More Than Love Letters (31 page)

Does the Home Office keep your shoulder to the creaking wagon right through the recess, or are you taking the chance to get away and spend some time in West Brom before the madhouse reopens? We must converge soon for that drink. Maybe I’ll bring Margaret, so that you can join me in paeans of praise to her beauty.

Richard.

PS. Margaret, in her unflagging campaign to convince me that the small stuff matters as much as the big, today played what she clearly regards as her trump card, in response to some throwaway remark of mine about dog poo. Jack Caulfield (you know, the blind kid in her class) turns out to be living in his own personal darkness because of toxocariasis, following exposure to roundworm eggs in dog faeces. It’s a chance in a million! Well, two cases per million per year, to be precise. I’m still sure that she’s wrong, but I just couldn’t argue in the face of odds like that.

 

 

Appartamento 7
Via San Giuliano 84
20146 Milano
Italia

 

3 October 2005

Dear Margaret and every one,

I am very sorry that I am not writing to you before, to tell you where I go. It is being very long time, I know. Gjergj is phoning me when I am in Ipswich, to say he is OK and he is escaping in Italia. I am not wanting to tell you then, because I am frightened to tell anyone that he is speaking to me. I get out to Italia too, so now we are being safe here together.

In Italia we both are being decided as refugees, so we can stay here, and never going back. Gjergj is already having his work permission. He is doing a job building a factory. There are three other Albanian boys building it, with Italian boys also. Gjergj is asking me to marry him. In Italia we are having both Muslim and Christian wedding. In Milano they have some mosques, and we are also finding an Albanian Orthodox priest, the friend of one of the builder boys.

I am wanting to say thank you again for every thing you are doing for me in England. Gjergj and me are just getting a flat, the address is writing on this letter. So if Margaret or Lauren or any one wants to come and visiting us, we are being very happy to be seeing our good friends.

Nasreen xx

 

 

From:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent:
11/10/05 19:15
To:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]

 

Hi, Margaret,

I’ve found out something about Declan.

It was Zoe who let it slip, actually, because last year I noticed she kept transposing the letters of her name, and I was keeping an eye out (thinking about possible dyslexia, you know), but it was the only word she ever did it with. And it was striking, because usually of course their own name is very strongly imprinted from early on. Well, yesterday she had drawn an alarmingly maculose pink-and-purple self-portrait (I’ll spare you the trouble, hon: ‘maculose’ is a 7.5). She came up to show me it in the playground at lunchtime, and her name, on the bottom, was misspelt again. I happened to say, ‘Your name’s not Zeo, is it?’ and she laughed and said, ‘No, that’s my daddy!’ It’s his middle name. It seems his parents just liked it – and in some respects were therefore unlucky, since their choice predated both the Power Rangers’ crystal and the hangover prevention pills. Zoe’s subsequent naming was a rather sweetly anagrammatic gesture. So you see, it seems he may just be my Zorba after all!

Of course it does mean that at family gatherings – Christmas and Easter – I’ll always risk running into a brother I’ve snogged in a lift. But maybe the minions of Mephistopheles aren’t that big on the major Christian festivals anyway.

Big hugs,

Becs xx

 

 

From:
Ellen Reed [[email protected]]
Sent:
26/10/05 19:24
To:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]

 

Dear Margaret,

This seems like the most appropriate way to say thank you properly to you both for the wonderful gift of the portable computer. (What is it you call it, dear, a laptop, isn’t it? I think I heard Richard referring to it as his notebook, too, though to me that’s something with spiral binding that you keep by the phone or write your shopping list in.) I know you said that it is only Richard’s old one, and that he doesn’t use it very often, but still, it is so generous of him to think of me. I must admit, it’s still easier for me to hit the keys than to grip a pen and write without wobbling. And then you went to all that trouble to set up the e-mail connection for me while you were here, too. First it was the mobile phone, and now this – you are certainly turning me into a very twenty-first-century grandmother! Maybe your mum will have time to e-mail me sometimes – I’ve given her the address. It does seem to be so much quicker to dash off than a letter – or I feel certain it will be once I’ve got the hang of it. And you can tell Richard I’ve been practising my chess, against the machine. I shall be able to give him a much better game next time he comes to visit!

I also want to say again how much I enjoyed having you and Richard to stay these last few days. Wasn’t it funny, Richard insisting upon going back to the New Forest to play Pooh sticks? I’m not sure I am supposed to tell you this, but he whispered to me that it was because last time he had been longing to take hold of your hand while you leaned over the railing, so he wanted to go again, so that he could hold hands with you this time. And what a lovely dinner Richard cooked for us on Sunday! Your grandad always used to expect a roast dinner on a Sunday, beef or lamb or chicken with roast potatoes and two or three different vegetables. I sometimes felt as though I spent all morning on a Sunday, after church, peeling and chopping and basting. What Richard produced took half the time, and was just as tasty. I didn’t even notice there was no meat in it until you pointed it out. I must ask Kirsty if she can get some of that balsamic vinegar for me, next time she goes into Winchester. Really, Richard is as good as one of those television chefs – and a lot less bossy and rude than some of them seem to be!

Well, I shall press the ‘send’ button now, like you showed me, and hope that I’ve got it right!

With love from Gran xx

 

 

From:
Margaret Hayton
[[email protected]]
Sent:
26/10/05 20:20
To:
Ellen Reed [[email protected]]

 

Dear Gran,

I’m so glad that you are using the computer! I wasn’t sure that you would want it really – I wondered if you were just being polite, earlier, when you said how pleased you were. And we both had a lovely time with you, so ‘thank you for having us’, as Mum always taught me to say when I was a little girl.

It was just so satisfying to see you back in your own home again, Gran. With Kirsty coming on Sundays as well for a while, I’m sure you’ll be able to cope. I thought you were getting about better than I’ve seen you for ages, since before you sprained your ankle, in fact. Did you manage to make it to the post office on the frame by yourself to get your pension today, like you said you might?

And don’t worry, Gran, I shall still keep writing you proper letters as well as sending you e-mails.

Lots of love,

Margaret xx

 

 

42 Gledhill Street
Ipswich

 

27 October 2005

Darling Pete,

Margaret is staying over at Richard’s flat again tonight after her hostel meeting. The two of them seem to be very much an item now. They are at his place most nights when he is in Ipswich, which is where he mainly seems to be in the evenings at present while Parliament is still on holiday (or ‘not sitting’, I think they say, don’t they?). Although they do come round here a lot, and even take me out for drinks, which is nice. Last night Richard cooked a lovely pasta dinner for us all, with these Italian wild mushrooms. At first I wasn’t keen on the texture, they were a bit rubbery, but when you got used to the chewiness they were certainly very tasty. Margaret tells me she is thinking of becoming a vegetarian. She is probably very sensible – Persephone has lent me a book all about factory farming and it is enough to turn you right off meat. But I don’t think I could do without my chops, and a nice steak once in a while.

It is quieter again here, what with Margaret always being either busy with school, or visiting her gran, and out so often in the evenings, leaving me and Snuffs by ourselves. But I find I don’t mind it any longer. I quite like the extra space, and Margaret has kindly let me bring her computer down to the kitchen, and says I can use it whenever I like. I’m quite the expert, you know, since my course at the college in the summer! A few Sunday afternoons ago, Margaret and Richard came round and we drafted an application to the charities fund at work, and I did all the typing in, and when they’d gone I made it look really professional, with fancy typefaces and everything. We want to get some money to set up that support scheme I mentioned to you, the one to give a helping hand to people like poor Helen. Margaret was talking about the plan as ‘Friends for Helen’, and I said, you should really call it that, so that her name will be remembered.

Summer really seems to be stretching on late into the autumn this year. September was blazing, and it’s stayed very dry even these past few weeks, and there’s not been a single frost to speak of so far. I’ve hardly had to put on a cardy yet, in the house. The only green bits left in the lawn are the clover and the moss. It makes me glad I haven’t treated it with weedkiller – which Persephone says is death to all sorts of wildlife, anyway. Snuffy spent most of her time in the really hot weather at the back of the flower bed, in a cool spot under the forsythia. She seems finally to have worked out what to do in the heat. Do you remember when she was a pup, how she was always wanting to chase her ball in the garden in the full sun, even though it made her pant fit to burst? And how she used to whimper when we took the ball away and told her to lie down?

Pete, I think this is the last letter I am going to write to you. I shall pop it in the envelope now, and then in the morning on the way to work I shall go round by the park, and put it with all the others in the old cashbox in the hollow tree. Do you remember, sweetheart, how we used to leave little messages for each other there, when we were first going out? That’s where I scattered your ashes – two years ago now – in the park, there by the hollow tree. It will always be our special place.

You know that I will always love you, Petey, that hasn’t changed, and I don’t think I shall ever stop missing you, either. But I don’t want to lie to Margaret any more. I told her you were working on the oil rigs! At first it was just to give me a way of carrying on writing letters to you without Margaret thinking it odd, but after a while it came to help me, too, to be able to imagine that you were just away somewhere, and coming back in a few weeks or months. I thought you might have rather liked your glamorous new job. If you were going to live on in my imagination I decided it might as well be doing something with a little excitement to it, and the wind in your hair, after twenty-five years behind a desk at the Inland Revenue, and then that last horrible one, in and out of hospital.

Anyway, I don’t think I need to keep writing to you any more. They have been more than just letters for me, Pete – even more than love letters. They have been my refuge. It has really helped, feeling that I could still tell you about what I was doing, even just the little things that nobody else would care about. But I think that now I am ready to get on with being on my own and living my life without you.

Goodbye, love,

Cora xxx