Last Letter Home

by Rachel Hore

‘It’s what my dad thought, too.’

  ‘Perhaps I ought to meet your father sometime and swap information.’

  ‘I don’t think in his current frame of mind that he’d want that.’ Again, that whisper of danger.

  Briony took up the cigar box and fitted the elastic band round it. ‘In that case, we’ll have to talk once I’ve made the transcript. I’m sure I’ll be able to reassure him. It’s no crime, after all, for two men to have disliked or distrusted one another.’

  ‘No, you’re quite right. I can’t think why he’s so worked up about the matter.’

  She drew her bag towards her and fitted the box inside, then stood and turned to face him. ‘Please don’t worry, Greg. I’m not trying to make anyone unhappy, just to find out some things about my own family.’

  ‘What if you dig up something you’d rather lay forgotten, Briony? Have you thought of that?’ Although he smiled, she sensed seriousness behind his words.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Greg only shook his head. ‘Shall I call you a taxi?’

  ‘I’ll be fine on the tube,’ she insisted.

  He led the way into the hall where he paused. ‘I haven’t shown you the rest of the house, have I? Leave your bag there and I’ll give you a quick tour.’

  It seemed churlish not to agree and she followed him through first into a beautifully lit modern kitchen where his supper was cooling, then up softly carpeted stairs, and in and out of several opulently furnished rooms. The house was lovely but somehow it left her cold. It was a place he stayed, like a hotel. Everything was new and clean and sparkling, but when she glimpsed inside the open door of a walk-in wardrobe there were only two shirts hanging in it. She used the bathroom and was delighted by the soft fluffy towels, perfectly folded, but it seemed profane to dry her hands on one.

  When she finally picked up her bag to go, he drew her to him and kissed her mouth. Her skin prickled and warmth shot through her and it was with some effort that she pushed him gently away. She brushed off his offer to walk her to the tube station and set off through the chilly night alone, pulling her scarf snugly round her neck.

  As she walked through the crisp evening, fallen leaves rustling under her feet, she felt glad to put distance between herself and Greg. She couldn’t work him out. There was a fascinating, charismatic aspect to him, and yet at the same time she couldn’t read him. Did he treat all women as he did her, or was there genuinely some spark unique to the two of them? She fancied she could smell his cologne still and walked even faster, trying to throw off her confusion, training her mind instead to go over the events of the evening. His interest in the letters troubled her. She remembered that Luke had shown him her transcript of Sarah’s letters to Paul. A lump came into her throat for it felt like a betrayal, though it was her fault for not apprising Luke of her doubts about Greg.

  At least she’d hadn’t left Greg the letters this evening, she thought, as she entered the tube station and passed through the ticket barriers. Warm air from the tunnels sucked her down the steps to the bright platform. Safe in a seat on the busy train, her hands closed round the box in her bag. Yes, she still had the letters.

  It was after nine when she closed her front door behind her. In the kitchen she unpacked the milk, bread and a plastic box of sushi she’d stopped to buy, then crouched to delve in her bag for an article she’d printed off, intending to read at the table as she ate. It proved elusive, but when she pulled out the cigar box to facilitate her search, she knew immediately by its lightness that something was wrong. She rolled off the elastic band and opened the lid. The box was empty.

  The shock sent her sliding to the floor, where she sat with her mouth open trying to assemble her thoughts. Greg. The bastard. All that schmoozing and showing her round his pied-à-terre and he must have seized an opportunity – while she was in the bathroom, probably – to take the letters. She couldn’t believe that he’d stoop that low. Though she sensed it would do no good, she hastily emptied the bag, but the letters weren’t there.

  Her hands were trembling as she fished her phone out of her pocket, so she had to try twice before she found his number, but ended up speaking to his voicemail. ‘I never believed you’d do a thing as contemptuous as that. I was right not to trust you. I expect those letters back first thing in the morning or I’ll contact the police.’

  She hardly noticed the food she ate, she felt so angry and distressed. She held the phone, but the screen stared back at her blank, silent. With a huge effort of will she texted Luke, telling him what had happened and warning him not to give Greg any more information about Sarah and Paul.

  Then she made herself mint tea and sat nursing it and thinking, its fresh smell a comfort, going over and over what had happened. What mattered to Greg so much that he had to have those letters? His grandfather did not come across well in them, arrogant, bigoted maybe to modern eyes, but Sarah, in her letters, also portrayed him with fondness. She hadn’t read all of Paul’s yet – a pile of marking had interrupted – and at the thought a shaft of misery pierced her. He, Greg, would read them first. It felt like a violation. Spurred by anger, she picked up the phone to ring him again, but there was still no answer. She began to pace the flat, like a caged animal, her agitation growing, but short of jumping in the car and racing back to Greg’s she didn’t know what to do. She had visions of herself banging on his door and shouting and rousing the neighbours and felt hot and cold with embarrassment at the thought.

  Briony slumped down at her desk, intending to look through her emails, keeping her phone by her in case. She’d sat here last night, she remembered, reading those damned essays. The cigar box had been here, too, she’d been reading Paul’s letters there previously. There were the books she’d dumped from her bag before she’d set off for work. Then she’d snatched up the box, slid the elastic band over it and slipped it in to show Greg. Her eye fell on something, a tiny corner of buff paper peeping out from under the pile of books. It piqued her interest. She nudged the books aside, and the paper revealed itself as an envelope with a loop of familiar black writing on it. She saw to her joy a small haphazard pile of old letters. Paul’s letters. She must have left them there, the ones she hadn’t read. Eagerly she grabbed them up, half a dozen of them. ‘Thank you!’ she whispered to whomever might be listening, Paul’s ghost perhaps, or Sarah’s, smiling in the darkness. The thought enchanted her as she switched on the desk light and opened the first letter. She was quickly absorbed, her eyes widening as she read.

  Thirty-five

  Sicily, July 1943

  My very dear Sarah, I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve been able to write . . .

  Paul’s fear and nausea fought for dominance in the hot, cramped interior of the landing craft, buffeted by wind and waves, juddering from the shells exploding all around. The stink of leather and cordite and rank sweat was overpowering. Next to him in the near-darkness a young lad was rubbing a coin and muttering ‘Oh God, oh Jesus,’ over and over, until a gruff voice told him to ‘Stow it.’

  The floor of the craft bumped and scraped on sand and then jolted to a sudden halt, throwing the men forward. As they righted themselves, complaining, metal shrieked against metal, the door was lowered and Paul gulped in fresh air. A gargoyle face looked in, grinned and called, ‘Out you get, lads!’

  Paul’s fingers, sweaty with fear, slid on his rifle as he stood up. It was time.

  He stepped out gasping into thigh-deep, chilly brine, remembering in time to raise the gun clear as he dashed with the others to the wide beach. Moonlight, a canopy of stars, then the quiet sky flashed white and a great distant rumble shook the ground. Bullets cracked and the man ahead of him slumped onto the wet sand, a dark stain spreading like a halo. ‘Leave him, Hartmann. Get up the beach,’ the sergeant’s voice barked from behind and Paul staggered onward, tripping over abandoned kitbags and lumps of metal, blasts of sand scouring his face as he ran half-blind to the line of dunes ahead.

  Writhing black smok
e and flashes of fire. A thud and an earsplitting crack, and a wall of hot air flew at him, knocking him off his feet. For a brief moment he stared up at the uncaring stars, wondering if this was it, then he felt a meaty hand grip his collar, hauling him to his knees. ‘No sleeping on duty,’ the sergeant’s voice rasped in his ear and he blundered forward again, though every instinct shrieked at him to go back. He faltered, glancing round at the big man goading them on. To see a startling backdrop: great black shapes of ships on a jet-dark sea, the ships that had brought him here, their guns flashing fire, hurling shells over his head at an enemy he hadn’t yet seen. Above it all, a silvery barrage balloon was drifting free, its appearance strange, but calm and stately. It gave him courage to go on.

  Soon he was plunging through soft cold sand, fearing a hidden mine or a loop of barbed wire at every step, though it seemed that the sappers had done their job. He passed the cruciform carcass of a fighter plane – one of their own, he noticed, briefly wondering about the fate of its crew. A new sound started up ahead, the mechanical repeat of machine gun fire, striking sparks up into the night, then came a roar as a tank overtook them on the brow of a dune to his right and swept onwards inland, its turret spitting bullets. They followed its tracks in the compacted sand, until they reached a lodgement the commando parties had established.

  And suddenly Paul saw how close they were to the enemy. On a hillock the other side of a dip in the dunes nestled a concrete pillbox. Here and there on the crest of the hillock he could make out swarthy faces beneath bowl helmets, heard the Italians’ cries of dismay as the tank mounted the escarpment and did its deadly work. He recoiled at an explosion, raised his rifle, aimed at one of the faces and pulled the trigger. The face disappeared, but another rose to take its place. Returning bullets struck sand up in his face. Paul ducked, put out a hand to steady himself and was shocked to encounter an arm. Whosever it was he was dead and in the light of a flare he saw the man’s face. ‘Blackie!’ he gasped. The mild, steady man he’d fought beside in Egypt and Tunisia. Taken by a bullet between the eyes. Paul tasted bitterness. Blackie had a wife, two children at home. The thought stirred him into hot anger. He half rose and fired indiscriminately at the enemy’s dune, then stopped, aware that they weren’t shooting back. Instead, above their position poked a stick, a rag of white tied to it, fluttering in a sign of surrender.

  ‘Cease fire!’ someone shouted, and as a localized silence fell a dozen frightened Italian soldiers appeared over the top of the dune with hands raised and stumbled down into the dip. Paul saw Harry reach them first and obeyed his summons. Some of the platoon was directed into the enemy trench to collect up discarded weapons: Paul was set to tying the prisoners’ wrists. He was surprised by their sheepish air of relief, by the unpleasant coarseness of their battledress as he searched them for grenades. Then Harry ordered two corporals to lead them back onto the beach, where they’d be transferred onto a ship. Further along the dunes similar scenes were being played out. ‘Hoorah for King George,’ he heard one Italian call out and the man’s fellows gave a thin cheer.

  ‘Cowards!’ the sergeant hissed.

  ‘Why won’t they fight?’ Paul asked Harry, but Harry shook his head. As Paul’s spirits lightened, he heard Major Goodall cry, ‘Don’t think for a moment that this is the last of them.’

  And on they forged, weaving their way from dune to hillock, using flares to light their path until they left the sand behind and entered a scrubby hinterland. Ahead were a suggestion of trees and the lumpy black shapes of farm buildings.

  A grove of stunted olives, then rows of vines, grapes glistening amid the rustling leaves, a stink of manure, then the rough stones of a wall under Paul’s hand. The muffled barking of a dog started up. As they crossed the farmyard they heard the scrape of a door and a gruff voice shouted a challenge. A distant shell lit up the sky, revealing for a moment the burly figure of a gnarled old man brandishing a shotgun. A popping sound and the gun clattered to the ground as the man stumbled and sank down against the wall of his house, his palms clamped to his face. It was Ivor who stepped forward, lowered his smoking pistol, and Paul remembered something he’d once heard him say: ‘Shoot first, think afterwards. At least that way you’re alive.’ Ivor prodded at the farmer with his boot, but the man was dead meat. From its confinement nearby the dog continued its furious barking.

  Ivor and Harry summoned Paul and he followed obediently as they stepped over the body and slipped inside the house. They checked the few simple rooms by the flame of Harry’s lighter, but instead of enemy soldiers they found only the old man’s wife cowering in the marital bed. When she saw them she knew at once her husband was dead and wept, bringing down a stream of curses on them.

  ‘Tie her up,’ Ivor said roughly, but when Harry glanced at him in disbelief he changed his mind. ‘Leave her be then. She has no way to summon help.’ They left the house and joined a party to search the outbuildings. There was no livestock. When they opened the barn door a desperate sheepdog kept them at bay until Ivor shot it, but all it seemed to be guarding was a mangy donkey and a rickety painted cart.

  The moon had begun to sink in the sky as they moved on, following several tanks carving tracks across a field of tender plants. Paul knew they must soon turn east, their mission being to secure the port. The Italian defence had been weak, but where were the Germans, that was what they were all wondering. He suspected it wouldn’t be long before they found out.

  As they tramped along in the greying darkness they sensed the massive presence of Mount Etna in the distance, its summit reaching higher than most of them believed possible, blocking out the stars. A familiar, pungent scent arose all around. A picture of the walled garden flashed into Paul’s mind, a sense of Sarah and safety. After a moment he realized what the smell was – the woody scent of thyme.

  ‘Get down.’ Harry’s low voice came to him on the hot, dense air.

  Paul sank silently into a crouch, peering between gleaming vine leaves into the silvery darkness. There! Was that a man or a shadow? He raised his rifle, but to shoot was to give away their position. He had to be sure. The leaves sighed in a warm breath of wind then fell still. No one.

  He watched Harry scamper to the shelter of a heap of rocks, so he rose and followed with the others. From the safety of this new position he could see the low wall of a farmyard and, there! Was that a movement at the other side, a glint of metal? His hand fumbled behind for the pocket of his kitbag and closed round a grenade. A signal from Harry and he bit out the pin and tossed the ball in a great arc, ducked and held his breath, praying that it wasn’t the farmer come out to take a piss.

  The explosion momentarily deafened him, the blast shaking the ground. Then screams, and a boy’s voice crying for his mother before the Germans’ machine gun burst into life and a fireball lit up the vineyard in a sudden nightmarish glare. There were at least a dozen of them, he saw as he rose to lob his next grenade. Another burst of sound and light and the machine gun abruptly ceased. Instead, from somewhere behind and to their right, their own gun started up. There were shouts of panic from the farmyard, then a repeated command. He glanced at Harry for instruction, but Harry was sitting with his back against the rock, one hand clutched to his jaw.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  Harry did not reply, did not appear to hear him.

  Paul reached out and pulled away the hand, expecting the worst, but there was no bloody wound and Harry simply looked up at him in surprise.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  Harry snapped back into life. ‘Of course I am,’ he said, staggering to his feet.

  ‘Shall we move in on them now? They’re retreating. I heard someone give the order.’

  ‘Yes, at once. Onto them, lads.’ The platoon surged forward shooting flame into the darkness, but when there came no returning fire they scrambled one by one over the wall. To find a ghastly scene: a mess of bodies and twisted metal illuminated by a burning straw bale which a fat farmer with a flamboyant
moustache was valiantly trying to extinguish. Seeing British soldiers, he dropped his pail and raised his hands. The soldiers ignored him. Most rushed through in pursuit of their prey, but others stopped to collect up weapons. Paul remained to speak to a burly German soldier lying groaning, his leg beneath the knee a shattered mess of blood and bone.

  ‘Our doctors are coming. They will help you.’ He spoke to the man in his own language.

  ‘Deutsch?’ the man grunted, his face twisted with disgust. ‘Sie sind Deutsch?’ and when Paul didn’t answer, drew painful breath and spat at him.

  ‘Ja, and your fellows ran and left you,’ Paul said, wiping the spume from his face as the man’s angry gaze bored into him. It was not the first such occasion and he could never help a rush of shame. But nor did he avoid these situations, because since Egypt, when he’d first rescued a wounded German, he’d felt it to be something he should do. It made no rational sense, of course, first to try to kill a man and then to comfort him, but they were still his countrymen and he felt he owed them something.

  ‘Hartmann!’ Ivor’s warning voice. He spun to see the wounded German prising a pistol from the dead hand of an officer spreadeagled nearby.

  ‘Für Hamburg,’ the man cried. A shot and a scream as the pistol skittered across the stony ground. Paul stared at Ivor’s smoking gun, then at the German cradling what remained of his hand. His thoughts struggled for dominance. One kind of enemy had saved him from another, but the wounded German now had bloody stumps instead of fingers. Nausea rose in his gorge.

  He nodded thanks to Ivor, then crouched and reached in his kitbag for his precious syringe. ‘A doctor will help you,’ he said again as he plunged the needle into the man’s thigh and watched the agony leach from the exhausted face. He was an older man, Paul saw with pity, possibly a labourer of some kind in civilian life. Even if he survived, what would be left for him after his leg was amputated and his hand maybe, too?