by Julia Kelly
“I’m so happy I could scream,” said Nicole.
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“What changed? Did he woo you on your cross-country drive with trivia?”
“No, but the conversation was good. He likes ABBA, by the way,” she said, pulling a face.
“I will never understand your hatred of ABBA,” said Nicole, not needing to see Cara to know her feelings on the subject. “ ‘Waterloo’ is a fantastic song. So is ‘Fernando.’ ”
“You and Liam have no taste.”
“You’re just jealous,” said Nicole. “Now, what’s bothering you enough for you to pick up the phone and call me?”
“I don’t know. I just had the unsettling realization that I feel more like myself around him than I do around anyone else,” she said.
“Hey,” said Nicole.
“Except you.”
“Thank you.”
“Is that crazy?” Cara asked. “I hardly know him.”
“Of course it isn’t crazy. You’re a different person than you were before you met Simon. You’re a different person than you were when you were married to Simon. What I’m most concerned about is that you’re comfortable and happy, and it sounds like you are. And, for the record, you do know Liam. You two have spent more nerdy time together over this diary than I thought possible. And he’s met Iris.”
“Who likes him.”
“And, as we know, Iris is never wrong,” said Nicole.
“Don’t tell her that. We’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Do you know what I think you should do?” asked Nicole.
“Tell me.”
“Don’t listen to what any of the rest of us have to say. Trust your instincts. They took a battering in the divorce, but you know yourself now in a way you never did before. These last couple years have been good for you, but it’s time to move past all of this.”
“Thanks, love,” said Cara quietly.
“If you do decide to snog the professor, call me and give me all the details,” said Nicole.
Cara rolled her eyes. “Now I’m the one hanging up.”
Nicole started to shout something down the phone, but Cara was already ending the call. She threw her phone on the bed. She’d finish the diary that afternoon, but first she would sink into a bath and indulge in the anticipation of a dinner date with Liam.
25 September 1941
I said goodbye to Paul this morning. He tried to talk me into staying in bed, but I told him that would be desertion.
The truth is, I was still feeling unsettled after some of the things he said yesterday. But then, while I was bathing before we left the flat, he ran out and persuaded one of the cabmen’s huts to give us a bit of weak tea and rolls. When I came out, he had it all set up on the table and sat me down to apologize.
“I woke up in the middle of the night, horrified that I’d embarrassed you yesterday, darling. Sometimes I think Reggie is a
bad influence.”
“You’re blaming Reggie?” I asked.
He shoved his hand through his hair, mussing it up deliciously, even though he’d already combed it down with water once that morning. “He goads me, you know.”
I took a sip of tea, refusing to let him out of a full apology. After a few seconds, it came.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that I worry so much about you,” he said, spreading his hands wide. “There’s nothing I can do to protect you when I’m on base or flying missions.”
“And there’s nothing I can do to protect you either, Paul,” I said, touching his cheek. “You aren’t the only one who worries.”
“I know that. Am I forgiven?”
I pulled away a little. “What about after the war, when we’re together again? I won’t be dictated to. I didn’t leave my mother’s home only to lose myself again.”
“I would never do that to you, darling. You must trust me.”
29 September 1941
Da has written back.
27 September 1941
My dearest Lou Lou,
I’m stunned but happy to hear your good news. I wish you every congratulation, although I must confess a little sadness too. I had hoped that one day I would be the man walking you down the aisle, but you’ve shown us all that you don’t need anyone leading you. You’ve become quite the independent young woman.
I’m sorry to say that your mother has not taken your news as well. I suspect it won’t be a surprise to you, but she’d hoped that you would forget Paul and be content to wait for Gary. However, don’t let this diminish your happiness. You have made your own choices, and I couldn’t be more proud.
With all my love (and Mum’s too),
Your father
15 October 1941
I’ve hardly had time to write a word here or, I’m sad to say, to Paul except for a scribbled note here or there. B Section has been run off our feet between lectures about new bombers, meteorology, and further fine-tuning of our technique, and our shifts. The skies have been unsettled with air raid sirens, but often the planes veer off, heading northward. But it’s no matter to us. We remain ever vigilant on our rooftop perch, the lights guiding us as we search for our enemy.
3 November 1941
Rumors abound that our battery may be sent north to Liverpool, Newcastle, or Glasgow. The Luftwaffe have been bombing those cities heavily, trying their best to dismantle whatever factories and depots they can.
Most of this kind of speculation around the canteen and the NAAFI never comes to pass, but this feels different. I shall write to Paul after I finish this and tell him. It’ll make it harder for us to see one another because the train journey will be even farther than London, but perhaps I can come to him. He dismissed the idea in his last letter, but that was nearly two weeks ago.
Two weeks! I might be hurt at his negligence except I’ve been so exhausted that many days I can’t see fit to raise my own pen. It’s been five days since I wrote him myself.
It’s no excuse. Not with what he means to me. I will have to do better.
7 November 1941
I wrote to Paul as I said I would, but I shouldn’t have bothered. I could’ve written his response back because it’s the same every time. It hardly bears transcribing.
He wants me to transfer out of Ack-Ack. It’s too dangerous. He doesn’t want me to be in Liverpool or Newcastle or Glasgow because they’re too far north and harder for him to get to when he’s on leave. If he ever manages to receive leave again.
Sometimes, when I’m at my angriest, I wonder if Reggie really did confuse the dates of his leave in Edinburgh or whether Paul has been gallivanting around, enjoying the idea of having me waiting for him without having to make the effort of coming to see me.
14 November 1941
No letter from Paul since I wrote to him on the seventh. We think Glasgow is our most likely next assignment because the shipyards have been battered with German bombs recently.
I won’t transfer.
5 January 1942
Everything is over. I thought I loved him.
20
LOUISE
“Rumor is more rationing’s coming,” said Mary as she flipped the pages of the abandoned newspaper she’d scooped up from the table in the NAAFI.
“What is it this time?” Charlie asked, laying down the jack of spades on the discard pile.
Louise watched Nigella pluck it up and lay down three jacks, discarding her last card facedown on the pile. “Gin.”
Charlie threw down her hand. “If I’d have known you’d develop into such a card shark, I never would’ve suggested starting this game.”
Louise shook her head, tallying up Nigella’s points and Charlie’s losses and adding it to the score that was already in the tens of thousands. “You could just admit that she’s better at this than any of us.”
“No. I’m about to go on a hot streak here any moment. Just you wait,” said Charlie.
“I don’t know why I keep winning,” said Nigella. “I
swear I’ve never been particularly good.”
“What’s Nigella good at?” Cartruse asked, dropping into the chair next to Louise.
“Gin.”
“Drinking it or playing it?” he asked.
Nigella gasped. “Cartruse, how could you even ask such a thing?”
Cartruse grinned. “Easily. I’m just trying to decide which answer I’d like better.”
“Cards,” said Louise. “Otherwise she’d be out of a job.”
He grunted and reached for the scoring sheet. “So Nigella’s winning.”
“By about two thousand points,” said Louise.
“Hot streak, any moment,” said Charlie.
“What was it you said was going to be rationed, Mary?” Nigella asked.
“Rice,” said Mary, “although there’s nothing official yet.”
The women all groaned, knowing they’d be receiving letters from their mothers and sisters moaning about the scarcity of rice in just a couple weeks’ time, even if they hardly ever cooked with it.
“Anyone up for the picture they’re showing tonight?” asked Cartruse.
“I never go to the pictures,” said Charlie. “What’s the point, when we have to leave to go on duty halfway through?”
Cartruse shrugged. “You can see half of everything now and watch the rest when the war’s over.”
“So I watch Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart try to win the girl, but leave before I get to see the kiss? I don’t think so. That’s the wrong half of the love story for me,” said Charlie.
“What about you, Lou?” Cartruse asked, nudging her with his elbow.
She shook her head and shoved her hand in her pocket to draw out Paul’s compass. All of the girls knew what Cartruse didn’t. That she and Paul had quarreled about the rumors that B Section might be going north.
She’d thought it would be easier when they were married. The fight on the wedding day had been rooted in ignorance, she told herself. He, like so many other men around him, assumed what they always had: that women were weaker, more frightened, less suited to serve. But she would talk to him, reason with him. She would make him understand that what she was doing was important. But to do that, she needed to see him or at least hear from him.
They’d experienced these gaps in communication before. When he’d moved bases or when she’d jumped from Leicester to Oswestry to London, there had been a lapse of a few days when the post had to catch up with them. Yet this was stretching from days to weeks, and she was beginning to worry.
“Maybe I’ll see the picture another day,” she said, tipping Paul’s compass to watch the needle quiver as it pointed north. Since Paul had given it to her, she’d taken to worrying it in her pocket, smoothing her thumb over the dinged corner.
Cartruse frowned, but the door of the NAAFI flew open and Vera walked in holding a clutch of letters before he could reply.
“Post’s come, girls!” Vera called, waving the letters over her head.
The hope that today would be the day Paul’s letter would come nearly felled her, but she forced herself to stay in her seat as Vera handed out letters. She was a married woman now, not a lovesick girl.
“Two for Mary. One for Nigella. Four for Charlie. How many soldiers have you got writing to you now, Charlie?” Vera asked.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Charlie said with a smirk.
“Cheeky,” said Cartruse.
“Don’t you know it,” said Charlie.
“And these two are for Louise, as is this,” said Vera, holding up a large brown envelope.
She took the letters and the envelope, quickly scanning the addresses. Kate’s service number was marked on the top of one envelope, and the other was from her father. They would wait.
The brown envelope had no markings other than her service number. Curious, she flipped it over, ripped open the top flap, and upended it onto the table. Letters fell out, spreading across the veneer, and Louise knew.
Her chest squeezed so tightly she could scarcely breathe. They were her letters. Letters she’d written to Paul. And they were unopened.
“Oh my . . . Louise, I’m so sorry . . .” Vera’s voice trailed off as she and the other girls looked on in horror.
“It can’t be,” she whispered, picking up one of her envelopes and tearing at it. Her letter to him dated two weeks ago slid out, opening up just enough that she could see her usual salutation: My dearest Paul . . .
She ripped another open and another, pulling the sheets of thin paper free. Every single one of them was covered with her handwriting in blue ink from the fountain pen her father had given her on her sixteenth birthday. All of these letters, unopened and unread. For a month she’d been writing to Paul and he’d never seen a one.
“This can’t be happening.” The words came out on a sob that choked her. “He can’t be dead.”
“Maybe he isn’t,” said Mary hopefully. She pointed to the large envelope. “Do you recognize this handwriting?”
Louise shook her head, unable to form words as grief swirled up to pull her down.
Cartruse held a loose sheet of paper and his mouth fell into a thin line as he read. He slid it across the table to Louise. “You need to see this.”
Dear Miss Keene,
I have been aware for some time that you are in frequent correspondence with Flight Lieutenant Paul Bolton, who has so valiantly served his country during this war. It is with my deepest regrets that I must inform you that on 11 November 1941 his plane was shot down over the Channel. I am told by his fellow pilots that he flew bravely to the end, taking two German planes with him.
I thought it best to return your correspondence to him unopened. I offer you my deepest condolences.
Sincerely,
Group Captain Gerald Reynolds
“He’s dead,” she said, numb to the core. “He was killed in action.”
A hush fell over the entire NAAFI, servicemen and women she’d never met before instinctively knowing when one of their own was suffering a great loss. She wanted out of here. Out of this place, where everyone was staring at her. She curled her arms across her stomach, pulling in on herself as though that would keep the pain from radiating throughout her entire body.
She remembered the WAAF who’d received the telegram informing her of her husband’s death in this same NAAFI. She’d felt so sorry for the woman but unsure what to do except sit in respectful silence. Now she was the one grieving, forced to share with all of these people the lowest moment of her life.
“Louise,” said Vera softly.
She realized then that her friend was crouched down next to her, speaking quietly.
“I’m going to take you back to our billet,” Vera said.
Dumbly, Louise nodded, but when she tried to stand, she found that her legs seemed to not be working. She stumbled toward the table, but before she could fall, Cartruse and Vera were at her side, each hooking a shoulder under her arms.
The walk to the billet was a blur—at once too slow and hazy, yet too fast to account for the blocks they’d covered. Nothing made sense. Paul was supposed to write her back, tell her he was worried about her because he loved her. He was supposed to promise her that they’d be together again soon. He was supposed to be as vital and alive as the morning he’d left her with a kiss at the front door of her billet.
“You can’t come in,” she heard Vera say. “There are rules.”
“I don’t care about the rules. She needs help,” Cartruse said.
She lifted her head, suddenly aware again that she was propped up between her friends.
“I know you care for her, but the best thing you can do is let her be. She’s lost her husband,” said Vera, placing a light hand on Cartruse’s arm.
Through the haze of her shock, Louise registered his shoulders drooping. “Then who will help get her upstairs?”
Charlie stepped into her view now—brash, fun Charlie, who had been there on her wedding day, her sole witness. In her hands she clutc
hed the bundle of letters, meaningless words that Paul would never read.
“Vera and I will do it,” said Charlie.
There was a bit of bustling around Louise as Charlie took Cartruse’s spot, nodding to him as he held the door open. They were taking her upstairs. Up to her room. That’s where she wanted to be. In her room. By herself. Maybe if she was in her bed, she would wake up and find that this had all been a wretched dream.
Except dreams didn’t hurt with such precise, searing pain that cut straight to the bone.
Somehow, Vera and Charlie made it up the stairs, carrying Louise most of the way. When they burst into their shared room, they quickly made up her bed and settled her down. Lovingly, they removed her boots and her tunic jacket before tucking her into bed as though she were a child.
“I’m going to get her some tea from the canteen,” said Vera in a low whisper.
“Tea’s not going to do a thing to make her feel better,” said Charlie.
“It’s the only thing I can think to do right now.”
Charlie must’ve agreed, because Vera left without another word.
Lying on her side, Louise stared at a water stain just above the stack of Vera’s mattress biscuits. Why wasn’t she crying? She should be crying. She’d just lost her husband, yet she couldn’t make the tears flow.
She must’ve said something, because Charlie stroked her hair and said, “You’re in shock. That’s why you can’t cry. Just give yourself time.”
“I don’t understand how he can be gone.”
“I don’t either. I don’t either.”
Vera hurried back into the room, three cups of tea and a little plate of biscuits on a tray. “I told the girls in the canteen it was an emergency, and they scrounged up some biscuits.”
“Can you sit up, Lou?” Charlie asked.
Putting her palm flat on the bed, Louise dragged herself up and took the cup of tea. She barely registered the warmth radiating from the mug.
For a few moments they sat in silence, until she said, “I don’t understand.”
“I know, dearest,” said Vera.
She shook her head. “No. I don’t understand how Paul can have been dead for so long and I’m only finding out now.”