Write to me, maid, please? Send it to the Army Postal Service in Algiers. The office has just been opened or I’d have written sooner.
It’s awful not hearing from you. It’s a feeling worse than pulling up your squid jigs and finding them empty. That’s a terrible thing, let me tell you.
I miss you, maid. Even more than I miss my mam’s cod and brewis, and that’s saying a lot. Once you taste it, you’ll know what I’m saying.
My darling, I think about you from the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep – did you know it’s as cold as a turr on a ballycatter here at night? Never thought the desert would be cold. You learn something every day.
Tell me about the fire station and your sister and your dad. Tell me everything you’re doing. I want to imagine it all. You don’t know how much thinking about you gets me through these days.
If I don’t hear back from you, I’ll guess that you’ve had some sense talked at you and you’ve decided to give me the heave-ho. It’ll break my heart, maid. I expect George is buzzing around you like a nipper in August. I’ll bet he danced a jig when I was gone.
I love you, Ellie Mae. You know I do.
Thomas
PS: I’ve just looked. My heart’s still in my shoes.
***
Headmaster’s House
St Bartholomew’s Catholic School for Boys
Norwich, Norfolk
February 5th, 1943
My dearest Thomas,
I can’t tell you how happy I was to receive your letter! Yes, my darling, I’m here in Norwich, working at the fire station as I ever was, missing you every day. Poppy and Dottie are well, though Dottie has taken to moping about and being cross with me when I tell her I’m not interested in getting back with George since you left, except as a friend, of course.
I waited for your telegram. After you left, I listened for the telegram boy every day when I was home. It was the first question I’d ask Poppy and Dottie when I arrived home from work. But it never came. I thought you’d changed your mind. I thought, once you’d got to London, you’d realised how impossible it was for us to even think of a life together. We’re from different parts of the world, you’re Protestant and I’m Catholic, and you said your mother warned you about Catholic girls!
I was so upset. I’d sit in Chapelfield Gardens in my lunchtime and cry. I walked in Plantation Garden and cried. I cried all over Norwich! I’d take my engagement ring out of the box and put it on when I was alone in my room. I’d pretend you were about to arrive. I’d dress up in the green dress you like and even put on the lipstick you got me from the GIs. I’d imagine us dancing at the Samson. Then, of course, I’d cry.
Then, a couple of months after you left Norwich, I found your telegram in a drawer in Dottie’s room. I went quite mad with her, you can imagine! And after I read in your letter that you’d rung the house and spoken to Dottie, well, I was very, very cross indeed! And she said she’d forgotten you’d rung! I honestly don’t know what’s got into her. She’s become a right little madam. I’ve barely spoken to her since. I’m still very cross with her.
Here’s me running on about my sister problems. Darling Thomas, my heart is soaring and I’m happy as I’ve ever been. I’m waiting for you, my darling. Come back to me. I’ll be here.
Your loving fiancée,
Ellie Mae
Chapter 39
Tippy’s Tickle – 16 September 2001
Emmett heads further into the cave and steps onto a calcified ledge, reaching around a stalactite for the cloth bag. He unties the drawstring and lifts out a package the size of a basketball wrapped in one of Florie’s red bandanas. Unwrapping the bandana, he runs his hands over the gift he’s been working on for the past few months.
He doesn’t know where he got the idea from. It just came to him, as things often do, out of the blue. Just pieces of driftwood and old lobster traps he’s carved up and slotted together, like putting one of his mother’s puzzles together, until it has formed into a vase the shape of the earth. A flat-bottomed earth, open on top.
She probably didn’t even have a gift for his mam, seeing how she’d just showed up out of nowhere. His cousin, Mam had said. He didn’t need a cousin. They’d all been just fine without her. People complicated things, like when Sam came.
He’d been happy doing his boat work. He’d saved hard to buy Rod Fizzard’s old store. No one bothered him there. Home for noon dinner and supper, prayers and bed. Church on Sunday. Going out in the boat whenever he wanted. Now he’s got Sam there down at the store. He did that for his mam; took Sam on as a favour. And even though they got through more work, it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t the same as being on his own.
Sooner they both left, the better.
He wraps the vase back up in the bandana and tucks it into the cloth bag. Time to get back to the house. He can’t wait to see his mam’s face when she sees his gift. Nothing is too good for his mam.
I’ll set things right for you, Mam, don’t you worry. Don’t you worry at all.
Chapter 40
Norwich, England – 24 December 1943
The large red bauble sits like a newborn in its swaddling of newspaper. Ellie lifts it carefully out of its wrapping and holds it up to the ceiling light, smiling at her distorted reflection in the round ball. It had always been her favourite, and it had somehow managed to escape unscathed through twenty-one years of curious cats and Christmas trees pulled down by grasping toddlers. She rests it back in its newspaper nest and picks
