The letter reader, p.1
The Letter Reader, page 1
Also by Jan Casey
The Women of Waterloo Bridge
Women at War
The Woman with the Map
THE LETTER READER
Jan Casey
AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS
www.ariafiction.com
First published in the UK in 2023 by Head of Zeus Ltd, part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Jan Casey, 2023
The moral right of Jan Casey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (PB): 9781803283845
ISBN (E): 9781803283821
Cover design: Jessie Price/HoZ; background: Rory Kee
Head of Zeus Ltd
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM
To my beautiful grandchildren. With all my love. XXX
Contents
Welcome Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Acknowledgements
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
Prologue
June 1941
Connie hitched her skirt above her knees and ran to catch the number fifty-three as it pulled away from the stop. Grabbing hold of the rail, she hauled herself up onto the platform, nodded to the conductor and found the last empty seat upstairs.
Whilst Connie watched, the man next to her rubbed a spyhole in the condensation on the window and tried to peer out at the rubble and debris before the glass fogged up again.
‘It’s a filthy day,’ he said, the combined smells of soot, wet dog and fried sausages rising from his wool coat when he turned towards her. ‘Got far to go?’
‘The recruiting office,’ Connie said. ‘In the West End.’
‘Oh, yes,’ the man said with enthusiasm. He had a kind, fleshy face and a scar over one eye where it looked as though a deep layer of skin had once been peeled off. An injury from the Great War, Connie guessed. ‘Good on you,’ he said. ‘I wish I could do my bit, but those days have long gone I’m sorry to say.’
Connie smiled at him. ‘I’m sure you’ve done more than enough.’
‘What’s it to be?’ he asked. ‘WAAFS, ATS, WRNS or something closer to home? I was reading just the other day that women are going to be conscripted into all sorts of jobs – construction, air raid wardens, drivers, working in munitions factories, as well as the usual nursing and teaching.’
‘My husband’s in the Navy so I’m hoping to be a Wren,’ Connie answered.
‘Lovely uniform,’ the man said. ‘Much more sophisticated than the … Damn, another detour.’
The bus turned sharply left and Connie, along with everyone else, stretched her neck to see which route the bus was going to take, but there must have been an unaccounted-for obstruction in the road because, without warning, the front wheels tipped violently and the bus lurched forward before teetering this way and that.
Several cries could be heard from passengers all around the bus as they were hurtled out of their seats and their heads and arms and knees bashed against windows and metal poles and each other. A child started to sob and a young woman shouted, ‘Mum, Mum, can you hear me?’ Connie had only been able to steady herself by leaning against the man next to her, but his head had been flung forward against the handrail and when he stared at her – a dazed look in his eyes – a rivulet of blood streamed down over the already damaged part of his face.
‘Here,’ Connie said, taking a handkerchief from her pocket. ‘Let me help you.’ She dabbed at his wound as best she could then untied the belt from her mac and wrapped it around his head.
‘Thank you, my dear,’ the older man said as he laid his trembling hand on Connie’s arm for a moment.
Those who were able began to stand and shuffle about and try to make their way up the central aisle that was now an alarmingly steep incline, but the bus shifted again with the change of weight. A pregnant woman moaned and a man, nursing his swollen, misshapen wrist, tried to calm the person next to him who might have been his mother or an aunt or a complete stranger.
‘Stay perfectly still,’ a voice called from downstairs. ‘The emergency services are on their way. Is anyone seriously injured?’
The passengers appraised each other, all of them stoically reluctant to give themselves preferential treatment.
‘Yes,’ Connie shouted. ‘There’s a gentleman with a nasty cut to his head, a woman who doesn’t look injured but is heavily pregnant and a man with a broken arm. I can’t see any of the others very well.’
‘Are you able to walk as lightly as possible around the seats and give me a roundup?’
‘Yes, perfectly able,’ she said, although her heart was thumping and her legs felt as if they were filled with loose wadding rather than anything solid.
On tiptoes, Connie made her way from seat to seat, trying to look reassuring and as if she knew what she was doing. She shouted down that there was an elderly man with a very sore shoulder, a young woman who had bashed her cheek against the window, a child who’d been forced under a seat and had heavy bruising to his knees, an older woman who’d fainted but had now come around and many who were in shock.
Every time she took a step, or someone moved, the bus pitched forward and the passengers couldn’t help gasping or groaning. It felt as if they were dangling on the edge of a cliff and it would take nothing more than the slightest shift to send them into an abyss. Then there was the frightening smell of fuel.
Not wanting to alarm the others, Connie slowly and deliberately made her way to the top of the steps and signalled her fears to the man at the bottom. Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw the faces of the passengers staring at her. Some were ghostly and pale, others red and sweating, quite a few waxen and bewildered, all of them trusting and expectant. Her stomach lurched when the implications hit her. These people had somehow been led to think she was their spokesperson, their leader; the woman who would ensure they were led to safety.
I hope I can live up to the looks on their faces, she thought as she realised that whilst she’d been concentrating on the others she’d begun to feel much less jittery herself. The man with her belt wrapped around his head nodded and gave her the glimmer of a smile, and in that instant she knew that whatever happened she would do her best to remain in control and useful to these people who had put their faith in her.
‘Right, the rescue services are here,’ the man called up to her at last. ‘Can you bring the passengers down one by one?’
A surge of fear travelled through Connie’s arms and legs and a wave of cold sweat broke over her. But what else could she do? Run down the stairs and leave those who had fared less well than her to their own devices?
Taking a deep breath, she manoeuvred the others down the steps that stood at a giddy angle and handed them to the safety of the ambulance crews. When she got to the man who’d been sitting next to her, he said, ‘I’m terribly sorry, my dear. That’s probably my blood on your mac.’
She smiled at him. ‘Don’t give it another thought,’ she said. ‘Just worry about yourself.’
When the bus was empty, Connie was handed out onto the pavement where she stood for a moment taking in the scene. Ropes had been secured to the vehicle where it seesawed over a large pothole, fire and rescue crews shrouded in smoke and murk deliberated what course of action to take next, piles of refuse and wreckage were heaped on the pavements and Connie thought the whiff of stale food on a damp coat was much more preferable to the strong stench of leaking gas.
The ambulances had clanged their way towards the nearest hospital and for a moment, Connie felt overwhelmed with sadness that she’d never know the fate of the people she’d helped. Then she reminded herself that if everyone chased after someone they’d looked out for during these last months, no one would achieve anything else.
A small group of passengers who were well enough to continue their journeys under their own steam had congregated under the overhang of a shop and one of the women beckoned to Connie. ‘Ta very much,’ she said. ‘I’m glad someone knew what they were doing.’
Connie laughed. ‘I don’t think any of us could have had previous experience of being in that precarious situation. Look at how it’s leaning.’
They all stared at the faltering bus and a collective shiver ran through them.
‘Are you a nurse?’ a man asked. ‘Or a teacher? You just got on with it.’
‘No.’ Connie smiled. ‘Neither of those, but I was glad to help out.’
The small crowd began to go their separate ways and Connie wondered how many incidents would bring her close to others for a short period of time before the war was over.
Suddenly, a chill passed through her and she went to tighten her belt then remembered it was wrapped around her fellow passenger’s head. So instead, she pushed her hands deep into her pockets and walked the rest of the way to the recruiting office, cautiously excited and hopeful that signing up to the WRNS would give her the same opportunity to feel – as she’d done today – that she could be of use in these uncertain times.
1
April 1967
Wednesday. That could only mean one thing. Or two, to be fair. Liver and onions for lunch and a lavender-coloured tabard washed and drying on the line.
From the kitchen window, Connie watched the nylon overdress dance backwards and forwards in the wind, then leaning a bit closer, she inspected what she could see of the clematis she’d planted the previous weekend. It seemed to have taken hold and she crossed mental fingers that it would continue to thrive. The flowers on the little label she’d nestled in the soil were a delicate blush and she imagined them clinging and climbing and covering the back fence. If it did well, she might secure some kind of lattice to the top of the wooden panels and train the plant along that, which would go some way to blocking out the sight of the cooling towers that loomed, like monstrous concrete sentries, over everything for miles around.
She stared at them now, mesmerised by their foreboding size, the clear definition between their dark grey rims and pale lengths and the clean austerity of their shape that was like an egg timer with the top cut off. Burrowed amongst the six towers were two cloud-scraping chimneys that spewed out a ceaseless torrent of smoke or steam infused with clouds of whatever it was the funnels themselves belched into the atmosphere. Her poor clematis probably didn’t stand a chance.
When Connie mentioned to Arthur the potential hazards of living so close to the power station, he would laugh and say there was nothing at all dangerous in any of the emissions, but she wasn’t so sure.
The kitchen timer buzzed and, folding a tea towel into a pad, Connie took the casserole out of the oven. She turned over the two pieces of liver, still pale and soft in the middle, stirred the onions around in the gravy, put the dish back on the hot shelf and set the timer for a quarter of an hour. Potatoes simmered in one pan and runner beans in another. Somewhere in the labyrinthine workings of the power station, Arthur would be hanging up his overalls and hard hat, taking off his steel toe-capped boots and shrugging on his mackintosh. As Connie laid the table, she imagined him bending to fasten his bicycle clips around his trouser legs, then straightening to secure his cycle helmet under his chin. He would wheel his bike through the grounds of the industrial site to the gate, set it in motion, clamber onto the seat, salute the security guard and be home in fifteen minutes, ready for his dinner.
Most of the other men they knew on the estate stayed at the works for their midday meal and came home in the evening to whatever their wives decided to cook. Millicent next door often served fish fingers that she kept in the small freezer compartment of her refrigerator. Sometimes she heated up frozen chips, too, or gave the breadcrumbed sticks of cod to her family with mashed potatoes and baked beans. Shirley on the other side concocted dishes made with an Italian staple called pasta. Arthur laughed when Connie described the recipes to him and shook his head if she suggested they try – just try – one or other or anything different.
‘No,’ he would say. ‘Millicent and Shirley and their ilk are too young to remember what we had to go through, so they’re always looking here, there and everywhere for something different and exciting, but the war was enough excitement for us, thank you very much. You must have had your fill, too. Anyway, I, for one, am happy to stick to our routine.’
But Connie, for another, was not.
She sighed, sat on the edge of a dining room chair and threaded the tea towel first through one fist and then the other. She realigned a pleat in the heavy, flowery curtains and tucked the material behind the sash holding them open around the patio doors. Of course she knew Arthur didn’t really mean the war had been exciting. That was merely his way of saying they should be grateful for the serene and ordered lives they lived now. But, she beat her hands on her thighs to make the point to herself, a little more excitement wouldn’t go amiss or, if nothing else, perhaps a slight deviation from their same-old, same-old. Chicken in a basket at the pub once every few weeks, or a film at the cinema, or a picnic, or – I don’t know, she thought – chops instead of pie on a Saturday.
But Arthur would have none of it, so it was a roast dinner on Sunday with leftovers on Monday. On Tuesday they had shepherd’s pie, Wednesday liver and onions. Thursday was stew with dumplings, except at the height of summer when they ate salad with cold cuts; Friday was fish and on Saturday they had steak and kidney pie. And there was a different coloured tabard for each day of the week, too, which she wore around the house and garden to carry out the housework she performed on a strict rota.
If only Arthur could be persuaded to have his dinner at the power station once or twice a week, she could, for a start, see more of her neighbours. They were all kind and included her in invitations to coffee mornings and get-togethers, even though they were younger than her. But time was tight, as she was busy preparing Arthur’s hot meal before lunch, and every afternoon was spent shopping for the next day’s food. Sometimes she was able to nip in to see one of them in the afternoon for a cup of tea, although by that time of day they were walking to collect their little ones from school and nursery, and if they did have others in their homes, it was inevitably friends with children who could amuse each other.
Perhaps she could linger in Barnby Dun on market days, although there wasn’t much there. Or catch the bus to Doncaster and explore the Minster and cobbled streets without Arthur checking his watch and fussing about the weekend being the only time he had to weed the garden or sweep the paths.
What she really longed for was a job that would get her out of the house for a few hours every day. She’d spoken to Arthur on countless occasions over the years about finding a position behind the counter in a bakery or manning a reception desk in an office, but he wouldn’t give his permission. Just last week Millicent had told her about a job as a dinner lady at the local infant school. But when she brought up the subject with Arthur, he’d shaken his head and said, ‘I didn’t fight a war only to have to suffer the embarrassment of having others think I can’t provide for my wife.’
She’d stood behind him in her blue tabard, duster in hand, silently mimicking his words as she guessed verbatim what he would say. And as always, she’d dropped the discussion because she knew she wouldn’t get anywhere.
What was the point in torturing herself; Arthur was immovable on the subject of her working and really, she should be used to it by now. But if anything, her relentless, monotonous schedule was becoming more and more difficult to bear.
Craning her neck to peek over Millicent’s fence, Connie could make out the top of her neighbour’s head bobbing around in her garden. She was probably trailing after her toddler on his tricycle and as she did so, the breeze caught tufts of her short, auburn hair and sent them skywards. From this distance it looked as if the younger woman had had it cut again, something she did often, and Connie was intrigued to see the finished style. Her neighbour’s head disappeared from view and shame engulfed Connie at the thought that Millicent might have glimpsed her peering in her direction. An almost irresistible urge came over her to open the door and shout to Millicent that she wasn’t a prying, meddlesome busybody, really she wasn’t – but luckily she stopped herself in time.
