Free One Sunday by Joy Dettman Page A

kitchen, drinking tea, discussing Lizzie’s premonition of doom and hoping there’d be another call to connect which might offer more reliable information than Lizzie’s premonitions.
    Two peas in a pod, Miss Lizzie and Miss Jessie Martin, close-set eyes, narrow, beak-like noses, thin-lipped mouths. Lizzie’s features had settled early into worldly intolerance, while Jessie’s expression was long-suffering. They had the same tree-stump legs, though Jessie’s thighs and backside could not yet hope to compete with her sister’s; however, she was nine years Lizzie’s junior and thus had time to expand.
    Laws unto themselves, that pair of stickybeaking old maids, they’d been delivering telegrams and steaming open likely letters for thirty years. The telephone exchange offered a more immediate form of gratification.
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    At six-thirty Helen Squire was in her father’s library, willing the telephone to ring. She wasn’t supposed to be in the library, but before her parents left for Willama, her father had told her to listen for the telephone. There was a second line in the hall, which was the one he’d meant her to listen for. She knew that, but she’d asked to go to Willama with them, had pleaded to go, and he’d ignored her, so she’d come in here to listen, and to read old letters – not his private letters, only the ones addressed to Mr and Mrs Nicholas Squire.
    Safe to read this morning. The trip to Willama took over half an hour, then the same back, and if they had to talk to the doctors and see Rachael, then they weren’t likely to get back until eight at the earliest.
    The letters were in the bottom right hand drawer of his desk, two rows of them, still in their envelopes and placed there in chronological order. On her knees, head down, she read, replaced, selected and rejected until she found a letter from Arthur.
    My dear Mother and Father,
    News of Freddy’s death was a great grief to me. I hope you can take consolation in knowing that he died, if not in the action, none the less, for his country’s sake, and with good work to his credit.
    He was recognised as one of our best flyers. I have heard it said that our chaps seem to be better at it than the Germans or even the French. From what I have recently learned, he was flying the machine in such weather as kept most flyers indoors. Would we expect anything less of our Freddy?
    I try to take comfort in knowing he died in the way he would have chosen. We could not ask more for him, other than to hope his death was swift and painless.
    This place is hell on earth, and death not always swift and painless…
    â€˜You shouldn’t be in here, Miss Helen.’
    Mrs Johnson stood in the doorway on silent feet. Servants should have been made to wear clodhoppers with metal heels.
    â€˜I . . . Father said to stay close to the telephone.’ Helen stumbled to her feet, backing away from the open drawer.
    â€˜He didn’t tell you to listen to his private telephone or to go through his private papers, Miss. It’s not proper. He wouldn’t be pleased about it, you know.’
    Big grey eyes too wide, plump lower lip ever ready to tremble, Helen grasped that lip between her teeth, looked at the letter in her hand and not at Mrs Johnson, self-elected watchdog of Nicholas Squire.
    â€˜You hop out of here now and we’ll say no more about it. Has there been word of your sister?’
    â€˜They wouldn’t be there yet.’
    â€˜Doctor didn’t say what had gone wrong?’ Like her postmistress sisters, Mrs Johnson was after her own restricted information. That was where the resemblance ended. She was string-bean thin, dried out and wrinkled. Her breasts too were dry, for the first time in thirty-odd years. At fifty-four, her youngest child three years old, Mrs Johnson hoped her childbearing years were finally over.
    â€˜Father said the ambulance had taken her to