‘Didn’t want to move away from home?’ Morton questioned with a smile.
Susan rolled her eyes. ‘A pilot—Daniel Winter. We were engaged and he was quite often sent to the aerodrome at Hawkinge, so the last place I wanted to be living was West Kingsdown! Love did strange things to us WAAF girls during the war,’ she said with a fond chuckle.
‘Daniel Winter?’ Morton repeated, flipping the pages of his notepad. The name was familiar. Then he remembered.
‘Do you know of him?’ Susan questioned.
Morton frowned. ‘Well, he was living up at Cliff House in Capel in 1939—the exact same place that Elsie lived during her time working at Hawkinge.’
Susan stared at him, clearly mystified. ‘Really? Do you know, I had no idea about that? Isn’t that a strange thing?’
Morton wasn’t sure if it was strange or not. He certainly didn’t believe in coincidences. ‘Well, to the best of my knowledge, they never lived there at the same time, so maybe it’s not that strange,’ he ventured, not believing his own words. He wrote this connection on his notepad and then waited for her to continue, but her recollection had stalled.
‘Would you think it stranger if I told you that he was killed in an air raid, just a few hours after I had told him that Elsie had given birth up at Cliff House?’ she asked.
Morton met her watery eyes. ‘Really? You’re sure about that?’
Susan nodded. ‘Of course, he knew she was pregnant—one of the other girls billeted with Elsie up at West Kingsdown wrote to me with her suspicions—and he didn’t seem especially interested at the time. Elsie came back to Capel to give birth and I went to see her shortly afterwards. Daniel came to see me later that day and I told him—you know, just having a catch up as we didn’t see each other that often—and he got quite angry and stormed off.’
‘Then what happened?’
Susan took a deep breath. ‘He died in a bombing raid that night. Ironic, isn’t it? Like all the other pilots, he diced with death every time he got into his plane, but then he goes and gets killed by a stray bomb.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Morton said, seeing the emotion rising in her eyes.
Susan shrugged. ‘It’s one of those things. Everyone lost somebody. I carried on at Hawkinge, then met a local man, we married, settled down and had children and a very long and happy life together.’
‘And do you know what happened to Elsie after you saw her that day?’
‘Well, she obviously couldn’t keep the baby—it was put up for adoption—so she returned to her duties with the WAAF. What with censorship and the Official Secrets Act, I never got to know what exactly she was doing, or where she was posted. After the war we kept in Christmas card contact—the odd letter—I’ve got one here to show you, actually.’ Susan bent over and pulled a small letter from the container on the floor. ‘It’s not wartime, but it might be of interest. I must have kept it because it was her new address.’
Morton took the letter, unfolded it and read. Valletta, School Lane, Nutley, Sussex. May 19th 1968. My dear Susie, I trust that all is well with you & yours. Just a few lines with our new address—a charming little cottage we’ve named Valletta. We are thankfully emerging from an unsettled period; Laurie passed away four weeks ago, so there has been an awful lot of organisation to contend with. The funeral, as you might imagine, was contentious, as was the reading of the will. Everything—every damned last thing in the house that belonged to him—all of it went to his sister in the end. Still, we shall endeavour to be happy in our new home. Hoping to hear your news. With love, Elsie.
‘Peculiar,’ Morton said. There were so many parts of the letter that interested him.
Susan smiled. ‘Theirs was not exactly a happy marriage. Hence the contentious funeral and the will.’
Morton nodded, as a few things began to fall into place. It explained Elsie’s subsequent remarriage, just a few months following the death of her first husband. It also clarified that the division between the two sides of the family was via a diagonal slice with Lawrence, Kath and their mother Agnes on one side and Elsie and her children on the other.
‘She was happy, I think,’ Susan added, staring at the floor, recalling. ‘Once she’d escaped her husband’s tyrannical family.’
‘Did you meet any of her family at any point?’ Morton asked.
‘Only Elsie’s mother-in-law—old dragon she was,’ Susan said with a chortle. ‘It was brief—she threw me out of the house.’
‘Oh, right.’
Another laugh from Susan. ‘Horrible woman. I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. She died not long after. Suicide, if I remember rightly.’
Morton looked up quickly. ‘Suicide? Do you know why?’
Susan shook her head. ‘No idea, again, it was one of those consequences of war. More births, more deaths.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not sure what else I can remember. Oh—tell you what I do have,’ she said, rummaging in the container again. She handed Morton a number of small black and white photographs. ‘Daniel’s—he had a Box Brownie camera.’
Morton thumbed through the collection, examining each photo briefly and reading the handwritten captions on the backs. They
