Read Online Mrs Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters - Free Book Online Page B

yet she couldn’t imagine why he would. She smoothed her pinny, tucked loose hair behind her ear, cleared her throat. She stood still for a few seconds, breathing in and out, a mechanical effort, consciously performed. She felt a crippling tightness in her throat. Yet she had to be a picture of composure. It didn’t do to be anything else. And her knees almost buckled beneath her. She breathed, deep and loud, she tucked more hair behind her ears. She hummed a tune she had heard on the wireless. She would appear normal. On no account could she … she yanked open the door.
    The squadron leader pushed past her, grinning, carrying a box, bulky and heavy-looking.
    ‘What on earth is this?’ said Dorothy, hands on hips, head on one side, while Jan Pietrykowski placed the box on the kitchen table. Her curiosity emboldened her, if only temporarily, and she forgot the tight throat, the quick breathing, the sweat pooling like oil slicks behind her knees.
    ‘A gift for you. For you, Mrs Sinclair.’
    ‘Oh. Why, thank you. What on earth is it?’
    ‘A gramophone.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘You like music, no? I think so, because you always hum. At least, these two times we have met you have been humming as I walk down your path. So I bring you music.’
    She did like to hum – just simple tunes, half heard, half remembered – and perhaps she liked to dance too, in her mind, humming her tunes, performing her duties, trying not to think about war and absconded husbands, dead babies and dead pilots. It was only natural.
    Jan carried the gramophone through to the parlour, at Dorothy’s request. She cleared the sideboard and blew off its thin layer of dust. He returned to his car – ‘Not my car, our squadron car’ – and came back in with a box of records, which he placed alongside the gramophone.
    ‘I can’t accept all this, Squadron Leader,’ said Dorothy, collecting herself. ‘I’m afraid you can’t leave this here.’ She hated to sound disapproving.
    ‘Then it is a borrowing, from me to you, and you will return it to me when I have to depart, when I return home, whenever that shall be.’
    ‘A borrowing?’
    ‘Yes. Actually, it is not mine. It belonged to another man, a good pilot, an Englishman. I met him when I first arrived in your country. A generous man, of good spirit. He told me if anything were to happen to him, I must make sure his gramophone is looked after and is enjoyed. So I think of you, in this quiet cottage, and your girls who you tell me about. Girls, they love to dance, I think. And you too?’
    ‘Dance? Me? No.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘We shall see. Anyway, this is yours for as long as you want it, and to enjoy and to use.’
    ‘Don’t your men want it? For entertainment?’
    ‘We have wirelesses. We have dances. In fact, next Saturday. I invite you and your girls to the dance, as my guests.’
    ‘But I don’t dance. Especially at dances.’
    ‘No need to dance. We can sit and talk. Be like friends.’
    ‘That sounds very nice. I’m sure Aggie and Nina would be thrilled. They so enjoyed the last one.’
    ‘We must have fun when we can get it, in times like these. If my men can’t fly yet, we can drink, eat, make joke, no? No need for guilt.’ And the squadron leader smiled at Dorothy. ‘I shall collect you next Saturday, at seven o’clock,’ he announced.
    ‘All right,’ said Dorothy, smiling broadly despite her misgivings. ‘I’ll go, as you have been so kind as to ask. But I shall not dance.’
    The girls, tired and grubby, arrived back at the cottage around half past five. They took one look at the gramophone and the records, and it seemed their world was complete. They searched eagerly through the stack of records, digging out their favourites. Aggie was delighted to find some Billie Holiday songs – ‘You must listen to her, Dot!’ – and that odd, brittle-strong voice was now flowing through the house, the jaunty music restoring something to them all. Dorothy immediately