Letters to the Lost (16 page)

13 March 1943

Dear Lieutenant Rosinski

Thank you for your letter. I must admit it was a surprise to receive it, and especially to hear that you’d found the watch. I truly had given up hope of ever getting it back and am most grateful to you.

I also owe you an apology. Perhaps you guessed that the name and address I gave you that morning were not my own, but belonged to a trusted friend. Forgive me, I acted in haste and didn’t mean to deceive.

Things she wanted to say flitted in half-formed sentences through her head, but even without writing them down she knew that they sounded too personal. Too encouraging. She wanted to ask him how he was and to say that she’d been thinking of him, hoping that he was safe – or as safe as anyone could be in the skies above Germany, being shot at by enemy fire. But while she could tell herself that making contact with him wasn’t breaching Charles’s trust, she knew that the letter had to be business-like. Brisk. Dragging her gaze from the blustery garden she looked down at the paper again and began to write, quickly.

The post service has suffered the effects of the war as much as anything else. It might be best if I was to collect the watch from you in person, if you expect to be in London again in the coming weeks, and if it wouldn’t put you to too much trouble. It would, of course, be perfectly all right for you to write to me at this address to let me know if this is acceptable to you, and when and where we might meet.

In the meantime, best wishes and sincere thanks

Stella Thorne (Mrs).

Oh dear, was that too brisk? She stared at the
Mrs
, which now seemed prissy and reproachful. She’d wanted to make things clear before they met again, so there could be no room for misunderstanding, but did she sound like she was showing off, putting him in his place? She should probably write the letter again and leave it out, but her first attempt was already screwed up in the grate, and paper was so scarce . . . Hastily she tore it from the pad and folded it in half, then pushed it into an envelope and sealed it down.

Writing his name on the envelope felt curiously intimate.
2 Lt D. Rosinski.
A shiver went up her spine. But then it was freezing cold in the dining room, where the sun never penetrated and she’d been sitting for a long time. She got up and went in search of a stamp. Probably best to post it straight away before she lost her nerve.

‘Lovely day!’ Ada called out from her position at the garden fence, where she was talking to Marjorie Walsh. Stella smiled and waved, hoping to make a quick getaway, but the new warmth in the air had put Ada in the mood to hold court. ‘’Ere – come and see what Marjorie’s brought for Blossom!’

Feeling her smile stiffen, Stella crossed the street. Blossom had grown prodigiously in the last few weeks and presided over the Broughtons’ backyard like a mini-Empress, accepting the offerings of visitors with regal grace. Peering politely over the door of her sty, Stella saw that this morning she had her snout buried in a heap of dandelions, and when Ada scratched the top of her head she lifted it up to reveal two yellow flowers drooping from the corner of her mouth like Carmen’s rose.

‘Daft old girl,’ Ada clucked. ‘Ain’t you, eh? Daft old girl.’

‘You look very . . . bright this morning, Mrs Thorne,’ Marjorie Walsh said, studying her with a touch of suspicion. ‘Have you done something new to your hair?’

‘Oh – no, I don’t think so.’ Self-consciously Stella’s hand went to the scarf holding her hair back from her face, while in her mind she cast around for an escape. ‘I’d better—’

‘Got a bit of lipstick on, that’s it,’ Ada said approvingly. ‘Always makes you feel better, don’t it? I knew that night out was a good idea – you’ve had some colour in your cheeks since. It don’t do to sit around pining.’ She sniffed thoughtfully. ‘Marjorie and I was just talking about the Fete – not long now until Whitsun. Don’t it come around quickly? Don’t seem like a year since the last one. That was when Reverend Thorne announced you two was engaged, weren’t it?’

To Stella it seemed like much longer than a year, more like a lifetime. The Fete was a highpoint of the St Crispin’s calendar; a meticulously planned event which was ostensibly all about raising money for good causes and bringing the community together. After one particularly bruising meeting Charles had confessed to Stella that it was just as much about the ladies of the parish vying for control of the tea urn, and that it would be easier to get a place in the War Cabinet than on the St Crispin’s Fete committee. The days when he’d confided in her seemed very far off indeed.

‘The first committee meeting’s on Thursday week,’ Ada said. ‘Why don’t you come along? Do you good to keep occupied.’

The look of stifled alarm Marjorie directed at Ada wasn’t lost on Stella, who was a little alarmed herself. As the doctor’s wife, Marjorie Walsh liked to think she was at the centre of parish life but also a little above its other inhabitants, and Stella recognized that Marjorie viewed her as a potential rival.

‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said hastily, ‘but I’m sure you don’t need my help. The fete is always so perfectly organized. A well-oiled machine, Charles calls it. I’m sure the last thing you need is a spare part.’

‘Well . . .’ Marjorie said, with obvious relief.

‘Nonsense. A bit of new blood is just what we need. Well-oiled machine it might be, but the war’s put a right old spoke in the wheels. No coconuts for the coconut shy, no sweets for Guess the Number of Sweets in the Jar . . . We was just saying we need some new ideas, wasn’t we, Marjorie?’

‘Well . . .’ Marjorie said again, relief turning to dismay.

‘It’s very kind of you to ask me. I’ll have a think and see if I can come up with any ideas, though I’m sure it’ll be nothing that you expert ladies haven’t thought of already.’ Hoping that was an answer that would cause no offence to either party, Stella began to move away. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me I suppose I’d better get this in the post.’

‘Ahh,’ Ada folded her arms across her floral bosom and beamed. ‘Letter for Reverend Thorne, is it?’

‘Y-yes. Yes, that’s right.’

‘Well, we won’t keep you then, love, you get on and catch the post. And don’t forget to kiss the back before you drop it in the box – that’s what I always used to do to the letters I sent Alf in the last one. Convinced it would bring him luck, I was – and look where he is now; dozing in the armchair indoors, so there must be something in it!’

Stella laughed politely as she made her escape, the letter clasped firmly in her hand, address-side carefully averted.

20 April ’43

Dear Stella

I have a three-day leave pass for the weekend. I’ll be waiting for you in Trafalgar Square on Friday at noon, to return your watch to you. I’m afraid I have no idea where I’ll be staying so can’t give you a contact address in the event that this time doesn’t suit you. I’ll wait for a half hour and if you don’t come I guess I’ll just have to trust the watch to the British postal service.

Hope to see you,

Dan Rosinski

*

The letter folded into itself again, along its old creases. The paper was brittle and yellowed with age, but the ink inside was unfaded. Jess guessed it hadn’t been exposed to the light in almost seventy years.

And it was the same handwriting, of course. Stronger and surer, but instantly recognizable from the letter still tucked into the pocket of the trench coat. Dan Rosinski’s writing, on another letter to Mrs Thorne.

Stella. That was her name, and she lived at the Vicarage in King’s Oak. Where was that? Jess’s knowledge of London was sketchy, but she had a feeling it was on the outskirts somewhere, in the suburbs. She slid the letter reverently back into its age-spotted envelope and turned it over in her hands. Her chest felt tight with emotions she couldn’t quite identify. Astonishment, perhaps. Excitement. Fragments of fact whirled in her head and she tried to catch hold of them, to pin them down in the right place.

The first envelope was addressed to Miss N. Price – Nancy. She was Stella’s friend and she’d been in on the whole thing from the start, providing a front for Stella because she was already married. And if this was Miss Price’s house, Stella must have given the letters to her at some point so her husband didn’t find them.

Jess ran her thumb along the tops of the envelopes in the box, flicking through them so that she could tell at a glance that they were all addressed in the same hand. There were so many. She put the one she held back into the box, at the front from where she’d taken it out, and checked the date stamped in the circular postmark on the next envelope. May 1943. Whoever had put them there had been careful to make sure they were all in order.

The bed creaked and sagged as she sat back and crossed her legs, staring at the box in the centre of the pink counterpane. She felt lightheaded. In it lay the key to finding out who Stella Thorne was, and where she might be now. In it lay the secret of why Dan Rosinski wanted so much to find her, and the story of a love affair that had happened the best part of a century ago.

The All Saints Senior Citizens’ Lunch Club was forgotten. With a shaking hand she slid out the next envelope.

12

1943

The day was blue and full of noise and sunshine. Standing at the edge of Trafalgar Square, Dan felt oddly small, like one of the toy soldiers he used to play with when he was a kid. The guys at the base never stopped saying how tiny England was – you could fit it four times over into Texas, they said – but the buildings around him seemed huge, used as he was to flat fields and squat corrugated iron huts like tin cans cut in half, and looking down on German cities from thirty thousand feet.

This time yesterday they’d been flying over Wilhelmshaven, dropping bombs on the submarine yards there. A week ago it had been Bremen. Only a week? The spaces in his head expanded and contracted, trying to accommodate the horror of the memory: enemy fighters appearing out of the cloud like a swarm of bees, fifteen bombers and their entire crews lost. He rubbed his fingers against his forehead, as if he could erase it.

Wearily he wondered if she’d come, or if she’d send her friend. Either way, it didn’t matter. Across the square on the steps of the National Gallery a queue was forming for the lunchtime concert, and he thought wistfully of a still hour with Bach to hush the roar inside him. He checked his watch. Looking up again, he saw her.

She was wearing a dress the same green as the new leaves on the trees at the edge of the square, threading her way through the shifting sea of people. She hadn’t spotted him, and so for a moment he watched her, adjusting the reality of her to the girl in his photograph, kneeling in the wrecked church. She looked different now. More buttoned-up. A married woman, not a fragile girl. He was aware of distant disappointment.

He went towards her, unhurriedly, and in the second that she noticed him he saw her falter. She stopped walking, so that people had to step around her.

‘Hi.’

‘Hello.’

‘I wasn’t sure you’d come. I mean, I wondered if you might send your friend. Nancy.’

He said it because it was something to say to breach that first awkward moment, but almost instantly regretted it in case it made their meeting seem somehow illicit, or more meaningful than it was. She shook her head and her glossy curls danced, the breeze catching at one and flicking it across her face. Carefully she tucked it back behind her ear.

‘I wanted to see you myself, to say thank you for finding the watch.’

It was busy and people, hurrying in their lunch hour, were having to alter their course to move around them. A bespectacled man in a suit narrowly avoided bumping into her as he stepped aside to make room for a couple of ATS girls and a pigeon browsing for sandwich crumbs. Dan took her arm and drew her gently towards him, out of the way. He’d put the watch in an envelope with her address on, so that if he hadn’t made it back from a mission there was still a good chance it would find its way to her. He took it from the inside pocket of his tunic now, and gave it to her.

‘Here – safely delivered. You might want to open it up and check if it’s the right one, although there’s not a lot I can do about it if it isn’t.
S.T. 1942
, right?’

‘Yes. My parents-in-law gave it to me for Christmas.’ Relief and perhaps gratitude had melted a little of her stiffness. They began to walk, past the fountains, towards the National Gallery. ‘Did you find it in the church?’

He barely missed a beat, dismissing the memory of the leering airman. ‘Yep. Right where you were looking. I don’t know how you missed it.’

They reached the bottom of the steps, and stopped. At the top, the line of people going into the gallery was inching forwards. There was a frozen little pause, in which he searched his mind for some polite way of saying goodbye and came up with nothing. Life on a bomb group base and extreme fatigue had put him out of practice with social graces. He cleared his throat. ‘I thought I might see the lunchtime concert in the gallery there. Myra Hess – I’ve always wanted to hear her play.’

She startled, like a horse about to bolt. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you . . . You must go. Thank you again for the watch.’

She was already backing away. In a second she would turn, and in two more she would be swallowed up by the crowd. His heart gave a sudden twist inside his chest, and his mouth opened to say words his brain hadn’t had time to process.

‘Look – if you’re not in a hurry – I mean, if you don’t have anything to get back for right away, why don’t you join me?’

They walked up the steps together, a little way apart, not speaking as they followed the slow tide of people. Not speaking out loud, anyway. Inside his own head Dan had plenty to say, all of it addressed to himself and heavily featuring the words ‘goddamn’, ‘fool’ and ‘mistake’.