by Iona Grey
He didn’t have to go. He wanted to.
She sipped her tea and said nothing.
Afterwards, they walked along the Embankment. The sun was bright but the wind whipped cottonwool clouds across it so that shadows washed over them like waves on a beach. Silvery barrage balloons floated high up above the city. The sky looked like such a serene place from down here.
Neither of them had said anything when they’d left the gallery, they’d simply walked slowly together across the square, absorbed in conversation. Something had changed while he’d slept. His guard had been lowered, but she didn’t seem to mind. He still felt pretty dazed and out of it, as though the adrenaline had drained from his body and his reflexes – usually on high alert – had been switched off. It was a feeling he only usually got these days halfway down a bottle of bourbon, but which used to be a regular thing back home. A thing called peace.
And so they walked, with no particular destination in mind and no hurry to reach it. He found himself doing most of the talking. She asked questions, and listened with apparently genuine interest as he told her all about home and Pop and Alek. About Mom, who’d died so long ago she’d become little more than a silver-framed black-and-white memory, but who came to life again as he talked.
‘Mom’s family had settled in Chicago in the ’90s, but Pop didn’t come over until 1914. He was studying to be an engineer in Warsaw when he saw how things were going to go. He didn’t want to fight under the German flag in a war he didn’t believe in, and he reckoned America was the land of the future, especially for engineers. There was a big Polish community in Chicago, so that was the obvious place to head to. He met my mom at a dance.’
She glanced sideways at him with eyes full of sunlight. ‘Love at first sight?’
‘Yeah, though it took her family a while to come around to the idea. They were Catholics and he was Jewish. He had to work pretty hard to convince them he wasn’t such a bad match . . .’ It always amused Dan to remember how spectacularly Josef Rosinski had proved himself, and he was smiling as he turned to her. ‘Sorry. As if falling asleep wasn’t bad enough, now I’m boring the life out of you by talking all about myself.’
‘It’s not about yourself, it’s about your family. And it’s certainly not boring.’
The sun shone on her hair and made it gleam like well-polished mahogany. He thought of his camera, left with the rest of his things in the dingy officers’ club in Piccadilly and wished he’d brought it.
‘What about your family?’
By some unspoken consent they’d stopped walking and leaned against the railings overlooking the river. The water was khaki-coloured, as if it too was in uniform and doing its patriotic duty. Next to his her arms looked pale and improbably slender, which made him realize how he’d grown used to being surrounded by men.
‘I don’t have one. Perhaps that’s why I like hearing about other people’s. I grew up in the charitable school, with Nancy – she’s the closest thing to family I have. And Miss Birch, I suppose. She was the headmistress and not the most maternal person, but I can see now that she was very kind.’ The wind picked up that curl again and bounced it across her cheek. ‘She gave me away at my wedding.’
‘And what about your husband’s family? The ones who gave you the watch?’
‘They’re kind too. Very proper.’ She stroked the curl behind her ear and shrugged. ‘They had higher hopes for Charles, but they try to make the best of it.’
He frowned. ‘How did you meet him?’
‘The school finds work for pupils when they’re of an age. The housekeeper at the Vicarage left at the start of the war so he needed a replacement.’
‘You went to work for him? But you must only have been—’
‘Seventeen. I knew nothing at all about keeping house, but in those days there was a lot of other work to do – organizing evacuation rotas and collecting clothing for the refugees that were arriving from Belgium and Holland. I think that was what made him think I’d make a good vicar’s wife.’
It sounded like a joyless arrangement. How did a young girl who was as beautiful and gentle and sweet as this one end up thinking that was the best life had to offer her?
‘Smart guy,’ he said blandly.
‘Not really. If I had been, he wouldn’t be in Africa now, would he?’
There was something terribly bleak about her matter-of-fact tone. Dan turned to look at her, impulsively putting a hand on her upper arm.
‘That’s Hitler’s fault, not yours.’
She stiffened and turned her head to avoid his gaze. Sensing her resistance, he let her go. Goosebumps had sprung up on her bare skin and she rubbed at them briskly. ‘I should have brought a coat. It’s colder than it looks.’
He couldn’t give her his jacket, it was strictly forbidden. He had no problem with flouting the rules himself but was deterred by the embarrassment it would cause her if they should be caught – the bastard Military Police had a habit of appearing from nowhere.
‘Let’s keep walking,’ he said, sensing again that she might be about to bolt. ‘St Paul’s is just up there – Wren’s finest work. Mind if we go and take a look?’
She was doing nothing wrong. After all, it was a church, and from the moment they stepped through the towering doors they were enveloped in its atmosphere of hushed reverence. Of holiness. It wasn’t like going to a bar or a nightclub, or the Opera House with its pulsing, sensual music and feverish heat.
In fact it was even cooler in here than outside. She felt the shiver of goosebumps on her skin again as she walked slowly across the black-and-white tiled floor, her footsteps echoing in the magnificent quiet. They’d instinctively gone their separate ways when they came in, and Lieutenant Rosinski was somewhere behind her now, gazing upwards with the same grave focus she’d seen on his face in the bombed-out church that morning. She headed towards the altar, pulled by some illogical need to explain herself to God. For all Charles’s insistence that He was the universal father who knew and loved everyone, she could never quite stop herself from thinking of Him as a friend of Charles’s – a bit like Reverend Stokes or Peter Underwood – who tolerated her for his sake. Like a guest at a party, she felt bound by courtesy to make some sort of formal acknowledgement.
In the gloom of a side chapel, rows of votive candles glowed. She went in and lit one.
Dear Lord, please keep Charles safe wherever he is and let him know that I love him . . .
The words formed themselves in some dutiful part of her head, while in another she imagined God looking down on her with mild contempt. She was very much the third party in this relationship; He would look after Charles on His own say so, without any prompting from her. She was also struck by the irony of needing to ask God to tell Charles that she loved him. As his wife of less than a year she should be able to do that herself. She did do it, in fact, at the end of every letter, but because he never mentioned love in anything more than a general sense in his impersonal replies, she felt like she was standing on a mountaintop and shouting it into the wind.
As she left the chapel she saw Dan Rosinski leaning against a pillar, arms folded, looking perfectly at ease. Too at ease, Charles would think; God was the universal Father, but He was the kind of strict parent you would address as ‘sir’ and who would frown on such informality. Seeing Dan at a distance she felt an odd lurch beneath her ribs. He was an American soldier; just another one of the thousands that filled the streets of London and towns and cities all across the country, and who appeared on newsreels. And yet he was no longer a stranger. His family was from Poland. His mother was dead. He had a brother called Alek who was with the Ordnance Corps, currently training in Maryland. When he spoke of his father you could hear the affection in his voice. He wasn’t just another American soldier, he was her friend.
When he saw her he detached himself from the pillar and came towards her.
‘OK?’
She nodded. ‘It’s a beautiful church.’
‘
You can imagine when it was built that they were virtually turning them away at the door on Sundays. Imagine leaving your dark home with the low ceilings and tiny windows and coming here . . .’
She could. When he said it like that she understood. It wasn’t just a feeling of cowed duty that brought people to church, but genuine wonder. Reverence. The belief that there must be something beyond the small sphere in which they lived their short, dark lives.
‘How come you know so much about it? I mean, I’m a Londoner born and bred, and I don’t know half of what you do.’
‘Back home I studied architecture. I just started my senior year when Pearl Harbor changed everything. I went from sitting in a classroom studying German architecture to sitting in a B-17 and destroying it.’ He looked away, out across the majestic sweeping space of the church.
‘But if you didn’t, the Luftwaffe would have flattened this place by now. Or there’d be red flags hanging down the columns outside and a photograph of Hitler on the altar.’
‘Maybe.’ He smiled, and the clear, pure light filtering in from above showed up the lines of exhaustion around his mouth and the dark smudges beneath his eyes. ‘Come on, I’ll show you something.’
He walked back in the direction from which they’d come. Without speaking she followed him up a winding stone staircase, like the ones taken by princesses in fairy tales. They had to step aside to make way for other people coming down, and when they reached the top she was slightly breathless from the climb, and from the astonishing place in which she found herself. They were beneath the dome, on a narrow walkway that ran around its perimeter. Heaven rose above them in an extravagant, painted canopy of gold and blue, pierced by shafts of ethereal light.
‘I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.’ All of a sudden her chest tightened and she thought for a painful second that she might cry. First the music, and then this – it was like she’d been walking along a dark corridor lined with closed doors and had suddenly discovered that paradise lay on the other side of them.
‘It’s called the Whispering Gallery.’
‘Why?’
His eyes were warm. ‘Sit down right there and I’ll show you. When I say, you have to close your eyes and lean your cheek against the wall, OK?’
A stone ledge ran all the way around the walkway. It was smooth and shiny with age. She sat down on it and watched him walk away with his easy, unhurried stride. Laughter bubbled up inside her, and a sort of childish anticipation that she hadn’t felt for years. She had to press her lips together to stop it escaping her.
He stopped right opposite her, on the other side of the void, and gestured for her to close her eyes. In the darkness behind her closed lids the laughter was suddenly spiked with something else. Anticipation. A shiver of fear. She leaned closer to the wall and waited. Faint echoes rose from below, footsteps and muted voices, and then a whisper so close and clear it was like a caress in her ear.
‘Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?’
She gasped and opened her eyes, expecting to see him standing in front of her. But he was where he had been before, leaning casually against the wall on the opposite side of the dome. She blinked, and the laughter spilled out, and before doubts and reality and duty could wither this moment of pure happiness she pressed her cheek against the ancient stone and whispered, so softly it was scarcely more than a breath.
‘Yes.’
13
27 April ’43
Dear Stella
I’m writing this on the train going back to the base, to say thank you. I had the best time last night. OK, so maybe not one of the best dinners, but I’ve got to say Spam rissoles never tasted so good as they did in your company. (And I think that says a whole lot more for your company than it does for the rissoles.)
I don’t know whether I should be writing this letter or not. I don’t know if receiving it will make you feel better or worse. I guess I just have to say the things that are on my mind and leave you to tear them up and put them on the fire if they’re not what you want to hear. I want you to know how special you are. I want you to see that you are clever and funny and interesting. I want you to realize that you are beautiful, although as I write that and remember the way you looked last night in the candlelight, I know that a part of what makes you such dynamite is that you don’t have the faintest idea of how incredible you are.
Believe me, you really are.
Most of all I want you to be happy. You deserve to be. Listening to you last night I got a glimpse of a girl who has lived her short life so far to please others. The fact that you do that is, again, a part of what makes you the amazing girl that you are, but I ’d hate for you to be so focused on the needs of everyone else that you forget your own.
Thank you for listening when I talked about flying, and about the crew. The last week was a tough one and I guess the ones ahead won’t be a picnic either. It’s easier to face them now.
I won’t write again. You’re married, and I understand the seriousness of that commitment. Of course, I’m selfish enough to wish that you weren’t, but I’m also smart enough to have noticed that circumstances aren’t exactly on our side anyway. We had dinner, and you took my mind off of the things I wanted to forget, and helped me to remember the good stuff at the time I needed to most. I’ll always be grateful for that.
Look after yourself – for me. (I figure that telling you to do it for someone else is the best way of getting you to do anything.)
Dan.
They were just words written on a page, but their immediacy took her breath away. Like a swimmer coming up for air, Jess lifted her gaze from the letter and let it wander around the room, taking in the leaf-sprigged wallpaper, the bright scarlet poppies on the tiles in the fireplace, and saw for the first time not just the neglected home of an old person, but the setting for stories she wanted to hear, of secrets she wanted to know. The wind sighed softly in the chimney, and the outside world felt very far away. Sucking in a lungful of air she took the next envelope out of the box and plunged back under, into the echoing world of the past.
8 May ’43
Dear Stella,
It was so good to get your letter. I hadn’t dared to hope that you’d write, but I’m sure glad that you did. My crew was flying at dawn this morning – mission #6 completed – and it was here waiting for me when I got back. Reading it was like hearing your voice.
Stella, I don’t want you to feel guilty. Since Bremen I’ve gotten to be quite an expert on guilt and have come to the conclusion that as emotions go it’s right up there on the negative scale with malice and jealousy. It poisons happiness and makes us believe that we’re not good enough, and that the things we do and the choices we make are wrong. As human beings I guess we’re programmed to try to be happy, and guilt tells us that instinct is bad. I don’t believe that it is. In fact, sitting in the cockpit of a B-17 with German flak and tracer fire coming at you from all sides, it seems like snatching some happiness is the only thing that matters. Or else, what’s life for?
It was just a kiss – a moment on a London street on a warm spring night. You can blame the brandy, or the war, or you can blame me. I’m not sure I could have kept myself from kissing you if I ’d tried, and I sure didn’t want to try. I could say I’m sorry, but the truth is (and I’m too wiped out to write anything but the truth) I’m not, because I liked kissing you. But you are still Charles’s wife. You have not caused him a second’s pain or given away anything that belongs to him. It was a moment, that’s all. A very precious, special moment.
Look after yourself for me.
Dan
PS. You should definitely go to the Fete Committee meeting – don’t let that old girl Marjorie get to you! Hold your head up and remember how strong you are.
17 May ’43
Dear Stella
I just finished reading your letter and I’m still smiling. Don’t ever apologize for writing about everyday stuff. I feel like I’m right there at the Church Fete me
eting, although I have no idea what a coconut shy is so I can’t really comment on whether cauliflowers would make suitable replacements for coconuts. But the fortune-teller sounds like a great idea, whatever that Stokes guy says. God might be in charge of our destiny, but I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t pay good money to find out what He has in store for us all right now.
We haven’t flown for a couple days. Every day more crews are shipping in from the US and they look so green we feel like old hands in comparison. There’s a dance on the base tonight, to welcome them all. They’re fixing up one of the hangars with streamers and balloons and sending trucks out around the villages to pick up local girls. I guess this all means nobody’s going to be flying tomorrow either. I don’t know which is worse; the nerves of doing a mission or the boredom of doing nothing.
Remember I told you about Morgan, my co-pilot? Well, this week he finally managed to get himself a bicycle from a kid in the village. Back home Morgan’s folks own a farm out in the middle of Arkansas and he claims he was riding a bicycle practically before he could walk, so he was pretty damn pleased with himself for landing one over here, even though he paid well over the odds for it. (The kid who sold it to him might have looked like a scruffed up choirboy, but he drove a deal like a New York hustler.) Morgan set off for the pub in the village on it last night, bragging that he’d have finished his first pint by the time the rest of us arrived, and promptly rode it right into a ditch. Apart from his bruised pride and a few nettle stings he was unhurt, though Adelman, our bombardier, laughed so much he nearly bust a rib.
The village here is beautiful. When we arrived everywhere was brown with mud but now it’s all turned green, and the trees are all covered in blossom, like snow. It’s hard to imagine a prettier place to fight a war.
Good luck with the rest of the fete preparations – stick to your guns about the fortune-teller, and look after yourself for me.