Chapter 12 Stephanie
Stephanie
Present day
Finn didn’t call, but he did message me. He said he was very excited about the mural and that he would help me in any way he could.
I read his message, gripping my phone tightly. I was relieved he’d not said it was a silly idea, or made excuses about why he couldn’t help.
I breathed out slowly. Maybe this could work, I thought. And probably I wouldn’t get the grant – I had no doubt there would be other more experienced artists applying – but I felt like even managing to get the grant application written and sent before the deadline would be a victory of sorts.
My phone buzzed in my hand again. It was another message from Finn.
He wouldn’t be around for a while because he was marking dissertations, he said. “But,” he added, “try this link.” Straightaway another message arrived with a password.
I was in the staffroom at Tall Trees because I’d been helping Tara with a stocktake at The Vine and there wasn’t time to go home before my shift. So now, intrigued to see what Finn had sent, I sat down on one of the saggy armchairs and clicked on the link.
It took me to a basic website, and after I’d typed in the password, it took me a moment to understand what I was seeing. It was the book – Elsie’s book of letters and messages and memories. All the pages that had been scanned in so far.
“This is amazing,” I replied to Finn. “Thank you.”
“Let me know if it sparks your creativity.”
“I will.”
It was infuriatingly hard to see on the tiny screen of my phone, so I got up and wandered to the main entrance of Tall Trees where Vanessa, one of the receptionists, was on duty.
‘Can I use the computer?’ I asked.
She dragged her eyes up from the book she was reading and gave me a hard stare. ‘Are you looking up something dodgy?’
‘No,’ I said, not sure if she was joking or not. ‘It’s about the history of Tall Trees.’
Vanessa raised an eyebrow and tilted her head towards the computer at the end of the desk. ‘Go for it.’
I pulled up a chair and sat down next to her. Then I opened the internet, typed in the link from Finn’s message, and entered the password.
On the bigger screen it was easier to see the pages. It was a real mishmash of different things. I got the impression that Elsie had simply handed over the notebook to the patients and told them to write whatever they wanted.
The first few pages were accounts of a bomb that had fallen at the air base at Biggin Hill.
I hadn’t known about that before Finn mentioned it the other day, though I’d known it had been an RAF base before it became the busy airport for private jets that it was now.
I zoomed in on a message and started to read, and once I’d got used to the old-fashioned handwriting, I was quickly engrossed.
The soldiers – airmen I guessed they would be called – had written all about how they’d been having their dinner when the bomb had dropped, with no warning.
One of them had written a detailed description of what he’d eaten, which made me smile.
Others listed the people who had died – lots of them women, to my surprise.
One of them drew pictures of the friends they’d lost, which I found very moving.
Another wrote a vivid account of dragging survivors from the rubble, rescuing them in daring and dramatic fashion.
It was so thrilling, I found myself biting my lip as I read.
‘Interesting, is it?’ Vanessa said. I looked up from the screen and saw her watching me curiously.
Oddly, I found I was reluctant to share what I was reading. I felt a bit territorial over this book already. So instead I just shrugged. ‘Local history,’ I said.
‘Is that what that Finn’s doing?’
‘Sort of.’
Vanessa nodded. ‘He’s cute.’
I looked at her. She was younger than me and she was related to Blessing in some way – a niece, or a cousin, or something.
I couldn’t remember the details. Vanessa was a student and working at Tall Trees on the side.
She liked covering reception because she could do her uni work at the same time.
I admired her work ethic, and I envied her stunning good looks, and I suddenly felt as territorial over Finn as I did over the book.
‘Cute?’ I said, ultra-casually. ‘You think?’
‘Hell yeah.’ Vanessa glanced at me sideways, pouting her lips like she was getting ready to snog an invisible Finn. ‘I love geeky men like that. They’re like Clark Kent.’
I laughed. ‘He’s a history teacher, Vanessa, not Superman.’
She raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow. ‘We’ll see.’
I felt a bit prickly, like she’d stolen something of mine. ‘He’s not going to be around much for the next few weeks anyway, because he’s busy at work,’ I said.
‘Shame.’
I shrugged, trying to show her that it didn’t matter to me what Finn did, and Vanessa gave me a little knowing half-smile and turned her attention back to her book.
The next few pages of Elsie’s book were hard to read. Not the writing – I’d got used to that now – but the words themselves. Some of the airmen had written letters to their families and sweethearts in case they didn’t come back.
“I wanted you to know that I treasure the time we spent together,” one man had written to someone called Ginny. I wondered if he and Ginny had ended up together or if they’d gone their separate ways.
“I hope you’ll be proud of me, Mum and Dad,” another wrote. “Because that’s all I ever wanted, you know. To make you proud.” He’d signed it, and added “age 19”.
I felt tears in my eyes, at the thought of this young man – just a few years older than Micah – who’d gone off to war, hoping to make his parents proud.
Making my own parents proud had never been one of my goals.
Mum was much prouder of Max – turning his back on “normal” life – than she’d ever been of me.
And Dad, well … I usually just got the impression that he was a little confused by me.
I always felt my presence made him feel guilty, as though I reminded him of his shortcomings somehow.
And obviously that meant he didn’t want to spend much time with me.
I wasn’t even sure if he’d told his new friends in Portugal that he had children.
Mind you, on the odd occasions when someone asked me if I had any siblings now, I would always be a bit vague and say I had a brother but we weren’t really in touch.
I took a deep, slightly shuddering breath in and Vanessa looked up at me but didn’t say anything and I was glad.
Maybe this was too much for me, I thought as I clicked on the mouse to open the next page. I was definitely on the mend, but I wasn’t the same person I’d been before and I wasn’t sure I ever would be. Maybe this wasn’t the right project?
The next letter was a sweet note to a new wife, who was pregnant with the writer’s first baby.
“Please tell our son or daughter that they were so loved by me, their father,” he’d written.
I pinched my lips together. “I hope you aren’t working too hard and please if you get the chance to be evacuated, you must go.
It’s not safe for you to be in London when the bombs are dropping and things are so bad. ”
Underneath the letter, someone else – Elsie, I assumed – had added a note: “AC1 Rogerson killed in action 19 December 1940”. And then, in a different colour of ink, there was another note adding: “wife killed in bomb in Stepney 11 December 1940”.
I covered my mouth with my hand, feeling the loss of this family like a sharp pain, all these years later. I wondered if he’d known his wife had died before he was killed. Perhaps not. I wasn’t sure how long news took to filter through in those days. It wasn’t as though people could just email.
‘Okay?’ Vanessa said, looking at me in concern. ‘What’s wrong?’
I shut the website down. ‘Fine.’ My voice was shaky. ‘It’s fine. I need to start my shift now. Thanks for letting me use the computer.’
She gave me a dazzling smile. ‘Any time.’
Feeling slightly wrung out, I hurried off to the staffroom to read the rota for my shift. I couldn’t do this, I thought. I was too fragile and wobbly. The idea of painting a mural about the history of Tall Trees was a good one, but not for me. Not when the history was so sad, and so raw.
I was on the late shift tonight, but though our residents went to bed early, it wasn’t time to start getting them into their night clothes quite yet.
In fact, a lot of the people on my corridor were playing cards in the lounge.
I left them to it and, grabbing a pile of information leaflets Blessing had asked me to make sure were given out, I went along the hall, just checking in on the ones who were settled in their rooms.
Val was one of the women who gave the card games a swerve.
I couldn’t blame her really because they did get very raucous and extremely competitive.
So I knocked on her door and went into her room, where she was watching Four in a Bed on the little portable television on her chest of drawers.
Someone – probably Blessing – had told me Val had worked in hospitality when she was younger and I’d scoffed at the idea, because she was really very prickly and I couldn’t imagine her running a hotel. But perhaps I’d been wrong.
‘Blessing asked me to give these out to the right people,’ I said, putting down one of the leaflets. ‘Make sure you at least glance at it, won’t you? Or she’ll have my guts for garters.’
Val looked at the leaflet without interest, then at me, more carefully this time.
‘Are you all right, Stephanie?’ she said.
I eyed her with suspicion because she didn’t often enquire as to how I was. ‘I don’t have any teabags,’ I said.
Val tutted. ‘I didn’t ask.’
Immediately I felt guilty. ‘I know, I’m sorry. I’m a bit out of sorts.’
‘I can see that.’ She nodded to where I’d put the information leaflet, which I saw now was about prostate screening, down on the table at the end of her bed and I screwed up my nose, and scooped it up again into the pocket of my tunic.