Letters From an Unknown Woman (5 page)

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was written across the top. She knew that this meant it was a letter from a prisoner of war. And there was Donald’s handwriting, overshadowed and cowering, it seemed, beneath the rubber stamps of officials and censors. STALAG-VII-C. A red crown with the word ‘passed’ underneath. A German eagle. Hands from both sides of the war had touched this envelope, had read its contents. Enemies had co-operated in its journey across Europe. It thrilled Mrs Head a little, and she became breathless.

‘So the little Scotchman painter and decorator is alive after all,’ she gasped to herself, as she hurried with the letter into the kitchen, ‘wiling away his days in a prisoner-of-war camp.’ She giggled nervously. ‘Well, he could have written sooner.’

She fought the temptation to open the letter, unable to understand whether the soaring feelings of excitement she was experiencing were for the knowledge that Donald was alive and that her daughter was no longer a widow, or that she could tell her daughter how wrong and mean-spirited she had been all this time in assuming Donald to be dead. She became so excited about the letter that she was wondering whether she should go down to the factory and give it to her there, but she was tired enough after her shopping expedition to feel that the longer trip would be too much for her.

She told Mrs Wilson next door, when she went out into the yard to hang up some washing, and then she told Mrs Allen on the other side.

‘Tory’s Donald is alive,’ she told them, with an air of pride, forgetting those scornful remarks she had made to her neighbour shortly after he was declared missing in action, that she’d never supposed he would last long in the Army anyway, that he would be among the first to be killed or captured, the puny little Scotchman. Now she proclaimed him as a hero to her neighbours. The truth was that the news Donald was still alive lifted her heart far more than she would have expected. Dead he was rather a disgrace, but captured – that meant there might still be a chance for her family to distinguish itself in the war effort.

‘Have you opened it?’ said Mrs Wilson.

‘No, of course not. It’s addressed to Tory.’

‘He’ll be asking for food. That’s what they all ask for. Mrs Adams’s son’s a PoW, and the first thing they write about is to ask for a food parcel. Bovril, Oxo cubes, ointment, chocolate, cocoa, tea, all that sort of stuff. You can claim extra rations if you’ve got a PoW in the family.’

But Donald didn’t ask for any of these things. When Tory finally came home, a little later than usual, she took the envelope down from the mantelpiece where it had been propped all day, watched by Mrs Head with the same inert concentration as the china spaniels that sat obediently at either end of the mantelpiece. She didn’t register as quickly as her mother that she was holding a letter from her husband, and pored for some time over the peculiar markings on the envelope, looking across for explanation.

‘There! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? You said he was dead all this time – well, dead men don’t write letters.’

The letter suddenly felt heavy in Tory’s hands, as though it had been written on sheets of lead. That was when she began shaking – it seemed to take all her effort to keep the envelope from dropping out of her grasp.

She couldn’t say anything.

‘Aren’t you going to open it, child?’ Her mother liked nothing better than sending Tory back to her infancy.

‘I can’t.’ She meant this literally: her fingers couldn’t find an edge to pull. After a few moments she held the letter out, still shakily, towards her mother. ‘Can’t you do it for me?’

‘Child, surely you can open a letter from your husband.’

Tory took a moment to re-examine the front of the envelope.

‘This is dated December …’

‘Well, just be thankful it got here at all – who knows what obstacles that little piece of paper has had to overcome to get here? Now open it …’

‘I can’t,’ Tory repeated. ‘I’m shaking too much.’ She didn’t want to say what she was really thinking: that a letter so old was no proof that her husband was alive, that he could have died since. Eventually Mrs Head took the letter and tore it open. Glancing to check that it was indeed from Donald, she held forth the extracted sheet of blue paper, covered with awkward, square-looking handwriting, for her daughter to read.

‘Please,’ said Tory, ‘you read it.’

Mrs Head feigned reluctance to do this, but secretly she was delighted to be the first reader of Donald’s letter. She had long since recovered from the shock of knowing that Donald was alive and, as the afternoon had drawn on, had even become a little bored by the fact, but now the opportunity of a little performance, to be the herald of important news – she relished the prospect.

‘Very well, Tory. Why don’t you sit down and prepare yourself? Would you like a cup of tea first?’

‘No,’ said Tory, as she sat on one of the stiff, wheelbacked dining-chairs. ‘Just read it.’

There was a little moment of fuss as Mrs Head hunted down her spectacles. Then, with Tory nervously seated, she held the letter before her, cleared her throat, and began. ‘
My Dearest Darling Sweetheart Tory
…’

Tory couldn’t help but let out a yelp of passion at hearing herself so addressed by the man she had convinced herself was long dead, and Mrs Head paused to let her recover. Her daughter was sobbing, and the tears were falling fast. She went on:

‘
At last the Germans have given us pens and paper and allowed us to write letters home. They have only given us one sheet each and told us to write in block capitals, so that they can read them,

I suppose. Well, now I’ve said all that I’ve got hardly any room left to say anything else.’

Mrs Head and her daughter both laughed, Tory in the most relieved sort of way, as her mother held the letter so that she could see the big block capitals it was written in.

‘Wonderful that he’s kept his sense of humour,’ said Mrs Head.

‘
I’m doing pretty well considering. Was captured near Libyan border, defending an airfield, and was shipped over the Med and transported north through Italy. Don’t know where the hell I am now, though. Good crowd here, some Australians and Canadians. We play cards quite a lot. Food not so bad.

‘We were right, Tory, weren’t we, when we said he was in North Africa? I told you. I’m so glad he wasn’t badly hurt.

‘
Nothing else troubles me, apart from not being able to …
’

Here Mrs Head stopped abruptly, and was silent for a few moments as she read on to herself. Tory, who had been hanging her head for most of the time, suddenly looked up. ‘Apart from not being able to what?’

‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Head.

‘What is it? What has he written?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t say, Tory. Your husband seems to have quite lost his mind.’

‘Show me.’

Tory reached for the letter but Mrs Head drew back, cautiously.

‘What are you doing? It’s my letter, you shouldn’t even be reading it.’

‘But you asked me to.’

Tory seemed to have regained her composure after the shock of receiving the letter and was now standing up. For a moment it seemed that there might be an absurd chase through the house, the daughter after her mother in pursuit of a letter from her own husband. Before this could happen Mrs Head seemed to concede defeat and allowed the letter to pass into her daughter’s hands. She quickly scanned through it to the final paragraph.

Nothing else troubles me apart from not being able to pull your knickers down and give you a good fuck. Instead, could you write me a dirty letter, by return of post? I mean really filthy, full of all the dirtiest words and deeds you can think of
.

I require this most urgently.

Love to your ma

Donald

XXX

Mother and daughter were silent for a few moments after Tory, having taken far longer than seemed necessary, had finished reading. Neither knew quite what to say. Tory read through it again, squinting closely, as though having trouble deciphering the very clear handwriting.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, how many times do you have to read it?’ Mrs Head finally blurted.

‘He’s not himself,’ said Tory, with a sense of hard-won resolve.

‘I can tell by the handwriting. He’s not himself. After all he’s been through, he’s confused. His head’s been turned.’

Mrs Head coughed theatrically. ‘I don’t care what he’s been through, there is absolutely no excuse for that – sort of thing. We can only hope that he’s not in his right state of mind, as you say. He seems to have forgotten completely that he even has any children.’

Tory felt as though she had frozen into a solid lump. For a few moments she couldn’t move or speak. She stood by the mantelpiece, the letter hanging in her hand like the shred of a burst balloon. The porcelain spaniels each patiently examined one of her ears. She was experiencing no emotion, apart from a distant sense of panic, such as she sometimes felt on a railway platform when gripped by the absurd thought that the innocent old lady behind her might push her into the path of the express. Her mother had identified the truly horrifying thing about the letter, that it contained no reference whatsoever to Tom, Paulette and Albertina.

‘You’d better give me the letter, Tory.’ Mrs Head was holding out her hand.

‘What? Why?’

‘So that I may dispose of it properly, of course.’

Tory had by now put the letter carefully back in its envelope, and she held it close to her. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, Mama, but I’m going to keep it for the moment.’

‘But you can’t possibly be thinking of replying in the manner he demands. Make a note of the address so that you can write him a sensible reply, but let me destroy that letter. It pains me too much to think what might happen if someone should find it.’

‘No one will find it. Why should they?’

‘Well, where are you going to put it? In some box of keepsakes so that when the war is over and Donald is safely home you can go through your casket of treasured memories? What’ll happen then? You’ll read this letter and all the filth it contains … Or you’ll leave it for your children to discover when you’re long gone, and what’ll they think of their war-hero father then? These things have a habit of turning up …’ Her argument trailed off.

Tory had folded the letter and was holding it against her breast in a rather defiant way. She had no intention of giving it up. ‘You’re judging Donald too harshly, just as you have always done. We can’t begin to understand what he might have been through. Of course he puts a brave face on things in this letter, but that’s his way, never complaining. It could only be a kind of madness that made him write that last paragraph, especially as he must have realized it was likely to be read by people other than me.’

‘You’re beginning to sound a little as though you’re making excuses for him. He’s a British soldier, for heaven’s sake. This letter has been read by officials of the Nazi war machine – look at their stamp on the top of the letter. What sort of impression is that going to give of our moral health?’

This thought did give Tory some pause. The idea that some jackbooted Nazi had read this letter from her husband, imagining the sort of wife who would comply with such a demand without a second thought, imagining some lipsticked, viridian eyeshadowed she-devil with a Passing Cloud hanging from her lips … Her mother was right, such correspondence could easily be used to give an impression of the British housewife as morally depraved.

‘Don’t worry, Mama,’ said Tory irritably, ‘it will not be seen by anyone. But I must keep it for the moment.’

Mrs Head shook her head pityingly and went back into the kitchen. Tory went in the opposite direction, to the sitting room, where she shut the door behind her and then leant with her back against it. She began crying.

Over the months this room had become her own private space. In the past it had only ever been used for entertaining visitors and her mother rarely went in there. Tory derived great comfort from its plusher, classier furnishings. The little velvet chaise longue, the mahogany escritoire, the china pots and vases with their healthy-looking plants. There was a smell in there she had come to recognize as one that offered great comfort, the smell of polished wood and venerable old cushions and upholstery. It was a churchy smell. Old without being merely dilapidated and worn (which could not be said for the dining room and kitchen), it was a smell that seemed to speak of long lives lived in one place, generation after generation.

When the tears had subsided, which they did rather quickly, Tory read Donald’s letter again. ‘Oh, Donald, how could you?’ she said croakily to herself. The letter should have been the moment of Donald’s heroic return to the world of the living. Instead he had made a fool of himself and had soiled the occasion with a most uncharacteristic lurch into sexual vulgarity.

Tory calmed herself by writing letters to the children, one for all three of them this time

Dear Tom, Paulette, and Albertina

Prepare yourselves for some truly wonderful news. Your father is alive and well! Yes, that’s right, your sincerest wish has come true. I received a letter from your father this very morning, and in it he said he wanted me to tell you how proud he is of you all, and that he is thinking of you every day and night.

She did her best to write a letter that conveyed a sense of rejoicing and celebration, such as the children (she hoped) would be feeling when they read this letter, but it was a hard struggle and she soon found that she had said all she could on that subject, and filled the rest of the page with inconsequential news.