Letters to the Lost (3 page)

But it was too late now. The letter had been torn open and couldn’t be resealed. The plea sent out from across the world by a dying man had been heard, however inadvertently, by her and no one else. And so now she had a choice: to ignore it, or to make some attempt to find Mrs S. Thorne. Whoever she might be.

2

London, August 1942

No one expected a wartime wedding to be lavish, but the parish ladies had done their Reverend proud.

The austere brick interior of St Crispin’s was decked with dahlias, phlox and chrysanthemums garnered from tired August gardens, and across the road in the church hall a spread of bloater paste sandwiches, Spam rolls and Marjorie Walsh’s inevitable scones had been lovingly laid out around the one-tier cake. King’s Oak was a small suburb of North London, mostly made up of Victorian terraces with tiny brick-paved yards at the back, and neat pairs of semidetached houses built after the last war. It certainly wasn’t a rich parish, but no one could say it wasn’t a generous one. Coupons had been swapped and rations pooled, and the resulting feast was a tribute to the resourcefulness of the St Crispin’s parishioners, and the high regard in which they held their vicar.

He stood at the front of the church, not facing them as he usually did, but with his head bent in private conversation with God. There was something vulnerable, Ada Broughton thought from her usual place in the third-row pew, about the pinkness of his neck above his collar, and something rather impressive about his solitary communion with the Lord. He wasn’t a particularly young man – the difference in years between him and his bride had been much muttered about during meetings of the Mothers’ Union and the Hospital Supplies Committee – but his bookish, undernourished appearance gave an impression of youth, and inspired in his lady parishioners (in the days before rationing, at least) an urge to bake him suet puddings and individual cottage pies with the leftovers from the Sunday roast.

They’d all had him down as a confirmed bachelor and his engagement to young Stella Holland had come as quite a surprise. In fact, as Marjorie Walsh sounded a strident chord on the organ announcing the arrival of the bride, Ada saw his head snap upwards and his eyes widen, as if he too had been caught off-guard by this turn of events. His expression, as he looked at his best man beside him, was almost one of panic, poor lamb.

Ah, but the bride was a picture. Looking over her shoulder, Ada felt her eyes prickle and her bosom swell beneath her best pre-war dress. Slender as a willow, her narrow shoulders held very straight, her face pale behind the mist of her veil, little Stella looked like Princess Elizabeth herself rather than a girl from the Poor School. The bridal gown was another collaborative effort, donated by Dot Wilkins (who’d worn it in 1919 when her Arthur had recovered enough from the gas to rasp ‘I do’) and altered by the Ladies’ Sewing Circle. They’d stopped making field dressings for an entire month while they updated the style and took in all the seams to fit Stella’s tiny frame, which was currently further dwarfed by the solid tweed-clad figure of Phyllis Birch walking beside her, in lieu of a father. But it was Stella who drew everyone’s gaze. None of them had ever dreamed that the mouldy old lace dress could be transformed into this vision of loveliness. Ada dabbed a tear and allowed herself a moment of maternal pride. In the absence of the girl’s mother she didn’t feel she was overreaching herself too much.

Her expression soured a little as it came to rest on Nancy Price, walking behind the bride. Her dress was of ice blue satin, which had looked smashing on Ethel Collins’s daughter when she’d been a bridesmaid in the summer of ’39, but less so on Nancy. The colour went well with her bottle-blonde hair, but she inhabited the demure garment with an attitude of secret amusement, as if the puff-sleeves and modest sweetheart neckline were somehow ridiculous. Even doing something as simple as walking down the aisle, Nancy managed to make herself look faintly unrespectable. The two girls really were chalk and cheese – it was a wonder they were such good friends, though maybe having no family and being brought up in one of those places made you cling to whatever comfort you could find. Ada hoped that now Stella was going to be Mrs Charles Thorne and a vicar’s wife, she’d grow out of the unsuitable friendship.

Marjorie speeded up the tempo of the wedding march as the bride approached her waiting groom. Shafts of sunlight poured over their bent heads, filled with dust motes like fine, golden celestial confetti. Ada put aside all other thoughts and settled down to enjoy the vows.

Charles’s first name was actually Maurice; until she heard the vicar saying it, Stella hadn’t known that. Maurice Charles Thorne. It seemed so strange and so funny that she couldn’t focus on anything else as she repeated her vows, and afterwards she had no recollection at all of promising to love and honour and obey. She supposed she must have done, because there was the shiny gold band on her finger – just a thin one, which was all they could get – and people were kissing her on the cheek and slapping Charles on the back and congratulating them both on being husband and wife.

Wife
. Standing outside the church, her arm tucked through Charles’s as Fred Collins adjusted his camera, she hugged the word to herself and felt something expand and glow inside her chest, like an ember unfurling. Wife meant security; a proper home filled with your own things, not a narrow strip in a dormitory surrounded by the snifflings and mutterings of twenty other girls. She thought of the wedding presents displayed on the dining-room table in the Vicarage – a china tea set patterned with roses from an aunt of Charles’s, a crystal rose bowl from Miss Birch and an embroidered dressing-table set from the girls at Woodhill School – and her smile widened, just as the flashbulb exploded.

The church hall looked lovely. The damp-stained corners were hidden by Union Jack bunting, hoarded since the armistice, which lent the drab green interior a holiday atmosphere. A banner, painted on a frayed bedsheet, hung over the buffet table, bearing the words ‘The Happy Couple’.

And everyone had been so kind. Even Charles’s parents, conspicuously smart and decked in brittle smiles, had kissed the air beside each of her cheeks and pronounced themselves delighted. It was no secret that they would have much preferred their son to marry a girl from the tennis club in Dorking, who could make up a four on Lillian’s bridge afternoons and converse with her friends in the right sort of accent, but Stella was grateful to them for keeping up the pretence.

‘Such a pretty dress!’ Lillian Thorne exclaimed brightly, standing back to look Stella up and down. ‘Did you make it yourself? It looks terribly professional.’

‘It belonged to one of the ladies in the parish. The sewing circle altered it for me.’

‘Really? Oh, gosh, you should have said – you could have had mine! It was a Hartnell: cost a small fortune, and now it’s just squashed into a trunk in the attic. If I’d known you were in need of one I’d have dug it out.’

The offer would have been kind, but since it came about three months too late Stella wasn’t sure how to respond. Unperturbed, Lillian ploughed airily on. ‘What a sweet bouquet too – though it looks like it could do with a drink.’

Stella looked down at the roses wilting in her hand. Lillian was right. They were tea roses of the old-fashioned kind – donated with great pride and ceremony by Alf Broughton from the one bush in his tiny patch of garden that he had refused to give up to rows of sprouts and potatoes – but they were already beginning to collapse. Stella remembered the roses in Lillian’s garden in Dorking, which were as stiff and immaculate as she was, and realized that the compliment was as barbed as their stems.

‘It’s not the only one,’ Roger Thorne muttered, looking irritably across the room to where Alf was cheerfully dispensing bottles of stout and glasses of lemonade from a makeshift bar by the kitchen hatch. Mr Thorne had somehow managed to lay his hands on a case of champagne, but it was still underneath the trestle. The people of King’s Oak didn’t go in much for fancy stuff like that, and Alf – a stout man in every sense – wasn’t up to the engineering feat required to open a bottle.

Stella took a sip of her lemonade, aware of the dangers that lurked like Atlantic mines beneath the surface of the conversation. ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ Charles had said curtly, staring out of the train window on the way home from their one visit to Dorking. They’d never understood him, he explained. They were baffled by his calling, and annoyed that he hadn’t followed the path that had been prepared for him into Roger’s accountancy firm. Stella had sensed a deep hurt, and her heart had ached for him. Family dynamics were a mystery to her, but once they were married they would build their own family and Charles, at its centre, would be healed by her understanding and the huge stores of love she had inside, just waiting to be given.

‘Where is Charles?’ Lillian asked testily, as if reading her mind. ‘I’ve hardly spoken a word to him.’

That makes two of us, thought Stella, following Lillian’s gaze as it roamed the hall. It was quite crowded now, with members of the St Crispin’s parish who hadn’t bothered coming to the church service slipping in to grab a free bite to eat. Stella barely knew most of them, but felt a beat of affection and relief at the sight of Nancy,incongruously dressed in blue satin and smoking a cigarette, like a film starlet captured in
Picture Post
relaxing backstage between scenes. There was no sign of Charles inside, but a movement in the yard outside caught her eye.

‘He’s out there, talking to Peter.’

Peter Underwood was Charles’s best man. A friend from his days at theological college, he was now the vicar of a small parish in Dorset. It was the first time Stella had met him, though Charles talked about him a lot. From the tone of these comments Stella had expected someone altogether more charismatic than the slight, sallow-skinned, cynical young man whose eyes were owlish behind his spectacles.

‘Well he shouldn’t be,’ Lillian snapped. ‘He should be in here, talking to his guests with his new wife.’

That at least was something they could agree on.

‘I’ll go and have a word,’ said Roger, excusing himself with a note of relief. ‘The buffet has almost disappeared. Surely it must be time for the speeches?’

Miss Birch was the first person to climb the rickety steps to the small stage. As she cleared her throat in that emphatic way that demanded silence Stella had such a vivid sense of déjà-vu that she was surprised to look down and see Mrs Wilkins’s white lace rather than her dark green school pinafore.

‘It is my great pleasure and privilege to stand before you on this joyful occasion and say a few words on behalf of the new Mrs Thorne,’ Miss Birch said in her Assembly Voice, and a ripple of applause went through the hall. ‘Stella is one of the great successes of Woodhill School, and I had no hesitation in putting her forward for the position at the Vicarage when Reverend Thorne found himself in need of a housekeeper. Little did I suspect that I wasn’t only helping fill a domestic breach,’ (here her severe features took on a most uncharacteristically playful look) ‘but playing cupid too. As the months progressed it was not only the Vicarage hearth that was warmed, but the heart of its incumbent too!’

Heads turned in Stella’s direction and a collective ‘ahh’ echoed around the assembled crowd, as if they were watching a display of fireworks. Her face burned. ‘The qualities that made her such a valuable member of Woodhill – her kindness and diligence, her cheerful outlook on life and her faithfulness and loyalty – will also make her a wonderful vicar’s wife,’ Miss Birch went on. Stella wished she still had the lace veil to hide behind. Or Charles, but he was standing with Peter Underwood beside the stage. Suddenly she glimpsed Nancy, who rolled her eyes and pulled a face, and she felt better.

‘I wish the Reverend and Mrs Thorne every happiness in their life together. May it be long and full, unblighted by this blasted war, and blessed with the joy of children,’ Miss Birch concluded, in the ringing tone she used when announcing the next hymn. ‘Do please join me in a toast to the happy couple – the bride and groom!’

Mr Thorne’s champagne was still in its box beneath the trestle, so the bride and groom were dutifully toasted in stout and lemonade, or – in the case of the groom’s parents and Dr Walsh – with nothing at all. Charles mounted the steps to fill the place vacated by Miss Birch.

Stella loved to hear him speak. During the months of their engagement she had sat in a side pew at St Crispin’s on Sunday mornings while he delivered his sermon and her blood had secretly thrilled. There was something remote and romantic about him then, standing before the altar in the cavernous church or reading from the vast Bible in the pulpit. However, it didn’t quite translate to the church hall. The solemnity and passion with which he preached deserted him as he stood between the limp plush curtains and stammered his thanks to Miss Birch, then went on to deflate her claim that she had brought Stella and himself together, giving the credit to God instead.

‘Many times I questioned Him about His purpose – a lovely young wife wasn’t something I had expected to find in my ministry at St Crispin’s – but it’s not unusual for God to have to put things right in front of my nose before I notice them.’ He smiled his shy, boyish smile and the ladies of his congregation sighed. ‘That only left me with the task of convincing Stella!’

Everyone laughed indulgently, but Stella’s face felt stiff with smiling. The halting progress of their awkward courtship was the last thing she wanted to be reminded of today, when at last they could start life properly as man and wife.

Secretly Stella wasn’t entirely sure that she believed in God, but she had certainly felt His presence, like a disapproving chaperone, whenever she and Charles had been alone together since their engagement. Charles had kissed her for the first time on the evening he’d asked her to marry him, but it had been a hurried, dry thing that carried with it a sense of relief rather than longing, and a far cry from the lingering, melting kisses she and Nancy witnessed in the Picture House on a Saturday afternoon (both on the screen and in the back row). Stella always left the cinema with a sense of restless yearning, weighted down with all the love she longed to give. Now that there was no extra-marital sin to police, she hoped God might leave them in peace to get on with it.