Letters to the Lost (34 page)

She moved aside the envelope at the front of the box and showed him.
Mrs S. Thorne, The Vicarage, Church Road, King’s Oak, London.

‘So they are . . .’ Will said, surprised. ‘I didn’t even notice. So who is she, this Stella Thorne?’

She hesitated, like she was wrestling with some private dilemma, and then took a rapid little breath. ‘I don’t know yet. But I really need to find out.’

It was a relief, finally, to tell someone.

She tried to keep it brief, but was aware as the words came out of her in stop-start bursts that there were bits that sounded weird and made no sense. He didn’t stop her though. He’d sat down on the chair beside her bed and listened as it came spilling out. All of it: about Dodge and that last gig at the pub in Church End. About how he’d left the wad of money in the van and she’d seen it. Seen her chance. About how she’d run, and kept running until she found herself in a back road, looking at a house that had obviously been empty for years. About the letter from Dan Rosinski, marked ‘Personal and Urgent’.

‘It felt like fate. I know that sounds insane.’

He smiled. It was a kind of lopsided smile, bittersweet somehow, and it gave her a fluttering feeling in her chest. ‘Not to me it doesn’t, and I know all about insane.’ He flicked through the letters in the box, releasing a faint scent of age and damp that took her right back to the house. ‘So have you found out anything that’ll help you find her?’

‘Nothing yet. She was married right from the start, when they met. Her husband was a vicar – a chaplain in the army. He was away in North Africa when she met Dan. He was an American pilot.’

Will picked a letter from the box and scrutinized the address on the front. Its series of scribbled numbers and initials had meant nothing to her, but he seemed to be able to decipher them. ‘Palingthorpe, in Suffolk. He would have been with the US Eighth Army, flying B-17s on daylight bombing raids into occupied territory. Dangerous work. Not a great survival rate.’

‘But I know he did survive. He’s still alive now, in America – Maine, to be precise. What I don’t know is where she is, or what happened to them. They were in love. They wanted to be together when the war was over—’

Her chest heaved and cracked beneath the strain of talking and she was gripped by a fit of coughing. There was a jug of water and a glass on the locker beside the bed, but to get it she’d have to reach right over, and as the stupid hospital gown was fastened by ties at the back there was no way she was going to risk it. She coughed on, burying her face against her knees until she felt him beside her, gently touching her arm. He must have understood the issue and had come round the bed to get the glass for her. She took it and gulped gratefully.

‘Better?’

She nodded, fighting for breath. In the aftermath of a coughing fit she always felt like a rag doll that had been picked up and shaken by a dog, then dropped again. She was getting better, feeling stronger every day, but the coughing still ripped through her body like a tornado.

‘So, where had you got up to?’ he asked, gently. ‘With the letters?’

‘I’d read about three quarters of them, I think. Once I started I couldn’t stop. They didn’t mean to fall in love, but you can see it happening. At first I thought she was stringing him along, wanting a bit of excitement while her husband was away, but I know it wasn’t like that now. She seems to have been the only thing that kept him going. That’s why I don’t understand what could have happened.’

She slumped back on her bank of pillows and waited for him to say something dismissive or flippant about it just being a wartime fling. She was worn out, with coughing and talking, and felt suddenly exposed – not just by the stupid hospital gown, but by having shared the story of the letters. Dan and Stella were hers; she’d come to care about them and – in that strange time when fever had blurred the boundaries between day and night, waking and dreaming, reality and imagination – she’d felt she inhabited their world. She was afraid that now she’d opened it up to the brisk breeze of normality, and the fragile layers of the past would be scattered forever.

Will Holt got to his feet. ‘I expect you’ve been dying to find out. Why don’t I go and get us a cup of tea while you read on?’

31 July ’43

Darling girl,

Today was insane. Crazy, like some kind of nineteen-hour nightmare. I’m still not sure I’m awake, because I can hear the engines in my head and my hands feel like they’re still clamped around the throttle and the control column. I need to sleep, but I need more to talk to you, even if it can only be on paper. Stella, I ’d give just about anything for a night with you now. Just to hold you and breathe in the scent of your hair would be enough.

Two more missions down. Four more to go. If I get through them you will marry me, won’t you? Somehow? I don’t care if it’s just the two of us standing in the ruins of St Clement Danes at dawn, just so long as you’ll promise to spend your life with me.

I love you Stella. Take good care of yourself for me.

D x

8 August ’43

Darling Stella

Sorry for the long silence, and for my last letter, which I have a feeling might have sounded kind of crazy. I didn’t know it at the time but when I wrote it I was right in the middle of coming down with the ’flu. It was the real deal – fever, hallucinations and aching so bad all over that I was sure I ’d been shot up and couldn’t remember it happening. When I came round in the hospital I thought the blonde nurse was German.

The worst thing is that the boys have finished their tour without me, but since they’ve also finished without Johnson and Harper I guess I’m the lucky one. Morgan and Adelman came to see me after their last mission. They smuggled in a bottle of bourbon and we managed to get disgustingly drunk before the nurse rumbled us and threw them out. If there’s one thing worse than having the ’flu, it’s having the ’flu with a crushing hangover, I can tell you that.

I’ve been stood down for ten days, and lying here hour after hour I can’t help thinking that if I hadn’t got sick I could be done by now. I could be in London, in the house in Greenfields Lane, with you. I think about you all the time, and it’s a bittersweet kind of pleasure. Bitter because it makes me miss you more, and sweet because – well, for obvious reasons.

I’m hoping to be passed fit for flying again in the next couple days, and will be assigned a new crew. That’ll be tough, but only four more missions and I’m done, and we can make a start on the rest of our lives. I don’t know what will happen, but we’ll always have a place to be together now, however and whenever.

Take care of yourself for me, darling girl.

Dan x

Jess was smiling as she finished reading; smiling because there it was – the first reference she’d found to the house in Greenfields Lane – and also in sympathy with Dan Rosinski and his ’flu. She knew how he’d felt, especially with the confusion. The weird thing was that while she’d been in the same situation it was him she’d been dreaming about. Him and Will, anyway; the two had become kind of interchangeable. She felt her cheeks heat up again remembering how he’d appeared through the fever’s fire and chaos and touched her face with his cool, gentle hands. The rest of the world had long since slipped out of focus and she wasn’t sure what was real and what was delirium, but she’d felt his strength and his kindness. And she’d known she could finally stop struggling because he was there, and she was safe.

She must remember to say thank you. God, she wished she had a mirror – she probably looked all kinds of hideous. Gingerly she altered her position in the bed, taking care not to knock the tube in her hand as she tried to tug the ugly gown into some kind of arrangement where it didn’t look like a paper sack. She turned towards the window again. The outside world was nothing but a pewter grey background in which the brightly lit ward was reflected, and she was just pulling her fingers through her lank, greasy, sawn-off hair when she caught sight of him coming back. She turned round quickly, her heart giving an odd little skip.

He was carrying a tray on which were two cardboard cups and a piece of fruit cake wrapped in cellophane. He had nice hands, she noticed as he put one cup down on her locker, then pushed back the hair that had fallen over his forehead. Nice hair too. And an incredible smile.

‘The cake looks fairly sad, but there wasn’t much else and I thought you might be hungry.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and the tightness in her chest was nothing to do with pneumonia.

26

1943

‘Are you going to eat that?’ Nancy eyed the dried piece of Genoa cake that Stella was absent-mindedly turning to crumbs. ‘Only, if you’re not, I will. I’m starving.’

Stella pushed the plate across the table. She’d only ordered the cake because she’d sensed the disapproval of the Nippy when she’d only asked for tea; Nancy had been late and, it being a Saturday, there were lots of other people waiting for tables. She had no appetite lately – the worry, she supposed. Dan was out of hospital now and back on duty and every day she woke up with a sick feeling in her stomach, knowing that he could be in the sky and heading for the heart of Germany, all the guns of the enemy ranged against him.

Across the table Nancy polished off the cake and took a packet of expensive-looking cigarettes from her handbag. Lighting one, she settled herself back in her seat. ‘My feet are killing me,’ she said, crossing her legs and drawing attention to her high-heeled cream leather shoes. She’d given up the salon and, funded by Len, devoted her days to the pursuit of beauty, though it didn’t seem to bring her much satisfaction. ‘I’ve already been all round Debenham and Freebody looking for a dress but honestly, I wouldn’t scrub the floors in the flimsy old rags they’re selling in there. I want something stunning. Something sophisticated.’

‘Have you got coupons?’

‘Oh yes, loads.’ Nancy waved her cigarette dismissively. ‘Len can always lay his hands on them. It’s finding something worth spending them on that’s the problem. I need nylons as well,’ she sighed, extending her leg and picking at a run with scarlet-tipped fingers. ‘Don’t suppose there’ll be any of those to be had in the shops for love, money nor coupons.’ She looked up at Stella with sudden interest. ‘Here, don’t suppose you’ve got any lying around, from your Yank . . . ?’

‘I’ve got the packet he gave me in Cambridge, but they’ve been worn a good few times. They’re not bad though – you can borrow them if you like.’

Nancy’s face fell again. Being with Len had spoiled her for second-hand. ‘Thanks all the same.’ She exhaled a plume of smoke with an edge of irritation. ‘You’d think he’d keep you well supplied with little treats like that, wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s not like they’re short, is it? Bit tight if you ask me.’ She shot Stella a sly glance. ‘Not giving them away to someone else, is he? One of them village girls he’s met at a dance on the base?’

Nancy always became sharp when thwarted, but since she’d been seeing Len it was as if any softness she’d once had had been stamped out, or hidden beneath the black-market silk blouses and the mysteriously acquired trench coat. Anger flared through Stella’s veins like a flash fire, and she set her cup down in the saucer very carefully. ‘He gives me lots of things,’ she said quietly. ‘More than I ever dreamed I’d have.’

‘Yes, well, there’s a war on. Fancy promises of undying love don’t keep you warm and looking presentable, do they? Give me a few pairs of nylons and a decent lipstick any day.’

‘He’s given me more than promises.’

‘Oh yes? Got a ring, have you?’ Nancy looked at her with withering pity. ‘Stella, angel, you’re too nice for this world. I don’t want to sound cruel, but I don’t want to stand by and see you get hurt neither, because you can bet as soon as he’s flown his last mission he’ll be off into the wide blue yonder and he won’t look back. I’m not saying it hasn’t meant something, but let’s face it, it ain’t going to last. A wartime romance, that’s what it is. God knows, we need a bit of romance. It’s about the only thing that’s in plentiful supply these days.’

Coming to the end of this speech, Nancy took another drag on her cigarette and stared moodily out of the window. It was a bright September afternoon, but cold enough for people to have unearthed threadbare coats from the backs of wardrobes. The year was turning.

‘A house,’ Stella said softly, almost to herself. ‘He bought me a house.’

It was as if the words stopped time for a second. Nancy froze, and when she moved again her face and voice were curiously blank.

‘A house?’ She tapped her cigarette over the cheap tin ashtray on the table and gave an abrupt little laugh. ‘Where?’

‘Church End. It’s tiny and old and hidden away on a little back lane. I love it.’

She said the last bit almost defensively. Nancy ignored it. ‘Blimey. So you’re leaving the Rev then?’

Stella nodded and swallowed the last of her tea. It was cold and almost made her gag. ‘You were right. I should never have married him. I . . . I had no idea. About anything.’

‘So when are you going to tell him?’

‘I don’t know.’ A wave of inexpressible weariness crashed over Stella, as it did so often these days. ‘It’s hard to find a good moment when he’s hundreds of miles away in Italy. It’s not the kind of thing I can put in a letter, sandwiched between news of the runner bean glut and Reverend Stokes’s latest sermon. Maybe I’ll even have to wait until the war’s over: I’ve been listening to the wireless – it seems we’re making proper progress so it surely can’t be too long. In many ways I think he’ll be relieved. I know appearances are important to him, but he knows as well as I do that the marriage was a mistake.’

Nancy’s pencilled eyebrows shot up, though whether her scepticism was directed at the idea of the war, or Stella’s marriage ending wasn’t clear. ‘What about the God thing? Marriage vows made in church being unbreakable and all that?’