The Last Letter from Juliet

by Melanie Hudson

  With the closing credits of Miss Marple rolling down the screen, I walked through to the kitchen to make dinner. It was the real deal on the quintessential cottage front – not a fitted cupboard in sight – and very pretty, with French doors at the rear. A circular pine table with two chairs sat at the opposite end of the kitchen to the French doors, underneath a window. A golden envelope addressed to Katherine Henderson, C/O Angel View, sat on the table. I opened the envelope and took out the Christmas card.

  Another angel, they were everywhere this year.

  Dear Katherine

  Just a quick note to welcome you to Angel View and explain about the house, which until recently belonged to a very special lady called Juliet Caron – my amazing Grandmother. You will find that her personality is still very much alive within the cottage walls. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to decorate the cottage for Christmas before you arrived, but you’ll find lots of decorations in the loft if you want to make the old place feel a bit more Christmassy.

  Most importantly, please make yourself at home and have a wonderful time.

  Yours,

  Sam Lanyon

  P.S. … you may find that a particularly vigilant Elf has already pitched up and positioned himself in the house somewhere. He always kept a beady eye on Juliet at this time of year. Give him a tot of whiskey and he’ll be your friend for life!

  Smiling, I rested the card against a green coloured glass vase filled with yellow roses and took a cursory glance around the kitchen. There he was – sitting on a shelf, looking directly at me with his legs crossed and auspicious expression on his face.

  I crossed the room to take a good look at him.

  ‘Hello, Mr Elf,’ I said, cheerily. ‘You needn’t worry about me. As Eliza Doolittle once said, I’m a good girl, I am … unfortunately!’

  A few half-burned candles were scattered around the worktop and also on the windowsill. I took the matches from the lounge and lit them. There was a notepad and pen on the worktop, as if waiting for the occupier to make a list, and a very pretty russet red shawl was draped over the back of one of the chairs. I picked up the shawl and ran it through my fingers – it smelt of lavender and contentment. A luggage-style label had been sewn onto the shawl at one end. It read—

  This was Lottie’s shawl – her comfort blanket. You wrapped Mabel in it on the day Lottie died.

  Feeling a sudden chill, I took the liberty of wrapping the shawl around my shoulders and began to put together the makings of dinner – cheese on toast with a bit of tomato and Worcester sauce would do. I took an unsliced loaf out of the breadbin and opened the drawer of a retro cream dresser looking for cutlery. Sitting on top of the cutlery divider was a hard-backed small booklet with a large label attached to it. Another label? I took out the booklet and ran a finger over the indented words, First Officer Juliet Caron, Flying Logbook.

  I turned the label over. With very neat handwriting, it read:

  This is your flying logbook, Juliet. It is the most significant document of your life. Look at it often (whenever you use cutlery will do) and remember the times when you were happy (Spitfires), the times when you were stressed out (Fairey Battle – awful machine), the times when you had no idea how you survived to fly another day (like that trip in the Hurricane when the barrage balloons went up just as you were leaving Hamble) and that terrible day you tried to get to Cornwall with Anna – the one entry you wish you could delete. Other than the compass, this is your most treasured possession.

  My rumbling tummy brought me back to the moment. I filled the kettle, stepped over to the fridge and noticed a laminated note stuck to the door with ‘Read Me’ written on the top. I read it, expecting it to be instructions from Sam, or Gerald.

  It wasn’t.

  While the kettle was boiling, I read a letter which began:

  This is a letter to yourself, Juliet …

  So that was what all the labels were for … Juliet had been frightened of losing her memory. I took the letter off the fridge and turned it over.

  Where Angels Sing, by Edward Nancarrow

  When from this empty world I fall

  And the light within me fades

  I’ll think, my love, of a sweeter time

  When life was light, not shade

  With bluebirds from this world I’ll fly

  And to a cove I’ll go

  To wait for you where angels sing

  And when it’s time, you’ll know

  To meet me on the far side where

  We once led Mermaid home

  And finally, my love and I

  Will be, as one, alone

  And at that moment, after pouring water from Juliet’s kettle into Juliet’s cup, sitting in Juliet’s house and wearing Juliet’s shawl, I felt an overwhelming sensation of being swaddled, that Juliet and I were somehow linked. Gerald would blame my overactive imagination, of course, but I really did feel that I was supposed to come to Angels Cove this Christmas.

  With my dinner quickly made and eaten, I set up camp in the lounge and, trying to ignore the other Katherine who was hammering at the door to get in, I decided it was time for Kevin McCloud (such a lovely man) to transport me into his TV world of Grand Designs, into other people’s lives – happier, family lives – where dreams really do come true (and maybe a tot or two of that whiskey wouldn’t go amiss either).

  Glancing into the sideboard I was mesmerised – it was an Aladdin’s Cave of memorabilia, of yet more labels. Next to the whiskey was a wad of faded A4 paper held together by green string. The top sheet had the typewritten words,

  Attagirls!

  The war memoirs of Juliet Caron

  Lest she forgets

  I untied the string and peeled back the top sheet to reveal a letter.

  1 June 1996

  My dear Sam

  How is life at sea treating you? I know I say it too much for your liking, but I’ll say it again – I’m so very proud of you (and a little jealous of all that fabulous flying, too!).

  Anyhow, I’m sure you must be busy so I’ll get to the point because I’m worried, Sam. Worried that my older memories are starting to fade and that one day soon they may leave me completely. Sitting here in my little cottage, able to do less and less each day, watching the tide ebb and flow, I have felt suddenly compelled to remember and record what happened in my life during the war. I read somewhere that if you wish to tell a story of war, do not tell the basic facts of the battle, but tell instead of the child’s bonnet removed from the rubble of a Southampton street, or the smell of twisted metal from a burnt Hurricane crashed by a friend, or the lingering smell of a man, robbed of his prime by typhus, as he lays in a strange bed in a foreign land, dying. I’m not sure I shall be able to do this, but even so, I have begun to write everything down. My friend Gerald is helping me. I aim to write one instalment per month – the first one is written already and attached – and send you copies as I write them. It’s an heirloom, I suppose, for you and your children (or if nothing else to give you something sensational to read during those long nights at sea!).

  As you read each instalment, remember that my words will be as accurate as my aging mind allows them to be. Certain days stand out more than the rest. Just lately, I find that I can remember 1943 like it was yesterday, and yet events from yesterday elude me as if set in 1943. But what is truth of any situation anyway? I really do feel that life is made up of a constant stream of living, punctuated only by that otherworld of sleep. The fact that we choose to put a time and date to everything is merely a paper exercise. I used to think that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever, resigned only to memory. But now – now that I can no longer take my memory for granted – I realise that this is not the case. Love, for example, once thought lost, can be captured forever, just so long as someone out there strives to keep the memory of that love alive.

  And so here is the first in a series of my memories that consist only of certain vivid days. They are memories of a time when suddenly, for a woma
n, absolutely anything (both the good and the desperately bad) became possible.

  Anyway – enough of my ramblings!

  Drum roll, please …

  ‘Ladieeeees and gentlemen! Lift your eyes to the heavens and prepare to be amazed, to be wowed and bedazzled! Here she is … the fearless! The death-defying! The one and only – Juliet Caron!’

  I rested the letter on my knee just as a crash outside coincided with the sudden outage of the lights and the television turned to black. The glow from the fire provided sufficient ambient light for me to reach into the sideboard and find the torch, but the battery must have been an old one because the torchlight was weak and to my disappointment, within a few seconds, petered out.

  Determined to take on some of the inner strength of the remarkable woman who had written a note to herself at ninety-two years old to never give in, I surrounded myself with candles, stoked the fire and wrapped the russet shawl tighter around my shoulders. And despite knowing that I shouldn’t waste my phone battery on a little light reading, not tonight of all nights, I got myself cosy on the sofa, abandoned Harry Potter, enabled the torch on my phone and began to read.

  Chapter 4

  Juliet

  1938

  A Cornish Christmas

  Newspaper Cutting: The Bicester Herald

  FREE AEROPLANE FLIGHTS FOR TEN LUCKY READERS!

  AIR DISPLAY EXTRAVAGANZA!

  Reach for the stars with the one and only

  LOUIS CARON FLYING CIRCUS!

  Old Bradley’s Field

  1st July (for one day only)

  2.30 p.m. till dusk

  Star Attraction

  JULIET CARON

  The daredevil darling of the skies and Britain’s finest child star &aerobatic pilot

  Admission 1s. Children 6d.

  My name is Juliet Caron and although it would be difficult for anyone to believe if they saw me now (age has a dreadful habit of throwing a dust sheet over the vibrancy of youth) I was once the celebrated flying ace and undisputed star of the one and only Louis Caron Flying Circus.

  I do not say this to boast, well, maybe a little bit, but to explain how it was that my father taught me to fly almost as quickly as I learned to walk and how, on a bright winter’s afternoon just a few days before Christmas 1938, I found myself soaring one thousand feet above Cornwall in my bright yellow Tiger Moth, looking for angels. It was a simple time in my life. Simple in the way that only those brief years before we know the agony of love, can be. My lungs were exploding with the exuberance of youth and my face was tight against the freezing air. In sum, I was living a life that was just about as alive as it is possible for a human life to be.

  But first I must tell you a little of the flying circus, because my childhood was the circus, it moulded those formative days when the personality begins to take shape. My circus years were wonderful years. They were the years I had my parents with me, parents who were – and always would be – my inspiration, my warriors, my rocks.

  When I was fourteen a journalist asked me to describe what being part of a flying circus was like. My father stood by me while I thought of my answer. We were in Sam Bryant’s field near Bicester, Oxfordshire, our aircraft lined up side by side, waiting to display. The crowd was arriving and the buzz of expectation bounced in the air while a cornflower blue sky kissed by a soft, silky breeze heralded the chance of a wonderful display. Tongue-tied, I looked at my father, who knelt next to me, and stalled as to what to say. He said to close my eyes and imagine how it feels to fly – to say the first thing that came into my head. The answer I gave was the answer of a child, but I would have given exactly the same answer as an adult, because the euphoria of flying – that feeling of absolute freedom – never left me.

  ‘Imagine heaven on earth,’ I said, ‘or rather, heaven in the skies. Imagine you’re in a dream and in that dream you somehow shrink down to the size of a doll and strap yourself onto the back of a golden eagle. You cling on to his feathers while he swoops and dives and soars and loops. And then you realise that if you’re very gentle with him and pull lightly on a feather here and there, you can control him a little, and then you’re flying too, every bit and just as naturally as the bird, and every element hits you with a freshness that can’t be matched, every sense is bright and alive. And then the bird dives towards the earth, barely missing the ground, before turning on a hairpin and soaring away. You are not in control at that moment, I think, but you are not in danger either, not so long as he – you – pull up in time. But that’s the best thrill of all – the not completely knowing if you’ll pull out of the dive in time. You simply have to trust, have faith in your judgement and let go of all fear. But you do pull out, because instinct and survival and an understanding of how to fly and how to move through the air kicks in, and you climb higher and take a breath, but not for long, because then you jump off the bird and into your father’s arms and cling on while he spins you around and around and the whole world is no more than a line of spinning colour. And your hair and skirt and legs are flung out at ninety degrees and you know that if he lets you go, you’ll fly out of the dream and into oblivion. But again, you have to trust, to become a part of the motion, to know that he will never let you go, you’re safe.’ I glanced up at Father and smiled. ‘I suppose I just feel full of joy and completely free. That’s all, really.’

  An hour after the interview, my Father and mother died. Father was flying and mother was his wing-walker, her long hair and scarf trailing behind her. She was waving at me just before she died. I was standing next to my Tiger Moth, my performance coming later. I waved back at her, proud and happy. But then Pa lost control somehow and didn’t pull up in time, and I was no longer waving but screaming and running, not believing such a thing could possibly be true, already aching for a feeling I would only ever know once again – that feeling of unquestioned security and unconditional love.

  But back to Cornwall and Christmas 1938.

  The little Tiger Moth, its Gypsy engine humming a familiar tune, clung to the Cornish coast as I peered over the side, my face tight against the freezing slap of the winter air. I was looking for my final navigational landmark – three small craggy mounts known locally as the Angels – that sat a few hundred yards out to sea next to a little fishing village called Angels Cove. All I had to do was to find the mounts, then a mile or so further along the coast I would find my destination, a rather grand-looking house called Lanyon and in turn, my landing strip.

  I took a moment to glance down again and cross-reference the river arteries on a map before turning at Lizard Point to follow the coast northbound. If my calculations were correct, the mounts would be on the nose in two minutes exactly. They were, and looked exactly like stepping stones plopped into the sea for the convenience of a Cornish giant. After circling around the Angels a couple of times to take a closer look, I headed inland and descended, slowing to almost stalling speed looking for Lanyon – a large, red-brick manor house, with four gables and twelve chimneys. And suddenly it was there, sitting above a little patch of sea haze, in majestic reverence, on the cliffs above the cove.

  The landing strip was nothing more than the lawned area in front of the house, but drat it all, a downdraft from the cliffs pulled at the aircraft’s little wooden frame as I approached, dragging me far too close to a line of very tall cedar trees as I turned finals. I powered on, overshot the approach and climbed away, waving cheerily at a couple of gardeners just a few feet below, who were leaning on rakes, open-mouthed, watching. The performer in me not dead but simply sleeping, couldn’t resist throwing the Moth into a tidy little barrel roll, before disappearing off over the horizon, to find pastures new and within these pastures, hopefully, a safe place to land. Within a minute I had found a stretch of level grass on the cliffs, directly above Angels Cove. There was a large barn in the corner of the field, too, which, if empty, could act very nicely as a store for the Moth. I turned into the wind, began my final decent and moments later, to my great
relief, landed safely.

  With the propeller slowed to a stop, I tore off my goggles and wool-lined leather helmet, unclipped the harness and jumped out to gather my bearings. A minute later found me jumping back into the wing’s stepping plate because a dozen or so cows approached at speed with a collective air of indignant and inquisitive over-confidence.

  From my position of height, I attempted to shoo.

  Shooing proved fruitless.

  Help appeared almost immediately in the form of two men and a dog. They were walking towards me from the direction of the barn. The first man was wearing a long coat, his collar turned up against the wind. On closer inspection he was frowning. Definitely frowning. The second – the stockman by the looks of things – was shaking a stick in my direction. Even the dog seemed to walk with an air of peeved annoyance.

  The men slapped fat sashaying backsides as they walked towards me, saying things like, ‘Get on with you,’ and ‘Away, away.’ On seeing the younger man’s face more clearly, and suffering from sudden and complete amnesia regarding the existence of Charles, my fiancé, who was waiting for me at Lanyon, I attempted to tidy my hair, which was beyond redemption. I quickly glanced down at my clothes. I was wearing a flying jacket (my father’s, far too big for me and ripped on the right sleeve) and, over thermal long-johns, men’s overalls, covered in oil, rolled up at the ankle and pulled in at the waist with a wide belt. The icing on the cake was my footwear – muddy, fur-lined flying boots.

  Taking a cloth from my pocket, I gave my face and hands a quick wipe. The two men were only a few steps away now. The younger one paused out of earshot to speak to the other man, who snorted in my direction before turning tail and heading towards the barn, using a long stick to usher the cows with him.

  The man approached. His expression did not soften.