Aunt Letitia Read online

  Aunt Letitia

  Dominic Luke

  Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  ‘I HATED MY father. Absolutely loathed him.’

  The policeman listened, watching the steam rising from the old lady’s tea. She held the china cup in a gnarled and shaking hand. All around, the teashop buzzed with conversation. Crockery chinked, waitresses hurried back and forth, the door opened and closed as customers came and went.

  ‘I often thought of murdering him. I plotted ways I might do it without being detected. Though I really shouldn’t be saying this to you: you could have me arrested.’

  The policeman could not help wondering if the old dear was right in the head. He knew he ought to get back on duty, but it was cosy in this teashop. Outside it was cold and wet.

  A few more minutes wouldn’t hurt.

  ‘You could do with a drop of brandy with that tea. For the shock.’

  ‘It was brandy which got me into trouble in the first place.’ The old lady laughed at the policeman’s expression. ‘Oh yes. Drunk and disorderly. You wouldn’t expect it at my age, would you! I’m ninety-one.’

  ‘You should go easy on the booze. That was a nasty fall.’

  ‘It was stupid. A stupid thing to do. Tripping over the kerb. I forget I’m not as sprightly as I used to be. I don’t usually drink in the middle of the day, Constable, so you needn’t look so disapproving. I had just heard something rather unexpected – unpleasant – and I took a sip or two of brandy to calm my nerves. Best cognac, too. Very expensive on the black market. It was meant for a Christmas present. I’m buying all my presents early. With things the way they are, one never knows what might happen.’ She paused, an insouciant smile on her lips. ‘Listen to me! I can assure you, I don’t make a habit of talking like this to total strangers. You must excuse me. It’s the shock.’

  ‘Not the booze, then?’ The policeman was professionally cynical.

  ‘It was only a nip, to revive myself. I’m not an old soak – not yet, at any rate. But you mustn’t take any notice of me. I’m talking nonsense. All that about wanting to murder my father: it’s quite untrue. I haven’t got it in me to murder anyone.’

  ‘Ah, well, you’d be surprised. I come across some strange goings-on in my line of work.’ The policeman looked at the old lady through narrowed eyes, thinking: she ain’t half as dotty as she makes out.

  ‘My father was a bishop. The most evil man I ever knew.’

  ‘And there was I thinking that bishops were Christian fellows. But he can’t have been worse than this here Hitler, surely?’

  ‘He and dear Adolf would have got on famously.’ She finished her tea and popped a precious lump of sugar into her mouth. ‘A pair of bigoted, pompous old bores. But you must be tired of listening to me. I’m keeping you from your duties, whatever it is you policemen do.’

  The policeman allowed a hint of a smile. ‘Picking old ladies up off the pavement.’

  ‘Touché!’ She gathered herself together. ‘The worst of it is, I’ve got blood on my coat. But it can’t be helped. Least said, soonest mended. And now I really must go. I’m meeting my nephew in front of the National Gallery, and I don’t want to be late.’

  The policeman helped the old girl to her feet and handed her, one by one, her hat, gloves, umbrella, handbag, bags and parcels. ‘I’ll hail you a cab.’

  ‘It’s quite all right, I’ll walk.’

  ‘I don’t think you are in any condition to go walking, madam.’

  ‘Oh, tush, of course I am. The day I can’t walk the few steps from here to Trafalgar Square is the day you can put me down! Besides, I can pop into the bookshops on Charing Cross Road as I go. Thank you for the tea.’

  As the policeman held open the door, he felt a pang of regret, wishing they could have lingered over their tea. He had enjoyed listening to the feisty old dear. She showed more spirit than a great many people half her age. If the whole country battled on the way she did, there would be no doubts about winning the war.

  As he watched her walk slowly away to be swallowed by the crowds, he suddenly realized that he didn’t even know her name. Not that it mattered. He was hardly likely to meet her again. And if he didn’t get back on duty soon, his sergeant would take great pleasure in hauling him over the coals.

  Letitia Warner used her folded umbrella as a walking stick now that the rain had stopped, making her way – slow but determined – through the crowds on Oxford Street. Red buses passed in procession, but there were fewer motor cars now. Letitia wondered if, with petrol rationing taking hold, horses might make a comeback. It would make her feel young again, to see horse-drawn buses, cabs and carriages on the streets of London; but it would not provide an escape from the war. The signs were everywhere: shattered and boarded-up windows, fallen masonry, walls shorn up by heavy timbers, and notices warning that looters would be prosecuted. This war, even more than the last, was determined to make its presence felt.

  Letitia blinked away sudden tears as she walked, rapping her umbrella firmly on the pavement. It was absurd to cry! She was not even sure what had brought it on. Was it the sight of Oxford Street, blitzed and shabby but exhibiting a spirited air of normality? Was it because she had tripped up the kerb and made a spectacle of herself? Was it because she had nearly given herself away in that teashop just now?

  It was all of that, perhaps: but most of all it was down to that throwaway remark she had heard in Selfridges, less than an hour ago. Swiftly and unexpectedly the memories had come crowding back: memories of her father, and of poor Angelica, her sister; memories that stung, that lacerated, that sent her spiralling down into a pit of despair. Everything looked bleak and pointless. The future seemed devoid of hope – which was probably not far from truth. The whole world was in turmoil. Death and destruction rained down from the sky nightly. Things were changing quickly, and for the worse. It was enough to make her wish she had done what she once intended to do, all those years ago, one morning in early spring.

  I meant it, too, Letitia said to herself as she laboured along Oxford Street. It had all been planned. No hysterics, no drama: just a calm matter-of-fact decision to take a step into oblivion. If there hadn’t been an interruption, if the doorbell hadn’t rung…. But it had, and here she was, ninety-one years old and living through one more day.

  However hopeless things seemed, something always came along to lift one up: a gallant policeman; or the sight of London broken but unbowed in this second autumn of the war; or the prospect of meeting one’s great-nephew in front of the National Gallery.

  Hugh was waiting for her, a static figure amongst the traffic and the people and the pigeons. He was staring at Nelson’s Column that reached up into a lowering grey sky. Around the base was a large hoarding, exhorting passers-by to purchase National War Bonds.

  ‘Good grief, Aunt, whatever have you been doing?’

  ‘Having adventures, as usual.’ Letitia had recovered her poise, was all blasé.

  ‘But there’s blood on your coat!’

  ‘Only a speck. It’s nothing. A silly accident. No damage done. But I’m afraid, Hugh, I shall have to go back home to change. My stockings are torn, my knees are grazed. I won’t be allowed in anywhere looking like this.’ She took his arm. ‘Come along. On the way, we can decide where we shall go for dinner.’

  Washed and changed, Letitia negotiated the stai
rs in her Chelsea house, taking them one at a time.

  ‘Help yourself to a drink!’ she called on ahead. ‘There’s plenty to choose from.’

  When she reached the old dining-room, Hugh was standing by the sideboard examining an exotic statuette that his father must have sent from India years ago; but Letitia’s eyes were drawn to the photograph in a silver frame next to it: Hugh in army uniform looking impossibly young. Taken during the last war, of course: the war to end wars, they had called it. But now here was a sequel, despite everything. How long would this one last? Would anybody be left alive to see its end?

  Letitia advanced into the room and Hugh turned. He had a glass in his hand.

  Letitia smiled. ‘I hope you poured one for me.’

  As they sipped their drinks, sitting on faded chairs, she related with gusto the episode with the policeman.

  ‘He was rather good-looking, too.’ Her pearls rattled round her neck as she laughed. ‘What a pity I didn’t note down his number.’

  ‘Honestly, Aunt, you’re incorrigible.’ Hugh was laughing too.

  ‘I think he deserves some kind of reward, don’t you? Not everyone would have been so kind.’

  ‘What were you doing drinking brandy in the middle of the day?’

  Letitia did not answer, using the prerogative of the old to go conveniently deaf.

  ‘You are being evasive,’ Hugh accused her.

  ‘No more than you,’ Letitia parried. ‘I still don’t know what this terribly important work that you do actually is.’

  ‘It’s all very hush-hush.’ Hugh took a swig of whisky, before adding, ‘And naturally very dull.’

  Letitia laughed. ‘You haven’t changed at all, you know.’

  ‘I’m just very much older.’

  ‘Oh, tush! Age is nothing. What I mean is that you are still the same in essentials as when I first saw you, a little boy just arrived from India. You have always been very sensible and down-to-earth.’

  ‘And boring.’

  ‘Not so, dear Hugh. Never boring. Reliable, trustworthy, steadfast.’

  ‘In Cynthia’s book, reliable, trustworthy and steadfast equal boring.’ Hugh spoke sharply.

  ‘Cynthia has never known when she is well off. She knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, as Oscar Wilde would have said if he’d ever been unfortunate enough to meet her. Besides, does it really matter any more what she thinks?’

  Hugh shook his head, indicating that it did not matter; but at the same time he frowned. Letitia guessed that his wife still had the power to wound him.

  He got up and held out his hand. ‘Another drink? Or ought we to go to dinner?’

  ‘Oh, another, I think,’ said Letitia firmly. ‘Let’s enjoy ourselves while we can.’

  Watching Hugh pour the drinks, Letitia was taken back nearly forty years, when she had still lived in the house called The Firs in Warwickshire, and Hugh had been dumped on her by his father without – as Letitia had often afterwards remarked – so much as a by-your-leave. The Firs had been a very pleasant house, not large but nicely situated, isolated from the other houses in the village of Binley. At the back there had been a long, narrow lawn bounded by tall trees. Letitia had thought it a darkly romantic aspect, as if one was standing in the midst of a Russian forest which stretched away endlessly in every direction. It had given one a comforting feeling of loneliness: not the feeling that one was missing out on wonderful times being had by people all around; more the feeling that there was no one around at all, that one was blessedly free of other people and their messy, intrusive lives.

  Hugh handed her back her glass. She smiled up at him, and he smiled down, and she said affectionately, ‘Where shall we go to eat?’

  Letitia woke in pitch darkness. She heard the wail of the siren and then, a moment later, a knock on her bedroom door. Hugh was calling her.

  Dragging her old bones out of bed, Letitia put on her dressing-gown and opened the door. She could not see Hugh. His voice seemed to come out of the empty dark.

  ‘Oughtn’t we to go to the shelter?’

  ‘Fiddlesticks to the shelter. I’m not going outside in this weather. We’ll be quite safe in the basement.’

  She could tell Hugh was not convinced. He obviously thought she was not taking the threat of German bombs seriously. It was, she reminded herself, his first experience of a raid.

  Down in the kitchen, Letitia poured herself a large whisky. She laughed at Hugh’s expression, remembering the frowning policeman who’d advised her to go easy on the booze.

  ‘I find it helps to pass the time.’

  ‘I’ll stick to cocoa, all the same.’

  As he warmed some milk, they heard guns firing in the distance and, faintly, the drone of aeroplanes. Before long, the crump of explosions added to the noise.

  ‘We seem very unprotected here.’ Hugh was nervous, looking up at the ceiling.

  Letitia was unconcerned. ‘My dear boy, it doesn’t matter where you are. Even people in shelters or down the tube have been killed when there’s a direct hit.’

  ‘I can’t imagine how you can stay so calm.’

  ‘One can get used to anything. This has been going on every night since the beginning of September. It’s become a tedious inconvenience more than anything. I never can sleep through it, more’s the pity. I’ve forgotten what it was like to have an uninterrupted night’s sleep.’

  Letitia looked at Hugh, pale and drawn, both hands curled round his mug of cocoa, beads of sweat on his forehead, glistening in the electric light. His dark hair was turning slowly grey; his face was rather gaunt and sallow. She wondered how much the noise of the guns and the explosions reminded him of the years he had spent fighting in the trenches of France and Flanders. He had never spoken much about that part of his life, but at that time he had written her many letters. The early ones had been brutally direct in their descriptions of life at the Front.

  ‘I was having the most peculiar dream,’ said Letitia, wanting to distract Hugh. ‘I dreamt of the day when you left The Firs after your first visit. You were off to Hampshire to stay with your mother’s family, and poor Arnold was returning to India. Do you remember?’

  ‘No, I don’t remember.’ Hugh was not paying attention. ‘How far away are those explosions, do you imagine?’

  ‘It was a sunny day,’ Letitia continued, choosing to ignore the question. ‘In that respect, it was unlike most of the other days of your visit, when it rained so often. I remember clearly standing on the doorstep to wave goodbye. You looked small and forlorn in your sailor suit as you waited to get into the carriage. It is so clear in my memory – or perhaps it is just the dream that I am thinking of. Such an odd dream. You were in the carriage; I could see your head framed in the window. The horses were stamping and champing at their bits, and the driver was up on his seat holding the reins, trying to calm them. You turned your head and gave me a little wave. Your face was quite expressionless. And then, instead of the carriage starting off, it was The Firs which moved, slipping quietly away as if it was floating on a stream, and I was standing on the doorstep all the while, waving. And everything got brighter and brighter, and it seemed as if I was standing on the stone step in a white void, and in the distance there was a black speck which was you sitting in the carriage. I could hear the horses neighing, but then the neighs turned into the alert, and I woke up.’

  ‘How very odd.’ Hugh looked at Letitia in puzzlement.

  ‘It was so very vivid. I had forgotten about sailor suits. Of course, one trusted absolutely in the navy in those days. Britain was great because of her navy. Back in the days before the naval race with Germany. One had never heard of dreadnoughts then.’

  Hugh smiled. ‘You are trying to distract me, Aunt.’

  Letitia returned the smile. ‘How well you know me! But from the sound of things, it is the docks and the East End that are getting it tonight. No need for us to worry.’

  ‘It is not so much for me that I am afraid. I am
, of course, scared by the thought of a German bomb landing on me. But I am mostly thinking of Ian. War is so much worse when you have a child. I find myself thinking about him all the time, wondering if he is safe. I cannot bear that he has to go through all this, when we thought we had put an end to wars forever.’

  Letitia took his hand in hers. ‘Ian is probably a lot safer than we are right now.’

  ‘For the moment.’

  Letitia said nothing. Now was just the time, she thought, for a heart-to-heart talk. The scene was perfectly set. They were alone; it was the middle of the night; the threat of death hung over them. There was even whisky to loosen her tongue. Earlier, sitting with the policeman, she had let slip hints and clues, unable to stop herself, shock having disoriented her. The relief, the sense of freedom, had been dangerously exhilarating. How much better it would feel to unburden oneself completely, to confess everything, to be free of it all at last. But that was impossible. To confess to a stranger was absurd in itself. To tell Hugh was out of the question. She would keep her secrets. She would tell no one.

  There was a pause and then, in the near distance, the sound of an explosion. It made Hugh jump. Letitia squeezed his hand, holding it tight in her bony fingers. He still needs me, she thought, and this thought gave her strength. It was Hugh who was important now. He had always been the one who mattered, ever since the day when he unexpectedly arrived at The Firs.

  Looking down at his hand held in hers, she recalled a tiny boy with wide eyes and dark curls and a little pouting mouth; a boy twisting an antimacassar in his little fists as she told him tragic news in her house in Warwickshire long ago.

  Chapter Two

  ‘WHEN THE RAIN stops,’ said Letitia in 1902, ‘we can go into the garden, or perhaps take a walk up Hunter’s Hill.’

  Hugh scowled. His face was pressed up against the french windows and his breath was obscuring his view of the wet outdoors. He did not want to go into the garden or walk up some boring hill. He did not want to be in this strange house with an old woman he had never met before. He did not want to be in this country at all. It was a cold, grey, wet, horrible country.