Last Letter Home Read online

  She picked up the next envelope from the pile and tried to extract the letter inside, but at some point it must have become damp, and she saw she couldn’t pull it out without tearing it. She inspected the next one, to find the same thing had happened. Perhaps if she held it in steam from the kettle . . . It was too dark to do anything about it now, though, so she tied the bundle together, put it back in the tin and went upstairs to read in bed.

  After she’d switched off the light she lay in the darkness thinking. It might make sense for her to type fair copies of the letters as she read them. It would mean that reading them would take longer, but they’d be easier to refer back to that way. As she fell into a drowse she was sure she could hear the whisper of a woman’s voice in her mind and fancied it to be Sarah’s.

  The museum was in a castle on a mound with a view over Norwich and Briony stood out on the concourse for a while the following day, a sharp wind lifting her hair, looking out across the gleaming glass and metal shapes of shops and offices below, with the stone towers of churches rising here and there among them. In the misty distance, dark canopies of trees girded the city, a sign of where the countryside began.

  A church bell nearby began to chime the hour and when it finished, another answered. Eleven o’clock, the morning was flying by. Briony walked briskly through the castle entrance into a high-ceilinged hallway that was bathed in watery light. At the reception desk, she pulled out her purse to buy a ticket.

  In the busy labyrinth of the museum, she dawdled first in a room full of stuffed zoo animals whose glass eyes glinted at her, then wandered through another full of birds before mounting a flight of wooden stairs to the gallery above. Here she found what she had been searching for, glass cases of objects representing the museum’s military collection. She inspected trays of medals with rainbow-coloured ribbons, cheery postcards sent home by soldiers and examples of uniforms. Here and there hung faded flags, proud symbols of old glory. A display board featured a mosaic of photographs of straight-backed soldiers from the Second World War, all trimmed moustaches and grave expressions. She examined them carefully but recognized no one.

  She wasn’t certain what she had hoped to find; names, she supposed, evidence of her grandfather, more precise details of what his battalion had been doing in Italy. Anything else would be a bonus. But there wasn’t much useful except context. She read a great deal about the Norfolks’ action in France in 1940, about the retreat from Dunkirk in little boats, about the soldiers who’d been taken prisoner and marched to Germany. There had been the terrible massacre of a hundred soldiers from the 2nd Battalion ordered by a German commander at a place called, by some awful irony, Le Paradis. Later, battalions of local infantry had been dispatched to Singapore, many men ending up as prisoners of the Japanese and enduring desperate hardship. Some never returned. Those that did never fully recovered. All these stories of bravery, loss and endurance abroad were intensely moving, but there was no mention of Italy.

  Briony went downstairs to ask at the information desk. ‘Many other documents are in the Norfolk Record Office,’ the woman there told her and explained where County Hall was, a mile or so distant. She’d best make an appointment, apparently.

  When she returned to Westbury Hall and was about to turn the car down the lane to the cottage, Briony had seen a van parked in the turning circle by the house. The name on the side, in writing looped with flowers, was ‘City Gardenscapes’. That was Luke’s. She’d swung her car in next to it, killed the engine and opened the door. Instantly she’d heard their voices.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she cried. ‘I thought you were in Brighton.’

  ‘Brighton was yesterday,’ Aruna said with a sigh. ‘Don’t you ever look at your phone? We texted this morning to say we were coming.’

  ‘The battery’s run out, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You are hopeless.’

  ‘Aruna has a couple of days off and I’m between jobs, so we came down last night to stay with the parents.’ Luke sounded as ever more reasonable. ‘We thought we’d pop over to see you on the off chance. We had lunch at The Dragon, then walked round the village.’

  ‘How lovely. Come and see where I’m staying. Hop in, you can leave your van here.’

  Luke climbed in next to her.

  ‘What’s the pub like then?’ she asked. It seemed that he and Aruna were getting to know the place better than she did. So much for peace and privacy.

  ‘Great food and a lovely orchard garden,’ Aruna said from the back seat. ‘Very pleasant. Oh, this guy came over when we were getting out of the van just now.’

  ‘He wanted to know what we were doing,’ Luke added as Briony reversed the car. ‘We told him we’d come to see you and, hey presto, he was sweetness and light! He says he’ll call round and see you as he’s got some news. Greg somebody, the name was. Ring any bells?’

  ‘Yes. Greg Richards. He’s OK.’

  ‘Is there something you wish to tell us, Bri?’ Aruna said in a suggestive voice.

  ‘No, there isn’t,’ Briony replied crossly as she drove up the lane to the cottage. ‘He was going to ask his dad something for me, that’s all.’

  ‘How are you getting on with your search?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Not very fast,’ she replied, ‘but you’ll never guess, Paul Hartmann probably lived in my cottage.’ They were approaching it now. She parked the car and, when they got out, smiled at their pleasure in Westbury Lodge.

  ‘It’s like a gingerbread house, isn’t it?’ Aruna said, digging her phone out of her pocket. ‘The pointed windows, I love them. And the ochre brick. Turn round, you two. Let me stand between you. There, now say cheese!’

  ‘Or gingerbread!’ Briony laughed as she posed, then went to wrest open the front door.

  She sniffed at the now familiar musty smell in the house and hurried to throw open the windows and put the kettle on.

  There was a more cheerful atmosphere in the house with Luke and Aruna there, she thought as she gathered mugs from the cupboard. She was aware of Aruna busily looking into every room and coming back with comments on everything from the flock wallpaper to the careworn furniture.

  ‘Aruna, don’t, it’s rude,’ Luke pleaded, exasperated, but Briony merely laughed.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s only a rented place. If you said that about my flat it would be different.’

  ‘But you’ve got good taste so I wouldn’t,’ Aruna said. ‘Even though you insist on having “old stuff” everywhere.’ She mimed quote marks in the air.

  After they’d finished their tea Briony smiled at them. ‘There’s somewhere interesting I’d like to show you both; Luke, in particular.’

  She led them outside. ‘It’s really special,’ she said, pushing open the stout wooden door.

  ‘An old walled garden,’ Luke breathed when they entered. ‘Such a shame it’s no longer in use.’

  ‘Maybe you can imagine how it was. Sarah talks about it in her letters.’

  Briony watched him saunter about, amused by his obvious pleasure. He stopped from time to time to inspect a twisted old tree, its branches still wired to the wall, or some metal struts in the brick that marked where a shed or greenhouse must have been. Then he stood, arms folded, as he gazed across the expanse of grass, lost in thought. It was wonderful to see his reaction. An idea set root in her mind.

  Aruna hardly noticed the place. She had sat down on the bench to consult her phone, then walked around, gazing at the screen from time to time and frowning. ‘I can’t get a signal,’ she called to Briony.

  ‘That’s funny. It works in the cottage,’ Briony replied. She endured her friend coming to take a selfie of them both, though, with the chimneys of the hall growing out of their heads as an amusing background.

  Drawn by their laughter, Luke drifted towards them. ‘This place is great,’ he told Briony, with a delighted smile.

  ‘I thought you’d like it,’ Briony said. ‘I—’

  ‘It would have been the kitchen garden
, right?’ Aruna butted in.

  ‘Yes, in the house’s heyday,’ Luke said. ‘There’s an interest in them again now. Lots are being restored.’

  ‘For reasons of heritage, I suppose,’ Briony murmured.

  ‘Yes, but I reckon it’s also our current interest in where food comes from. It’s wonderful to think that a garden like this might have supplied everything from artichokes to the downiest peaches, though things had their season, of course. We’ve become too used to anything being available in supermarkets all the time.’

  ‘Yes, Easter eggs at New Year and mince pies at Hallowe’en,’ Briony said with a laugh.

  ‘That’s simply the way commerce works now,’ Luke said with a frown. ‘There always has to be a build-up to the next big festival.’

  That was true, Briony thought. She worried about people’s loss of connection to the natural world, to the changing seasons. The reasons for the old religious festivals were being forgotten, how Candlemas in January had filled the deep dark days with light, why a good harvest was an occasion for thankfulness, why the self-denial of Lent had helped a pre-industrial population through the last bit of winter when stocks of food had run right down. ‘We live such artificial lives now,’ she sighed.

  ‘You should do a programme about it, Aruna,’ Luke said.

  ‘Maybe, but I’d need an angle,’ Aruna mused. Briony knew how competitive it was to get new radio programmes commissioned. Aruna’s bosses liked edgy, unusual subjects fronted by high-profile presenters; programmes, it went without saying, that were also cheap to make.

  ‘There’d be plenty about that sort of thing in the radio archives, wouldn’t there?’ His voice trailed off. He was examining the small hard apples on an old tree nearby, lines of dark red already spreading across their pale green peel. ‘I’m no expert,’ he said, ‘but I think these are quite an unusual variety.’ He stepped back and contemplated the tree with his familiar arms-crossed pose. ‘Have you found out much about this place?’ he asked, and when Briony shook her head, ‘What about asking the girl Ru and I spoke to at the Hall earlier?’

  ‘You met Kemi? She’s lovely, but she seems to know more about selling flats than history. Perhaps I’m doing her down. We can try asking, but I haven’t had much luck so far.’

  Kemi was there as usual, but she had been taking a middle-aged couple around the show flat and so they had to wait a few minutes until the pair had finished their questions and left. Then Kemi smiled at the new arrivals somewhat warily. She was nervous of Briony with her difficult questions.

  ‘Luke and Aruna, friends of mine. Kemi, we were wondering about the old walled garden. Do you have any information on it?’

  ‘Let me think. There is a little bit in here,’ Kemi said, picking up one of the glossy prospectuses on her desk and flicking through the stiff bright pages. She came to the one she wanted and passed the open brochure to Briony, who read aloud from a paragraph headed Heritage.

  ‘Westbury Hall was owned by the Kelling family, knights of the shire, for three hundred and fifty years. After the death of Sir Henry Kelling in 1952, the baronetcy died out, but the Hall passed to his second cousin, Unwin Clare, and, on his death in 2014, was sold to Greenacre Holdings who have converted the house into luxury flats that are sympathetic to the original design of this magnificent Grade II listed property. Westbury Hall retains the benefit of large, landscaped gardens, which include the site of the old Walled or Kitchen Garden, a pre-war plan of which is owned by Mrs Clare and may be viewed by arrangement.’

  ‘Why was the house sold to Greenacre?’ Luke wanted to know.

  ‘I believe that the Clares couldn’t afford to run it or something,’ Kemi said.

  ‘Couldn’t pay the inheritance tax, I suppose,’ Luke muttered. ‘It’s a shame that we’re not really in Norfolk long enough to try to see Mrs Clare. Does she live far away?’

  ‘No, not far.’ For some reason Kemi’s eyes were full of amusement.

  ‘In the village maybe?’ Briony prompted.

  ‘She lives here at Westbury Hall,’ Kemi said, laughing. ‘Her apartment is along the corridor.’

  ‘Here?’ Briony’s jaw dropped in surprise. The former owner had been here all the time?

  ‘Yes! Would you like me to ask her if it’s convenient to see you now?’

  Seventeen

  Only a few minutes later they were admitted to a large sunny living room looking out onto the back garden of the hall, and when Briony shook hands with Mrs Clare she recognized her at once as the stooped old lady with the pug she’d seen walking past her window. The dog had risen with effort from its basket under the window, waddled over and was now issuing croaky yaps at the visitors from the shelter of its mistress’ skirts.

  ‘You would like to see the plan of the garden, I gather? It’s all right, Lulu, they’re friends, friends, I tell you. Go back to your bed.’ She spoke gently as though the pug were a toddler, and back in its basket it sat glaring and snorting at these foreign invaders.

  ‘Are you sure it’s convenient?’ Briony asked politely. ‘We didn’t expect to be able to see you so quickly.’

  ‘It’s really no trouble.’ Mrs Clare must be at least ninety, Briony realized. Probably once tall, she was now frail and shrunken. Her sparse silvery-grey hair was arranged into flattering curls around her face. Her eyes, the palest of watery blues, were sunk into hollows in an oval face as wrinkled and careworn as her dog’s, and yet those eyes were guileless, dreamy, and there was something about her of the girl she must once have been. It was there in the delicacy of her bone structure, the lightness of her movements.

  Mrs Clare drew her visitors across to a framed chart hanging in a shadowed part of the room and fumbled at the cord of a light set above it. ‘It’s pen-and-ink and watercolour, you know, and one must be careful of sun damage,’ she explained.

  ‘And this is the walled garden?’ Luke asked, leaning in to examine the picture.

  ‘As it was in 1910, we think. Before the Great War, certainly.’

  ‘This is amazing,’ Briony whispered as she and Aruna gathered close to Luke to look.

  It was a hand-drawn plan of the garden whose overall shape Briony recognized, delineated by its wall. The growing area was divided into four main sections, labelled variously as flowers, vegetables and fruit bushes in tiny, but readable calligraphy. There was a greenhouse against the south-facing wall, where Briony remembered seeing the metal struts, and an octagonal herb garden lined with low box hedging in the centre of the garden. A key drawn in the left-hand corner of the page referenced some of the different crops.

  ‘Gooseberries,’ Aruna said, ‘I’ve never eaten them.’

  ‘Really?’ Briony wasn’t sure whether to be surprised. ‘My granny grew them. They’re sharp, need loads of sugar. Look, damsons. Granny had plum trees, too.’

  ‘There used to be a splendid grapevine in the greenhouse,’ Mrs Clare said beside them, ‘and the grapes were delicious. I’ve no idea what type, but they really had a wonderful purple glow.’

  ‘You must have lived here a long time then. Well, of course you did, with your husband . . .’ Briony coloured at her clumsiness.

  Mrs Clare didn’t seem offended. ‘Longer even than that. I was born here. Unwin was my father’s second cousin, though we didn’t meet until we were both grown up.’

  ‘Oh, and your father was . . .’ When were they talking about? Briony was even more confused.

  ‘Sir Henry Kelling, of course. I was born Robyn Kelling and I was the last of the direct line, but because I was a girl I couldn’t inherit Westbury Hall and so it passed to Unwin. Sir Henry’s father and Unwin’s father were first cousins, you see.’

  Briony was amazed. This lady was a Kelling! She couldn’t stop herself wondering whether the marriage was one of love or convenience, but of course she couldn’t ask. She felt Robyn Clare’s clear-eyed gaze upon her, as though she could read her thoughts. Something else occurred to her, too, which was that Unwin Clare’s surname would
surely have been Kelling, too, if one followed the male line, but that seemed nosey to ask on first acquaintance, as well. ‘It must have been a relief that you didn’t lose your home,’ she settled for finally.

  ‘It was. I grew up here between the wars,’ Mrs Clare continued. ‘Did the girl on the desk not explain anything at all? I was born in 1921. I’m ninety-five this year, you know.’

  What age did a woman have to reach before she began to be proud of it? Briony wondered, as she and Luke made noises of congratulation. Aruna, however, had lost interest in the conversation and instead crossed the room to where a display of photographs were set out on a console table.

  ‘Are these your family, Mrs Clare?’ she asked brightly.

  ‘The one on the right is my son Lewis,’ Mrs Clare said, with new warmth in her voice. ‘He and his wife live in London. I find it strange to have a child who’s an old-age pensioner!’

  They moved over to inspect the photographs. ‘This one’s my dear Unwin with Digby, taken some years ago, but it’s a favourite of mine.’ A mild-looking country squire in his seventies, wearing a Barbour jacket, held a scruffy terrier that peered out through a curtain of rough hair.

  ‘And this one?’ Aruna reached toward a large old black and white print in a dilapidated frame, propped against the wall.

  ‘Careful with that. Here, let me.’

  Mrs Clare lifted the frame with both hands and Briony craned to study the group of figures lined up in sombre rows before what was clearly the frontage of Westbury Hall. The women sat on chairs, the men standing behind, all except for a distinguished-looking gentleman with a handsome moustache, who occupied the chair at the centre next to a lady with a disdainful expression, wearing a neat, elegant hat at a fashionable angle.