by Iona Grey
‘The first committee meeting’s on Thursday week,’ Ada said. ‘Why don’t you come along? Do you good to keep occupied.’
The look of stifled alarm Marjorie directed at Ada wasn’t lost on Stella, who was a little alarmed herself. As the doctor’s wife, Marjorie Walsh liked to think she was at the centre of parish life but also a little above its other inhabitants, and Stella recognized that Marjorie viewed her as a potential rival.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said hastily, ‘but I’m sure you don’t need my help. The fete is always so perfectly organized. A well-oiled machine, Charles calls it. I’m sure the last thing you need is a spare part.’
‘Well . . .’ Marjorie said, with obvious relief.
‘Nonsense. A bit of new blood is just what we need. Well-oiled machine it might be, but the war’s put a right old spoke in the wheels. No coconuts for the coconut shy, no sweets for Guess the Number of Sweets in the Jar . . . We was just saying we need some new ideas, wasn’t we, Marjorie?’
‘Well . . .’ Marjorie said again, relief turning to dismay.
‘It’s very kind of you to ask me. I’ll have a think and see if I can come up with any ideas, though I’m sure it’ll be nothing that you expert ladies haven’t thought of already.’ Hoping that was an answer that would cause no offence to either party, Stella began to move away. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me I suppose I’d better get this in the post.’
‘Ahh,’ Ada folded her arms across her floral bosom and beamed. ‘Letter for Reverend Thorne, is it?’
‘Y-yes. Yes, that’s right.’
‘Well, we won’t keep you then, love, you get on and catch the post. And don’t forget to kiss the back before you drop it in the box – that’s what I always used to do to the letters I sent Alf in the last one. Convinced it would bring him luck, I was – and look where he is now; dozing in the armchair indoors, so there must be something in it!’
Stella laughed politely as she made her escape, the letter clasped firmly in her hand, address-side carefully averted.
20 April ’43
Dear Stella
I have a three-day leave pass for the weekend. I’ll be waiting for you in Trafalgar Square on Friday at noon, to return your watch to you. I’m afraid I have no idea where I’ll be staying so can’t give you a contact address in the event that this time doesn’t suit you. I’ll wait for a half hour and if you don’t come I guess I’ll just have to trust the watch to the British postal service.
Hope to see you,
Dan Rosinski
*
The letter folded into itself again, along its old creases. The paper was brittle and yellowed with age, but the ink inside was unfaded. Jess guessed it hadn’t been exposed to the light in almost seventy years.
And it was the same handwriting, of course. Stronger and surer, but instantly recognizable from the letter still tucked into the pocket of the trench coat. Dan Rosinski’s writing, on another letter to Mrs Thorne.
Stella. That was her name, and she lived at the Vicarage in King’s Oak. Where was that? Jess’s knowledge of London was sketchy, but she had a feeling it was on the outskirts somewhere, in the suburbs. She slid the letter reverently back into its age-spotted envelope and turned it over in her hands. Her chest felt tight with emotions she couldn’t quite identify. Astonishment, perhaps. Excitement. Fragments of fact whirled in her head and she tried to catch hold of them, to pin them down in the right place.
The first envelope was addressed to Miss N. Price – Nancy. She was Stella’s friend and she’d been in on the whole thing from the start, providing a front for Stella because she was already married. And if this was Miss Price’s house, Stella must have given the letters to her at some point so her husband didn’t find them.
Jess ran her thumb along the tops of the envelopes in the box, flicking through them so that she could tell at a glance that they were all addressed in the same hand. There were so many. She put the one she held back into the box, at the front from where she’d taken it out, and checked the date stamped in the circular postmark on the next envelope. May 1943. Whoever had put them there had been careful to make sure they were all in order.
The bed creaked and sagged as she sat back and crossed her legs, staring at the box in the centre of the pink counterpane. She felt lightheaded. In it lay the key to finding out who Stella Thorne was, and where she might be now. In it lay the secret of why Dan Rosinski wanted so much to find her, and the story of a love affair that had happened the best part of a century ago.
The All Saints Senior Citizens’ Lunch Club was forgotten. With a shaking hand she slid out the next envelope.
12
1943
The day was blue and full of noise and sunshine. Standing at the edge of Trafalgar Square, Dan felt oddly small, like one of the toy soldiers he used to play with when he was a kid. The guys at the base never stopped saying how tiny England was – you could fit it four times over into Texas, they said – but the buildings around him seemed huge, used as he was to flat fields and squat corrugated iron huts like tin cans cut in half, and looking down on German cities from thirty thousand feet.
This time yesterday they’d been flying over Wilhelmshaven, dropping bombs on the submarine yards there. A week ago it had been Bremen. Only a week? The spaces in his head expanded and contracted, trying to accommodate the horror of the memory: enemy fighters appearing out of the cloud like a swarm of bees, fifteen bombers and their entire crews lost. He rubbed his fingers against his forehead, as if he could erase it.
Wearily he wondered if she’d come, or if she’d send her friend. Either way, it didn’t matter. Across the square on the steps of the National Gallery a queue was forming for the lunchtime concert, and he thought wistfully of a still hour with Bach to hush the roar inside him. He checked his watch. Looking up again, he saw her.
She was wearing a dress the same green as the new leaves on the trees at the edge of the square, threading her way through the shifting sea of people. She hadn’t spotted him, and so for a moment he watched her, adjusting the reality of her to the girl in his photograph, kneeling in the wrecked church. She looked different now. More buttoned-up. A married woman, not a fragile girl. He was aware of distant disappointment.
He went towards her, unhurriedly, and in the second that she noticed him he saw her falter. She stopped walking, so that people had to step around her.
‘Hi.’
‘Hello.’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d come. I mean, I wondered if you might send your friend. Nancy.’
He said it because it was something to say to breach that first awkward moment, but almost instantly regretted it in case it made their meeting seem somehow illicit, or more meaningful than it was. She shook her head and her glossy curls danced, the breeze catching at one and flicking it across her face. Carefully she tucked it back behind her ear.
‘I wanted to see you myself, to say thank you for finding the watch.’
It was busy and people, hurrying in their lunch hour, were having to alter their course to move around them. A bespectacled man in a suit narrowly avoided bumping into her as he stepped aside to make room for a couple of ATS girls and a pigeon browsing for sandwich crumbs. Dan took her arm and drew her gently towards him, out of the way. He’d put the watch in an envelope with her address on, so that if he hadn’t made it back from a mission there was still a good chance it would find its way to her. He took it from the inside pocket of his tunic now, and gave it to her.
‘Here – safely delivered. You might want to open it up and check if it’s the right one, although there’s not a lot I can do about it if it isn’t. S.T. 1942, right?’
‘Yes. My parents-in-law gave it to me for Christmas.’ Relief and perhaps gratitude had melted a little of her stiffness. They began to walk, past the fountains, towards the National Gallery. ‘Did you find it in the church?’
He barely missed a beat, dismissing the memory of the leering airman. ‘Yep. Right where you were looki
ng. I don’t know how you missed it.’
They reached the bottom of the steps, and stopped. At the top, the line of people going into the gallery was inching forwards. There was a frozen little pause, in which he searched his mind for some polite way of saying goodbye and came up with nothing. Life on a bomb group base and extreme fatigue had put him out of practice with social graces. He cleared his throat. ‘I thought I might see the lunchtime concert in the gallery there. Myra Hess – I’ve always wanted to hear her play.’
She startled, like a horse about to bolt. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to keep you . . . You must go. Thank you again for the watch.’
She was already backing away. In a second she would turn, and in two more she would be swallowed up by the crowd. His heart gave a sudden twist inside his chest, and his mouth opened to say words his brain hadn’t had time to process.
‘Look – if you’re not in a hurry – I mean, if you don’t have anything to get back for right away, why don’t you join me?’
They walked up the steps together, a little way apart, not speaking as they followed the slow tide of people. Not speaking out loud, anyway. Inside his own head Dan had plenty to say, all of it addressed to himself and heavily featuring the words ‘goddamn’, ‘fool’ and ‘mistake’.
He hadn’t expected her to say yes. He’d expected that little dismissive shake of the head she did, a rushed excuse that would leave him free to walk away with the satisfied feeling he’d done the right thing and to be able to enjoy the concert alone. Instead he had the responsibility for making sure she wasn’t bored and for making small talk during the interval, when his brain was so fried that even remembering his own name was an effort.
The gallery’s walls had been stripped of their paintings and the frames gaped emptily on the walls, but in Dan’s eyes their absence only served to emphasize the fine bones of the building, like a society beauty without her magnificent jewels. Like Stella Thorne, too. As they crossed an echoing hall towards the concert room he stole a glance at her. The girls he’d come across over here, at dances on the base or in the bars in London, seemed to wear the same scarlet lipstick, like it was some kind of unofficial uniform. Her lips were dusky pink and natural. Naked, he thought. Jesus. Did she know how much sexier that was? No, of course she didn’t.
And that was the other pain-in-the-ass thing. Not only was he too tired to come up with amusing conversation or anything even remotely resembling charm, but he wasn’t sure he was up to beating back the onslaught of desire that being this close to a woman like Stella Thorne – young, pretty, shy, married – was inevitably going to bring. He wasn’t like some of the guys on the base who rushed down to London on their furloughs with their pants on fire, but he wasn’t made of stone either. Despite the best efforts of the Eighth Army, he was still more or less human.
The concert was to be held in the octagonal gallery, and there were rows of chairs set out in three of the rooms leading off from it. It was obvious at a glance that they were mostly already taken, but Dan spotted two seats together at the far end of a row. Taking care not to touch her, he guided her towards them.
They’d just sat down when the musicians began their final tune-up, making conversation unnecessary. Around them the audience – which seemed to be made up of a complete cross-section of the London population, from office workers to soldiers on leave and elderly couples – shifted on chairs as they settled down. Latecomers were still slipping in, and the uncomfortable-looking benches along the walls were filling up too. Above the sound of the orchestra Dan heard a commotion by the door and turned to see a formidable-looking lady in a fur stole with iron-grey coils of hair sitting over her ears. Sighing with ostentatious dismay, she was extending her tortoise-like neck to search for an empty seat while people on all sides pretended not to notice.
Dan’s heart sank as the courtesy that had been bred into him fought with more recently acquired exhaustion. But twenty-two years of conditioning were impossible to deny. Lightly he touched Stella’s arm and gave her an apologetic look as he got to his feet and raised a hand to catch the woman’s eye. Looking mollified she bustled over.
‘Thank you, young man. My lumbago, you know . . .’
The bench against the wall was too narrow for comfort, but the old girl had probably done him a favour; at least now he could enjoy the music without being distracted by the nearness of Stella Thorne. But as the orchestra finished tuning up and the famous pianist took to the stage amid a burst of applause, Stella got up from her seat and slipped into the narrow space beside him.
In the second before she sat down their eyes met, and her mouth – her soft, pink mouth – curved into a shy smile.
Silence shimmered over the room, and then Myra Hess began to play the first exquisite, tentative notes of Bach’s Art of Fugue. Wearily Dan leaned his head back against the wall and looked up at the patch of pale blue sky through the glass dome above.
Goddammit, he thought.
She’d never heard anything like it; had never imagined that such music existed. It bore no relation at all to the wheezy organ in St Crispin’s, or the piano Miss Mason used to play in school assemblies, or the thin notes that came out of the wireless and the gramophone. This music seemed to be all around her, inside her, not just something to be listened to, but something to feel. It vibrated through her, and when she closed her eyes it was almost as if she could see it too, bright showers of sound in the darkness, drowning out the sour little voice that told her she shouldn’t be here.
She wasn’t sure why she’d said yes. If she’d had time to think about it she wouldn’t have, but the invitation had come from nowhere and she’d accepted before she knew what she was doing. Because the day was bright and spring-like, perhaps, and there was a pulse of excitement beneath the noise of the city that made getting on a bus and going back to King’s Oak seem like a screaming shame. Because there was nothing waiting for her there except Reverend Stokes’s laundry and a mean piece of reeking haddock to turn into something for supper. Maybe that’s why she’d accepted his invitation, and why, steeped in shimmering music, she couldn’t be sorry.
Besides, it would give her something to tell Charles about in her next letter, she thought, resolutely averting her gaze from Dan Rosinski’s long thigh inches away from hers on the bench. Charles was so cultured and educated, and she was so often aware of how limited he must find her. I went to one of the lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery, she imagined herself writing. Quite by chance and on impulse. It was Myra Hess herself, playing Bach. I adored it . . .
Shadows moved across the walls and the music swooped and gathered. Gradually she became aware of the tension leaving Dan Rosinski’s body until his leg came to rest lightly against hers. She froze. Sparks shivered along her nerves and her heart began to pound, galloping ahead of the music. Had she got it wrong again? Did he think that by agreeing to come she was—?
But then she glanced at him and the breath left her lungs. With his head tipped back against the wall and the light falling on his face, he was asleep.
There was no final, flourishing chord. The notes died away, echoing and unbearably poignant. There was a moment of pure silence as the enchantment lingered, and then a storm of clapping. Dan Rosinski’s hand twitched, his fingers straightening and stiffening, and then she felt him gather himself. He sat upright and moved his leg away from hers as he joined in the applause.
It didn’t go on for long. The spell was broken and people were already gathering their belongings and getting to their feet, in a hurry to return to offices and resume the business of the war. Stella knew she should stand too, and in her head she rehearsed a goodbye that would show gratitude without being too . . . emotional. The words eluded her. Neither of them moved, and as the seats emptied he dragged a hand through his hair and sighed.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What for?’ She picked up her handbag from beneath the bench and pretended to look for something inside it.
‘You’r
e very polite. Either that or you’re used to people falling asleep in your company.’
She abandoned the pretence and smiled. ‘You must have been exhausted.’
‘It’s been a pretty long week.’ A shadow passed across his face, but then he gave his lopsided smile and chased it away. ‘I’m also absolutely starving. I think there’s someplace to eat here. Do you mind if we go find it?’
That was her chance to make her excuses and leave, but she didn’t. Instead she found herself leaning against a balustrade on the stairwell while he queued up for tea and sandwiches at a makeshift counter. She couldn’t help but notice that the two starchy, well-bred ladies behind it were vying to serve him, blushing almost girlishly as they arranged teacups and a plate of sandwiches on a tray and took his money. The accent, Stella thought. Or the smile. She braced herself against it as he carried the tray over.
There were no free tables, so they perched on the stairs in the shadow of a mammoth pillar, just like that morning on the steps of Bush House. ‘One day I’ll take you to a proper restaurant, where you can sit on a chair,’ he said with a grin, picking up a sandwich. Then his expression abruptly changed. ‘Jeez – I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I guess I’m still half asleep. Your husband – is he away fighting someplace?’
‘He’s in North Africa, but not fighting. He’s an army chaplain.’
She spoke calmly, without apology. It was a relief to bring the spectre of Charles out of the shadows, to be able to feel that she wasn’t pretending to be something she wasn’t, or playing a game. She sipped her tea.
‘He’s a minister? I guess I could have worked that out from your address. How long have you been married?’
‘Since last August.’
His eyebrows rose a fraction. ‘And when did he go away?’
‘October.’
She watched him process this; saw the question in his eyes that he opened his mouth to ask. But then he stopped himself and smiled. ‘Poor guy. Bad enough to have to leave home, but to have to leave a new wife too . . .’