The Telephone Box Library

by Lucas, Rachael

  She read on, yawning despite herself, desperate to know what happened next. And then she turned the page, and her heart dropped.

  September 22, 1941

  The most awful, awful day.

  Harry is gone. I have sat for hours trying to pluck up the courage to write those words. I thought perhaps if I didn’t that it might not be true. But no. I stood by the telephone box, waiting for him to arrive. I checked his note in case I’d got my days in a muddle – I even went home and laid out all the other notes he’d left for me in the telephone box, but no – it said very clearly ‘I will see you here at six – your loving H.’

  At first I was cross, and then I was worried. And yet somehow, deep inside, I had the most awful sinking feeling that something dreadful had happened – I don’t know why.

  In the end it was Len – dear, kind Len, my sweet friend – who told me. He’d seen me standing there, and walked past a couple of times before he asked if I was waiting for my Canadian chap. He bicycled off, and when he got back I was still there and he’d pulled some strings, asked what was going on at the airfield, and discovered there’d been a terrible crash during a training exercise. They’d been on a navigational flight, and something went wrong. Three Canadian airmen were killed outright. I’m weeping as I write that word. I can’t think of my Harry – my lovely, funny Harry, so full of life and kindness – as being gone. I can’t ever imagine getting over this.

  Lucy had tears streaming down her cheeks. Poor, poor Bunty. She closed the diary and put it down on her bedside table. She’d read enough for one night.

  The next morning she got up early and sat down on the sofa in pyjamas to carry on. She’d had a disturbed night, tossing and turning, her head full of confused dreams about Bunty and the man she’d loved and lost. And Sam seemed to be caught up in there, too. Lucy yawned and rubbed her eyes, stretching her arms out widely. She looked down at the diary again, imagining Bunty’s heartbreak.

  A knock at the door made her jump and she stood up, hushing a barking Hamish. She pushed back the curtain in front of the door and opened it, wiping tears from her eyes.

  ‘Oh God, I’m sorry,’ Sam said, looking at her with concern. ‘Is this a bad time?’

  Lucy rubbed another tear from her cheek, and Sam reached into his pocket, handing her a white handkerchief made of cotton. She looked at it, startled, then dabbed at her eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ She went to hand back the hanky, but Sam shook his head.

  ‘You keep it.’

  ‘It’s just – oh God.’ She collapsed back onto the chair, motioning for him to sit down. ‘I’ve been reading Bunty’s wartime diaries, and they’re absolutely heartbreaking.’

  He glanced across at the black diary, still open to the page that Lucy had just finished reading. He closed it, gently, and handed it over before Hamish tried to lie on it. He’d leapt onto the sofa beside Sam and was very insistently demanding that his tummy be rubbed.

  ‘I came to ask if you’d like to come to the pub quiz this evening, but if you’re feeling a bit –’ he inclined his head towards the handkerchief, lying on the side of the chair – ‘perhaps not?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He gave a half smile. ‘I hoped you’d say that. Mel reckons you’ll be the secret to us finally being in with a chance of winning.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. Does she know something I don’t?’

  ‘You’re a history teacher. That’s better than any of the rest of us.’

  ‘No pressure, then?’ She gave a self-deprecating smile.

  ‘None at all.’ Sam made a face. ‘I’d better get off. I’ll see you later.’

  Lucy closed the door, made herself a coffee, and climbed back onto the sofa to finish reading Bunty’s diary.

  She went next door after lunch. She’d read all the way to the end of the diary, which ended not long after Harry’s death.

  ‘Hello,’ Bunty said, and the expression on her face said it all. ‘You’ve read it, then.’

  Lucy nodded. Bunty wasn’t the hugging sort, but she reached out a hand and squeezed her gently on the arm. Bunty smiled sadly.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep at all well last night, thinking of you reading it.’ She led Lucy through to the sitting room and sat down in her armchair. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The clock ticked the seconds away.

  ‘I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you shared it with me. There’s so much – you lost so many people that you loved.’

  ‘Oh, my dear. We all did. War is a terrible, terrible thing.’

  ‘It’s just – you all had to cope with so much. And working every day there, doing the same thing, crammed in that little building with the men.’

  Bunty took a breath. She seemed to grow taller, as if she was preparing herself for something dreadful.

  ‘I’ve not been – altogether honest with you. You know, before I gave it to you, I read back over the words I’d written, and since then I’ve been thinking about the past. Something I saw the other day made me think about mistakes we make because we believe we’re doing the right thing.’

  Lucy leaned forward slightly on the sofa, listening intently.

  ‘It’s not only because of my war work that I’ve been reluctant to talk to you. I mean, of course we all signed the Official Secrets Act, and for some of us that meant we kept our mouths shut, despite what people might want us to do. It’s not that I think they’re wrong to tell their story, but – well, keeping secrets – it’s become something of a habit of mine.’

  Lucy nodded.

  ‘It’s about Gordon.’

  Lucy thought about Bunty’s stolid, law-abiding son. He was a pillar of his local community, retired accountant, married to Margaret, who was a good fifteen years younger – which was, she thought, probably the raciest thing he’d done in his life.

  ‘One of the reasons I don’t really want to go over the past is because – like most of us who lived through the war – things were, well . . . they were complicated. War made one see very clearly, in some ways.’

  Lucy had heard this before. She’d spoken to a woman the other day who’d run off to join the Land Army at seventeen because it didn’t require permission from her parents, and fallen in love with the farmer where she worked, scandalizing the village – not to mention his wife.

  ‘The thing is,’ Bunty continued. ‘I knew if I told you about my war, it would bring it all up again. And I can’t –’ She faltered. A moment later she’d taken a handkerchief from her cardigan pocket and dabbed at her eyes, surprising Lucy.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Lucy said, trying to smooth things over. ‘I don’t want you to get upset. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.’

  ‘But I do.’ Bunty blew her nose. ‘I can’t keep it to myself forever. I thought perhaps I could. But I think – somehow – if I don’t tell someone, then it’s as if it never happened.’

  ‘Harry?’

  Bunty nodded. ‘After he died, I realized quite quickly that something was amiss. Of course in those days there wasn’t much one could do, and luckily – well, I did something which might seem rather selfish.’

  Pieces of the jigsaw were beginning to come together in Lucy’s mind.

  ‘Of course, Len had been sweet on me for a while. He was one of the ARP wardens in town, along with Henry. He was very kind. A stickler for the rules –’ she gave a mischievous smile – ‘which was clearly contagious, because my goodness, Gordon is a chip off the old block in that regard.’

  ‘But his father?’

  Bunty nodded again. ‘Was Harry.’

  ‘And nobody ever suspected?’

  ‘Oh, I think there were probably a fair few who had their private thoughts. It’s difficult to explain what it was like. All bets were off, in some ways. People were dying all over the place, or they were apart for years and years, marriages were falling apart. Nowadays there’s this rose-tinted view of the war years as everyone pulling together for the greater good. Ther
e was plenty of that, but we had a lot of fun, too.’

  ‘So you married Len and – did he know?’

  ‘I think he worked it out. But he never breathed a word. And we were perfectly happily married. He was a very nice man.’ Lucy turned and watched as Bunty eased herself up from the chair and made her way across to the window of the cottage. She looked across at the graveyard that sat behind the village green, and the telephone box where she’d met Harry, the man she’d adored – the father of her son.

  ‘I still think about him often. Wonder what my life would have been like with him in it.’

  ‘He sounded like a lovely man.’

  ‘Oh, he was. I found out, years later, that when they found the plane – still smoking – they found a wristwatch, the strap broken, still ticking away.’ Bunty put a hand to her heart.

  ‘I wonder what Gordon would have made of him.’

  ‘That’s a question.’ Bunty took a sip of tea. ‘I often wonder if he’d have been more carefree if he’d been brought up by Harry instead. Len was so worried about everything, it rather rubbed off on him.’

  ‘But he’s a nice man.’ Lucy thought of Gordon, bumbling along, doing anything he could to keep Margaret happy.

  ‘Yes he is. A good man. But heavens, you can imagine how it would feel to discover the truth after all this time. Gordon’s such a stick-in-the-mud that I think it would probably be the end of him. And goodness knows what Margaret would think. She’s such a prude.’ Bunty gave a sudden bark of laughter. ‘The war did funny things to us – we took risks, did things that nice girls didn’t do because we didn’t know when the next bomb was going to drop, or even if we were going to survive.’

  ‘I can understand that.’ Lucy nodded.

  It made sense. Everything she’d read, everyone she’d spoken to had said the same thing. It was a different time – as if the everyday rules were suspended for a while. It wasn’t surprising that there were consequences to that.

  * * *

  After a long soak in the bath, and with Bunty’s sad story still on her mind, Lucy made her way through the village to the pub. She was looking forward to the quiz. Mel and Sam were sitting on a table by the fireplace, and there was a wooden stool waiting for her. There was also another man sitting at the table who Lucy didn’t recognize.

  ‘This is Dave. He’s our secret weapon.’

  Dave, Sam’s friend and head teacher at the local secondary school, was short and round. He was wearing a t-shirt with a rainbow-coloured dog on the front, and had more hair on his chin than he did on his head. He beamed at her.

  ‘Hang on.’ Lucy looked at Sam, narrowing her eyes jokingly. ‘I thought you said I was your secret weapon?’

  ‘He did?’ Dave made to get up, laughing. ‘I’ll be off then.’

  ‘With your encyclopaedic knowledge of music and Lucy’s wisdom on all things historical, we’re sorted.’

  ‘And don’t forget,’ Mel added, getting up and taking her purse from the table, ‘my specialist subject. We’re sorted if there’s anything on gossip from Heat magazine. Drink?’ she said to Lucy, who nodded.

  ‘I can’t imagine they’re going to be quizzing us on the latest reality TV stars, somehow.’

  ‘You never know. Bob, the quizmaster, takes this stuff very seriously. He won’t even let his wife Jane have a peek. Locks himself in the study to get it done, and prints off all the quiz sheets at work.’ Sam passed Lucy a sheet of paper, printed with a collection of black-and-white photographs.

  ‘D’you recognize any of those?’

  Lucy peered at the photographs. ‘That’s whatshisname from I’m a Celebrity, isn’t it?’

  ‘Told you,’ said Dave, triumphantly.

  ‘But what’s his name?’

  ‘Whatshisname,’ said Lucy and Dave in unison, catching each laughing.

  ‘Watch out,’ Mel said in a stage whisper an hour later. They’d failed in spectacular fashion at the first two rounds, and now Helen was approaching.

  ‘Hello, you four,’ she said, in her loud voice. ‘So nice to see you so at home, Lucy. Any chance you might decide to stay on?’ Without waiting to be invited, she pinched a stool from the table beside them and wedged herself in between Sam and Mel, beaming directly at Lucy, who fiddled with a beer mat and pulled a non-committal sort of face. She didn’t want to think about leaving the village when she was right in the middle of a perfectly nice night out, thank you very much.

  ‘Mel, Lucy – if you could have a look and see if you have anything you’d like to add to the collection for the library. We’re planning to have a sort of rotating selection available.’

  ‘I’ve got the full set of Fifty Shades books, if you want them?’ Mel snorted with laughter.

  ‘Good heavens, no,’ Helen looked shocked. ‘I think we’ll keep it PG at best. Can’t have children going in there and finding themselves faced with a lot of smut, can we?’

  The woman whose chair Helen had stolen had returned and was standing beside the table holding two wine glasses with a boot-faced expression. Helen noticed – although not until Mel had cleared her throat several times and inclined her head with decreasing amounts of tact in the direction of the disgruntled woman – and removed her neat bottom from the chair.

  ‘See you on Thursday, then,’ she trilled, disappearing into the throng that surrounded the bar.

  ‘Okay, well, you were rubbish as a secret weapon,’ said Mel later, as they made their way down the hill and back towards home. She’d had several rum and cokes, and ricocheted gently off a green wheelie bin as they walked in single file down Lacemaker’s Lane. Sam turned, making sure Lucy, who was bringing up the rear, was okay.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I’m pissed,’ said Mel, unnecessarily. She took a flower from a stem of gladioli outside a cottage and put it behind her ear, twirling around and pretending to play the castanets. ‘Who wants to come in for a nightcap?’

  Sam shot Lucy a brief glance, raising an eyebrow in query. She wasn’t quite sure what it meant, and yet somehow it made her stomach flip over.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a coffee, actually,’ Lucy said, thinking perhaps it’d help sober Mel up before she had to get up in the morning and deal with a houseful of doggy guests.

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘You two are such boring old farts,’ Mel said, pulling her keys out of her pocket. ‘No wonder you make such a good match for each other.’

  Luckily it was dark, so nobody could see the expression on Lucy’s face. She looked down at her feet as Mel opened the door, avoiding Sam’s gaze.

  The moment Mel put the key in the lock, a cacophony of barking started. ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ said Mel, slurring slightly.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ came a shrill, outraged voice from the top of the stairs. ‘Mum, couldn’t you come in without setting off all the dogs in the village?’

  ‘Sorry, lovey,’ Mel said, dropping her keys in the fruit bowl on the dresser. ‘Shh. Go back to bed.’ She giggled. ‘Right. Coffee for the old farts, and a brandy for me. You two sit down there. I’ll put the kettle on.’ She motioned to the sofa.

  There was a huge, shaggy-haired lurcher curled up asleep on the armchair, so there was nowhere for them to sit but beside each other. Lucy felt alarmingly aware of the sensation of Sam’s body close to hers. Mel reappeared a moment later with three mugs and plonked them on the table. She crashed down on the sofa, squashing them even closer together.

  ‘No milk. So I thought we could drink a toast to something lovely.’

  ‘I don’t mind having it black,’ Lucy began. Sam shot her a look and rolled his eyes.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Mel said, heaving herself up. ‘Forgot the brandy. Hang on.’

  ‘Did she have much more to drink than we did?’ Lucy whispered, watching as Mel made her way out the door, stopping to pat the lurcher on the head.

  ‘She got talking at the bar before we arrived. Steve, the landlord, has a bit of a crush on her. Think he gave her a coup
le of free shots before, and then again after the quiz. Mel’s always been the same – she’s Mrs Wholesome Outdoor Living ninety-nine per cent of the time, and then once in a while she lets herself off the leash, gets plastered, wakes up with the hangover from hell and swears she’s never drinking again.’

  ‘Here we are.’

  Mel sloshed a huge measure of brandy into each mug.

  ‘So the big question is,’ Mel said, sitting back with a sigh against the sofa cushions, ‘what’s going on with Freya? You figured it out yet?’

  ‘She’s been a bit less grouchy this week. Maybe it was hormones or something.’

  Clearly Sam hadn’t got to the bottom of it. Lucy perched on the edge of the sofa, not wanting to sit back because if she did she’d sink into the cushions and end up wedged between the arm and Sam, who was now sitting with a Jack Russell curled up on his knee.

  ‘I tried to give Camille the third degree, see if I could get anything out of her. But nothing.’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll sort itself out,’ Sam said, easily. He stroked the head of the Jack Russell. Lucy noticed that, like her, he wasn’t touching his drink.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Mel.

  A moment later, there was a faint sound of snoring from her end of the sofa.

  ‘I’ll get her a blanket,’ Sam said, passing his mug to Lucy. ‘She’ll wake up covered with dogs.’

  Ten minutes later they let themselves out of Mel’s house and stood for a moment on the footpath. Sam pushed his hair back from his forehead in the gesture that had grown familiar, and smiled ruefully.

  ‘See you at the phone box meeting, then?’

  Lucy felt the sensation of her stomach dropping to her feet. God, it would be so easy to curl her hands up and around the back of his neck, lean her face up and kiss him. For a second, she wondered if she could – but then turned away, with a casual wave. She’d never been that sort of person. The kiss on the cheek she’d given him the night they’d drunk too much wine had been so out of character. Just because she could still feel the graze of his stubbled cheek on her lips and smell the faint, oaky smell of his aftershave, didn’t mean –