Last Telegram (25 page)

“Four? Same place?”

“Perfect. See you there, my darling. I love you.”

“Me too. See you tomorrow.”

• • •

We met at “our” boardinghouse, knowing that we had just a few hours together, precious moments to cherish, to keep us going through the separation we knew was ahead.

We were lying blissfully in each other's arms when the moan of air raid sirens started, and there was an urgent knocking on our bedroom door. “Everyone out,” the landlady called. “Shelter over the road. Tube station.”

“When will they ever give up?” he groaned. “It's just their last gasp. Won't amount to much.” We held each other tight under the covers, trying to block out the noise. But when the crackle of the ack-acks began and the explosions came close enough to rattle the windowpanes, he got out of bed, pulling on his trousers.

“Come on, we're going to the shelter,” he said.

We dressed hurriedly and ran out of the now-empty boardinghouse into the street. A warden was shepherding people toward the station down the road. My legs felt like dead weights and he grabbed my hand to pull me along. There were two more thunderous explosions even closer by, and I felt sure we'd be hit before we could get there.

Just as we reached the entrance, a deafening blast knocked us to the floor. Stefan shielded me with his body, covering my head with his arms, his face buried in my hair. Broken glass fell around us like an orchestra of tinkling triangles. For a few moments I lay there, my heart pounding, fearing the worst. He was heavy and I struggled to breathe.

“Lily? Are you okay?” His voice seemed muted—it was only later I realized I'd been temporarily deafened.

“I think so,” I gasped back.

When the sound of falling glass stopped, we sat up and gingerly started to brush ourselves down. “Don't move a moment,” he said, getting out a handkerchief to pick the shards from my hair. I could just make out, through clouds of dust, two or three others carefully brushing themselves down, but no one seemed seriously hurt. The explosions had stopped. Perhaps that was the pilot's last bomb, I thought, and he was even now dodging the ack-acks on his way back to Germany.

“That was a close shave.” My voice came out more shakily than I felt.

“Are you okay?” he said. “How's the baby?”

“Fine, I think,” I said, feeling my tummy. It wasn't even starting to show yet, so how could I tell whether any harm had been done? “What about you?”

“Nothing serious,” he said. We got to our feet slowly, checking each other for cuts. As the dust started to clear, we stood, arm in arm, looking back across the street. The bomb had landed just forty yards away outside our boardinghouse, and from the crater were leaping dark flames and choking smoke like a giant witches' cauldron. The front wall of the building had sheared away, exposing the rooms above. In the light of the fire, we could just make out the bedroom we'd left minutes earlier, the bed probably still warm from our bodies.

We ducked as another bomb dropped close by. “Come on,” he said, taking my hand. “It's not safe here. Let's go down and see if anyone's making tea.”

The few remaining hours of our precious night together were spent with several thousand other people squeezed onto the platform like sardines, drinking sweet tea and singing to keep up our spirits.

When they started on
My
Old
Man
, we both joined in, singing gustily.

“Remember when Grace taught us this song,” he shouted over the hubbub. “And you told us what ‘dilly dally' meant?”

“It was the first time I heard you play the piano,” I shouted back, recalling the little things I'd noticed that day, his long elegant fingers, the wisps of dark hair on the back of his neck.

“That was the day I first fell in love with you,” I whispered, “though I didn't know it at the time.”

“Oh, I knew it long before then,” he replied, kissing me. “From the moment I first saw you, at that camp.”

“You're making it up, you soppy thing,” I laughed. “You were just a boy, just off the boat.”

“Being just off the boat didn't stop me falling in love,” he said. “I had never met anyone so beautiful in my life.”

Such extremes of sadness and joy, I mused later, stroking his hair as we lay in each other's arms on the hard concrete platform. He left his family in desperate circumstances, but met me. And now I could not imagine life without him.

The next morning, he eluded the wardens and braved the shattered boardinghouse to retrieve his army kit bag and my smaller hold-all.

“That bomb was a good omen,” he said, wiping away my dusty tears. “We survived that, so we can survive the rest of the war. Look after yourself and little Stevie.” He patted my stomach and kissed me again. Then he was gone.

• • •

By the time my train reached Westbury, I could barely stand and had to be helped off the train. I had never known such agony, overwhelming my whole body in surges of increasing intensity.

The station master hailed a taxi. “Take Miss Verner to The Chestnuts, quickly,” I heard him say. “I'll phone for a doctor.”

Dr. Fairweather arrived at the same time as me. He opened the door of the taxi, took my pulse, placed his hand on my forehead, asked me where it hurt, felt my belly, and said, “We need to get you inside.” He wrapped my arm around his shoulders and heaved me up the front steps.

As Mother opened the door, her face fell slack with shock. “Lily? What's happened? Is she going to be okay?”

“She's losing the baby,” he said bluntly. “Get old towels and a rubber sheet if you've got one. Some newspapers and some hot water would be good too.”

This can't be happening,
I thought through the haze of pain,
I'm not ready yet.

They told me that she was a girl, a miniature human being the size of a baby's hand, with all her features starting to form, ten fingers, ten toes, two ears, and two firmly closed eyes. Dead, of course. I named her Hannah, after Stefan's mother. He'd like that, I thought.

When it was all over, and the house was quiet and dark, despair hit me like a black tidal wave. As I tried to stifle my wails into the pillow, I heard a quiet knock on the door.

“Lily? Can I come in?”

Gwen knew words wouldn't help. She lay down beside me and held me until I stopped shuddering and eventually slept. When I woke in the early hours, she was still there, the soft brushed cotton of her Viyella pajamas and the smell of her talcum powder wrapped warmly around me. And even as the misery of the past twenty-four hours reasserted its clangor in my head, the gentle rhythm of her breathing soothed me, and I slept again.

Silk is often associated with mourning. During Victorian times, black clothing was
de
rigueur
for funeral guests. “Widow's weeds,” black, concealing clothes often of silk bombazine and heavy veils of silk crêpe, were usually worn for more than a year. Black silk was also used for mourning accessories like handkerchiefs, umbrellas, hats, and shoes.

—
The
History
of
Silk
by Harold Verner

There was no news for weeks.

At first I didn't worry. Stefan was brave and smart, and he had promised me faithfully that he would avoid danger wherever he could. There were so many reminders of him that I felt he was still with me. Gwen and I took Mother for a walk in the bluebell woods and we gasped at the shimmering display that nature provided, year after year, in defiance of everything happening around us. The same blue as the sapphires in my ring, I thought, twisting it on my finger and recalling Stefan's proposal. Was it just five months ago? A lifetime had passed since then.

June brought the willow fluff that always reminded me of that day on the bench, when Stefan and I first held each other. At night, I would cuddle my pillow and try to summon his presence, the love in his seal-black eyes, the warmth of his body, his slow smile, our wordless understanding.

They told us to listen for an announcement, and as the three of us gathered around Father's old radio to listen to John Snagge, I couldn't help remembering the day war was declared, our first kiss, on Stefan's twenty-first birthday.

• • •

“D-Day has come. Early this morning, the Allies began the assault on the northwestern face of Hitler's European fortress. The first official news came just after half past nine, when Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force issued Communique Number One. This said, ‘Under the command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France.'”

• • •

The news was thrilling and terrifying, all at once. Each day we rushed out to buy the newspapers, each evening we stayed glued to the six o'clock news on the radio. Churchill called it “the beginning of the end.”

Stefan had warned me not to expect any kind of communication, I assumed because he would be behind enemy lines. I couldn't write to him either. In some ways, I thought at the time, this was a blessing. My heart still ached from the loss of our baby, but I would not have told him about it when he was so far from home. I consoled myself with the thought that once he was back, we would have plenty of chances to try again.

I read and reread his letters, kissed his photograph each night before sleeping, and tried to imagine him safe in the care of a French resistance group, growing fat on the fruits of the countryside. He had been taken from me once and returned safely. It would be the same this time. There would be plenty of time for making more babies. My body felt hot and heavy just thinking about it.

But with each passing week, my sense of foreboding grew. One night I dreamed I was back on Christmas Day 1938, when Stefan arrived on the porch asking to see me. The low sunlight streaming through the house illuminated his face, his long eyelashes casting shadows on his cheeks. And then I noticed the figure was wearing the uniform of a telegram boy, and he was holding an envelope. I woke in a ferment of fear. After that, the possibility that I might never see him again would prowl my thoughts and sometimes pounce, paralyzing me with anxiety.

In August, came news of the liberation of Paris. Everyone went out to celebrate but I hid in my room, finding it impossible to share their joy. If the Allies were making such good progress, why couldn't letters get through? Stefan must have known how desperate I was for some kind of news. I scanned every newspaper photograph of celebrating Parisians crowding the boulevards and cracking open bottles of champagne, desperately looking for his face among them. It was absurd, I knew, but I couldn't help hoping. Once the hangovers cleared, he would be on his way home.

A few more days passed, and the surge of optimism flooding the news reports only helped to deepen my fears.

Then the telegram arrived.

• • •

Out of politeness, and to spare the feelings of the painfully young delivery boy, I took the small brown envelope, said “thank you,” and closed the front door. Even without opening the envelope, I knew what it would say. With John in PoW camp, it must be Stefan.
Missing
in
action, presumed dead
. They always hedged their bets, until it had been confirmed.

I did not scream or drop to the floor hysterically, as they did in the movies. My brain went blank, I was frozen to the spot, and I appeared to stop breathing. The world went icy cold. If I stayed perfectly still, my subconscious seemed to be telling me, perhaps I could turn back time, to prevent this from happening?

But the grandfather clock tick-tocked steadily. Seconds passed, then minutes. When it started to chime the hour with ten long, clamorous gongs, I was jolted from my paralysis. The world had not stopped.

Numbed of all emotion, I leaned my cheek against the coolness of the stained glass and wondered, in a detached sort of way, what would happen next.

“Who was it?” Gwen said, coming out into the hall. She saw the envelope in my hand and her face bleached white. “Oh God, Lily, no.”

I tried to speak, to say something brave, but no words would come out. She took the envelope, turned it over. “You haven't opened it.”

I shook my head, numbly.

“Do you want me to?”

I nodded.

• • •

Mourning is like sleepwalking through deep snow. Its landscape is endless and unchanging. Every step is painful and exhausting. The world becomes monochrome; colors lose their hue, and music is muffled and distorted.

Not knowing, that was the most terrible thing. At least that's what I believed then.

Like a drowning soul clinging to driftwood, I sometimes allowed myself to imagine that I would open the door and find him on the doorstep, weary but unharmed, and we would fall into each other's arms. But with dreary inevitability, the chill reality of those words always intervened: “Missing, presumed dead.” I knew what they really meant, and it was easier not to torment myself, not to hope.

Gwen and Mother tiptoed around me. I became expert at suppressing my emotions, and despite their protestations, I insisted on going into work, where I applied myself with a single-minded focus I'd never experienced before. Like an automaton. It replaced thinking.

Except at night. When I closed my eyes or even lay in the dark with them open, his face came to me. Sometimes calm and sad, sometimes weeping, troubled and angry, or screaming with fear. Scenarios of his death played out through my head in pitiless variety. He lay in agony, clutching a stomach wound (Vera once told me these were the worst), writhing in the slime of a trench, on a beach with crimson blood pumping onto yellow sand, his face blackening as he burned in a blazing tank, his body flung apart through the air by the violence of a plane crash. I didn't even know when it had happened. I'd been carrying on as normal for days and perhaps weeks, in casual ignorance. The guilt cut like a knife.

The visions denied me the blessed oblivion of sleep. When I dropped off, even for the briefest of moments, I dreamed of terrifying things and had to force myself awake to escape them. Or worse, I would dream that I was in his arms, rolled in our warm, silky cocoon, irradiated with happiness. And then I would wake with a start to the icy, bitter reality. I would never again stroke his skin, smell his hair, taste his lips, hear the deep tones of his voice.

A few desperate nights later, I crawled downstairs to the drawing room drinks cabinet and without guilt drank two large glasses of whiskey. In the morning, I woke with a throbbing head, realizing, with grim satisfaction, that for the first time in weeks I'd slept without dreaming.

I did the same the next night, and the next. One night, as I poured the drink, my hands shook so much that I dropped the tumbler. In the half darkness, the sound of the shattering glass was like an explosion reverberating through the silent house. I held my breath, praying that Gwen and Mother were so soundly asleep they would not hear it. Tiptoeing to the kitchen to find a dustpan, I met Gwen coming down the stairs in her pajamas, holding a hairbrush in front of her like a weapon.

“Christ, Lily, I thought you were a burglar.”

I gestured vaguely toward the kitchen, hoping to make her think I was on my way to make tea or cocoa. I could clean up the mess in the drawing room later.

“What are you doing up at this time of night?” she said. “You smell like a distillery.” Slowly, her sleepy face registered understanding. “Oh, Lily. I'm such an idiot. I thought you were being so strong. But you're not, are you?”

“I'm fine, honestly.” If only she would go back to bed and let me get on with clearing up.

“Except at night?”

I nodded, not trusting my voice. The sympathy in those pale green eyes was weakening my armor.

“Come on, let's clear up the glass and pour ourselves another one,” she said firmly. She went to the kitchen and came back carrying a cloth and a dustpan and brush, as I stood in the hall, unable to move.

In those few moments, Gwen had understood what had been happening to me, even before I dared admit it to myself. And she realized that ticking me off would only induce more self-denial. How did she manage to be so strong, so intuitive, so generous? She had become the warp to my weft. How had I been so absorbed in my own woes that I'd utterly failed to appreciate this before now?

It was this realization, rather than my own misery, which finally undermined me. Abandoning any attempt to hold back the tears now, I leaned against the wall, my knees crumpled, and I slid, sniveling, down to the floor. I was wiping my nose on the sleeve of my nightdress when Gwen pulled me up and led me into the moonlit drawing room, sat me on the sofa, took a handkerchief from her pajama pocket, and put a fresh tumbler of whiskey in my hand. She wrapped a blanket around my knees, tucking me in like a child.

“So, talk to me,” she said.

“There's nothing to say.”

“Tell me how much you loved him.”

And so I started, often incoherent, weeping with wretchedness or roaring with rage. How he was my life. No one would ever replace him. About my misery, and my nightmares. “I just want to die too,” I moaned, finally running out of words and tears.

Gwen leaned back and stretched. “You are not going to die, Lily,” she said firmly. “You will get by somehow. Life goes on. It always does. But now we both need some sleep.”

I nodded, sniffing.

“And you're putting off going back to bed?”

I nodded again.

“Would it help if I stayed with you tonight?” I must have looked disconcerted. She squeezed my hand. “Just that, stupid. Nothing more.”

That night, I slept better than at any time in the past weeks. Each time I woke, Gwen's solid, reassuring presence and gentle breathing soothed me back to sleep again.

I had long since stopped reading the “killed in action” columns, but the deaths must have been announced in the newspaper, because around that time came a flurry of condolence letters—from cousins and aunts, employees at the mill, some of his former Pioneer pals. Michael, now back in the country, telephoned and promised to visit when petrol rationing allowed. All this I found comforting, even heartwarming. But when the envelope arrived with Robbie's handwriting on the front, my heart sank and I put it aside for opening later.

When I finally plucked up the courage to read it I realized that I need not have worried after all.

Dearest Lily,

We may have had our differences in the past, but please believe me when I say how sincerely sorry I was to hear about the death of your husband Stephen. I am sure he was an extremely brave man and this must be a terrible blow.

I know just a little of what you must be suffering: I too have family members and friends who will never return, and it is hard to imagine the world continuing without them. My only consolation is that their deaths have been in a good cause, what we fervently hope is the defeat of evil. I firmly believe it is now the bounden duty of all of us remaining to appreciate what we have, enjoy every day, and work hard to fulfil the promise of the better world that they died for.

I hope to be in Westbury before long and if so, may I call in to offer my condolences in person?

Affectionately yours,

Robbie

I had to read the signature twice to confirm that its author really was Robbie Cameron. The letter was certainly pompous, but the sentiment was surprisingly sympathetic, considering how malicious he'd been about Stefan in the past. Where was the arrogant Robbie I'd first met nearly five years ago? The bully who had threatened me and pushed me into such a disastrous decision? War had changed us all; had it perhaps softened him, made him more compassionate and sensitive? It certainly sounded so, and though I was still suspicious, a part of me rather hoped that he might prove to be a reformed man.

Vera got special leave to come home and see me. We sat on the drawing room sofa for hours as I talked about Stefan, the same words pouring out once more, like the tears, the unstoppable, painful stream. She wept with me, and then took me for a gentle walk around the garden and the orchard, to clear our heads, she said, till it was time for supper.

I had no appetite, hadn't eaten properly for days, but felt obliged to retain some kind of normality by turning up for meals, even though sitting through them was purgatory. This time was no different. The four of us sat in the dining room—with all its memories of Father and the boys—while Mother served the meal she had summoned from our still scarce rations.