The Postmistress
By Sarah Blake
Audio finished 14 May 2012

England is at war with Germany and the US is resisting it. A Doctor from a fictional town on Cape Cod goes to London to help out in the Blitz of World War II, and also to escape the town where his first death-in-childbirth has happened.
The postmistress is a strange spinster who falls for the local town defence man. She is all about order and procedure. She has a letter from the doctor to give to his wife if he dies. She breaks the rules and reads a letter that suggests he is dead but can’t bring herself to let down the wife.
A radio correspondent meets the doctor and sees him die in an accident with a taxi after an air raid. She takes a letter from him but following the horrors of the fleeing Jews she records in Vichy France, she visits the Cape but can’t bring herself to give the letter to the doctor’s pregnant widow who doesn’t know he is dead.
The story describes the effects of recording people’s stories, and how a story keeps existence going. Other themes include how people deal with secrets, the truth and the telling of it.