Last Letter Home Read online

  It made sense suddenly. ‘I was asking Mariella about the villa I saw up the hill,’ she explained. ‘Where I walked before Luke found me. That must be why she’s given us the film. But,’ she wondered, ‘where did she get it from?’

  ‘Sshh, there’s more,’ Luke said.

  They found themselves staring at two men in khakis weeding a patch of earth studded with tender little plants.

  ‘Potatoes!’ he pronounced knowledgeably.

  ‘Tatties, eh? Ooh ah!’ Mike’s teasing voice.

  The camera zoomed in on one of the hoes working briskly between the plants and a hand reaching down to yank out a weed, then moved upwards. The man’s open jacket revealed a vest stretched over a tanned, muscled chest. His head was lowered as he concentrated on his work, and his arms glistened with sweat. As though noticing the camera for the first time, he looked up and straight at the lens, pushed his cap back and wiped his forehead with his arm. Short, springy dark hair grew above a high forehead and laughing eyes in a narrow, tanned face.

  Surprise raced through Briony’s whole body.

  She knew that face, those eyes.

  There came a loud ripping sound, the picture flew away in a rag of ribbon and the screen glared yellow once more.

  ‘That’s it, folks,’ Mike said, switching on the lights. ‘Can’t see what the fuss is all about, personally.’

  There were general murmurs of bewilderment. Why had Mariella given Briony this film? ‘It was of round here,’ Aruna said, ‘so perhaps she thought we’d be interested. Hey, Briony, are you OK?’

  Briony blinked and realized that everyone was staring at her. ‘Sorry,’ she said, then after a moment, ‘I wonder if Mariella meant it for all of us, or maybe . . . well, I don’t know. Listen, guys . . . Mike, sorry to be a pain, but I need to see it again.’

  There were groans, but she didn’t care. She had to. She knew without doubt that the film had been for her and her alone.

  The soldier’s face was as familiar to her as her own.

  ‘He was exactly like my brother. I didn’t mean it was Will, of course,’ Briony told Luke and Aruna, ‘it would have been my grandfather. Mum always said Will took after him.’

  It was later in the evening and she had stepped out to join the others in the gloom of the vine-canopied patio, hesitant until they welcomed her. Astringent smoke from a candle on the low table filled the warm air, its flickering flame throwing restless shadows up the leafy wall and reflecting off beakers of the ruby wine they’d bought at the vineyard. With Mike’s help she had watched the film again, making him slow it right down when they reached the shots of the man who looked like her brother.

  ‘I did see what you mean about him being vaguely like Will, though the clip was so grainy. Do you know for definite your grandfather was here during the war?’ Aruna asked.

  ‘According to Dad he was in this part of Italy.’

  Aruna looked sceptical. ‘It would be an amazing coincidence if it was him, Briony. I mean, those men all looked alike, especially in khaki with those savage haircuts.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She wouldn’t let Aruna sway her. The man’s eyes had looked out across the years into her own in a way that had tugged at her heart. She had only been ten when Grandpa Andrews died and could not remember him clearly, but she’d seen pictures. She was possessed by the desire to know if this man was him.

  The obvious thing would be to ask Mariella, but she wasn’t due for a day or two and Briony couldn’t wait. In the morning she’d find out where she lived and visit her.

  After Aruna and Luke had retired to bed she sat alone for a while in the candlelight watching the shimmering reflection of stars on the tranquil surface of the pool and thinking. Grace, her counsellor, had encouraged her to talk about her mother, and in the course of these conversations Briony had come to understand the true extent of her loss. With her mother’s death she had lost that entire side of her family. Maybe, just maybe, she’d been handed a chance to recover something.

  Four

  It was to a modest farmstead that Signor Marco at the café directed Briony the next morning, on the side of the hill directly above the village, the path a slog to climb in the heat. Behind the yard gate, a heavy muscular dog of uncertain breed and doubtful friendliness broke into deep barks at her approach, but at a sharp command from Mariella it slunk back to its kennel.

  Mariella invited Briony through into a cool, tile-floored kitchen where she was glad to sit at a wooden table and sip water. Of the boy who had given her the projector and the mysterious cine film there was no sign.

  Mariella continued with her tasks, tidying freshly ironed laundry into a basket with deft movements. The back door stood open to a view of the terraced hillside and from the yard came the contented chook chook of chickens scratching for food. It was an idyllic place, and yet there was a tension in the room. Briony felt it in the way the woman watched her as she folded towels. It was as though she was weighing her up.

  ‘I wanted to say thank you,’ Briony began, meeting her eye. ‘For the projector.’ She mimed rolling film, like in a game of Charades.

  ‘Prego.’ The woman nodded. ‘You . . . watch it?’ She sank onto the kitchen chair opposite, clutching a pillowcase against her chest.

  ‘Yes. It’s the Villa Teresa, isn’t it?’

  ‘Si, si. In the war.’

  Briony leaned forward. ‘Mariella, why did you want me to see it?’

  Mariella shrugged in surprise. ‘Why? You are historian. You find out maybe, the people? Who they are?’

  ‘They’re British soldiers, definitely.’

  ‘Si, but their names, who they are. You can find out.’ Mariella appeared so eager, but why, why?

  ‘This is obviously important to you, Mariella. Where did the film come from?’

  That wariness again. ‘Somebody give it to me,’ she mumbled. She would not meet Briony’s gaze.

  Briony, puzzled, tried once more. ‘Who?’ she asked gently. ‘And why?’ but the questions silenced Mariella altogether. She held the pillowcase tightly, her face as expressionless as a smooth brown nut.

  ‘May I?’ Briony murmured, getting up to fill her glass from the tap. The drops of cold water splashing on her skin steadied her. She tried again. ‘Mariella, where did the film come from?’

  ‘The Villa Teresa,’ Mariella said finally. She laid the pillowcase on the table and neatened the folds. ‘My father find it there long time ago. When he was a boy.’ Now she’d decided to speak her words came out in a rush. ‘He die last year and these things he leave. I don’t know what to do with them.’

  ‘What things?’ Briony felt a prickle of interest. She couldn’t forget the face of that soldier in the film, weary, but cheerful, despite all that he must be going through. She remembered her grandfather had been like that, a steady man who been happy to live for the present and rarely spoke of the past or the future.

  ‘I will show you.’ Mariella left the kitchen and Briony heard her light tread on the stairs. After a couple of minutes she returned with a rectangular tin like an old-fashioned sandwich box. She flipped open the lid and took out a fat folded manila envelope that was soft and furry with age. She handed it to Briony, who turned the package over hopefully, but nothing was written on the front. She looked to Mariella for guidance.

  ‘Open,’ Mariella invited.

  Briony untucked the worn flap, peeped inside and carefully withdrew a thick pile of old letters tied together with a length of frayed blue ribbon. Mariella sat down again, folded her arms and watched her with an expectant air.

  The knot would not undo and it took Briony a while to ease the ribbon off the bundle. The envelope on the top was crumpled, as though someone had once forced it out, examined it and tucked it back under the ribbon again without much care. The ribbon suddenly split and the letters flew out over the table, twenty or thirty of them, maybe more. She herded them together, hoping the order was right, picked one up off the top and studied it, then another.

  Th
e letters were all addressed to a Private Paul Hartmann in the same educated English hand; elegant italic, a woman’s probably. Briony studied the addresses but they’d mostly been sent via the British Forces Post Office, so she couldn’t tell where Hartmann had been when he received them. Some envelopes were scrawled over in blue crayon, clearly forwarded from place to place. There were several letters without envelopes, including one that must have been folded and refolded so many times it was falling apart. She put that down and selected another. Wafer-thin paper crackled in her hand. The writing on it was fairly easy to make out. Flint Cottage, the writer had headed the page. 1st September 1940.

  ‘Read it,’ Mariella bade her, so she read it aloud in halting tones, sometimes having to go back to convey the sense properly. Dear Paul, it began.

  I promised to write to you again very soon and apologize that this is the first opportunity that I’ve had, I’ve been so busy with the garden. We’re picking soft fruit, do you remember all those raspberries we planted at Flint Cottage? Well, there’s a good crop, mercifully, and Mrs Allman and I have been kept busy with pies and bottling for weeks, what with damsons, now the pears and the blackberries, and the Bramleys not far behind. It’s a nuisance that there’s so little sugar to be had.

  Now I’m rambling and I haven’t asked you how you are. Did the last parcel from your mother arrive, with the soap and the blue jersey? I’m glad you’re not near London at present, given the news. If you do get moved let us know, won’t you. We think about you a great deal and try to imagine what you’re doing. You’re keeping your spirits up, I hope?

  Diane is in Dundee still and we hear from her occasionally. Mummy is taking First Aid classes along with Mrs Richards! We are all keeping bright considering. Your mother is well and seems to like the library books I choose for her. We miss you like anything at Westbury Hall. All is well there, though we’ve hardly seen a blink of the Kellings. Ma and Pa, I mean. Diane’s seen Robyn in Dundee. I will try to write again soon.

  Yours,

  Sarah

  It was a well-judged letter, warm and deliberately cheerful, but a little distant, Briony thought when she’d finished. A letter between friends. September 1940. The Allies hadn’t arrived in Italy until 1943, of course, so Hartmann must have received it when he was elsewhere. It struck her that this meant he might have carried it around with him for several years. It must have been special to him.

  Briony looked up to see Mariella’s eyes upon her, calm dark pools, but with a touch of trouble. ‘Please take them,’ Mariella said. ‘Maybe you find her family and give them.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Briony frowned. ‘I wonder who Paul Hartmann was.’ There was something about the voice of the letter she’d read, its vitality, and the lightness of the handwriting, that stirred her interest. She could almost imagine the writer sitting by a window with a view of an autumn garden, the air smelling of bonfire smoke, as her hand flew over the page.

  ‘Please.’ Mariella was pleading. ‘The film, these letters, they do not belong to us. You take them.’

  ‘But Mariella, if your father took them from the villa without permission, perhaps I shouldn’t have them. They don’t belong to either of us.’

  To Briony’s surprise, Mariella drew herself up proudly, her dark eyes glinting. There was no sign of anxiety now in the stern line of her mouth, the firmness of her hands clutching the table edge. ‘Some people say he steal them, but I tell you the Villa Teresa belongs to my family,’ she said.

  ‘Oh,’ Briony said in surprise.

  ‘What happened in the war was important to my father. The young people, they say it was so long ago. What does anyone care now?’

  ‘I care,’ Briony said quietly.

  ‘Yes, so I tell you a little. The Villa Teresa belonged to the father of my grandfather, you understand?’

  ‘Your great-grandfather.’

  ‘Yes. But he die in the war and then my grandfather and the cousin of my grandfather both say the villa belongs to them. So, for many years they fight about it, until there is no more money to pay l’avvocato.’

  ‘The lawyer?’

  ‘Si. And then my grandfather die, some say of sadness. For many years, we do not know what will happen.’

  ‘But no one lives there now?’

  ‘No. The villa is falling down. No good.’ Mariella smoothed her hair and sighed. Then with the same quick movements that she used to fold linen, she straightened the pile of letters, pushed them back into the big envelope and shut them in the tin. ‘Take, take,’ she said, pushing the tin towards Briony.

  It was apparently impossible to refuse and part of Briony didn’t want to. Whoever Sarah, the letter-writer, turned out to be – an acquaintance of her grandfather or otherwise – Briony was curious.

  ‘I can try to find her family, I suppose. If not, maybe I should give them to an archive? Museum,’ she explained hastily, seeing Mariella frown.

  ‘Yes, museum.’

  She took the box. When she thanked Mariella, she was surprised when the woman embraced her warmly. Only as she made her way down the hillside did it occur to her that Mariella had not properly answered her questions, but instead raised new ones.

  ‘So the Villa Teresa was occupied by Allied troops during the invasion of Italy, but when the time came to give it back to its owners, Mariella’s great-grandfather had died and the family argued about who should inherit it,’ Briony explained to Luke and Aruna later that afternoon. She was sitting at the pool’s edge, her stripy sundress drawn up over her knees, swirling her feet in the water. ‘And the case has lain unresolved for years and years, the old people are all dead and no one knows what’s happening.’ The dolphin mosaic on the bottom of the pool wriggled and bucked.

  ‘The bureaucracy. Unbelievable!’ Luke’s teeth flashed in a sardonic grin. ‘It could only happen here.’ He was sitting on a sunlounger, a paperback splayed face down on his stomach. His body had already turned a pale gold in the sun.

  ‘That still doesn’t explain why Mariella gave us the film.’ Aruna, in her white bikini, gleamed darker than ever. She was sitting awkwardly on the sunbed next to Luke’s, examining a nasty blister on the side of her foot. ‘Damn these shoes,’ she muttered, wriggling her toes. ‘Bri, chuck me the suncream, will you?’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Briony grumbled, obliging. ‘All I get is this boiled lobster look.’

  ‘You are a delicate English rose,’ Aruna agreed with a grin. Her sparkling nose jewel brought out the brilliance of her sharp brown eyes and a coiled snake tattoo on her ankle emphasized the delicacy of her bone structure.

  Briony smiled back with fondness. Aruna was so slender and perfect it was no surprise that everyone fell for her. Luke was a case in point. Briony had been with Aruna when the couple had first met and she still remembered the besotted expression on his face the instant he set eyes on her friend.

  ‘You’re both gorgeous,’ Luke sighed. ‘Now go on with the story, Briony.’

  ‘Mariella’s family think of the villa as theirs and her father had taken the film and the letters away without asking anyone and she didn’t know what else to do with them.’

  ‘It all sounds a bit odd to me,’ Aruna said, arranging her towel on the sunbed. ‘So you’ve got some film of your grandfather and a few old letters and she’s got the stuff off her conscience.’ She reached for her Ray-Bans and lay down to cream her stomach.

  Luke sat up, peering at Briony over his sunglasses. ‘Do we know anything about this woman who sent the letters? You said her name was Sarah.’

  ‘I’ve only read a couple, so no. She lived in Norfolk, I think, somewhere called Westbury.’

  ‘You know Norfolk, Luke,’ Aruna murmured sleepily.

  ‘I don’t. It’s my parents who have moved there, not me. We can certainly look Westbury up on the internet next time we get a signal. I’ll tell you what, though.’ Luke took off his glasses and fixed Briony with narrowed eyes. ‘The villa. How about a spot of trespassing when it’s cooler?’r />
  ‘That’s a great idea.’

  ‘Aruna?’

  ‘If it isn’t too much of a slog,’ Aruna groaned.

  ‘Try wearing some proper shoes for a change,’ Luke’s voice was gentle.

  ‘Oh shut up,’ she murmured.

  ‘Should we ask the others?’ Briony said tentatively.

  ‘They don’t like walking, haven’t you noticed?’ Aruna said with a laugh. She rolled over. ‘Here, will you put some cream on my back, Luke? Pretty please?’

  Five

  Mike and Zara didn’t want a walk, so towards evening it was only the three of them who set out. The light breeze in the lane brought the trees to life and in their shadow the air was deliciously cool. They were hot and tired, though, once they’d scaled the hillside and reached the rutted lane that led to the villa. Worse, despite her better shoes, Aruna was hobbling from her blister. She sank down on the grass verge to inspect it and Briony observed the tenderness with which Luke crouched to wipe the dust from her heel and stick on a plaster he took from his pocket.

  ‘You carry them around with you!’ Briony was impressed.

  He held out his hands to show old scratches and scars. ‘Occupational hazard,’ he said, ‘even with gloves.’

  Luke ran his own business in South London, designing and planting city gardens. Briony still teased Aruna about the way they’d first met. ‘Your knight in faded denim,’ she’d say with a chuckle. ‘Rescuing the beautiful maiden’s moggy.’

  Purrkins, Aruna’s beloved blue Burmese, was supposed to be an indoor cat, but sometimes made a break for it. On this occasion he’d been missing for two days and Briony was helping search for him. Luke’s van was parked outside a house three doors down and Briony nipped along to ask if he’d seen a big, fluffy, blue-eyed cat. He hadn’t, but he’d heard mewing from the house next door where someone said the inhabitants were away. Purrkins, it turned out, had become stuck behind a one-way cat flap. Luke simply clambered over the garden fence and let him out. Aruna was so grateful that she immediately asked him to join them for supper. Briony, seeing which way things were going, murmured an excuse.