The Last Letter

by Kirsten McKenzie

  ‘May I leave my bag here?’ Nicole asked in passable French. Her holidays at her uncle’s hotel in Germany had prepared her well in the basics of most of the main European languages; French, Spanish, Italian, and German, natürlich. She’d have trouble conducting a full conversation about politics in any of those languages, except German, but if it involved directions, refreshments or luggage, she could hold her own.

  The grizzled trader muttered a gruff ‘Oui’, reading his newspaper, which looked to be as old as he was. Hardly current events.

  Nicole browsed the uniform hats on display, selecting a couple of old RAF caps. Placing them on the trestle table, she caught the eye of the stall holder – his blink gave his word that they were to be held for her as she continued browsing. Other punters came and went. The stall was never entirely empty. A pair of Chinese ladies looked like they’d wandered in by accident, but still left with a Chinese military field compass in its original leather case, and a handful of Chinese-Russian friendship pins. Mass-produced in the nineteen fifties, they were more kitsch than collectible.

  Nicole ran her hand over a leather flying jacket. British-made, lined with sheepskin, it looked like it had suffered a hard life. It was bulkier than she would have liked, but there was something about the supple leather, and its sheer Englishness which appealed.

  ‘Combien?’ Nicole asked. How much?

  ‘Deux cents cinquante,’ came the gruff reply. Two hundred and fifty euros.

  Cheapish, Nicole thought, for a genuine World War Two flying jacket. Once she added her mark-up, there’d be a good bit of profit in it, but no harm in trying to negotiate a better price.

  In the end, she paid three hundred euros for the jacket, the two hats, and a handful of unnamed service medals from the Second World War, the sort given to every serviceman. Bundling them all into her bag, she turned to thank the seller, but he was already buried in his newspaper.

  By the end of the day, her feet were aching; her bag felt as heavy as the Shackleton ice shelf in the Antarctic, and she was utterly overwhelmed by the crowds, the bargains, the smell of dust and decay intermingled with the scent of the famous moules – the mussels – served at every bistro she passed. Abstractly she wondered what Lille did with the mountain of black mussel shells at the end of their biggest weekend.

  Collapsing gratefully in her room, she considered having a shower before going out for dinner, but that required too much energy and, besides, she wanted to spread out all her treasures, to assure herself she’d been a canny buyer, and hadn’t fallen prey to any impulse buys or counterfeits. Sadly, replicas were slowly infiltrating the famous fair. As much as the organisers tried to stamp them out, they were like cockroaches, and appeared everywhere, in every sector of the industry.

  With her treasure spread all over her room, the floor resembled the shop. Stepping carefully over her wares, she carried the jacket to the full length mirror, and put it on. Miles too big, it enveloped her. Warm and snug, it felt special, as if its previous owner was smiling at her trying on his coat.

  She thrust her hands into the deep pockets, wondering who it was who’d first put his hands in them. What had become of him? She heard the faint crackle of paper. Confused, she couldn’t feel any paper in the pocket. She opened the jacket and spied an internal pocket. Carefully, she withdrew the paper from inside. A letter, undated, it began “Darling Elizabeth ...”

  Engrossed, Nicole settled into the armchair, curling her legs underneath her, and read the letter, fascinated by the glimpse into the past, until she came to the end, when reading became impossible due to the tears in her eyes.

  THE WAREHOUSE

  Breakfast in the Viceregal Lodge was a quiet affair. Guests came and went, the officers ate hurriedly, an odd mixture of standard English fare and an assortment of adopted Indian dishes.

  Patricia was merrily regaling Sarah with the intricate details of her outfit, gushing over the stitching and the quality of the lace. A conversation the other ladies at the table were more than happy to participate in.

  If Patricia noticed any quietness from Sarah, she gave no sign. She was fully entrenched in the world into which she’d landed.

  ‘Yes, a game of croquet sounds divine! I’ve never played, but I’ll give it a go. What do you think, Sarah, a game of croquet this morning?’ Patricia looked expectantly at Sarah.

  ‘What? Oh, croquet, here?’

  ‘Well, we’re hardly going to play in London today are we!’

  The table tittered. Almost every lady there would have given anything to be back in England, away from the giant bugs which wantonly invaded even the dining table at the Viceregal Lodge. The bugs were incessant, the heat relentless, the servants dire, and the melancholy incurable. Little did they realise, the first-timers at least, that life in India was a pantomime. Its reality merely a brief moment in time – a time they, and the world, would never have again. The Victorian era was like no other for the British as a race, especially for the sort of ladies who were entertained in the circles of English upper classes.

  ‘Sorry, Trish, but today I need to find my things, and sort through them. I’ll have to arrange transport, and shipping and stuff. Mr Lester has offered to take me. I think you should come with me.’ Sarah gave Patricia a look.

  Patricia frowned. ‘You don’t need me for that,’ she said.

  Simultaneously, Albert Lester bellowed a ‘no,’ from the end of the table.

  Pointedly ignoring him, Sarah responded, ‘Yes, Trish, I need you with me. I need you to help me get things organised to get everything home. You know, the whole reason you came back to Simla with me?’ Her eyebrows were raised as high as they would go, eyes narrowed at her friend. She understood Trish was in her own little fashionista heaven, surrounded by fabrics and designs she’d never get to experience again, but she needed her friend to come home too. That was her plan. She would go home today. Her father would be on his own. Why can’t Trish understand what I’m getting at?

  A deep voice interrupted the glowering down the table, ‘I’ll come with you, and Miss Bolton can go and learn the rules of croquet. There’s no need to deny her that enjoyment when she’s only just arrived. Surely you’re here for the season? It won’t take long to get your things moved here if you’re going to stay here, or we can move it all back into Firgrove House. It hasn’t been let yet, so you could stay there, if you’re comfortable. Of course, completely understandable if you don’t want to?’ Brooke carried on idly spreading a slice of toast with English marmalade, as if his offer hadn’t just put the cat among the proverbial pigeons. Albert Lester needed to come down a couple of pegs, to a level more befitting his position. Brooke wasn’t having him dictate what Sarah could or couldn’t do. The man was far too interested in Miss Williams for his liking.

  Sarah’s heart thumped. No. I mustn’t think of him. She was going home. Once there she’d find a way to get to her mother. She wasn’t in India. She must be in New Zealand; that was the only possibility left. She had to go back to the shop. Hopefully that girl hadn’t sold anything she needed to find her mother. Blast it. Torn between her girlfriend’s happiness, her feelings for Brooke, and the imminent loss of her father, she muttered quietly, ‘Thank you, Major Brooke, that would be lovely. You don’t mind, do you, Mr Lester?’ She challenged her father.

  Lester shook his head.

  Patricia clapped her hands. Never had a woman revelled in layers of petticoats, restrictive jackets, and headache-inducing hats than Patricia at that very moment. Oblivious to Sarah’s discomfort, she had but one thing on her mind, and that was fashion. Her mind was spiralling out of control with ideas. She’d already begged a sketch pad from the Viceroy’s wife, who was completed enamoured with a new face from home.

  Sarah swallowed a spoonful of porridge, which turned to stone in her stomach, as she contemplated her next move. Like a game of chess, she needed to think three moves ahead of herself. Everything she touched could have a consequence. Every future she altered now, would af
fect the past. She barely acknowledged Trish as she waved a cheery goodbye when she left to prepare for her game of croquet, a game which called for another wardrobe change.

  ‘Are you not hungry, Miss Williams,’ Brooke enquired, his own plate a barren wasteland. A smear of yellow egg yolk was the only evidence there’d been anything there in the first place.

  Sarah shook her head, trying to force down some tea. What to do? What to do?

  Brooke leaned forward, his voice barely above a whisper, ‘Why is it that Lester seems to think he has any say over your life? It intrigues me, his obsession with your activities.’

  Glancing at her father, Sarah replied, ‘I’ve no idea. He has no hold over me. Maybe he feels some responsibility for what happened to Simeon?’ As soon as she said it, her mind violently protested. Would her father be capable of murder, to protect her? She gazed again at Albert, engrossed in a conversation, his grey head bowed down to listen to the woes of an ancient Englishman seated next to him.

  The same thought had taken root in Brooke’s mind also. ‘I’ll come with you, just to be on the safe side. Shall I meet you outside in an hour?’

  Sarah was deep in thought. Suddenly everything seemed more believable. The idea that her father had potentially murdered someone to protect her felt vaguely comforting, if not a tad macabre.

  The three of them made an odd trio, with Lester refusing to meet Sarah’s eyes, and ignoring Brooke completely. The ride down the Mall, past the butter-yellow Christ Church was conducted entirely in silence. Sarah gazed out across the valley, every colour squeezed fresh from a tubes of artist’s oil paints onto the palette.

  Down past the fashionable shops on the Mall, past the browsing memsahibs, parasols sheltering them from the Indian sun, filling in time before another party, a ladies luncheon or an afternoon tennis match.

  They left the fancy shopping precinct, bouncing their way to the lower mall, where throngs of people shopped. Here the noise of the crowd would have drowned out any conversation, should it have occurred. Hawkers selling stacks of multicoloured shawls; potters squatting on the ground next to their pregnant terracotta gourds. Spice traders surrounded by their finely woven bowls, filled with mountains of every spice, their peaks echoing those of the Himalayas. Pots and pans jostled for space among woodturners, and racks of dead poultry and small mammals hanging freely in the open air. The stench of the market was tempered by the flower pedlars. Dahlias and marigolds intermingled with chamomile and golden champa –frangipani. A cascade of colour through the street.

  And, all too soon, they were outside a set of warehouses, two of them occupied by small traders, who watched with interest as the silent trio waited for the doors to be unlocked.

  ‘Sarah, stop and think ...’ Albert started to say.

  ‘Don’t,’ was her response as she marched into the warehouse, the scent of dust and decay as familiar to her as it would be to any antique dealer. Things shut away in storage exude their own scent, the slow smell of neglect.

  Silverfish scuttled from the light, and faint rustles under the furniture sounded ominously like rodents gorging themselves on leather and lace.

  Brooke wandered around as if he were shopping for some trinket for himself. Reaching out absently to peer beneath drop cloths, or feel the heft of an ornament laying atop hastily packed crates.

  Brooke broke his reverie, ‘I’m trying to imagine how you’ve been living these past few months. Miss Williams.’

  ‘What?’ Confused, Sarah turned towards Brooke, her arms firmly folded across her chest.

  ‘How you’ve been living – in hotels I presume.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense whatsoever. I’ve been home, and have come back to find out what happened to all my belongings.’ And here she turned to Lester before continuing. ‘You wouldn’t think it’d be that hard to ship someone’s belongings back to England, not when you have the greatest navy in the world at your beck and call. When you’re essentially the only superpower in the world.’

  ‘Now I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. But I do think you haven’t been exactly honest with me.’

  Spinning back towards him, her anger bubbling over from the night before, ‘For God’s sake, I never asked to be here. I’d give anything to go home. To see my mother again. To have my father hug me, for him to call me love just once more. I’d give up all of this in a heartbeat to see my parents again, together. Alive. And yet here you are, all puffed up in your stupid uniform, your whole life is about to go up in flames and you have no idea. And you want to accuse me of not being honest with you. Well, fuck that. Fuck it.’

  Brooke flinched. There was real heartbreak in her words. He started to reach out, but Albert got to her first.

  ‘Sarah, love,’ he pulled her into a hug, her sobs stifled in his shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry. I wish I could say you don’t have to go home. I want to say “stay and make a life here”, but I can’t. I’m sorry I pushed you away. I’m so sorry I didn’t try harder to find you, and I’m sorry I gave up trying to come home.’ His voice lowered to a whisper, ‘You have to go home. You can’t change history. Everything you do now will irrevocably change something. We just don’t know what the ramifications might be. You can’t make a life with Brooke, you know that, right?’

  Brooke cleared his throat, the picture in front of him as unsettling as Sarah’s words. The packing crate next to him was unsealed. A stack of lace edged handkerchiefs, starched within an inch of their lives, lay on top. Brooke picked one up, clearing his throat again, and ignoring the completely incomprehensible happening in front of him, he interrupted, ‘Ahem, Miss Williams, perhaps I may be of some assistance. I’m sorry I questioned the veracity of your statements. I am intrigued by them, but perhaps we could do this particular task another day. You seem very upset. This can wait,’ and he offered the handkerchief.

  Sarah pushed herself away from her father, and reached for the lace hanky, her fingers brushing Brooke’s. And disappeared.

  THE LETTER – PAGE 4

  “We’re pushing forward now. Got them on the run, you could say. What’s in the papers is the truth of it. We can taste the end. It’s in the air, and we’re the boys who’re bringing it to an end, and not too bloody soon.

  We’ve almost every nationality flying with us now – apart from the Germans, of course. I’ve made so many promises to visit the families of the lads I’ve met – you and I will be travelling the rest of our lives. First, we’ll go to India. God knows I need some warmth in my life – not to say that your arms aren’t warm enough for me, far from it, but once you’ve slept in the barracks here on base, you’ll know the meaning of cold. I’m imagining taking you on long walks through the grounds of the Taj Mahal, and through the Red Fort, and to Jaipur, the Pink City and the Amber Fort. India is a country full of colour – colour which we Brits seem to have lost, probably around the time the Romans left. Why is it that we have no colour in our psyche?

  The Kiwi boys say their country is just one colour, green. Green under a long white cloud. Can you imagine that? A green, green country, unscarred by war or poverty? We could move there, my love. Start again. Sell everything, and begin with nothing tying us to home. Nothing to remind us of the past, of what this country has sacrificed.

  The Australian chaps describe their country as red. Not blood red. Not the red I see marring so many here now. So many lost lives and limbs. Not the red of sorrow, but an ochre, as if the land has been slashed with a giant scythe, and the earth scuffed to give it a depth of colour, a seriousness, but mixed on the palette with adventure.

  Our country was once so beautiful, but like a butterfly pinned to a board in a display case, we cannot keep that beauty from fading. Coral plucked from the reef dies before our eyes, and I fear that that is what this war has done to our country. England is fading in front of us. We could stay, and try and find that beauty again – but perhaps we should flee before we, too, fade away to nothing?

  Your beauty would shine regardless of
where we live but I’m scared I’ll never see it again.

  I’ll write more tomorrow.”

  THE SHOP

  The sound of two bodies colliding against a stack of plastic crates echoed through the basement. An old tin Disneyland tray slipped from its perch, clanging noisily on the wooden floor, followed by silence.

  Warren Brooke stirred first, ‘Christ, was that an earthquake?’ Carefully he tested his arms and legs, stretching one booted leg out at a time, before turning his attention to Sarah, ‘Miss Williams, are you hurt?’

  Sarah groaned, everything aching, her mind foggy with the pain.

  ‘Miss Williams? Are you OK?’ Brooke reached for Sarah, groping blindly in the dark before his hands found her on the ground. They brushed over her legs, her waist, skimming her sides, inadvertently brushing one breast as he sought out her face. Gently probing her until he was satisfied she was unhurt. He pulled her up to a sitting position. ‘It must have been an earthquake. They’re fairly common, but damn it I don’t remember a thing.’

  Sarah coughed, holding her hands to her head, realisation dawning in the dark.

  ‘Where the bloody hell is Lester? Lester? Albert, where are you?’ Brooke called out into the dark. Silence the only response.

  ‘It wasn’t an earthquake, Warren, it’s worse than that. I’m sorry,’ Sarah muttered.

  ‘Roof must have come down,’ Brooke observed, ‘Come on, I’ll help you up, best we get out of here before there are any more tremors,’ Brooke tugged on Sarah’s hands until she stood up.