutenant Rosinski,

I do hope you won’t be offended, but after we spoke on the telephone earlier it occurred to me that you might be in need of all sorts of household items as you set up your new home with your wife . . .

Stella paused and raised an eyebrow. ‘Your wife?’

He looked sheepish. ‘I couldn’t exactly tell her you were someone else’s wife, could I?’

Apart from the saucepans and blankets I donated to the local WVS and some items of sentimental value, many of the things I brought with me when I moved from Greenfields Lane were still packed away in the cases they came in, as I have no need of them here. I thought they might be of use to you in a time when such things are hard to come by.

‘The little beauty . . .’ From beneath the layers of straw Dan lifted a green lustreware teapot and four cups and saucers. These were followed by four plates patterned with ivy and a bundle of bone-handled cutlery, tied up with string. A small milk jug bearing the legend ‘A Present from Margate’ emerged next, then a little mirror with an oak frame that crossed at the corners, and a pressed glass cake stand. At the bottom of the crate was a chipped enamel milk pan and a frying pan, cheap and barnacled with use, but worth a price beyond rubies. Dan held it aloft like a trophy, grinning.

Stella read on, incredulous at such generosity.

I hope you will accept them as a house-warming gift and indulge a foolish woman who is getting sentimental with the advancing years. It pleases me to think of these things being used once more in that dear house, and I wish you all the happiness that I enjoyed there.

Kindest Regards

Violet Nichols.

P.S. I have included a little present from my ‘girls’ – who are yet another unexpected joy of my new life in the country. I hope it has survived the journey!

They looked at each other, mystified and a little overwhelmed.

‘Her girls?’

‘There’s nothing else in here . . .’ Dan was looking in the crate, sifting through the packing straw and lifting it out to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. It had spilled out onto the bedroom floor and drifts of it lay across the bed, giving the room a rustic feel. Dan had straw in his hair, and there was straw sticking out of the spout of the teapot. Idly reaching to remove it Stella gave a gasp of surprise.