Last Letter Home Read online

  ‘Don’t worry. I don’t. It’s like my dear old dad says, if something’s meant to happen . . .’

  ‘You should make it happen. Give fate a nudge. What about that dating site Louisa swears by? She says it’s brilliant.’

  ‘Brilliant for Louisa, yes. She’s tougher than me.’ She tried not to sound sarcastic, but while their outgoing friend Louisa thrived on the excitement of meeting men she’d only previously talked to online, Briony was appalled at some of her stories. And the very idea of advertising herself in that horribly public way made her feel cold with horror. The possibilities for rejection seemed endless.

  ‘Is there really no one at the college you like, Bri?’

  She thought about it. There were several men who were the right age and, so far as she knew, single, but one was probably gay, and the only one she fancied of the others wasn’t interested, she could tell. She shook her head and mumbled, ‘Not really. And if it went wrong, I’d still have to go on working with them.’

  ‘You’re looking at the downside all the time. I think you should try online.’

  Briony didn’t have time to respond before Aruna’s phone burst into a jaunty pop tune. Luke was calling to say his tooth was fixed and that he would meet them by the car in a few minutes.

  ‘What will you do the rest of the summer?’ Aruna murmured, as they set off. ‘Some of us have to go straight back to work, of course, but you academics . . .’

  ‘Same here, actually.’ Briony sighed. ‘I’m teaching on summer schools for two weeks – you know, for visiting students – and then I’ve got the rewrites of my book to do. The new publisher is brilliant, but, blimey, it’s more difficult writing for a non-academic audience than I thought. My editor’s come up with so many suggestions. Anyway, once I’ve tackled that, I might take a week or two off.’

  ‘Sounds good. What will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She paused. ‘Actually I do. I’d really like to see what I can find out about Grandpa and what he was up to here. Maybe I’ll try to trace the woman who wrote those letters.’

  ‘Sarah, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’ She’d given the matter some thought. It wasn’t simply Sarah, it was the whole new vista of the past that fascinated her. There was the spell of the ruined villa and its garden, the grainy images on the film of the man she was sure was her grandfather, Mariella’s story, all these were mixed up together somehow and she was curious about how and why.

  ‘Great idea. And, Briony, I know we shouldn’t be talking shop while we’re on holiday, but I can’t let a good chance go by. If there’s some amazing story in it you will let me know? It’s exactly the sort of programme I could interest the commissioning board in.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Briony sighed. Once, before her horrible television experience, she’d have been pleased at Aruna’s suggestion. She’d worked at the same college since doing her PhD there and had reached a plateau regarding promotion. She supposed her new publisher would expect more of the kind of media exposure that had been so disastrous for her. After her ordeal by Twitter the thought was terrifying.

  When she mentioned her plans to Luke, sitting in the back of the car as he navigated the tight winding roads back to their holiday villa, she was touched when he said, ‘You know you said Sarah lived in Westbury? Well, I googled it when I was waiting in the surgery. Westbury is not far at all from my parents in Norfolk. I’m sure if I asked nicely they’d have you to stay. They love having visitors. Dad misses London gossip.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind, Luke, thanks.’ She’d rather be somewhere on her own than staying with strangers and having to be on time for meals, but it was sweet of him to offer. ‘I can’t go anywhere for a while, though. There’s too much I need to do in London.’

  This last bit was true, but she spoke wistfully. She could already feel the pull of the Norfolk past.

  Seven

  ‘I hope it’s to your taste,’ Briony said, handing over the brace of bottles she’d brought from Italy. ‘It’s the local stuff.’

  ‘It looks very pukka to me,’ her father replied, his eyes lighting up as he examined the labels. ‘We like a good Italian red. Come on through. Lavender will be back from yoga in a few minutes.’

  Briony’s father, Martin, had spent all his life in the Surrey market town of Birchmere. This was where his parents had settled after the war. In the 1950s and 60s his father had taken the 7.30 train up to London every morning to his job at the Ministry of Defence, arriving home again in time for supper at six-thirty. In 1968, eighteen and ready to leave school, Martin replied to an advertisement in the Birchmere Chronicle for a trainee reporter. His eager demeanour and an excellent reference from his headmaster managed to deflect attention from his predicted unexceptional exam results and won him the job. Soon he was painstakingly typing up stories about stolen bicycles, lost dogs and petty vandalism. It was a year after his training finished that his breakthrough came. He happened to be studying the price of engagement rings in the window of the local jeweller’s on the very afternoon that it was raided by a masked gang. His dramatic account of the hold-up and the gang’s getaway made the front page and was syndicated several times, and after that he never looked back. That and the pay rise he received gave him the courage to propose to his girlfriend Jean, the woman who was to be Briony’s mother. Martin remained loyal to the newspaper all his working life – until eventually it broke faith with him.

  By 2006, when the brave little Chronicle, like many local newspapers, experienced declining circulation and was bought up by a national media conglomerate, he’d reached the dizzy heights of Managing Editor, in charge of the schedules. He loved this post, which gave him responsibility, but not too much, and when the new owners shed fifty per cent of the Chronicle’s workforce, the loss of his job nearly broke his heart. His second wife, Lavender, Briony’s stepmother, was still a few years off retirement as a school secretary, so what with his pension there was enough money coming in and he discovered a new interest: photography.

  Briony entered the living room of her childhood home with the usual mixed memories of pleasure and irritation. The house was a comfortable mock-Tudor semi, a few minutes’ walk from the picturesque old town centre with its tree-edged pond and its market cross. When her mother had been alive it had been a cheerfully messy family home in which her brother’s half-constructed model planes had battled for space with her mother’s houseplants, stacks of her father’s vinyl records and her own books and sheets of flute music.

  Now it was tidy and dust-free, the records replaced by CDs neatly arranged in alphabetical order on the shelves and Lavender’s tapestry cushion covers of cats adorning every chair. Their real-life cat, an elderly tabby, lay stretched out on the sofa, its ears twitching as it hunted birds in its dreams. Briony smiled at it fondly as she placed her bag on her father’s desk, and brushed accidentally against his computer mouse. The screen flickered into life at a photograph of a place she recognized.

  It was a beautiful shot of what seemed more like a fairy pool with silver birch trees round it than the muddy town pond. She bent to examine it. ‘Is that the mere?’ she said, incredulous.

  ‘Right first time.’ Her father was a stocky man, his habitual pose being hands in pockets, chest out, conveying a sense of bonhomie. But now, at nearly seventy, he had a definite paunch, though his smiling blue eyes behind their spectacles still twinkled with boyish enjoyment.

  ‘It’s not a documentary photograph, though, is it, Dad? The mere is OK, but not this pretty. You’ve touched it up, haven’t you?’

  ‘Maybe just a tad. It’s art, Briony, that’s what you have to remember. People can’t bear too much reality these days.’ He laughed. ‘Now who said that?’

  ‘T. S. Eliot, I think. Well, you’ve certainly transformed it.’ She’d have preferred the realistic version with all its associations of her childhood. Feeding the ducks with her mother; Jimmy Sanderson throwing her lunchbox in the water when she was twelve; both memories mad
e her sad for different reasons.

  ‘I’m starting to receive quite a few orders for this sort of thing,’ her father continued with satisfaction. ‘There’s an art gallery opened up near the church that already sells my cards, and I reckon they’ll take some framed enlargements if I play the manager right. Look.’ He tapped the keyboard a couple of times and pictures of other local scenes slid across the screen. The mediaeval parish church, the Georgian high street, the oldest pub. All had been bathed in the same unnaturally warm light to give the impression of being olde-worlde.

  ‘They’re great, Dad,’ she said and they grinned at one another. He had always been a glass half-full man, absorbing himself in each new interest as it came along, resilient, never dwelling on disappointment for very long. There were times, though, when that hadn’t been helpful, but she dismissed the thought.

  ‘Can I show you something of mine?’ she asked. ‘I was given it in Italy.’

  She pulled up another chair, logged into an internet account and found the digital version of Mariella’s filmstrip which a pal in the college archive had created for her. It took a couple of goes to open it on her father’s curmudgeonly system, but then it worked. Together they watched the jerky clip of film begin and she felt quite emotional with him here beside her. How her father would react, she couldn’t guess. It was very moving to see someone from your past on film, more so than simply a photograph because you were seeing them come to life, breathing, gesturing, maybe hearing their voice.

  ‘Look,’ she said, freezing the film. ‘Watch this man here.’ Her father took her place at the desk, adjusted his glasses and inspected the screen as she let the film move on.

  She heard his sharp intake of breath. ‘Well, I’m blowed,’ he murmured, then, ‘Play that bit again, can you?’ She replayed the scene a couple of times, froze it again when the man’s face was clearest, and her father sat back in his chair, staring. ‘It’s extraordinary,’ he said finally, removing his spectacles, studying again that smiling face from so long ago.

  ‘Do you think it’s Grandpa Andrews, Dad?’

  ‘It’s definitely how I imagine he would have appeared at that age. And doesn’t he look like Will? I did tell you Grandpa Andrews said he’d been in Tuana. What is this building, did you say? And what about the other men, do we know who they are?’

  ‘I don’t, no. The place is the Villa Teresa, a mile or so from Tuana, up on the hillside.’ She told him briefly about the ruined house and garden.

  ‘Well, it must be him then. It’s remarkable. He would have been there in forty-three or forty-four, I suppose; he never talked much about it. I asked him once if he would do an interview for the paper for an anniversary, but he wasn’t keen, not keen at all, so I backed down.’

  ‘Do you have anything belonging to him from the war, Dad? Photos or letters or anything?’

  ‘I believe your granny threw away a lot of things after he died. Your mother was a bit upset, I remember. There may be a shoebox of stuff stashed away somewhere, but . . . now is it on the wardrobe or in the loft? Surely you’ve seen it before, though?’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned it.’

  ‘We’ll have a look after lunch. Ah good, here’s Lavender.’

  Through the window they watched a car roll onto the drive and a petite, curvy, energetic woman with a dandelion puff of silvery-blonde hair climb out. She was wearing a tracksuit and manoeuvring a huge organizer bag. This, Briony knew, would be full of things pertaining to all the different aspects of her stepmother’s busy life, from shopping lists for the elderly ladies she visited, to a pair of yoga socks, her latest book-club paperback and her phone, loaded with photographs of her grandchildren and step-grandchildren. Lavender waved and Briony was concerned to see her face was a little thinner. Perhaps it was simply that her stepmother hadn’t put on make-up for yoga.

  She came straight in and gave Briony a hug. ‘How lovely to see you. I’ll nip up and change, then we can have lunch. Martin, love, will you put the oven on at one-eighty?’ Her voice trailed down as she climbed the stairs. ‘And offer Briony some Prosecco. Just the elderflower for me.’

  Martin went about his duties with every appearance of contentment. Briony followed him into the big sunny kitchen noticing all the new little touches since she’d last visited: a glass worktop protector with rabbits round the edge, a rubber-spiked doormat by the back door, a pretty china dish for the shepherd’s pie that her dad fetched from the fridge.

  She felt a wave of affection for Lavender, who loved to buy new things for the house. Briony and Will hadn’t always felt warmly about her. After their mother’s death their father had adopted the stiff-upper-lip approach to grief, leaving it to his own mother to manage his teenage children after school and during holidays. He had kept Jean’s mother, Granny Andrews, at a distance, which probably hurt her deeply, though after her death he confessed to Briony that he hadn’t been able to bear her terrible sadness in addition to their own. Briony’s memories of her were fond. Granny was a calm, wise person with smiling eyes, but after losing her husband and her grown-up daughter in quick succession something seemed to break in her.

  For years, Briony’s father wouldn’t consider the idea of dating again and then, when he did, the relationships didn’t last long. It was therefore a shock to Briony and Will when, in their early twenties, Lavender walked confidently into their lives.

  ‘Briony, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.’ Briony had almost dropped the phone in surprise at what followed: the revelation that her father was in love.

  At least – probably prompted by Lavender – he had tactfully arranged introductions to take place at a neutral venue, a carvery pub on the outskirts of Birchmere. She and Will had sat opposite the new couple and, as she took in Martin’s fondness for Lavender, she’d felt overwhelmed by grief all over again. Their father couldn’t keep his eyes, or indeed his hands, off this woman. Lavender had been slim back then, a lively, friendly, large-eyed woman who hardly stopped talking. After the meal they went back to the house for coffee and Briony found it painful to see Lavender fetching mugs, a tray, teaspoons, out of all the right cupboards as though she lived there already.

  She was divorced from her husband, she told them. She showed them a snap of her daughter, a pretty girl of their own age in a nurse’s uniform and with her mother’s extraordinary wiry hair.

  ‘I’m sure her ex couldn’t get a word in edgeways,’ Briony said cattily to Will later when he dropped her off at her student house in South London.

  ‘Do you suppose Dad used to look at Mum like that?’ Will wondered. ‘It won’t last, surely. It can’t. She’s not like Mum at all.’

  ‘She’s already put some of her clothes in Mum’s wardrobe,’ Briony warned. She’d retreated upstairs to shed a quiet tear and hadn’t thought it at all shameful to spy. After all, to protect Dad she had to know what they were up against. Time passed, though, and it became clear that Lavender wasn’t a manipulative gold-digger or an obsessive bunny-boiler. She was simply a thoroughly nice middle-aged woman who had fallen in love with a man as lonely as herself.

  Now, years later, when Briony looked back, she blushed to think how selfish she and Will had been. They had their lives before them. Will was already going out with the girl who would become his wife. It had been mean of them to resent Dad finding happiness again. At the same time, their feelings had been understandable. She now knew from dealing with her students how self-absorbed and vulnerable twenty-year-olds could be. Dad finding someone new would naturally have brought back feelings of loss. She and Will had struggled with the belief that he was betraying their mother.

  In time, as they loosened their ties with home, they came to appreciate Lavender, if not to love her. Briony was privately amused at her stepmother’s enthusiasms and the way that she’d domesticated her father. Saucers for coffee mugs, boxes of fruit teas, magnets bearing coy little sayings clamping the grandkids’ drawings to the fridge, all these were so unlike Marti
n Wood’s previous environment that Briony was amazed at his acceptance of it.

  As they ate their lunch at the sleek table in the glass extension that had transformed the gloomy old kitchen, Lavender asked about Briony’s holiday and spoke with eagerness about their own forthcoming one – in a Greek island paradise with creative writing classes, outdoor yoga for her and photography for Martin.

  ‘That sounds fun, Dad,’ Briony said, catching her father’s eye.

  ‘I just do what I’m told these days,’ Martin grumbled.

  ‘Martin, you agreed it would be good for both of us!’

  ‘If you’re happy, I’m happy,’ Briony’s father said, beaming as he collected up the dirty plates, and Briony could see that he meant it. He was perfectly satisfied with his life. She felt a prickle of envy.

  She glanced around the kitchen. There was nothing much of the past here. No photographs of her mother. Everything was new, from the knives and forks on the table to the landscaped garden beyond the French windows. Sadness and disappointment had been wiped from this house as though they had never been. She supposed she ought to admire her father and stepmother for this, but she couldn’t quite. It felt as though her own past had been expunged, too.

  Still, it was worth it to ask: ‘Dad, about Grandpa’s things.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Lavender, where did you put Jean’s father’s bits and bobs?’

  ‘The drawer under the bed in the guest room,’ she said after a second’s thought.

  The guest room was actually Briony’s old bedroom, though it had been redecorated twice since she left home, just as Will’s room had been appropriated as Lavender’s sewing room.

  After the meal was over and the kitchen restored to a pristine state, Briony followed her father upstairs. She stared around at the flowery bower that her bedroom had become and wondered at the fact that she still slept in it occasionally without realizing that Grandpa’s things had been underneath her all the time. She’d peeped in the drawer before, but had only seen spare duvets and pillows. Now when she pulled it out from the bed and pushed aside a duvet, she saw with a stab of tenderness that she’d missed hidden treasures: four framed photographs of her mother stacked neatly together, her parents’ wedding album, a box with ‘Jean’s schoolbooks’ written on it.