The Last Letter from Juliet

by Melanie Hudson

  We both laughed at the memory.

  ‘The very first day, then?’ I pushed.

  He touched my face tenderly and nodded.

  ‘The very first day.’

  I placed the card on the mantelpiece and delved back into the box. The second item – the Christmas tree ornament–had a sliver of a red ribbon attached for hanging and was, in fact, a tiny oil painting set into a silver frame. The painting depicted a winter snow scene of Edward’s cottage, painted from the side aspect when looked on from the tiny pebbly beach which was down the path, just beyond the cottage, around our secret corner.

  ‘This is lovely,’ I said, holding the ornament in my hand.

  Edward looked on tenderly.

  ‘It’s yours, actually.’

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘I painted it as a Christmas present that first year – the night you left. But when you married Charles, I …’

  My heart melted. ‘I’m so sorry, Edward. More than you can ever know.’ I stood and crossed to the sideboard to hang the ornament on the tree. ‘We’ll have to make sure it’s always on show at Christmas, won’t we?’

  He joined me by the tree.

  ‘Always?’ He took me by the hand and we crossed to the velvet chaise.

  ‘I’m leaving Charles tonight and heading back to Hamble in the morning. It’s over, Edward. No more lies.’

  He nodded and stroked the back of my hand.

  ‘I’m not going to ask you if it’s the right decision because I’m sick of doing the right thing. I want you in my life, Juliet, whatever it takes. For ever.’

  He kissed me then.

  ‘But what about Lottie?’ I asked, his mouth exploring my neck.

  ‘Lottie?’

  He pulled away slightly.

  ‘She seems to have designs on you again. And what with you having escorted her to the party last night …’

  ‘Escorted? What on earth?’ He let go of my hand and pulled away. ‘Listen to me, once and for all, Juliet. Mr Lanyon invited all of us – all the guys who work there – to the house for Christmas drinks. I only went because I thought you might be there. I don’t understand why Lottie keeps coming into this. She’s recently widowed, for goodness sake. She’s got a baby to the man – if, indeed, he is the father, which I doubt – and she’s a pal. That’s it. The only woman I will ever – ever– love, in my entire life, is you. I know you’re married and know I shouldn’t have asked you to meet me in London, but you are never out of my mind. When you married Charles, I was devastated. But the fact that we might actually have a chance now …’ His smile was suddenly wide and bright. ‘… I can’t tell you how happy that makes me feel.’ He took my hand again. ‘Somehow, the two of us need to survive this war. And when we do, we’ll come back to Angels Cove and the rest of the world can go to hell – forever!’

  We kissed, we made love, we held on.

  We played on the beach, touching each other with the carefree jostle of children mixed with the magnetic body-language and sexuality of adulthood, and in the late afternoon sunshine, we sat quietly on the beach, kept warm by a combination of thick clothes and happy thoughts.

  ‘Edward,’ I began, scrunching my shoes into the pebbles. ‘I know you can’t give me any real detail about your job, but my friend Marie, well, her friend is quite a big wig in the foreign office and she was telling me about the SOE … and I was wondering … is that what your set up is, here? Can’t you please tell me something – anything – if only so I know how to communicate with you, how to get in touch, that sort of thing?’

  ‘You’re not far off the mark,’ he said, pausing to throw a pebble into the sea. ‘We plan certain operations … and I travel around making sure those operations go to plan.’

  ‘You go to Europe?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘By boat from the Helford?’ I pushed.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  That was enough. He was an operative for the SOE, that much was clear – one of the most high-risk jobs of the war – but it wasn’t until much later that I would find out that Edward Nancarrow – or Felix Gruber – codenamed Savage Angel, was so much more than that.

  I looked across to the islands. It was high tide. The sun created low shadows across the sea.

  ‘Those little mounts led me here,’ I said, resting my head on his shoulder. ‘They’re the reason I found you.’

  ‘Ah, but they’re not actually mounts,’ he corrected, placing an arm around my shoulder and tucking me in closer, ‘they’re angels. They watch over the village and keep it safe – have done for centuries. They do a fabulous job keeping fisherman from peril, playing home to the mermaids, that kind of thing.’

  I smiled.

  ‘Mermaids? Really?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely. The mermaids live on the far side, though, where only the fisher-people can see them. They protect us, too, of course, the mermaids, when the angels are busy, but only if we’re very good. They’re picky.’

  I took a pebble out of Edward’s hand and put it in my coat pocket to save as a memento.

  ‘Good?’ I sighed. ‘Oh, dear. They’ll send me straight to the devil, then, especially after last night.’

  Edward turned my face towards his.

  ‘Don’t feel that you owe Charles – or the Lanyons –any kind of guilt, because you don’t. They’ve got your money and that’s good enough for them. You’ll end the marriage tonight?’ he asked, more as a statement than a question.

  ‘I will.’

  Charles was in the lounge sitting with his mother listening to the wireless when I arrived at Lanyon.

  ‘Oh, Juliet! Happy birthday!’ she said, turning to face me. ‘You must be absolutely exhausted.’

  I took my flying boots off at the lounge door and glanced inside. Lottie and Anna, who had been playing cards in the kitchen with little Mabel, dashed through the hallway to welcome me home.

  Anna raised her eyebrows in my direction but said nothing, while Lottie fussed around me like a mother hen.

  ‘You absolute poor thing, having to work today! I don’t understand why one of the squadron chaps couldn’t have done the rotten silly test flight, really, I don’t. And look at the state of you. You look like you haven’t slept a wink!’

  Anna pursed her lips and tried to suppress a laugh. I glanced across the lounge at Charles and noticed him frown.

  Ma Lanyon pushed herself up out of her favourite, if saggy, floral-covered armchair.

  ‘Come on in and warm yourself by the fire, dear,’ she said, taking my coat and giving orders to Lottie to rustle me up a little supper. She glanced at Charles. ‘On second thoughts, why don’t we all go to the kitchen and make supper for everyone and give Juliet and Charles some private time.’ Lottie began to protest but Ma insisted. ‘No, Lottie … give them some space. Juliet disappears off to Hampshire tomorrow and they’ve hardly had any time alone.’ She scooped Mabel up. ‘Come with Grandmama, little one. Show me what you’ve been baking!’

  ‘But we haven’t been baking, we’ve been playing cards,’ Mabel said, confused. ‘Anna taught me poker!’

  ‘Oh, well, show me how to play, then.’

  Charles rubbed his forehead, anxiously, as they left.

  ‘Would you close the door, please, Juliet?’

  With the door closed I returned to sit next to Charles. He got straight to the point. I was expecting a blazing confrontation about my day-long absence. I didn’t get one.

  ‘I spoke with Anna,’ he said, softly. ‘The telephone call last night …’

  I couldn’t believe it. Anna must have taken the initiative and told him he was rumbled. What an angel.

  ‘Yes, it was quite a shock.’ I said.

  ‘I … I don’t even know where to begin. I met her last summer, in Singapore. She’s a nurse. I … it’s a cliché, I know.’ He wrung his hands before taking mine in his. ‘I can’t be without her, Juliet. I’m so sorry that such a thing should happen. Truly.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry,�
� I began. ‘I understand, and much more than you know. You know I do.’

  He nodded. ‘Nancarrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was time to tell the truth, finally. Time to discuss our marriage in the cold light of day – the light of Christmas Day. When the conversation was over and I had confessed my feelings towards Edward (and Charles had asked me to pour us both a stiff drink) we hugged each other with a closeness we had not known since the war began. It was a hug that conveyed the absolute relief that the pretence was over, but it also expressed the real love and affection we had always felt for each other – would always feel. But a sibling kind of love was not enough for either of us, not anymore, and no amount of wishful thinking from Lottie or Ma and Pa Lanyon would ever be able to turn it into anything else.

  Chapter 30

  Katherine

  About time

  I looked out of the window on Christmas Eve morning to be met by a curtain of dank drizzle. It would have been a duvet day in Exeter, but here in Cornwall, gazing out of the lounge window at the calm sea as it lapped against the islands, I felt drawn to taste the salt on my lips and feel the crunch of pebbles under my boots before driving up to Lanyon to escort Juliet on her penultimate day out.

  Meandering across the beach I replayed Juliet’s story in my mind. I crossed to where I imagined she had sat with Edward and looked through the sea fret towards the tiny islands she had used to navigate her way to Lanyon. Once upon a time, I realised, stories from history had fascinated me. I loved to pick through the eye-witness statements of the past – the stories, the rumours – to try to gauge some idea of the truth of what had happened at one particular time and place, while the Earth tumbled through the universe at sixty-seven thousand miles per hour, always seeming to repeat itself in its seasonal, patterned way, day after day, year after year, and yet in reality, never really doing exactly the same thing twice. With each moment in a particular time a space gone forever the very second after it happened, the only way of knowing anything about anything that had gone before was either though memory or the recording of historical data. And as I stepped on the sands of time and the droplets of mist that had soaked previous faces and curled other stray strands of hair, I remembered that, what had interested me the most during my own years as a student – one of James’ students, in fact – was that, without humans on Earth, without the human brain and soul to see it all, nothing really existed. Not the sun, nor the moon or the stars – nothing. Because without our distinctly human ability to see it all – to pause, to consider – none of it, nothing that existed in the whole of the universe and beyond, was really there at all. Once the human race was lost, there would be no one left to wonder at life and all that was amazing and wonderful and frightening, would be gone. The whole universe would no longer exist, simply because there would be no one around to look up and see it. Humans were the most important part of the universe, because they were the only thing that made it real.

  And this was why, once upon a time, a young woman called Katherine Henderson (or Jones, as I was then), a free-thinking history student, had wanted to write books about ‘then and now’ and make television programmes and inspire children. But that was all before she fell desperately in love with her university professor, married him, moved into his house, and absorbed herself into his life, at which point there had been no room for two sparkling careers behind the green door of that leafy Exeter street. Love had persuaded me to take a seat on the reserves bench – supporting my husband, promoting and encouraging his ideas (which were sprinkled with more than a smattering of my own) – and I had never regretted walking away from my own chance to make my own history.

  Until now.

  Until a woman called Juliet had brought me back to life, handing me a ladder.

  Juliet.

  I suddenly wanted to see her. To make the most of her, while I still had the chance.

  I ran back to the cottage, jumped into the car, shot up the hill and drove through the pillared gates for Lanyon, all the while wanting to take a pin and stick it in the earth, to slow it down in its relentless journey through the universe or even to spin it backwards a few marching paces, to be given just a little more time. And as I jumped out of the car, my pace began to speed even quicker, because Time, it turned out, was so very precious indeed.

  Chapter 31

  Juliet

  Over the Rainbow

  ‘I’ve been fired.’

  Marie was laying on the sofa in the dark. The blackout blinds up even though it was early afternoon. She was chain-smoking and listening to the wireless when Anna and I, having dropped our bags in the hallway, walked in the living room.

  ‘Fired?’ I repeated, putting on the light and taking off my coat. ‘From the ATA? Never!’

  Marie sat up and stubbed out her cigarette. She looked utterly dreadful. It was the first time Anna and I had seen her in anything but a perfectly put together state.

  ‘Sonofabitch from the Home Office got an eyeful of me and Jimmy at the 400 Club. He blew the whistle to the newspapers and before we knew it flashbulbs were going off in our faces and guess what? I’m being encouraged to move on.’

  ‘But that’s crazy,’ Anna said, taking a seat next to Marie. ‘They’re desperate for good pilots, how can they even think of letting you go? Why should anyone care if you were out with Jimmy at the club? I don’t understand. You can do what the hell you like, surely?’

  Marie glanced up at me. I knew exactly what she was going to say.

  ‘Jimmy’s married.’

  Anna dropped her head.

  ‘Oh, Marie.’

  ‘Oh, stop your chiding Miss Prim! They’ve been looking for a reason to get rid of me since I flew under that bridge.’

  Anna and I looked at each other. ‘Bridge?’ we said in unison.

  ‘Oh, it was nothing, not to me anyhow, but you Brits are always so damn straight-laced all the damn time …’

  We waited for an explanation. If Marie had been knowingly reckless in an aircraft, there was no way the ATA would swallow it. This we had to hear.

  ‘Well, OK, I’ll tell you. I know you’ll understand, Juliet, what with being a stunt pilot and all – but promise you won’t glower at me, Anna! You know how prissy you can be!’

  Anna’s jaw fell open. She looked at me and mouthed, ‘Prissy?’ I shook my head to reassure her.

  ‘It was the day you gals went to Cornwall. I met some RAF guys in town and we got to talking and they said they’d flown under this bridge in Bristol and I said “that sounds like fun” and they bet me a crate of champagne I wouldn’t have the nerve to do it.’

  I could see where this was going.

  ‘So, the next day, I was taking a Spit to St Athan …’

  ‘Why is St Athan always involved when you mess up?’ Anna asked, confused.

  Marie stepped over Anna’s question. ‘… and phoned them up and they went to the bridge to watch and I flew under it. That’s it. No big deal.’

  ‘No big deal?!’ The exclamation was out before Anna remembered she needed to button it in.

  ‘What?’ Marie asked, incredulous. ‘It was easy. It’s a big bridge!’

  I couldn’t help but laugh. Anna was still open-mouthed. I put my hand under her chin and shut it.

  ‘Anyhow, somehow the boss found out, so he hauls me into the office and chews my ass over it for half an hour – I mean, seriously, what is it with this damn country that no one can mind their own damn business any of the time!?’

  Marie surprised us then by bursting into tears.

  ‘But I don’t care about any of that crap.’ She looked up, her wretched face a complete mess. ‘It’s Jimmy. I’ve lost him.’ Her bottom lip started to tremble.

  ‘Won’t you see him again?’ I asked, resting my backside on the arm of the sofa next to her.

  She shook her head and blew her nose.

  ‘He’s being posted – abroad. He can’t even tell me where he’s going – or won’t.’

&
nbsp; Anna took her hand.

  ‘It’ll blow over,’ Anna said. ‘You’ll see. I don’t know about the Jimmy, thing, but as for the ATA, hanker down here with us and wait it out. Give it a couple of weeks and they’ll be begging you to come back. They need you more than you need them!’ Anna looked up at me for support. ‘Don’t they, Juliet?’

  But I sensed that Marie had begun to make other plans. She was a rich American socialite and could do what the hell she liked and Marie simply didn’t respond well to the discipline of the ATA. For Marie, the ATA had been a fantastic, dangerous, distraction. A place where she felt she was doing her bit for the war and having the time of her life while she was about it. But in losing Jimmy (a man Anna knew nothing of and I had believed to be nothing more than a fling rather than ‘the one’) the light had gone out from her deep blue eyes, her sparkle had diminished and it was clearly time to look for a new distraction, because Marie was like a shark – oh, a wonderful, loving shark – but a shark nonetheless. She had to keep on swimming, keep on being entertained, or she would die.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I asked.

  She took a moment to pull herself together.

  ‘I’ve been asked to go back to the States for a while – just for a month or so – to do a recruitment drive for the ATA, see if I can’t persuade a few more guys and gals from the old flying clubs to come over, lend a hand.’

  ‘But I thought you’d been fired? Why would you help them?’ Anna asked.

  Marie shrugged.

  ‘Oh, they’re not so bad and I don’t suppose I’ve been fired so much as … redistributed. To be honest, I’m ready for a bit of a change.’ – I knew it – ‘And the god-awful food and clothes over here are killing me! This war is all just so … depressing.’

  Anna slumped back into the sofa. Her eyes filled with tears. ‘But it won’t be the same without you, Marie. Who’ll take us up to London now?’

  Marie took both of our hands.

  ‘Hey! I’ll be back here before you know it,’ she said, throwing her fabulous smile in Anna’s direction. ‘Those sonofabitches won’t keep me out of the game for long. I’ll get my ass back in a damn Spitfire before you know it, you just see if I don’t.’ She squeezed our hands. ‘We’re the Spitfire Sisters, aren’t we?’