Letters From an Unknown Woman

by Gerard Woodward

  Tory watched the spectacle, her lips set a tiny bit lopsidedly, not quite grimacing, but close to it. She sat down again and took a drink from the glass of water next to her.

  ‘It’s getting cold,’ her mother said, as she poked around on her plate for the next morsel. ‘It would be the most awful crime, in these times of scarcity, to waste good food like this. Absolutely criminal. And so tasty …’ She sprinkled some salt and pepper onto her meal. ‘If you don’t eat it, Tory, I – well, I don’t know what the world would think of you, if it knew …’

  The likelihood of the roast dinner containing human meat was very, very slight. No one lived over those shops, she was sure, and certainly not Mr Dando (she hadn’t seen the fallen wardrobe, of course, or the pictures on the wall, or the ornament on the stranded mantelpiece). And there wouldn’t have been anyone out in the street at that time of night during a raid. Which could only mean that the meat was stock from the butcher’s shop, thrust forth by the bomb blast. But then – it was very unlikely that Dando’s was so richly stocked with meat that there was much to keep overnight. Surely any meat that came in was gone within minutes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Tory, picking up her fork, ‘I’m sure you know best.’ She was giving the meat the benefit of the doubt. Besides, it was producing the most appealing, tempting smell. Human meat, surely, would not give off such savouriness. She picked up a piece on her fork, opened her mouth and filled it.

  Mrs Head was very pleased. If she herself had any doubts about the food that had entered her digestive tract, if she discerned the faintest unwholesome taint to what was now slowly progressing through her gut, it seemed instantly dispelled the moment Tory joined her in her meal. This was because she sincerely believed that Tory would not, for a moment, have considered eating the pork if there had been any doubt in her mind that it might be human flesh. She was good in that way. Had Mrs Head been told that she had eaten human meat, she would merely have felt that an unfortunate misunderstanding had occurred. She might have felt uncomfortable, even a little nauseous, but that would have passed once the digestive process had reached its discreet conclusion. Tory, on the other hand, would have believed that her soul had been indelibly stained. She was not, as far as her mother knew, a particularly religious person (if she was, it certainly wasn‘t her parents’ doing) and yet she seemed to have an almost spiritual understanding of right and wrong. She had what her father had called a sound moral foundation. He should have known, of course, because, at six years old, Tory had reported him to the police for breaking a promise to take her kite-flying. This was something for her mother to be proud of, but it irked her sometimes because she was often made to feel bad in the radiant light of her daughter’s goodness.

  But Tory didn’t eat much. If she was to be a cannibal (so she seemed to imply with her leftovers), she wasn’t going to be a greedy cannibal. By contrast Mrs Head was again made to feel a little bit bad by finishing her portion entirely and wiping up the juices with some bread.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The rest of the evening followed a well-established pattern, though Tory couldn’t rid herself of the lingering suspicion that she had been transformed in some irrevocable way. It was a similar feeling to the aftershock of being kissed for the first time (Clarence Dundry, chief teller at her father’s bank, on the common after a tea of kidneys and lemonade at the English Rose Tea Rooms). She would look at her face in the mirror and say, ‘Tory Head has been kissed by a man,’ and wonder why the face looking back at her was the same face that had always looked back at her, and not a different one, a woman’s one. Now she might look in the mirror and say,

  ‘Tory Pace has eaten human flesh and no longer deserves to live amongst civilized people,’ but again it would have been the same tired face that had looked back at her for the last ten years. The tired, drawn face of the mother-of-three and wife-to-one.

  She changed her clothes and brushed her hair, then went into the living room to write some letters at the escritoire. She wrote letters nearly every day, usually to the children, a separate letter each. This torrent of postage was met with a trickle in reply, but she didn’t expect much more. At first they had written brave, unhappy letters from the Cotswolds. Paulette, her older daughter, had written, ‘Do not worry about us, Mother. I have devised a machine for disarming ogres. It uses trick chocolate…’

  Tom, her studious eldest, had written, ‘We are very sorry that

  Father is dead, but we doubt he would have wanted to be part of a world like the one that is taking shape around us…’

  This letter had alarmed Tory. While she herself had decided that Donald was no longer alive, she couldn’t remember passing this belief on to the children. And they seemed to have accepted it so matter-offactly, or at least Tom had. But then none of them had been particularly close to their father, or had appeared especially fond of him.

  She tried hard to imagine her son. It had become difficult. She didn’t have any recent photographs. She remembered him more by his actions than his appearance: she could picture him changing the wheel of his bike, or mixing things in a test tube from his chemistry set, or plotting the passage of sunlight across the living room, or sitting in a corner of the kitchen with his face hidden behind a big, serious book. The only feature she could recall with certainty was his spectacles, because they were so black and heavy-framed. She tried to imagine him explaining the death of their father to the two girls, in his matter-of-fact way. She imagined that they had sat under a haystack, the girls sobbing while Tom spoke: ‘There’s no point in crying, you know. There’s a war on and people have to die. That’s the whole point of a war …’

  She sometimes wondered why she bothered writing to her clever son at all. He clearly found her letters unsatisfying. She was reading his most recent one to her, which began

  Dear Mama,

  I refer you to your letter dated 16–1–41, in which you tell us about your work at Farraway’s Gelatine Factory. Your most recent letter (dated 21–3–41) repeats a lot of this information. There is really little point in writing to us unless you have something new to tell.

  I have bought a magnifying glass.

  Yours sincerely

  Tom

  He seemed to think he was writing on behalf of the girls as well. They rarely wrote, and when they did, the results were even briefer. Albertina, her youngest, had once written her the following:

  Dra Mama,

  I cant think of anything to rite

  Your truly

  Albertina

  ‘At least she’s honest,’ Mrs Head had said, and it had amused Tory, seeing the sweated labour evident in every crooked down-stroke. In fact it had moved her to tears, the simple, contradictory honesty of her little girl’s letter, so painstakingly rendered in clumsy pencil. But this evening she felt Albertina’s sentiments acutely as her own. She couldn’t think of anything to write. The bombing of the butcher’s shop was not something that she thought they would like to hear about, although perhaps it would do them good, occasionally, to be reminded of why they’d been evacuated in the first place. She played over to herself the words that were actually struggling for expression: ‘Mrs Head and I had the most gorgeous roast dinner this evening. The only problem was that we couldn’t be sure the meat was not human, perhaps even a portion of Mr Dando’s leg, which made it rather difficult to enjoy…’

  She emerged from the sitting room an hour later, defeated and nauseous, and sat in the armchair opposite her mother at the fireplace. Her mother was, unusually, reading the paper that Tory had brought home that evening. Mrs Head did very little reading, even of newspapers. She was a woman who liked to be always doing things, and she didn’t regard reading as an activity. Somewhat reluctantly, Tory picked up her knitting. She was in the middle of making a stripy bobble hat for Albertina, but it wasn’t going well. Tory was not a natural knitter, unlike her mother, and she’d several times already had to unravel the thing and start again. Knitting within visual range of her mo
ther was always a risk since it invited commentary.

  But this evening Mrs Head seemed unusually quiet. The pair of them sat there in a silence interrupted only by the curious noises their respective digestive systems gave, alimentary howls and cat-calls, as that evening’s meal was, apparently with some difficulty, processed. It was as though two forest animals were calling to each other in the dark, little yelps and shrieks from Mrs Head’s intestines answered by gorilla-yodels and perversely masculine grumbles from Tory’s petite insides. Suddenly a new voice was added, as Mrs Head spoke.

  ‘There we are,’ she said, turning the pages of the newspaper to face her daughter. ‘What did I tell you?’ She pointed to a news item that described the safe return home of several prisoners of war after a daring escape from a German camp. ‘I expect Donald is at this very moment digging some sort of tunnel, like those fellows did.’

  ‘Donald is dead, Mother. I would be wearing mourning if it was available on rationing.’

  ‘Quite right that it isn’t,’ said Mrs Head, who hadn’t worn black when her Arthur had died, even though it had happened long before clothing coupons came in. ‘It’s extravagant, illogical and unchristian. Why should you want to draw attention to yourself and demand sympathy? But that ignores the main fact that your husband, as we’re all sure, apart from you for some unknown reason, is not dead.’

  Tory didn’t speak, but struggled with a stitch instead.

  ‘Why do you insist on believing this nonsense, Tory? I think it’s criminal. You’ve even convinced the children when there isn’t a shred of evidence—’

  ‘It’s been six months, Mother,’ her daughter snapped, ‘six months since he was declared missing in action …’

  ‘But it can take a long time before news comes through. That’s what the letter said. It can take months …’ But even she had to concede, privately, that the chances of Donald being alive were small. The losses in North Africa had been heavy, and the Germans had shown little mercy. She wished it was otherwise, since she dreaded the thought of her daughter becoming a widow – it was a role she cherished for herself alone. At the same time she couldn’t help secretly (or so she hoped) nursing feelings of blazing selfrighteousness and supreme vindication when her son-in-law was declared missing in action after only three months in the Army. She wondered why on earth anyone, let alone those who should have known better, would think he might serve any useful purpose as a fighting soldier. She was up visiting from Waseminster the very day his call-up papers came, and she couldn’t quite believe it.

  ‘What would the Army want with you?’ she’d said.

  Donald had given her one of his disgruntled tomcat looks, thinking she was being sarcastic before realizing she was genuinely puzzled. ‘It’s conscription,’ he explained. ‘Everybody has to go.’

  ‘But surely they mean every able-bodied man …’

  Jokingly, Donald had rolled up his right sleeve and flexed his biceps, displaying the little white muscle that suddenly appeared there, like a boiled egg. ‘You’re forgetting I’m from Glasgae,’ he said, exaggerating his nearly lost Gorbals accent. ‘We were slaughtering Visigoths while you lot were still treading grapes with the Gauls.’

  Mrs Head suspected different periods of history were mixed up in that little put-down, but didn’t feel able to question Donald’s scholarship. He was a very bookish chap. ‘Well, it’s a long road,’ she said, ‘that leads from wallpapering the pantries of Plumstead Common to the battlefields of the Eastern Front, whenever there may be one …’ She’d been rather pleased with that retort, and afterwards she couldn’t stop giggling at the picture in her mind, of Donald running on his silly little legs to paste rolls of wallpaper over the approaching German tanks. ‘God help us,’ she half whispered to herself.

  *

  He had sent regular letters but wasn’t allowed to say where he was, though they guessed, from his continual references to sand, heat, scorpions, camels and pyramids, that he was somewhere in North Africa.

  Then the letter from the Army Records Office arrived.

  Dear Sir or Madam,

  I regret to have to inform you that a report has been received from the War Office to the effect that

  No.

  (54769)

  Rank

  (Pte)

  Name

  Pace, Donald Midlothian

  Was posted

  “missing”

  on the

  (date unknown)

  The report that he is missing does not necessarily mean that he has been killed, as he may be a prisoner of war or temporarily separated from his regiment. Official reports that men are prisoners of war take some time to reach this country, and if he has been captured by the enemy it is probable that unofficial news will reach you first. In that case I am to ask you to forward any postcard or letter received at once to this office, and it will be returned to you as soon as possible.

  Should any further information be received it will be at once communicated to you.

  I am,

  Sir or Madam,

  Your obedient servant,

  H. J. Hiscock

  Officer in charge of Records

  ‘They do not take prisoners in the desert,’ had been Tory’s first remark, after she and her mother, shoulder to shoulder, had read the letter together. She had made up her mind that quickly, and hadn’t altered her position since.

  ‘It’s unpatriotic of you,’ Mrs Head now said to her daughter, ‘to suppose that your husband is dead.’

  ‘Patriotism has got nothing to do with it,’ said Tory, quietly, without looking up from her knitting.

  ‘Well, I don’t like to say this, Tory, but in my opinion you seem too ready to believe the worst where Donald is concerned. Any other wife would be clinging to the hope that he had survived as a prisoner of war, but you almost seem to want him to have been killed.’

  This made Tory look up in alarm. About to remonstrate angrily, she checked herself, then looked down again at her needles. There were tears forming, her mother was pleased to note. One or two had dropped into her wool.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to believe that he’s alive,’ she said.

  ‘It’s just that I don’t really think Donald is much of a survivor.’

  Donald was physically tough, in his small, wiry way, but he tended to keel over when confronted with an obstacle. She remembered a bossy, needle-nosed spinster who’d refused to pay him when he’d spent a fortnight brightening up her gloomy little parlour. After a few doorstep arguments he had just thrown in the towel, said, ‘Have it your own way’, and gone on to the next job. It had shocked her that he should give up so quickly. She even went round to the spinster’s house herself to try to reason with her. It was a particularly lean time and they needed every penny. How Donald had laughed when she, too, came home empty-handed. ‘I told you. No point in wasting energy with someone like that.’ She supposed he thought the same when confronted with enemy divisions.

  Sometimes there came to her mind a picture of Donald as a skeleton, picked clean and bleached white, drowning in sand.

  ‘Well, I think that’s a rather pitiful thing to think about your own husband …’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Mama.’

  And so they didn’t. They said very little for the rest of the evening.

  They went to bed without wishing each other goodnight, feeling hungry and unloved.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mrs Head set off early next morning for her journey to the high street, which she decided to walk, despite there being trams available, just to see if she could do it. She chose a special hat for the occasion, determined to make an early impression on the distant butchers, in the manner of Mrs Richards, and so bedecked herself in a turquoise toque garnished with osprey feathers, forgetting how down at heel the high street had become in recent years, and not realizing how jarringly she would stand out among the grey crowds there. She was pleased to see that there were many butchers in the high street.
In fact, there seemed to be more than she would have thought necessary. She found it easy to register with the one she considered the most promising (from the relative abundance of red meat in his window), and was able to buy some fatty little chump chops and streaky bacon that very morning. Perhaps the bombing of Dando’s, she thought to herself as she made the long walk back, was to be a blessing in disguise.

  She was quite unprepared for the shock that was to greet her on her return. Opening the front door she found a letter on the mat, realizing even before she picked it up that it was a powerfully official communication. The blue envelope bore German writing in one corner that, just by virtue of its dark, prickly typeface, looked threatening. It made her hesitate as she stooped to pick it up, and in the end she lifted the envelope carefully, as though it was a piece of broken glass.

  Kriegsgefangenenpost was written across the top. She knew that this meant it was a letter from a prisoner of war. And there was Donald’s handwriting, overshadowed and cowering, it seemed, beneath the rubber stamps of officials and censors. STALAG-VII-C. A red crown with the word ‘passed’ underneath. A German eagle. Hands from both sides of the war had touched this envelope, had read its contents. Enemies had co-operated in its journey across Europe. It thrilled Mrs Head a little, and she became breathless.

  ‘So the little Scotchman painter and decorator is alive after all,’ she gasped to herself, as she hurried with the letter into the kitchen, ‘wiling away his days in a prisoner-of-war camp.’ She giggled nervously. ‘Well, he could have written sooner.’