The Last Letter by Kirsten McKenzie

Author:Kirsten McKenzie [McKenzie, Kirsten]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786154347
Publisher: Accent Press
Published: 2016-10-24T04:00:00+00:00

THE PILOT

Phil Williams turned the little statue over in his hands. A beautiful example of Roman workmanship. By rights he should probably hand it over to the Museum of London, but there was something about a piece of treasure you’d found yourself. It was so smooth. He tried to imagine the craftsman who had shaped it, and its journey to Britain. Or was it crafted here? If only Pitt Rivers was still around to ask. A leading light in the dawning of the professionalism of British archaeologists, who were now a cut above their philandering grave-robbing predecessors.

Convalescing in a military hospital was not quite the holiday he’d imagined. His injuries were so minor compared to those filling the beds around him. He shouldn’t even be here, but for the infection that had set in. A pilot with a compression fracture of his arm would normally have been sent back to base on light duties, but it was amazing the damage one small microbe could inflict. So, here he was, surrounded by men who screamed in the night. Men without arms to worry about, or ears to cover when the screams got too loud, when demons came in the dark to haunt the men who feared they’d never be men again.

As one who needed minimal care, other than daily dressing changes and wound swabbing, he was left to his own devices. He read the papers to the men who couldn’t, all of them knowing that these barely covered the atrocities overseas, and only hinted at the losses on home shores. It seemed to the airmen and soldiers that the papers served to placate the populace, as if they were small children who needed the bosom of their mother to protect them from the truth that the bogey man was at the door.

The rest of his time he spent sitting outdoors. Never in his life had he imagined living in such surroundings. The sweeping lawns, views for miles, the peace. The ground around him was littered with the cigarette butts of other soldiers who’d sat on the same rough bench seeking peace and solitude from the horrors they’d seen, but today he was alone, contemplating the little statue he’d plucked from the earth. What else was still there and would it still be there if he ever managed to go back?

He’d been allowed to send word to Elizabeth that he’d had an accident, a minor accident, and he was recuperating in hospital, and that she was welcome to visit at the weekend. It was now the weekend, and with every footfall on the gravel path his heart soared thinking it was her. Every time he turned around, he’d been forced to smile at nurses, patients, harried visitors, and crying widows, until he gave up turning around at every sound. It wasn’t until her hand touched his shoulder, as light as a feather, that he realised she was there.

Gathering her in his good arm, he pulled her tightly to his body, breathing in her scent, the scent of happiness and freedom.

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