Last Letter Home Read online

  ‘Will they let him out?’ Diane said when Sarah had finished reading the letter aloud. ‘Won’t they interview each one and only keep the bad eggs?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. The government must know what they’re doing. We have to trust them. That’s all we can do.’

  ‘Still it doesn’t seem fair. I don’t think he’s a spy, do you? He wouldn’t be a very good one.’

  ‘Of course he isn’t, silly.’ As usual, Sarah regretted being cross with Diane, because it made her look as though she’d been struck. She told her more gently, ‘Anyway, I’m sure Sir Henry will be able to speak to the right people.’

  The news was not encouraging. Sir Henry had indeed raised Paul’s case with the department concerned at the Home Office, but had been told in rather abrupt tones that, regretfully, nothing could be done. Churchill himself had been instrumental in these internments and, as unhappy as the Home Office was about these assaults on innocent people’s liberty, this was wartime and the country’s security was paramount.

  ‘There is every indication that your son is safe and well,’ Sir Henry had written in a letter to Mrs Hartmann in his quick neat hand. ‘I will continue to raise the matter as seems appropriate.’

  It was hard to witness the tears in Mrs Hartmann’s eyes, to know that Paul had been all she had left and now he’d been taken away too.

  Paul’s letters continued to arrive from time to time. They were bravely cheerful. The Jewish dentist had been removed to hospital. Paul and his housemates were sleeping on sacks filled with straw, quite comfortable but for the odd flea. Could his mother send him a towel and some lavatory paper? Sarah helped Mrs Hartmann make up a parcel and took it to the post office for her. The following week he sent his thanks. A package with books in it did not reach him and Sarah realized they must be careful or they might get him into trouble.

  During the weeks after Paul had gone she missed him enormously. At first she didn’t have time to think about it properly because they were so busy at Westbury Hall, coping with his workload as well as their own. Major Richards petitioned the authorities and they were given a short, flabby man in his thirties named Ted Walters to take Paul’s place in the garden. Walters was a conchie, which didn’t bother Sarah particularly, except that he was not a very noble example, always whining that something was unfair: the effect of manual work on his constitution, the meanness of the judge who’d sent him there when he was used to being an office clerk. Major Richards saw at once that there was no point in putting him in charge of anything, so Sarah found herself responsible for training Walters and keeping him hard at it, which she managed by a mixture of threats and encouragement.

  It came to her more gradually that the weight of sadness pressing down on her spirits was not simply grief for her father, uncertainty about the present and fear for the future. It was all those things, but it was also to do with missing Paul. They had worked well together and she felt comfortable with him. Sometimes she would look up from her planting, expecting to see him but it would be Ted with his sour expression, or she’d notice the progress of the Indian Hibiscus syriacus in her own garden and take pleasure in writing to Paul about it.

  He was often in her thoughts. She had long had a habit of holding in her mind, one by one, the people she loved as she lay in bed waiting for sleep, and Paul very naturally joined that number. She would try to picture his bright eyes in his serious face as he considered their conversation, the near blackness of his short springy hair, the strength and fluidity of his movements as he worked, a certain graceful way he had of taking up his jacket and swinging it over his shoulder, or his skill at whittling animals out of bits of wood with his penknife. Life here without him was dull, colourless. Despite working so hard Sarah did not sleep well, waking in the night, wrestling with worries that crowded her mind.

  The news from the Continent grew worse daily. On 15 May, three days after Paul was taken, Holland had surrendered to the Germans. The newspapers were full of rumours that seemed to confirm the rightness of Mr Churchill’s round-up of enemy aliens like Paul. The German forces must have known in advance about the movements of the Dutch army and they had compiled a list of officials and Allied sympathizers who were to be ‘shot on sight’. Holland, too, the rumours said, had obviously been full of spies. Britain must be vigilant! Brussels fell two days later, then, symbolically, on the old battleground of the Somme, German forces succeeded in splitting the Allied armies in two, leading to the debacle of Dunkirk.

  Ruby’s father arrived at Flint Cottage one lunchtime and bore the little maid home, weeping. Her elder brother had been reported dead after the ship that had carried him from Dunkirk beach was shelled. Ivor Richards telegraphed his parents to say that he had been rescued and was now safely back at Aldershot. For other families in Norfolk it was to be a terrible time of uncertainly before news trickled through. Beloved sons and fathers and brothers were confirmed dead. Others, it turned out, were prisoners of the Germans, which was a relief – at least they were alive. Of a few there was simply no trace at all. In this tide of grief it seemed trivial to worry about Paul, who after all was apparently alive and well, and so Sarah tried to dampen her concern.

  Then came a day in June when two dreadful things happened: Norway finally surrendered to the Germans, and Italy declared war on Britain and France. Not long after came the most doom-laden news of all: the Nazis had occupied Paris. France, Britain’s strongest and closest ally, had fallen. Now the British were alone.

  On the morning of 4 July, Sarah left for work before the papers came, but when she passed Ted’s bicycle propped up against the wall at Westbury Hall a headline on a folded copy of the Daily Herald left in the basket caught her eye. She picked up the paper. Aliens Fight Each Other in Wild Panic, it said. She read the article in growing horror. A British cruise ship named the Arandora Star had been sunk by a German U-boat north-west of Ireland. It had been full of enemy aliens, Germans and Italians, being exported, it was believed, to Canada. Hundreds of them, it appeared, had drowned.

  She read on, her skin prickling with horror. The article claimed that the German passengers had punched and kicked their way past the weaker Italians in a chaotic scramble for places in the lifeboats. Words like mob, brutal, sickening rose to her eyes. She could hardly take it in. Surely it couldn’t be true. Someone like Paul would never have behaved like that. But Paul wouldn’t have been on board. Would he? The realization spread through her like the freezing waters of the north Atlantic. Internees, it seemed, hadn’t simply been shut up in camps in Britain, they were being sent on elsewhere, by ship, at the mercy of the German navy, who wouldn’t have had a clue that they were torpedoing their own people. But surely Paul’s mother would have been told if he was being sent away . . . Suppose, though, she hadn’t been. Sarah had seen Mrs Hartmann walk past the walled garden the previous afternoon and gone to speak to her. The woman had said nothing about any kind of news from Paul. What should she do – warn her and show her the newspaper, or was she jumping ahead of events and worrying unnecessarily? She must wait, she decided, laying the paper back in the bike basket. If something had happened to Paul then there was nothing any of them could do and they’d hear soon enough.

  The days passed and there was no news. She wrote to Paul and briefly mentioned the doomed Arandora Star, but there was no reply. It was unbearable living without knowing if he was safe.

  At last, two weeks later, a letter came and when Sarah read it her heart lifted. He’d been ill with a fever, it turned out, and was sorry he’d not been able to write before. There was no mention of her letter to him so she wondered if it had got through the censor. He begged her to write back, also to send more supplies. She and Mrs Hartmann hastily packed up a box of food and toiletries. As an afterthought, Sarah plucked some rosemary and lavender from bushes that had survived the great cull of the kitchen garden, wrapped them in greaseproof paper and slipped them in with the milk powder, the socks and the soap, thinking of the pleasure it would give him to sme
ll the scent of his English home.

  Home. Even that was to be taken away from him. One hot August day as tiny planes did battle for Britain’s fate in the skies above its green and pleasant fields and orchards, Mrs Hartmann climbed onto a rickety chair in her kitchen to reach the last big jar of plum jam from the top cupboard. The weight of it must have surprised her, for she overbalanced, cracking her head on the corner of the sink as she fell to the floor.

  It was there that Sarah found her late in the day when she came to deliver some library books, a slight figure like an old rag doll lying in a pool of broken glass and purple fruit, the fallen chair and the open cupboard telling their simple, tragic story.

  It was the hardest letter Sarah had ever had to write Paul, to tell him that his mother was dead, harder still that he wasn’t allowed to return to Westbury for the funeral. The service was arranged by Lady Kelling and taken by Mr Tomms, and Sarah was touched to see how many people came. Sir Henry was there, she was pleased to see, though Robyn hadn’t been able to take leave from the Wrens. The Richards and Mrs Bailey were in attendance, of course, but a surprisingly large number of the villagers came too. Those who had known Mrs Hartmann’s story felt sorry for her. The postmistress represented the mood when she said afterwards that she felt it a dreadful shame about Paul being sent away and she hoped the poor lady was at peace. The service was unremittingly English in style, Lady Kelling having been heard to say that there would be no German hymns or organ music at a time of national crisis like this. Afterwards there were refreshments in the village hall.

  ‘Is there anything that you can do to help Paul?’ Sarah asked Sir Henry when she was able to speak to him on his own.

  ‘I assure you that I haven’t given up,’ the man growled, his tone impatient. Perhaps he had been trying and been frustrated. Perhaps he didn’t care.

  Lady Kelling told her that the cottage would be put in order and closed up for the time being. She assures us nothing will be taken away, Sarah wrote to Paul, so please don’t worry on that score.

  It was in a cloud of despondency that she returned to work, knowing that the fragile woman of whom she’d become fond was no longer there to visit, would no longer walk past with a wave and a smile on her slow way down to the village. It made Paul’s absence weigh more heavily, knowing she was now the one who cared for him most; more, she believed, than the Kellings seemed to. She didn’t think anyone else wrote to him regularly or even kept him in their thoughts and that made it even more important that she kept doing so. He relied on her, she knew; she sensed that in his letters. There was quite a pile building now. Sometimes she would take them out and reread them, and now her eyes sought out tender phrases.

  The thought of you keeps me going . . . the memory of us working in the walled garden is dear to me . . . I picture the garden as it was, and walk round it in my mind, naming the plants. How is it that we do not appreciate peace and beauty enough at the time, but often only value it when it has been taken from us?

  The things she, in turn, wrote to him about were ordinary details of everyday life. Her tales about Ted Walters’ ineptness were amusing, though it would seriously annoy her at the time whenever the man did something stupid. His latest sin was leaving the gate of the garden open, thus allowing wild deer to wander in during the night to trample the beds and tear bark from the trees. I read him the riot act about that, I assure you! she wrote. I won’t be surprised if he doesn’t show his face tomorrow. The trouble is, if we lose him, I doubt that we would be given a replacement.

  She was also trying to keep the vegetable patch at Flint Cottage going, she told Paul, and what with that and keeping their own chickens and goats which Mrs Allman fed scraps to and spoke to as though they were her own children, life was very full.

  The great news, she wrote in mid-October, is that Derek, our evacuee, has returned.

  A letter from Nora Jenkins, addressed to Sarah’s mother, had arrived two weeks earlier. Mrs Bailey read it and passed it to Sarah. I’m writing to ask if you’ll take our Derek again. The bombing is terrible, if the planes come we get no sleep, and if they don’t I still lie awake waiting for them. Derek is so pale and tired, it would ease my mind if he could go to you.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Mrs Bailey said in a mild tone of voice, which completely surprised Sarah, considering the fuss her mother had made about having him last time. And so Sarah took an afternoon off work to receive him from his mother at the station and help settle him in.

  Now ten, the year had made a difference to Derek. Food rations must have helped, because although still thin, he didn’t have quite that hollow-eyed look of before and his skin had lost its anaemic pallor. She felt for him as he said goodbye to his mother on the station platform and pretended not to notice how he quivered with repressed emotion as she led him down to the waiting bus.

  To Sarah’s continued surprise, Mrs Bailey welcomed him warmly and came with them up to his box room and helped put away his few items of clothing in the cupboard and stow his case under the bed. She had even managed to borrow some old toys from the Bulldocks, and when the vicar’s youngest boy, a chubby-faced lad named Toby, turned up on the doorstep with a football, Derek went off with him shyly to practise penalties on the patch of wasteland behind the village hall.

  ‘Poor child,’ Mrs Bailey said, watching them go down the path together, Toby chattering and Derek tongue-tied. ‘We must find him better shoes and, Sarah, he has no proper underwear!’

  Over the next few days her mother’s battleaxe side came to the fore. No one, either shopkeeper or neighbour, was allowed to deny her imperious requests, and Derek was soon dressed as well as any other genteel Norfolk child for his first day at the village school, with a satchel of his own and a pencil case full of crayons. Mrs Bailey herself cut his sandy hair and even the sun contributed, bringing colour to his cheeks.

  The nights were worrying at first, for Derek heard the air raid sirens in his dreams and would wake crying. One morning he was found asleep under the kitchen table cuddling his pillow, but gradually a normal sleep pattern resumed. Still, he looked every Monday for the postman and when his mother’s letter came would run with it up to his room and remain there quietly until someone went up to find him.

  His presence made a difference to the household, giving meaning to the daily routine, and making everyone try harder for ‘my little man’, as Mrs Allman called him. She took him once on her day off to visit her younger nephew in Ipswich and he returned home excited with tales of the marshes and bearing a bird’s egg he’d found. ‘Reg said I gotta leave the others or it’d upset the mum,’ he declared solemnly when he showed them the speckled white egg and explained how he’d learned to blow out the contents through the holes he’d made at either end. The sad idea of the mother bird losing all her chicks had clearly struck home. He had a sweetness to him, a tenderness, to which Mrs Bailey in particular responded. Sarah watched him at the tea table as he tried to remember to close his mouth when he chewed his bread and couldn’t help but think of the little, damaged boy the Baileys had lost in India whom their mother would never mention, but whom, it seemed after all, she carried in her heart.

  Twenty-four

  Briony was woken by a text arriving from an unknown number. When, tentatively, she clicked on it, she realized that Greg Richards must have picked up her number from the automatic reply message she’d set on her personal email. To that he’d been directed by the similar automatic reply on her college email, an address that was freely available on the college website. She had a moment’s panic, cursing herself for how stupid she’d been to leave this trail to her very bedside. It would have been so easy for some internet troll to find her, except thankfully, she comforted herself, they didn’t seem interested in her any more. She recovered herself and read Greg’s message again, more carefully this time. In London, it said, but coming back Westbury Thursday 7-ish. Drink or dinner? Cheers, Greg.

  She lay back on the pillows and considered for a moment. H
is face rose in her mind, the classic dark good looks, the easy manner, his lively expression. She could probably stand to have a drink with him, and, if that went well, dinner. Above all, she was curious as to what he might have found out from his father about her family’s past. So she texted back to say, OK, where shall we go? I hear The Dragon is good.

  She contemplated the day’s tasks, glancing through the kitchen window at the overcast sky as she ate breakfast. Drive into Cockley Market for supplies and a potter, she decided, and then home for more editing. If the rain held off, perhaps a walk along the river later on. She’d noticed a footpath sign by the bridge. First of all, though, she wrote a note to old Mrs Clare at the Hall, tucked it into an envelope she found in a drawer and dropped it with Kemi on her way out. She was asking when it might be convenient to visit again.

  It was market day in town. Two rows of brightly coloured stalls ran down the centre of the long street with its gracious Georgian shops, and Briony enjoyed choosing fruit and vegetables before queuing at the baker’s for freshly baked bread, where she listened to the gossip. Then, her shopping bag now heavy, she was waiting for a gap in the traffic to nip over to the butcher’s when she spotted Aruna on the other side of the street. Her friend was standing outside an old, whitewashed coaching inn, its sign of a heraldic bear swaying overhead in the breeze.

  Briony couldn’t see Aruna’s face because she stood head down, her sunglasses pushed into her hair, reading something on her phone. She’d just raised her arm to hail her when Aruna stowed her phone in her bag and crossed the road, apparently not seeing Briony at all, and disappearing into a little bistro before Briony had a chance to attract her attention. She must be meeting Luke, Briony decided, and hurried up the pavement thinking she’d surprise them, but when she stared past the golden letters on the smoked glass of the bistro into the gloomy interior, she saw that the hazy figure who had risen from his seat at the back to greet Aruna wasn’t Luke. She received the impression of a heavy, powerful man wearing a suit. He looked up and she stepped away, suddenly afraid of being seen, then dithered on the pavement arguing with herself. Aruna was her best friend. She knew her through and through. But something furtive about her behaviour just now suggested she didn’t wish to be seen. Finally Briony lost courage and walked slowly on by.