‘I’ve never—I’ve never played this way before, the way I play when you’re listening.’
Greer smiles. ‘Then I shall always be listening.’ She comes to settle close to him. ‘Do you play in public, to audiences?’
Finn gives a wry smile. ‘Sort of. But all my audiences are under twelve years old. Plus, on occasion, a few teachers.’
‘Oh? But, why?’ Greer asks. ‘I’d have thought you would’ve been playing in concert halls since you were a kid. I imagined you in London on a stage, at the Royal Albert Hall.’
Finn laughs. ‘I guess not.’
‘Why not?’
Finn shrugs.
‘Oh, please. There must be more to it than that. Your music is … divine. I can’t be the only person who feels that way, surely? Your teachers, your mother, they must have encouraged you to perform.’
‘My mother,’ Finn considers, ‘was very … generous and very proud of me. She listened to me play but she was so, well, set apart, so removed within herself, after my father left, that I don’t think she ever really did anything with her whole heart again. Even when she listened it was a bit like playing into a void, into a bottomless darkness that my notes fell into, bouncing, knocking into each other … I never felt her deeply moved or touched. I suppose there was always a part of her that my brother and I could never reach. I wanted her to love the music as I did, to meet my passion, but she couldn’t. So, playing for her wasn’t a very happy experience for me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Greer says softly. ‘But your teachers? Didn’t they meet you?’
‘No,’ Finn says. ‘Well, it wasn’t their fault. I don’t think I gave anything – I didn’t offer anyone my whole heart after that. I’d just give them the minimum and I’d save the rest for myself, in private.’
He sets his violin gently down on the carpet.
‘But it gives you joy now, doesn’t it, to play for me?’
‘Yes.’ Finn grins. ‘Pretty much more than anything.’
Greer smiles. ‘Ditto.’
Finn eyes her. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Liar. I sense you hatching a plan.’
Greer laughs. ‘Okay, all right. I was thinking … what a great shame it is, that you don’t play in public, when you could bring such great joy to so many people.’
Finn shrugs. ‘I don’t think so. There are many musicians better than me out there, people go to concerts, they listen to CDs. There’s really nothing more I have to offer that’s any better than all of that.’
‘Bullshit!’
Finn looks at Greer, shocked.
‘I’m sorry, but that’s total crap,’ Greer says. ‘It’s not up to you to decide what other people want to hear, if you’re not offering them the option. If you go out there and play and nobody’s interested then, okay, I’ll give you that. But you’ve got to at least give them the chance.’
Finn gazes at Greer, speechless.
‘Don’t rob them of you,’ she continues, ‘before they’ve even had the chance to choose.’
Finn takes a deep breath. ‘That must be the most impassioned speech I’ve ever heard,’ he says, still a little breathless. ‘Especially involving myself as the subject. I’m enormously touched.’
‘Don’t be,’ Greer says. ‘I didn’t say it because I love you, I said it because it’s true. I said it because it needs to be said. I said it because you need to be heard. I said it—’
‘Do you love me?’
Greer frowns. ‘Of course. Didn’t I tell you that when I came back? In fact, didn’t I tell you that yesterday too, and the day before that?’
Finn grins. ‘Yes, but I’m not averse to hearing it every day, even more often than that, in fact, if circumstances permit.’
‘Okay, well, I’ll see what I can do about that,’ she says. ‘I love you. There you go, that should keep you going for another hour or so.’ She smiles.
‘Cheeky. If you had some ribs I could tickle,’ Finn says, ‘this is when I’d be tickling them.’
Greer laughs. ‘But you can’t, you can’t touch me,’ she teases, ‘you can’t—’ And then, all of a sudden, she stops. ‘Oh, shit.’
‘What?’
‘Children,’ Greer whispers. ‘Children.’
Finn leans forward. ‘What? Where?’
‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-six.’
‘And, do you want children?’
Finn shrugs. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never really given it much thought.’
Greer sighs. ‘Oh, God. When I was your age, I thought of nothing else. Well, not quite, but nearly. And …’
‘What?’
Greer sighs. ‘Well, not only can I not give you any sexual satisfaction, but I can’t give you any children either.’ She sighs again, deeper. ‘Not that I could do the latter even when I was alive, so that’s no matter.’
Finn frowns. ‘But isn’t the little girl next door your daughter?’
‘Yes, she is. But I didn’t give birth to her, that’s all. I was lucky enough to inherit her from Edward’s first wife.’
‘Inherit?’
‘She died, when Tilly was about a year old.’
‘Shit,’ Finn says. ‘And then you … Poor bugger.’
Greer sighs again. ‘I know. Edward hasn’t had the easiest time of it, wife-wise.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Finn says. ‘And now I’m stealing his second – he must hate me. And I can’t say I blame him.’
‘You’re probably not his favourite person in the world right now,’ Greer admits. ‘But he knows this is all me, that it hasn’t … that you wouldn’t … Anyway, in time, I hope the two of you might even become friends.’
Now Finn sighs. ‘Sweetheart, I think you’re overestimating the human condition right now. I think you’ve forgotten what it was like to be one of us.’
Greer gives a wry smile. ‘I’m trying, but now I—I’m worried.’
‘About what?’ Finn shuffles over to her. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t want you to regret it. When you’re much older and it’s too late.’
‘Regret what?’
‘Not having a real wife, children, a normal life.’
‘Oh, hell,’ Finn says. ‘Forget about that. I’m a self-obsessed musician. I can happily play for ten, fifteen hours a day. I’d make a lousy husband and a worse father.’ He reaches out to her. ‘Really, you’re the absolute perfect, perfect … non-wife for me.’
Greer smiles. ‘You may think that now, but when you’re sixty and alone and—’
Finn frowns. ‘I won’t be alone, I hope. You’ll still be here, won’t you?’
‘I hope so too,’ Greer says. ‘But I don’t know. How can we know for certain? Really, I have no idea how long I’ll be here for.’
‘Shush,’ Finn holds a finger over her lips. ‘Let’s not worry about this stuff now. What’s the point?’
‘The point is to prepare,’ Greer says. ‘So you can prevent pain in the future and—’
‘Look, don’t worry about me. I’ll be playing this thing’ – he nods at the violin at his feet – ‘until I drop down dead. I’d drive any normal woman crazy; my kids would be in therapy complaining about their father who never gave them any attention. Believe me, our strange situation is the best of all worlds.’
Greer gazes at him. ‘Are you certain?’
Finn nods. ‘More certain than I’ve ever been of anything in my life.’
Greer looks at him, trying to discern a flicker of dissolution or doubt. But Greer can’t see any trace of fear or hesitation in Finn’s eyes; she can only see her own reflected back at her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
My Otto,
Little Otto is so good, so quiet. I think the force of my fear keeps him silent. It’s a shame, truly, that he will not be allowed to run and shout and cause a little mischief. I worry that, if we are here for too long, he will grow into a man unable to express himself or reveal his feelin
gs or, perhaps, even know them in the first place. I pray this will not happen. I am forever shushing him, drilling silence into his bones so now he doesn’t even cry out when he’s hungry, he simply cries silent tears and, of course, I pick him up (though I am usually holding him anyway – he may also grow up being uncomfortably attached to his mother) and tend to him. But don’t worry, he’s okay, he’s not being deprived because of his silence, I am taking care of him, as best I can, though it just isn’t nearly as well as I would like, given …
His eyes are still blue, his hair black. He looks so like you that, sometimes, I am scared by it, I think you are a ghost or that you’ve crept up upon us without warning. Sometimes, I wake with him in my arms and, despite his tiny body, I – blurry-eyed and only half conscious – think that he is you. I confess at these times I cry, because he is not. Though, not for a second, would I wish him away, that I would take you in his place. I am selfish. I want you both. I will not swap one for the other. One day, we will all lay in bed together, me and my two Ottos, I will have you both in my arms and then all will be exactly as it should be. We wait for that day; we wait for you.
Ever Yours,
Marthe
They are sitting up in bed together, Clara leaning back against the headboard with her eyes closed, Pieter reading letters. He taps her gently on the arm. Clara opens her eyes.
‘When will you go?’
‘What? Oh …’ This is something she’s been trying not to think about. She’s been fending off her mother’s phone calls, along with her own doubts and fleeting desires to return to England, along with the very real need to tend to the shop. Clara hates, too, to think of the would-be letter writers and receivers who aren’t, because she isn’t where she should be.
‘It’s okay, no pressure,’ Pieter looks up from the paper he’s holding. ‘I don’t want to rush you; I’ll just need to—’
Clara turns to him. ‘Oh, God, you—do you want me to go home right now, you should have said’ – she slides her legs out of bed and stands between two piles of papers, searching the floor for clothes – ‘I know this is just a fling, I didn’t want to outstay my welcome, yes, I really should …’
‘What?’ Pieter puts down his paper. ‘Wait. Home?’
Clara picks her T-shirt off a nearby chair. ‘Right, you should have said something before.’
‘Home?’ Pieter says. ‘I wasn’t talking about home; I was talking about Herzogenbusch.’
‘Oh.’ Clara pokes her head out of the T-shirt with a sheepish smile. ‘Oh, right, that.’
‘Yes, exactly. I have something for you.’
‘Something else?’ Clara continues to smile, flushed with relief. ‘You already bought me a bike.’
‘True,’ Pieter says, reaching into the drawer of his bedside table. ‘But that doesn’t prohibit me from doing other things, does it?’
Clara shakes her head, stepping back to the bed.
Pieter removes a thin blue file and hands it to Clara who, sliding back under the bed sheets, takes it. She undoes the knot of string tying the file together, then, slowly, carefully, pulls back the blue cover to reveal a small stack of pages swathed in lines and lines of tiny black sentences.
‘What is it?’
‘Marthe’s letters. I translated them for you. I wrote them out, so you can read them yourself to Otto.’
‘Oh.’ Clara’s eyes fill and the desire to declare love rises again in her heart.
‘But I’ll just need a few days’ notice, to make sure I don’t have any appointments when you want to go.’
Clara puts her hand to her mouth.
‘And,’ Pieter adds, softly, ‘I don’t remember saying that this was just a fling – did you? Am I forgetting, in my old age, this important detail?’
Clara drops her hand. ‘I love you.’
Pieter leans towards her, smiling. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that.’ He taps his left ear. ‘My hearing isn’t what it used to be.’
Clara grins. ‘I said, I love you.’
‘Ah, good. That’s what I hoped you’d said.’
Pieter shifts forward, until he has Clara in his arms and is kissing the tears, of relief and joy, that slide slowly down her cheeks.
‘I love you too,’ he whispers. ‘I love you too.’
Later that day, they go for a cycle ride. Clara almost crashes several times, whenever she takes her eyes off the road to glance over at Pieter and grin at him.
‘I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,’ she calls out. ‘At last! It’s glorious, it’s truly glorious!’
Pieter laughs. ‘Now you can officially say: it’s as easy as riding a bike.’
‘Yes,’ Clara calls, breaking away from him in a rush of speed. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’
Still laughing, Pieter stands on his pedals and pushes after her. ‘Wait, go easy on me, I’m old and unfit, I might give myself a heart attack trying to catch up!’
He follows Clara, gliding behind in the stream of her scent and laughter, along the canals, through the winding streets until, at last, she stops outside a shop. Pieter looks up at the sign: De Posthumuswinkel. He dismounts and crosses the road with his bike to lock it against the railing with Clara’s.
‘Ah, so you brought me here. You promised lunch, but it was a trick.’
Clara shrugs. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I didn’t mean to, but I’m like a homing pigeon. And this place reminds me of my own little Letters, so I need to visit it every now and then …’
Pieter casts her an indulgent smile and then, as he takes her hand to cross the road again, he bites his lip. His grip on her hand loosens. Clara looks over at him.
‘Are you okay?’
Pieter nods.
‘Really?’
He shrugs. ‘I just wonder when you will want to go home. After all it is, as you say, your home and you miss it – your shop, your letters …’
Clara stops outside De Posthumuswinkel, shifting to let another couple of customers in through the door.
‘Well, I’ve been thinking about it, actually,’ she says, treading softly. ‘I just didn’t want to say anything yet, since I didn’t want to scare you off.’
‘Scare me off?’
‘Yes, I mean, you told me how you don’t like to commit, and—’
Pieter frowns. ‘I didn’t say that. I said I couldn’t have children and so I didn’t really have relationships either, but that’s not the same thing at all. Unless, of course, you do—’
‘No, I don’t,’ Clara says, a little too quickly, fixing her gaze at the pavement. ‘Anyway, that wasn’t what I wanted to talk about, it was something, something … I’ve been thinking, that it might be possible to close my shop in Cambridge and open one here. I could do the same thing. People could come in and write letters, I could walk the streets—’
‘—or cycle,’ Pieter suggests.
Clara shakes her head. ‘No, cycling is too quick. I wouldn’t have a chance to really see people. I need the chance to spot them.’ She smiles. ‘It’s how I spotted you, reading your letters by the light of your lamp.’
‘Then I’m glad you hadn’t learnt to ride before,’ Pieter says. ‘Or we might not be here right now.’
Clara nods. ‘So, what do you think?’ she asks, her heart beating fast, afraid that she’s moving too quickly, saying too much, too soon, that he’s about to say so, to let her down gently. ‘Of my idea?’
‘I think it’s wonderful,’ Pieter says. ‘I think I will be your best customer.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘You are a complete mystery to me,’ Ava says.
He’s taken to meeting her for lunch every Monday outside the library. They walk through town to sit on the wall outside King’s College, so long as it isn’t raining, and eat a falafel wrap from the van on Market Street or a thick slice of homemade pizza from Gustare.
Ross grins. ‘Grand,’ he says. ‘I like to be enigmatic.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘Yeah, but it’s more than just
that. I don’t see you. I don’t see …’
‘What?’
Ava takes a deep breath. This isn’t a spontaneous decision. She’s been thinking about it for days, about whether or not to tell him, and she has finally decided that she will. He’s the closest thing she has to a friend, after all. And Ava has, at last, had quite enough of being lonely and secretive. Still, even though she’s planned out what to say, it doesn’t make the saying of it any easier, now that the time has come.
‘I – usually – I see things about people. Well, one thing, actually …’
‘Aye?’ Ross fixes her with a gaze of intense interest.
Ava squirms, unused to such undiluted attention, wishing she’d managed to blurt it out all at once. ‘I, um, I can see the worst event of people’s lives.’
Ross uncurls his crossed legs and sits up straight. He puts down his falafel wrap, which Ava knows is a serious step, since not much gets between Ross and his food. His gaze transforms from intense interest to total fascination.
He grins again. ‘I knew there was summit special about you.’
Ava blushes. ‘But, anyway, well I can’t see yours.’
‘And thank feck for that.’ Ross laughs. ‘I’ve gotta say, I’m not one of those ones who wants to know when they’re gaunnae die.’
‘Oh, no, it’s not always death,’ Ava says. ‘There’s plenty of suffering worse than death.’
‘Jesus,’ Ross says. ‘I don’t wanna know about that either. That’s some depressing stuff right there.’
Ava shrugs. ‘Imagine what it’s like for me. It’s impossible to make friends, cos all I can see is the worst of what’s going to happen to them and, as you might imagine, it does tend to get in the way of any normal conversation.’
‘Shit.’
‘Exactly. In fact,’ Ava says, thinking this will impress him, ‘I was actually attempting to have a fling – of sorts – a few weeks ago, and—’
‘Of sorts?’ Ross interrupts.
‘Well, if he’d proposed marriage, I probably wouldn’t have said no,’ she admits. ‘But, anyway—’
The Lost Art of Letter Writing Page 18