The Postmistress (7 page)

“I just think you ought to be more careful, Iris,” Mrs. Cripps sniffed now. “There’s that German man around, as you well know. The other night I was coming home and there was his light shining straight through the window above Harry’s Garage—no curtains at all, you understand? It could be seen plain as day on the water, shining straight through like that. And then he snapped it off. What do you make of
that
?”

“He was probably going to bed.” Iris tossed the envelope into the sack.

“Yes.” Florence inclined her head. “Well, that’s what I thought, but then, I hadn’t walked much farther when it went back on again.”

Iris didn’t answer.

“It may have been a sign, Iris. He might be a part of a German invasion, their advance man on the ground.” Florence drew the phrase out, impressed with herself.

“He has a wife over there,” Iris said evenly as she could. “In a refugee camp. In France.”

“So he says.”

“Yes,” Iris flashed back.

“I read all about those camps,” Florence sniffed. “There’s no need to tell me. But why is she there in the first place? She must have done something to get herself in there—at the very least stuck her neck out somehow.”

“I expect there was something wrong with her papers.”

“Exactly.” Florence nodded, a little triumphant. “That’s exactly my point. You’ve got to be careful. You’ve got to watch out, watch yourself. It’s horrible, but honestly, the French have had a hard enough time without all these people, Jews and what have you, displaced by the war, flooding in from all over Europe, masses of people suddenly to deal with, as if they hadn’t enough already. First the Germans, now this, and
she
may not be, but some of them
are
dangerous, you can be sure of it—”

“It’s been very hard on the man, I think,” Iris broke in to shut the woman up. Otto Schelling came in every day with a letter addressed,
Frau Anna Schelling, Gurs Ilot K 20, France
; and on Thursdays, he’d add to it a postal order she’d fill out in the amount of five dollars, earned working over at Harry’s Garage. Deep set and dark blue, his eyes regarded her from a long way off as she asked the necessary questions—
How are you? Same amount as last week?—
taking the single dollar bills he pushed across, writing him a receipt. He wrote a letter every day. And he had never yet gotten a letter back. Every afternoon, he turned around and walked back out as quietly as he had come in, with the exhaustion of a man who hurled himself against the wall of each passing day, and would do so again and again, until the wall broke.

“We all have to be careful, Iris.” Florence was determined to be mild. “That’s all I am pointing out.”

“Careful about what?” The doors had opened on Marnie Niles sailing in. “I thought I’d find you in here, Florence,” she declared, satisfied.

Mrs. Cripps raised her eyebrows at Iris, punctuating the end of their conversation before she turned around to Marnie. But her attention was caught by the sight of Emma Fitch’s head wrapped in a yellow scarf bound who knows where, crossing the frame of the open door.

“Isn’t she the tiniest thing?”

“Yes, yes she is.” Marnie had to agree.

All three women followed Emma out of sight. Iris quite liked “the little bride,” as everyone in town seemed to think of her. She dove in and out of conversations gamely, offering commentary on what her husband thought, what her husband was determined to try—playing the doctor’s wife straight up.

“Do you need anything?” Iris asked Marnie Niles who shook her head. Iris nodded and retreated to the back room where the pile of unsorted morning mail lay thick upon the table. Most of the town did not venture in until after eleven or so, when suddenly she’d look up from the sorting table in the back and find the lobby nearly full, as though someone had called a meeting. The women in the lobby kept on a running patter, to which Iris only half-listened.

“It’s unfathomable.”

“Unfathomable and unforgivable.”

“That’s a bit harsh, Marnie.”

“No, dear, it is unforgivable for a man to marry a weak woman!”

“But I imagine he likes taking care of her. Perhaps that makes him feel stronger?”

“A man takes better care of a woman when she doesn’t depend upon him,” Marnie sniffed. “Will Fitch’ll have his hands full, now that he’s gone and chosen a tiny slip of a city girl—and from away.”

Marnie’s voice trailed off as Iris returned to the front window with letters in need of canceling.

“Of course she’s from away,” Florence retorted. “Who would have married Will after what his father did?”

Iris glanced up. What had his father done?

“Do you remember after it all, how he’d stand at the end of the garden dressed head to toe in khaki looking like the summer people’s help, his neck and shoulders bowed, staring into the bank of roses?”

“What was he going to do?”

“He ought to have left town,” Mrs. Cripps replied crisply. “Anybody with any shame would have, instead of sticking around. Think of the Aldens and the Dales. They lost everything. Everything. And there he was still with his roses.”

“Still,” Marnie reflected, thrusting her hand into her mailbox and sliding out with a single envelope. “It was hard on Mary.”

“Always is hardest on the wives.” Mrs. Cripps nodded darkly. “We all might as well be Indian brides.”

“For pity’s sake, Florence!” Marnie burst out laughing. “You ought to stop taking
National Geographic
!” And her laughter fluttered behind like ribbons long after the door closed.

Seeing Mrs. Cripps intended to stay put, Iris went right on feeding the mail into the canceling machine. The envelopes skimmed under the lip of the machine,
November 18, 12 pm. Franklin. November 18, 12 pm. Franklin, November 18, November 18, November 18.
The letters sped out the other side, Iris giving the crank a good shove. The last envelope had stuck and she had to give it a yank to pull it out the finishing end of the machine.

“I suppose it’s the power,” Mrs. Cripps commented quietly to Iris, evidently finishing some discussion with herself, “that one loves about a job like this.”

Iris gave Mrs. Cripps the briefest of glances.

“After all, just look at what passes through your hands.”

Iris could feel herself going red. This woman! And something was off with the machine. The next envelope was sticking in exactly the same place. Yanking it out, she saw with annoyance that the date had smudged.
18? November 19?
Iris held it closer. No, it really was off. It could easily be saying that today was the nineteenth.

“What’s the trouble?” Mrs. Cripps asked solicitously.

“The date.” Iris put down the envelope. She’d have to write a note to Midge Barnes, the postal inspector down in Nauset. Damn.

“Does it matter, really?” said Mrs. Cripps, sticking like a burr. She had never seen the postmaster bothered before. “One day or the next, the mail will get there all the same, isn’t that right?”

Iris had made the mistake of hoping the glitch had ended, but now a third envelope had gone through and hovered somewhere between November 18 and November 19. “Yes, it does matter, Mrs. Cripps,” burst out Iris. “It matters very much.”

The machine looked the same as always. She stared at it, irritated. Its blue body lay there dully, as if she had done something wrong. She knew that was silly, but this kind of random inexplicable happening drove her around the bend. She could countenance that milk had a shelf life, that human beings trip and fall down, that perfectly clear skies might suddenly cloud and rain—but she refused to accept these things happening without some reason. Someone had left the door ajar on the icebox, someone else had not been looking where he went. But the canceling machine.

The lobby doors swung open, and Florence turned around to see who it was. A big smile spread across her face. “Hello, Harry,” she said, luxuriously. “Miss James is having some problem with her machine.”

Iris rolled her eyes.

“Oh?” said Harry. “What’s wrong?”

Mrs. Cripps decided that she had quite a lot to tell Marnie Niles. Harry’s hair was combed, for starters. And as he crossed the lobby, she could tell without looking that the temperature had risen slightly behind the window. Oh, she smiled to herself, I will be right in the end about this one. She turned back to Iris and patted the counter between them. “Good-bye, Miss James. I have work to do. Good luck with that,” she pointed.

Harry set down the mug he was carrying and looked at the canceling machine. “You having some trouble with that?”

“Yes,” answered Iris, flushing, acutely aware that it was just the two of them suddenly, alone in the post office. “It’s sticking on me.”

“Let’s have a look.”

Iris pushed the small machine across to Harry. He picked it up in his hands and shook it. It didn’t make a sound. Then he put it down very gently and reached for a screwdriver in his pocket, looking up at Iris for her okay. She nodded.

“What do you suppose happened?”

“Beats me,” he answered with the cheerfulness of someone who’s been around machines all his life. “Things break.”

How was it possible that he wouldn’t know—or that he wasn’t bothered by not knowing? Iris watched as he carefully loosened the four brass screws that held the front in place. The inside of the machine resembled the gears of a clock and the tiny hammers with the dates, little bells. He leaned down and blew into the belly of the machine, pulled back and looked, then blew again. Iris watched his fingers. There had been nothing said between them, nothing at all but this kind of steady attention. He was in every day for his mail, and though at first she had thought she ought to signal somehow that she was ready, she realized this slow unstated comfort between them was some kind of movement—the beginning of the dance. Without paying much attention, he replaced the plate and screwed it down quickly. “There,” he said, pushing it back toward Iris. “See if that does anything.”

She slid a clean piece of paper into the canceling slot and turned the knob. Out it slipped onto the ledge in front of Harry. “
November 18, 1940,”
he said.

“Wonderful,” Iris heard herself saying. “Thank you, Mr. Vale.”

“Harry.”

She looked up.

“Harry,” he said to her quietly. “It’s Harry.” She flushed and looked down.

He cleared his throat. “Say, listen.”

She opened the stamp drawer, her heart thudding.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

The stamps lay in fresh sheets in perfect order before her.

“Any chance you’d think about lowering your flagpole out there?”

Oh.
She glanced back up, disappointed. He was one town official speaking to another. That was all. “Why?”

“Well”—he hesitated—“it seems to me it’s sticking straight up, just begging for attention.”

Iris had to smile, despite herself. “Is that how it seems?”

“If the Germans get within sight of town, they’re going to plot a course straight in off that pole.”

He was quite serious.

“I’d have to speak to the post office inspector,” Iris said and shut the drawer.

“Fair enough.” He dipped his head, but made no move to leave.

He had only come in to ask about the flagpole, Iris told herself, a little hotly. Why else would he still be standing there at her window? Best to serve him and be done with it.

“Need a box for that, Harry?”

He went a little pale and glanced down at the mug on the counter between them.

“A box?”

“Yes,” she answered. He was very pale, indeed. “To mail,” she added.

“I—”

She pointed at the mug. “Shall I measure it?”

And she pulled the tape measure off her waist, to take its height and width. “Just a small box will do you,” she decided, and disappeared behind the sorting boxes into the back of the mailroom where the parcel supplies were kept.

“I brought some tissue, too. A nice mug like this needs care.”

“Right.” He leaned his elbows upon the counter. Deftly she folded the thick cardboard along the creases and pulled the sides up into the shape of a box. She fluffed the tissue paper up and carefully settled the mug into that nest. He seemed fixed upon her hands, which only made her work the faster to get them out of the way. At last, the box was sealed up tight.

She looked up at him. “Where to?”

“You,” he said.

Iris blinked and reached for the sleeve of her cardigan slipping off her shoulder. “I beg your pardon?”

Harry put his hands on either side of the box and slid it forward toward the postmaster. “It’s for you.”

Iris regarded Harry for several seconds. Then she smiled very slowly. “Shall I open it?”

He grinned then, and leaned his elbows upon the counter. “Go ahead.”

Carefully, she slit the tape covering the opening with the blade of the scissors hanging from the window and slid her finger in to pop up the top. The mug lay snug in there and she peeled off the paper she had just wrapped it in, aware of Harry watching her, helpless and in a kind of thrall.

“It’s grand,” she pronounced, setting the blue ceramic mug between them. “Thank you.”

“I thought you probably like your coffee.”

She smiled at him. “I do.”

“Good.” He patted the counter in lieu of good-bye, turned around without another word, and headed for the door. She flushed and looked down. He passed through the door without closing it, and a small breeze reached where she stood.

4.

A
STEADY, COLD RAIN blew more and more people into the crowded Savoy Hotel bar, bringing the smell of damp wool and hot bodies with them. One hundred and twenty-one nights they’d all lived through, one hundred and twenty-one, night after night, and the people who remained, the people who climbed back up into the light every morning, could be forgiven the extravagant gestures, the brave huzzahs, the fists in the air. Though the bombers might come in the next hour or two, and everyone knew it, no one was going down into the funk holes just now. London was out in the streets. For now, people hurried along calling out to each other even on this miserable wet night, strangers calling—
Good night! Good night
—sending voices into the streets, not sirens, not whistles, not bombs.