Now he slowly unfolds the letter, half expecting the words to have evaporated in his absence. It’s not addressed to him by name, simply beginning with a sentence at the top of the page, but there’s absolutely no doubt in his mind that it’s intended for him.
Monday 1st May ’17
I know that you have given up hope of ever feeling happy again. I know you’re just shuffling through your days now, trying not to make any major mistakes, waiting until it’s all over, until everything is at an end. And, should you want to pass the rest of your life like this, you won’t be judged for it. And yet, there is a tiny part of you that still flickers brighter than the rest, a dim spark of hope that lingers on. I know you feel it flare up sometimes: when you step into an unexpected patch of sunlight, when your daughter laughs, when you chance upon a deer who’s wandered into your garden and, instead of skittering away, he stops and looks you right in the eye.
I know you’ve suffered great tragedy twice in your lifetime, twice more than any man should have to suffer and I know that, even then, you still experience little moments of glory and wonder – hidden bubbles that burst up unexpectedly amid the madness and misery. I know, too, that occasionally – usually at twilight, when the veil between the magic and the mundane is nearly lifted – you see that a choice is open to you, and that the life you choose is up to you.
Edward folds the letter on his lap twice in half, smoothing the edges across his knees. He knows he’ll open it up many times again, that he will reread and reread, but for now he needs a little silence. He needs to make sense of this mystery, to figure out who sent him the letter and why. It must be someone he knows, since the writer clearly understands him so well, better in fact than he understands himself. Which is rather strange and, in fact, slightly scary. Has someone been watching him, following him, spying on him? But even then, how could they see so deep into his heart? Perhaps it’s from his sister, Alba. Yet it doesn’t read as if it’s written by a sister, being both too impersonal and yet too intimate all at once.
Edward takes a deep breath. He already feels different, despite himself. In the past three hours, since he first read the letter, his cells have started to shift about, his blood has begun pumping a little faster, his bones are realigning, minute cracks are creeping across the ice encasing his numb heart.
Edward puts his hand to his chest, feeling an ache in his muscles and bones, as he sometimes does when he stands after kneeling on the floor for too long. He wonders, for a moment, whether he might be about to have a heart attack. So he sits, waiting for the pain to pass, glancing about the kitchen, wondering what his wife would have thought of the state of this house. He asks this of himself often, though he knows the answer: she would have hated it. She would have thought it boring and bland, the opposite of the magnificent multicoloured costumes she created which, Edward reminds himself, was exactly the point. A few months after she’d died he’d suddenly decided that he had to find a new place to live, a place that didn’t remind him of her every single second of every single hour of every single day. It was a decision he’s regretted in a million moments since.
Edward stares at the oven. And then, for some reason, after studying a rogue spot of strawberry jam on the marble worktop, Edward glances up at the ceiling, at the thick black crack snaking across the plaster. He feels a sharp tug in his chest and presses his hand closer to his heart. And then, for the first time in a very long time – almost three years, in fact – Edward feels the urge to do something, something useful, something ordinary and insignificant.
Edward stands. He will mend the crack in the ceiling.
Clara sits with a box of papers in her lap. Her mother chatters away in the background, something about swing dancing and high heels, while Clara presses her fingers to the first page, the heat of her skin making marks on the black leather. She’s torn between a desperate desire to read and devour every word and a longing to save the pages forever untouched, so keeping a little piece of her grandfather always alive and unwrapped.
Clara has never been a particularly curious person. She’s never kept awake at night wondering what’s happened to all those people who receive her letters. She doesn’t want to ask her customers what they write in their own letters. She’s never tempted to open the ones she’s promised not to read. Once, when Clara was thirteen, she had a deep crush on a boy and, while they sat in his bedroom listening to records, he left to go to the bathroom. She shifted to lean against the wall and felt something hard under the duvet. It was his diary. She hadn’t read it. Perhaps, Clara sometimes thinks, this lack of curiosity accounts for her lack of success as a writer of fiction. And yet, she knows now that, no matter how much she longs to hold on, no matter how greatly she wants this moment to last for ever, she will, of course, read this diary.
Every inch of the first page is enveloped with her grandfather’s handwriting, a small, slanting script in twilight-blue ink from the nib of his favourite pen. She can imagine him, hunched over the writing desk in the shop, scribbling away. He only ever wrote with one pen, the very first he ever made, when he was an apprentice in Amsterdam, before his family came to England. And he’d never allowed her to write with it, no matter how much she’d begged.
‘A perfect pen falls in love with a single hand,’ he had said. ‘Its love is lifelong and loyal. In the hand of another it will dry up, it will scratch out words and turn everything into an illegible mess. It isn’t fair to put it through that pain. So you may hold my pen, my sweet, but I’m afraid I can never allow you to write with it.’
A sigh of sorrow rises in Clara’s chest but she swallows it down, knowing it’d arouse comment from her mother. Her grandfather’s twilight words blur. Clara blinks and brushes her fingers over her eyes. Then she takes a deep breath and begins to read:
My dearest Clara,
You’ve found this because you’re looking for a story and, I’m guessing, because you’re lonely and longing for a connection – with yourself and with others. Well, I can offer you both. Enclosed in this box are letters. They belong to our family; they tell of a great love story. I won’t say anything more than that, since I’d like you to discover the rest without my help.
I believe, if you should want to find out more, that the adventure will do you great good. It will ignite desire in you, it will set you on a path to grand adventures – out in the world and inside your own heart – that will ultimately bring you great joy. Of course, if you already have this in your life now, then you may not want to venture down the rabbit hole to which these letters will lead you. But, I have a feeling that, when you find this note, you’ll still be hiding away in your little shop of letters, writing to those who call upon you, offering your magic to transform their lives yet neglecting your own. Of course, if I am wrong, you can ignore your silly, fussing grandfather. If I am right, however, then please read these letters. And please follow where they will lead …
With all love,
Granddad xox
‘Dad! What on earth are you doing?’
Edward looks down from where he’s standing on the tabletop. He brushes plaster out of his eyes, then wipes long dusty white streaks across his jeans.
‘I’m mending the crack in the ceiling,’ he says.
Tilly raises an eyebrow. ‘It looks like you’re making a massive hole in the ceiling.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Edward says. ‘It’s all part of the process.’
The arch of Tilly’s eyebrow rises higher. ‘Ok-ay.’ Dropping her school bag on the floor (then shifting it a safer distance from underneath the large hole) Tilly walks over to the cupboards and starts searching for biscuits.
‘Pass me that hammer,’ Edward says, ‘and stop doubting your father’s skills. I am an architect, you know.’
Tilly sticks her head out of the cupboards and picks up the hammer with her free hand, the other clutching a packet of dry digestives. ‘Dad, you haven’t done that for years.’
Edward takes the hammer and taps at the jag
ged edge of the hole. A little shower of white powder dusts his hair. ‘I know. But, I’m thinking maybe it’s time for me to start working again.’
Tilly, with half a biscuit sticking out of her mouth, looks up.
‘But you sold the firm.’
Edward shrugs. ‘That doesn’t mean I can’t get a job working for someone else’s firm, or doing freelance jobs,’ he says, still gazing up into the hole. ‘Anyway, it’s just a thought I had today. I haven’t made any plans, I was just thinking.’
‘That’s great, Dad,’ Tilly says, swallowing the biscuit, then nibbling at another. ‘You should get a job. It’ll do you good to do less thinking and more actual living.’
Edward pulls his attention away from the hole to regard his daughter. How can you be so wise, he wants to ask, did you grow up while I wasn’t looking? But the realisation of just how much he’s been neglecting Tilly since his wife died brings tears to his eyes and he has to say something else instead.
‘I’m glad to see you’re eating today. Does this mean you’ve come to your senses and no longer think you’re fat?’
‘You’re so lame, Dad.’ Tilly rolls her eyes. ‘These biscuits only have twenty-eight calories each. I can have three.’ And, with that, she leaves the kitchen.
Edward gazes after her as she skips purposefully along the corridor, and suddenly thanks every lucky star he never thought he had – quite the opposite, in fact, if there are such things as unlucky stars – that his darling daughter seems so relatively unscathed by everything. If only he was so robust himself.
As Edward’s gaze returns to the hopelessly gaping hole above his head, another thought comes to him: after fixing the mess he’s made of his ceiling, he will have to, somehow, track down whomever sent him the letter.
Chapter Four
Ava’s days are shaped by The Times cryptic crossword. She begins it in the morning, unfolding the paper as she sits with her cup of milky Earl Grey and marmalade scraped thinly over slightly burnt toast. While drinking the tea and nibbling the toast, Ava scans the little black-and-white squares, digesting each of the clues. By the time her cup and plate are empty, she’s usually filled out three or four answers. And the rest of the unanswered questions have soaked into her mind and memory, allowing her to revisit them throughout the day.
Words float up at unexpected moments. Ava will be washing dishes when she hears: Bemuse – 7 Down: Play goddess to stupefy (6). She’ll be checking in library books when: Bittern – 14 Across: Bird pecked bird (7) pops up. She’ll be running for the bus when she’ll realise: Rayon – 10 Down: Light shed on synthetic material (5). And each time Ava will smile, a secret little smile, then make a mental note of what to fill in later … In truth, though Ava tells herself she’s driven by the desire to finish the crossword as fast as possible – the competition with oneself being the point – actually an ideal day is when the final answer arrives at bedtime. This way she can spend most of her moments concealed in the comfortable confines of her own mind, almost able to pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist at all.
Ava’s other hobby is gardening. She enjoys being with her plants whatever the weather. She loves springtime, of course, witnessing the resurrection of so many of her beautiful flowers, coaxing them on with soft words, gently touching the light-green leaves of new shoots as they push their way through the wet, dark earth and into the cool sunlight. But she loves the winter as well. On even the coldest mornings Ava wraps herself in thick wool, slips her socked feet into sheepskin boots, curls her fingers around a large mug of coffee and ventures out onto crisp, crunchy grass. She’ll take a few crossword clues – tucked safely and snugly into the corners of her mind – out into the frosty air and mull them over as she slowly circles the frozen lawn. Ava doesn’t touch the solid earth during the coldest months but she brings the warmth of her body into the garden and stays with her plants for as long as she can. She strokes a bare finger along the stripped branches of the bushes and trees, reminding their hibernating leaves of the warmth of life to which they will one day return.
But, of all the seasons and all the months, May is Ava’s favourite. When a symphony of bluebells explodes across her flower beds, she can’t stop smiling. Sometimes she’ll stare at them for hours. She’ll be preparing dinner, or doing the washing-up and just look out of the window. Then, finally, she’ll tear her gaze away, catch sight of the clock and realise an hour has disappeared. And, during the months when her garden is plump with colour, the combination of the beauty and silence is so soothing that Ava often forgets to think about her crossword puzzles at all.
Today, as she steps outside in stockinged feet, Ava senses a shift in the air. She sniffs her cup of lukewarm peppermint tea, shivering slightly in the cool morning breeze as she glances around her garden. She should probably slip on a pair of shoes – the soles of her stockings will soon be damp from the dewy grass – but something stops her and Ava walks onto the soft wet lawn. Instead of circling the garden she stands in the middle, shuts her eyes and wonders what feels different. It takes a while before she can pinpoint it. It feels as if something is about to happen.
And then, in the next moment, it does. A sound, like Ava has never heard before in her life, soars through the air – a flood of notes from a violin. It pierces Ava’s heart, stopping her breath in her throat. Then the sound dies and the air is still again. But, after a few minutes the music begins again and, as it plays, something inside Ava stirs, as if her heart is a hibernating bear slumbering all her life and only just now waking up.
Finn O’Connor was three years old when he heard his first concerto. It was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Finn was absolutely transfixed. He was a boy who loved to run and jump. He’d never been able to sit still for more than a second – his mother having to employ great skills of persuasion whenever she sat him down for a meal – but as he’d watched the musicians and their instruments he hadn’t shifted from his chair for a moment. Through every bar of spring, summer and autumn Finn stayed glued, still as a statue, while the notes of a dozen instruments soared above, around and vibrated within him. But when winter arrived and the violin solo came to a crescendo, Finn was literally capsized by the music. He fell off his chair.
Six days later, finally exhausted by his unrelenting begging, Finn’s mother spent the family’s weekly shopping budget on a second-hand violin. Then after he lived, breathed and slept with it for another two weeks, she took two extra cleaning shifts at the school to pay for lessons. He hadn’t been able to read by sight or play pieces perfectly without practising, but what he lacked in innate talent Finn made up for in tenacity. His enthusiasm only increased as he grew. He practised all day, each day, every moment he could. He woke early and stayed up late. He pelted into the living room after school, snatching up his violin, his most precious, prized possession and holding it against his heart. He stood with it, whispering his secrets into the wood before cocking his ear to the bridge to better hear the soft replies.
‘Finn, please. Not at the dinner table,’ his mother would protest, half-heartedly. ‘Can’t you let go of that instrument just long enough to eat?’
Finn’s answer to this plea was always the same. He’d cast a reproachful glance out from under furrowed brows and tighten the fingers of his left hand around the scroll of his violin.
‘You’re spilling your peas,’ his mother would object.
In response, Finn would press his lips to the table and inhale the offending peas, to which his mother would sigh and mumble something unintelligible. Then she’d start muttering about their father.
‘It’s all my fault … I’m not enough … If only your father hadn’t left, you wouldn’t be so …’ And tears would fill her eyes and Finn would pretend not to see them.
‘Don’t be stupid, Mum,’ Byrne – Finn’s older brother – would snap then. ‘Dad left cos he’s a bastard philanderer. And Finn would still be a weirdo, even if that man, or any man, was here. I’d just consider yourself lucky you’ve got one n
ormal son.’
At eleven years old, Byrne didn’t have any slightly strange obsessions. He didn’t even have any passions – excepting video games and spaghetti. He viewed the world through the jaded eyes of someone who knew what he liked and what he didn’t – most things in life falling into the latter category. So when Finn serenaded him at bedtime with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Byrne slammed the door and stuffed his head under his pillow. And when Finn trundled along the pavement to school, humming the violin solo from Aida, Byrne told him to ‘shut the hell up’.
But, despite all her concerns and half-hearted protests, for the most part Mary O’Connor took great delight in her younger son and his music. She asked him to play when she did the dishes every night and while she was making breakfast every morning. At other times, when she was scrubbing someone else’s linoleum floors, for example, she found herself humming along as if Finn were standing beside her, bow in hand. His music seeped into her dreams so she woke smiling, even though her bed was bare and bereft of the man she wished was still sleeping beside her.
It was only when Mary most longed for that man and turned to her youngest son instead, that she hated the violin. When she read to Finn at night and felt the sudden urge to cuddle him close and squeeze him tight, she glared at the instrument wedged between them, momentarily wishing it would spontaneously combust. Of course, she never said anything against it. Indeed, Mary was eternally grateful that Finn had something he loved so dearly he might not miss an absent father quite so much.
Finn was twelve when a tragedy occurred. As he ran across the road on his way home from school, clutching the violin under his arm, he stumbled and dropped the case. A car blasted its horn and Finn sprang away. He survived. The violin didn’t.
‘I’ll buy you another one,’ his mother promised. ‘As soon as I can find another job. It won’t be long, don’t worry. I’ve got another interview next week.’
The Lost Art of Letter Writing Page 3