by Susan Sallis
PS How is your mum?
Nine
August 1948, Orion
Rache, I’m going to deal with your letter here and now, and deprive you of all the news about Georgie, and Vicky, and Aunt Mabe, and Nora-Marie from next door who makes the drop scones, and Pop being awarded Headmaster of the Year by the county and Joan Greenwood who teaches at the school, and has a crush on Pop. I’m doing this quite deliberately, so that you will see that by worrying about Mrs Fritz like a dog with a bone you are missing out in a big way!
Right. Here goes. Mr and Mrs Fritz lived on the outskirts of the city in a council house. In 1944 – August thereof – Mr Fritz is in a temporary internment camp awaiting the next batch to be sent to the Isle of Man for the ‘duration’. We don’t know anything about his background, whether they’ve always lived in England or whether they just arrived before the war. She’s English, he’s a German Jew. He came into Gloucester on that Friday afternoon. He had borrowed or stolen a bike, and presumably got through the gates of the holding camp in odds and ends of clothing which included one of the Swallow ties. We wondered whether it was one of Hermione’s old ties, but no proof. He visited his wife – we wondered whether he might have dropped in to see Mr Silverman en route, but no proof. Then he went on down to see his fancy-nancy (no proof) who lived by the pump rooms and worked in the canteen for foreign personnel. We think her name was Eva. OK so far?
On the Saturday evening he repeated the whole thing (no proof) and we picked him up as he came from the direction of Silverman’s and swung alongside the war memorial on the edge of the park. He threw us off the scent, but we picked him up right outside the house, where he faced up to us and accused us of hounding him. Then he went into the house.
The air raid happened in the small hours of Monday morning. I went back to the house in Spa Road later that morning, managed to get past the police, and was convinced Fritz was in the rubble under the staircase. The warden found a tie, and later two bodies were dug out, Fritz’s and Eva’s. You joined me and we went to Hermione Smith’s house, where we discovered that Mrs Smith was missing and had lied to Hermione about her dental appointment. Also you told me that Hermione appeared to be missing a school tie (no proof). Mrs Smith turned up.
Tuesday, you and Tom got on the trail again and investigated the scene. You discovered the exact place where Fritz and Eva had been killed. You also found some scraps of rope, which suggested that they had died before the raid and there was a possibility they had committed suicide by hanging. You then went to the temporary morgue in the infirmary and were told that they were both fully dressed, which could have been a confirmation of your suicide theory, but again – no proof. Tom then ‘dragged’ you round to Silverman’s where you discovered his body hanging from a ceiling beam in the shop.
The result of all these disconnected incidents – well, Rache, they are only circumstantially linked, please note all the times I have had to add ‘no proof’ – was:
1) you and I felt responsible in some way for the deaths of Fritz and Eva. How we managed that, I can’t remember after so long. I came to my senses pretty quickly, and I thought you had too.
2) Tom feels responsible for the death of Silverman because he had some kind of premonition about it and did not follow it up quickly enough.
Now, Rachel Throstle, will you kindly read through the above and accept that just because we happened to be around on that Friday and Saturday, and you and Tom were the first to find Silverman’s body, does not make us in any way responsible? None of us. Tom was obviously looking for a way to beat himself up over the loss of his dad . . . I can’t see why, but just know I am right. And you and me . . . well, we were just a couple of drama queens.
Yours regally, Meriel
August 1948, Orion
Dearest Rache, Got your letter and thanks. Now, no more about that. Turn the page or even close the book. I am very glad I was able to help and don’t thank me. I agree with Tom that the whole business of Mrs Fritz – who, apparently, is really called Sylvia Strassen – is really funny and it serves you right for being so gullible! I just hope she doesn’t try it on again – not that she’s likely to after pinching your typewriter like that, but you never know. If she does you’ll just have to get in touch with the police. I’m really glad you think it’s now a closed book.
The trip to Huddersfield sounds rather grim to me. It’s really hard to imagine you all still scrimping and saving on food and clothes and everything. America really is the land of plenty as far as I’m concerned. Rex mails me huge checks, and the ice box here is always stuffed with food.
So good to talk to you on the telephone. Yes, I love having my hair short again, all Ingrid Bergman like you did it. It saves a lot of pain too; when it’s long enough Georgie loves to grab a handful and when Vicky sees him laughing about it she does it, too!
I wondered how we should get on when Pop was home for the summer but he has planned the nicest thing. He’s taking Aunt Mabe for two weeks’ vacation on the Maine coast, and has told Rex to ‘get himself down here’ to keep me company and help with the kids! I approved of the first thing – the holiday – but not really the second. Pop is hoping we’ll get together again, of course. I’m pretty certain it can’t happen, Rache. I know you will be sad about this, and in a way I am too. Perhaps there is some way round it all. It will have to come from Rex. Perhaps if he applied for a job somewhere else I might be willing to go back. He’ll have finished his doctorate now, and that may well open up new horizons for him. Even then it would be difficult. He’s not interested in the children, Rache, that’s what is so awful to me. I can see that he’s still shocked about Georgie. But damn it all, Vicky is still around, and she is not only lovely in every sense of the word, she is such fun, too. I didn’t say anything to Pop, but I gather Rex has agreed to come for a few days. We’ll see.
Meanwhile . . . Joan. She’s never heard of our Joan Greenwood, the actress, but when I told her about the sexy voice she dropped hers a tone, and now speaks slowly and significantly, even when she is only asking how we all are. Aunt Mabe and I can’t help giggling about it – not unkindly because she’s so sweet. We thought at first she didn’t have a chance after Mom – his dear Ellie – but now I’m not so certain. He’s sixty and Joan is forty-five and very attractive, so he’s probably flattered to bits. And I’m an expert on extra-marital relationships, as you well know. OK, he’s a widower, but so recently it would be the same as extra-marital. And funnily enough, I don’t think Mom would mind. She was never daft and adoring like poor old Mum was about Dad, and she would want him to be happy. Joan is bound to call and see me when Pop and Mabe are away – she is very good with Vicky and Georgie – and she just might confide in me. We’ll see.
Am I getting a bit too much like Daphne doo-dah – fat girl, permed hair, loved to gossip? I’m telling myself it’s because I am interested in people. I really am, Rache. Aunt Mabe said to me ever so seriously last week, ‘Honey, when the kids are grown-up I think you should go to college. You should read psychology. You are good at it.’ I made a face and she knew what I was thinking and she actually grabbed my arm. ‘Meriel—’ she always calls me Merry or honey, my full name means trouble. ‘Meriel, Georgie will lead a proper life. He will probably get married.’ I stared at her, amazed. ‘Aunt Mabe . . . I don’t think it would be allowed . . .’ I stammered on those words, because it hurts to have to face up to the fact that Georgie will never be independent in this world.
She gripped my arm so hard it hurt. ‘Then you make sure you know enough about psychology that you can make it allowed!’ And she marched off angrily – angry with me for not having thought it through, angry with . . . everyone all of a sudden.
She apologized later. ‘Things that matter, Merry . . . I either end up in tears or lose my temper. And you don’t do that. You never judge people, do you, honey?’ I must have started blabbering something, but she ignored me. ‘I’ll never forget you coming out of that hospital clutching your ba
by. You never blamed Rex or the hospital people or anybody. It had happened, and that was that, and you would deal with it as you saw fit. You could really help people.’ She just walked away then, before I could say anything, probably because she was ‘ending up in tears’. I know I was.
August 1948, Orion
Dearest Rache, I’m doing a Daphne doo-dah now. Joan came over to say cheerio to Pop. She’s got her parents with her for the whole summer. Whether it was the feeling of being a bit restricted, I don’t know. But she got Pop on the verandah, the dark end, and kissed him! And that’s not all. He let it happen but didn’t do much reciprocation, hands lightly on her waist, head slightly inclined towards her, but not much passion visible. Then – the hussy – she stopped hanging on to his shoulders and one hand slid over his and she moved it – his hand – from her waist to her breast! She was wearing a navy and white gingham dress buttoned to the neck with a Peter Pan collar almost up to her chin so he couldn’t get past that, but he didn’t move his hand, and I’m almost certain he inclined his head another two or three inches towards her. What do you think of that? Sorry to sound a bit too Daphne for words, but I slid out of sight into the kitchen, and Aunt Mabe was there washing up after dinner, and I didn’t tell her. So you’ve got to have it, my bestest friend, whether you like it or not! Maybe this is one of my letters you’d better burn!
Wednesday
Rex is here. Came late last night. Vicky went berserk with delight and all he could say to her was, calm down. She went to bed in tears, and he asked whether she was always like this! Then I began to feed Georgie, and he said why on earth wasn’t I using a formula like any other mother? I told him Georgie is six months old, and I breastfed Vicky for nine months. And he said, ‘Sorry. Just thought you wouldn’t want to breastfeed . . . him.’
And even after that, Rache, I let him sleep with me. I am my father’s daughter, am I not?
Sunday
Rex left today. He got a taxi and picked up the Amtrak at Vermont, then he will fly ‘home’. Five days. He was with us for five days. I knew that almost all that time he was itching to get away. Back to Dawn, I guess.
It’s really hot and the children both sleep after lunch and he could have rented a car and taken us to the lake.
Darling, stopped abruptly there because Joan came over. Turns out she saw him leave in the cab. Rex. She’s kept away these past few days to give us a bit of time alone, I guess. She must have told her parents about Rex, and her father said immediately, ‘Let’s take that little family to the shore for a couple of hours. Kids always enjoy water. What d’you say, girls?’ So here was Joan checking that I wasn’t in floods of tears and hoping it was a good idea.
Needless to say . . .
I know I’m always going on about this neck of the woods, Rache, but it is so beautiful here. I guess I appreciate it so much because I know the whole stay is just that, a stay rather than a permanency. I do hope this ‘stay’ will last through the winter, when the snow lays itself over everything and the trees are decorated with ice pendants. Anyway, sweetie, yesterday afternoon was grand. The lake is a sort of basin in Harrison river. It’s fed from Harrison Falls so the water is constantly renewed, and is as clear as crystal. The river sort of takes time to calm down in the lake, then meanders on into the county and out the other side, and eventually empties itself into the sea – must ask Pop about it, get him to draw a map for Vicky. He’s still so good with her, they draw together at the weekends. Mostly animals. I think he might like to change to maps.
It took us almost two hours to drive there because Mr Greenwood does not go above thirty. Georgie got a bit fretful, actually, which is most unusual. Joan took him on her lap and tickled his tummy, which he loves, then said a little rhyme to him which I remember my old mum chanting to the twins. ‘Leg over leg, as the dog went to Dover, when he got to a stile, up he went over – up he went over.’ Do you know it, Rache? I thought it was amazing, an English nursery rhyme in America.
And Mrs Greenwood turned round – very gingerly – in the front seat and said over her shoulder, ‘My great-grandmother always sang that one to me when I was little. She came from Kent in England way back in 1844. Answered an advertisement in the local paper for a Kentish maid who could make drop scones. She didn’t know what drop scones were, and she thought the post was for a cook housemaid! Great-Grampy’s mother taught her how to make drop scones and be a good independent American wife. And she taught them all her rhymes – dozens of them, there were – some you skipped rope to, others you played ball with. She was a great grandmother and a great lady. She’d been an orphan in England, and she reckoned there’d been a mistake at the heavenly turnstiles and her family were all waiting for her in America!’
We laughed like drains, of course, but that’s how I feel, in a way. I looked sideways at Joan, and knew that from now on her drop scones would always be my favourite tea-time food. And then I knew . . . she was right for Pop. It came to me there in the car, with Georgie starting to grizzle again, and Vicky repeating ‘Is we there?’ at every bend in the road. And at the same time, or maybe a split second after it . . . and because of Great-Grandma Greenwood . . . I also knew I would have to give my marriage another go. It’s so tempting to say to you here and now, Rache, I will come home. I think about it all the time. I could live with dear old Mum – she’d help with Vicky and Georgie, I know that. I could take up Dad’s offer of working at Nightingale’s and I could have real fun making life for him and DM absolute hell! But . . . but . . . I’m not sure any more, Rache. And in that moment, in the Greenwoods’ old car, I knew that I should give Rex another chance to love his kids. I could run away . . . it is possible. Gran Greenwood couldn’t. She’d burned her boats. And now, I think I’m going to burn mine. I think you will understand.
This is a kind of farewell letter, sweetie. I’ll always write, and hope you will too, and there will be visits, I’m sure of that. But I’m going to set sail for America properly, now. I’m going to work at it, Rache. I don’t know about Rex, but my children are American, and my mother-in-law said we were similar, and she was American. Pop, too. And darling Aunt Mabe, who will have to leave the school house and be alone again. And now Joan and Mr and Mrs Greenwood. They’ve got another daughter and a son, both married with families, so I’ll be meeting them and gaining lots of cousins. Oh my God, Rache. I’m sitting here on the verandah, kids asleep upstairs, so hot, no covers, fireflies and big drunken moths around the lights, and the sky just huge above the trees, and I feel I’m going to explode . . . is this my road to Damascus? I haven’t told you a thing about the afternoon, and the picnic, and Vicky sitting waist-deep in the crystal water, patting it with her hands so flat they’re bending backwards – like she does in the bath. And Georgie being gently, gently dunked by Mr Greenwood, going rigid for a moment with shock and then screaming with joy and waving his fists . . . and Vicky laughing her head off at him.
I must lock up and go to bed, Rache. I haven’t been drinking though I know it must sound like I have. Pop will be phoning through in a minute telling me my Aunt Mabe is worrying him to phone every night. I know he’s right but I’d bet quite a lot that he would phone anyway. They are my family, Rache. If she is my Aunt Mabe, then he is my Pop. I have to stay.
PS Darling, do you think Tom is worried about not remembering his mother? Don’t answer that, of course he is. Cheer him up. Offer him one of mine. I’d offer him my dad, but in the circs that wouldn’t be funny.
Another thought. I know that Mr Silverman is – was – good. And I think we both know that Fritz . . . sorry, Wilhelm Strassen . . . was evil. I don’t know why I said that. Perhaps because I feel its truth so certainly, I had to see it in my own handwriting.
All my love, Rache. Merry
Ten
AND THEN SYLVIA Strassen was murdered.
I had seen her several times from the corner of my vision. When I looked at the wedding photographs I was certain she was standing on the edge of the little crowd who
had assembled outside the church to see my dress and throw confetti. Meriel said the picture was too blurred, but Sylvia was smiling and the rabbit teeth were there.
She had turned up in June, just over two months ago. Tom and I were renting a flat in Brunswick Square, just across from the new technical college. We were on the first floor, so if anyone rang the bell we could inspect them from the window.
The bell rang, and there she was.
I knew her instantly: still skinny, her face all eyes and nose and teeth, hair tucked into a headband, sort of gingery. I’d . . . seen her around now and then . . . as Meriel said, we were bound to cross paths occasionally. It did not mean that she remembered me.
Tom was down in the Forest of Dean interviewing a man who had worked on the Burma railway, and I had hoped it might be him wanting me to throw down the key because he’d forgotten his. She looked up and saw me peering down at her, and her expression became a mixture of anger and fear and stubborn defiance. Just as it had back in 1944, the weekend of Holidays at Home. She held my gaze for the instant before I stepped back into the room.
The bell jangled again, imperiously. I opened the door on to the landing and waited for Mrs Price on the ground floor to answer it. She paid a lower rent because her husband did the garden and she answered the door – and sorted the post and ‘ran a mop’ over the hall floor now and then. There wasn’t a sound from below; the whole house appeared to be empty except for me.
The bell jumped and jangled again and again. It was on a spring just inside the front door. I went on to the landing and looked over the banisters. The spring was still shuddering. Then the letterbox was lifted from outside and a shrill voice said, ‘I know you’re there – I saw you!’
I ran downstairs; if anyone was in the flat above and the attic above that, I certainly didn’t want to call attention to myself in quite this way.