The Letter

by Ruth Saberton

  “I don’t know,” I reply. “I’ve never really had the chance to find out.”

  “Well, feel free to come here anytime and see,” Matt grins. “You could make a start in here if you wanted.”

  “Here” is a small door set into a crumbling wall, which Matt unlocks before standing back to let me through. Fingers of ivy reach for me as I pass through; I push them away, impatient to see the secrets hidden in this small walled garden with its tangled hedges and its flower beds thick with the remains of long-dead plants. The garden is a perfect square, with paths leading from each corner to converge at the centre. Rosemary bushes, straggling and woody, guard the paths on each side.

  “Kit’s memorial’s in the centre. All paths lead to him because he was the centre of his parents’ world,” Matt says simply.

  “I thought he was lost in action? That’s what the window says in the church.”

  “You’re right: he was. This is a private memorial his parents placed here for the family. I guess it gave them something to focus on and a private place to grieve. Some people need that.”

  He’s right. They do. I don’t think I’m one of them though. I’ve not visited the garden of remembrance since the simple ceremony after Neil’s funeral. He isn’t there: he’s in my heart. His mother called me a cold fish when I refused to have him buried with an ornate headstone. She wanted the grave and the ritual and the whole big funeral, but Neil would have hated it. He was all about grabbing life with both hands and wrestling it to the ground, and in honour of this I scattered his ashes on the lake where he loved to sail. That’s where he would want to be, with the water and the wind and the freedom of endless possibilities. It was the last thing I could do for him.

  “All these bushes are rosemary,” Matt says, pointing at the bedraggled hedges. “According to Janet, the Foundation’s garden historian, rosemary’s associated with remembrance. I think that’s a nice touch, don’t you?”

  I nod but I’m not looking at Matt. Instead, I’m imagining a woman who’s walking towards the centre of the garden. Her grey hair is swept into a chignon and she’s wearing the clothes of a long-gone era. Her head is bowed and one hand trails through the rosemary, brushing the leaves and filling the air with a pungent scent. For Lady Rivers, Kit would forever be associated with this aroma, just the faintest trace of it enough to bring his memory tearing back no matter where she was. I’m envious because when I think of Neil, no matter how hard I try to conjure up the warm scent of his neck when I nuzzled into it at night, all I get is the choking smell of the hospital. Maybe I’ll plant a rosemary bush at the Rectory. If I think of Neil when I brush past it, will this smudge out the horrors lodged in my senses?

  Matt and I walk to the centre of the garden. A semicircular stone bench is placed at the midpoint where the paths converge. In front of it is a simple marble slab set into the path.

  Captain Christopher ‘Kit’ Rivers

  Beloved son

  1896–1916

  ‘Their name liveth for evermore’

  It’s plain, but its simplicity is more moving than an ornate tomb covered in weeping angels would have been.

  “Kit’s parents must have sat here and thought of him. I hope the peace of the spot helped them,” I say.

  “His mother apparently told her friends that she didn’t know how she could bear the loss or go on without him. Losing a child must be unbearable. Poor woman. They say she never got over it. How could she?”

  “She wouldn’t have, but in the end you do your best because there’s no choice,” I say quietly. “You have to move forwards.”

  You do, Neil agrees, smiling across the garden at me. And you are moving forwards, Chloe. You really are.

  “That’s true. I think this is a healing place. Maybe it helped her do that?” Matt says. “I never fail to be touched by it. Crazy as it sounds, I feel close to Kit here even though he’s buried somewhere in France.”

  He’s right: it is a special place. As we stand quietly and look at the memorial, which is softened by the watery sunlight, I decide I want to tell Matt Enys about the carving in the church. It could be a piece in the puzzle and it was what I came here to talk about. If he thinks I’m making something out of nothing, then I’ll just have to deal with it.

  “Matt,” I begin, “Kit’s window in the church has a daisy in it, doesn’t it? Have you any idea why? I was looking at it earlier and it seems to me as though it was added later on.”

  “Yes, I know the bit you mean and the daisy does look like an addition,” Matt agrees. “It’s very out of place, I think, but I’m afraid if you’re asking me why it’s there I can’t tell you the answer. It’s another mystery. It could mean something or it might be as simple and banal as somebody thought it might look nice. It may even be a clumsy repair.”

  I nod. “That’s what I thought too, but when I was in church earlier for the remembrance service I noticed something. It’s probably just a coincidence, but I’ve noticed there’s also a daisy carved onto the front pew, on the shelf part.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a daisy carved onto the pew,” I repeat. “It’s nothing special. Just something that looks as though it’s been etched with a penknife. If I was at school I’d find similar things scratched onto desks.”

  Erect penises are usually what the kids I teach like to carve, but I don’t share this little gem. I’ve only known Matt a few hours, hardly long enough to discuss genitalia.

  “In St Nonna’s?”

  “Yes. I was sitting in the front pew on the right-hand side and it caught my attention.”

  “Interesting,” Matt says slowly. “That pew used to be where the Rivers family sat. Back then the most important families had their own pews and, being the foremost landowners, the Rivers were right at the front. On the right-hand side.”

  “I could have been sitting where Kit Rivers once sat?”

  “It’s very likely,” he replies.

  “So the daisy in the window and the one on the pew are linked?”

  “They could be, but how we’d ever know that for sure is the big question. I’ve never heard anyone explain what the daisy emblem is all about.”

  “But it could mean something.”

  “Like a message from the past?” Matt’s teasing me and I laugh.

  “I know that’s a bit unlikely. Fair enough. It could have been done by anyone.”

  “True, but it does sound very intriguing. Come on, then. Shall we go?”

  “Go where?”

  Matt Enys smiles down at me. “To the church, of course. I’d like to see this for myself.”

  Chapter 8

  Chloe

  Matt and I walk through the empty church, our footsteps seeming unbearably loud as we pass through the nave. We slip into the front pew and I point out the etched daisy. Matt’s fingers stroke the wood.

  “How strange,” he says.

  “Do you think it means something?”

  “To be honest I don’t know.”

  “But Kit would have sat here?”

  He nods. “This was the family pew and Kit would have sat here every Sunday until he left to fight, but I couldn’t tell you whether this is linked to him. The daisy in the window has irked me for years but I’ve always assumed it was a clumsy repair. Obviously it wasn’t here in Kit’s time.” His finger skims the design. “Maybe there could be a connection, but I couldn’t even begin to guess what that might be.”

  “So it’s a mystery?”

  “It seems that way. Kit’s memorial window was made at least ten years after his death and the design was nothing to do with him.”

  “Do you think you can find out what it means? Or if it’s linked to Kit Rivers?”

  “I’ll certainly do my best,” Matt promises. “This is where I earn my keep. Maybe there’s something in the house that I’ve overlooked? Or a line in one of the poems? A photo tucked into a drawer? There are hundreds of possibilities, but it’s going to take time. You’ve seen the Man
or and how full of stuff it is. I could be a while.”

  “Needles and haystacks spring to mind,” I say, and he laughs.

  “If only it was that straightforward!”

  We sit in thoughtful silence. The two memorial windows glow in the late sunlight, like laughter after a storm of tears. I think about the poems I read, and I wonder what the significance of the flower might be. Could it have been Kit who carved this one? The etched flower is perfectly placed to be secretly traced with a forefinger, maybe during prayers or a sermon. For a second an idea surfaces, flickering through my mind with bright brilliance before it flips and dives deep, leaving me struggling to cling onto what it was I thought I almost understood.

  Matt turns to me. “You could help? If you like?”

  “Me? How can I help? I’m no historian.”

  “I don’t need a historian. I need a pair of sharp eyes and somebody who’s interested. You see things in a different way to other people, Chloe. You notice details and patterns. If it hadn’t been for you then I wouldn’t know about this carving.”

  I shake my head. “It might be nothing.”

  “Or it might be everything. The point is, I don’t know and I wouldn’t have known if it wasn’t for you. Look, you don’t have to make your mind up now, but we’re always looking for volunteers at the Kernow Heritage Foundation and I think you’d be a wonderful addition to the team. You’re exactly the kind of person we need.”

  This unexpected praise feels like slipping into a warm bath. I can’t remember the last time that somebody told me I might be useful to have around. My mother watches me with a permanently worried pleat between her brows, and when I last stayed with my sister I caught her hiding the steak knives (although Steph always was a drama queen). The doctors have an air of patient resignation, Perky Pippa analyses me as though I’m a lab specimen and, before I finally handed in my notice after my brief return to work, all my colleagues tiptoed around me. To be in St Nonna’s with a virtual stranger who thinks I’m worth listening to is really quite refreshing. Matt doesn’t know anything about me. He doesn’t know about Neil or the past. He just sees me.

  “Sorry. I’m being presumptuous. You’re probably busy enough already,” Matt apologises when I don’t reply. He runs a hand through his hair and smiles ruefully. “Feel free to tell me to shut up. I’m afraid I get totally carried away about Kit. My ex said it borders on obsession and she probably has a point. I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than spend hours sifting through junk.”

  He’s wrong: I haven’t. My grand plan of leave London and move to Cornwall never got beyond what would happen when I actually arrived. For months my only focus was escaping the flat and all the memories it held. The minutiae of dealing with estate agents, potential buyers and conveyancers filled my time and, following that, the logistics of storing items and selecting those that would come with me. I never thought about what I’d do with myself once I got here. Paint again was the hope, but I never considered just how vast the Rectory would feel or imagined how my days would yawn ahead, empty and endless.

  Do it! Neil’s lolling against a pew and looking stern. Can’t have you lazing about all day now I’m not here to kick you up the backside! You’ll be watching Jeremy Kyle and Homes Under the Hammer before you know it!

  He’s gone in one beat of my pulse. Still, this is the reminder I need. Neil would hate to think of me alone and lacking focus. Stewing in the Rectory won’t bring him back to me, but perhaps finding out more about Kit Rivers and doing some voluntary work for the Kernow Heritage Foundation might help to ease the ache in my heart?

  “OK,” I say. “Why not?”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I have some time on my hands and I’d like to help.”

  “Well, that’s great! Welcome to the team!”

  He holds out his hand and we shake. It’s strange to have my fingers enclosed in a man’s grasp, however fleetingly, and I’m startled by the unexpected intimacy of the contact. I slide my fingers away as swiftly as I can. Neil and I held hands all the time and this is a reminder of the loss of something I’d so casually taken for granted. I’d loved being linked to him as we strolled around the market or sat on the sofa watching a film.

  Sometimes it’s the simple losses that slice deepest. It’s a good thing I have something new to concentrate on.

  “When do I start?” I ask.

  Matt grins. “At the beginning, of course. You, Chloe Pencarrow, have got a lot of reading to do!”

  “And Matt thinks that the image in the window and the carved daisy on the pew are linked?” Sue asks, or at least I think this is what she says. It’s hard to tell because her mouth’s full of pizza.

  As I’d expected, it would have been easier to stop the tide racing up the beach than to find a good excuse not to eat dinner with the vicar and her family. It’s Monday evening, the elusive gap in her schedule that Sue was looking for. It turned out that one of her meetings had been cancelled at short notice. When she knocked on the Old Rectory’s door to see if I happened to be free, I was bleary-eyed after hours spent mugging up on the Great War and the history of Rosecraddick. For the first time in longer than I can remember, my thoughts have been well and truly occupied by something other than my own grief.

  “Happy reading!” Matt had said cheerfully this morning when he’d turned up with a pile of books and papers. “Just something light to keep you going. Owen, Sassoon, Robert Graves, some military history, some social history, and the icing on the cake – my personal notes on Kit Rivers. Don’t read it all at once!”

  “You do know I teach art, not English?”

  “You foolishly said you had time on your hands,” Matt had reminded me. “Kernow Heritage Foundation needs all volunteers to be well informed before we let them loose. Let me know when you’re ready for your test.”

  “Test?”

  “Absolutely. Nothing too scary. Just a couple of essays and some multiple choice,” he’d deadpanned, and for a minute I’d stared at him in horror before he’d started laughing.

  “Very funny,” I’d huffed, but secretly I was pleased. What better way to take my mind off the present than by immersing myself in the past? The desire to paint was starting to return but I was still afraid to pick up my brushes. What if my gift had died with Neil? What if I couldn’t paint anymore? Several times I’d almost tried, had selected a sketchbook and sorted out my watercolours before the dread of failure took hold and I’d put everything away again. Whatever the name was for the artist’s equivalent of writer’s block, it seemed that I had it.

  “Enjoy,” had been Matt’s parting shot – and then he’d driven away, waving merrily and leaving me clutching an armful of books. I’d supposed I had better get stuck in.

  And anyway, enjoy wasn’t quite the word I would have used for reading about the horrors of trench warfare…

  I’d lit the wood burner in the sitting room and curled up in the window seat with the first of the books Matt had lent me. This was a social history of the Great War, and as I’d read I’d been transported back to the early nineteen-hundreds. Then I’d delved into Kit’s poetry again before turning to Matt’s notes. The mug of coffee I’d made turned cold, lunchtime came and went, and by the time Sue hammered on the door the sun had dipped behind the woods and shadows were tiptoeing across the floorboards.

  “I’ve been trying to call you!” Sue had cried as I’d opened the door. “I was getting worried.”

  “I think I left my phone in the kitchen. I couldn’t hear it.”

  “Brr! It’s blooming freezing in here! I thought you’d got logs?” Sue had stood in the hallway, puffing out clouds of breath. “This is ridiculous! Isn’t the range working?”

  “It was. I think it must have gone out while I was reading.”

  Her eyebrows flew up into her curly fringe. “How long were you reading?”

  “I’m not sure. Five hours? Maybe six?”

  It had been a shock to find myself abruptly retur
ned to the twenty-first century, and for a few seconds I’d blinked and rubbed my eyes. Sue was already marching into the kitchen where, sure enough, the range’s firebox had died down to a red glow.

  “Thank you, Lord, for the gift of central heating,” Sue had said, stuffing logs into the firebox and stoking it up to a roar. Then she’d slammed the door shut and turned to face me, hands on her hips and with her chin set at a determined angle.

  “Right. That’s sorted now, but it’s going to take a while to heat the radiators. In the meantime, you’re coming to ours for pizza and some serious defrosting. No arguments!”

  Before I’d had a chance to protest, Sue had fetched my coat and bag and herded me out of the house and to her car. Once she’d turned the engine on and the car’s asthmatic heater had started puffing out wheezy clouds of warmth, she’d driven me across Rosecraddick to the New Rectory, where the radiators were cranked up and her husband was unpacking a stack of Domino’s best. Tim didn’t seem at all put out that his wife had turned up with an extra mouth to feed. Instead, he gave me a kiss on the cheek, said he was pleased to meet me and poured us all a glass of red wine. Before long I was curled up on a squashy sofa in a toasty living room, my plate piled high with pizza and my head just the right side of woozy.

  “You’ve got to stop titbitting our dog,” Tim scolds his wife now, just as she’s about to offer Molly a piece of pepperoni.

  “I don’t!” protests Sue, hastily tucking the giveaway meat behind her back.

  Her husband laughs. “See what kind of a vicar we have in this parish?” he says.