Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase

by Louise Walters

  Oh, but surely. Surely? No. I’m crazy to even think it.

  What is it that holds me back? Am I shy? I’m not shy. Am I not good enough for him? Whatever, none of it matters any more. It’s over. And it didn’t even begin.

  ‘Look,’ he says. ‘You can’t leave.’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, you can, what I mean is … I don’t want you to.’

  ‘Why on earth not? I’ve embarrassed you horribly.’

  ‘You’ve embarrassed yourself, that’s all. But nobody cares. This sort of thing always blows over. I forbid you to leave, actually. You do remember that I defended you? Utterly?’

  Of course I remember. ‘Philip—’ And to my surprise I start sobbing, loudly. I didn’t want to cry. I hate to cry.

  ‘Oh no,’ he says. ‘For God’s sake, here, take my hanky.’

  Only a man like Philip would have a clean hanky in his pocket. I blow my nose. Pull yourself together, Roberta, I tell myself. Sort this out. ‘I thought you would be used to crying women. With Jenna around, I mean.’

  Not for the first time, I regret my thoughtless words. Philip stares at me, he feels the need to remove his glasses again, he runs his hand through his hair. He puts his glasses on the desk. I hope he doesn’t sit on them in that absent-minded way of his. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  ‘Jenna and I are none of your business.’

  I know this is true. I hate myself. And I am wrong, of course, quite wrong. Philip regards me as an employee, and only an employee. He is in love with Jenna, not me, and I cannot believe I even framed such thoughts, admitted such hopes to myself.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, blotting out my dreams. ‘I didn’t mean to intrude.’

  ‘Forget it, Roberta. I understand. And you shall stay. I absolutely depend upon you. This place would fall apart but for you.’

  ‘What about Sophie?’

  ‘She’s capable, a sweet girl, she knows well enough what to do. But you … you lend this place some gravitas. You are the Old and New. Don’t you get it?’

  ‘Gravitas? Me? Causing scenes like last week’s? Come off it, Philip. You are the Old and New. It’s your shop.’

  ‘Then, we are the Old and New. One of us can’t operate without the other. And you didn’t cause a scene, that ghastly woman did. So I ask respectfully and in all sincerity, please will you reconsider, and please will you stay? Please, Roberta.’

  The fact that we are even having this conversation is enough to convince me. I have to leave. I have to leave now. Sod the notice period. If I don’t leave now …

  ‘I am leaving, Philip. I’m so sorry. I’ll go now.’

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  If I think Philip is about to clamber over the desk, grab me, kiss me on the lips, shake me by the shoulders and beg me even further to stay, I am mistaken. He holds out his hand and I shake it. It is warm, his grip is firm, yet his touch feels somehow fragile. His eyes are vague, as though he is peering into a murky and troubled future, and I fear he is close to tears. And I fear my rising desire to comfort him, so I release my hand and leave the office.

  I’m aware of him, standing alone, receding from me as I leave, watching me go in silence.

  17

  7th December 1940

  Dear Jan,

  I am sorry not to have written to you recently. But as you know, I don’t like writing letters. And I have been so busy with one thing and another. The war and its ruination of this world may as well be happening on another planet. We see and hear so little of it now that the squadron has gone. Of course, there is still activity on the aerodrome, just not as much as before. But no more bombs. No more Hurricanes landing just a whisker from my house! Thank goodness for that. You know, I still think of that young pilot and I feel sorry that he died in that way.

  Well, December has arrived. I do hope you can make it up here to see us, I’m sure Aggie and Nina would be pleased to see you again. Aggie goes on all right, missing her chap and dreadfully sad, but she soldiers on. Nina and I both do our bit to cheer her up. I hope Christmas will restore her spirits and despite all that is going on in this world, I shall do my best to make the day a happy one for her.

  As for your needing peace, Jan, I am possibly the last person who can offer you such a thing.

  Yet, I am your

  Dorothea

  Two weeks and five days after Albert raped her, the familiar cramps began. For a day she managed to ignore them. But the following morning, the blood began to flow, and she had no choice but to acknowledge once again the bitter disappointment that blighted her life.

  She knew he would never return, and that was one small consolation. She hoped he would be killed, really, to make everything easier. And because he deserved to die after what he had done to her.

  He had abandoned her, knowing how much she wanted another child, knowing full well that if he went away there could be no further children. But hadn’t she abandoned him too, setting herself up in the tiny bedroom at the back of the house, shutting the door on him night after night? There could be no child if she didn’t—

  It was hard to believe that she once fancied herself in love with the man. He could offer her nothing. But she had not thought him a bully. Had he done this to other women? She thought not. No, it was just her, his wife. His anger was directed at her, nobody else. She could imagine him, in a different home, with a different woman; she would be younger, simpler, they would be happy together, and he would even be loving, in his own way.

  But still the thought nagged at her, should she report him? What exactly would she report? A soldier returning home on leave and having relations with his wife? Who would believe there had been any wrongdoing? And now it was surely too late. Perhaps he didn’t even understand that he’d done anything wrong, although he had gone a day earlier than he’d said he would. Out of guilt? Perhaps he had learned his lesson.

  And what if she had fallen pregnant? How on earth could she have begun to explain to Jan? Because she knew – yes, she was absolutely certain about this – Jan would come back, she would see him again. She could have told him the truth, but would he have believed her? Perhaps he would think it only natural. After all, Albert was her husband.

  But no matter. There was no baby. There was just her – empty, hurt and bloodied. Nothing to tell, no confessions to make.

  Try as she might, Dorothy could not get her words to rhyme. So she ceased trying and she let her words take shape on the page as they would, as they seemed to want to do, with a life of their own. And at last this small collection of words seemed to her a poem. She felt that she had written her first, perhaps her only, poetry. And she would be the sole judge, she knew that she would never share her writing with another.

  But her words, as she shaped them, read them, over and over, in snatched moments, late at night, early in the morning, startled her, gave her a strange unearthly sensation of power, like running along a wide, empty beach on soft-firm sand with youthful and boundless energy. It was a small liberation, but from what, she could not comprehend.

  18

  Such lurid dreams!

  The woman was on her hands and knees before him, her eyes closed – this, the most ladylike of the women he had loved, the most demure. He cried out – he must have cried out often – and one of the nurses would be by his bedside, as suddenly and silently as an apparition. Oftentimes it was the nurse named Sylvia, nineteen years old, he guessed, pure-skinned, angel-white, soothing him with a quiet word, a soft murmur, a cool hand on his brow. She would check his pulse, holding his left wrist, checking his dogged heartbeats against the little watch strapped like an amulet to her breast pocket.

  Was he in pain?

  Yes, but not the kind she talked of, not the kind she even knew of, he thought.

  The pain in his arm was nothing to the pain in his heart, and that in turn was nothing compared with his physical desire. Love, at this stage, was secondary. He acknowledged to himself
that he was once again in the grip of pure lust, the most vulgar emotion. Sylvia and the other nurses must have noticed. They bathed him and dressed him, they were familiar with his body. But it mattered not. Where was the shame, in truth? He was born a man.

  He longed to clamber back into his Hurricane, to be back among his men. He wanted to kill more Germans. And that was a lust too, and sometimes it was difficult to define where each lust began and ended. He even wondered, in tortured lucid moments, if his aroused state was entirely due to thoughts of the Englishwoman.

  Dorothy. Dorothea. Hardly could he bring himself to think her name.

  Mrs Dorothy Sinclair.

  The hospital bed was comfortable enough – white and firm. His sore, aching arm was broken. Smashed in several places, the doctor said. It would give him ‘gyp’ for the rest of his life, and by that Jan inferred it would give him pain, irritation. But he was alive, he was well. And he would return to flying, he proclaimed to the doctor, within the next week.

  It was his right arm, which was unfortunate. He couldn’t write. He had thought of asking a nurse to help him, but no, he did not want his words to one woman shared with another. The nurses were pretty, young, confident and – with him, at least – flirtatious. He flirted back too, a little, if he wasn’t too tired, but only to be polite. They were gentle girls doing a difficult job. He did not desire them.

  A new doctor came. He sat on the bed, introduced himself as Dr Burton. He wanted to talk, if that was all right. Jan was no fool, he knew he was a head doctor immediately. He told him so, and Dr Burton smiled. So, then. They could be frank.

  It was not a good idea to return to flying too soon.

  ‘We fear you are fragile, mentally. Exhausted. You need to rest longer,’ he said.

  ‘That cannot be done. I am needed,’ said Jan.

  It was a fine winter’s day with pale diluted sunshine, small puffs of cloud skittering across the blue sky. Out of the window he could see other wounded men sitting in wheelchairs with blankets on their laps, being wheeled around by the pretty nurses, or sitting and smoking, contemplating the views across the hospital gardens to the fields beyond.

  He had no idea, he suddenly realised, exactly where he was. Which hospital was he in? It appeared to have been converted from a grand house. But he did not know its name. He thought he was still in Kent, but perhaps he wasn’t. Somehow he hadn’t ever thought to ask.

  ‘If you return so soon,’ said Dr Burton, ‘have you considered that you may be a liability? Your judgement impaired? Not to mention your injuries, which will not have healed fully.’

  Jan found the young doctor smug, like most doctors. This Burton thought he was God, obviously. He looked dapper in a grey flannel suit. But he was not God, and Jan was determined to keep this young man in his place.

  ‘I am not “impaired”,’ he told him. ‘I shall return today, if you like. No? So I give myself three, no, two more days, and I return. I flew back to my aerodrome with one arm. Two weeks ago, I think? It is healed. I feel it is healed. It is very near to healing. I will remove this plaster myself if you do not do it for me. I will do this.’ He made a violent tearing action at his injured arm.

  Dr Burton shook his head. He asked Jan questions: Where did he come from in Poland? Where did he learn his English?

  Jan, bored, defensive, said as little as possible.

  The doctor reiterated his warning not to be foolish, to consider his squadron – its safety, his own safety.

  Jan kept up his stubborn silence. He was behaving, he knew, like a spoiled brat. But he would not be bossed around by a doctor who looked as though he had never killed a rabbit, let alone a fellow human being. Jan could not communicate with such a man.

  Dr Burton gave up, thanked Jan for his time and left him.

  19

  Dorothy smiled to herself as she basted the chicken, slaughtered just the day before by Nina. Dorothy could not bring herself to perform the task, and Albert had always been the one to snap the birds’ thin tremulous necks. Last Christmas, alone, she had not bothered with Christmas lunch, but this year she had plucked, gutted and now cooked the bird with great pleasure. The smell was divine, she thought, the house was warm, the frost outside clinging to the world like washed lace, and she and the girls were cosy and contented. Dorothy was determined to make Christmas Day a good one for all three of them. Besides the chicken, there were roasted potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, parsnips from the garden. And port, a bottle hidden away by Dorothy for years, taken from her mother’s house. Why she had taken it, Dorothy couldn’t fathom; it was just another item in her strange and ill-considered trousseau. Perhaps, she mused, today was why: Christmas Day 1940, cold, but calm. And safe, for now.

  The girls had sipped two small glasses each already and were lounging, listening to their favourite Billie Holiday songs. They had loved the presents Dorothy had made for each of them: simple linen handkerchiefs she had dug out from the bottom of her rag bag and which she had embroidered with their initials, pressed and then scented with a handful of lavender; a silk scarf for Aggie that Dorothy no longer wore; a red lipstick, barely used, for Nina. Not astounding gifts, but something sitting under the small Christmas tree for the girls to open, wrapped simply with brown paper and kitchen string.

  Dorothy was glad there were no presents for her. She had never liked them. She would be expected to smile and say thank you; she felt obliged to be thrilled. Her mother’s idea of presents had been The Infant’s Progress: From the Valley of Destruction to Everlasting Glory, and other hideous books that Dorothy had never read but had hidden away under her bed. They were probably still there, she thought, as she took a modest sip of her own glass of port. The thrill of alcohol, its exuberance, was a sensation Dorothy rarely allowed herself. She loved too much the hot, glowing feel of it in her mouth, her throat, her gullet, through her stomach, down deep into her legs. She loved too much the feeling of losing oneself, of being buoyed up, and the opportunity it afforded for blurring and forgetting. But she could not forget the way in which Albert had acted towards her after he had taken too much drink. She would never allow herself to get into that state, to lose her mind completely to drink’s calamitous charms. But today, this Christmas Day, she was allowing herself the pleasure of alcohol. December had been a month of further disappointments, and she needed to forget.

  Despite his promises, his hints and suggestions, Squadron Leader Jan Pietrykowski had not visited. Indeed, he had not written for over a month. Was he dead? Dorothy thought not. She knew not. Was he injured? It was possible. It was probable. Perhaps the squadron had been moved again? Perhaps he was cross with her? Did he know, somehow, about Albert and her brief, shameful, blameless relations with him? Such a shrewd man, she would not have been surprised if he had guessed from the tone of her last letter, from her careful choice of words. But, of course, it was impossible. Wasn’t it? Nobody was that intuitive.

  ‘What’s up, then, Dot?’ Nina said. She was languishing on the settee, her port glass glowing in her plump hand, the glass rimmed by the red lipstick she had been unable to resist trying on.

  Dinner was nearly ready, and Dorothy had emerged from the kitchen to take a short rest. ‘Nothing at all, Nina,’ she said. ‘Dinner will be ready in ten minutes. I’m just letting the chicken stand.’ Dorothy sank into her chair by the window.

  ‘You’re the best ever cook,’ said Aggie.

  ‘Oh no, but it’s good to feel useful. You both looked so cold this morning.’

  ‘It’s bloody freezing out there,’ said Nina. She shifted on the settee, wincing as she did so.

  ‘Are you quite well?’ said Dorothy.

  ‘Yeah. Course I am. Just feel a bit funny. Can’t get comfy. I’m ever so hungry. Can’t wait for that dinner.’

  Dorothy turned to the window. Slowly, she rose from her chair, transfixed, wide-eyed.

  ‘What is it, Dot?’ said Aggie, coming to stand beside her. She flicked the yellowed lace curtains to one side. ‘Oh!’


  Squadron Leader Jan Pietrykowski was opening the gate. He was carrying a bottle-shaped brown package and a kitbag. A small open-topped car was parked half on the road, half on the verge, crimson and bright as a brand-new toy. Dorothy wondered that they hadn’t heard the car arrive. But, of course, the music was loud.

  ‘You’ve been pining for months, and now he’s here. And you’re just going to stand there?’ said Aggie, taking her glass from her.

  As if in a dream, Dorothy made to go back into the kitchen, to open the door and let him in. But her knees, disobedient, would not budge.

  ‘I can’t,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’ll go!’ said Aggie brightly, handing Dorothy’s glass back, and she half ran, half skipped through to the kitchen.

  Dorothy looked aghast at Nina, who grinned in her disingenuous manner, took a large mouthful of port and shrugged. Dorothy groped behind her for her chair and sat down. She stood again immediately as Aggie entered the lounge, followed by the unmistakeable smell of uniform, of hair grease, of kindness. And the man, more handsome than she remembered, the man she had longed for, stood once more in her parlour, smiling, unwrapping a bottle of champagne, no less, and looking at Dorothy as though she were Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon herself.

  ‘I apologise for arriving without asking,’ he said. ‘I had a last-minute pass. Twenty-four hours only. Tomorrow, I must return to Kent.’

  ‘I see,’ said Dorothy. Her throat was so tight she felt she might suffocate. He was extraordinarily handsome. Had she not noticed this before? She thought she had. But there was something wrong, something amiss with the way he held himself, the way he moved. And it was still a shock to her that she cared so much.

  ‘But for now, today, Christmas. Good times, good wine. Good company.’ He looked at her, and smiled.