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The Very White of Love: the heartbreaking love story that everyone is talking about!
S C Worrall
‘A love story told in exquisitely poetic letters’ DAILY MAILTorn apart by war, their letters meant everything…‘My love. I am writing to you without knowing where you are but I will find you after all these long months…’3rd September 1938. Martin Preston is in his second year of Oxford when his world is split in two by a beautiful redhead, Nancy Whelan. A whirlwind romance blossoms in the Buckinghamshire countryside as dark clouds begin to gather in Europe.3rd September 1939. Britain declares war on Germany. Martin is sent to the battlefields of France, but as their letters cross the channel, he tells Nancy their love will keep him safe. Then, one day, his letters stop.3rd September 1940. It’s four months since Nancy last heard from Martin. She knows he is still alive. And she’ll do anything to find him. But what she discovers will change her life forever…
S. C. WORRALL was born in Wellington, England and spent his childhood in Eritrea, Paris, and Singapore. Since 1984, he has been a full-time freelance journalist and book author. He has written for National Geographic, GQ, The Times and the Guardian. He has also made frequent appearances on Radio and TV, including the BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent; NPR and PBS. He speaks six languages and has lived in or visited more than 70 countries. The Very White of Love is his debut novel.
Copyright (#ulink_18ef937b-a9f5-5979-86bb-74a94d0473e9)
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Simon Worrall 2018
Simon Worrall asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008217525
Version: 2018-09-17
For Nancy and Martin
Je lève mon verre
Her hands are clasped in the blue mantle of heaven
And the sea, her haven, is flecked with the white of love
‘OUR TRUE BEGINNINGS’ BY WREY GARDINER
Foreword (#ulink_a09934be-39f4-50fe-98e9-efcb19d17cd6)
It was decorated with red roses and tied with a piece of red ribbon, a battered, cardboard chocolate box at the bottom of my mother’s wardrobe. I lifted the box out and put it on the bed next to a pile of her clothes we were donating to charity. Inside were bundles of love letters, yellow with age, tightly bound with string, fastened with tiny knots, as if those knots alone could hold them in place.
Back at my cottage in Herefordshire, I erected a makeshift altar in the window of my study, which overlooked the pub garden and the Black Mountains beyond. For an altar cloth I laid one of my mother’s favourite blue shawls over the top of a chest of drawers, placed a vase of wild flowers and some mementos of her life: a silver bracelet she had bought in Singapore; some of her notebooks and poems; a photograph of her, aged five, sitting with a white, cotton bonnet on her head, in a field of daisies. At the back of this improvised altar, I placed the box of letters and two white candles.
Her death was still new and raw. So the box lay unopened for almost two weeks. I sat by the kitchen window watching the river flow past, hoping it could take my sadness with it. I was a motherless child in my fifties. Divorced. Anchorless. Winter was coming. I went for long, lonely walks across frost-covered hills. In the evening, I doused myself with wine and nicotine, falling asleep to the sound of otters whistling on the riverbank, under a moon that shone like a silver penny on a bolt of black satin.
Then, one rainy afternoon when I was stuck indoors, I untied the knots.
Contents
Cover (#u38b8f20f-5ad5-5a4d-87e4-240a103d6d38)
About the Author (#udcc6c011-8737-5a7d-bf44-6d95f9a20fc4)
Title Page (#u6839532d-1f4a-5cb3-843d-318e1e5f4fbb)
Copyright (#ulink_db103bd7-67d7-54a8-bf76-328b9891fa63)
Dedication (#uf0d2882d-2e1e-5db2-b328-ea3a4f8962ce)
Epigraph (#uf4280d02-ecb3-5ca4-8a60-97d075ba2319)
Foreword (#ulink_fdccea48-9c67-5e6f-8d55-90f78aa0f4af)
Part One (#ulink_5616d26a-38fe-5267-8922-68a94040b564)
19 SEPTEMBER 1938: Whichert House (#ulink_fce1d7c3-3066-521a-99f9-b6a57239e802)
14 OCTOBER 1938: Oxford (#ulink_273cc46f-574e-5be6-92c9-30244f8c56d8)
22 OCTOBER 1938: Whichert House (#ulink_fb8c1956-55d8-5516-b231-c59408c68ce0)
12 NOVEMBER 1938: London (#ulink_2e0d570b-c4c8-5ab3-a304-d8fc9cdf1ae2)
CHRISTMAS EVE 1938: Whichert House (#ulink_04993e93-b58f-510b-afc1-56b7774dc6c6)
12 FEBRUARY 1939: Oxford (#ulink_f787dbcc-5833-5048-8d4b-5b432ca0aa16)
25 APRIL 1939: The Oxford Union (#ulink_765659ef-0c76-5966-9097-7b787356ade1)
25 JUNE 1939: The River Isis, near Oxford (#ulink_39ee9e77-bb9e-5a32-9ba2-d42802d40a09)
3 AUGUST 1939: Whichert House (#ulink_08396f75-e7ec-5e81-a9fe-82b174ca244c)
5 AUGUST 1939: Whichert House (#ulink_064d9370-9cd3-5513-8894-c789fefbd9e5)
6 AUGUST 1939: High Wycombe Railway Station (#ulink_4d68136c-bbc2-5084-8482-bb17fe768745)
3 SEPTEMBER 1939: Blythe Cottage (#ulink_451141f3-1fe2-5c4f-88f7-e1d3142104ca)
23 SEPTEMBER 1939: Whichert House (#litres_trial_promo)
3 DECEMBER 1939: Whichert House (#litres_trial_promo)
13 DECEMBER 1939: Levant, Sussex (#litres_trial_promo)
CHRISTMAS DAY, 1939: Blythe Cottage (#litres_trial_promo)
16 JANUARY 1940: Newbury Racecourse (#litres_trial_promo)
18 JANUARY 1940: The English Channel (#litres_trial_promo)
1 FEBRUARY 1940: Wahagnies, France (#litres_trial_promo)
21 FEBRUARY 1940: Wahagnies (#litres_trial_promo)
10 MARCH 1940: Wahagnies (#litres_trial_promo)
11 MARCH 1940: Wahagnies (#litres_trial_promo)
13 APRIL 1940: Mousehole, Cornwall (#litres_trial_promo)
21 APRIL 1940: Whichert House (#litres_trial_promo)
22 APRIL 1940: Northern France (#litres_trial_promo)
6 MAY 1940: Wahagnies (#litres_trial_promo)
12 MAY 1940: Wahagnies (#litres_trial_promo)
14 MAY 1940: A Road Near the River Ath (#litres_trial_promo)
15 MAY 1940: Waterloo, Belgium (#litres_trial_promo)
19 MAY 1940: A Road Near Gaurain-Ramecroix (#litres_trial_promo)
19 MAY 1940: Tournai, Belgium (#litres_trial_promo)
20 MAY 1940: The Escaut Canal (#litres_trial_promo)
22 MAY 1940: The Escaut Canal (#litres_trial_promo)
23 MAY 1940: The Road to Hazebrouck (#litres_trial_promo)
24 MAY 1940: The Road to Hazebrouck (#litres_trial_promo)
25 MAY 1940: Hazebrouck, northern France (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)
3rd SEPTEMBER 1940: Blythe Cottage (#litres_trial_promo)
9 SEPTEMBER 1940: Blythe Cottage (#litres_trial_promo)
22 SEPTEMBER 1940: Blythe Cottage (#litres_trial_promo)
6 OCTOBER 1940: Blythe Cottage (#litres_trial_promo)
11 NOVEMBER 1940: Blythe Cottage (#litres_trial_promo)
CHRISTMAS DAY 1940: Blythe Cottage (#litres_trial_promo)
19 JANUARY 1941: Blythe Cottage (#litres_trial_promo)
9 FEBRUARY 1941: London (#litres_trial_promo)
29 APRIL 1941: Blythe Cottage (#litres_trial_promo)
27 MAY 1940: The Orphanage (#litres_trial_promo)
27 MAY 1940: The Orphanage (#litres_trial_promo)
6 SEPTEMBER 1941: Thurlestone Sands, Devon (#litres_trial_promo)
Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Part One (#ulink_99847a44-c454-5ba3-956e-71d0721de811)
ENGLAND & FRANCE
SEPTEMBER 1938 – MAY 1940
19 SEPTEMBER 1938 (#ulink_91162259-bf36-5874-a850-617352eb23f0)
Whichert House (#ulink_91162259-bf36-5874-a850-617352eb23f0)
Dear Aunt D.,
I’ve fallen madly in love with Nancy Claire Whelan. You’ve every right to laugh when you read that, but I’m terribly happy to have found someone so fond of me, who leaves everyone else I’ve met in the cold. I’m sure you’ve seen her riding her bicycle about town. She lives down the road from you at Blythe Cottage. She is an only child – and a redhead! Her father is in the Revenue Department of the civil service. She was at school in Oxford so she knows it well and she has also lived in France and Germany. She speaks the languages, she sings and acts, she’s intelligent, pretty and, a thing I envy her for, has a good and interesting job.
He lifts the pen and looks out of the window. Outside, a soft rain is falling. Just thinking of her makes him want to dance around the room. But he doesn’t want to tell his aunt everything.
Meeting her was a strange and fateful coincidence . . .
Martin opens his eyes. There’s a thudding pain in his head, as though someone has inserted a fist into the back of his skull and is trying to force the knuckles out through his eyeballs. He groans and rolls over. Fragments of the previous evening float to the surface of his alcohol-curdled brain, like bubbles in a pond. They’d started at the Red Lion, across the street from Whichert House, tankard after tankard of warm beer followed by shots of Bell’s. Hugh Saunders, who is also up at Oxford, had driven over from Gerrards Cross, one of a network of friends in south Buckinghamshire Martin got to know while staying with his Aunt Dorothy during the school holidays. As children, they rode bikes together, played golf and tennis, and later courted the same girls. A couple of old friends had also come down from Aylesbury. It’s the holidays. Four weeks away from Oxford University where Martin is about to start his second year. Four weeks with no essays to write or tutorials to attend. Aunt D. and the rest of the family are off fly-fishing in Scotland. He can come and go as he pleases, stay up as late as he wants, drink too much.
From the Red Lion they’d driven to the Royal Standard of England: a cavalcade of cars swerving down darkened lanes. Hugh bet him half a crown that he’d get to the pub first. ‘Nobody beats the Bomb!’ Martin shouted, as he leapt into his racing-green Riley sports car, pulled his goggles down and raced off down the narrow lanes, throwing the Bomb into blind corners at sixty miles an hour, Hugh’s headlights so close to his rear bumper that Martin kept thinking at any second Hugh’s Alvis would come crashing through the back window. On the hill down from Forty Green, the crazy fool had tried to overtake him! Their spoked wheels almost touching, it was all Martin could do to keep the Bomb from mounting the hedgerow.
At the Royal Standard, they’d laughed and told stupid jokes about girls, but mostly they had talked about cricket. At closing time, Martin invited everyone back to Whichert House, where they stayed up most of the night, drinking Irish whiskey until they passed out in the living room. As the birds began to sing, Martin climbed the stairs to the little, yellow-painted room in the eaves where he’d spent much of his childhood.
His eyelids are practically taped together. He squints at the framed painting on the opposite wall. A circus scene. A relic of childhood. During school holidays, he would lie here in bed counting the different animals. The tigers in their cage. The bear. The elephant on its chain. Now, his mouth feels like it has grown fur inside it during the night. His breath smells like a rotten cheese. He groans. Then he remembers. He has to get to the post before it closes.
‘Bugger!’ He leaps out of bed and throws on his clothes. ‘Bugger!’
