The Air Raid Book Club(69)
“I think I better get Billy home to bed,” said Elizabeth. “It’s very late.”
Gertie kissed them both good night. “Thank you for coming. And for my beautiful picture.”
“I’ll be off now too, dear heart,” said Uncle Thomas, pecking her on the cheek. “Sparkling soiree. Haven’t enjoyed myself so much in ages.”
As they returned to the living room, Gertie spied the whisky bottle still on the side table. “One last toast?” she asked Charles, keen for him to stay a while longer.
“Why not?”
Gertie poured two glasses and handed one to him.
“Many happy returns,” he said with a smile.
Hedy picked up Elizabeth’s picture to admire it. “We should find a place for this.”
Gertie gestured toward a small, framed pastoral scene next to the bookcase. “You could take that one down and put it there perhaps.”
Hedy lifted the picture from the wall, and as she did, something slipped to the floor. She bent down to retrieve it. “I think this might be yours, Gertie,” she said as she unfolded it.
As soon as Gertie saw the words “My dearest love,” she knew what it was. The words swam before her, but she didn’t need to read them. She knew them by heart. Each syllable hung heavy in her memory like the pendulum of a grandfather clock endlessly ticking with guilt and regret. That was why she’d hidden the letter for so long. She could neither bear to part with it nor be faced with the daily reminder of its contents.
“Are you all right, Gertie?” asked Charles as she sunk onto the sofa, her face drained of color.
“It was my fault,” she whispered, clutching the letter to her heart as tears formed in her eyes.
When Harry first mentioned his cough, Gertie had dismissed it as a common cold. A week later, he took to his bed, and still, she didn’t send for the doctor. Harry would be all right. She had lost Jack, her father, and her mother, but Harry? Harry couldn’t possibly go anywhere. She simply wouldn’t allow it. On the day she came home and found him collapsed in the bathroom, she knew she’d made a mistake.
“Didn’t you know about his childhood condition?” asked the doctor accusingly.
Gertie nodded. “It was why he received medical exemption in the war.”
“Well, he should have come to us a lot sooner. He’s very sick.”
Gertie had left the hospital and gone straight to Southwark Cathedral. A service was in progress as she crept in at the back. She sat in the sacred calm, turning her despairing face upward toward the angels and archangels.
Please. Not Harry.
It would seem that someone was listening, as Harry started to rally. “He’s been very, very lucky,” said the same doctor in the same accusing tone.
As he began to recuperate, Gertie and Harry had agreed that daily visits were unnecessary and started to write letters to each other instead. Gertie wrote long tales of that day’s events at the bookshop: Of Miss Snipp informing their publisher’s representative, Mr. Barnaby Salmon, that it was a travesty that his publisher had let Florence L. Barclay’s titles go out of stock. Of how sad Mr. Travers was now that his wife had died. Of how cross she’d been when Hemingway had chewed through a first edition of Thomas Hardy poems. In return, Harry wrote with tales of hospital life: of a patient who argued with his wife before she picked up his wooden crutch and hit him over the head with it, and of the kerfuffle when the police had to be called. He told her that the nurse called Winnie was his favorite because she reminded him of a kind aunt who had always given him biscuits. His least favorite was called Enid. She had a sharp tongue and made him think of a storybook witch on account of the hairy mole on her chin. Gertie’s heart had danced with joy whenever the post arrived.
The letter she held in her hands now had been the last one she received. It had arrived on the day Harry was due to come home from the hospital. Gertie stared at the words through a blur of tears.
My dearest love,
Another night is over and all I can think is that I’m another night closer to being with you again. The doctors think I should be well enough by Thursday. I can’t wait to be safe with you and Hemingway in our dear little house. Being stuck in hospital for too long makes a man realize how lucky he is, and I am desperately lucky to have you, my darling Gertie. The day I walked into Arnold’s all those years ago was the happiest of my life. There isn’t a single moment that goes by when I don’t thank the god of fate for bringing us together. I’ve been thinking that we should take a little trip. Perhaps Paris to see the Bouquinistes? All I know is that we must live for the day, my darling. Life is fragile, and I want to relish every moment of mine with you.
Ever your loving husband,
Harry
“We still had so much life to live,” she told Charles and Hedy with an anguished sob.
They came to sit on either side of her, offering murmured comfort as Gertie’s grief surrounded her like a dense London fog.
“It was all my fault,” she said, ignoring their gentle protestations. “I should have insisted he go to the doctor sooner. I could have prevented his death.” She glanced at each of them in turn as she finally uttered the secret she had buried for so long. “Harry would still be alive today if it weren’t for me.”
Chapter 19