Letters to the Lost

by Iona Grey

  There was a roll of yellowing crepe bandage on the top shelf of the cupboard, and she took this and a packet of soluble aspirin into the kitchen. She unhooked a teacup and filled it with water, then dropped in two of the tablets. Waiting for them to dissolve she looked around. In the grimy morning light the place looked bleak, but there was something poignantly homely about the row of canisters on the shelf, labelled ‘TEA’, ‘RICE’, ‘SUGAR’, the scarred chopping board propped against the wall and the scorched oven gloves hanging from a hook beside the cooker. The cup in her hand was green, but sort of shiny; iridescent like the delicate rainbows in oily puddles. She rubbed her finger over it. She’d never seen anything like it before, and she liked it. It couldn’t have been more different from the assortment of cheap stained mugs in the flat in Elephant and Castle.

  She drank the aspirin mixture in two big grimacing gulps, her throat closing in protest at the salty-sweetness, then took the bandage into the front room where she applied herself to the task of binding up her ankle. Mid-way through she heard whistling outside, and stopped, her heart thudding. Footsteps came closer. Dropping the bandage she got to her feet, tensed for the knock on the door or, worse, a key turning—

  With a rusty, reluctant creak the letterbox opened. A single, cream-coloured envelope landed on top of the heap of garish junk mail and takeaway menus.

  Mrs S. Thorne

  4 Greenfields Lane

  Church End

  London

  UNITED KINGDOM.

  It was written in black ink. Proper ink, not biro. The writing was bold and elegant but unmistakably shaky, as if the person who had written it was old or sick or in a rush. The paper was creamy, faintly ridged, like bone or ivory.

  She turned it over. Spiked black capitals grabbed her attention.

  PERSONAL and URGENT. If necessary and possible PLEASE FORWARD.

  She put it on the mantelpiece, propped against a chipped jug bearing the slogan ‘A Present from Margate’. Against the faded furnishings the envelope looked clean and crisp and opulent.

  Outside the world got on with its weekday business, but in the little house time faltered and the day dragged. The initial euphoria of having got away from Dodge was quickly eroded by hunger and the savage cold. In a cupboard in the kitchen she discovered a little stash of supplies, amongst which was a packet of fig rolls. They were almost two years past their sell by date but she devoured half of them, and made herself save the rest for later. She kept trying to think of where to go from here, what to do next, but her thoughts went round in futile circles, like a drowsy bluebottle bashing senselessly against a closed window.

  She slept again, deeply, only surfacing when the short February day was fading and the shadows in the corners of the room had thickened on the nets of cobwebs. The envelope on the mantelpiece seemed to have absorbed all the remaining light. It gleamed palely, like the moon.

  Mrs S. Thorne must have been the lady who had lived here, but what did she need to know that was ‘Personal and Urgent’? With some effort she levered herself up from the sofa and scooped up the landslide of mail from beneath the letterbox. Wrapping the blanket around her shoulders she began to go through it, looking for clues. Maybe there would be something there to hint at where she’d gone, this mysterious Mrs Thorne.

  Most of it was anonymous junk offering free delivery on takeaway pizzas or bargain deals on replacement windows. She tried hard not to look at the takeaway menus, with their close-up photographs of glistening, luridly coloured pizzas, as big as bicycle wheels. In amongst them she found a newsletter from All Saints Church with ‘Miss Price’ scribbled at the top, and several flimsy mail order catalogues selling ‘classic knitwear’ and thermal nightwear addressed to Miss N. Price.

  No mention of Mrs Thorne.

  She tossed the church newsletter onto the junk pile and stretched her cramped spine. The idle curiosity that had prompted her to start the search had faded when it yielded no instant answer, and the pizza photographs made her feel irritable and on edge. Since she wasn’t even supposed to be here it was hardly her responsibility to make sure the letter reached its destination, and it wasn’t as if she didn’t have enough of her own problems to sort out. She didn’t need to take on anyone else’s.

  But still . . .

  She got up and went over to the fireplace, sliding the letter out from behind the clock. ‘Personal and Urgent’ – what did that mean anyway? It was probably nothing. She knew from Gran that old people got in a state about all kinds of random things.

  The paper was so thick it was almost like velvet. In the gathering dusk it was difficult to make out the postmark, but she risked taking a step towards the window to squint at the blurred stamp. Bloody hell – USA. She turned it over and read the message on the back again, running her fingers over the underlining where the ink had smudged slightly. Tilting it up to the dying light she could see the indentation in the paper where the pen had scored across it, pressing hope into the page.

  Personal and Urgent.

  If possible . . .

  And before she knew what she was doing, before she had a chance to think about all the reasons why it was wrong, she was tearing open the envelope and sliding out the single sheet of paper inside.

  The Beach House

  Back Creek Road

  Kennebunk, ME

  22 January 2011

  Darling girl

  It’s been over seventy years and I still think of you like that. My darling. My girl. So much has changed in that time and the world is a different place to the one where we met, but every time I think of you I’m twenty-two years old again.

  I’ve been thinking a lot about those days. I haven’t been feeling so good and the meds the doctors have given me make me pretty tired. Not surprising at ninety years old, maybe. Some days it seems like I barely wake up and lying here, half sleeping, all those memories are so damned vivid I almost believe they’re real and that I’m back there, in England, with 382 Squadron and you.

  I promised to love you forever, in a time when I didn’t know if I ’d live to see the start of another week. Now it looks like forever is finally running out. I never stopped loving you. I tried, for the sake of my own sanity, but I never even got close, and I never stopped hoping either. The docs say I don’t have much time left, but I still have that hope, and the feeling that I’m not done here. Not until I know what happened to you. Not until I’ve told you that what we started back then in those crazy days when the world was all upside-down has never really finished for me, and that those days – tough and terrifying though they were – were also the best of my life.

  I don’t know where you are. I don’t know if the house on Greenfields Lane is still yours and if this letter will ever reach you. Hell, I don’t know if you’re still alive, except I have this crazy belief that I ’d know if you weren’t; I ’d feel it and be ready to go too. I’m not afraid of Death – my old adversary from those flying days. I beat him back then so I’m easy about letting him win this time around, but I ’d give in a hell of a lot more gracefully if I knew. And if I could say goodbye to you properly this time.

  I guess that pretty soon none of this will matter, and our story will be history. But I’m not done hoping yet. Or wishing I could go back to the start and do it all again, and this time make sure I never let you go.

  If you get this, please write.

  My love

  Dan

  Oh.

  Ohhhh . . .

  She folded the letter in half again and shoved it hastily back into the envelope. She shouldn’t have touched it; would never have done if she’d thought for a minute it would be so . . . serious. Life and death kind of serious. Personal and urgent.

  But it was too late now. The letter had been torn open and couldn’t be resealed. The plea sent out from across the world by a dying man had been heard, however inadvertently, by her and no one else. And so now she had a choice: to ignore it, or to make some attempt to find Mrs S. Thorne. Whoever she mi
ght be.

  2

  London, August 1942

  No one expected a wartime wedding to be lavish, but the parish ladies had done their Reverend proud.

  The austere brick interior of St Crispin’s was decked with dahlias, phlox and chrysanthemums garnered from tired August gardens, and across the road in the church hall a spread of bloater paste sandwiches, Spam rolls and Marjorie Walsh’s inevitable scones had been lovingly laid out around the one-tier cake. King’s Oak was a small suburb of North London, mostly made up of Victorian terraces with tiny brick-paved yards at the back, and neat pairs of semidetached houses built after the last war. It certainly wasn’t a rich parish, but no one could say it wasn’t a generous one. Coupons had been swapped and rations pooled, and the resulting feast was a tribute to the resourcefulness of the St Crispin’s parishioners, and the high regard in which they held their vicar.

  He stood at the front of the church, not facing them as he usually did, but with his head bent in private conversation with God. There was something vulnerable, Ada Broughton thought from her usual place in the third-row pew, about the pinkness of his neck above his collar, and something rather impressive about his solitary communion with the Lord. He wasn’t a particularly young man – the difference in years between him and his bride had been much muttered about during meetings of the Mothers’ Union and the Hospital Supplies Committee – but his bookish, undernourished appearance gave an impression of youth, and inspired in his lady parishioners (in the days before rationing, at least) an urge to bake him suet puddings and individual cottage pies with the leftovers from the Sunday roast.

  They’d all had him down as a confirmed bachelor and his engagement to young Stella Holland had come as quite a surprise. In fact, as Marjorie Walsh sounded a strident chord on the organ announcing the arrival of the bride, Ada saw his head snap upwards and his eyes widen, as if he too had been caught off-guard by this turn of events. His expression, as he looked at his best man beside him, was almost one of panic, poor lamb.

  Ah, but the bride was a picture. Looking over her shoulder, Ada felt her eyes prickle and her bosom swell beneath her best pre-war dress. Slender as a willow, her narrow shoulders held very straight, her face pale behind the mist of her veil, little Stella looked like Princess Elizabeth herself rather than a girl from the Poor School. The bridal gown was another collaborative effort, donated by Dot Wilkins (who’d worn it in 1919 when her Arthur had recovered enough from the gas to rasp ‘I do’) and altered by the Ladies’ Sewing Circle. They’d stopped making field dressings for an entire month while they updated the style and took in all the seams to fit Stella’s tiny frame, which was currently further dwarfed by the solid tweed-clad figure of Phyllis Birch walking beside her, in lieu of a father. But it was Stella who drew everyone’s gaze. None of them had ever dreamed that the mouldy old lace dress could be transformed into this vision of loveliness. Ada dabbed a tear and allowed herself a moment of maternal pride. In the absence of the girl’s mother she didn’t feel she was overreaching herself too much.

  Her expression soured a little as it came to rest on Nancy Price, walking behind the bride. Her dress was of ice blue satin, which had looked smashing on Ethel Collins’s daughter when she’d been a bridesmaid in the summer of ’39, but less so on Nancy. The colour went well with her bottle-blonde hair, but she inhabited the demure garment with an attitude of secret amusement, as if the puff-sleeves and modest sweetheart neckline were somehow ridiculous. Even doing something as simple as walking down the aisle, Nancy managed to make herself look faintly unrespectable. The two girls really were chalk and cheese – it was a wonder they were such good friends, though maybe having no family and being brought up in one of those places made you cling to whatever comfort you could find. Ada hoped that now Stella was going to be Mrs Charles Thorne and a vicar’s wife, she’d grow out of the unsuitable friendship.

  Marjorie speeded up the tempo of the wedding march as the bride approached her waiting groom. Shafts of sunlight poured over their bent heads, filled with dust motes like fine, golden celestial confetti. Ada put aside all other thoughts and settled down to enjoy the vows.

  Charles’s first name was actually Maurice; until she heard the vicar saying it, Stella hadn’t known that. Maurice Charles Thorne. It seemed so strange and so funny that she couldn’t focus on anything else as she repeated her vows, and afterwards she had no recollection at all of promising to love and honour and obey. She supposed she must have done, because there was the shiny gold band on her finger – just a thin one, which was all they could get – and people were kissing her on the cheek and slapping Charles on the back and congratulating them both on being husband and wife.

  Wife. Standing outside the church, her arm tucked through Charles’s as Fred Collins adjusted his camera, she hugged the word to herself and felt something expand and glow inside her chest, like an ember unfurling. Wife meant security; a proper home filled with your own things, not a narrow strip in a dormitory surrounded by the snifflings and mutterings of twenty other girls. She thought of the wedding presents displayed on the dining-room table in the Vicarage – a china tea set patterned with roses from an aunt of Charles’s, a crystal rose bowl from Miss Birch and an embroidered dressing-table set from the girls at Woodhill School – and her smile widened, just as the flashbulb exploded.

  The church hall looked lovely. The damp-stained corners were hidden by Union Jack bunting, hoarded since the armistice, which lent the drab green interior a holiday atmosphere. A banner, painted on a frayed bedsheet, hung over the buffet table, bearing the words ‘The Happy Couple’.

  And everyone had been so kind. Even Charles’s parents, conspicuously smart and decked in brittle smiles, had kissed the air beside each of her cheeks and pronounced themselves delighted. It was no secret that they would have much preferred their son to marry a girl from the tennis club in Dorking, who could make up a four on Lillian’s bridge afternoons and converse with her friends in the right sort of accent, but Stella was grateful to them for keeping up the pretence.

  ‘Such a pretty dress!’ Lillian Thorne exclaimed brightly, standing back to look Stella up and down. ‘Did you make it yourself? It looks terribly professional.’

  ‘It belonged to one of the ladies in the parish. The sewing circle altered it for me.’

  ‘Really? Oh, gosh, you should have said – you could have had mine! It was a Hartnell: cost a small fortune, and now it’s just squashed into a trunk in the attic. If I’d known you were in need of one I’d have dug it out.’

  The offer would have been kind, but since it came about three months too late Stella wasn’t sure how to respond. Unperturbed, Lillian ploughed airily on. ‘What a sweet bouquet too – though it looks like it could do with a drink.’

  Stella looked down at the roses wilting in her hand. Lillian was right. They were tea roses of the old-fashioned kind – donated with great pride and ceremony by Alf Broughton from the one bush in his tiny patch of garden that he had refused to give up to rows of sprouts and potatoes – but they were already beginning to collapse. Stella remembered the roses in Lillian’s garden in Dorking, which were as stiff and immaculate as she was, and realized that the compliment was as barbed as their stems.

  ‘It’s not the only one,’ Roger Thorne muttered, looking irritably across the room to where Alf was cheerfully dispensing bottles of stout and glasses of lemonade from a makeshift bar by the kitchen hatch. Mr Thorne had somehow managed to lay his hands on a case of champagne, but it was still underneath the trestle. The people of King’s Oak didn’t go in much for fancy stuff like that, and Alf – a stout man in every sense – wasn’t up to the engineering feat required to open a bottle.

  Stella took a sip of her lemonade, aware of the dangers that lurked like Atlantic mines beneath the surface of the conversation. ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ Charles had said curtly, staring out of the train window on the way home from their one visit to Dorking. They’d never understood him, he explained. They were ba
ffled by his calling, and annoyed that he hadn’t followed the path that had been prepared for him into Roger’s accountancy firm. Stella had sensed a deep hurt, and her heart had ached for him. Family dynamics were a mystery to her, but once they were married they would build their own family and Charles, at its centre, would be healed by her understanding and the huge stores of love she had inside, just waiting to be given.

  ‘Where is Charles?’ Lillian asked testily, as if reading her mind. ‘I’ve hardly spoken a word to him.’

  That makes two of us, thought Stella, following Lillian’s gaze as it roamed the hall. It was quite crowded now, with members of the St Crispin’s parish who hadn’t bothered coming to the church service slipping in to grab a free bite to eat. Stella barely knew most of them, but felt a beat of affection and relief at the sight of Nancy,incongruously dressed in blue satin and smoking a cigarette, like a film starlet captured in Picture Post relaxing backstage between scenes. There was no sign of Charles inside, but a movement in the yard outside caught her eye.

  ‘He’s out there, talking to Peter.’

  Peter Underwood was Charles’s best man. A friend from his days at theological college, he was now the vicar of a small parish in Dorset. It was the first time Stella had met him, though Charles talked about him a lot. From the tone of these comments Stella had expected someone altogether more charismatic than the slight, sallow-skinned, cynical young man whose eyes were owlish behind his spectacles.