Letters to the Lost

by Iona Grey

  He replaced the letter in its envelope. Up and down the ward people were standing up, stacking plastic chairs they’d brought in from the day room, rustling plastic bags as items to leave and items to take home were exchanged. Only Jess was still, curled up on the bed with her back to him, her knees tucked up. He wondered if she was asleep. Through the narrow gap between the ties of the hospital gown he could see the pale ridge of her spine, as delicate as an ammonite. He averted his eyes, and was just wondering whether to slip quietly away when she stirred and turned towards him.

  Her eyes were swimming with tears, shimmering like pebbles in a clear stream. Uncurling herself she held out the letter she’d been reading.

  ‘Look.’

  He took it from her. Dear Stella, he read, This is one of those letters I hope you don’t ever read, the one I’m going to leave on my bunk to be posted by the CQ if I don’t come back . . .

  ‘He must have got shot down,’ Jess said softly. ‘I guess she thought he was dead. She gave up on him.’

  27

  1943–44

  The high-up windowsills of St Crispin’s were decked with swags of ivy and fronds culled from an overgrown conifer hedge at the back of the village hall field. There were a few sprigs of holly too. Candlelight made its glossy leaves shine, and showed up the few berries, gleaming in jewelled clusters against all the green.

  You couldn’t beat candles at Christmas. Ada glanced up at the windows where, at four o’clock, the light was already beginning to fade from the day. If old Stokes didn’t get a move on they’d have that fusspot Jim Potter slapping a fine on him for breach of blackout regulations. She glanced across to where Jim was sitting with his wife. The fact that it was Christmas Eve and he was in his best suit rather than his ARP uniform wouldn’t hold him back from doing his official duty.

  At last Reverend Stokes announced the final hymn and they all roused themselves to sing O Come All Ye Faithful. It was one of Ada’s favourites, though it was hard to imagine all the nations arising joyfully together at the end of yet another year spent bashing each other to pieces. Really, it seemed never-ending, and harder to bear or comprehend at Christmas. All the suffering. All the loss. She sent up another swift and silent prayer of thanks that her Harry was safe at home, sleeping off the effects of a thirty-six-hour journey to get there. There were many as weren’t so lucky. Reverend Stokes had read out a list of names of those from the parish who wouldn’t be spending the festive season at home. It was no wonder the service had gone on so blooming long.

  Ada’s gaze came to rest on the solitary figure in the front pew and her hearty singing faltered a little. The poor mite. From the back you couldn’t tell at all that she was expecting; she was thinner than ever. Too thin, in Ada’s view. The mound of the baby seemed stuck on, like it was nothing to do with the rest of her body. She’d been sick as a dog at first, of course, but she should have got over that by now and be blooming, as much as anyone could bloom in this endless winter of an endless war. But she wasn’t. Her hair had lost the lustre it had had in the summer, and her eyes had lost their shine. You’d think instead of looking forward to a birth she was mourning a death.

  The organ swelled as Marjorie Walsh thundered triumphantly through the last verse. Born that man no more may die, Ada sang wistfully. Babies always brought hope. Maybe Stella would pick up once the little one was actually in her arms. In the meantime, Ada resolved to keep a close eye on her, make sure she was eating properly and not letting that old goat Stokes take all her rations.

  As the congregation filtered out of their pews, moving slowly towards the door and the frosty twilight beyond, she abandoned Alf and caught up with Marjorie and her husband. Dr Walsh had taken the half hunter from his waistcoat pocket and was looking at it, saying, ‘If we hurry we might just catch the end of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on the wireless.’

  ‘We’ve just had carols,’ Marjorie hissed.

  ‘Hardly the same standard.’

  Marjorie was about to reply when she noticed Ada and was forced to present a polite smile. ‘Lovely service, I thought. Very festive with the candles, though we ought to blow them out quickly now as it’s getting so dark. And such a nice letter from Reverend Thorne, though even he sounds like he’s struggling to hold on to hope and stay cheerful.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ Ada looked past Marjorie to where Stella was collecting hymn books. Smiling was obviously an effort and made the tendons stand out in her neck. ‘Mrs Thorne’s shockingly thin – there’s not an ounce of flesh on her bones. It’s not right in her condition. Is there anything you can give her, Doctor?’

  Dr Walsh tucked the watch back into his pocket and rocked back on his heels. ‘Some women just don’t take well to childbearing. It’s a question of temperament, and I’m afraid there’s little we in the medical profession can do about that.’

  Pompous old so-and-so. Ada almost wished she hadn’t asked. ‘Oh well, I daresay she’ll pick up when she’s got a little one to nurse.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Dr Walsh smiled with patronizing gravity. ‘Though I’m afraid I’d have to say that, in my experience, that’s when the problems can really start.’

  Usually in nightmares you woke up just before the really terrifying thing actually happened – when you were falling and about to hit the ground, or when the shadowy figure who was chasing you was almost within grabbing range. But there was no such relief from this nightmare. It just went on and on and on.

  Dan was gone, and yet she had to stand here in the church hall, pouring tea and handing out Marjorie Walsh’s mince pies (‘Yes, isn’t she clever – you can hardly tell there’s no currants in the mincemeat’) and smiling. Smiling until her face hurt almost as much as her heart.

  It all felt ridiculously surreal, but then she supposed that all nightmares were. She continued to act out the role of Vicarage wife and say the simple, meaningless things that people expected to hear from her, while behind the rigid mask of her face the real her was screaming. Sometimes she imagined dropping the act and letting the mask crack and fall away. She imagined setting down the teapot now and sinking to the floor behind the table and just sobbing and sobbing, like she did in bed at night, but loudly and without restraint. The idea was mesmerizingly seductive.

  ‘Careful,’ Dot Wilkins squeaked, snatching her cup away as tea overflowed into the saucer. ‘You’ll have a caution for waste if you carry on like that.’

  ‘Sorry. I was miles away.’

  ‘I could see that. Missing him, are you?’

  Stella nodded, clenching her teeth hard against the need to cry out. Missing him like you wouldn’t believe. Missing him so much that I think I might die. Wishing I could die.

  ‘It’s always worse at Christmas. I remember when Arthur was away in the last one, and just thinking of him out there in the freezing cold, having bully beef and biscuits and the Queen’s plum pudding for his Christmas dinner made me so miserable for him I couldn’t eat a mouthful of mine. My mother was furious, she always said it was a sin to waste good food.’ She picked up the brimming saucer and tipped the tea back into the cup. ‘There’ll be happier times ahead though, you wait and see. When the war’s over and you’ve got your little family . . .’

  Right on cue the baby inside her stirred, butting irritably against her drum-tight skin. Now it was bigger its movements always felt cross, like it too resented having to share her body. There won’t, the real Stella behind the mask replied coldly to Mrs Wilkins. You’re quite wrong. I’ll never be happy again because the man I wanted to have a family with is gone. Missing presumed dead.

  The fake Stella smiled her painful, plastic smile. ‘Of course.’

  ‘It must be such a comfort to Reverend Thorne, knowing there’s a baby on the way. “A blessing, and evidence that God has not deserted us in these dark days” – that was what he said in his letter, wasn’t it? I thought that was lovely.’

  At this, Stella’s ability to deliver the appropriate lines deserted her. She e
xcused herself, muttering something about getting more milk. In the kitchen she closed the door and stuffed her fist into her mouth to stifle the sob that tore up through her.

  Missing does not mean dead.

  That night she sat on the edge of the bed in the darkness, Josef Rosinski’s letter clutched in her hand. She hadn’t drawn the blackout and the thin moonlight made shapes on the floor and across the bed. It wasn’t bright enough to enable her to read the old-fashioned handwriting, but she didn’t need to. She knew the letter by heart and whispered the words into the silence, to make them seem more real.

  There’s still hope, and we must not lose sight of that.

  It had taken her a month after she had got Dan’s letter of farewell to muster the strength to go back to the little house in Greenfields Lane. Grief and morning sickness felled her, though at least she was able to hide the former behind the latter as an excuse for keeping to her bed and abdicating responsibility for the house, the church, the Red Cross Parcels and crèche.

  The idea of returning to the place where she’d known such brief and perfect happiness was almost unbearable, but in the end some kind of masochistic need took her back. The little house was cold and there were shadows where before there had been sunlight. The remains of the fire they’d lit on that September afternoon was still in the grate, but the sheets had long since lost the scent of his skin. They felt damp against her cheek when she lay on them to read the letter she had found waiting for her amid the scattered skeletons of leaves on the doormat, addressed to Miss S Thorne.

  Dan’s father had reached out to her across the miles of icy, treacherous ocean. She had been inexpressibly touched by his generosity and gentleness, which reminded her so poignantly of Dan. But she was also choked by guilt.

  Reading his letters I was in no doubt about how much my son loved you. Loves you. I believe that he’s still alive somewhere and, spurred on by the thought of you, he will find some way to make it back so you can have the life together that he had planned.

  She hadn’t written back. She wanted to, but knew that doing so would mean choosing to deceive this kindly, grieving old man or to compound his hurt by telling him that she was carrying the child of another man.

  Outside it had begun to snow; tiny, feathery flakes that dissolved almost before they’d touched the wet ground. Like wishes. Like plans.

  January came. A new year, but one with little new hope. At least once the scrappy attempts at festive decorations were taken down and the old routine resumed, there was no longer the same pressure to be cheerful. Everyone was snappy and fed up. Stella was in good company.

  As the baby grew inside her she felt as if she herself was shrinking, and her world too. The journey to the shops seemed longer and became almost overwhelmingly arduous over icy pavements that she could barely see for the mound of her stomach. Church End seemed as far away as the moon. She ached to find out if another letter had come from America, but the opportunity seemed constantly to elude her. Mornings were taken up with shopping, as supplies grew shorter and queues longer, meaning that by the time Reverend Stokes’s lunch was cooked and cleared away she was on her knees with weariness. In the afternoons when she wasn’t due at the church hall for crèche or parcels, Ada had taken to calling round ‘to check if you’re all right, love’, and help her make a start on the supper.

  It was Ada she assumed she’d see when she opened the door one afternoon towards the end of January. The sight of the telegram delivery boy sent the air rushing from her lungs.

  ‘Telegram for Mrs Thorne. Here, do you need to sit down?’

  ‘No. No, I’m perfectly fine. Thank you.’

  She shut the door on him abruptly and fell back against it, tearing open the telegram, struggling to hold it steady enough to read as hope and terror sluiced through her.

  REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR HUSBAND, REV. CHARLES THORNE, HAS BEEN INJURED IN AN INCIDENT 22nd JANUARY 1944, NORTH ITALY. FURTHER INFORMATION TO FOLLOW BY LETTER.

  28

  2011

  Stella Thorne.

  Will typed the words into the box on the screen and pressed enter, then waited for his cheap and unreliable laptop to digest them. It wasn’t, as Ansell would have pointed out, the best name to work with; not unusual enough, and with a chance of spelling variations in the surname. But it was a start. The information necessary to find the girl with whom 2nd Lieutenant Daniel Rosinski had fallen in love in 1943 was out there, all that was needed was the knowledge of where to look, the patience to work through the possibilities and a little bit of inspired guesswork and lateral thinking. Oh – and an incentive for all of the above, which in his case came in the form of Jess Moran.

  He could tell how much it meant to her. Shut away in that forgotten house, hiding from her bastard boyfriend, he could understand why she’d become so swept up in Dan and Stella’s story, and so desperate to help bring about its happy ending: other people’s problems – especially ones that were over half a century old – always seemed easier to tackle than your own. And she certainly seemed to have had her share. Will was no stranger to loneliness and isolation, but just imagining what she’d been through made his heart turn over inside his chest.

  It also put his own issues into perspective and gave him a new determination to get himself together. It was Sunday, which usually meant a lie-in until lunchtime, a large fry-up, and an afternoon slumped on the sofa watching whatever sport was in season with a beer in his hand. Today however, he’d got up early and done an hour at the gym, shopped for proper wholesome food and given the flat the cleaning of its life. With fresh sheets on the bed, the week’s laundry picked up from the floor and put into the washing machine and actual fruit in the bowl beside the toaster he’d been able to stick two fingers up to the invitation stuck to the fridge as he got the milk out for his coffee.

  He grimaced as he took a mouthful. It had gone cold. On his screen the circle of doom continued to rotate, so he turned his attention instead to the pad of A4 paper beside him.

  At Ansell Blake the starting point was a death certificate. It was from there that they gleaned all their information; a date of birth, the place of death, the name of the informant (who was likely to be known to the deceased and therefore a good source of additional information), a married woman’s maiden name. It provided a few bare facts; dry seeds from which shoots and roots might, with the right nurturing, sprout. But this search was different.

  Hesitantly at first, and then with gathering confidence he listed the facts he had.

  Stella Thorne, maiden name –? Married Charles Thorne – Minister (C of E?) King’s Oak, North London, Army Chaplain – sometime before 1943. Born –

  He paused, calculating. She’d been young enough during the war years to be swept off her feet by an American air man – the typical age of whom was late teens to late twenties – putting her in roughly the same age bracket?

  Born – 1913 – 1925??

  The screen of his laptop brightened, showing the results of his search. All one thousand, eight hundred and seventy-four of them. Applying the dates he’d estimated narrowed it down, but still there were one hundred and thirty-seven Stella Thornes with husbands called Charles. The online archives were always frustratingly general, encompassing all name combinations and variations. Without knowing her maiden name or the exact date and place of their wedding it was impossible to know which one was likely to be the love of Dan Rosinski’s life.

  He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled slowly as he stared at the computer, his mind spinning fruitlessly like the circle on the screen. At a guess Stella Thorne might have got married in King’s Oak, at the church where Charles was minister, but to find out for sure he’d have to make an appointment with the current vicar to look through the parish register, and when would that be possible? Not on a Sunday, he was pretty sure of that.

  He’d made a deal with himself that he wouldn’t go back to the hospital to visit Jess until he had something concrete to tell her, some information t
hat would move her search forward. Impatience and frustration made his nerves fizz like badly wired electrics and he got up from the sofa and paced over to the window (a journey that would have been extremely hazardous before his tidying blitz). The information was out there, he just had to work out how to find it.

  He headed to the kitchen to put the kettle on again for more coffee. The wedding invitation on the fridge door mocked him with its smug, gilt-edged traditionalism. Mr and Mrs Hugo Ogilvie. He parroted it aloud in a childish comedy voice, and was just reflecting that he’d spent too much time around Ansell the Arse when a thought struck him.

  Leaving the kettle to boil noisily to itself he shot back into the sitting room.

  Like many women of her time, Stella’s life might have gone pretty much unrecorded, but he was prepared to bet that her husband’s hadn’t. He typed Barnard Castle WW2 into the search engine. That was the place Dan Rosinski had mentioned in his letter; the faraway place where Reverend Charles Thorne had been posted, and finding out what happened to him was a good place to start finding out what happened to his wife.

  With infuriating languor the screen produced a list of results. Clicking on the first one, Will discovered that 54th Training Regiment of the Royal Armoured Corps had had a camp at Barnard Castle. A little more searching down the labyrinthine alleyways of amateur enthusiast forums led him to the regimental diary of Charles Thorne’s Tank Regiment, digitalized and uploaded by some extremely helpful tank geek.

  And there he was. Reverend Charles Thorne, Chaplain to the Forces, 4th Class. Joined the Regiment June 1943, embarked for Italy from Glasgow 29th July, arrived Naples 8th August. Injured 22nd January 1944, sent home on board hospital ship No.12, arriving Southampton 3rd February. There was another link, to a document this time. Will clicked on it and found himself looking at a miniature facsimile of a medical card. The handwriting was typically illegible, but when he enlarged the picture to its maximum size he could just about make out what it said.