The Doomsday Testament(105)

‘We met in that old church hall by the cathedral, the one that smelled of stale sweat, flat beer and Capstan Full Strength. It was a time of hate, but you drove it away with your laughter. My soul was blackened and rotten, but you healed it with your goodness. My heart had turned to ice, but you melted it with the warmth of your love. When I picture your eyes they are the shifting colours of a tropical sea on a sunlit summer’s day; sometimes blue, sometimes green, their surface sparkles but in their depths lies the smoke and the fire that makes you you.

‘Your mother disapproved of me and the army disapproved of you, but you were clever enough to defeat them both. I can never smell the musty earthiness of old straw or feel the kiss of the sun on my bare flesh without thinking of you. You came to me bathed in the scent of elderflower and new-mown grass, your skin soft as velvet and hot as naked flame, and together we found a new place, far from war, far from pain, and far from fear.

‘I had forgotten how to live. You gave me life.

‘When the war found us again, your courage humbled me. Who would have believed we would ever become a target in our harmless old town? But then Hitler is a serial devourer of all that is good, with his Junkers and Heinkels, his incendiary bombs and his aerial torpedoes.

‘On the best day of my life, but one, you made me prouder than any man, standing tall before the priest even as the ground shook beneath our feet in the big shelter under the railway station. Remember how we laughed when he said, “Do you Margaret . . .” because you will never be anything but Peggy to me? When we emerged into that living hell, shattered buildings were our guard of honour and our confetti the falling ash. You smiled through your tears and spent our wedding night mending torn bodies and splinting broken bones, while I dug the living and the dead from the rubble that had been their homes. Coventry, 14 November 1941. And still we were happy. Because the seed had already been sown.

‘They appeared, like snowdrops at the end of March, earlier than expected but never more welcome. Elizabeth and Anne. Anne and Elizabeth. I held them in my arms and felt the life I had created squirm and bubble within them. I looked into their eyes and saw your eyes. Perfect. Have two new human beings ever been more perfect? How many hours did I have with them, and with you? I count them every day, but somehow I can never reach a proper tally. Did I ever see them smile? I dream that I did, but I do not truly know.

‘I try not to remember that day, Peggy, but the devil perches on my shoulder and whispers the details in my ear. I know I was at the camp when I heard the sirens. I ran, God knows how I ran, until the breath was like a knife in my throat and my legs collapsed under me. What is there in bricks and mortar to make them burn so? Flames, leaping from the roof like a giant funeral pyre. Flames, spewing from every window so it was as if I peered into the very mouth of hell. Flames all around. A sea of flames. No, an ocean of flames. I knew you would have been taken to the shelter, so why did I run to the hospital? But Elizabeth was sick, and Elizabeth couldn’t go to the shelter. So you stayed. You all stayed. I wept for you as I watched the hospital burn, all the time praying that you had escaped. All the time knowing – knowing – you had not. Then you were there. In the doorway. A shimmer in the heat. A smudge of darkness against the gold and the red. Of course, you would get them out, brave Peggy. You would smell the smoke and carry them through the wards and down the burning stairs and into the burning hall and out into the burning world. I called out your name, but the fire devoured it. Just as it devoured you. And Anne. And Elizabeth. You were on fire as you walked towards me, a pillar of flame with a halo of gold around your pretty head. Was it your feet that melted first? Or was it the tarmac? Did you hold them out to me as I ran into that wall of burning air? Did you cry my name as they held me back from you? I can’t remember, Peggy. All I remember is lying on the hot ground with my hair on fire and watching you melt, sinking slowly down until you and my babies became one with the burning earth.

‘And then I went mad.’

Jamie’s emotionless voice faded and the only sound in the room was Sarah’s sobbing.

‘You realize what this means?’ he said harshly. ‘My grandfather had another wife. Another family. If the Germans hadn’t killed that woman and her children Jamie Saintclair wouldn’t have existed. They died, so that I could live. How do you think that makes me feel?’

Her reaction astonished him. She lifted her head and her eyes flashed. ‘They had names,’ she snapped. ‘Peggy and Elizabeth and Anne. Don’t try to kid yourself that if you don’t give them names they don’t exist as real people, the way the Germans do by not mentioning the Jews. Spare me your fucking self-pity, Jamie. Matthew left you those pages so that you would understand. Don’t tarnish his memory and theirs by using it as an excuse to feel sorry for yourself. If you want to sit here and mope, that’s fine by me, but I’m going to pack.’