Aunt Letitia Read online

  ‘No you can’t, don’t be so daft. Shut that door, Clive, and straighten the blackout. Where’s that blooming Peggy, and the baby?’

  ‘On their way down.’ Ian appeared in the doorway. ‘I heard them on the stairs behind me.’

  ‘Did you now.’ Mrs Mansell gave Ian a dark look.

  Letitia smiled. Mrs Mansell took a dim view of Ian but Ian took no notice. It was like water off a duck’s back to him after the Germans and the desert.

  Soon everyone was gathered in the kitchen: the inmates as Letitia referred to them all, including herself. Susie was sleepy as always but Clive was on tenterhooks, unable to sit still. Peggy, Letitia noted, had been crying. Mrs Mansell noticed it too. She took the baby and set her daughter to make tea, ‘to keep your mind off things’.

  Incendiaries were crackling outside now, and before long the high explosives began to fall, making the house shudder. The sound of the anti-aircraft fire rose to a mighty cacophony. As the noise grew, silence fell in the kitchen. They sat as if paralysed, eyes roaming but taking nothing in, all their attention concentrated on what was happening outside. Would the next bomb be theirs? Letitia felt the onset of cramp in her leg but such was the tension she dared not move.

  ‘I hope Mansell is watching out for himself.’ Mrs Mansell broke the silence at last. Her atypical concern for her spouse, who was out on compulsory fire-watching, seemed to Letitia somehow ominous. Something was going to happen.

  Ian was the first to stir. He began to spit and polish his boots, hunched over them, frowning. As Letitia watched him, cramp flared in her leg, gripping it. The pain made her gasp, but such was the din that nobody noticed. She knew she would have to move. Anything to ease the agony.

  Putting her hands on the arms of her chair, she prepared to push herself to her feet.

  Ian looked up from the shiny black heel of his boot, catching movement from the corner of his eye. Aunt Letitia was getting up but she seemed unsteady, jerky. Even as his eyes focused on her, she swayed then pitched forward. As she fell, she caught her head with a glancing blow on the edge of the table.

  ‘Aunt!’ Ian leapt up, scattering boots, brushes and polish. Mrs Mansell hovered over him as he knelt beside Letitia. Feeling for a pulse, he noticed blood congealing on her forehead.

  ‘Is she all right? Are you all right, Mrs Warner?’

  Clive was watching saucer-eyed. ‘Is she…?’

  ‘She’s not dead,’ said Ian quickly.

  Mrs Mansell straightened, taking charge. ‘Clive, run and fetch the doctor.’

  Clive shrank back into his chair, eyes swivelling in fear towards the blackout. ‘Go outside? I daren’t go outside!’

  Ian jumped up, galvanized by the emergency but still finding time to give Clive an encouraging wink. ‘I’ll go. Tell me how to get there.’

  Mrs Mansell gave directions. ‘You’d best take my bike,’ she said.

  Letitia came to, dimly aware that she was lying down but not sure where. She was able to hear but not, for the moment, to see, which was disorientating. Voices came out of the blackness. One was Ian’s. He was out of breath, sucking in air; but it was his tone that caught her attention, made her heart race even before she understood what he was saying.

  ‘It’s as if the whole city is on fire. It’s lit up bright as day, flames everywhere. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never imagined anything like it.’

  ‘You’ve put a puncture in my tyre!’ Mrs Mansell; aggrieved. The sound of her tetchy voice was oddly comforting as Letitia tried to get her bearings; but then came another voice, a stranger’s, a woman’s: calm, confident, professional. For some reason it sent a shiver up Letitia’s spine as she lay there in the darkness.

  ‘Mrs Warner? Can you hear me, Mrs Warner?’

  The blackness began to break up. Dots of light appeared like little stars. The dots grew, multiplied; began to clump together. A picture slowly formed, becoming ever more solid and detailed.

  She was in her own kitchen, inexplicably stretched out on the flagstoned floor, swathed in blankets, a pillow under her head. The electric lights were off, flickering candles the only illumination. A woman was kneeling next to her, the woman’s face peering down at her, concern showing in her green eyes. It was difficult in the half-light to guess her age: perhaps late forties.

  ‘I’m Doctor Kramer. How do you feel now, Mrs Warner?’

  So this was the locum, the female doctor who was reputed to be very good. But if I can remember that, thought Letitia, then there can’t be much wrong with me.

  ‘I’m …’ Letitia cleared her throat, summoned her reserves. Now was not the time to be feeble and helpless, not with all the inmates watching. ‘I’m quite all right. Just a bit of a headache.’

  ‘That’s not surprising, the way you bumped your head when you fell.’ Mrs Mansell still sounded aggrieved. ‘You gave us a quite a turn, falling down like that.’

  ‘I just got up too quickly, that’s all. A dizzy turn. It happens. There’s no need for all this fuss.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ said Doctor Kramer. ‘If you’ll just let me examine you….’

  Letitia felt it best to acquiesce. She didn’t, in any case, have the strength to argue.

  Doctor Kramer was competent and reassuring: no bones broken and the head wound just a graze. All the same, she said, she felt it would be best if she returned tomorrow – or later today, as it was – simply as a precaution. Letitia was about to say that there was really no need and that she already felt much better, but as Doctor Kramer turned to pack her instruments back into her bag, candlelight glowed on her red hair and Letitia had a sudden and overpowering feeling of déjà-vu. She frowned as her mind, muddled after her fall, groped to make a connection….

  The sound of an explosion came pounding and crunching into the kitchen, making the crockery rattle. Letitia’s eyes widened as she remembered the raid. How could she have forgotten it when there was so much noise, bombs falling, guns booming, aeroplane engines throbbing high above?

  ‘I must go,’ said Doctor Kramer. ‘I will be needed.’

  Letitia’s train of thought had snapped, she was firmly back in the present moment. The doctor seemed entirely a stranger now as she picked up her bag and headed for the door. She hesitated a moment, looking back as if she was about to say something, but Letitia barely noticed, her attention given to the raid.

  Doctor Kramer let herself out. As the blackout fell back into place, Letitia caught sight of a pulsating glow outside and was reminded of Ian’s words: it’s as if the whole city is on fire….

  The house shuddered as another bomb exploded nearby and suddenly Peggy leapt to her feet, shouting wildly, waving her arms. ‘I can’t stand any more of this! I can’t stand it!’

  ‘Be quiet, Peggy! Don’t be so silly!’ Mrs Mansell spoke sharply, shoving her daughter into a chair, but Letitia felt that Peggy had spoken for all of them as they crouched in the basement like rats in a sewer. The young at least had resilience, energy, belief in their own immortality. But what reserves were left at her age? And it seemed she could not even stand up without coming over all dizzy.

  She closed her eyes but did not sleep. The aeroplanes kept coming. The night wore slowly away.

  She woke late in her own bed, feeling cold and shivery. Her head ached.

  There was a knock on the door and Mrs Mansell entered, bearing tea in a cup and saucer – it was in order to use the best china upstairs. Letitia sat up and sipped the hot tea whilst Mrs Mansell fussed around, taking down the blackout and opening the curtains, plumping up the pillows, tut-tutting at the state of the dressing on Letitia’s forehead.

  ‘I feel quite my old self this morning,’ Letitia lied. ‘I may even get up later.’

  ‘I’d wait until the doctor’s been if I was you, Mrs Warner.’

  Letitia changed the subject. ‘Is Mr Mansell all right?’

  ‘All right? Well, I suppose you could call it all right. Black as the ace of spades, he was, whe
n he finally got home. And he says Parliament got hit, and the Tower, and Westminster Abbey, and hundreds was killed, and the fires was so hot you couldn’t get near ’em. They just burned and burned and nobody could do nothing about it.’ She gave a heartfelt sigh. ‘Ah well, it’s all over now. Till tonight, any road. You just lie there and rest. I’ll come and check on you later. Oh, and that Mr Ian said he will come and sit with you, but you just send him away if he gets to be a nuisance.’

  Doctor Kramer did not come until the afternoon. Letitia, who had been snoozing, woke to the sound of voices, Ian and the doctor talking by the foot of the bed.

  ‘She was talking in her sleep,’ Ian was saying. ‘Something about a baby. Peggy’s baby, I presume. There is nothing the matter with Peggy’s baby, but Aunt Letitia seemed worried about it.’

  ‘Ian thinks I’m deranged.’ Letitia struggled to sit up, was irked to find this was more difficult than she’d expected. ‘He thinks I damaged my brain when I hit my head on the table.’

  Ian had said nothing of the sort, but Letitia was annoyed with him – annoyed with herself, too. Had she really been talking in her sleep? She wished now that she’d sent Ian away, out of the room; but she’d not had the heart. He’d looked so anxious, like a puppy seeking approval.

  ‘I don’t think we need worry on that score,’ said Doctor Kramer. ‘It can only have been a glancing blow. There’s a little scratch, hardly any bruising.’

  Then why, Letitia asked herself, do I feel so frail today?

  Doctor Kramer ushered Ian out of the room, commenced her examination. Her diagnosis was something of a relief.

  ‘As I thought, no lasting damage from the fall. The wooziness you are experiencing is probably just a touch of flu. Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I will not pass out every time I stand up?’

  ‘The fainting fit was a symptom of the flu, I would say, rather than vice versa.’ Doctor Kramer pulled on her coat, smiled. There was something very reassuring about her. ‘I should stay in bed for a couple of days, if I were you. Let your friends make a fuss of you.’

  ‘I hate fuss.’

  ‘Humour them. They just want to feel useful. I must go now, I am rushed off my feet today, but I shall call back tomorrow or the day after – if you don’t think it too much of a fuss, that is!’

  It was impossible not to respond to Doctor Kramer’s warm smile, and her voice had a soothing lilt to it. Letitia was reminded of the feeling of déjà-vu she had experienced last night, but Doctor Kramer departed and the feeling faded again.

  The fuss began. It was not, however, as bad as she had expected, and the subject of her health was soon eclipsed by the momentous events of last night’s raid. London was still reeling, by all accounts. There had been nothing to match it throughout the blitz. Was it a taste of things to come?

  That evening, there was an alert just before ten. Letitia struggled down to the basement, leaning on Ian’s arm.

  ‘Now we’re really for it,’ whispered Clive. After the inferno of last night, he no longer thought of air raids as a big adventure.

  They sat waiting, faces pinched and drawn, ears straining for the sound of approaching aircraft. But it turned out to be a false alarm. The all clear sounded, and Letitia returned thankfully to bed.

  Flu and the effects of the fall kept her bedridden for a week. There were no more raids, but people lived in a state of fear, expecting the worst. The next raid, they said, would be heavier than the last – might even be the knockout blow which would end the war. But the days passed and the knockout blow did not come. The night skies remained empty.

  Ian departed, heading back to North Africa via Buckinghamshire and a brief meeting with his father: making the effort, as Letitia had asked. Doctor Kramer called regularly, seemed pleased with Letitia’s progress. She had a friendly, no-nonsense manner which Letitia warmed to. Mrs Mansell, on the other hand, regarded the red-haired locum with suspicion.

  ‘I don’t hold with women doctors, and that’s the truth.’

  ‘There is no reason why women shouldn’t be just as good doctors as men.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I for one like Doctor Kramer. She is …’ Letitia searched for the right words, surprised herself by saying, ‘… like an old friend: it’s as if she were an old friend.’

  Mrs Mansell pursed her lips. ‘Well, that can’t be right, for a start. Over-familiar, I call it. Don’t go letting yourself be put upon, Mrs Warner.’

  Letitia stifled a smile, sensing that Mrs Mansell was marking her territory. ‘I’ll come to no harm with you to look out for me, Mrs Mansell.’

  ‘Yes, well …’ Plumping the pillows, Mrs Mansell seemed to pound them rather vigorously to Letitia’s mind, before replacing them. ‘I’m only doing my job, Mrs Warner.’

  Doctor Kramer, too, was only doing her job, but she had a way about her that made it seem so much more. One felt that one had known her for years. It was, as Letitia had said to Mrs Mansell, as if she was an old friend.

  An illusion, Letitia told herself: simply a well-rehearsed bedside manner. Perhaps Mrs Mansell was right; perhaps one should not allow oneself to get taken in.

  ‘You don’t seem yourself today, Mrs Warner.’ It was the doctor’s fourth or fifth visit. ‘Anything I should know about? Any aches or pains?’

  ‘I feel fit as a fiddle,’ said Letitia; but that wasn’t entirely true.

  Doctor Kramer looked at her thoughtfully. ‘You had a close encounter with a bomb last autumn, I believe. Your regular doctor told me about it.’

  ‘You talked about me?’

  ‘We talked about all his patients – now my patients for the duration, of course.’

  Doctor Kramer was brisk, professional, reassuring. It was ridiculous to be wary of her. One shouldn’t be influenced by Mrs Mansell’s suspicious mind. If one didn’t feel quite right, then it was a medical matter. It was quite in order to discuss a medical matter with one’s doctor.

  She tried to explain.

  ‘Being caught in a bomb blast,’ said Doctor Kramer, ‘is enough to knock the stuffing out of anybody, young or old.’

  But in Letitia’s mind it had not started with the bomb; it had started with her fall on Oxford Street. At the time she had not taken much notice. There had been other things on her mind, and there’d been Hugh to think of: one had to put on a brave face for Hugh. In retrospect, it seemed very lucky to have escaped without breaking anything, though it had been bad enough even without that, grazing her hands and knees and jolting every bone in her body, leaving her shocked and shaken.

  It had started off wet that day, she told Doctor Kramer, but she had not let that put her off, and the ordinary act of shopping had become exciting and patriotic in bomb-blasted Oxford Street where defiant signs declared Business As Usual and Hitler Won’t Beat Us. She had felt buoyant – almost youthful – until, browsing in Selfridge’s, an overheard remark had worked as a catalyst, bringing back memories of Angelica.

  Letitia paused. She had rather strayed from the point, thinking aloud. She was supposed to be talking about the effects of the fall, asking for Doctor Kramer’s medical opinion, but the fall did not make sense without mentioning Angelica. Letitia wanted to make it clear that she had not tripped because she was a doddery old woman but because she had been too upset to see where she was going.

  And yet, perhaps that in itself was a symptom of old age, memories crowding in on her and – she glanced at Doctor Kramer – her mind playing tricks.

  The doctor was sitting on the edge of the bed, neat in her grey skirt and jacket, her eyes a brilliant green. Looking at her, it was as if she had stepped out of a dream, or from the pages of a long-forgotten novel: one felt that one had met her before. It was this which led one to let one’s guard down – to talk about things that were best left hidden.

  But why shouldn’t I think of Angelica if I want to, Letitia said to herself with a surge of anger; why shouldn’t I speak about her, too? Unlike their father, Let
itia had never been ashamed of her younger sister, or so she had told herself; but keeping quiet, avoiding the issue, wasn’t she treating Angelica as a skeleton in the family closet? Was she not, in effect, colluding with her father to erase Angelica from history?

  Some secrets, Letitia realized with sudden clarity, become shameful by the very act of keeping them. It had taken a knock on the head the other night for her to grasp this. The terrible air raid had not been without its uses. One might even say that it was Hitler who had paved the way for her.

  ‘I had a brother,’ Letitia said, her voice sounding in her own ears surprisingly firm and composed, ‘who, as a boy, was the apple of my father’s eye. But my father was nothing if not prudent. He wanted another son – a spare, as he put it – in case anything should happen to Jocelyn. But he was thwarted in his aim when Angelica was born, a girl. He came to regard her as a miscalculation. But that was not the end of it.’

  Letitia reached back in her memory, dredging up her shock and confusion at seeing her father’s reaction as Angelica’s shortcomings slowly became apparent. Shame, humiliation, disgust: she now recognized these for what they were. Yet for a time she had thought her father merely looked down on Angelica because she was a girl. Letitia had known, even at her tender age, that girls were inferior: her father had made it clear. She had accepted it, as children do, and it had not lessened her love for her big brother, the chosen one. It seemed entirely natural that he should be put on a pedestal. But she had loved Angelica too: Angelica who had laughed a lot, who had been unfailingly happy and open-hearted and, at times, touchingly helpless. Father had said that Angelica was different; but if she’d been any other way, she wouldn’t have been Angelica. It was only gradually that Letitia had come to realize her father saw Angelica’s strong points as her weakness, that her naivety was something to regret and feel ashamed of.

  It was much, much later when a change had come over Angelica. She had become silent, withdrawn, weepy; she no longer looked people in the eye. Perhaps, Letitia had thought, she had finally realized that she was flawed; perhaps she was lamenting her inadequacy.