The English Girl: A heartbreaking and beautiful World War 2 historical novel

by Sarah Mitchell

  Dear Mrs Markham,

  * * *

  Captain Alex Henderson has returned home. He left the camp last week and by the time you receive this he will be back in America. He was looking forward to the weather in Kentucky, but mainly to seeing his wife and two children again (a girl and a boy).

  * * *

  Sincerely,

  * * *

  First Lieutenant W. Drummond

  * * *

  PS The enclosed Kodak was found under Captain Henderson’s bed after he vacated his room.

  ‘Mummy! Where are you? Hurry up, it’s your turn and dolly’s bored of waiting!’ Alice’s impatience floats to the hallway from a different continent. America, perhaps.

  Viv opens her mouth, but her lips and tongue seem to be locked in place and make no sound at all. Wordlessly, she bends down to pick up the photograph lying on the black-and-white tiles. At the sight of Alex her heart contracts. The image has captured his profile as he gazes at a woman with pretty blond curls. The baby in the woman’s lap wears a dress with ruffles spread like a dinner plate, while beside them stands a shy-looking boy in a miniature cowboy hat.

  The most shocking thing of all is that Viv is not shocked. A dreadful, slicing kind of hurt is exploding from her core, but the pain is tinged with something else.

  Humiliation.

  And anger. Not just at Alex. Not even mostly at Alex. With herself. She gazes at the little family, the picture of happiness. Of course Alex was not interested in marrying her. He never had any intention for her to set even one foot in America. She has closed her eyes and ears, refused to know the truth, when the truth has been hammering on the door, processing the streets with placards, for months. What a fool she has been. Turning over the photograph she sees written on the back, Louisville, February 1942. Come home to us soon, sweetheart! S xx

  The white-haired soldier in the mailroom, the one who treated her with such scorn when she delivered her final message to Alex, knew all about S, Viv thinks bitterly. He probably never even gave Alex her letter, which would explain how he came to have Viv’s address. When she looks again at the spidery writing, she hears every word being articulated in that condescending drawl, and her flesh burns with loathing.

  ‘Mummy! Why are you being such a long time? And where’s Daddy?’

  ‘I’m coming.’ Her voice has the volume of a whisper. She tries again, but this time the words splinter into fragments, torn apart by the sob she flings a hand over her mouth to contain. Hauling herself together, she says more steadily, ‘Alice, darling, I have to do something, just for a minute or two. Daddy is sitting in his study. Why don’t you and dolly keep a lookout for Daisy? I’m sure she’ll be here any minute.’

  Before Alice can reply, Viv runs up the stairs and into her bedroom where she shuts the door and leans back against the wood. To her surprise, the swell of emotion that downstairs threatened to overwhelm her doesn’t materialise. Her tears seem to have frozen solid, maybe because of the ice-cold temperature – the electric heater has been moved to the drawing room and there is now a definite frost on the inside of the window.

  After a moment Viv walks to the dressing table. The sight of her reflection in the unforgiving light makes her moan with horror. Somehow, she always manages to forget the brutality of the haircut forced upon her by the accident, her gleaming locks replaced by a dull brown helmet through which the badger’s streak of grey is becoming undeniable. And in the harsh, colourless morning she can see how age will steal away the rest of her looks. Fine lines spread from her eyes and mouth like cracked pottery over a face that is pale and gaunt with unhappiness.

  He didn’t love her. Alex never loved her. He desired her, that was all. While to her he had been like a knight from a fairy tale, a hero who banished those horrible, paralysing bouts of despondency, her body, her appearance, was the only part of her he wanted. The glittering romance, her justification for leaving her husband and turning her daughter’s world upside down was, for Alex, merely a quick fuck and fumble while his wife was on the other side of the Atlantic. And maybe Viv wasn’t his only lover. Although she could never know for sure, she wouldn’t be unique among women to be charmed by a chat-up line asking if she was a film star. Well, now her beauty was gone, and so was he. The bitter symmetry of the timing was almost laughable.

  She peers at her reflection. Smeared mascara from the earlier bout of weeping has blackened her eye sockets as convincingly as a fist. Reaching for her jar of cotton wool, Viv realises she is still clutching the note from First Lieutenant Drummond – and also that the dressing-table stool contains all of Alex’s letters. Wrenching open the lid, she rummages beneath her rosebud housecoat for the stack of envelopes and pulls a letter from the pile at random: My darling sweetheart, since we met I can’t ever stop thinking about you… She flings down the page. Pulls out another: Gee, Viv, what have you done to me? You’ve turned this American soldier soft as Jell-O… A third: Fighting my feelings for you, sweetheart, is harder than fighting all of the lousy Hun at once. And finally, the most painful one of all, the one she should have seen straight through from the very beginning. Envelopes are strewn about her feet like confetti, but the letter she most wants, yet can hardly bear, to read is conspicuous from the rest because on this occasion Alex wrote in green ink…

  I can’t ever stand to be parted from you, Viv. As soon as this lousy war is over, I’m taking you straight home with me, sweetheart, whether you like it or not. I can already see you standing in the sun on the deck of some big old steamer. You’ll be the sexiest damn import the good old US of A has ever had…

  ‘Mummy?’

  The plea barely glances the surface of her thoughts.

  ‘MUMMY!’

  Alice is hovering on the threshold of the bedroom, twisting on one leg. ‘Daisy is here. She arrived a few minutes ago.’

  Viv touches her forehead, tries to find some focus in her pounding skull. ‘Tell her to wait. I’ll be down in a moment, and that—’ She breaks off at the sound of the stairs creaking and Daisy’s voice calling upwards.

  ‘Don’t worry, Alice. Mummy might be busy.’

  Alice’s gaze darts anxiously between Viv and the mess of scattered paper.

  ‘It’s all right, I’m coming now.’ Viv scoops the pages higgledy-piggledy into the top of the stool.

  ‘What were you doing?’

  Chucking the housecoat on top of the letters, she hastens across the room. ‘Just reading some letters, that’s all.’

  ‘You look funny. Your eyes are all black.’

  Viv remembers the sooty clouds of make-up. ‘I’ll sort myself out in a minute, darling. Why don’t you go downstairs?’

  Alice doesn’t move. She peers around her mother’s hips towards the dressing-table stool.

  Steering Alice onto the landing, Viv closes the door behind them. She tweaks her daughter’s hair. ‘Hurry up, you don’t want to keep Daisy waiting.’

  ‘No need to worry about that.’

  Viv starts in surprise. Daisy is at the top of the staircase and staring with curiosity at Viv’s face. Viv feels heat creeping into her cheeks. She swallows quickly. ‘Wait in the hall, Daisy. I didn’t invite you upstairs.’ The rebuke sounds rather severe, harsher, in fact, than she intended.

  There’s a pause, before Daisy clamps shut her mouth and begins to descend the stairs in an ostensibly slow and precise fashion. As Viv watches, she feels her own pulse accelerate and only once Daisy has reached the very bottom does she pull Alice forwards. ‘Come on, darling.’

  ‘What about your dirty face?’

  ‘I’m not going to bother about that now.’ She almost wants Daisy to remark on her appearance so that she can snap something back. Possibly something rude.

  At the foot of the stairs Daisy is standing in front of a picture frame, examining from unnecessarily close quarters an oil painting that used to belong to Toby’s mother. Her back is very rigid, and she doesn’t move until Viv clears her throat.

  ‘Major M
arkham and I will be leaving soon. Since the weather is so bad, I can’t be certain what time we’ll be home, but there’s a cottage pie in the larder to heat up when you and Alice get hungry. The drawing room is the warmest place to sit because that’s where the electric fire is at the moment. Please make sure Alice keeps on her cardigan and mittens, otherwise she gets very cold.’

  Daisy seems to have to drag her attention away from the painting. ‘You will be back this afternoon? I can’t be too late.’

  Viv blinks. ‘I hope to be home fairly soon after lunch, but as I just said’ – her voice rises slightly – ‘I can’t make any promises because of the snow.’

  ‘I shall need to leave by four o’clock. Otherwise I’ll be walking some of the way in the dark. The buses aren’t running and the journey this morning was bad enough in the light.’ As if to emphasise the point, Daisy glances down at the hem of her overcoat, which is dripping slowly onto the tiles.

  ‘You didn’t mention that before. When I asked you to take care of Alice, you didn’t say you needed to be back by a particular time.’ Viv can feel her nerves fraying further, beginning to unravel like a bad run in a stocking, one that can’t be stopped with either soap or nail varnish.

  ‘I hadn’t realised you might want me to stay the whole afternoon. You didn’t say anything about being gone all day, you simply asked me to look after Alice while you went out with Major Markham.’

  Viv swallows. She can’t tell if the throbbing in her head is because of the awfulness of the letter, her annoyance with Daisy or another of her accident headaches. Nor can she remember precisely what she did tell Daisy, but they can’t possibly miss the appointment because of the girl, this sudden contrariness. Her voice sharpens again. ‘You work for Major Markham. Perhaps you should have consulted his diary. If you had, you would have seen he has booked the entire day away from the camp and would have known what to expect!’

  For a moment Daisy simply scowls at her. Then, ‘There’s nothing new about that.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said’ – Daisy’s chin tilts upwards and her voice is bolder – ‘there’s nothing new about that. Major Markham is often away from camp for the whole day. In fact, the truth of the matter is that he’s hardly ever there! These days the camp is run by Captain Holmes, with Frances and I doing our best to manage the paperwork.’

  Viv gapes at her. What on earth does she mean? If Toby hasn’t been at the camp, where can he go every day? The vision of him hunched in his armchair comes to her, and all at once she sees as clearly as if she has witnessed the scene herself, Toby sitting in his parked car, staring for hour upon hour at the surly grey sea as the sky lifts from winter morning dark and sinks back to plum again. Her blood seethes with a fresh tide of emotions, all probing for a crack, an outlet.

  She draws a breath. ‘At least he was there when it mattered. During the war, I mean. He didn’t avoid his duty then.’

  There’s a terrible silence.

  She sees Daisy step backwards, as if Viv had actually walked over and shoved her in the chest. ‘Who told you…?’

  ‘Nobody. Nobody important.’ Viv thinks of the encounter at the tool shed. Until that moment she hadn’t even realised the comment about Daisy’s brother had registered. She says quickly, ‘I expect the person in question didn’t know what he was talking about. I really shouldn’t have said anything.’ But Daisy continues to glare at her so dreadfully that Viv is suddenly afraid the girl might walk straight out of the front door.

  Footsteps on the tiles come to her rescue.

  ‘I thought I heard voices.’ Toby nods an acknowledgement to Daisy, before turning to his wife. ‘Have you seen the weather? Surely it can’t be sensible to travel today, not with all that snow. There’s no traffic on the roads. I think we ought to postpone. I’ll telephone Doctor—’

  ‘No! Don’t do that!’ Viv cuts him off. The last thing they need is for Daisy to understand the reason for the trip is medical. And besides, cancelling is not an option, particularly after what Daisy has told her about Toby’s absence from the camp. ‘Listen, darling, the local lanes are bound to be quieter than the main roads. We’ll be fine once we get going. And, after all, we don’t know when we’ll next be able to meet our friend. Conditions might get worse before they get better, and you know how anxious he is to see us.’ She finds his eyes and tries to inject a sense of purpose, of common purpose, but his focus has the same vague, absent quality she’s noticed of late. The gaze of a dreamer desperate to cling to sleep rather than wake and confront reality.

  Stepping smartly forwards, Viv takes his elbow. ‘Look at the time! Practically eleven! We really must leave. Daisy had a horrible walk to get here, and she doesn’t want us back late.’ She throws a beaming smile to Daisy over her shoulder, part apology, part an attempt to undo the damage of the last few minutes, but the expression that greets her is as cold as the leftovers of last night’s dinner. As she ushers Toby away, collects his leather gloves, overcoat and car keys, Viv can’t tell whether she’s the one who is holding everything together, constructing some semblance of normality, of married life, or the culprit who is responsible for ripping everything apart.

  * * *

  The view through the windscreen is relentless. Where there should be sky, meadows and road, a vista expands before them that is so bleached and uniform the lack of colour seems to affect Viv’s balance. Every time she closes her eyes the world lurches sideways and seasickness rocks her stomach. Thank heavens Toby insisted on driving; she would never have been able to navigate, to peer relentlessly into that white frozen space the way he is doing now, bent low over the wheel, his haggard face grim.

  The streets close to home were bad enough. As the tyres struggled to find purchase, the wheels spun and slipped. Several times the thorny fingers of a hedge scraped like nails against the paintwork and more than once they took a corner on the right-hand side of the bend. Further from the coast, the difficulties are of a different scale altogether. The long, straight stretches of road are bordered by treeless fields which the winter gusts have exploited to heap snow into unpredictable traps. One moment Viv is briefly reassured by a glimpse of tarmac and the next the way is obstructed by a drift so large it seems a dumper truck has spilled a year’s supply of laundry at their feet.

  She glances at the speedometer and then at her watch. They are travelling between five and ten miles an hour, have covered less than half the distance and the time is nearly one thirty. The appointment is at two, and at this rate they will not get to the city until much later than that. It is possible Dr Dandy will wait, that he will see his other patients first and fit Toby in when they arrive. It’s also possible nobody else will be foolish enough to relinquish the security of their four walls in this dreadful weather, that the surgery is deserted, and that Dr Dandy will leave at the earliest opportunity. And even if they see the doctor, they will have to face the drive back, probably in the dusk when the temperatures will be even lower and the ice more copious. Viv can’t bear to think about that. Nor about Daisy’s reaction when they do finally get home. The only thing worse is the worry of not going at all.

  The Ford Anglia slews sideways again, and Viv grabs the armrest of the passenger door. Every time the vehicle loses traction, she’s returned to the ill-fated bus, the squeals of brakes and passengers ringing in her ears, being flung against the window, the floor, and the crack of bone on glass… She hadn’t anticipated this aspect of the journey, the ordeal of reliving the trauma of the accident every few minutes. As the rubber bites the ice, she feels the chassis steady, the wheels find a forward direction, and her heart starts beating once more.

  A second later Toby stops the car. He stares at the wipers, not turning his head. ‘We have to go back.’

  Her first reaction is relief. Still she cannot quite bear to give up. ‘The worse might be behind us.’

  Toby gestures through the windscreen. A little way ahead, a boulder of white taller than the bonnet extends almost
the width of both carriageways. ‘I’ll never get around that, and even if I do, there’ll be another one in a hundred yards and another after that. Enough is enough, Viv. There’s a bloody good reason why nobody else is out on the roads today.’

  Viv opens her mouth to argue and finds she can’t. Snow is starting to come down again. A fog of flakes enveloping the car so that in a matter of seconds even the drift ahead is barely visible. All at once she wants nothing more than the drawing room, the comfort of the electric fire. And Alice. ‘Yes,’ she says, and her voice sounds small and frightened. ‘Let’s go home.’

  Slithery inch by slithery inch, Toby manoeuvres the car to face the other way. ‘If there’s anything coming…’ he mutters at one point, but of course there’s nothing travelling in either direction and eventually they begin to battle back along the route they have just crawled. For a long while neither of them speaks. Progress is so slow that Viv sometimes doubts they are moving at all, driving into the hypnotic flakes is like walking through a beaded curtain. They part barely enough to let the car pass and immediately close behind them again, obliterating all sense of direction and progress.

  Eventually, somewhere between the city and the coast, Toby clears his throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘for bringing you out in this weather. And for making you behave so uncharacteristically.’

  Viv turns in surprise. ‘It was me who insisted we came. I—’

  ‘It was my fault, Viv, not yours.’ He takes his eyes from the road to engage with hers. ‘You had no choice, not in the circumstances. You mustn’t blame yourself.’ Immediately, he looks away again.

  ‘Toby?’

  Although he doesn’t respond, the silence feels expectant, bursting with possibilities. Viv’s head is spinning. Was he talking about the snow, or something else entirely? Something that perhaps might only be acknowledged in a situation as alien yet strangely intimate as the one in which they find themselves. Tentatively she places her hand on his sleeve and tries again. ‘Toby?’