The Letter

by Ruth Saberton

  “And I’m the luckiest girl,” she said.

  Kit raised his champagne flute. “To my fiancée, and to being lucky.”

  They clinked glasses – but try as she might, Daisy couldn’t shake off a growing sense of unease. It was because time was running out before Kit left, she told herself, and nothing more sinister.

  Later on, whenever she tried to recall that afternoon, Daisy could never remember what they had eaten. Luncheon must have been exquisite, but the food passed her lips without her noticing and she drank the champagne without tasting it. Instead, she feasted her eyes on Kit. When she wasn’t gazing at him, she was admiring her ring. She’d not be able to wear it openly but would keep it in the little Christmas 1914 tin Kit had given to her as a keepsake. When he came home he would speak to his parents properly and then she vowed she would never take the ring off again.

  Once their engagement lunch was over, Kit drove home slowly with one gloved hand resting on Daisy’s knee and the other loosely holding the wheel. The heaviness of their imminent parting was weighing on them both. When he turned off the road and guided the Rolls along the bumpy track to the old hay barn, Daisy wasn’t sure she could bear the pain of being close to him, as close as two people could ever be, only to be parted.

  Her heart was already breaking even before he’d left.

  The early promise of sunshine had been swept away by late afternoon. Grey clouds rolled in across the sea and, as Kit stopped the car, fat raindrops began to fall, lethargically at first before gaining enthusiasm.

  “Run!” he cried, flinging the door open and dashing around to help Daisy out. “I’ll put the hood up – just run!”

  She did as he said but, even so, Daisy was soaked by the time she reached the barn. Kit, who was only moments behind her, was equally sodden. Laughing and shaking raindrops from their hair, they climbed the rickety ladder up to the loft and collapsed into the sweet hay.

  “Drenched!” he groaned. “Can you believe it? Some May this is.”

  “It’s just an excuse to get me in here again, isn’t it?” Daisy teased.

  “Do you think I organise the weather for my own nefarious purposes?”

  “Of course! I think you can do anything. Besides, aren’t I worth a little effort?”

  Kit pulled Daisy against him and pressed kisses onto the crown of her head. “You’re worth everything,” he said fiercely into her hair, his breath like fire against her scalp. “Nothing matters more to me than you, Daisy Hills. You’re all I think about and the thought of coming home to you is what keeps me going.”

  “Thinking of you coming home is all that keeps me going too,” she whispered. Their laughter had evaporated now, the mirth rolling away like the raindrops from the barn roof. “I live for your letters, Kit. Hearing from you and knowing you’re coming home is all that keeps me from going insane.”

  He tightened his arms around her. “I read your letters over and over again until I know them by heart, and when I write my poems I’m telling you how it really is and how I really feel. I can’t say that in a letter or out loud – but, Daisy, I need to say it. I know my verse might not be romantic or easy to read, but it’s true and I’m writing it for you – and I swear my feelings for you are in every line.”

  Daisy hid her face in his chest. Kit’s poems certainly couldn’t be described as romantic sonnets. The imagery was raw and shocking, but she saw through Kit’s eyes the ugliness of this war. The pity and the pathos and the barbarity, and his honesty in depicting these things, had brought them closer than any flowery lines could ever have done. This way she was sharing Kit’s new world. Some men, he’d once explained, came home on leave only to be angry with their womenfolk for not understanding what they’d gone through. They found themselves relieved to return to their comrades at the Front, where they could get on with the job and not have to pretend all was well.

  “You make me see,” she said. “You make me understand at least a little of it.”

  “How else could we build a life together when it’s forming who I am?” Kit asked, his face still buried in her hair. “It’s impossible to explain what it’s really like there: men alive one moment and dead the next, and forced to commit acts of unimaginable savagery. I’m not a hero. Christ, Daisy, I wouldn’t want you to ever fully know some of the things I’ve seen and done. My poems are the only way I know to beg you to still love me and to bear with me and to understand if I seem changed.”

  There was a lump in her throat. “I’ll always love you.”

  Kit moved so that he was looking directly at her. “I know you mean that, but war changes a man, Daisy. We’re engaged but if you change your mind or something happens that alters me irrevocably then I want you to know that I would never hold you to this engagement. I’d want you to be happy even if that meant letting go of me. I love you so much I would rather a million times over that you were free to be happy.”

  His green eyes looked down into hers. They were no longer like sunlight filtered through seawater, Daisy realised. They now seemed darker and haunted, like deep-sea caverns where unknown monsters lurked. Those eyes had seen things Daisy couldn’t imagine, and at this thought a sliver of fear pierced her heart.

  “I’ll love you no matter what happens,” she promised. “I’ll never stop and I’d never leave you. Never.”

  “If I lose a limb? All my limbs? My sight? Suffer from shell shock?”

  Daisy raised her chin. “‘Love is not love / Which alters when it alteration finds, / Or bends with the remover to remove.’”

  “‘O no, it is an ever-fixed mark’,” Kit quoted back. Then he leaned his forehead against hers, exhaling wearily. “I might not come home, Daisy. I might not be able to make you my wife. Or I might never be the same again. You need to understand that, and you need to be prepared for it.”

  Daisy felt icy cold all over, reliving again the fruitless search of the dream, the nightmare feeling that he was always just out of reach.

  “Don’t say that. Don’t talk like it, do you hear me? You will come back. Of course you will.”

  Kit looked away. “There’s nothing I want more than to come home, marry you and build our family. A whole tribe of Kits and Daisies to run around on the beach and learn to sail and swim. I want a future with you, but I wouldn’t blame you if something happened to me and you found another man to make you happy.”

  “There will never be anyone else, Kit. Never. I will only ever marry you,” Daisy vowed. “I’m your fiancée now and I’ll wait for you forever. It’s you or nobody! Look at me! Look at this!” She held up her left hand, and the daisy ring caught the light. “This is what matters. This,” she cried, thumping the heel of her hand into her chest, “and this!” She waved her hand at him again, thrusting the ring almost into his face. “I’m your fiancée!”

  “Daisy, I might not come home. I might be k—”

  Before Kit could bring ill fortune on them by speaking the words out loud, she covered his mouth with hers. The discussion was forgotten now, as need flared in them like tongues of fire licking through dry gorse. They had spent so little time together, but Daisy’s body knew his instinctively and kissing him was as natural as breathing.

  Trembling with longing, Kit kissed her back. It was a kiss that went on and on and on. Kit Rivers kissed Daisy as though he could never get enough, as though he was starving and she was the substance he’d been craving. Daisy was ravenous in turn, wanting nothing more than to touch and taste and explore him in a homecoming she’d been dreaming of since the moment he’d sailed away. In this moment nothing else mattered to Daisy except giving herself up to the bliss of Kit’s love, and every fibre of her body was alive and rejoicing at their intimacy.

  She had been born for this, Daisy thought as Kit tenderly lay her back into the hay before lowering his mouth to hers again as she arched to reach him. Daisy Hills had been created for Kit Rivers and he for her. She meant every word she said: there would never, ever be anyone else for her. How could ther
e be when there was no way of telling where he ended and she began? Engagement rings and marriage and certificates didn’t mean a thing. This dusty barn was their church, the hammering of rain on the roof their music and the scuttling field mice the witnesses.

  Kit’s touch and love were all the vows Daisy needed. He was her all, her one and her only love. She would wait forever to be with him.

  Chapter 13

  Daisy, August 1916

  The news came on a day much like any other. There was none of the pathetic fallacy so loved by writers: instead of howling gales, swirling steel-grey skies and dismal rain, the bright sun was out, salty air blew in through the open kitchen window and birds sang in the garden.

  Daisy was seated at the kitchen table shelling peas for supper and listening to Mrs Polmartin complaining about the poor quality of the mutton she was stewing. Meanwhile, Reverend Cutwell had closeted himself in his study after visiting Rosecraddick Manor. He was calling there an awful lot lately and always looked so upset when he returned to the Rectory that Daisy feared the Colonel’s health had taken a turn for the worse. In the garden, Clarence, their remaining and ancient gardener, was hoeing so slowly that Daisy was certain the weeds were growing faster than he could work. All in all, it was a quiet and ordinary afternoon.

  The garden was far too much for Clarence, Daisy reflected as the pods popped and the peas pinged into the dish, but with all the young men at the Front, finding help was increasingly difficult. Daisy knew they needed to plan ahead though, especially when it came to producing food. The Rectory flower garden might have to become a casualty of war, so that it could yield crops rather than blooms. The front lawn could be dug up too, and planted with cabbages if need be.

  As Kit had said, the war had changed everything.

  It had changed everything except her feelings for Kit, Daisy reminded herself. Kit filled her thoughts constantly. Saying farewell to him again couldn’t have been more painful if she’d been cutting away a part of herself. Sometimes his features smudged in her memory and she ached to remember him, but then she would shut herself away in her bedroom, prise up the floorboard and pull out her tin. Tucked inside with his letters and her diary were the photographs they had posed for on what she had come to think of as Engagement Day. The photographs had arrived exactly two weeks to the day since he’d departed. Daisy wept to see Kit captured in time like this, his dear face so serious and his uniform so smart, but it was a comfort to be able to look at him. She hoped he’d received the likeness of her that she’d posted on. She wondered whether he traced her features with a forefinger, as she did his, and whether he kissed her image and held it to his heart. She hoped that, if he did, these things comforted him. The daisy engagement ring was kept safely in her secret tin, but Daisy often slipped it onto her finger and admired the sparkling reminder of Kit’s love and the promise he’d made to marry her. She couldn’t wait for the day to come when he would make that promise come true.

  Kit’s last letter had been heavily censored, thick black lines obscuring information that the British Army felt would be dangerous in the wrong hands, but two poems had made it through. Maybe the army censors weren’t into poetry, Daisy thought wryly. If they had been, then they might have objected to Handful of Men and Regret to Inform. These two poems told of how a young officer and his men were shelled by Germans and had hidden in their shell hole for three days while the battle raged around them. One by one they died, until only two were left clawing through the mud and eventually made a break for safety. Then the officer, Kit of course, had to write home to the families and inform them of their losses. As always, Daisy had been moved to tears by Kit’s verse.

  There were twenty poems now and Daisy kept these with Kit’s letters. She’d tied them all up with her hair ribbon and tucked them into the tin with all her treasures. The poems were special – she had read widely enough to know this objectively – and instinct told Daisy that they had to be protected at all costs. What Kit saw and how he conveyed it was important and it was her job, her calling, to guard his work until he was able to return. What to do with it after that would be Kit’s decision. The poems were profoundly troubling and Daisy was certain they wouldn’t be popular, but they were truthful.

  The world needed to hear what Kit Rivers had to say.

  “Penny for them,” said Mrs Polmartin.

  Daisy looked up, startled to find herself in the Rectory kitchen shelling peas rather than cowering in a shell hole or wading through a mud-clagged trench.

  “I don’t think my thoughts are worth even a farthing,” she laughed.

  The housekeeper gave her an arch look. “I’m not convinced of that, Miss Daisy. You looked as though you were miles away. A couple of hundred miles away, maybe? With a young man?”

  Daisy chose not to bite.

  “I was actually thinking about turning the lawn over to cabbages or potatoes. We don’t need the flower beds either,” she said. It was partly true. “And I was thinking about asking the Trehunnists if we could buy some chickens and a cow from them too.”

  “A cow? Whatever would we do with a cow, Miss?”

  “Milk it? Make cheese?” To be honest, Daisy wasn’t certain. She would pay a visit to the farm, ask kindly after Dickon (who was still in hospital) and give his mother her condolences for the loss of her other sons. With Mr Trehunnist away fighting too, maybe she would be glad to sell some livestock and make some money.

  “Cheese and milk. Whatever next?” said Mrs Polmartin wonderingly.

  As the pods popped and more peas rolled into the dish, Daisy let Mrs Polmartin chatter away. The words became bubbles of sound cushioning her and allowing her thoughts to drift again, this time to plans for the future. Daisy was hoping to join the VAD but she didn’t want to leave the Reverend in the lurch with just Mrs Polmartin, Nancy and Clarence left. Her godfather was a funny old stick, firmly stuck in the old Queen’s era, but she’d grown fond of him. In many ways he was generous, opening his home to her and also to Eddie during the school holidays, and Daisy suspected he had even turned a blind eye to her romance with Kit. The war had shaken everything about and in spite of his original disapproval he had never again mentioned Kit’s mooted engagement or reminded Daisy to know her place. Instead he had quietly turned the running of the house over to her and retired to his study, leaving her with great tracts of free time to write and walk and swim. He was looking old and tired lately though, and she wondered if—

  “Miss Daisy! Miss Daisy! I came as soon as I could. I’m so sorry, I’ve only just heard the news.”

  Nancy whirled into the kitchen, her face scarlet with exertion. She was at Daisy’s side in an instant and she was weeping.

  “I’m so sorry, Miss. I know it’s all supposed to be a big secret, Miss, but Gem and me guessed a long time ago. I’m so sorry. This bloody war!”

  “You watch your mouth with such cursing in the Reverend’s house,” scolded Mrs Polmartin, but Nancy ignored her.

  “It is a bloody war, Mrs P! First my Gem and then Aunty Anne’s boys and your Bertie, and now even Mr Kit. When’s it going to end?”

  Daisy stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

  The high colour drained from Nancy’s cheeks. “You don’t know? Oh, Miss Daisy. I thought you’d have heard. It’s Mr Kit. He’s missing in action.”

  For two years Daisy had dreaded this moment. She had spent hours fretting and worrying, scanning the casualty lists in the newspapers and living for Kit’s next letter. She’d always known there would be no telegram for her and any news would have to be gleaned second-hand, but if the day did come Daisy had always thought she would faint away or have hysterics. Oddly, now that the worst was upon her all she felt was a sense of icy calm. Was this because this was what she had been waiting for?

  No. It couldn’t be that. She felt this way because it wasn’t true. If Kit were dead, Daisy would know. A part of her would have died with him and she would have felt it. She and Kit were twin souls. There was no p
ossible way he could die without her knowing. No way at all.

  “Kit isn’t dead. You’re talking nonsense,” she said.

  “I wish I was, Miss, but it’s all over the village. Colonel and Lady Rivers have had a telegram. The blinds are down too in the manor house. It’s awful news, Miss, and I’m so sorry.”

  There was a rushing sound in Daisy’s ears and the table seemed to melt beneath her.

  “It isn’t true,” she insisted, her voice sounding very far away. “Kit isn’t dead. I’d know if he was. He isn’t dead. He isn’t. He isn’t. He isn’t.”

  “She’s in shock,” Nancy said to Mrs Polmartin. “You know she’s sweet on him. What do we give her for shock?”

  “I’ll fetch some brandy,” Mrs Polmartin was saying. “Or should it be sweet tea?”

  “Both,” Nancy decided.

  The room was whirling and although she could hear this conversation Daisy felt a thousand miles removed from it. This twisting terror that Kit would always be a fingertip’s distance out of reach was the fulfilment of her old nightmare. The dream had been a message; she wasn’t to believe this news or to give up hope. Kit was still alive and if she looked hard enough Daisy knew she would find him.

  “Kit isn’t missing. I didn’t see his name in the casualty list,” she insisted.

  “Oh my love, you must have missed it,” said Mrs Polmartin.

  Daisy didn’t think so. She scoured the lists every day.

  “You’ve got it wrong,” she told Nancy sharply.

  Nancy, setting the kettle on the hotplate, shook her head.

  “Sorry, Miss, but there’s no mistake.”

  “Are you totally sure?” demanded Mrs Polmartin. Her hands on her hips, she gave Nancy a hard look.

  “I heard it from our Sally when I was just in the village. The Colonel and Lady Rivers had a telegram and they told the staff just this morning.” Nancy’s eyes brimmed. “Sal said they called everyone into the hall and broke the news. Mr Kit’s been missing for weeks, since the early days of the Somme apparently, or so the Colonel said. It’s come as a terrible shock to them.”