The Lost Letters of William Woolf

by Helen Cullen

  William cast his mind back to the afternoon when they had taken their first tentative steps to what would become a shared life. It was autumn. A westerly wind scattered crisping leaves around their feet and stirred a profound change within William. He could not endure one more minute of this constant low-level anxiety about their friendship, nor bear to sustain his neutrality for another second. As he sat on the floor of his bedsit, helping Clare to sand down a rocking chair she had dragged home from a flea market with the intention of painting it duck-egg blue, the urge to speak bubbled up inside him with increasing force. They had been working in silence for twenty minutes when he abruptly stood up and started folding his sandpaper into an awkward square.

  ‘Clare, there’s something I have to ask you.’

  She looked up from where she sat; her legs stretched on either side of the rocker in a perfect triangle, black-and-white striped socks peeking out from inside the hem of her tartan flares.

  ‘Uh-oh. This sounds ominous. Should I be worried?’

  ‘I hope not.’ William’s eyes danced across her face, lingering on her own before they darted away at the critical moment. ‘I was just wondering, could I, perhaps, take you out on Saturday night?’

  Clare coiled her hair into a braid that curled around her throat and watched him fidget in his too-shiny brown leather brogues. Earlier, she had teased him that they looked like they were fashioned out of conkers. She pushed a bruise on her forearm.

  ‘What are you talking about? We go out all the time. We’ve spent every Saturday night together for the last six weeks.’

  William sighed. ‘Not on our own we haven’t.’

  He cursed himself for not considering in advance what to say, but the words had just burst from him like air from an over-inflated balloon. Clare jumped up and punched him playfully on the arm, a huge grin on her face.

  ‘William Woolf, are you asking me out on a date?’

  He stood tall, shoulders back, with his hands clasped behind him as if he were appealing to a jury in court.

  ‘Yes, indeed! That’s exactly what I am doing and, if you don’t want to, well, I guess I’ll live down the mortification in about eight to ten years, but I would be grateful if you saved me the pain of having to avoid you for that length of time. I really don’t want to have to drop out of uni, or move to Alaska, or start wearing disguises to avoid you. All in all, I think it would be much easier for us both if you just agreed.’

  He made a little bow at the end of his speech and a flop of brown curls tumbled across his forehead. She reached forward to brush them back behind his ear and said, ‘Well, when you put it like that, it does rather appear so. Hypothetically speaking, if I were to say yes, where would we go?’

  ‘I haven’t quite worked that out yet, but does that mean you’re coming? Stop smirking – you’re torturing me.’

  ‘Well, I’ll think about it and –’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well, I appear to have misinterpreted things here,’ he interrupted, his face crestfallen. ‘I’ll carry this home for you so you can be on your way.’

  He struggled to pick up the rocking chair in a bear hug and began wrestling it towards the door. Clare’s guffaw followed him and intercepted his flustered flee. He turned towards her and she helped him lower the chair to the floor.

  ‘Of course I’ll come, you fool. You wait four months to raise the question and then expect an immediate acceptance! You’re not very good at this, are you?’ She sighed and sat back down on the floor with fresh sandpaper in her hand. ‘Maybe that’s a good thing,’ she said.

  And so William had followed a yellow silk scarf down the wrought-iron staircase of a smoky jazz club, wondering if a kiss waited in the air between them. They sat in the smallest booth, tucked away in an alcove. Clare drew circles in the threadbare blue velvet of the banquette with her finger and tucked one bare leg beneath her. William reshaped the melting wax of the candle into odd little figurines and nudged closer to her. Over rum cocktails they could not afford, and bowls of olives they stole from other tables, stories saved for night-time were told. They shared confessions in the shadowy candlelight: tales of childhood, secret dreams of the future, the little worries they carried like pebbles in their pockets.

  ‘I don’t need to know where you came from to know you had a happy childhood, William. I have a sixth sense now for children of my ilk; I can see it in their eyes, but yours have no shadows at all.’

  ‘In all honesty, I’m terrified that I’ll end up a mediocre man who never had the nerve to turn his dreams into something real. I don’t want to become an English teacher bashing teenagers over the head with books they don’t care about. I want to write my own, one that will set their brains and hearts on fire!’

  ‘I’ve never wanted to get married and I hate the thought of a wedding; parading my dysfunctional family in front of my friends while I waddle along in a big white dress. I really can’t imagine anything worse. Could you see yourself doing it?’

  Not long after midnight, they ascended the stairs from the basement back out into the city night. This time, Clare led William by the hand. It had started to snow. He spun her in a circle, a light, white dust sprinkling down on them. Clare wrenched a red-and-white polka-dot umbrella from her denim rucksack and released it above their heads.

  ‘There are,’ she said, ‘few things more romantic than a shared umbrella.’

  He kissed the top of her head and whispered, ‘I can think of one.’

  Their first kiss chased away any lingering doubts he had about her feelings for him. When they arrived back at William’s, he unpacked a Super-8 camera from a compact charcoal leather suitcase under his single bed. They stood on the front steps of the Georgian house where he rented the basement flat and filmed the snowflakes dancing in the moonlight. Clare lay in the garden in her crimson duffel coat and fanned her legs and arms to make an angel. William captured it all on film; it was a silent movie he often returned to in the years to come as he settled down to sleep. He remembered drying her legs in his only good towel, the orange one with a giraffe in the centre, which had been airing on the radiator. He rubbed life back into them as she hummed along with David Bowie singing ‘Wild as the Wind’ on the radio. It was much too early to tell Clare how much he loved her, but Bowie sang the words for him. It was easy to believe they were the only two people listening to John Peel that evening and that he had chosen the song just for them.

  William sat in the depot and ran that film through his mind once more but, these days, the actors felt like strangers. His wife’s hair was brown now, rather than blonde. And much shorter. She had stopped dying it when she started her work experience at the solicitor’s. Nobody takes a pretty blonde barrister seriously, apparently, and definitely not one with silk scarves in her hair. It wasn’t just their physical selves that had changed, though, that part was easily understood; what confused him was trying to identify when their feelings had altered. Was it a million little incremental changes over a long period of time? Or something obvious he had missed? If their essential selves were still the same, couldn’t they find each other again? Or had they travelled too far down separate roads to reconnect in a different but happier place? The music swarmed over him like a misty fog rolling in from the Atlantic Ocean, and he luxuriated in it. The past felt more friend to him, now, than the present.

  II

  Marjorie snapped William to attention for the second time that day; she clinked a silver spoon with a peach-coloured plastic handle against the side of his Charlie Chaplin mug. ‘Yoo-hoo, William! Time for elevenses! It’s your turn to do the honours.’ He touched his lips with his fingers. Were these the same ones Clare had kissed? Had he really pulled that sliver of silk free? He rose and carried his mug to the kitchen, where he guiltily stirred two spoonfuls of sugar into a fresh cup. Sugar was banned in his home and William had made a ludicrous promise to stop taking it in tea altogether. Now, the refuge of a milky, sugary mugful was tainted by Clare’s cross voice, but he couldn’t re
sist the sweetness. When had he lost the will to argue over sugar? The right to surrender to tooth decay, false highs or type-two diabetes of his own free will had been robbed from him. Why admit defeat on this point when they had slammed doors over so many other things: moving the driver’s seat in the car back and forth; whose turn it was to wash up; what the answering-machine message would say; where to spend Christmas; whether to go on holiday and, if so, where; temperature control; volume control; affection control?

  So many power struggles, but the sugar ban could not be contested. Each grain was a thread Clare longed to pull. One pinch led to his self-indulgence, another to his alleged Peter Pan syndrome, a third to his lack of ambition. It would leave him open to questions concerning his lack of responsibility and her unhappiness with their lot. William had become acutely aware of the triggers. He walked blindly into so many kitchen catastrophes that their early life together had not prepared him for: finishing the leftovers, not finishing the leftovers, buying a rose for her from a market stall, not posting her mother’s birthday present, admitting he was thinking about re-forming his old band, the Bleeding Hearts, with Stevie.

  The very thought of William cavorting about the country with Stevie and his misfit collective caused a muscle in Clare’s temple to throb visibly. At university, she had possessed a greater level of tolerance for their antics and peculiar brand of glam-folk, but her enthusiasm waned when advancing years did nothing to deter Stevie from his flamboyant misadventures in self-destruction. William looked back on their ‘Toilet Tour’ triumphs with a bittersweet nostalgia that sometimes overwhelmed him. He missed the swagger by association of playing keyboards for Stevie; the confidence and confidants; the potential for calamity and hilarity erupting at any moment. He pined for the nights when Clare had swayed in front of the stage, arms bedecked in dozens of silver bangles that twinkled in the light, purple leg-warmers sliding towards her ankles as she danced. Whenever he looked out at the audience, she always caught his eye, and he felt himself grow taller by her witness.

  These days, the only moments of unpredictability in his life came within the walls of the depot. At home, he felt like a frightened rabbit, constantly sniffing the air for an ill wind. Clare was a queen of entrapment, but some traps the rabbit saw glinting miles away. The sugar was a dare he would not challenge. He wasn’t trained for this heart-to-heart combat and was desperate to avoid any more injury. William nursed his contraband and tuned back into the conversation that was circling around him.

  ‘I just think,’ said Marjorie, ‘that valentines only matter if they arrive by the fourteenth. A couple of weeks could be the difference between ’appily ever after and takin’ out a personal ad. There’ll be a lot of soggy pillows an’ sulky silences if some of this lot don’t make it.’ Her left hand, stained with orange fake tan, nails painted metallic pink, formed a right angle with her hip.

  Mr Ned Flanagan, the Dead Letters Depot director, opened and closed the kitchen cupboards with increasing speed.

  ‘That’s all well and good, Miss Clarke, but there are just as many other undeliverables we need to get through that are far more important than Sarah in the sixth form telling some pimply footie player that she is up for it, or what have you. We cannot simply ignore everything else and prioritize love affairs over all the other, more important, business of the world. There could be –’

  Marjorie cut him off as he removed his glasses to polish them in a peach linen handkerchief.

  ‘Well, with all due respect, sir, it’s clear you ain’t ever been in love. Nothin’ll slow down the business of the world like broken ’earts. We ’ave to help Cupid do his job. That’s our part to play.’

  ‘More like we must help Stupid! I’ll have you know, Mrs Flanagan and I have enjoyed a love-filled marriage for over thirty-five years now. If you don’t love someone enough to remember their post code, it doesn’t look too good, from where I’m standing. Billy, what do you think?’

  Mr Flanagan rapped his knuckles on the counter-top to get William’s attention. He was the only person who called him Billy.

  ‘William, sir. It’s William.’

  ‘Yes, Yes, William, Billy, Willy – it’s all the same. Now, what do you think about this idea to move everyone on to valentines duty?’

  William scratched his fingers through his beard. ‘As much as I share Marjorie’s soft spot for a love story,’ he said, ‘I think everything should be dealt with by normal procedure, and the valentines just have to join the back of the queue. Otherwise, it’s not fair on the others.’

  In truth, however, William was not sure he was in the right frame of mind to be facilitating love’s young dream, not when his own great love story was being stretched so thin. A thought struck him: if he and Clare completely dissolved, did that mean she wasn’t his great love, after all? He shook the question away as he watched Ned’s back retreat.

  ‘There you are, Miss Clarke,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘The voice of reason. Good man, Billy. Now, go team!’

  Mr Flanagan had recently attended a seminar on Staff Motivation and Morale, with, at best, mixed results. He thrust a self-conscious fist into the air in lacklustre victory and skipped out of the room, away from Marjorie’s look of blatant contempt. William splashed the dregs of his drink into the sink and ran after him, catching him on the stairs.

  ‘Mr Flanagan, I was just wondering if you’ve had a chance yet to read my presentation on the Supernaturals? If you think it’s worth developing, I’d love to get started.’

  ‘Yes, Billy, I gave it a glance. First of all, I don’t think God can really be considered a supernatural being.’

  William shuffled a little on the step, pausing before he spoke again. ‘I see. Well, I just meant it as a collective term for those addressees that don’t exist in reality. We could try something else. Maybe “Mythical Creatures” or “The Others”?’

  Mr Flanagan raised his eyebrows and leaned in a little closer. ‘So you think God is a mythical creature, Billy?’

  ‘I don’t really think anything at all about him, sir. What we name them isn’t really the point. It’s more what we do with them.’

  Of all the fascinating worlds opened to William by the Dead Letters Depot, the Supernatural Division (as he thought of it) intrigued him the most. On the fourth floor, rows of mail sacks were lined up in metal-framed structures like flip-top bins. At the front of each row, a laminated sign in bold moss-green capitals was taped to the floor to identify each category: GOD, SANTA, SCIENCE FICTION, SAINTS & PROPHETS, TV/FILM CHARACTERS, LITERARY FIGURES, STARS and OTHER. It was true that much of the mail in the depot was intended for flesh-and-blood people who walked the earth. It was the degree of magic that people must believe in for the other types of mail to be delivered, however, that forced the fourth floor to adopt a supernatural element for William. An uncanny number of people all over the country took pen to paper and wrote to idols, icons and ideas: Elvis, the Tooth Fairy, Yoda, St Anthony. These messages in a bottle, trails of bread left in the forest, obsessed William. Who were these true believers and how long did they wait for a reply? Was the writing more important than the response? Did the writers tell anyone that they had written these letters? Were they relieved or saddened that their unanswered prayers had fallen on deaf ears?

  For some time, William had wanted to create a volume of these missives for public record. He felt there was a cast of thousands currently speaking into the void but who deserved to be heard. Other letter detectives had their own obsessions: Trevor had sought his job purely to fuel his philately; Morgana had a collection of questionably private photographs that everyone pretended didn’t exist; Roger diligently worked on translations from foreign languages; Dolores was determined to reunite manuscripts, books of poetry or short stories with their scribes; and for Marjorie, it was, of course, love letters and, in particular, valentines. The Supernatural Division was William’s great obsession and what inspired the stories of his imagination.

  There was already a S
easonal Santa Unit, commissioned every December to answer all the children who wrote to Father Christmas and helpfully included their addresses. The staff tried to personalize the letters a little so as not to dispel belief, should the children compare with each other. Fan mail to stars of stage and screen was sent to production companies or agents. Missives to deceased celebrities were despatched to next of kin, their fan club or the manager of the estate. It was the letters to God, to mythics and mystics, to the other, that haunted William and formed the basis of his work. He had started collecting his favourites in the filing cabinets that lined the echoing Supernatural Division. He painstakingly typed out those he wanted to include in the volume and took photographs of the original documents. In his mind’s eye, he saw the two laid side by side on glossy, ivory pages within hard covers, the book entitled ‘A Volume of Lost Letters’.

  Mr Flanagan peered over his spectacles at William. ‘The truth of it is, Billy, we shouldn’t really be opening those letters. You know very well it is illegal to open any mail unless we believe that there is some chance we can forward it on to its ultimate destination. If a letter is addressed to God, what do you think you are going to learn from the contents about the intended address? It seems a bit dubious to me, if I’m truthful.’

  ‘Some of the letters we have here are over fifty years old,’ replied William. ‘Nobody is going to lodge a complaint, and I think people would get a lot out of being able to read them. They’re cultural artefacts, really.’ William stopped his left foot tapping on the marble step when he saw Mr Flanagan peering at his mustard polka-dot socks.