The Very White of Love

by S C Worrall

  Molly skewers a piece of pheasant, lifts it to her mouth, then turns to her daughter. ‘Remember that summer day at Harlech, when Martin and I appeared in the pageant?’ She thoughtfully chews the pheasant, then dabs her lips with her napkin. ‘I had a dream.’ Roseen glances anxiously down the table at her mother, who is known for her eccentric ideas. ‘It was terribly hot. Poor Martin was absolutely fed up with being paraded around in a velvet costume.’ She takes a sip of her drink. ‘Anyway, the point is, I had a dream that I couldn’t find him anywhere. I was just beginning to panic when I caught sight of him, standing on the battlements, looking out over the sea.’

  Nancy listens, intrigued, trying to imagine where the story is headed.

  ‘He saw me and came running across the flagstones, waving his arms and yelling.’ She looks around at the assembled company. ‘It’s a message. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Nancy gushes, trying to sound positive, despite the shock of today’s letter. ‘I hope it is!’

  Molly looks at her, patronizingly.

  ‘Robert is a great believer in dreams, isn’t he?’ Uncle Charles clears his throat.

  ‘All the Graves’ are fey,’ says Molly, toying with her pearls. ‘It’s why I am a dowser. Water talks to me.’

  ‘I sometimes talk to the donkey across the field,’ says Michael, enthusiastically. ‘But he only knows one word.’

  ‘Which is?’ Aunt Dorothy smiles indulgently. Tom kicks his brother under the table.

  ‘Hee-haw!’ Michael brays.

  ‘For God’s sake, Michael!’ Tom barks.

  ‘Hee-haw! Hee-haw!’

  ‘That’s enough, darling.’ Aunt D. pats his hand.

  Nancy rises from the table. ‘Excuse me,’ she says. ‘Need a bit of fresh air.’

  She goes outside and lights a cigarette. Today was meant to be about love and celebration. But it is as though she is not there. How could they be so insensitive? she thinks, as the nicotine rises to her head. If only Martin were here! She feels so alone without him. Up above her, the beam of a distant searchlight slices a path across the night sky.

  She stubs out the cigarette and goes back inside. As she is about to re-enter the dining room, she hears raised voices. Pressing her ear to the door, she listens as Molly speaks.

  ‘Why should I feel happy for them? I wish he had never got engaged!’

  ‘If you had let them get married, we might have a little piece of Martin with us now!’ Roseen blasts back at her.

  ‘She’s twenty-three, the daughter of a taxman. There are so many more eligible girls Martin could choose.’

  ‘He LOVES her!’ Roseen shouts. ‘Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Love . . . ’ Molly makes the word sound like a disease.

  Nancy leans her head against the doorframe, tears welling in her eyes. Though war has changed everyone’s lives, bringing most people closer together, it has not altered the calcified assumptions and prejudices of Molly’s mind. She is the obstacle. She is the one who is ruining their happiness. If it weren’t for Molly, they would be married and she could be bearing Martin’s child. The hateful, bigoted snob!

  But she is not going to let Molly defeat her. Touching the ring on her finger, Nancy takes a deep breath, then walks back into the dining room, with her head held high. She goes to her seat but doesn’t sit down. Instead, she lifts her wine glass and clinks it with her knife. If no one else is going to mention her and Martin’s special day then she will. And to hell with etiquette.

  ‘Today is another anniversary.’ She stares defiantly across the table at Molly.

  Everyone stops eating, as though a bomb has landed in the garden. Molly’s mouth gapes open in horror at the temerity of this uppity, young redhead to propose a toast to the family – when she’s not even part of it! Nancy feels her daggers look and almost abandons the idea. But Martin always said that their generation should do things differently. Break the mould.

  ‘On this day, exactly two years ago, I met Martin.’ She holds her glass aloft.

  ‘That’s right!’ exclaims Roseen. ‘You always said it was a good omen that it was the same day as our parents’ wedding anniversary.’ She turns to Molly. ‘Isn’t that amazing, Mummy?’

  Molly doesn’t react.

  ‘And a year later, on the very same day, the war breaks out.’ Aunt D. shakes her head.

  ‘So, not such a lucky day, after all.’ Molly’s voice is icy.

  Nancy looks around her, feeling lost, then slumps back down into her chair, deflated, like a balloon that has had a needle stuck into it. She has to summon all her powers of British self-control to prevent herself from bursting into tears and running out of the room. Seeing her anguish, Uncle Charles reaches out a loving paw, clasps her hand in his then raises his glass. ‘To Martin!’

  ‘To Martin!’ Nancy repeats, looking directly into Molly’s eyes.

  ‘To Martin!’ Aunt D. and the rest of the family join in.

  Molly stares back at Nancy, and mutters under her breath: ‘To Martin!’

  Tears pour down Nancy’s face as she pedals home. The words she overheard Molly say, as she stood with her ear pressed to the door, still burn in her mind like hot coals. But this is their day, the anniversary of that moment when her life changed for ever and no one can take it from them, not even Molly. And, as the pedals revolve, her thoughts turn back to those first, magical weeks with Martin – their first meeting; their first, awkward tea rendezvous; their walks across the fields from Whichert House; their outings in the Bomb; their first kiss, outside Blythe Cottage; and that magical moment when Martin proposed to her under the hollow oak in Church Path Woods.

  A white blur almost slaps her across the face. A rush of air, in her ears, as an owl’s ghostly form strikes some poor field mouse in the road. She brakes hard and swerves. The front tyre slams into a pothole. She is thrown from the bike and lands sprawled on the muddy verge. Sobs now turn into cries of despair as the owl melts back into the night, like a ghost. They are two lonely creatures journeying in the darkness.

  She limps the rest of the way home, pushing the bike. Blood from where the pedal skinned her ankle dribbles down the side of her shoe. She grits her teeth, almost relieved to feel the pain. This is what soldiers feel, after all. She must be strong. For Martin. Wherever he is.

  She looks up into the sky. More searchlights carve the darkness into diagonal patterns. Clear nights like this mean bombing raids. The shoals of Heinkels and Dorniers climb the silver track of the Thames, like salmon, to drop more bombs on London. The spawn of death. Oh, Martin, my love, please come home!

  There are no reassuring lights at Blythe Cottage. Like all the other houses in the street, it too is blacked out. She parks the bike at the side of the house, navigates the route to the front door, past the buckets of sand and water her father now fills every day in case of fire, turns the key, slips into the darkened hall.

  ‘My God! What happened to you?’ Her mother drops the sock she is darning as Nancy hobbles into the living room and runs to her daughter.

  Nancy bursts into a flood of rib-aching sobs, as she clutches her mother to her. ‘Today was meant to be a happy day,’ she sniffles. ‘And now it’s all turned so horrible!’

  ‘Want to tell me about it?’ Her mother rubs her back.

  Nancy’s shoulders heave with a fresh bout of violent sobbing. ‘Another of my letters came back.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, pet.’ Her mother points at the bloodied sock. ‘Let’s take a look at that, though.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Nancy flops down in an armchair.

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ Peg inspects the wound, then gets up and fetches a dressing and a bottle of TCP.

  ‘Ouch!’ Nancy winces. ‘That hurts!’ She starts to sob again. ‘Why is Molly so mean to me?’

  ‘Is she?’ Peg dabs at the wound.

  ‘Always!’ Nancy sniffles. ‘I even overheard her saying she is happy we didn’t get married!’

  ‘I am sure she
doesn’t mean that.’ Peg unrolls a bandage. ‘Everyone’s nerves are jangled.’

  Nancy buries her head in her hand and wails. ‘Can’t she see I love Martin to pieces?’

  ‘Of course she can.’ Peg strokes her daughter’s back again. ‘And sometimes mothers feel threatened by that. They don’t want to lose their little boys.’

  Nancy blows her nose. ‘I just wish Martin were here! So we could face this together. He would never let Molly behave like that.’

  ‘Of course, you do, poppet.’ Her mother kisses her. ‘Of course you do. And I know any day now he is going to walk in that door. I just know it!’ Nancy wails. ‘Now, let’s get this bandage on.’

  As her mother gently winds the bandage around her ankle, Nancy feels like a child again, when she would come from school with grazed knees or scratches all over her legs from trying to pick blackberries in the brambles. One day, she will do the same for their children. Hers and Martin’s. But that thought merely brings on another flood of tears and sobs.

  ‘There!’ Peg says, soothingly, as she tapes up the bandage. ‘All fixed.’

  ‘If only it were that easy.’ Nancy kisses her mother on the cheek.

  Her mother returns to her darning and plunges the needle back into the fabric.

  ‘You’re going to ruin your eyes.’ Now, Nancy can play the mother.

  ‘Make do and mend.’ She twinkles. ‘That’s the new slogan.’

  ‘Yes, Mum. G’night.’

  ‘Don’t forget your torch.’ Peg blows her a kiss.

  Nancy picks up the torch from the telephone stand, where her father leaves it for her every night, fully charged, in case of an air raid. Even the country areas are being hit now. She hobbles up the narrow stairs to her room, closes the door behind her and switches on her bedside light.

  On the mantelpiece stands the drawing of Martin in his uniform that Roseen’s fiancé, Andrew Freeth, drew the day before Martin returned to France. She blows him an air kiss as she passes, then searches through the record pile. Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’? Too German. Brahms? Too melodramatic. She sits back with her hands on her knees, then pulls out a small, gold-covered EP, lays it on the gramophone, drops the needle. There’s a hissing sound, then the lilting jazz piano, lazy as a hot day in Louisiana. The plunk of a double bass.

  Fats Waller’s voice takes her back to that evening at Whichert House when they came back from London on the train. The silent house. The fire burning in the grate. Martin’s comical crooning: ‘I’m good for nothing but love.’

  Where is he now? In a camp? Hiding somewhere in France? Everything has changed. Plans. Love. Dreams. Hers is now a provisional life, without a fixed destination or time frame.

  The needle makes a scratching sound as the song ends. She takes out his last letter and opens it. It is dated 6 May. Wahagnies. But it only arrived at the end of June.

  Beloved: This is the time to write you a long dramatic letter but I won’t. I shall just tell you that spring is turning into summer, that orchards have taken shape, that the sky is beautifully blue though sometimes disfigured by shell bursts and bombing planes, that all men must move to keep abreast of the times including ourselves, and that you must never worry about me because I am buoyant and my love and yours would not lead me into danger.

  I hate to tell you this, but I have had to burn my letters including all those I’ve had from you. I can’t tell you how sad I felt to see about one hundred letters from you disappear into the flames. But I realize that it is necessary and I hope you will forgive me. And send me lots more to make up for the loss.

  Alors, je lève mon verre, mon amour. I love you more than ever. Martin.

  She has reread it dozens of times since it arrived, teasing out every scrap of information or hidden meaning from between the lines, searching for new clues she might have missed. At first, she thought he had said: ‘This is not the time to write a dramatic letter.’ But when she read it again she realized he actually meant this is the time to write a dramatic letter. In other words: things are heating up, but there is no time for a full explanation. In fact, it is the shortest letter he has ever written her. So she can assume it was written in haste. Four days later, she now knows, the Germans invaded Belgium. He is sending her coded messages. Shell bursts and bombing planes. All men must move to keep abreast with the times. He is telling her they are about to leave for the front. He had never written like that before. So real.

  What upsets her most is the burning of the letters. She knows how much hers meant to him and how much letters from home meant to all the men. And how much the women back home poured their feelings onto those blue airmail pages. It was their only line of communication, the only way they could tell their men how much they love them. Letters brought them together. Literally, put them on the same page. Now those bundles of love have been turned to ashes. Incinerated. And the love of millions of women on this side of the Channel is going unanswered.

  How can they comfort their husbands and sons and brothers now? How can they soothe them with their words when their men are lonely and tired? Make them forget war, and remember home, if only for a few moments?

  She puts the letter down, undresses, slips into her nightie, slides into bed, then takes out a pad of white airmail paper. She’d chased all over London trying to find it, dodging air raid warnings and navigating Tube stations crammed with people fleeing the bombing. Nobody had the sort she was looking for:A4, 10 gram, white. Only the smaller sizes. She finally found it in a little shop tucked away in a back street near Covent Garden. The last pad left.

  She starts to write, cramming as many words onto each line as she can. Only one airmail sheet is allowed now, so every millimetre is precious. A semaphore of love that begins in her brain and travels down the nerves in her arm to her wrist, sending the pen weaving across the page, like a shuttle, leaving in its wake a blue river of love that will flow from her heart across the Channel to France. To him.

  Martin, my love. I am writing to you without knowing where you are but I will and must try to find you after all these long months. I may only use this sheet of paper, but though we have not heard officially from you or the Red Cross yet, I pray this letter will get through all the same. I cannot bear any longer to go on imagining you alone, ‘somewhere in Germany’. Wondering what can possibly have happened that no letters come. You see we have heard nothing of you since the evacuation of Dunkirk when you were in Hazebrouck on 26 May. I cannot tell you what this time has been . . .

  She tuts, irritated by the self-pitying tone that has crept in. She considers crossing out the last sentence, ploughs on.

  But, Martin I promise you even in the blackest bits nothing has shaken us. I have believed with all the strength I possess that you are alive though a prisoner – we all have: your mother, Roseen, and my parents have been wonderful.

  She hears something outside. A bomb exploding? A lorry backfiring? She gets out of bed and goes to the window. Nothing. Just the inky darkness. And an owl crying in the woods.

  She slides back into bed again and takes up the pen. The ink spurting from the tip of the nib’s stem is in time with the pumping of her blood, all her emotions focused onto this tiny, mitre-shaped blade of gold-plated steel.

  When I think of you as I do and have done since May, constantly and without cease, I know that whatever time it may take before we have news from you that time is immeasurably longer and harder for you – alone and probably a prisoner in a strange country. My love – I wish I could comfort you, press my lips against yours, stroke your hair as I used to, fill you with my love. I pray that wherever you are you are comfortable. That you are well and unhurt in mind and body. And that you will soon come home to me. If you are in a camp with Elliott Viney and the others, you will be with familiar and well-trusted friends: I am thankful for that. How I long to know how you are treated and what it is like. We have a parcel waiting for you at Aunt Dorothy’s, to be sent as soon as we have an address. Please tell us everything you want so we c
an send it if anyway possible. If I could fit myself in a box, I would send that, too.

  She turns the page. Be positive, she reminds herself. Cheerful. As if he has just gone away on holiday. To Devon or somewhere. And will be back in a few weeks.

  Sweetheart – do you see it is 3 September? The war began a year ago today but it is also our anniversary – the end of a week together two years ago – and the anniversary of your mother’s wedding day. She is staying at Whichert House for a week and is being so brave and hopeful.

  She lifts the pen. What a total and utter lie! She’s about to cross out that line, but stops herself. This is not about her. It is a letter to make Martin feel loved and reassured.

  Tonight at dinner we raised our glasses for you and held them high. I remember all the most beautiful things we shared. Our love is like a beautiful, protective cloak around me. In the last letter I had from you in May you wrote: ‘You must never worry about me because I am buoyant and my love and yours would not lead me into danger.’ I pray those words are more true now than ever.

  We all live to see you again, tangible and completely dear. Nancy.

  9 SEPTEMBER 1940

  Blythe Cottage

  Normally, when she gets home in the evening, the last thing Nancy want to do is type. That’s what she does all day, at the insurance company in Holborn where she works. Hitler has given the insurance business a tremendous boost. Trapped like a hamster in her cubicle, she spends her days typing a hundred words a minute on an upright Underwood with ten other secretaries. Letters to various Whitehall departments, seeking clarification on the new insurance scheme the Treasury is underwriting. Distraught widows whose husbands have been killed; shopkeepers in Lewisham who have lost rooftops in the air raids; a printing works in the Elephant and Castle flattened by a Junker bomber. It’s her contribution to the war effort, even though some of the claims, she knows, are bogus. A car dealer in the East End wants an outrageous amount for a collapsed wall. A laundry in Lewisham demands £1,000 to mend their roof. Everyone is on the fiddle.