by Rachel Hore
‘I liked Miss Sarah the best of them, apart from Mrs Allman the cook, she was very motherly. Mr Allman had died in the Great War and they’d never had any kids theirselves. She used to say it was like having her own boy, looking after me. As for Mrs Bailey, she did her best, that’s all I can say. She was good to me in her own way, but she didn’t like it if I cried and she had quite a tongue in her head. She wasn’t used to boys who walked mud into the house and were hungry all the time. Miss Diane was dainty and pretty in the way of one of them china dolls she kept in her bedroom. But my mate Alf’s ma said Miss Diane wasn’t right in the head, so I stayed out of her way.’
Forty-three
Derek had liked it in the country well enough, though he was frightened of the noises at night, the creak of the floorboards and the strange cries, that Alf told him were devils, but which Miss Sarah said were foxes. Foxes being strangled more like.
They’d been very kindly to him when the news came. It had been 1943, just before Christmas; he’d hated Christmas for years afterwards. It had been a direct hit: his mum would have been killed at once, his dad told him when he came down to see him, as if that was a consolation to a young boy who’d lost the person he loved most in all the world. His dad told him to be a brave big boy and to stay with the Baileys because he was working nights and sleeping at his sister’s in the day, and what with her kids, too, there wasn’t room for Derek. And so he’d stayed in Westbury until the end of the war when his dad found them lodgings and wanted him home. Thirteen he was and settled in Westbury, but he hadn’t any choice. You did what your dad told you then.
Miss Sarah said she’d come up in the train with him and make sure he met up with his father. She took a small suitcase with her, said that she’d stay with her aunt, make a proper trip of it.
She hadn’t spoken much on the train, but had stared out of the window at the passing landscape, her eyes dreamy with her thoughts, some of which must have been happy ones, for then she smiled, but at other times when he glanced up from his comic she appeared troubled. He wondered what she was going to do in London, but wasn’t bold or interested enough to ask. Boring old shopping, he supposed. Women liked to shop. He remembered the battlelight in his mother’s eyes when she arrived home with a bargain, and blinked away tears at the memory.
When they reached Liverpool Street Station, his dad wasn’t there so they hung about a bit on the station concourse, then Miss Sarah said he was to look after their cases while she went to the convenience.
Derek waited with the luggage, his own holdall, Sarah’s suitcase and, over his shoulder, a long-handled cotton shopping bag of the same dull brown as his jacket. From this she’d extracted a vacuum flask and a greaseproof paper packet of sandwiches which they’d shared for their lunch on the train. He watched Sarah’s sturdy figure disappear into the ladies’ waiting room and continued to scan the crowds for a jaunty bow-legged man with his hat pushed back above an open face, but Dad was nowhere to be seen. Hanging above the concourse was a great clock with heavy roman numerals that marked the time with ponderous hands. Dad was already fifteen minutes late. Derek watched a pigeon alight on top of the clock and set about cleaning its wings.
A slurred male voice behind him made him jump: ‘Hey, young man,’ and he turned to see a stranger, some gent who must be down on his luck, for he was ill-shaven with dark circles under his eyes and wore an ill-fitting suit and cheap shoes. Derek’s nose wrinkled at the alcoholic fumes on his breath.
‘You’re with Miss Bailey. C’n you give her this?’ Despite the slurring, there was something about his voice that made him think of Westbury. He glanced at the crumpled envelope the man held out and drew back. The bloke wasn’t wearing gloves and Derek felt a shudder of revulsion at the livid scars across his hand.
‘She’ll be back in a minute, sir. You can give it to her yourself,’ but the man’s eyes darted nervously in the direction Miss Sarah had gone.
‘No, that wouldn’ do. Jus’ give it t’ her, there’s a go’ lad.’
Derek had been drilled to be polite to his elders so he accepted the envelope. When the bloke rummaged in the pocket of his trousers and brought out a coin, he received it automatically. Then the man tipped a finger to his hat brim in a clumsy salute and stumbled away.
‘Sir, who shall I say . . . ?’ Derek called, but the man merely gave a dismissive swipe of the hand before he was swallowed by the crowd. A minute later, Miss Sarah could be seen walking quickly towards him. She reached his side smelling lightly of a flowery scent as though she’d visited some foreign land.
‘Still no sign of your father then?’
He shook his head and held out the letter he’d been given.
‘Where did you get this?’ She examined her name on the front and her blue eyes rounded and her cheeks drained of colour. He thought she hardly heard his explanation. He watched her slit it open with her thumb, pinch open the scrap of paper inside and heard her sharp intake of breath as she read it. Her eyes met his, unfocused, then she craned to see the great clock where the first pigeon had been joined by another. Dad was twenty-five minutes late now and his heart fluttered like the birds’ wings.
‘Derek!’ His dad was barrelling towards him out of the crowd, a short, heavily built man in working clothes. He ran, felt Dad’s rough hand round his shoulders and pressed his face briefly against his father’s coarse cheek.
Sarah came over, a wild look in her eyes. ‘Mr Jenkins, we’re very glad to see you.’ She held out her hand and his dad shook it.
‘Much obliged to you, miss, and beggin’ pardon for the lateness. An unexploded bomb in Lime Street, and the bus weren’t goin’ nowhere. Shanks’s pony all the way and my chest ain’t too good.’
‘He walked, Miss,’ Derek explained, seeing her puzzled expression. ‘Did the bomb go off, Dad?’ he said in a nervous voice, thinking again of his mother.
‘I’m dreadfully sorry to be rude,’ Miss Sarah cut in,’ but I have to go. Derek, be a good boy, won’t you? I’m sure we’ll meet again some day.’
‘It’s very good of you to ’ave ’ad ’im,’ his dad said.
‘It was a pleasure, always a pleasure,’ she said, and bent and kissed Derek, and again, that flowery scent and he felt himself blush. Then she took up her suitcase and was off, the crowd parting for her busy figure to pass. She was gone.
‘She was in a hurry,’ his dad said, a little affronted.
‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ he whispered, glancing up at his dad and, to his shame, he felt tears flood his eyes. He dashed them away with his hand and as he did he felt the weight of the bag on his shoulder and a tremor of horror passed through him.
‘Dad, she’s forgotten her bag.’
‘That’s a shame. What’s in it?’
They opened it and peered in. There was the battered vacuum flask, something wrapped in cloth that turned out to be a pair of shoes, much repaired, and underneath, a cardigan wrapped round something that felt like a book. Nothing valuable then.
‘Women’s things. We’d better take it with us, I suppose. Come on, nipper, or I’ll be late for work.’ He seized Derek’s suitcase and laid a guiding arm around his shoulder. ‘It’s just you and me now, but we’ll do our best, eh?’
‘And he did do his best,’ the old man Derek told Briony. ‘Until the lung cancer took ’im. Just like it took King George. Dad were proud of that, strange, innit? Lived just long enough to see the Queen’s coronation on the telly. I rented it for ’im special cos ’e couldn’t make it to the Mall. We sat and watched it together.’
Briony smiled to picture this, then she said, ‘But what about the letters?’
‘They were in Miss Sarah’s bag, but we didn’t find them till months later. Dad washed out the thermos, but the bag hung behind the door of our room till we got used to it being there. We kept meaning to get it back to her, but somehow it never happened. Then one day when we were on the move again, I took a proper look inside. Found the box wrapped up in the cardi
gan, but it was all too late then.’
‘Too late?’
‘Time had sorter passed on. You remember being fourteen.’
‘Yes,’ Briony sighed. She did remember, but not in the way he meant. She’d been that age when she’d lost her mother.
‘It was years and years before I went back to Westbury. And by then the Baileys were long gone from Flint Cottage. There is one thing, though, that always puzzled me. That bloke at the station. When he went off, he threw something away on the ground. I picked it up.’
‘What was it?’
‘A train ticket. To Westbury.’
Briony was silent for a moment. ‘Why is that important?’ she said finally.
‘He’d bought a ticket, but didn’t use it.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She was still puzzled. Then she opened her bag and said, ‘Mr Jenkins, I know it’s a long time ago, but do you recognize any of these Westbury men?’ And she handed him the photograph of Ivor, Paul and her grandfather Harry that she had brought with her from her grandfather’s box.
Mr Jenkins peered at it frowning, changed his spectacles and examined it again. He started to speak, then paused and looked up at her with a shrewd expression. ‘I can’t be certain,’ he said, pointing to one of the men, ‘but I think that’s him. The gent I met on the station that day.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Paul Hartmann?’
‘No, my dear. That one’s Hartmann. I remember him all right, but it wasn’t him that day.’
Briony took the photograph back, examined it and stared up at the old man, unable for a moment to understand what this meant.
‘You’d better keep clear of Westbury. You’re not wanted there, do I make myself clear?’ Ivor’s last words to him at the demob station still rang in Paul’s mind as he watched the passing English countryside through the grimy window of the train.
‘What did you say?’ he asked Harry, who had finally stirred from the stupor into which he’d fallen as soon as the train had started. Paul had noticed with compassion how the rays of sunlight playing on his friend’s face emphasized the lines around his eyes, the shadows of exhaustion. Then, ignoring the high-spirited banter of the others in the carriage, he had retired into his own thoughts as the train bore them on towards London.
‘Have you decided?’ Harry’s bleary eyes were on him. ‘What’ll you do.’
‘You heard our friend Richards,’ Paul said, leaning back in his seat. ‘I don’t see much point in returning to Westbury. It would only cause trouble.’ They’d send on his mother’s paltry possessions if he asked, he supposed. Once he had an address for them to be sent to. Otherwise his pay would keep him going for a short while until he found a job.
‘You’ll have a hard time here being a Jerry. No references from Sir Henry after what happened. Go home to Germany, Hartmann.’ Ivor’s voice sneered inside Paul’s head.
To some extent Ivor was bluffing, he sensed that, but there was a strong likelihood of truth in everything he said, too. He wouldn’t feel comfortable going back to Westbury, but he didn’t know where else to go. And if Sarah’s feelings about him had changed after what had happened . . . although even Ivor hadn’t been so low as to make such a judgement . . . then he’d be on his own. A German on his own in London after a bitter war, especially with all the shocking news coming out of his homeland now . . . how could they, his own countrymen . . . ?
‘I’ll find some digs in London,’ he told Harry. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
Harry studied him without emotion. His hand went to his chest, feeling for a front pocket that wasn’t there in this new suit, then he rolled his eyes and searched inside the jacket instead, finally locating his cigarettes. Paul took one from the proffered packet and for a while they both smoked in silence.
‘I tell you what,’ Harry said finally. ‘I’ll stay in London a few days. We’ll go about together, shall we? Have a few drinks. I don’t feel ready to go home yet.’
‘I don’t mind if we do that,’ Paul said, though the pain and desperation in the other man’s eyes disturbed him. The war had changed Harry more than any of them.
They shared a gloomy room in a cheap hotel in Earl’s Court. It wasn’t much with its view of the back of another building, its bare floorboards and the ever-present smell of boiled cabbage wafting up the stairs, but it would do.
‘We won’t be here much, look at it that way,’ Harry said as he dumped his bag onto one of the rickety beds. ‘Shall we try that club round the corner first?’
Paul remembered the suspicious way the proprietress had glanced at him with her darting eyes and pursed lips, and he gave the wardrobe door, which fell open all the time, another kick. He couldn’t help comparing the room with the humble attic he and Sarah had shared in Kensington and his heart ached for that night of happiness that seemed so long ago. ‘I’ll meet you there in an hour,’ he told Harry, ‘I have something to do here first’.
When Harry had left, he went down and bought some writing paper, envelopes and a stamp from a very old lady who answered when he rang the bell on the desk. Upstairs, he borrowed the bulb from the ceiling light, fitted it into the bedside lamp and in its circle of meagre light wrote to Sarah. It was so long since he’d heard from her and he had no way of knowing whether she’d received his letters, so he was unsure what to say; then after much thought he whittled the pencil end to a new sharpness with his penknife and decided to keep it simple.
My dearest Sarah,
I hope I’m right to send this to Westbury as I’m not sure where you are now. I hope that your mother might forward it. As you can see from the address I’m back in London and would very much like to see you. I will be here for a few days at least, but after that letters can be sent poste restante in the usual way. Needless to say, I feel exactly the same about you as ever (and dare to hope you still feel the same about me!). I think of you with love every day.
I trust that your mother and sister are both well. I assure you that I am in good health and full of hope for the future – our future!
I remain yours,
Paul xxxx
He read this over, altered the second ‘hope’ in the third line to ‘imagine’, breathed a brief prayer as he folded it into the envelope and licked the stamp. If he didn’t hear back over the following few days then he’d have to think about what to do next. As far as he knew, the Baileys still didn’t have a telephone.
On his way to meet Harry he dropped the letter into a postbox that leaned like the Tower of Pisa from a cratered pavement.
It was early afternoon, three days later, that he returned to the hotel from the labour exchange, where he’d spent a fruitless morning queuing only to be treated with rudeness by the matronly woman behind the desk when he reached the front of the queue. He knocked softly and opened the door of their room, to find that Harry was still sound asleep and snoring, and the room smelled rancid. Paul regarded him morosely, but then everything for him was coloured by the dismal fact that though he asked downstairs on every possible occasion if there were any letters or telephone messages, he had not heard back from Sarah.
His bed gave a monstrous creak as he sat down on it, which caused Harry to stir. He blinked in the dim daylight, then noticed Paul and pushed himself up to sitting with a groan.
‘Wha’ time is it?’ Harry’s forehead, Paul saw, gleamed with moisture.
‘Two.’
‘Have you been out?’
‘Yes. No luck. As soon as they see my papers . . .’
‘Cretins.’
‘No, I understand. It’s to be expected.’
‘You’re a better man than I am, Hartmann.’
‘No, I’m not. Listen, Harry. Last night, well. You can’t carry on like this. You’ve got to go home. Your folks will be wondering what’s happened to you.’
‘They won’t.’ This said in a distant voice.
‘Haven’t you informed them you’re back?’ Paul, who had no family now, was shocked.
Harry muttered some excu
se, then rubbed his nape with a shaky hand and yawned loudly. He eased himself out of bed, pulled on his trousers, dislodged a ragged towel from the end of his bed and shambled off to the bathroom. In his absence Paul lifted open the window and stood in the welcome draught of fresh air listening to the sounds of the city and thinking of all the reasons why Sarah would not have answered his letter. One, maybe she hadn’t received it. She was away possibly. Or ill. Or . . . No, he’d have heard if it had been that. Two, she had received it but she didn’t want . . . Hell, his mind didn’t wish to go there either. He sighed sadly and turned back to survey the room. It was a horrible place, he hated it and the proprietress hated him, he could tell from her refusal to meet his eye now when he spoke to her. The sooner he moved, the better, but he didn’t dare yet in case Sarah tried to contact him. And then there was Harry.
If he stopped being obsessed with his own concerns for long enough, then he had to admit that he was worried about Harry. They’d both taken their fill of drink over the last few days. He’d followed Harry from a bar in the servicemen’s club to pub to dance palace and nightclub in his friend’s restless quest to lose himself in noisy crowds and alcohol.
Last night, he distinctly remembered sitting glumly on a bar stool in a club downstairs in Piccadilly watching Harry, tight as a butcher’s boy, count precious notes out onto the counter to buy whiskies for a load of squaddies and their girls whom he’d never met before in his life, and who would undoubtedly melt away once their benefactor’s money ran out. Paul had lost his patience before it got to that point, though, seizing Harry by the collar and marching him out. The walk home in the cool night air should have sobered him up, but he’d been too far gone for that and Paul had ended up half carrying him back to the hotel.
Harry returned from the bathroom, looking slightly the less worse for wear. Rather than hang around while he dressed, Paul took up his hat. ‘I’ll see you at the place on the corner,’ he remarked, referring to the greasy spoon they’d eaten in regularly, and left.
