The Lost Letters of William Woolf

by Helen Cullen

  ‘I admire your enthusiasm, Billy, but I just think it’s terribly unfair on those people who believe they really are writing to God. If they discover in your book a whole edition of other people’s letters and understand that the only recipient was one of us, what will that do to their morale?’

  ‘Maybe they’ll just be pleased to know that someone is listening?’

  ‘Dear boy, with all due respect, I doubt they were hoping for you. I’m afraid we’ll never get it past the board. Not at the moment, anyway. I agree that the archiving you are doing is worthwhile – a time capsule, if you will – but making these letters public is just not feasible. Also, it has been noticed that you have been spending too much time on the fourth floor. It’s time to get back to the business we hired you to do. God can take care of the others.’

  Mr Flanagan gave William’s shoulder an awkward squeeze before hastening downstairs to hide in his office until Mrs Flanagan collected him at five o’clock in their turquoise Ford Fiesta.

  William gulped back disappointment, ran his fingers through his hair, pulling the frustration from his scalp, through the messy curls. The tugging released some tension and he indulged in a long, deep breath that made his woollen jumper swell and collapse. In an act of self-satisfied defiance, he continued up the stairs to the fourth floor, despite Mr Flanagan’s warning. A new trolley of fantastical endeavours awaited him, and he dived straight in. The first letter he pulled out had just one word on the envelope: ‘God’. It looked like the handwriting of an old lady: curvy and elegant, letters practised first in chalk, then pencil and, eventually, ink. The ‘G’ started strong, the nib tearing a tiny scratch in the manila envelope. The ‘o’ and the ‘d’ were frailer, as if the writer had grown tired even before finishing the word. William read slowly.

  Dear God,

  It has been a long time since I went to confession. The last time I went, Fr Fitzpatrick told me a woman with six children could have no sins, so I never went back. It’s not right, though, because, as you well know, I am a sinner. Every morning, I wake up and curse the light meeting my eyes. I wish that you had let me go in my sleep – to be with Joe. I know that’s a terrible sin. I should be grateful for the new dawn, more time with my children and the grandkiddies. But I’m a burden on them now, and Joe’s the one who needs me. I’m sure you’re looking after him, but he has his own way of going on, and I’m not sure he’d make a fuss if he was worried. He’s never been very good at speaking his mind to strangers. He’ll just draw in on himself, like he did during his spell in the hospital. After all those years, I think he’ll miss having me to talk to, and the way I helped him into his overcoat, and out of his boots, made sure none of the different types of food touched each other on his plate. Unless you have more work for me here, will you let me go to him? I had a dream last night that I was in Heaven. Joe was sitting beside me on a promenade by the finest-looking sea – bluer and greener than I’ve ever seen in Blackpool, that’s for sure. An orchestra was playing on the bandstand and Joe asked me to dance, and we could. His old hip was like new, his hands steady, back straight, and no touch of arthritis in my legs. We danced like we were sixteen again. And when I woke up, I cried like I was a silly sixteen-year-old, too.

  Dear God, forgive me and please let me come to you. Help me find my Joe.

  Your faithful servant,

  Mrs Vera Flynn, Number 16

  William folded the pale-blue page back along the crease and slipped it carefully inside its envelope. He couldn’t imagine Clare pining for him like that now, worrying about him after he’d gone, wanting to join him. He mourned for her, though, so much already, even though he saw her every day. Each time he heard her laughing on the telephone, or saw her hands waving animatedly at a party, he wished the joke were his, the banter with him. He missed her teasing him about what she called his ‘grandad chic’, how she had persisted in coaxing him on to dance floors, where his two clumsy feet could be only an embarrassment, missed the way she picked all the raisins out of her scones and made a little pile on his plate for him to finish for her. So many little moments, inconsequential on their own, but the cumulative effect was staggering. He stopped himself unravelling before the pang sank in too deeply, placed Vera’s letter in the GOD bin, and returned to his desk, where he scooped up a bundle of new letters from the top of a postbag. He opened them one by one. The first was in an A4 brown envelope with sticky residue where once an address label must have lived.

  Mr Papadopoulos,

  I hope this letter makes its way to you before your wife gets a chance to intercept it. Why must she always stand between us? It won’t be long now until we can be together – I am sure of it. Keep saving, as will I, and our time will come. In the meantime, I will blow you a kiss every day as I wait for my bus across from your shop. If the light is right, I can catch a glimpse of your white coat as you work. How I long to lay my head against that starched cotton once again and breathe in the smell of flour and dough from your skin.

  Until then, I remain your impatient love,

  J.

  A baker named Papadopoulos in London? He was hopeful that the letter could be delivered, if not for the outcome of that delivery. Did the man know that J was watching him? It was not his place to judge; just to mediate, where he could.

  The second envelope barely housed its contents, so ragged had it become from having, clearly, been submerged in water. The typed letter inside, though streaked, was just about legible.

  Dear Ms Joyce,

  Thank you for your recent submission to our Human Bodies periodical. Unfortunately, we are unable to include it on this occasion, but we do appreciate the time you evidently spent preparing it. Your accompanying cartoons were particularly illuminating.

  Yours in writerly felicity,

  Elizabeth Tartt

  William was sorry that Elizabeth Tartt hadn’t returned the cartoons so he could see them; how bizarre! Perhaps some things were best left unseen.

  The third envelope had no address at all; ‘Desmond Downe’ was all that was written on the front. Had someone forgotten to write the address before they mailed it, or had it been posted in error?

  Dear Desmond,

  I know that I owe you an explanation, and a better one than this letter can offer. I know, too, that I am a coward to run without speaking to you in person, but I was afraid that, if I tried to, you would talk me round. There is no easy answer as to why I can’t marry you. You have only been loving and good. I know that any woman would be blessed to have a man such as you to take care of her, but I think that’s the problem – I don’t want to be taken care of. I feel so safe with you, but so much so that I end up feeling like I’m smothered in cotton wool. I need to see more of the world, to try some more things that scare me and find out what I’m capable of. I know that you will find that hard to understand, but please know you haven’t done anything wrong. And I promise there is no one else, at least no one that I’ve met yet. I’m just chasing the dream of another sort of life that’s full of sights and sounds and smells that are unfamiliar and mysterious, shocking and soothing. Someone else will come along who will take so much pleasure in your lovely life amidst all your fine things in Herne Hill, a life that would have been wasted on me. Until she comes along, take good care of yourself, and please, try not to think too poorly of me.

  Yours in friendship,

  Melanie

  William left Desmond’s letter to one side to see if he could track him down in Herne Hill. He would surely know by now that Melanie wasn’t returning, but at least if the letter found him he might have a better understanding of why she had left. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than arriving home one day and discovering Clare had gone without a word. How long would you wait before accepting that your partner wasn’t coming home? Could you forgive them if they did? The fourth envelope had nothing at all written on it.

  Mr Piot,

  I return these leather gloves to you in addition to the pot of lilies, the oyster tru
ffles and the silk scarf that I have already sent back. Please stop sending me these presents; it is entirely inappropriate and my husband is becoming increasingly furious. The connection you believe we share is entirely fictional and I have given you no encouragement. The next letter I write will be to the police.

  Sincerely,

  Mrs Assumpta Llewellyn

  Marjorie was right: they were overwhelmed by valentines. William took a perfunctory look to see if the parcel containing leather gloves could have come undone in transit, but there was no trace. He wished Mr Piot, Mrs Llewellyn and Ms Joyce well as he dropped them into the shredder receptacle; there was nothing more he could do for them. He decided to launch one more search mission before he returned to his desk. He assumed position and rummaged around in the overflowing trolley. This time, he dug deep. His fingers brushed against an unusual texture, thick and soft with grooves, like old wallpaper. It was just as he imagined paper might have felt in days long ago, when men on horseback carried letters through the night. When he manoeuvred the envelope out into the light, its colour surprised him. He had expected it to be ivory, or brilliant white, a very elegant wedding invitation, perhaps, but it was midnight blue. The colour just before blue becomes navy; the darkest, most mysterious shade on the spectrum. And his favourite.

  The handwriting on the front consisted of curls and spirals, dramatic capitals, carefully crafted lower-case letters, all in a dripping silver ink. There were just three words: ‘My Great Love’. William held the envelope close to examine the grooves in the darkness of the pages, and smelled the faintest trace of vanilla. Something stirred inside him. He ached to open this envelope. Not here, though. He slipped it inside his shirt pocket and felt it radiate hot light through the cotton and on to his bare skin. He had never taken a letter home before. He longed to read it but wanted to save it for somewhere else, a private moment on his own. He couldn’t risk Marjorie seeing it and whisking it away to be part of her lonely-hearts collection; somewhere deep inside him, he knew this one was different.

  The afternoon crawled along, a dying man clawing for the border. Eventually, William and his little mystery could wrap themselves in the cherry-red wool scarf knitted by his mother and vanish into the city. He hoped he would be able to exit the building without bumping into Marjorie, who would insist they walk together up the Bethnal Green Road. She was always ‘just ready to run’, but still managed to delay for a further fifteen minutes, changing her black patent court shoes for old runners, popping to the little girls’ room, collecting her Wonder Woman lunch box from the fridge and, most maddeningly of all, turning the coffee-shop sign she hung over her desk from OPEN to CLOSED. Infuriating. As if any work happened when she was ‘open’, or anyone ever came looking for her. Everyone was far too busy pretending to be on the telephone, rushing to a meeting, or hiding under their desks whenever Marjorie did her rounds. With alarming regularity, she patrolled each floor, resting her ample buttocks on any desk where she sniffed out a welcome. Her ‘Auntie of the Year’ cup often left a tea-stain ring in her wake.

  On the pained evenings when William was subjected to walking with Marjorie, he cursed his misfortune all the way to the bus stop. She always linked her arm in his, and he worried, with a deep sense of shame, that despite their obvious age difference, passers-by might think they were a couple. He always felt compelled to wait with her until the bus came, holding her plastic bag containing the lunch box and a copy of Woman’s Way for her while she smoked a cigarette, trying not to stare at the line on her jaw where the orange make-up stopped and the pale, blue-veined skin of her neck began. Clare always stuck up for Marjorie, said she was lonely and he shouldn’t be so heartless, that Marjorie could be her Ghost of Christmas Future, for all they knew. William thought it was easy to be compassionate about people who exist to you only as an abstract idea, as opposed to the physical beings who leave tea stains on your files and choke you with Poison perfume. He couldn’t bear to see Marjorie again today, to bat away her incessant valentines campaigning, so he broke Rule Eleven of the ‘DLD Charter for Good Professional Practice’ and slipped out through the fire escape.

  Clare would be home late that evening; Tuesday nights were reserved for her pole-dancing class, of all things. She was constantly starting courses that she seldom finished and was often away attending conferences. In the last eighteen months, Clare had lost fourteen pounds of fat she couldn’t afford training for a marathon she didn’t run; half made a summer dress that hung forlornly without sleeves in their wardrobe; joined a photography group and devoted a whole weekend to making a stop-motion film of the pages of a book slowly turning. She studied Vietnamese cooking without ever preparing them a meal, and learned Italian with no immediate plans to set foot on the Boot. They talked about her classes, but she never invited him to come along to any final-night drinks or sign up for one with her. He worried it was all a ruse to avoid coming home, but he was too afraid to ask. The pole dancing had unnerved him the most. Clare insisted it was just a high-energy fitness class, a more interesting method of calorie burning and muscle toning than working out at a gym. It had nothing to do with erotica, apparently. And yet, when she packed her bag before work, with a pair of white stilettos, black shorts and a slinky silver vest, he felt jealous to be excluded. When he mentioned the class to Trevor in work, the look he received was one of sympathy. ‘If it were my wife,’ he’d suggested, ‘I’d be asking myself some serious questions.’ His reaction did little to ease William’s discomfort, but he was determined to believe the classes were less about him and more about Clare’s relationship with herself.

  There was a time when she used to dress up for him; every occasion, a different ensemble, always when he least expected it. Before he met her, he thought antics like that existed only in films but, somehow, he found himself dressing up as Indiana Jones, eating mango as he perched on the stair handrail. His wife, who was always so sophisticated, elegant, refined. To think she had turned their bedroom into a bordello for his birthday weekend and collected him from work wearing nothing but a black silk ribbon under her winter coat. He sighed at the memory, but truly what he missed most was Clare at her most natural; perhaps stretched out on the couch in her awful lilac terrycloth dressing gown as she negotiated swapping a fried-egg sandwich for a hot-water bottle. Now, the stilettos peeking out of her bag, the flush on her cheeks when she came home after class, were cruel reminders of the fun they had once had. He longed to see her dance, tortured himself imagining how she looked as she span in time to the music, watching herself in the mirror. That part of her was slipping further and further out of his reach now, and he didn’t know if he could ever have it back. It reminded him of when they had first met, before their first date, when he could only dream of knowing her so intimately – except, this time, he felt anxiety rather than excitement, because he had so much less hope. Less hope, he admitted, but not none. All was not lost.

  William slammed the door of the fire escape and hastened up the street. He and Clare had lived in a flat in Tower Hamlets for five years. Clare had transformed it from a dingy two-bedroom disaster over an unpopular curry house into a home. All the furniture had been collected piece by piece from antiques markets, auctions and fairs. The mismatch of colours, history and texture should have clashed, but each element complemented something else, just as her good eye had intended. She had almost studied art at university before committing to law, and William wished she had, although Clare was pragmatic about it now. Only very occasionally would he hear the drag of her old portfolio across the wooden floor of their bedroom. Once, he watched her from the doorway as she held her paintings up to the light, running her fingers gently over the lines, smelling the paint. He had crept back down the hallway before she noticed him.

  Although they loved their flat, had built it together, Clare had wanted to move for a long time. As the years wore on, she became more frustrated that they remained in a starter home, while their friends’ houses, families and status grew. William re
fused, insisting they could only live somewhere if they could split the mortgage equally, and he was already at the limit of what he could afford. With every promotion Clare won at work, her dissatisfaction with their nest seemed to intensify. She thought it archaic that he wouldn’t countenance them moving somewhere more expensive when she could afford to pay the mortgage on her own. He wouldn’t back down, though, and Clare knew, on this point, she would never be able to change his mind.

  William’s route had defaulted towards home but instinct told him he should not take the letter there to read. Every so often, he ran his fingers over the pocket of his shirt to reassure himself he hadn’t lost it. He thought about stopping in the Carpenter’s Arms for a glass of red wine but couldn’t face talking to Aggie, the landlady. If anyone was going to ask him about the letter, it would be Aggie, her silver locket tickling the top of the bar as she leaned across it to speak to him in her croaking voice, so he navigated towards Broadway Market. William crossed the bridge and walked along the riverbank to a bench beneath a streetlight. The envelope glowed in the yellow haze of the lamp. He tried to reason with himself for a moment. Where had this rush of anticipation come from? What had possessed him to sneak a letter out from the depot? He exhaled a deep breath and turned the envelope over. He broke the seal, running his finger under the fold, and creaked it open. Eased the letter from its home. Three pages, creased evenly in thirds, writing on one side only. He twisted on the bench to tilt the paper towards the light and started to read.

  My Great Love,

  Maybe this is the year you will find me. I hope so. I have been saving up so many stories to tell you, and I’m worried that if you stay away much longer they will all have slipped from my memory. I’ve forgotten so much already. Are you hiding somewhere? Are you lost? Do you not feel ready? I wish you would hurry.