More Than Love Letters

by Rosy Thornton

  The main excitement here is that on Saturday I am going to meet my elusive MP, the slippery Mr Richard Slater – he’s invited me to his constituency surgery to talk to him about asylum seekers. He holds it in some obscure community hall – I’d always imagined these things went on at the town hall, or the local Party HQ. Anyway, I’m very glad of the opportunity: I really want to convince him of how appalling it is that when someone comes to this country thinking it will offer her safety, and she’s homeless, even a voluntary organisation can’t offer her support, if they are funded by the state. It’s just a nod towards the knee-jerk xenophobes who think we’re going to be swamped by immigrants making bogus asylum claims and sponging off social security – and what does it mean? People like Nasreen (I don’t think I mentioned her – she’s an Albanian girl living at Witch House), all on her own in a strange country where she barely speaks the language and certainly can’t read a form, unable to make use of the services she requires when she’s homeless and in need.

  Trouble is, I’m sure he’s not going to listen. He is reputed to have been quite a lefty at one time, when he was on the city council. Persephone says he supported financing the Multi-cultural Centre, and helped find the new premises for the Women’s Aid refuge after the old one was torched by someone’s ex-partner. But then, she says, he took being New Labour so seriously in ’97 that he freshly minted himself. From what you read in the local press, he’s now so sensible that he makes a pair of lace-up Start-Rites look like a walk on the wild side. He even abstained on the war in Iraq – I mean, he actually abstained! If he didn’t agree with military intervention then why didn’t he vote against like a decent human being? It’s like saying, ‘Hmm, should we violate international law and embark upon a war that will cost the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis? Well, maybe not, but I don’t really have much of a view one way or the other. Now, where were we, about those EU cabbage subsidies . . .’

  Love,

  Margaret xx

  PS. ‘Abecedarian’ is a cool straight 8.

  From: Rebecca Prichard [becs444@btinternet.com]

  Sent: 15/4/05 23:34

  To: Margaret Hayton [margarethayton@yahoo.co.uk]

  If you nod towards a knee-jerk xenophobe (1.5 points), aren’t you are in serious danger of getting clocked on the head? Sounds like you need to give him a good bashing about the brains with a copy of the Asylum and Immigration Act.

  And please can I keep Declan? He’s so pretty!

  Becs xx

  42 Gledhill Street

  Ipswich

  17 April 2005

  Dearest Petey,

  I feel like I’ve been busy recently, though I haven’t exactly done much, to speak of. I suppose it’s just that I don’t seem to ever just sit and watch telly any more. Last night that Nasreen came round again, the girl I told you about from the hostel, for another session with Margaret and the Biff and Chip books. I made us all a pot of tea when they were finishing, and went and joined them in the sitting room. Nasreen has hers without any milk. Luckily she mentioned it before I’d done the cups, because I still always put the milk in first – do you remember how you always teased me about it when we first met, because you said it showed I was posh. What a joke! Mum and Dad were really proud when I got the job at the bank, but they’d still have laughed at the idea that a daughter of theirs could ever be posh. I just started doing it because then you can see better whether the tea has brewed enough, when you start to pour it in.

  Anyway, we sat and chatted, and Nasreen is lovely. She’s shy and her English is a bit shaky, but she has a really pretty smile. She always wears a scarf, but it’s not one of those black ones that hide half your face, it doesn’t even cover all her hair, she wears it back a bit on her forehead, and her hair all loose and escaping at the back. It’s not even a special scarf, just an ordinary flowered one – I think Sarah at work has got one nearly the same, from Debenhams in the sales after Christmas. And her hair is wonderful – so black it’s almost purple or blue, and catching the light, so that it made me think of the word ‘lustrous’ out of one of my romances. I think she must put scent on it, because when I leaned over to pass her her tea I caught a waft of something sweet, like Turkish delight or cinnamon or that orange flower water Dora puts in her chocolate buns. Maybe there’s no wonder that the men in the east think their women should cover up their hair, to keep that beauty all for themselves, I thought.

  Well, then Nasreen started telling us why she’d left her country. It was me who asked her, I think Margaret had never liked to, but I suppose I was curious, why someone should leave their home and friends and come somewhere so different when she’s so young (eighteen, she said). Snuffs went and sat next to her on the settee and put her head on her lap while she was talking. She always seems to pick up on it if someone is sad (you know what a comfort she’s been to me without you here). It seems Nasreen had a boyfriend that her family didn’t approve of. Gjergj, his name is apparently – she wrote it down for us because English people can never spell it – and I said, how funny, that’s like my husband, his middle name is George, and that made her smile. Apparently it was because she is Muslim and he is a Christian. ‘Albanian Orthodox’ is what Margaret called it, I think – she seems to have been reading up on Nasreen’s country. I’d never heard of it – I thought there was only Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox. Poor Nasreen must have been really scared. She says she thought her brothers would actually hurt her, or Gjergj, and that’s why she ran away. Isn’t it awful what families can do to one another, sometimes? And of course English families can be just as bad. There’s another young girl in Margaret’s hostel, really bad with her nerves she is, because her father abused her when she was little.

  Me and Margaret have been swapping books. I’ve got her on to my old Nevil Shute novels, and she’s lent me a book called Ruth – it made me think of your sister. But terribly sad, it is, it’s about a girl who has a baby and she’s not married and the man abandons her. It’s by that Mrs Gaskell. (I wonder why she’s always ‘Mrs’? You never hear anyone saying ‘Miss Austen’, do you?) Funny that they never made us read Mrs Gaskell’s books at school – it was always the male writers like Dickens and Thomas Hardy – well, apart from Jane Austen, but she was the only one. Margaret says she is named after someone in another one of Mrs Gaskell’s books. Her dad chose it because it was his favourite story. She was talking about her name last night, in fact, how she has always hated it because she thinks it makes her sound old. I’d never really thought much about my name before – it’s a pity really, because it means I never asked Mum and Dad about why they chose it, while they were alive. If you write it in capitals it looks rather like one of those things where the initials stand for something – an acronym, isn’t it? – or the new name of something that used to be nationalised. But I like the way it has ‘core’ in it, like the heart of something. Because your name is at the heart of who you are, after all, isn’t it? Your grandad was Peter, wasn’t he? I can’t remember how old you said you were when he died – about twelve, I think? I wonder if he was like you.

  Margaret met the MP yesterday, at his ‘surgery’ as they call it – makes it sound like she’s going to him with the flu. She wanted to talk to him about Nasreen, something about how she can’t stay in the hostel because of being from abroad. I thought that was all illegal now, treating people differently because of where they’re from, but apparently not. I asked her how it went, because she’d been full of nothing else all week beforehand, and she did say he is going to meet her again next week, and get her some answers, so I suppose she was fairly happy about it, but she had a sort of hazy look that she gets sometimes, so I decided not to ask her any more.

  The rosemary alongside the path has come into flower this week. It looks a picture, and it’s brought the bumble bees out of nowhere. It got me thinking about the year when Snuffy was a puppy, and she thought that all the springy plants, the rosemary and the hebes, were a game we’d put there specially for he
r. Do you remember how she used to take a run up and leap into the middle of the bushes as if they were a bouncy castle? You always knew when she’d been at it, because she’d come in smelling of rosemary, and then you’d go out and survey the damage, and poor Snuffs would creep under the kitchen table and look so guilty that you hadn’t the heart to be cross with her. Most of the garden got flattened that summer – but it was only one year, because by the next spring she got too heavy to bounce and went straight through if she jumped on the plants. So then she got bored of it, and of course everything soon grew back to normal. You know, love, every time I call Snuffy in from the garden it reminds me of you, and how tickled I was when you came up with the name for her. Odd really, because we never even really watched ‘The West Wing’, did we? We just used to see the end credits before our Friday gardening programme. Mind you, you always preferred the ones on the BBC. But you used to tease me for looking less and less like Charlie Dimmock and more and more like Pippa Greenwood.

  Dora at the bank has invited me to a do for her and Dave’s thirtieth anniversary at the end of the month, at the social club at Dave’s work. Nearly twenty years we’ve been friends now, me and Dora. I remember she took me under her wing on my very first day at the bank. ‘We’ll be Dora and Cora,’ she said – and we still are! Anyway, this anniversary got me thinking about their twenty-fifth. Do you remember, Pete? They had it in that boat they’ve turned into a pub down at the docks, and you kept making jokes about having another tot of rum, and calling everyone ‘me hearties’ and ‘landlubbers’ until it drove me crazy and I went up on deck in a huff. But then when I was looking over the railings you came after me and put your arms round me from behind and took hold of my breasts and said ‘Ahoy there’, and that you’d found a chest of treasure, and suddenly it all seemed funny again, and I turned round and you kissed me.

  I miss you, Petey. Love you for ever,

  Cora xxx

  From: Michael Carragan

  [mmcarragan@hc.parliament.uk]

  Sent: 18/4/05 15:47

  To: Richard Slater [rpslater@hc.parliament.uk]

  Richard, hi! Well, you’ll be pleased to know I did my duty by you this morning. A rare appearance by the Rottweiler at a meeting on franchising of prison kitchen services. As I followed him out at the end, blending myself amongst the phalanx of special advisers by walking very quickly with my mobile phone adhered to one ear, I was able to slide seamlessly from the subject of privatised porridge to the question of when the Iraq vote refuseniks will be allowed out of gaol. I even managed to mention your name. He emitted a kind of small grunt as he outpaced me down the corridor, but there was no visible curl of the prime ministerial lip.

  Speaking of slathering jaws, how did it go on Saturday with your ageing feminist tub-thumper?

  Michael.

  Michael Carragan (Labour)

  Member of Parliament for West Bromwich West

  From: Richard Slater [rpslater@hc.parliament.uk]

  Sent: 18/4/05 16:19

  To: Michael Carragan [mmcarragan@hc.parliament.uk]

  Hello, Michael. Very grateful for the plug with ROTW. Fancy a drink tonight to analyse that grunt in more detail?

  The gods of back bench servitude have smiled on me for once, in the matter of the tub-thumper. She was due at 10.30, and I stepped out into the lobby expecting something tweedy and sexagenarian, but the only non-empty chair (see how my venue-hopping works?) was occupied by a twenty-something vision in stone-washed denim and Polartec, with a cloud of dark ringlets and huge, serious eyes. Disbelieving, I even called her name, ‘Margaret Hayton’, addressing the light fittings non-committally. The vision rose, and came forward and held out its hand gravely, and I couldn’t think of anything to say except ‘Richard Slater’ (which was unnecessary information), or anything to do except go on shaking her hand like a slightly senile vicar at a parish tea.

  Turns out she is a junior school teacher. It was good to be forewarned – you wouldn’t try to put anything over on someone who regularly stands up and faces thirty unescorted eight year olds. She talked some sense, too – and in an impassioned tone which was very hard to resist. Or at least, I found myself finding it so. It was all about the 1996 l egislation – the Asylum and Immigration Act, you know, the one when asylum seekers lost the right to council housing and other state support. She has a solicitor friend who works with refugees who thinks that voluntary organisations may also be precluded from offering housing if they are grant-aided by national or local government. Is this your neck of the Home Office woods, by any chance? Might pick your brains about it later. I told her I would certainly be looking into it, and she gave this laugh, except it was a laugh which made me feel depressed. Not that she was laughing at me, it wasn’t that, it was more sad and self-mocking, and it seemed to belong more to the old Margaret, the hard-bitten matron of my imagination, than to this fresh and clear-eyed creature. And before I knew what was happening I had taken hold of her hand again . . . and asked her to come back next Saturday! What was I thinking of? There’s nothing glamorous about the arcane detail of borough council grant-making powers, and asylum seekers certainly aren’t the darlings of the public’s heart right now. What’s more, I don’t have another one of my ex-directory surgeries in Ipswich for another four weeks, and I had planned on spending next Saturday in London, conducting a stratigraphic survey of the layered deposits of paperwork on my desk, and maybe making time to check out that new second-hand bookshop in Goswell Road.

  You can berate me for my stupidity tonight – how about meeting at 10 p.m. in the Lobby?

  Richard.

  Richard Slater (Labour)

  Member of Parliament for Ipswich

  From: Margaret Hayton

  [margarethayton@yahoo.co.uk]

  Sent: 18/4/05 22:10

  To: Rebecca Prichard [becs444@btinternet.com]

  Dear Becs,

  How are Zoe and her dad, then? Has she asked Daddy what Miss Prichard is doing in the bathroom in her underwear yet? (I bet you’re a bit nervous when it’s her turn to ‘Show and Tell’ about her weekend.)

  Well, I had my meeting with Mr Slater. In fact he told me to call him Richard, but it doesn’t seem right calling your MP by his first name, somehow. Like calling someone’s grandad Reginald, or when Dad’s bishop asked me to call him Sid. Though he does seem more of a Richard than a Mr Slater, actually. He’s not as old as he looks in the pictures in the paper, and he’s got nice eyes.

  When I got there I had to wait a bit, and there were rows of chairs like at the dentist, but no one there waiting except me. He came out of his office and called my name, and I got really embarrassed, you know how I always do if someone says my name in public. Not that it was exactly in public, there were only the two of us there, but you know what I mean. I hate – hate – my name. I always imagine people looking round, expecting to see a woman in her fifties, in a sensible raincoat – and I’m sure that was what he was thinking. People have aunts, and even great-aunts, called Margaret; I’ve never met anyone else our age cursed with the name. You can’t shorten it either. Imagine being a Madge, that would be even worse (slatternly 1950s housewife with a fag in her mouth and curlers in her hair), or a Marge (cartoon character with yellow face and two-foot blue beehive). And my best friend from school had a border collie called Meg. That just leaves Maggie . . . and for me the only image that conjures up is documentary footage on TV from the 1980s, CND demos, or striking miners on picket lines, and that inevitable angry chanting: ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie – out, out, out!’ Still, I suppose it could have been worse – Dad didn’t just like Elizabeth Gaskell, he was also into George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, so I might have ended up a Rosamond or a Bathsheba.

  Sorry, I digress. Basically, he seemed interested (though I suspect Mr Richard Slater MP might be adept at seeming all sorts of things). He’s going to meet with me again next Saturday and tell me what he’s been able to find out. I think next time I’ll wear my interview blouse, and those black trou
sers I had for graduation, instead of just jeans. I need to look more businesslike. Then he might take me more seriously, you know – not just think I’m some kind of kid.

  I know it sounds corny, Becs – but wouldn’t it be just amazing if I were really able to make a difference over this issue?

  Love,

  Margaret xx

  From: Rebecca Prichard [becs444@btinternet.com]

  Sent: 18/4/05 22:44

  To: Margaret Hayton [margarethayton@yahoo.co.uk]

  Hi Margaret,

  First of all: Declan. I think he is gorgeous, and things are hotting up nicely. I care nothing for your contumely and vilipendency – it’s water off a duck’s back, chuck.

  Second of all: this Richard bloke. Nice eyes, eh?

  And third of all: names. At least Margaret Hale is a decent heroine. Virtuous, but feisty with it. My mum called me Rebecca after the Daphne du Maurier (or in fact more likely the Hitchcock). Having read the book, at age fifteen, I took her to task about naming me after someone who is so obnoxious, so faithless and philandering, that she ends up drowned for her trouble – and has an extremely questionable relationship with her housekeeper. It seems to have passed Mum by completely that Rebecca wasn’t the name of the heroine. Come to think of it, she didn’t have a name at all, did she, the second wife? Maybe I should change my name to /&%>, the schoolteacher formerly known as Becs.

  Hugs,

  Becs xx

  From: Margaret Hayton [margarethayton@yahoo.co.uk]

  Sent: 18/4/05 22:49

  To: Rebecca Prichard [becs444@btinternet.com]