The Last Letter from Juliet

by Melanie Hudson

  Chapter 24

  Katherine

  Be more Marie

  Juliet sipped on water and turned to glance towards Logan Rock, across the beach.

  ‘Oh, Juliet. What a life you’ve led,’ I said, looking up from my empty coffee cup. ‘It was all so very … romantic.’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, I suppose it was. But tell me, what do you think of Anna and Marie?’

  ‘Oh, I absolutely love them. How could I not? And the job you all did? It was amazing.’

  Juliet put on her reading glasses, opened her handbag and with stiff fingers, unzipped an inner compartment. She took out a black and white photograph.

  Three women wearing the same ATA uniform I had seen hanging on the outside of the wardrobe in Juliet’s spare bedroom – a knee length skirt and smart buttoned jacket – were standing in front of what I believed to be a Spitfire. Across the top of the photo someone had written Attagirls. They all looked so incredibly happy.

  I leant in so we could look at it together. A perfectly manicured finger as gnarled as a twig pointed shakily towards one of the women.

  ‘That’s my Anna,’ she said. ‘And there’s Marie.’

  Tears edged onto her lower lids – sand between the toes again. I pointed to a vibrant-looking woman with chin length thick hair standing to Anna’s left. ‘And is that you?’ I asked, certain that it would be.

  She nodded. ‘It all seems like yesterday,’ she said, returning the photograph to its safe place. I sat back in my chair and we both took a moment to stare out of the window and sip tea. Juliet turned away from the view to smile at me kindly. ‘Gerald said you’ve given up a little, since your husband died.’

  ‘Given up?’ That was the last thing I wanted Juliet, the ultimate Attagirl, to see me as. ‘Not … given up, so much, as pressed the pause button.’

  Juliet nodded her understanding.

  ‘And when do you intend to press play?’

  Her response surprised me and I floundered, because it sounded so simple, and the truth was I had become exhausted by my grief, playing Queen Victoria to James’ Albert. But like a soldier living on the edge of no-man’s-land, I had dug my trench of grief deep enough to keep me safe from the stray bullets life could send ricocheting in any direction. Life in a trench is a stale, stagnant, half-life, however. And having dug-in so well in the first place, it now seemed nigh on impossible to clamber out, which is why I stayed there, in the gloop, because it’s easier, safer.

  ‘And that’s how other people start to see you,’ I explained, ‘as the widow. So you stay in that image, partly out of worry that if you’re seen to be happy …’

  I paused, uneasy at suddenly feeling able to be so completely honest.

  ‘They might think you didn’t care,’ Juliet finished, understanding.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘And I do see that no one would see it that way, at least, no one of importance, and all this self-imposed restriction is suffocating, and not at all what James would have wanted. Gerald has been worried, I know he has, and I do see that it’s time for the widow’s garb to be thrown on the fire, but it’s … it’s odd, reinventing a life. I wish I could be more like …’ I glanced around, thinking. ‘Marie! More like Marie.’

  Juliet laughed. ‘You’d be arrested inside the week!’

  I widened my eyes – ‘But it would be one hell of a week!’

  Juliet’s eyes were so kind, so understanding. But how could I explain that part of the problem was that even before James died, I had dug another trench, not so deep this time, but a trench all the same – it was the trench of James’ life. I had buried myself in his career, his city, his friends, and all at the tender age of nineteen, and I’d done it willingly, too – I’d taken the easy route. And now, having had no adult life without him, if I climbed out of the trench, as I knew I must, where would I go?

  Juliet read my mind. ‘It must be difficult, reinventing your life from scratch, but all you really need is for someone to pass down a ladder. Trust me, it’s much more simple than you think, once you set your mind to climb out.’

  I smiled.

  ‘And when I get to the top, where would – will – I go?’

  Juliet took a deep breath and gestured towards the wide expanse of sea.

  ‘Coddiwompling,’ she said with a wink. ‘That’s where.’

  When no performances are scheduled, it’s possible to explore the terraces and the stage at the Minack, and so I wrapped Juliet in enough blankets to survive a polar expedition and wheeled her out to the upper viewing area. The winter sun shone its faint, watered-down glow onto Juliet’s silver hair. I knelt next to the wheelchair and we remained in silence, taking in the theatre and sea.

  ‘I always fancied myself performing here,’ Juliet said, her face so frail against the cold breeze, nodding down towards the stage, which was a significant way down a myriad of stone steps, below us. ‘Sam and I used to visit here during the quieter times, jump on the stage and give it a go. He sang a whole song for me once. Didn’t give a damn who was listening!’

  ‘Really?’ I asked, delighted. ‘What did he sing?’

  ‘We’ll Meet Again.’

  She glanced up – coquettishly.

  ‘I don’t suppose … you could …?’

  I quickly leant back as an automatic reaction.

  ‘Me? Down there? No way! People will think I’m nuts.’

  Juliet shrugged. ‘I thought you wanted to be more like Marie. She would have loved it here. And those two over there,’ Juliet pointed to a happy couple who were exploring the terraces, ‘were just a second ago singing and having fun on the stage. You didn’t think badly of them.’

  But that was exactly the point, two people had been prancing on the stage, together. When two people arse about it’s fun, when it’s just one, it’s not fun, it’s lonely.

  ‘And don’t forget to really belt it out so I can hear you up here.’

  ‘But I don’t know the words.’

  ‘Of course, you do, everyone knows that song.’

  ‘But …’

  Juliet took my hand. ‘You were just saying it was time for a change, to be more optimistic. I’m handing you the ladder, Katherine. Don’t you think it’s time to put a foot on the first rung?’

  ‘Couldn’t you hand me the ladder another way? Like ask me to wrestle a tiger, or something? Something I little bit … easier.’

  Juliet shook her head.

  ‘It’s time,’ she said.

  I sighed, tottered down the steps to the stage and looked back up at Juliet sitting in her wheelchair, waving at me. My voice would never carry all the way back to her, for goodness sake, she was miles away. The couple who had been frolicking on the stage stopped their steady climb out of the theatre and turned to look at me, smiling.

  ‘Be more Marie,’ I whispered to myself, standing on the stage. ‘We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I know we’ll meet again some sunny day …’

  I was dreadful. Croaky. Out of tune. But it didn’t seem to matter. The fun couple dashed back to the stage to link arms with me to join in. Competing with the elements to throw our voices into the amphitheatre was not easy, but Juliet was right, who the hell cared, certainly not the handful of other people milling around the theatre who, by the second verse, all joined in, too. Two further women joined me on the stage while others flashed up the torches on their phones and swayed side to side as we all sang.

  ‘So, will you please say hello, to the boys that I know, tell them I won’t be long…’

  By the second rendition someone from the café put on the stage lights and we were all really rocking it – legs kicking in unison, the lot. It was my very own flashmob Vera Lynn moment, and I loved it.

  ‘Keep smiling through just like you always do, till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away … We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when, but I know we’ll meet again some sunneeee day.’

  As we closed the fin
al line, I waved up at Juliet who was clapping much more wildly than I’d imagined a woman two days from her centenary should be able to manage and feeling a sudden jolt of electric energy – of determination – I realised that it was time to start looking forward rather than constantly glancing over my shoulder trying to keep a focused view of the past in sight. I would help Fenella tonight with the bottling of the gin and if it wasn’t too late, I would persuade the village mafia to put aside their differences and hang the Christmas lights – if only for the sake of all the little (non-existent) children.

  But first, there was another ammunition box to find, near the Helford river this time, and as we drove away from Minack, I hoped more than anything that my wish at the monument would come true.

  Chapter 25

  Juliet

  A visit to Lottie

  I began my story by saying that there are certain days in life that are printed, for good or for bad, more indelibly into our minds than most. Such was that day with Edward, when we played like children on the river, in his boat, in the sunshine, in love. My promise to Charles to spend the day at Lanyon, checking on Ma and Pa, had been thrown out of the window completely. How easy it is to go back on one’s word when the alternative is spending time in the company of a new and exciting love.

  But it was only during the train journey back to Southampton that I began to consider how little I knew about Edward and wondered what the exact nature of his work was for the war effort at Lanyon. He was, he had finally explained, of Austrian origin – the American/English accent developed as a by-product of travelling the world with his father, a diplomat. In his work for the Foreign Office it had been suggested he adopt the Cornish surname, Nancarrow, while living in England. His real surname was Gruber, first name Felix, and was far too Germanic-sounding to sit comfortably for a man living in a country on the brink of (and now firmly ensconced in) war.

  I did manage to spend a little time at Lanyon during my stay. When probed about the changes at the house, Pa Lanyon had explained, simply and straightforwardly, that the chaps who had taken over the other side of the house kept themselves to themselves and that we were encouraged not to ask questions. Edward (it was too late to think of him under another name) when asked directly, had been matter-of-fact. He shrugged and said, ‘I can’t tell you. It’s a Foreign Office type of affair. And it’s best you don’t know.’

  When I pressed, ‘But is it dangerous, Edward?’

  He simply said, ‘No more than your job.’ Which meant nothing.

  On returning to Hamble the next day, I went straight to the mess and sought out Anna and Marie. Anna was airborne but Marie was preparing for a flight to Prestwick in a Tiger Moth.

  ‘A sonofabitch Tiger Moth!’ she moaned, walking out of the Met Office to get her kit together before departing. ‘And Scotland will be damn cold, too!’

  ‘In August?’

  She ignored me. ‘I bet I get pneumonia. There are polar bears in Scotland, right?’

  I laughed.

  ‘You’ve been spoiled lately, with all the Spitfire deliveries. It will do you good!’

  She stopped walking and turned around excitedly.

  ‘Hey, tell me. How did it go in Cornwall?’

  I shrugged and tried to feign coy. I could never feign coy.

  ‘Cornwall? Oh, you know. Same old same old. But honestly, Marie, flying the Hurricane down there was an absolute peach!’

  Marie frowned.

  ‘Hurricane? What the heck? I’m talking about Lanyon! Did you see Edward?’

  I smiled. My smile betrayed me. Marie turned towards the operations room.

  ‘Walk with me while I prepare, and keep talking.’ She took her pilot’s notes out of her flying bag and skimmed through the start-up checks for the Tiger Moth. ‘I want to know everything!’

  Over the planning table I gave an abbreviated account of the last twenty-four hours.

  ‘Then we had a picnic on his boat – The Mermaid – such a lovely thing. He flirted relentlessly, I batted him off, and then he tried to quote Burns, putting on a Scots accent, you know, but he failed – at both the poetry and the accent. He was so funny!’

  Marie couldn’t resist an eye roll, which I ignored.

  ‘We sailed, we walked, we talked and eventually … well, I headed back up the hill to Lanyon. I promised to make my excuses with Ma and Pa and head back down to the village, to Edward, to spend the evening together. But then Lottie arrived at Lanyon, out of the blue and in tears.’

  ‘That damn Lottie!’ Marie said, looking up from her map. ‘She’s always in the background, messing things up. Damn woman.’

  ‘She doesn’t mess things up on purpose. Her husband is dead!’

  ‘Husband? A real one?’

  ‘What other kind is there?’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh, honey. No one even knew she was engaged let alone married. She can’t have known the guy for more than two minutes!’

  ‘Does that matter? I’ve only known Edward for the briefest of time, but still, I …’

  ‘So, you are in love with him. I knew it!’

  I sighed, defeated.

  ‘What’s he doing in Cornwall, anyways, this mysterious stranger of yours?’ she asked, pouring over a map.

  I dashed around the table to stand next to her.

  ‘No one seems to know, exactly. It’s all very hush-hush. Foreign Office thing. But get this, his name isn’t Nancarrow at all, it’s Gruber!’

  Marie raised her brows.

  ‘He’s a spy, I’ll bet! Shall I do some digging?’

  I narrowed my eyes and nodded.

  ‘Sounds like a plan, Marie. Sounds like a plan.’

  It turned out that the organisation Edward worked for was the SOE – Special Operations Executive, which was part of the Special Intelligence Service, also known as MI6. It was an organisation established to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe. Contrary to Edward’s quip about his job being no more dangerous than mine – it was. Significantly more dangerous. The SOE employed and trained special agents. But what the SOE – also known as Churchill’s Secret Army – were doing in Cornwall, at Lanyon, was not information Marie (or Marie’s contact) was party to, that information I would discover later, and at first hand.

  ***

  The hand of war can deal the most agonising and downright cruel turn of fortune, and none more so than for Lottie Lanyon. When Lottie had holed herself up in Yorkshire after Mabel was born, she declared that she would return home a couple of years later with Mabel in tow as a war widow – albeit a fake one. But poor Lottie had not reckoned on karma, and on the day of her return to Lanyon – the day I had spent with Edward on the river – she finally confessed to her elopement with Canadian officer, Jim Reece, who, ten days later, was killed when his bomber was shot down over Germany.

  With a wedding ring on her finger and the pretence that the wedding had occurred quite some time before, however, Mabel could now be passed off as legitimate, but would remain at Lanyon with her grandparents and keep the surname she was given at birth – Lanyon – for ease of inheritance, it was explained. Frankly, it was all a bit of a mess, and Ma Lanyon needed quite a bit of a lie down after all the details had been discussed, but somehow, it worked.

  Pa deemed it best all round if the confused and despairing Lottie, who by her own admission was not capable of caring properly for the child at this time, returned to her life as a WAAF with a new posting wangled, by hook or by crook, to RAF Predannack, just five miles down the road. Pa knew people who could make this happen, and he did.

  And as for me? I was promoted to First Officer Caron and was now qualified to fly all RAF and Fleet Air Arm aircraft with the exception of the heavy four-engines bombers. Life in the ATA was exhausting but exhilarating, and not, as Edward had said, without a significant degree of danger. It wasn’t long before female friends in the ATA lost their lives to accidents caused by pushing the envelope by flying in poor weather conditions, and i
t was heart-breaking to see names of our co-workers rubbed off the chalk board in the operations room, one by one, as they passed away. But the pressure to deliver to the squadrons, who lost aircraft on a daily basis, was immense. As women pilots in the ATA, we possibly felt the pressure greater than our male counterparts. Determined to prove anyone who questioned our capabilities wrong, we pushed on.

  Early one summer morning that year the Spitfire Sisters cycled to the airfield from our home by the river. We headed straight for the ops room to pick up our flying chits for the day. Anna and I were programmed to fly two Spitfires to RAF Dishforth, in Yorkshire. The taxi Anson would arrive at RAF Leeming, ten miles north of Dishforth, the next day, to bring us back to Hamble. Which meant we would have an overnight stay in Yorkshire. Marie was peeved to be missing out, but didn’t mind too much because she was having a trial run out on a motorbike that evening.

  ‘But that’s brilliant,’ I said to Anna, once Marie had walked away. ‘We can fly up there together, in formation, and stay with Lottie and her aunt nearby, rather than in the mess.’

  Anna, despite being desperate to meet the notorious Lottie, wasn’t so sure. She began organising the maps we would need on the table.

  ‘I think we should fly separately,’ she said, having studied the route. ‘I’ve never flown in close formation before. I don’t think I can do it.’

  I could understand this. Formation flying could be tricky.

  ‘How about you take the lead and do all the navigation,’ I suggested. ‘I’ll sit on your wing. I used to do it all the time with Pa. I loved it.’