The Last Letter

by Kirsten McKenzie

  With dreams of wealth, health and happiness filling his mind, he slipped into the sleep of the pampered, dozing away the days on the journey from Simla to Delhi.

  THE DOLL

  ‘... happy birthday, dear Elizabeth, happy birthday to you. Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Happy birthday, my love,’ Elizabeth Williams’ father leaned in kissing her forehead, his eyes crinkling in pleasure.

  Young Elizabeth gazed up at her parents, their proud faces reflected in her confident eyes. Carefully removing the cream ribbon and folding it, she placed it behind her before moving on to the crisp tissue paper. The unbalanced weight of the package confused her. Slowly, the luxuriant hair of a child’s doll emerged. The matt bisque face was exquisitely hand painted, her feathered brows frozen in arched surprise.

  Elizabeth’s heart sang. A gift from her father, undoubtedly from one of his forays overseas – for this was a Kammer & Reinhardt doll, from the workshops of Germany. Manipulating the doll’s composition ball-jointed body showed a fluidity of movement none of her other penny dolls had. This one was far superior to the others filling her nursery.

  ‘Her name is Gretchen, my love. I’m assured she is of a very limited run. There’ll only be a handful of girls sprinkled throughout Europe with this very doll. Think of that! You playing with her at exactly the same time as those other children are playing with theirs. Like magic.’

  Elizabeth smiled at her father, still marvelling at Gretchen’s glass eyes and real human hair tied in adorable braids. Unbelievably, twinkling in the doll’s ears were a tiny pair of diamond and pearl earrings. Just as Elizabeth touched the tiny earrings, her mother passed her a small velveteen box. Laying Gretchen down gently on the tissue, Elizabeth opened the box, revealing a child-sized pair of matching earrings.

  ‘Your mother thought this a fitting gift for your tenth birthday, so I had the jeweller in Germany match yours to Gretchen’s. Do you like them?’

  ‘Oh, Father, yes, I love them. They’re divine, thank you!’ Elizabeth flung her arms around her father, sinking her face into his strong shoulder. Her mother joined them in their moment of joy, none of them realising this would be their last moment of true happiness.

  THE VILLAGER

  Barry Wentworth awoke with a jolt. His room was pitch-black – the blackout curtains were performing their role admirably.

  The screaming of foxes punctuated the darkness, but their otherworldly sounds were not what had woken him. He was well-used to the sound of those vermin, killers of chickens. Thieves who stole into his coop at night, regardless of the protective measures he took. No, the sound was something foreign to the night. Germans?

  Flannelette-clad legs emerged from under the eiderdown. Goosebumps rose on his bare arms – not from the cold, but from the real fear that they’d finally come. That Churchill was right, in all his pipe-smoking, bow-tie wearing pudginess, he was right. The Germans had invaded.

  Slipping feet into boots at the end of his bed, he grabbed his rifle, which stood ready propped against the wardrobe by his bedroom door. Throwing on a coat, he eased open the door, and stepped cautiously into the inky hallway.

  Barry muttered his old army motto under his breath, ‘Pro Patria’, For My Country, before creeping down the stairs, remembering to duck at the bottom to avoid the low lintel. Pausing at the front door, he straightened his shoulders, disengaged the safety catch on his rifle, and eased open the heavy door.

  The foxes fell silent.

  THE ACCIDENT

  Edward Grey pulled at the heavy rudder, laughing at his wife, her long hair in a frenzy behind her as the wind whipped at them both. Mary Grey yanked hard on her hat, its maroon ribbons slippery under her increasingly cold fingers.

  ‘I’ve no idea why you’re laughing, Edward, it’s not fun any more. It was fun when you were thirty, but you’re in your sixties now, and this is a young man’s sport. And I’m cold. Let’s go in now?’

  ‘Come now, Mary, let’s live, before we’re too old for living. I need the practice before the regatta this weekend.’

  Mary gave up on her hat, clamping it firmly between her knees, concentrating instead on holding onto the sides of the dinghy, her fingers white.

  ‘Why on earth you want to take up racing at your age is a mystery to me. Surely becoming a race official should suffice? All this damnable practice. Don’t be surprised if you catch a chill in this air.’

  A gust of wind rose up, pummelling the boat with icy fingers of water. Mary Grey gasped in shock, the frigid Atlantic trickling down her neck. Her teeth chattering, she glared at Edward, who was oblivious to her discomfort. For too long he’d played the City game. He missed the excitement of the outdoors, the camaraderie of war. He had his family, but he missed his men, his command. Being a leader was like a drug, at once both intoxicating and terrifying. The reliance you had on your men and their absolute obedience to your commands was like a reliance on drugs to lift you from your life, to transport you to nirvana.

  The wind picked up further, rattling the sails on the small skiff, the fabric roiling like the sea beneath them. Mary ceased to be cross with her husband, worry replacing anger. She noted a tightening across her husband’s features as he struggled with the tiller, tiring quickly. Mary lurched to her husband’s side, placing her tiny white hands next to his. Together they wrangled the tiller, pulling against the angry waves that tried snatching their wooden rudder away.

  The horizon, a stark strip of dark blue water against the pale sky when they’d set out, was now a filthy wash of grey, indistinguishable from the sea. Alone on the water, there was no one to help them. Mary fancied she could see the rocky shore, although she was so disorientated she couldn’t in all honesty identify what was north, or south, let alone the shoreline they’d left.

  They dropped the sails, with Edward gathering up the waterlogged fabric before the wind stole it, leaving Mary with her hands on the tiller. A rogue wave hit the yacht broadside, tipping the vessel almost ninety degrees on its side. Laden down with the heavy sails, Edward stood no chance.

  Edward Grey was washed from the deck of the yacht, and plunged into the brutal ocean. Tangled in the sails, he struggled to surface, gasping for air that never came.

  Mary screamed, her voice lost to the wind. Relentless waves obliterated all signs of her husband. Shock overcame her, and she stilled, resting her hands on the useless tiller, all urgency hidden under the ocean with her husband. Some suspected she let the sea take her, a noble decision to be with her husband in his last moments. For whatever reason, when the next wave came, Mary’s fingers let go, and she welcomed the quick death the water delivered.

  THE ROMANS

  Barry Wentworth paused on his front stoop. Blood pounded in his ears, drowning out the other sounds of the night. Straining to hear what he assumed were ‘legions’ of invading Germans, he willed himself to calm down.

  A flickering light in one of his upper fields caught his eye.

  ‘Right then, that’s it, you bastards,’. Wentworth whispered, striding across the gravelled drive, stones crunching under his feet, intent on doing his bit for Mother England by killing as many of the Nazi swine as God and his ammunition supply would allow.

  The flickering turned out to be flames, licking the wing of a plane nestled into the barrenfield.

  Wentworth smiled; one downed plane is one less the Germans can use to bomb us. He decided his work here was done, until the marching flames illuminated the unmistakable red, white and blue roundel, the distinctive emblem of the Royal Air Force.

  Barry couldn’t tell the difference between a Spitfire or a Harvard, a Bristol Freighter or a Hurricane, but the roundel was as British as his morning tea. Abandoning his rifle on the dewy field, he raced to the side of the burning plane.

  Leaping deftly into the anti-invasion hole he could see the pilot struggling to escape from the smoke-wrapped cockpit.

  Coughing in the acrid smoke, Wentworth struggled with the external latch on the canopy, fing
ers useless in his panicked state. The flames threatened to ignite the remaining aviation fuel in the tanks – if that happened, neither of them would be doing any more fighting for King and Country. Using the heavy-duty heel of his boot, he bashed at the latch several times, smoke stinging his eyes, his breath wheezy with the toxic fumes. Every kick became more frantic than the last.

  At last! The canopy popped open. Expecting the pilot to obey the laws of gravity, it took Wentworth valuable seconds to understand that the pilot was still strapped in. Stupid bugger, he thought. The rush of adrenaline and the heat of the fire thwarted his ability to process the scene, and it took Phil’s hoarse cries to jolt him back to reality.

  ‘Bloody thing’s stuck’ Phil cried, tugging on the webbing.

  With no knife to cut the jammed belt, Barry looked around frantically for something, anything, to cut the webbing.

  The firelight danced across the ground, catching on a tractor on the side of the field, an abandoned plough in the next field over, and on something embedded in the exposed earth in the anti-invasion hole he’d dug himself months earlier.

  Not a knife, a buckle perhaps, Barry rationalised as he stole it from the earth, its jagged end the perfect tool for plunging into the webbing –anything to create a tear, a weak point in the fabric to wrench the strap apart; let the pilot to drop free of his harness.

  The two men scrambled from the would-be shallow grave, the conflagration singeing their hair. Only seconds later, the fire finally found the rest of the fuel, and celebrated with a violent explosion, sending both men headlong into the field.

  A sickening snap of bone shattering was lost amidst the roar of the inferno behind them. The once proud Spitfire, all beautiful lines and powerful torque, was decaying before their eyes. There was nothing to be done, other than let the fire run its destructive course. No fire brigade worked this far out, nor were there hundreds of villagers armed with wooden buckets. Only an overweight farmer and an injured pilot.

  With the blaze well under way, and no means to extinguish it, Barry did what most Englishmen would do; declared it was time for a cup of tea. Helping Phil to his feet, the pilot cradling a newly broken arm, Barry introduced himself gruffly, with an awkward shake of the left hand. Common courtesy out of the way, they limped towards the stone farmhouse, both sure someone from the RAF would be along in due course to pick over the remains of the plane, and the pilot.

  Maintaining blackout conditions seemed pointless given a plane was burning as merrily as a Guy Fawkes bonfire in his field, so Barry lit one of the lamps in his kitchen. He set the lifesaving buckle down on the kitchen table, where it lay forgotten among jars of home-made jam and marmalade. As the kettle boiled on the stove, Barry pulled the lamp closer to have a look at both Phil and his broken arm.

  ‘My young lad’s in the Civil Defence, but in London. He’s one of the night wardens there. Comes back here when he can like, but it’s hard for him to get away. He’s the one who dug the hole you hit. He’s lucky to get away as often as he can, given he’s got such an important job. Yes, very important, my boy.’ Barry sniffed. He peered intently at Phil’s arm, poking at it with a nicotine-stained finger, ‘It’s a bad one, this break. I’m picking you’re going to be out of action at least six weeks, if not more.’

  ‘Christ, it’d better not be that long, I’m meant to be training the Poles next week. Bloody hell, if they get old Barley to do that, we may as well just surrender.’

  Distastefully, Barry sniffed, ‘Poles eh? You letting them lot fly our planes?’

  ‘They’ve lost their country, so if they want to help protect mine, they can fly every damn last one of our planes if they want.’ It wasn’t a polite reply to the man who’d just saved his life, but he wasn’t about to let anyone insinuate that their allies were lesser men just because they weren’t British.

  Barry sniffed again, as he strapped a makeshift split to Phil’s arm, and tightened the crudely fashioned tea towel sling he’d put round Phil’s neck, their conversation at an abrupt end.

  ‘You can kip on the settee in the front room tonight. I’ve only got the one bed since the Lloyds down the road needed my other one for the London kiddies they’ve taken in. Daft thing to do, if you ask me.’

  Phil’s hand tightened imperceptibly around his tea cup. He and Elizabeth hadn’t been blessed with children yet, but the War Office’s decision to send children out of London into the countryside to keep them safe from the nightly bombing by the Germans, was one of its few good decisions. This man was is a right piece of work.

  ‘I’ll be back off to bed then. If you could put out the light when you’re settled, I’d be much obliged. Don’t want to be wasting my kerosene; rations and all.’

  Phil said ‘goodnight’ and listened to the interminable sniffing as Barry ascended the narrow staircase.

  His eyes closed, Phil savoured the strong tea and the solitude. The near-death experience replayed over and over in his mind. Quiet descended upon the house, and its natural groans and creaks surrounded him like old friends. Spying the buckle on the table, he put down his mug, and picked it up. Twisting it in the flickering lamplight, the buckle looked old. Its age was as curious as its corroded shape. Nothing at all like modern buckles, its pin was too long, its essence askew. The green pigmentation of its corrosion gave it an ethereal colour. What’s it made of? Bronze perhaps? Another alloy? Regardless, it had saved his life. Slipping it into one of the pockets of his drab flying overalls, he drained his now cool tea, picked up the lamp and found his way to the front room.

  The settee wasn’t long enough for his lanky frame, but he had neither the energy nor the strength to move an armchair closer to accommodate his legs, so he sprawled in an ungainly parody of a seductress draping herself along the edge of the couch. Despite the pain in his arm, sleep stole him away in minutes.

  THE MORNING

  The clanging of pots woke him. Wincing in pain, Phil pulled himself up with his good arm, and made his way to the kitchen. The pain in his arm was making itself well known now. Mingled with a smell of breakfast cooking, the vague scent of burning lingered in the air, a reminder of how close he’d come to dying last night.

  ‘You’re awake then. There’s bacon and eggs on the table, and tea. I’ve to get on with me jobs, so I’ll leave you to it. Just you make sure the army gets that plane out of my field quick smart, and she’ll be right.’

  ‘The air force.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You said “army”, but it’ll be the air force who’ll take the remains of the plane away.’

  ‘Could be Adolf Hitler himself for all I care, as long as it’s gone from my field.’ Sniffing again, Barry left.

  Phil recognised the intractability of someone whose approach to life was one of confrontation and affront. To his credit, Barry had saved his life, but sadly it was his type who made the world, as a whole, a very bitter place.

  The divine scent of crispy bacon overtook the stench of burning, stirring hunger pangs in his stomach. Laid out on the table was a farmer’s size portion of fried eggs, bacon, and fire engine red tomatoes. Steam was still curling from the spout of the teapot shaped like a rooster. A peculiar choice for a man as difficult as Mr Wentworth, Phil thought, grasping the curly feathered tail handle to pour himself a cup.

  Nothing had ever tasted so fine as that meal, although eating it one-handed proved somewhat awkward. In the absence of an audience, Phil ate the bacon with his fingers, the use of a fork and knife beyond him this morning.

  Unable to wash up, Phil left the crockery by the sink, and, with no belongings to gather up, save the unusual buckle already in his pocket, he made his way outside to survey the remains of his damaged plane.

  A charred wreck surrounded by scorched field. Tendrils of smoke competed with tiny midges as he approached his once-proud aircraft. Upside down, its blackened belly resembled the carcass of a beached whale. Briefly he wondered whether it would be any use trying to recover the maps and charts from the c
ockpit. He dropped awkwardly into the anti-invasion hole dug so expertly by Wentworth’s son, but a quick glance at the now-unrecognisable cockpit and canopy was enough to see there was nothing left to retrieve.

  He went to climb back out of the still-warm hole, only to crash down onto his good arm as his foot slipped on the crumbling earth. In a heap at the bottom, his attention was caught by an unusually vibrant green staining a section of earth beneath him.

  Digging one-handed, he found the earth crumbled easily, revealing a misshapen object, similar in tone to the buckle in his pocket, but larger, sturdier. Plucking it from the earth, he held in his hand: a small copper alloy bust of a bare-chested young man. No bigger than his hand, it was heavier than it looked. Its antiquity was etched on the face of the boy. Without thinking, Phil slipped it into his pocket, knowing at once that the farmer would see no value in such a trinket.

  Like a bad penny, Wentworth suddenly appeared at the top of the hole.

  ‘Need a hand up, then? Saw you go in, and when you didn’t come back up, thought I’d best check if you were OK’

  Phil wondered how long he’d been standing there – if he’d seen anything of the bust. But Wentworth’s face was as clear as the skies. No suspicion lurked there, only annoyance that his field would be out of action.

  ‘Yes, if that’s OK? Seems I can’t climb out with this bung arm.’

  Stretching up his good limb, he was easily hauled out of the hole by Barry.

  The two men stood awkwardly next to the carcass of the plane.

  ‘Nothing worth saving then?’

  ‘No. It’s a lost cause down there. Not sure that the RAF would even bother with it, to be honest. Apart from making sure that there was nothing the Germans could use. Mind you, there’s been enough planes downed on their soil for them to scavenge if they wanted.’