Last Letter Home Read online

  To Sheila

  and in memory of Ann

  One

  They call it a storm and after days of it she felt storm-tossed, clinging to the wreckage of her life, each new attack dashing against her with a force that left her bruised and gasping. She might have borne it if it had simply been words, painful, devastating words though they were, words that cruelly shredded her self-worth, her professional reputation, her trust in her own judgement, her identity as a woman, but it was more than that; her sense of safety was threatened.

  It had been her first time in a television studio, Jolyon Gunn’s late night chat show, and she’d been invited on at the last minute because one of his guests had been taken ill. Probably with fear. Narcissistic Jolyon was not known for his charm, though this seemed only to boost the ratings.

  ‘And we welcome historian Briony Wood, who is writing a book about World War Two, is that correct, love?’

  ‘Yes, it’s to be called Women Who Marched Away. It’s about the ATS, the women’s infantry service during—’

  ‘Sounds smashing,’ he cut in. Jolyon did not have a long attention span. ‘Briony’s here to talk about the news that lady soldiers will now be fighting on the front line. Briony, I know this will be contentious but, really, war is a job for the lads, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not at all. There are plenty of examples of fighting women going right back to the Amazons. Or think of Boudicca or Joan of Arc.’ Briony tried not to sound strident, but the sight of so many men in the audience, some of whom had nodded in agreement at Jolyon’s words, meant she had to speak with confidence. Dazzled by the studio lights, she blinked at her host, who lounged lord-like in his leather director’s chair with his short legs spread, suave in a designer suit, his fat Rolex watch glinting. He smirked back at her and rubbed his neat black beard.

  ‘Surely they’re exceptions, though, Briony, and we remember what those Amazon ladies had to do to use their bows, don’t we?’ He made a slashing gesture to his chest and winked and there were shouts of male laughter. ‘You see it’s not natural, women fighting, they’re not shaped for anything apart from pulling out each other’s hair.’

  More bayings of amusement.

  Briony drew herself up and glared at him. ‘That simply demonstrates their determination. Anyway, just because something is “natural” doesn’t make it right. Warfare itself is natural, after all. But, Jolyon, surely our discussion should be about psychology and the social conditioning around gender . . .’

  The word gender made Jolyon straighten and his eyes filled with a mad light. Briony realized she’d walked right into a trap. This was a populist show and outspoken Jolyon had a huge following among a certain sort of male, but it was too late to retract her words, she’d look weak and stupid. She was suddenly acutely aware of how schoolmarmish she must appear, her light brown hair tied in a knot at her nape, her charcoal-coloured sheath dress smart and understated rather than fashionable, even with the soft blue scarf coiled about her shoulders.

  ‘The girls aren’t tough enough, Briony. They’ll cry, and fuss about their lipstick.’ The audience howled with laughter at this, though there were one or two hisses of disapproval as well.

  ‘I’d like to see you on a battlefield,’ she snapped. ‘You’d not hack it for a second compared to some of the brave women I interviewed for my book.’

  There were shouts from the floor and several men rose to their feet. One shook his fist at Briony. Jolyon himself stared at her with a pasted-on grin, for a moment lost for words. Only for a moment, though.

  ‘Thank you, Briony Wood,’ he pronounced with mock surprise. ‘I think she’s just called me a coward, guys! Isn’t that smashing?’

  Escaping into the rainy night, Briony switched on her phone to be greeted by a tattoo of alerts as the messages flew in. She opened her Twitter app with trepidation. As she read the first notifications, her eyes widened with horror.

  You ugly cow cum the war you’ll be first against the wall.

  Our Jolyon’s tuffer than any wimmin.

  The third was merely a string of obscenities that brought her hand to her mouth.

  The phone then rang. A name she recognized. She swiped at the screen.

  ‘Aruna?’ She glanced about the lonely South London backstreet and began to walk briskly towards the main road.

  ‘Don’t look at any messages. Especially not Twitter.’ Briony heard the panic in her friend’s voice.

  Too late. ‘Oh, Aruna. Why did I say it? How can I have been so stupid?’

  ‘It’s not your fault, he was awful, the pits. I’m sorry I ever gave his people your name. Listen, where are you?’

  ‘Clapham. I’ve just left the studio.’ Briony turned onto the high street and startled at a trio of youths in leather jackets who swaggered, laughing, out of a brightly lit pub. They brushed past, not even seeing her. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Don’t faff about with public transport. Get a cab.’ Aruna sounded urgent. ‘Go straight home, then ring to tell me you’re safe.’

  Men from Jolyon’s audience were beginning to emerge from the studio front door. They hadn’t spotted her yet, but their coarse gestures and rough laughter frightened her. Briony pulled her scarf up over her hair and began to hurry.

  Aruna came to her flat in Kennington that night, and Briony was glad because the next morning the abusive messages were still pouring in. At first, despite Aruna’s protests, she read them, answered the more reasonable or supportive ones, deleted others, sobbed with rage, but on they came. Finally, Aruna made her suspend her Twitter and Facebook accounts and told her to avoid the internet altogether. She did read a blog piece Aruna found, from a female politician who’d suffered similar attacks. ‘Eventually the cyber trolls will tire and retreat to their lairs,’ the woman concluded. The advice was to ‘stay strong’.

  ‘It’s all very well to say,’ Briony sighed. She wished her father and stepmother weren’t on holiday. She could have done with a bolthole.

  The ‘staying strong’ strategy might have worked had not the furore been stoked by Jolyon Gunn himself. When she sneaked back online that evening it was to find some stinging comments about her ‘prudish’ appearance being the reason she was still single in her late thirties. His fans, thinking this hilarious, all joined in.

  ‘Prudish? When have I ever been prudish?’ Briony gasped. Never mind Aruna’s reassurances, this was unfair.

  It had been a quiet Easter for news and the second morning after the ill-starred chat show she emerged, a bag of student essays in hand, to hear a man bellow, ‘Briony! Over here!’ She turned and was blinded by a camera flash. ‘Give us a quote about Jolyon, love,’ he said, with a cheerful grin. Panicking, she fumbled her way back indoors and watched him drive off. She’d leave going in to college till tomorrow.

  Later that day Aruna rang to warn that someone had posted her home address on Twitter. They knew where she lived now, the trolls. On the third morning, an anonymous postcard with a picture of a clenched fist on it arrived in the post. She was now too frightened to go out and made Aruna, who’d popped by with some shopping, tell a group of teenagers loitering on the pavement to clear off. Aruna’s dark bobbed hair flew in the wind as the youngsters stared back in innocent puzzlement at her earnest, pointed face. Briony realized with embarrassment that she was being paranoid. After Aruna had gone, an avuncular policeman showed up and settled his bulk on Briony’s sofa, where he sipped tea and recited comforting platitudes about the online threats.

  She rang Gordon Platt, her department head, for advice, but he sounded flustered, muttered about the college’s reputation and told her not to come into work for a few days ‘for security reasons’. She ended the call feeling let down and marooned. ‘It’ll all go away soon,’ Arun
a told her again. ‘If you keep your head down they’ll soon get bored.’

  Aruna was right. The attention melted away as quickly as it had begun. There was other news. The trolls found new victims. It was safe for her to come out.

  The trouble was that for a long while after that she didn’t feel safe at all.

  She still dragged herself into work, but felt overwhelmed. It wasn’t simply the usual heavy workload, the administration she had to do on top of teaching and her own research, it was anxiety about getting any of it done. The headaches that had been bothering her for some time became more frequent. They would start at the base of her skull and creep up to her temples and behind her eyes so that sometimes students or colleagues might find her collapsed on the tiny sofa in her office, as she waited for the painkillers to kick in.

  Eventually her doctor referred her to a counsellor. A few weeks later, she found herself in a peaceful upstairs room scented with lavender, sitting opposite a supple, elegant woman with a thin, wise face. Her name, appropriately, was Grace.

  ‘I feel I’ve struggled so hard all my life,’ Briony told Grace when she’d finished explaining why she’d come. ‘Now I don’t know what it’s for any more. I’ve lost all my confidence.’

  Grace nodded and made a note, then looked at Briony with eyebrows raised, waiting.

  ‘Everything’s a huge effort.’ Her voice caught in her throat, so that ‘effort’ came out as a whisper.

  ‘Tell me about the other things in your life, Briony; your family, for instance, what you enjoy doing when you’re not working.’

  Briony briefly covered her face with her hands, then took a breath so deep it hurt. ‘My mum died of cancer when I was fourteen. She wasn’t ill for long, but it was an awful time and then she simply wasn’t there any more. It was like this huge hole.’

  ‘That must have been dreadful.’ Grace’s sympathy encouraged her.

  ‘What was worst was there was no one I could talk to. Dad thought we should just get on with things, be practical, and I tried to be like Mum with my brother, which he hated. Will’s younger than me. He’s married with two kids and living up north because of his job. We’re fond of each other, but we’re not close.’

  ‘And you don’t have a partner of your own? Children?’

  Briony shook her head. ‘I . . . it simply hasn’t happened for me, I don’t know why. Nothing’s quite clicked. It doesn’t bother me, exactly, I have lots of friends but, well, sometimes I think it would be nice.’

  Grace stirred and smiled. ‘If you are open to it, then it might happen,’ she said, her eyes shining.

  ‘What do you mean?’ It sounded mysterious and a little patronizing, to tell the truth. She explained crossly how relationships had fizzled out, though she’d felt perfectly ‘open’ to them continuing.

  Grace simply smiled in that slightly maddening way. ‘We can talk more about that. I think you should slow down a bit, Briony. Say “no” more often and try to do things that you enjoy. And perhaps the next time we meet we should start by talking about your mother.’

  Briony nodded, wondering how all this could help her, but the doctor had said Grace was good, and she liked the sense of peace that the room imparted, so she agreed to visit again.

  Over the course of the next few months she found herself telling Grace about how abandoned she’d felt by her mother’s death, how it had been the sudden end of her childhood. Grace pointed out the importance of other losses – her mother’s parents only a few years before, how her brother Will had learned self-sufficiency and their father had finally married again. Perhaps, Grace suggested gently, Briony had developed her own defensive shell that stopped her letting anyone in. And the trolling experience had traumatized her so much because of the stress she was already under.

  After her eight weeks of seeing Grace, she sensed that something tightly coiled, like a steel spring, inside her was beginning to unfurl. There were still days when she would relive her ordeal, and feel frightened and powerless again, but these became fewer. She was beginning to come through.

  Two

  Several months later

  ‘Stop it, Zara. You’re driving everyone crazy.’

  ‘Apologize then, Mike. Say you’re sorry.’

  ‘I’m not saying sorry for something I haven’t done . . .’

  The angry voices faded as Briony tugged shut the door of the Italian villa with the tiniest of clicks. Her sigh of relief sent the gecko in the porch darting into the eaves. A fellow escapee, she thought, watching it vanish but, unlike her, it wouldn’t feel guilty. How long did she have before the others stopped bickering and noticed she’d gone? Perhaps they’d think she’d retired to bed early and lock up. Well, she didn’t care. Three days into their holiday and she was already tired of their company. Of Mike and Zara, anyway. Aruna and Luke weren’t to blame. At least, they didn’t mean to make her feel the odd one out.

  The evening was thick with the late July heat. Briony sniffed at the savoury smoke from their barbecue still hanging in the air as she set off over the rough ground between the olive trees to the gate. When she gained the leafy coolness of the lane, a fragrance of resin replaced the pungent smoke and she breathed it in gratefully.

  Which way now? Downhill the road led back through the hamlet with its bar and shop, then across a bridge over a babbling river where light dazzled off the water, a beautiful spot where children paddled. That way meant other people, though, and she wanted to be by herself. So she struck out left, up the hill towards the dying sun. It was a direction she hadn’t taken before.

  The going was easy despite the warmth and it wasn’t long before the lazy atmosphere of the Italian countryside and a pleasant stretch in her calves calmed her ruffled mood. She hated any form of conflict since the trolling, even when she wasn’t directly involved. It made her want to run and hide.

  Soon, the gritty road crunching under her trainers became a soft grassy track that drew her up between terraces of fruit trees where the air smelled fresh with citrus. Minutes later she came to a bend in the path above a sharp drop. She stopped, then stepped out onto a rocky crag to stare at a sudden breathtaking vista of the valley. Up and beyond the encircling hills were the folds of other hills and other valleys, a view that lifted her mood, it was so beautiful.

  Beneath the gold-streaked sky all was peaceful. The air was so still and the valley so deep that the smallest sounds echoed up. Briony narrowed her eyes and listened. Far away, a dog yapped a warning in canine Morse code. The strains of a car engine competed with the putter of a tiny plane passing overhead. Close by, a lone cicada tried a hesitant note like a violinist testing a string. Another, and then, as if at the drop of a baton, a whole orchestra of them started up around.

  Briony’s gaze rested on the terracotta roofs of a small town clinging to the neck of the valley. Tuana. She recalled a fragment of conversation she’d had with her dad the week before. She’d rung him to let him know where she would be staying.

  ‘Tuana?’ Martin Wood had said. ‘That rings a bell. You know your mum’s dad, Grandpa Andrews, was stationed there during the war?’ The reminder was enough to send her online to look for pictures of the town, then to the college library for a couple of books about the Second World War in Italy that she’d brought with her. Her grandfather had died when she was ten, silent about his war experiences to the last.

  They had stopped in Tuana for supplies on the day they arrived and found it a tranquil place with tight winding streets and a public square dreaming in the sun, but after they’d visited the little supermarket, Mike had been impatient to drive on to the villa and crack open the local vino he’d bought, so there’d been no time to poke around.

  The valley was idyllic; well, it appeared to be. Just as Briony knew that the grey haze crowning the furthest hills must be the pollution of Naples’ industrial belt, and the distant twin peaks wreathed in smoke was Mount Vesuvius, so did the thought of Mike spoil her pleasure. She yanked a tendril of bindweed from a nearby
bush. It snapped, flailed the air like a whip, then lay limp in her hand. She let it fall.

  There must be something wrong with her to feel this way. Anyone else would consider themselves lucky. Two weeks’ summer holiday at a villa in the mountains of Italy! It was Aruna who’d asked her along. Lovely Aruna, who since they’d found themselves sharing a student flat together, years ago, had been her best friend.

  Apart from Aruna, the holiday party were comparative strangers to Briony. Aruna’s colleague Zara and hospital doctor Mike were the couple in full spate of a row. Then there was Luke, a tall, gentle, laid-back man in his late thirties who was Aruna’s boyfriend of six months and whom Briony found considerate and easy to talk to.

  Briony stepped down from the rock and continued along the narrow path around the shoulder of the hill, treading carefully; one wrong step could send her tumbling. When she next looked up it was to see an escarpment ahead. Among trees crowded against the hillside above, her sharp eyes could make out part of the roof and upper storey of a sizeable house. How did one get to that, especially by car? There must be a road from some other direction.

  The footpath led more steeply uphill now, zigzagging between trees, but, curious about the house, Briony began to climb. She reached a ridge, hot and out of breath, to find that there was indeed a rutted earth road, snaking off right towards where she’d seen the house.

  Someone must have come this way because there were tyre marks in the dust. The owner of the house, presumably. But who would live up here, in such a lonely spot?

  She followed the car tracks for a couple of minutes before the road suddenly broadened out then ended abruptly at a pair of sagging wrought-iron gates bound by a rusty chain. A creeper with tiny red flowers twisted through them. It must have been a long time since they’d been opened. Of a car there was no sign, only soil thrown up on the road where the vehicle must have turned in impatient movements. Reaching the gates, Briony grasped the bars and stared, like an outcast, into the lush greenery beyond.