The Last Letter from Juliet

by Melanie Hudson

  Anna glanced at me.

  ‘You’ll let me navigate – the whole way?’

  I nodded. ‘Of course, I will!’

  ‘I don’t believe that for a second,’ she scoffed. ‘But all right. If you’re happy to sit on my wing. Let’s do it.’

  I had yet another idea.

  ‘Don’t you have an uncle near Oxford?’

  Anna looked up from her selection of maps.

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘What say we give him a bit of a flypast, pop into Brize Norton for a suck of fuel and he can bring us some lunch out to the airfield?’

  Anna’s eyes burned bright as a flame.

  ‘Oh, Juliet. He would absolutely love it! Imagine both of us turning up in Spitfires … jeez, Louise, that would be the business! He’d die and go to heaven, right there and then!’ She leant in. ‘But we’ll get in terrible trouble if anyone ever finds out we beat up the village.’

  I glanced around the ops room.

  ‘But no one is going to find out, are they, so don’t worry!’

  After a rather marvellous lunch, we arrived at RAF Dishforth around six p.m. to find that Lottie had wandered into the Officers’ Mess the night before and declared that two of the most beautiful women in England were flying into Dishforth the next day and would require a lift to RAF Leeming. She was inundated with offers and an hour after telephoning the RAF Leeming Officers’ Mess to announce our arrival, Anna and I were sitting in the back of a Canadian Air Force Jeep being escorted up the road by a couple of airmen from Montreal.

  Lottie was waiting outside the Met Office when we arrived, wearing her WAAF uniform. She hugged me as if she had just that second discovered the whole world would end tomorrow.

  ‘Oh, Juliet,’ she cried, not letting go. ‘I was so relieved when you said you could come. I can’t tell you how desperate I’ve been to see someone from the old place since I got back here. I miss Mabel so much and everything here is just … hellish.’

  ‘Hey, hey,’ I said, not minding as she wiped her tears on the shoulder of my flying jacket. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right. It won’t last forever. Everything is going to be fine, just wait and see.’

  But in the late afternoon sunshine, with the sound of a heavy Canadian bomber landing on the airfield, Lottie continued to refuse to let me go, and I knew at that moment that I needed to get Lottie home to Lanyon.

  I stepped back and held her at arms’ length to take her in before nodding towards Anna.

  ‘Lottie, meet Anna.’ Anna held out her hand. ‘Anna, this is Lottie, who’s a bit overwrought just now. But we’ll soon sort that out, won’t we Anna?’

  Anna shook Lottie’s hand and took an oil cloth out of her pocket to dry Lottie’s tears.

  ‘Darn right we will!’ She put an arm around Lottie. ‘You’re with the Attagirls now, don’t you know. If I can fly a Spitfire in formation to Yorkshire, then trust me, anything is possible!’

  ‘You know what?’ she said, smiling. ‘I really think you might be right.’

  We spent the evening not in the company of a bar-full of Canadian airmen, but at Lottie’s aunt’s house, which was an impressive double-fronted Edwardian town house, situated on the high street in the local market town of Bedale. Lottie’s Aunt Pru – a women’s rights lobbyist and gardening expert with a penchant for orchids – proved heavenly. But it was after dinner, when Anna and Pru went for a stroll in the garden, that I discovered the extent of Lottie’s despair.

  ‘The thing is,’ she said, linking her arm through mine as we stepped out of the front door and headed to the park for a stroll. ‘I’ve got this terrible feeling of dread hanging over me. I can’t seem to shift it.’

  ‘It’s the war, Lottie,’ I said. ‘We all feel that way.’

  ‘No, I know, we do. But it’s more than that. It’s a very definite feeling that, pretty soon, it’s all going to be all over for silly old Lottie, and I’m worried about what will happen to Mabel.’

  I stopped walking.

  ‘Oh, Lottie,’ I said, embracing her once more. ‘Which one of us can know if we’ll still be here tomorrow?’ I looked her firmly in the eyes. ‘But if any one of us is most likely to survive, it’s you.’ I took her face in my hands and smiled. ‘You’re … what’s the word? Indefatigable. You always have been, Lottie, truly you have. You need to find your spark again, that’s all.’

  She shook my hands free of her head.

  ‘Truly, Lottie,’ I persisted, ‘I think you should look at things realistically. You’re off to RAF Predannack in two weeks’ time, and you’ll be living at Lanyon with Ma and Pa again and dear little Mabel. You’re just missing her, that’s all, and it must have been a terrible loss, to lose Jim. I’m so sorry I didn’t get the chance to meet him, by the way.’

  She began to cry.

  ‘You would have liked him,’ she said, dabbing her nose with the back of her hand.

  We entered the park but she stopped walking again to face me. ‘But if anything should happen to me,’ she said, ‘you will look after Mabel, won’t you? I know I asked you before – which was so wrong of me and I’m sorry. But when Charles gets home, if I’m not there, you’ll bring her up as yours, as your daughter, with your own children?’

  I hesitated. Lottie took my hands. Her eyes were bordering on wild-looking.

  ‘Promise me, Juliet.’

  I wanted to say, ‘I’m sorry but I can’t promise that.’ I wanted to say, ‘I am not in love with Charles and it was unfair of me to marry him, just as it was unfair of him to marry me, just as it was unfair of you to ask me to raise your child. But all these things were done at the time with the best, if somewhat naïve, intentions.’ But most of all, I wanted to say, ‘I’m in love with Edward Nancarrow, who is in my thoughts and dreams and prayers every second of every day. He is my future, not Lanyon.’

  But I couldn’t.

  Standing in front of her now, I saw that motherhood and the war had done for Lottie. She had nothing left. And all I could say was, ‘Of course I’ll look after her. But please, Lottie, try not to worry.’

  Lottie calmed.

  ‘And when she’s older, read our poem to her …’

  ‘Our poem?’

  ‘The Christina Rosetti one, you know, the one I read to you to help you to feel better when your parents died. It’s called Remember…’

  ‘Better by far to forget and to smile, than to remember and be sad?’ I asked.

  Lottie nodded. ‘Yes, exactly. I want her to be happy.’

  ‘But you aren’t going to die, Lottie.’ I said. ‘This is madness. Truly. You’re not in danger, so stop worrying, please.’

  For the rest of the evening we played cards and rationed out a bottle of whiskey Aunt Pru had hidden in the back of the larder in 1938 and had been waiting for a special occasion to break out. Anna eventually persuaded Lottie to take to the piano and we sang Jo Stafford songs until the early hours of the morning, ending with a song that one day would mean more to me than any song had meant before or any song would ever mean again – Anna’s favourite and the song Marie sang with the naval officer’s head resting on her lap, Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

  Back at Hamble the following day, we picked up our delivery programmes before heading into the mess to grab some late lunch. A letter with a Cornish postmark sat in my pigeon hole. It was from Edward and it was a proposition.

  Darling, Juliet

  Spend the weekend with me?

  Let’s have two days just for each other – two days to last a lifetime, to remember each other by, whatever happens.

  I’ll meet you anywhere.

  London, Southampton, the moon?

  Say the word and I’ll make it happen.

  Yours, as ever,

  The kindred coddiwompler.

  E x

  I read the letter twice before hurriedly pushing it into my jacket pocket. Marie noticed my flushed face.

  ‘I won’t ask you right now what’s in that letter,’ she whispered throu
gh the side of her mouth, having sidled up to me at the planning table. ‘But by the colour of you, I would guess that has something to do with a certain chap in Cornwall, am I right?’

  I bit my lip. I couldn’t look her in the eye.

  ‘He wants to spend a whole weekend with me,’ I whispered.

  Marie’s face lit up.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Anywhere I like. He thinks we should have one weekend, just for us – two days to last a lifetime, he called it.’

  Marie turned her back on the table and rested against it. ‘So …?’

  ‘So, what?’ I opened out a map of South Wales.

  ‘So … are you going to meet him? Because if you are …’ she whistled and another pilot glanced up and smiled from across the table. Marie lowered her voice. ‘… if you are, that means spending the night together. And you do know what that—’

  I cut her short.

  ‘Yes, thank you. I know exactly what that means. But there’s no way I could get two or three days off work.’

  Marie sniffed.

  ‘But if you could get away, if you could meet up with him, say in a hotel, or even better, at my flat in Chelsea, just for a night …’

  ‘It’s not possible …’

  ‘But if you could,’ she persisted. ‘Would you?’

  I took a deep breath and looked her in the eye. My eyes must have shone.

  ‘Yes,’ I said before laughing out loud. ‘I do believe I would!’

  Ten minutes later, as I was about to enter the Met Office for a brief, Marie put a note in my hand.

  Spoken to Anna. We have a plan and it’s a hootie! See you tonight. Fly safely, my beautiful friend.

  And I wondered at that moment, truly, what would I do without them?

  Marie got her way.

  It was arranged that Edward and I would meet in London at Waterloo Station on Friday evening. I had been given the Saturday off, but would need to catch the Milk Train back to Southampton on Sunday morning and from there the early morning district train to Hamble. I knew by now that there was no problem getting the Milk Train to be back in time to fly the following morning. Yes, you were a bit tired, but it was worth it, and anyhow, that’s how we all lived then, from one adventure to another, grabbing every moment, at least, that’s what I kept telling myself as I stood in front of my dressing table and turned a photograph of Charles away from me, before packing Marie’s lacy negligée into my overnight bag, a negligée so fine it could pull through a wedding ring.

  But I needn’t have turned the photograph around because Fate, that overly-sensible overlord, would once again take me under his control, and as I stood on the platform in a hedonistic haze, pushing Charles from my mind and waiting to begin my ‘two days to last a lifetime’ I saw Anna and Marie running toward me, out of breath, just as the train arrived. Anna was waving a telegram.

  Charles injured Stop Hospital ship docks Southampton Monday Stop Operation on Tuesday Stop Can you be there Stop Love Ma

  ‘I said we shouldn’t come,’ she said, shaking her head. Anna talked over her. ‘But I thought you’d be even more desperate when you got back if you didn’t know. The guilt would hurt you too much, it would ruin whatever time you’d had.’

  The guard blew his whistle. Train doors slammed shut. I stood with the telegram in my hand. My friends stared at me, waiting for a decision.

  Marie took hold of my arm. ‘Go!’ she urged. ‘You’ll still be back in plenty of time to support Charles. This is your moment for happiness, Juliet. For passion! Edward said as much in his letter – two days to last a lifetime, remember?’

  I thought of opening my clutch bag and taking out my father’s compass. Was this to be the first time I would ask it a question? I glanced questioningly – desperately – at Anna, my moral compass, who’s face told me exactly what I really ought to do. Leaving the compass where it was, and mute with disappointment and guilt – disappointment of having my chance with Edward taken away, and with guilt for not being heartbroken about Charles’ injuries, because God only knew what they would turn out to be, I stepped away from the train.

  ‘No!’ Marie persisted. ‘You were far too young and naïve when you married Charles, you know you were. It was all a ridiculous mistake – even Charles knows that! What if something happens to Edward and you miss this chance. Please, Juliet. The train is starting to move. You can still jump on. Go to London! I’m begging you, go!’

  I felt my wedding ring through my glove, leant towards her and kissed her on the cheek before turning to hug Anna, just as the steam from the engine engulfed our embrace.

  ‘It’s no good,’ I said. ‘I can’t have a wonderful time with Edward now, not knowing the extent of Charles’ injuries. I can’t.’

  The train picked up momentum. Even if I had changed my mind, it was too late to jump on now. Marie’s shoulders slumped.

  ‘We should never have brought the damn telegram!’ She threw a bitter look in Anna’s direction. ‘We should have let you go to London with the innocence of not knowing.’

  I picked up my small suitcase with a protracted sigh.

  ‘Innocence?’ My dejected exhaustion at the whole sorry mess now echoing in my voice. ‘Nothing about that trip would have been innocent, Marie. You did the right thing.’

  We walked down the platform.

  ‘But don’t you think Edward deserves an explanation in person?’ Marie asked. ‘You could catch the next train to town, go to the Savoy and explain. Have dinner and catch the last train home …’ Her eyes were pleading.

  I shook my head.

  ‘If I go to London, I won’t have the strength to come home tonight. I know I won’t. I’ll get caught up in the moment and Edward will too.’ We began to walk again. ‘I’ll telegram Edward at the Savoy. Try to explain, somehow.’

  ‘Maybe he knows already?’ Anna said, suddenly brighter. ‘He works at Lanyon. He may have bumped into your in-laws, they would have told him about their son, surely.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Edward hasn’t been at Lanyon this week. I don’t know where he’s been.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll understand?’ Anna asked. ‘It’ll be a terrible blow. Do you think he’ll ask you to meet him again?’

  Tears pricked my eyes and I thought of Edward on the Helford River, trying – and failing – to quote Rabbie Burns, my love is like a red red rose, while he sailed across the river, laughing.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t.’

  Edward did not answer my telegram.

  Sitting next to Charles’ hospital bed four days later, I wept. I wept for Charles, whose ship had taken a direct blow leaving him fighting for his life with internal injuries and needing surgery to save his life, but mostly I wept for my lost love. Being at war was no different to being in the first throws of a desperate love affair, because it brought nothing but extremes. On the one hand I had known nothing but pure joy in my work and had been given a flying experience that would never have been open to a woman just a few short years before, but it seemed that if we were given such bright, beautiful, joyful light, then it must be at a price – if the joy is extreme, then so must the darkness be – the blackest of black. And when I thought of all that had happened so far – the lives lost, the ships sunk and the cities destroyed – I realised that I was tired of living a life of wild emotional ups and downs and all I wanted was for something in my life to feel settled. Although I was not, and perhaps never had been, in love with Charles, I did love him, and sitting by his hospital bed I knew that he represented an easier, more secure time, and that I simply had do the right thing and stay by his side to support him and at least try, for the first time since my marriage, to be a good wife.

  ***

  Charles survived his operation and stayed in hospital for a month. I was given compassionate leave to visit as often as I could. We were lucky that he had been sent close by to Southampton, but the demand on ATA pilots to deliver great swathes of aircraft every single day had nev
er been greater. Which meant that as Charles grew stronger, I returned to full time flying and once again, barely saw him.

  After six weeks in hospital Charles was discharged. But where to send him to recuperate?

  With Marie on leave and staying in London, Anna and I spent a week agonising over the problem. The options were quite straight-forward. I could leave the ATA, bring Charles home to Hamble and tend for him myself, or I could still bring him home to Hamble, but continue to fly and hire a nurse – I did not relish this option, as the girls would have to move out. There was a third option, of course. We could both go back to Lanyon and I could care for him there. But the thing was – and Charles felt it, too – our marriage had been in its infancy when the war began and I really didn’t know him well enough – on an intimate level – to nurse him.

  In the end, Charles made the decision for both of us. I was sitting at his bedside and was about to launch into chapter four of Lottie’s copy of Gone With the Wind when he reached over and put his hand on my knee. I put the book down and took his hand.

  ‘I’ve decided,’ he said, not looking at me but facing forward. A scar ran from his right eye across his temple and down to his ear. ‘I’d like to go home, to Lanyon.’

  His kept his head facing forwards. It was a distant kind of communication.

  Charles’ wish to return to Lanyon was the worst possible news for me. I would definitely have to leave the ATA, but most importantly, I would run the risk of seeing Edward and I wasn’t sure how on earth I could cope with that. But if it was what he wanted, everything else was simply not important.

  ‘All right,’ I said, slowly. The last thing he needed was a row. ‘I can sort that out for us.’ I tried to be bright. ‘And with Lottie there it’ll be just like the old days and who knows,’ I added, ‘it might even be …’ I stopped myself. Charles’s mental health had gone into decline and ‘fun’ wasn’t something he would consider at the moment. And who was I kidding, life at Lanyon could never be like the old days so I finished with, ‘Well, it might be for the best, that’s all.’

  Charles squeezed my hand.

  ‘You misunderstand me. I don’t want you to come with me,’ he said, ‘not right away.’