The Last Letter from Juliet

by Melanie Hudson

  He jumped up and held out his hands, looked down at me and smiled a bright and contagious smile.

  ‘One hundred, ya hear now – promise me!’

  I stood and put my hand on my heart the American way,

  ‘I promise to try to live until one hundred, or at least I’ll do my very best to—’ I decided to lighten the moment ‘—and when I do, I’ll take the old Tiger Moth up for a spin on my birthday and fly around and around the angels until I see you, waving up at me!’

  He laughed. ‘It’s a deal!’

  He took the poem from my hand, placed it in the envelope and handed it back. The early evening sky was illuminated tangerine red and wispy cirrus clouds kissed the edge of heaven.

  ‘Keep this safe,’ he said, taking my hand and the letter in both of his. ‘And remember, when you’re one hundred years old exactly, let yourself drift away into Neverland and go to the far side of the island,’ he pointed to the middle angel, ‘to that one, there, the one we went to that day we took old Mermaid for a spin, and I’ll be waiting for you, and it can be our own island, our home, for eternity.’ He looked deep into my eyes. ‘I promise you, Juliet, I’ll be waiting for you.’

  I broke down. He was being serious. This was it. The poor, poor man genuinely believed he was going to die. And if Edward was going to die, what on earth was the point of me living?

  That evening was the best and worst of my life. We held each other close by the fireside and danced to the Vera Lynn hit song, We’ll Meet Again. Amber never left his side all evening. She loved this enigmatic stranger, this American, this Austrian, this Edward Nancarrow, this Felix Gruber, or whoever else he might be, Amber didn’t care. With every morsel of her body she simply adored him, and so did I.

  Chapter 35

  Katherine

  Another surprise visitor

  I lay the manuscript down on the sofa beside me and sat for a moment thinking of Juliet. Not Juliet of the 1940s, but Juliet as she was right now, asleep perhaps, or maybe sitting her chair, awake and remembering.

  In need of a little air, I wrapped Juliet’s shawl around my shoulders, slipped my feet into a pair of Wellingtons left by the door, stepped outside and looked down towards the harbour. The Christmas lights were turned off now, but the village didn’t need any extra sparkle tonight. The almost-full moon shimmered across the water, reflecting a silvery road through the middle mount of the angels, which – to my absolute delight and enchantment – had been given a single cross that remained lit, positioned on the crag on top of the island.

  It seemed to be the perfect moment to pour out a glass of wine and play some music and try to behave a little more festively – it was Christmas Eve, after all – and maybe tonight I could break my embargo on love songs, if only in memory of Lottie, the incorrigible romantic. I flicked through Juliet’s record collection and smiled when the wartime songs Juliet had occasionally referenced popped up, including, I’ll Be Seeing You, Hold Me in Your Arms a Little Longer, Baby and Yours.

  With my wine glass for a partner, I danced slowly around the room to the slow, evocative song, Yours. I played the song twice more and I was just smooching around the room in my Scottish tartan pyjamas, pretending to be Vera Lynn, when my phone pinged. Uncle Gerald, no doubt. His timing was always perfected to the exact moment when I need to be brought down to earth with a thump.

  But it wasn’t from Gerald. It was an email from Sam Lanyon.

  Hi Katherine.

  Happy Christmas!

  Quick question. Is that white wine you’re dancing with, or champagne? If not champagne, don’t worry, I have some!

  See you VERY soon.

  Sam

  What the …?

  I glanced through the lounge window and saw nothing but the moon and the sea and the little cross on the island. I emailed back.

  Hi Sam

  Wine, I’m afraid. Did the elf grass me up?

  Katherine

  Almost immediately there was a knock at the door.

  He was here. He was actually here.

  I glanced at my reflection in the hall mirror – mascara stains and bead head. I spat on my pyjama sleeve and wiped my eyes before eventually opening the door.

  And there he was.

  Standing in front of me wearing his Navy flying suit with a bottle of champagne in his hand and an infectious smile on his face (his beard was surprisingly sweet, actually) was Sam Lanyon. And I have absolutely no idea why – maybe it was the emotion of Juliet’s story, or the noise of the party that had clearly spilled out of the pub and onto Noel’s front garden, or the half bottle of wine I’d just worked my way through – but right then and there on the doorstep, just as Vera Lynn nailed her final lines, I gave this man, this complete stranger who had gone through hell and high water to get home for Christmas to make his Grandmother happy, a welcome home hug. And for the first time in a very long time, knowing that I was safely swaddled in this stranger’s house in this peculiar little village, a village protected by mermaids and angels, I didn’t feel alone.

  Chapter 36

  Juliet

  Matthew Wilkins

  A note for my Grandson:

  I began my story by stating that I would write of love, not war and I hold fast to that statement. But I ask you to remember that we were living in a time when conventional rules of society had all but disappeared. I also ask that you try not to judge me when you read on. Everything you read in the following pages I did for love – not only a love for Edward, but a love for a free world, too, and for all those who had given the ultimate sacrifice.

  On with the story we go!

  Having said an emotional goodbye to Edward from the haven that had become his little cottage on the morning of Christmas Day, I waited with Edward’s beautiful dog at my side for Lottie to arrive to escort me back to Lanyon. It was one of those perfect, crisp days, but when I closed my eyes, I could not stop re-living my crash, and all the fruits of Arabia could not have sweetened the taste of blood or lessened the acrid smell of my beautiful Spitfire as she lay burning at Predannack. Lottie arrived promptly at ten. She had brought Jessops and a horse and cart. With our previous quarrel forgotten (or, if not completely forgotten, put to one side forever) we headed up the hill away from the cove and back to a house that felt like a prison to me.

  I settled into my old room, allowed Amber to sleep on my bed, slumped down next to her, tried and failed to finish Gone With the Wind and wondered, with Lottie busy at work all day, how on earth I was going to endure the coming weeks of having no one to talk to or to play with at Lanyon. Charles had gone, having recovered sufficiently to return to a portside desk job with the Navy. We had said our goodbyes on such amicable terms, it would not have been uncomfortable to spend time with him at Lanyon. But it was academic, Charles was not at home.

  I was just about to return to my book when a pretty little face – a face that glowed with the personality of a sincerely beautiful soul – appeared at my door. It was darling Mabel, who had been sent by Ma Lanyon (who had been the first to remember that the family would do well to keep me – and my money – on side) to see if I would like to join her and Pa for a cup of tea and a bit of bread and butter. Pa had brought some cheese home from one of his tenants and maybe, after tea, Mabel suggested, we might have a bit of a play in the garden with the dog, if I felt up to it. My melancholy melted immediately and I realised I needed to buck up.

  ‘Yes, Mabel,’ I said, prising an equally depressed dog off the bed. ‘That is a fabulous idea. Amber and I would love to play.’

  I spent two months recuperating at Lanyon, and thanks to my new pals – Mabel, Amber and Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind) – they were not wasted months. I often watched the house from the garden, watching the comings and goings of the SOE and noticed that Pa Lanyon often ventured into their territory. At first, I thought his visits to the other side of the house were from an estate management perspective, but the regularity and duration of the visits spoke of something else. Pa
, I decided, had become part of it all, whatever it all was.

  Then, one miserable afternoon. Mabel, Amber and I were playing hide and seek in the house when Pa appeared at the foot of the stairs and asked Mabel to report with Amber to cook, who had a surprise treat for them. He asked me if I would mind nipping into the other side of the house to meet a friend of his, who was also a friend of Edward’s, who was also the man who ran the whole operation at Lanyon.

  His name was Matthew Wilkins. He had a pronounced limp and a kind smile. I took a seat in his office while he talked in general terms about flying – he’d been a pilot himself, he said, early in the war, but an accident had brought an end to all that. He asked me about my own flying career, what type of aircraft I had flown and if I missed my life in the ATA since the accident. Yes, I said, I had. So much so, in fact, that I planned to return to Hamble next month to resume flying duties with the ATA.

  But Matthew had another idea, he needed my help, he said. He wanted to recruit me into a small team of aviators, aviators who were given very specific and very secret, tasks. This was when I finally found out the truth about the operation at Lanyon. Yes, I already knew of their involvement in clandestine operations – had gathered as much from Edward – but in my wildest dreams I had not imagined just how significant the whole set-up was.

  The SOE had been established at the beginning of the war with the sole purpose of working with local resistance movements in Europe and subversively wreaking havoc behind enemy lines – espionage and sabotage were the staples of their work. But the operation at Lanyon was even more than the training and inserting of agents behind enemy lines. Pa Lanyon was also the head of a group of local men trained at Lanyon and known as the ‘Stay Behinds’. The southern coast of the whole of Britain was a siege line – the closest point between the Nazi’s and their ultimately goal, Britain. And although Hitler’s planned invasion had been postponed because of the allied success in the Battle of Britain, plans had been made at home to facilitate a number of men who would act, in the case of invasion, as stay-behind saboteurs. Such stay-behinds would be hidden from the Germans in secret bunkers along the Cornish coast. As the Germans invaded and the siege line moved up the country, they would work behind enemy lines to sabotage the German occupation from within. It seemed odd, imagining German boots on British soil, but this was the reality of the time. The men recruited for such stay-behind tasks knew they had signed up for a suicide mission and Pa Lanyon was no exception.

  But Lanyon gave yet more to the war effort. The men under Matthew Wilkins’ command also worked with a secret organisation that ran flotillas from Falmouth and the Helford River. Such flotillas comprised of commandeered fishing boats from France (especially Brittany) and Cornish fishing boats (re-rigged and coloured to act as French boats), requisitioned to operated covertly between Cornwall and France to transport evacuees, escaped POWs and SOE agents, back to Britain. The men who operated these boats – once ordinary, untrained, local men – also dropped and recovered secret messages. With every port along the French coast fortified by the Germans, who shot suspected spies on sight, theirs was a ludicrously dangerous operation, but no more ludicrous and dangerous that the job Matthew Wilkins had in mind for me.

  He asked Pa Lanyon to leave the room – a room that had once been Pa’s office – took a dossier out of the desk drawer and placed it in front of me. My ATA photograph was paperclipped to the front. He sat forward in his chair and in a measured, calculated manner, began to speak, glancing towards the file.

  ‘It’s the way things are, you understand.’

  I shrugged. ‘Makes no difference to me. I have nothing to hide.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but you have built up quite a reputation.’

  ‘Good or bad?’

  ‘Oh, very definitely good – superb, in fact. You’re one of the most naturally gifted pilots the ATA have ever seen. It must have been frustrating not to have been allowed to join the RAF.’

  ‘Not really. I love flying for the ATA.’

  ‘Yes,’ He picked up my file and flicked through it before landing on one particular page. He looked at me a smiled. ‘I see your father ran a flying circus—’ he raised his brows ‘—amongst other things. Quite the entrepreneur. He left you a considerable fortune, all in all. Did the Lanyons ever ask where his money came from, the bulk of it, at least?’

  ‘He was a businessman. I never asked how he made his money. After I was born, he was only really interesting in the flying circus – that and his family.’

  Wilkins nodded, took a packet of cigarettes out of the top drawer, opened the packet and offered me one across the table. I shook my head. He took out a box of matches, lit his cigarette, took a long, satisfying drag, exhaled and sniffed.

  ‘I’ll get to the point, Juliet,’ he said, resting his cigarette on an ashtray. ‘You are exactly the calibre of pilot I’ve been desperate to find – a flying ace, a risk taker, but at the same time, a hardworking, level headed operator. Your evasion of the Messerschmitt over Predannack was superb.’ I sat expressionless, waiting for him to finish. ‘I need a small group of pilots exactly like you – skilled, calm under pressure. Your mother was French, I believe?’

  I nodded.

  ‘—and you know France well and are fluent yourself – you even look French.’

  ‘Mr Wilkins, what is it that you want me to do, exactly? Please don’t sugar coat it. Just tell me.’

  He took another draw on his cigarette.

  ‘I want you to train with a small group of pilots who fly Lysanders out of an airbase in mid-Devon and then, when you’re ready, I need you to fly for me, doing secret pick-up and drop offs – from here, most likely. The Lysander will be your own aircraft and no one will be party to your trips but me. You’ll have a small team of trusted engineers staying here and working on the aircraft with you but they won’t know where you’re going, or why. You’re familiar with the Lysander?’

  It was a fairly straightforward, high wing, monoplane.

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘The aircraft will be painted black. You’ll fly covertly to France at night, into secret locations hidden from the Germans, often retrieving or dropping agents, that kind of thing. A fixed ladder has been added to the rear cockpit on the port side, to get the agents out and in quickly. You’ll be in and out in minutes.’

  The ladder wasn’t a concern. The destination, however, was.

  ‘Fly directly into France? But that’s crazy. A blacked-out aircraft can be heard, if not seen. The whole thing sounds utterly suicidal.’

  He scratched an eyebrow.

  ‘We’d give you the same training we give to RAF pilots who are already doing the same job, and we’d give you the skills you’d need to escape and evade, although it would be very unlikely that you’d be required to put these skills into action, of course.’

  I began to shake my head.

  ‘Take a day to think about it and come and see me tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, pushing my file back across the desk towards him. ‘And I know you must be desperate for suitable pilots, but what you’re offering isn’t for me. I’m afraid you’ve been given an overly-inflated opinion of my flying skills. Doing a few loops and rolls in a flying circus does not qualify me for this. I may not even have the stomach for flying when I get back. I’m not sure how I’ll feel.’

  I stood to leave.

  ‘Is that because of the crash at Predannack,’ he asked. ‘Or because of your friend, Anna.’

  I refused to be ruffled, even though the thought of Anna’s death ripped apart the inner workings of my heart.

  ‘The answer is no, Mr Wilkins. I am not the man for you.’

  He stubbed out the remainder of his cigarette and also stood.

  ‘But I didn’t want a man, Juliet. I wanted you.’

  I headed towards the door.

  ‘Well, it’s your decision. All things considered, I suppose it’s perhaps best you’re weren’t allowed to fulfil your drea
m after all.’

  I stopped with my hand on the door handle.

  ‘Dream? What do you mean?’

  ‘To fly in combat. Isn’t that what you always wanted to do? RAF pilots do not have the luxury of choosing their missions, Miss Caron, they fly when and where is necessary. Whatever the danger. Go back to the ATA or stop flying completely and sit the war out at Lanyon. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.’

  I knew this barbed comment was aimed to rile me but it didn’t work. My flying with the ATA had been treacherous at times and I had lost too many friends to worry about taking his words about my failed RAF dream to heart.

  ‘You’re probably right,’ I said with a saccharine smile while turning the door handle. ‘I would have been useless in the RAF. I may have chipped a nail.’

  He shot from behind the desk to stand in the open door. He was grinning now.

  ‘Are you always so unrufflable?’

  I smiled.

  ‘Only on Tuesdays.’

  He laughed. His eyes danced. ‘But my God, Juliet. Can’t you see. This is exactly why you would be perfect for our operation. Please – please – reconsider.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I’m sorry. I would help if I could, but it’s not for me.’

  He bowed as if defeated and stepped away from the door, but as I turned to leave saw that he had saved his most powerful ammunition till last.

  ‘I understand that you’re a close personal friend of Edward Nancarrow …’

  I stopped in the doorway and looked at him.

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Do you understand the importance of his work, Juliet?’

  ‘He’s never really told me what he does. But now I’ve learnt about your operation, I’m guessing he’s an agent.’

  ‘I mention him because he would also be coming back from France that way – by Lysander. It’s becoming increasingly dangerous to get agents back by boat. Edward is a hunted man in Europe. The Nazis have had a price on his head for some time.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’