So why hadn’t he written back?
Love will guide him,
Mena thought as she arrived home on her bicycle from the Leicester Royal Infirmary one afternoon late in the month. It was a cold and windy day with a heavy sky full of racing clouds that seemed so busy they had forgotten to rain. Mena thought they would soon remember though as she discarded her bicycle in the usual place beside the coal shed and came in through the back door. She went straight into the sitting room where she hoped to find Pop so she could ask him if there had been any post for her today. She still had her coat and scarf on and Pop was there, along with her mother and Mary, which was a pleasant surprise. They all stood up as she entered. They looked pensive, Mena decided as she stopped and stared back at them, her smile eventually fading.
“No letter?” she said to Pop.
Pop shook his head. He was frowning.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sit down, Mena,” her mother said.
She sat in one of the armchairs and everyone followed her lead, only they perched rather than sat.
Mena smiled at them and gave a nervous laugh. “Whatever is it?”
Her mother fidgeted. Her hands made knots with her fingers. “You’ve not heard from your American boy in a while now, have you?”
“He’s called Danny,” Mena said. “Can’t you even say his name?”
“Not now, Mena,” Pop said.
Mena sighed and turned back to her mother. “It’s been three weeks,” she said. “That’s all. It’s nothing.”
“Three weeks,” her mother repeated. “And you were receiving letters from -” She paused. “Danny - regularly before that, weren’t you? “At least one or two letters a week. Isn’t that right, Pop?”
Pop frowned again and slowly nodded.
Mena didn’t like the line this conversation was taking. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You knew there would be risks,” her mother said. “It’s the same for Mary and - thank the Lord - she’s still hearing from Edward almost every other day.”
“It’s true, sis,” Mary said. “Three weeks is a long time.”
Mena couldn’t bear to listen to them, perhaps because they were voicing her own thoughts and in doing so it made it all the harder for her to ignore them. “There could be a hundred reasons,” she said, though right there and then she could only think of one: that Danny had read her letter and wanted nothing more to do with her. She was dirty. She was spoiled goods and what man would want her now?
Pop came to her defence. “We’ll give it more time,” he said. “A letter could arrive any day now.”
Mena caught the sharp-lipped glare her mother gave him for saying that.
“He’s given her up,” Margaret said. “It’s quite obvious. Now he knows about the baby, he doesn’t want the responsibility. He’s been gone two months and that’s long enough to forget our Mena. The longer we leave it, the worse it will be. People will talk.” She clasped her hands to her mouth. “The shame of it!” she added. “The church will ostracize us.”
Mena stood up. “The longer we leave what?”
Her mother looked up at her and sighed while Pop buried his eyes in the fire and began to fiddle with his pipe. She caught the odour of stale cigarette smoke and felt an arm around her. It was Mary, rubbing her shoulder, soothing her.
“What?” she said. “What is it? Tell me.”
“Very well,” her mother said. She was looking at Pop now. “We’ll give it another fortnight, but no longer.”
“Then what?” Mena said. She shook Mary’s arm away. “Somebody tell me!”
Her mother stood up and her face conveyed no emotion as she said, “You’re to be sent to a home for unmarried mothers.”
Mena felt the blood drain from her cheeks. She staggered back on weakening legs and caught Pop’s eyes at last as he slowly shook his head at her as if to say there was nothing he could do about it; that it was all for the best.
“You can start over,” Mary said. “Put all this behind you, eh?”
“What about our baby?” Mena said.
“Trinity House is a good Catholic home,” her mother said. “The Sisters of Enlightened Providence will look after you and the baby.”
“They’ll find a good home for it,” Mary said. “Then you can come back and get on with your life like it never happened.”
Like it never happened?
Mena couldn’t believe those words came from Mary’s lips. How could she of all people be so cold-hearted? Her head began to shake as she turned to Pop. She had tears in her eyes. “Pop?” she said, as if pleading with him to say something that would end this madness.
Pop bowed his head.
“Mary?” she said, her eyes wide as if to suggest that surely Mary would not allow this to happen.
“It’s for the best, sis,” Mary said.
Mena looked at her mother and her breath quickened in her chest. Her whole body began to shake until she felt too weak to stand. Margaret Lasseter made no attempt to disguise the satisfaction Mena knew she felt. Her thin lips twisted and one of her eyebrows slowly arched in triumph.
“No!” Mena screamed. “Pop, you can’t let her!”
Chapter Twenty-Six
T
he Tanners Bar at the hotel Tayte was staying at was typically quiet for an out-of-town hotel bar on a Sunday evening. The decor echoed the lobby area, featuring more dark wood and bright furnishings, such as a line of acid-yellow stools at the bar that stood out all the more because they were vacant. Tayte had suggested to Joan that they go through for a drink after he’d read the letters she’d brought to show him and they had made themselves comfortable at one of the tables; Joan with a whisky and water, Tayte with a Jack Daniels over ice.
He’d made good use of his notepad, adding Mel Winkelman to the information he had on Danielson, and he’d tried to give the letters back to Joan, but she’d told him to keep them, saying that she’d held onto them too long already and that she thought he would be able to make better use of them now.
“So Danny proposed to Mena,” he said, sipping his drink as he mulled the information over. He was thinking hard about what Joan had told him about Danny at her home earlier and how much the letters seemed to conflict with the idea that he’d raped Mena. Every instinct he had now told him that something wasn’t right with that picture.
‘I know what you told me about Danny earlier,” he said, “but I can’t believe that the man who wrote these letters to Mena could have begun such a relationship by raping her.”
Joan took a deep breath. “That’s why I wanted you to see them,” she said. “I’ve doubted my own ears ever since Mena brought them to me. I’ve been confused about it for a very long time.”
“And have you drawn any conclusions over the years?”
“No, not really. It’s just a feeling, much like the one you now have after reading them.” She paused, hovering her whisky glass before she took a sip. “You know, I often imagined that Mena had run away from home and had a good life, but when she never came back for her letters, as the years passed, I began to wonder if that could be true.
“Right now, I’m wondering why she felt the need to give them to you at all,” Tayte said. “Why she felt that she couldn’t keep hold of them herself. My only conclusion is that for some reason she was afraid of losing them and who better to give them to for safe-keeping than her best friend?”
“I’ve thought the same thing,” Joan said. She gave a little smile and added, “I like to think that Danny came for her after the war and took her back to America with him. If he had it would explain why she never came back for her letters - because she was with Danny and had no further need of them. But I don’t know.”
“It’s a possibility,” Tayte said. He snorted. “Maybe I’m looking in the wrong country. I could have stayed home.”
Joan wasn’t smiling. She raised her glass to her mouth and drained her drink back. “Promise me you’ll find out what became of her.”
Tayte gave a slow and serious nod. “I promise I’ll do my best,” he said, wondering again who else was looking for her and why, and what it might mean if they found her first.
Joan reached into her clutch bag. “If you do find her - if she’s still alive - will you give her this?”
She handed Tayte a pendant on a silver chain and he recognised it as a US dollar coin. It had a dent in the centre.
“Mena brought it to me with the letters,” Joan said. “Something else she never came back for.” She drew a deep breath. “I’ll leave you to it then,” she added. “I believe I’ve told you everything I know. I hope it will help.”
She started to get up, but Tayte stopped her. “Before you head back,” he said. “Do you have any idea who might have sent Mena’s suitcase to my client?”
Joan settled on the edge of her seat. She seemed to think about it. Then she said, “There was a friend of the family called Edward Buckley. He was like another brother to Mena and I heard that he was somehow caught up with her leaving. Just gossip around the village, but there might be something to it. He would be my best guess.”
“Jonathan mentioned him,” Tayte said. “He told me that Mary and Edward were going to be married, only it never happened.”
“That’s right,” Joan said. “They fell out over something towards the end of the war, before Mena left. I never saw him in Oadby again after that - or anywhere else for that matter.”
“Do you have any idea where I might find him? If he’s still alive, of course.”
“I’m afraid I have no idea,” Joan said. “All I can tell you is that his family lived in Hampshire at the time. They were titled, I believe.”
“Hampshire,” Tayte repeated, writing it in his notebook.
He stood up, keen to get started on the new information he had. With Danielson’s service number he knew he could open up a wealth of information that might be useful to him, and if Edward Buckley was from a titled family they would almost certainly be listed in Burke’s Peerage. Had he really helped Mena to run away? Tayte wondered why he would do that and whether the reason had anything to do with why he and Mary never married.
“Thank you, Joan,” he said, offering his arm to help her up. “I’ll walk with you back to your car.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
December 1944.
T
wo weeks had passed since Mena first heard about Trinity House and of her mother’s plans to send her there and she had received no more letters from Danny. She was at a loss to understand how she could have misread him so completely that at hearing her news he hadn’t even been kind enough to reply, if only to express his change of heart. It wasn’t like him. Danny was never that cold.
She thought her mother might have taken to intercepting his letters but she’d seen the postman herself on every one of those fourteen days. She’d even searched her mother’s room when she was out shopping, but she’d found nothing. Of course, with the war on there was another explanation as to why he’d not written, but Mena didn’t like to think about it. She’d given his details to Mary who had offered to look into whether he might have been killed in action or was perhaps missing, in which case there might still be hope, however slim.
Now that her fortnight was up, Mena had been locked in her room, apparently to save her from herself, but it was clear to her that her incarceration was for no other reason than to protect the family’s good name from the shame of her dissolute behaviour. Being isolated for long periods was nothing Mena wasn’t used to, but it was different now. Now she was her mother’s prisoner and the sentence she waited to serve felt like a death sentence to her. In less than a month her life had gone from salvation to ruin and as she waited for Pop to come for her she imagined that it was soon to become considerably worse.
She had been told to put on her yellow Sunday-dress. It had a high-buttoned collar and a white lace fringe and Mena hated it. It was old-fashioned and frumpy, which was why her mother liked her to wear it to church - and heaven help her if she left any of the buttons undone. There would be no church today, though.
When she heard the key in the lock and her bedroom door opened at last, her father stood in silence and waited. He had her coat and scarf with him, and as she passed him in the hallway, Mena thought how much older he looked today. He followed her without speaking and Mena wished he would say something - anything just to relieve the tension. Anyone would have thought they were going to a funeral were it not for that vile yellow dress. But she imagined he was hurting inside just as much as she was and although at times she would have wished him to be stronger, on reflection she would not have changed him.
It was the first Saturday of the month and it was a brighter day than Mena thought it had any right to be. Pop always said that skies like that were really the great shepherd’s flock roaming amongst the cornflowers. She knew better now, of course, but she still liked to think of such skies in that way. Those days, forever gone, seemed so innocent and so distant to her now.
They approached the Morris on the driveway and her heart began to drum in her chest when she saw that her mother was already sitting in the back waiting for her; and it was made worse by the fact that she didn’t even look at her as Pop opened the door and she climbed in. She sat as far from her mother as the limited space would allow and she kept her eyes fixed on Pop as he sat in front of her and started the engine. She watched him slam the door shut and it made her jump just the same.
It was some time before anyone spoke. They all knew where they were going and why and the occasion was hardly one to promote cordiality. Margaret Lasseter had a hat to match her pale-blue dress. She slid it from her lap towards Mena, filling the space between them and her eyes followed after it.
“Trinity House is the best home of its kind in the area,” she said. “The Sisters of Enlightened Providence won’t take just anyone so you’d better be on your best behaviour. If they like the look of you, I’ve arranged it so you can go at the beginning of next year.”