The Postmistress by Sarah Blake Page A

these drawings?”
    Mrs. Cripps took every question seriously, and as Miss James was a federal official, she gave the question still more of its due. But no, she shook her head, she couldn’t say as she ever had.
    “There you go then. You’ve been fine until now. Should be so again.”
    “But a map, Iris? We hardly need to know where we are.”
    Iris turned around. “If we are going to war, then we’d better know where the boys are going.”
    “Our boys are not going.” Mrs. Cripps did not like how easily the woman had said “the boys.” They weren’t hers to speak of like that. “The president has promised,” continued Florence. “And Churchill has said he doesn’t need our boys to be sent, not this year, nor next ”—she recited the prime minister’s ringing words—“ nor any other . He said that.”
    Iris shrugged. “They’ll have to.”
    “Oh, and why’s that?”
    Iris stuck her pencil behind her ear. “The British aren’t enough, Florence. They never have been. What’ve you got?”
    Rankled, Mrs. Cripps handed over her single letter. Iris took it through with her, and reappeared behind the window, throwing Florence’s letter upon the scales.
    When word got out that an unmarried woman was coming to take old Postmaster Snow’s job a year ago, it must be said there were doubts. Mrs. Cripps had made sure she was standing at her sink watching out the kitchen window when the bus with the new postmaster drove into town. Right away the woman’s neat figure and the black beret pinned on top of her straight red hair signaled trouble ahead. Attention would have to be paid.
    “She’ll do the trick, I’d say,” Johnny Cripps drawled at his mother’s elbow.
    “It doesn’t matter to me what she does, as long as she stays at the job,” Mrs. Cripps returned. “Though it’s still a mystery how the United States government sees fit to hire an aging single woman in such a position of influence, when there are plenty of men around unable to find work right now.”
    Mother and son watched the new postmaster follow Flores, the bus driver, along the sidewalk to the bottom of the post office stairs where he set down her three suitcases, touched the soft brim of his hat, and left her. They watched her take off her beret and slowly stuff it in the pocket of her greatcoat. Still she didn’t move, she seemed rapt instead in a long consideration of the solid brick building before her. And then, just before pushing open the gate, the new postmaster had turned and taken a good long look at the town.
    “Well!” Mrs. Cripps burst out. “She won’t find anyone around here to marry!”
    “She may not be looking.”
    “Everyone is looking.” Mrs. Cripps smiled at her son a little dangerously. “Even if they don’t think it.”
    Like a stone tossed into a flock of birds, talk startled swiftly into flight whenever the new postmaster was mentioned. Miss James was easy on the eyes, though no one agreed as to how. Tall and slim, she wore the Postal Department’s standard-issue navy blue cardigan buttoned at the neck, so it swung over her shoulders like a light cape, leaving her freckled arms to move freely in and out with the deliberate care of a page boy, or a squire.
    That image, of course, disregarded the postmaster’s lips, painted a good bold red, which alarmed some, until the temperature of those lips could be fully taken by the married women in town. Within days, however, it was clear they were nothing to worry over—no more sinister than a channel marker at the mouth of a well-run harbor.
    No, it became clear to them that Miss Iris James’s motives were best understood by looking around at the Franklin post office. As in any of their houses, the spirit of the woman had insinuated itself firmly there. Inside the lobby, the wastepaper basket was emptied regularly, and the pads of money order application blanks were stacked firmly upon the wall desk. The black-and-white government posters never had a