Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase (2 page)

I have since read this letter again and again, and I still can’t make sense of it. At first I experienced the strange sensation of needing to sit down. So I did, on the squeaky footstool, and my hand trembled as I read slowly, trying to take in every word.

Dorothea Pietrykowski is my grandmother. Jan Pietrykowski was my grandfather, never known to me, never even known to my father. These are incontrovertible facts.

But this letter makes no sense.

Firstly, my grandparents were happily, if briefly, married, but in this letter he seems to declare that he cannot marry her. Secondly, it is dated 1941. Polish Squadron Leader Jan Pietrykowski, my grandfather, died defending London in the Blitz, in November 1940.

D
orothy Sinclair sweated in her wash house, where the air was clammy with steam. Moisture clung to her face as she wiped her forehead repeatedly with the back of her hand. Her headscarf had long ago slipped off and she hadn’t bothered stopping her work to re-knot it, so her hair stuck to her face like the predatory tentacles of some lurking, living creature. It was important to keep busy on this day.

The copper in the dark, far corner hissed and bubbled like a cauldron, boiling Aggie and Nina’s clothes. Their uniforms, on a meagre ration, were muddied and stained almost daily. But Dorothy knew that presenting her girls with a pile of clean, starched and ironed laundry once a week was the least she could do. And despite the discomforts, she loved the work, in her own way. Washing frocks, stockings, undies, cardigans, the girls’ breeches and shirts and knickers, and all the laundry from up at the house, was more than just a household chore: it was now her living. Scrubbing, dipping, sweating, stirring, all of these had a rhythm of their own and gave meaning to her day. Turning the mangle over and over, as she did now, wringing the life out of clothes and sheets and tablecloths. And the ultimate pleasure, Dorothy’s favourite part of the day: pegging the clothes and linens out on the lines, and watching the sheets and cloths and pillowcases billowing and flapping like triumphant angel wings.

It was important to keep busy on this day. On … this … day.

She mustn’t think. About anything. Since
that
day, she had become adept at not thinking. Oftentimes now she thought in images. Language was partisan, ambiguous. She no longer trusted words. Yet she could not turn her back on them completely. She liked to write, so she tried to write. She wrote furtively, alone, in her notebook. She could not draw, so it had to be words. She hoped she was fashioning her ramblings into something like poetry. But it was hard to make sense, hard to sound pleasing.

She looked up from her laundry. She listened, and stared at the open door through which so little steam seemed to escape. Something was wrong. Since losing … since Sidney … she had developed a sixth sense, almost akin to smell. She ‘sniffed’ the air now. Letting Nina’s breeches hang loose and bedraggled either side of the mangle, she wiped her hands on her pinny and went to the door of her wash house. She looked up, but was dazzled by the sun, by the rows of white sheets and pillowcases and glittering tablecloths. She squinted up into the innocent blue sky. Small clouds sprinted across it, forgetful children racing home for tea.

Then she heard a drone, a low hum mixed with splutters and growls, like those of a threatened dog. Almost immediately she saw it, a Hurricane, weaving through the air. Surely descending too fast? She had never seen one coming in to land this quickly. Her heart began to thump, the blood thickened in her head, a tightness grabbed her around the throat. Was the pilot playing a game? Dorothy stared. No. This was not a game. The pilot was in trouble, and he was not the only one.

‘Please no,’ she said aloud, as she ran along the red-brick path. Hens scattered before her, cross and fussing and stupidly unaware of the new catastrophe looming above them. Dorothy reached her back gate, opened it and stepped out into the Long Acre, a field she liked to imagine was as immense as an Arabian desert. She had feared something like this would happen. She had seen the pilots, such young men and so reckless, looping the loop, showing off. It was only a matter of time, she always thought, and now that time had surely arrived. Why didn’t he bail out? The stricken Hurricane lurched towards her, listing wildly, like a broken pendulum. Dorothy looked back at her cottage in horror. She turned once more to the Hurricane and, with relief, she saw it veer away from her and her home, heading instead for the emptiness of the huge field. She walked mesmerised through the swaying ears of barley, scratchy-soft and clinging to her bare legs. It was a sensation she loved, usually, and felt herself in tune with.

The aeroplane was close now, close to its inevitable, barely controlled landing, close to the earth and to her and the swaying barley. It swooped over her head like a giant bird, its shadow providing her with momentary relief from the sun.

‘Dorothy!’

It was Aggie calling, from a long way away, Dorothy thought. She saw two fawn shirts quivering far across the Long Acre. The girls were running. Dorothy ignored Aggie’s shrill calls.

It was good. It was fitting, one year to the day since Sidney. Her poor lost Sidney. She should join him, really she should, and she could, and for a moment she marvelled that she had not thought of this before. She waded through the barley, determined. She marched towards the Hurricane as it gave itself up to the earth. A noise like thunder, a billow of choking black smoke, a sickening thud and the sound of all things smashing.

‘Dorothy? Pass the teacup to Mrs Lane, please. Dorothy, pass this one to Mrs Hubbard. And Dorothy? Hand round the plate of Genoa cake. Dorothy, do stand up straight. Goodness gracious, child.’

Dorothy hated the feel of her new white frock, stiffly starched and rubbing at her neck. Her mother, Mrs Ruth Honour, looked at her with her usual mixture of pride and disgust while Dorothy dutifully did as she was told and handed round the cake. Mrs Lane and Mrs Hubbard smiled kindly at her but Dorothy refused to look at them, knowing she would meet pity in their eyes. Pity she did not want, ever. She wondered, why did they pity her? It must have something to do with Mummy. Or, most probably, the death of her father. Mourning was over now, and mother and daughter were no longer in black. But Mummy was supposed to be lonely, wasn’t she?

Dorothy stood still, watching her mother and her mother’s gossiping friends nibble at their cake and sip their tea. The day was hot and her frock so uncomfortable; she longed to be outside, at the far end of the garden, under the gnarled apple tree, barefoot in the grass, singing songs to herself or writing in her head her great poetry, and dreaming about the past, the present and the future. In her imagination she had six siblings named Alice, Sarah, Peter, Gilbert, Henry and Victoria. She knew her brothers and sisters would be waiting for her now, in the cool grass, sitting in the tree, idly talking, teasing one another.

Watching the cake disappear into the garrulous mouths of the three women, Dorothy began to sway. Her throat tightened, her heart raced. She became aware of falling, falling, letting go and landing with a thud on the tea tray, rosebud cups and saucers smashing, tea spilling all over her new, stiff, white frock and all over the rug.

‘Dorothy? Dorothy? Oh, you clumsy girl!’

She felt something hot and sharp hit her in her stomach. Something else, hot and soft and wet, slapped her face. All around was choking smoke, black and thunderous.

‘Dorothy! Get back!’ Aggie’s voice was closer now.

Dorothy saw the girls floating on the other side of the burning wreckage, bright beacons in treacherous fog. ‘I want to join him,’ said Dorothy, but nobody heard her. She rubbed her neck. The new, white frock was too stiff, too rough.

Her mother stared at her.

Dorothy swayed. She fell, slowly, her white frock splattered with blood, her head spinning in a vortex of shame, and the sea of barley cushioning her fall.

It would always be said that Dorothy Sinclair was a heroine, trying to rescue the young Hurricane pilot who came down to meet his death in the Long Acre field on that hot afternoon in late May, 1940. A brave and courageous woman, never sparing a thought for her own safety. A woman to be held up as an example to others, the kind of woman Britain needed in those bleak and fearful times.

Dorothy knew better.

Still, she let people believe it of her, as it did no harm.

Mrs Compton came to visit her later that afternoon, after Dr Soames had been and dressed Dorothy’s wounds, which were sore but superficial: a cut across her stomach, and burns to her face. Fainting and falling down into the barley had doubtlessly saved her from worse injuries. She was a plucky lady, the doctor pronounced.

Mrs Compton had the unnerving ability to make Dorothy feel ashamed of herself. Did she somehow
know
? Dorothy thought that she might. Mrs Compton was a witch, Dorothy understood. She smiled weakly at the older woman and noticed a fine white hair protruding from a mole on her left cheek. Or thought she noticed. Perhaps there wasn’t even a mole? It was difficult for Dorothy to see people clearly, to see solidity, reality.

‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Compton, ‘what a state to get in!’

‘I just thought …’

‘I know, love. I know. Such a shame.’

‘They’ve been cleaning up out there all afternoon.’ Dorothy indicated the Long Acre and its swaying barley with a nod of her head.

‘They’re nearly finished now, though, I think. Don’t you worry about it. You did what you could. You did more than you should, perhaps.’

‘It was nothing.’

They sat in silence, sipping tea. The clock ticked on the range mantelpiece. Distant male voices drifted in through the open window, the voices of men clearing up the flesh and metal in the Long Acre. Had Mrs Compton remembered the part she played in the drama of a year ago? Was she aware of this saddest of anniversaries? Dorothy suspected not. Even more reason to distrust the woman. Even more reason to imagine her prone, with her head on a bloodied block, her ugly face contorted in fear, pleading for her life as Dorothy raised a huge axe, told her to—

‘He was Polish,’ said Mrs Compton.

‘I heard they had arrived. A couple of weeks ago, wasn’t it?’

‘It was. They do say the Poles hate the Nazis more than we do.’ Mrs Compton finished her tea with a small slurp. She put the cup and saucer on the table carefully and, folding her hands in her lap, she gazed at Dorothy. Dorothy shifted her own gaze to the window, watching male heads bob up and down, the hawthorn hedge obscuring their bodies. Dorothy thought about the Polish pilot, dead, burned and disembodied. Part of him had hit her in the face. She touched her cheek, and felt the dressing. She must look frightful.

‘And how are you keeping, nowadays?’ asked Mrs Compton, leaning forward.

‘I’m well,’ said Dorothy, standing to look out of the kitchen window, watching a hen scratch at the earth and pluck a worm from it. Dorothy, rational, contemplated the worm’s futile struggle.

‘Good. That’s good.’

Mrs Compton sounded doubtful. She glanced at the clock. She must go, she said. A young woman down at the next village was expecting her first baby and had been labouring since half past four that morning. Mrs Compton’s services may be needed by now.

Dorothy stared at her.

Mrs Compton moved towards the door and lifted the latch. She turned back to Dorothy, who remained motionless, her back to the window.

‘I’m sorry, Dorothy. I should have remembered. It takes time, you know. It
was
around this time last year, wasn’t it? If I remember rightly? Anytime you need to talk about it, I’ll be happy to listen. You don’t have to ignore it. I know we soldier on with life, but things can haunt us, Dorothy.’

Mrs Compton left then, closing the door, and Dorothy stared after her.

How dare that woman!

She picked up the teacup Mrs Compton had drained so unceremoniously and threw it at the door, hard and fast, before she even knew what she was doing, so that the noise of it shattering surprised her. In pain where the hot metal had ripped through her skin, she swept up the mess.

Alice, Sarah, Peter, Gilbert, Henry and Victoria lived and moved and breathed in Dorothy’s lonesome imaginings. The trouble was, she never really knew where she, Dorothy, belonged in this family of girls with flowing fair hair, strong sturdy boys playing with catapults and hoops, all six children with bright blue eyes and long lashes. They were blessed, she fantasised, with perfectly perfect childhoods. Was she the eldest sister? Austere, serious, strong, bossy? Or was she somewhere in the middle, forgotten, ignored and unimportant? Perhaps she was the baby, the odd one out among the girls with her long straggling brown hair, her green eyes. A cherub with thick little legs. Oh no, that would never do. Little Victoria was the youngest – she was the angel, with pink cheeks and fair curls and big blue eyes. Perhaps Dorothy was the second youngest? She was allowed to play with Victoria’s dolls, and the tiny black perambulator. Yes, that was where she fitted, with two big sisters to hug her when she fell, to pick her up and dust her down. Her brothers were of indeterminate age, but all were tall and raucous. They took no notice of Dorothy.

The first male who did take notice of her – many years after her imaginary brothers and sisters had slipped off the slope of her longing – married her. It was a short courtship; her disapproving mother had proclaimed, ‘If you marry that … man … I shall never speak to you again.’

Dorothy met him at a funeral in 1934. Her aunt Jane, an impressive eighty-two, had died during the summer. Dorothy had rarely met Aunt Jane, and not at all since childhood, knowing her only as her mother’s rebellious elder sister who had married beneath her and moved away from home, in Oxford, to the distant north which was Lincolnshire. Dorothy’s mother, on receiving the news of her sister’s death, had puckered her lips and frowned.

‘We must visit that fearful county. Please be sure to pack my fur, Dorothy. I do not intend catching my death in a Lincolnshire churchyard, for the sake of my sister or anybody else.’