Last Letter Home Read online

  ‘My hot stone was hardly warm.’

  ‘Mine is still. Here, that’s it.’

  They hugged each other till Diane’s shuddering ceased. Despite the familiarity of the scent of her hair and skin, Diane felt to Sarah like a foreign little creature, unknown, unknowable, her slender limbs as finely wrought as a bird’s wings, her cropped hair soft as down against Sarah’s cheek.

  ‘I feel a bit icky,’ she said, using their old childhood word.

  ‘You’re not going to be sick, though, are you?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Did you like it tonight?’

  Sarah sighed. ‘Yes, of course. Did you?’

  She felt Diane nod. ‘It was fun. I don’t think it was for you, though.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  Diane rolled over to face her so that her troubled eyes filled Sarah’s vision.

  ‘I could tell.’

  ‘You’re wrong, I was perfectly happy. I liked Jennifer.’

  ‘Yes, she was all right. The salt of the earth, that’s what Daddy would have called her. Oh I do miss Daddy.’ A little sob.

  ‘I know. So do I. Diane, is it all right for you here? Norfolk, I mean.’

  ‘Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s so different from what you’re used to. Maybe you’re wondering what you want to do here.’

  Diane rolled away and Sarah heard her swallow, then whisper, ‘But I never have, Sarah. Never have known what I want to do. What I’m for. And I’m different from you because I don’t care. I don’t feel things like you and Mummy. There’s just a deadness. Is there something wrong with me, Saire?’

  Diane turned her head and their eyes locked in the hazy light. Sarah felt such a rush of shock and sadness at this revelation that she couldn’t think of a thing to say. Instead she reached and pulled her sister close and pressed her lips gently against her forehead. Diane snuggled against her and they simply lay there. Soon Sarah felt her sister’s body go limp and her breathing deepen as she fell into sleep.

  No sleep for her. Diane’s words troubled her and she thought again how unknowable her sister was. It was touching that she had come to her in the night like this, an unexpected gift. She got cramp with one arm pinned under Diane’s chest, but when she tried to move, her sister groaned. She’d wait before trying again.

  The picture came to her again, as it had many times since Daddy’s death, of Diane’s face that day as she’d rushed in from the garden. The shocked whiteness, her shallow breaths, the muttered words that didn’t make sense. ‘I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean . . .’ Didn’t mean what? When she asked her weeks later, Diane appeared to have forgotten, for her hands flew to her face. ‘It was so dreadful. I should have helped him, not left him lying there.’

  ‘There was nothing else you could have done, dear. You are guilty of nothing, don’t you see?’ Diane simply stared at her with pleading eyes. There were no tears. If Diane cried for her father she did so alone and unseen. Sarah sometimes wondered whether Diane had been marked by something, the earlier tragedy that had struck their family. The thought was too painful and she brushed it away.

  ‘It’s all right, darling, it’s all right,’ she whispered to her sleeping sister. ‘You’re safe here. I’ll look after you. I’ll always look after you.’

  Twelve

  Period living

  Westbury Hall development

  Luxury serviced apartments

  Apply within

  The enormous board mounted next to the great whitewashed gateway took Briony by surprise. She drove up an asphalt road towards some promising-looking chimney tops gleaming in the late afternoon sun and slowed down in wonderment. Spread before her was a perfect Elizabethan manor house, the brickwork cleaned up and mended. As she neared a gravel turning circle in front, she noticed a car park discreetly screened by hedges to the left, an elegant metal bicycle rack, unused, television aerials on the roof.

  The great wooden front door bore a brass plate with ‘Reception’ engraved on it. Briony lifted an iron latch, the door creaked open and she found herself in a gloomy, high-ceilinged hall of panelled dark wood. Nestled in the elbow of the sturdy wooden staircase was a glass-sided lift. To the far left a great fireplace yawned. To the right was a sleek mahogany desk behind which a glossy young woman was tapping a laptop keyboard with purple-nailed fingers. Her neat black ponytail bobbed as she rose, smiling. ‘Hello. Can I help you?’ She reached for a sales brochure from a stack on the desk, but put it down again when Briony said, ‘I’m looking for Westbury Lodge. Was it you I spoke to on the phone? Kemi Matthews?’

  ‘Oh, you’re . . . Briony Wood? Lovely to meet you. Yes, I’m Kemi.’

  She opened a cupboard on the wall behind her, and selected one of the sets of keys that hung there. ‘Take the narrow drive past the house that way’ – she gestured – ‘follow it round and you’ll see the cottage to your right, past the long wall. All the instructions are in a file on the kitchen table. Everything’s ready, but if there is anything I can help you with do give me a call. Take care now.’

  Driving down between the right-hand side of the house and a long high brick wall, Briony eventually found a Victorian cottage set in a sunny spot. She stared at the house in delight. It was two-storeyed, built of ochre brick, dark with age. Pointed, white-edged gables sheltered hatched windows and a shallow porch. It was like the gingerbread house out of Hansel and Gretel. What an enchanting place to stay in for a fortnight.

  The email had arrived two weeks after her return from Italy. Luke’s Dad, Roger, sounded a bit of a character: ‘A lady in my wife’s book club knows of a cottage in the grounds of an old manor house a few miles hence, where her apparently rather charming daughter works. The last tenant has recently quitted the cottage and the owner wants to give it a lick of paint before re-letting, but as this isn’t a priority it appears you can stay there for a bit, if you don’t mind a bit of dust (and no doubt a few ghosts!).’

  Now, Briony walked the short, flower-bordered path to the stout oak front door. Inside, a compact hallway gave way to a chintzy sitting room to the left, a thankfully modern kitchen to the back and, at the right-hand side of the narrow staircase, a door which opened into a small dining room, rather crowded with a glass-fronted dresser, matching table and chairs and a heavy sideboard; gloomy remnants of a more formal age that valued best glass and dinner services as signs of status. Still, the table would be a good place for her to lay out her papers, and a wifi hub winked from a corner.

  The house felt so recently inhabited, with cleaning materials, spice jars and new celebrity gossip magazines stacked on shelves, that she fancied she was intruding. Mounting the stairs, she found two small bedrooms, the double bed in the bigger one made up ready for her arrival. The bathroom needed updating, for the wallpaper bubbled in places and her nose wrinkled at a lingering smell of damp. At least there was a shower over the worn bath. She’d seen worse, she decided, remembering the grubby shared bathroom in the overcrowded house where she’d dossed once with Aruna as a student in London.

  After she’d hauled her case up to the bedroom she paused to look out of the window. It was high enough here to see over the long brick wall into a garden beyond, but she was disappointed not to see any burgeoning flower beds, only a dozen neat geometric shapes of cropped grass divided from one another by gravel paths. It was like a tiny park with a bench or two. On one sat an elderly man, wrapped in a coat and trilby hat despite the warmth of the day. He was sitting, lost in thought, walking stick in hand. It was too far away to see the expression on his face, but he seemed peaceful enough. It was a sunny place to sit.

  It must be the old kitchen garden, the walls providing protection for the plants from the elements, Briony thought as she returned to the car to fetch the rest of her luggage. Hadn’t there been something about it in Sarah Bailey’s letters? Whoever Sarah had been, Briony would be walking in her footsteps. As she carried in the canvas tote bag containing Sarah’s letter
s and her grandfather’s box, she experienced the strange sense that the past was here all around, if only she could reach out and draw back the veil.

  Thirteen

  March 1939

  A wild wind blew in from the north, ‘straight from Siberia’, as Mrs Allman the cook remarked, but Sarah stepped out into the garden of Flint Cottage with optimism, seduced by the sunlight on the grass and the puffs of cloud dashing across a sky of boundless blue. Only for the cold to cut right through her, forcing her back inside to fetch a thicker coat. Even then her enthusiasm to start work on the vegetable bed quickly waned and she retreated to the shelter of the potting shed.

  Here it was gloomy and draughty, but smelled comfortingly of earth and creosote. A rummage on the shelves brought forth riches; a few garden tools, boxes, potting compost and some envelopes of seeds. After several trips from the shed with pots and compost she established herself in the sun-warmed conservatory and was as happy as the proverbial Larry for the rest of the morning, sowing lettuces and summer flowers, dreaming of deep blue spikes of delphiniums and the delicate scent of sweet peas that she remembered from working in the headmistress’ garden at school.

  Remarkably, her little Hibiscus syriacus plants from India had survived the severe winter, but she pondered the wisdom of planting them outside yet. The blooms had been a delicate pink with a dark red heart in India and she hoped they would be here, though the soil was different. She knew exactly where she wanted them, right in front of the cottage, but maybe she should consult Mr Hartmann about the matter.

  The thought must have summoned him, for shortly after luncheon he appeared, knocking softly on the frosted glass door of the conservatory. For a moment Sarah imagined this man in jacket and collared shirt to be Ivor, but he was taller and burlier than Ivor. Anyway, he couldn’t be. Ivor had returned to Aldershot. She wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed. Her feelings about Ivor were complicated.

  ‘Come in,’ she called, glad to have Mr Hartmann to talk to about her work. Her mother and sister had no interest in the messy business of gardening, appreciating only the beauty of the results.

  ‘Hello. My goodness, you’ve been busy.’

  He smiled to see her pots and trays and agreed with her about her hibiscus cuttings, that they should be kept inside for the moment and planted outside once the frosts had gone. His manner was as usual polite and encouraging, which gave her confidence.

  ‘Here’s me rattling on,’ she said. ‘Did you call for something in particular?’

  ‘Yes. I’m on my way to Cockley Market to have some tools sharpened,’ he explained in his soft accent, ‘and wondered if you wanted me to take any of yours.’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ she said, getting up. ‘That’s so kind. There are some shears I found in the shed that are probably blunt and a pruning saw . . . I’ll fetch them, shall I?’ She started to pull on her coat, then paused, her mind working. ‘I say, would you mind if I came with you, Mr Hartmann? I’d like to choose a really good pair of secateurs.’

  ‘Of course. If you promise not to call me Mr Hartmann. My name’s Paul.’

  ‘Pol.’ She repeated it as he had pronounced it. ‘And I’m Sarah.’

  He’d borrowed the shooting brake and proved a more cautious driver than Ivor as they set off down twisting lanes where primroses bloomed and the hedges foamed white with blackthorn blossom.

  ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it, your countryside here?’ he remarked. ‘So flat, the wide skies, it reminds me of home. And when you grow things, well, I think you come to love the land that gives them life.’

  ‘Yes, that may be true,’ she said, thinking of their garden in India. ‘Someone, Mrs Richards, was it, said you were from Hamburg.’

  ‘Yes. And I read Botany at the university, where my father taught, but after . . . after what happened . . . I was not able to continue my studies.’

  ‘I’m afraid . . . I don’t know about what happened. Though please, I won’t be offended if you don’t wish to speak about it.’

  ‘I don’t mind. It helps me keep him alive to me. Quite simply, my father protested against discrimination once too often at the university. One of his colleagues betrayed him. Maybe more than one, who knows. Anyway, he was arrested and later, well . . . it is enough to say that he did not survive. Listen, none of you here really understands how bad it is in Germany. Landowners like Sir Henry, they dream of past glories. Of course they do not want war. Nobody should want war, but it’ll be the only way to stop it all. Turn down that heater, please, if it’s burning you.’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine.’ Sarah considered what it must be like to be betrayed, like Herr Hartmann, by your own countrymen, your colleagues. It could never happen here, that would be incomprehensible, the very idea of it. She felt uncomfortable all the same. What if Paul was right? Maybe their way of life, their freedoms, could only be preserved by war against Hitler and all he stood for. Suddenly, she felt ashamed for not understanding.

  They passed the rest of the journey in relative silence, Paul lost in his thoughts, for when she glanced at him he was frowning, his eyes on the road. She folded her hands on her lap and watched a flock of birds follow a horse-drawn plough, trees swaying in the wind. It was all so beautiful that it was hard not to be happy. She knew she had a great capacity for happiness, which made her feel even guiltier about Diane.

  Cockley Market wasn’t busy and they were able to park right outside the ironmonger’s. Inside, Sarah breathed in the comfortable smells of leather, oil and animal feed. She chose and paid for her secateurs, then sat on a stool while Paul Hartmann conducted his business with the knife grinder. The old man who served him breathed strenuously and she noticed his scarred hands. When he spoke to Paul, his mouth twisted with bitterness. She understood at once that it was Paul’s accent that disturbed him. The man was likely to have seen active service in the last war, she decided, but still rage boiled in her. An old war was hardly the younger man’s fault, was it? Why did some people react with so little intelligence, like a dog that had been kicked once, which damned all humankind. She felt she should apologize for the knife-grinder’s attitude, though Paul would surely know that not all Englishmen were like him.

  When he was ready to go, it was the desire to make some public gesture that made Sarah say in the knife-grinder’s hearing, ‘Paul, would you mind if we had tea somewhere. I’m feeling a little headachy,’ as though they were good friends, at ease together. Which they would be, she decided. So what if he was only a gardener? He was far better educated than she was. They had so much to talk about, too. For a moment the face of her late father flashed through her mind. They both grieved, but Paul’s loss was so different that she felt humbled. It was impossible to compare the two.

  The cosy teashop they found, with its panelled walls, had probably once been the parlour of a house. They established themselves at a table in the bay window, where between the gingham curtains they watched a man chase his hat down the street. A shy young waitress came to write down their order.

  ‘I’m sorry about the man in Askey’s,’ Sarah said, when the girl had gone. ‘He was awfully rude.’

  ‘Ach,’ Paul said with a shrug. ‘It was worse at home. Here they cannot get you thrown in prison if they do not like you.’

  ‘I feel ashamed.’

  His eyes found hers and he smiled. ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of. Your family has shown me and my mother nothing but kindness.’

  In truth, Sarah thought as the maid carefully laid out the tea things, her mother and sister had been too absorbed in their own lives to notice the gardener much. During the sunny February, Paul had visited Flint Cottage several times to clear the worst of the brambles and trim the shrubs at the front, but it had been Sarah who had paid him. He had protested, but she insisted. ‘Your mother is not at all well,’ she reminded him. He had let slip that she was prone to bronchitis and her nerves were in shreds. ‘You must need to pay the doctor.’

  In a moment of enthusiasm she mad
e a sponge cake once and walked with it up to the Hartmanns’ cottage herself. Such a pretty place, she thought as she waited, but nobody answered her knock so she left the tin on the doorstep with a note. A few days later the empty tin was returned with a letter of thanks penned in shaky italics and the promise of an invitation for the Baileys to call ‘in the spring when I’m sure I’ll feel much better’.

  ‘How is your mother?’ she asked now.

  ‘Better than she was, thank you,’ Paul replied. ‘She has always had a delicate constitution.’ Although there was no one else in the room, he lowered his voice. ‘She nearly died having me, you know, and my parents were told by the hospital to have no more children, which is why I have no brothers or sisters. Herr Klein, the consultant who treated her, was Jewish, and he left Germany with his family for America two years ago. My parents’ friendship with him was used as another black mark in the case against my father.’

  The tea was ready to pour now, strong, hot and restorative. Sarah closed her eyes briefly as the warmth flowed through her. Teacakes arrived, scented with cinnamon and dripping with butter. How homely it all was. She could almost push away thoughts of the events that Paul described.

  It was in the car home in the gathering dusk that he spoke more about his father. He did not look at her, but spoke as though to himself, remembering, his voice stumbling with grief and anger over the worst parts of his narrative.

  Klaus Hartmann had been a lecturer in biology at the university for twenty years. His name had more than once been mentioned for preferment, but then he’d added his name to a letter protesting against the exclusion of Jewish students and found his path to promotion was blocked. His response was a heartfelt resistance to the regime’s interference in higher education. He declined invitations to join conferences organized by the government; he continued to teach any student who wished to learn, no matter what their background. Paul and his mother did not know exactly which activity it was that had triggered the Gestapo’s visit to their modest house in the Rotherbaum quarter early one morning in November 1937 and Klaus’ subsequent arrest and incarceration. There was to be a trial, the charge: treason, but it kept being postponed, due to ‘the illness’ of the defendant. Frau Hartmann and Paul were admitted to the prison hospital to see him, and were shocked to see the bruised, emaciated figure lying barely conscious in the bed. Only his eyes spoke to them and they were full of pain and fear. Klaus clutched his wife’s hand as though he’d never let her go and she broke out sobbing. ‘What have they done to you?’ It was only a few days later that his lawyer came to the house with the news they’d dreaded. Klaus Hartmann was dead, the official reason given that he’d been shot during an attempt to escape.