The Lost Letters of William Woolf

by Helen Cullen

  With renewed focus, he rearranged Winter’s letters in the order he had received them and turned his pad sideways. Using a sharp pencil, he drew almost perfectly straight columns from top to bottom and wrote in capital letters along the top:

  NEIGHBOURHOOD

  WORK

  NAMES MENTIONED

  SOCIAL SPOTS

  ROUTINE

  PORTRAIT

  DUBLIN

  It was difficult at first to look past the language of the letters and seek out the reality of her life, the concrete world she lived in. It shouldn’t have been so complicated for him, whose job it was to solve mysteries such as these, but he had never been so invested in his subject before. One thought haunted him like the brewing ache of a bad tooth: would the reality of Winter destroy the fantasy? When she wrote her letters, she had the power to be so selective about her life, about how she presented herself. Was it possible to get a true impression of someone, judging only by dispatches from their private self? How different would the public version be? What elements had she chosen to leave out? Webbed feet? Bad debts? Substance abuse? Did she lie in baths for hours at the weekend weeping as she listened to Barbra Streisand records until her skin grew wrinkled? Was her name even really Winter? Or did he have a secret portal to her truest self? One it could ordinarily take nights, months, years, of onion-peeling to get to.

  In his mind’s eye, the scant details of her appearance painted a portrait of a woman who could never have passed him unnoticed in the street: long, flame-coloured, waving hair, apple-green eyes, alabaster skin, a white rabbit-fur coat, those boots! Would she be recognizable from her description? Had he imagined her as being more beautiful than she was? How could a woman with that head and heart not be? Even if it was just something that glowed from inside her. Did it matter? He thought not. His imagination could conjure only so much; it was the words within her that had bewitched him.

  He populated the columns with more debris from her life: the Mexican restaurant in Camden that had already proved futile, Columbia Road Flower Market, the Long Hall pub, former work in the music industry, a vintage clothes shop on Dame Street in Dublin, a bar with a jukebox of fifties records, a mention of photographing protestors. Where could he begin? Not knowing her full name made it difficult. The chapel in Hoxton? Why not start somewhere close? If he put himself out there, maybe the universe would somehow guide him. He carefully gathered the letters together, returned them to their hiding place and ducked out of the depot into the dusky light of a crisp London evening. He walked briskly up Redchurch Street, turned right on to Shoreditch High Street and followed the road left on to Old Street. Hoxton Street was just to the right, and the square one more left. William knew this area well; the band used to rehearse in the basement of the George and Dragon pub once upon a time. He paused outside the chapel gates; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a church and wasn’t sure he’d ever stepped inside a Catholic one.

  The golden light flooding through the windows made him feel more welcome as he tentatively pushed the great mahogany doors inwards. Rows of teak pews ran in parallel either side of a plush red carpet, great ivory beams curved overhead, the iridescent altar loomed before him under a circular stained-glass window that looked to William like a flower, but he supposed it held some greater symbolism. A few people were scattered among the pews; whispers echoed in the rafters from the vestibule, where two ladies were poring over a book of psalms. He hesitated before entering further, but the iron casement of flickering votive candles called him forward. To think Winter had sat here, maybe even just days before, and lit one for him. Well, not for him exactly, perhaps, but that’s what it felt like.

  He sat down in the second-to-last row and allowed the silence to settle upon him. The iconography unsettled him, but he understood why she found it meditative to sit here. He closed his eyes and wallowed in the peace. A hand gripped his shoulder and William yelped so loudly that all the faithful turned to stare. Slowly, he turned his head, to see Ned Flanagan beaming at him from the pew behind. ‘You’ve been avoiding me, Billy!’ he stage-whispered, louder than if he had just spoken normally.

  William was confused.

  ‘Mr Flanagan, did you – did you follow me here?’

  Ned snorted.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Just a splendid coinkydink. Come. Let’s take a walk. We can’t talk here.’

  William had no choice but to shuffle along the bench and accompany his boss down the aisle and back into the symphonic onslaught of Hoxton Square. As they crunched across the gravel in the foreground of the chapel, William spoke first.

  ‘Mr Flanagan, I know you think I’ve been distracted recently, but I can assure you I’ve been getting results. Did you see the article in the Guardian about the whale vomit? I’ve been meaning to …’

  Ned looked perplexed.

  ‘Whale vomit? That’s not … never mind. The reason I wanted to speak to you is that your name came up at our board meeting.’

  William sat down on a bench in the square.

  ‘That sounds ominous,’ he replied.

  ‘Yes, I would have thought so, too,’ Ned said. ‘But it seems your little project has attracted the right sort of attention.’

  William marvelled as Ned explained how Sally’s father had heard all about his work from her, and that her enthusiasm had been infectious.

  ‘They are keen to invest in that book of yours, produce it ourselves, it seems,’ he said. ‘And, of course, we both know I’ve always been behind you a hundred per cent.’

  He held out his hand and William shook it vigorously.

  ‘We’ll iron out the particulars but, suffice to say – congratulations, William. You did it!’

  As Ned shuffled away, William remained on the bench a moment longer, watching the lights inside the chapel as they were extinguished one by one. Would he soon hold in his hands the Volume of Lost Letters? He chuckled to himself at Ned’s about-turn after his adamant opposition but, if this was divine intervention, he would take it. He had even managed to call him by his proper name. Miraculous, indeed.

  XIV

  The following evening, William watched the street from their bedroom window, waiting for the familiar grumbling sounds of Clare’s racing-green Mini slowing down outside. He arranged the books on the sill in alphabetical order, then by author, before finally returning them to their original positions in ascending height. He desperately wanted to tell her about his breakthrough with the Supernatural Division, but knew he had to tread softly, considering the role Sally had played in its development. He had spent the afternoon calmly working on the fourth floor, refining once again the letters he hoped to include, if he was going to expand the project to incorporate stories such as Prummel’s. The anxious anticipation of seeking out a letter from Winter which usually affected him when he worked there was on hold; he had intercepted Marjorie’s discovery only the day before. When he found another letter as the final dregs of the day were draining, he was shocked. Two on consecutive days? Were they accelerating in frequency, or had yesterday’s been lying dormant while he was in Clovelly? Against his better judgement, he sneaked the letter out of the depot and read it as he walked along the Bethnal Green Road.

  It was a blow to walk through his front door, a letter from Winter in his hand, and see Clare’s coat back on its hook in the hallway. The heady mix of guilt and anxiety tarnished the relief he felt that she was back in London and would soon be standing in front of him in their home. He was aware how complicated his life had become and, predominantly, at his own hand. Whenever he was away from Clare, he found it so easy to believe in the possibility of Winter, but whenever they were together it seemed absurd to think that Winter was anything more than a ridiculous flight of fancy. Was his instinct for romanticism more powerful than the pragmatic logic he used to reason with himself? This must be how people felt when they had an affair. He had always scoffed when folk spoke of being in love with two people at the same time, but now he had a more
empathetic perspective; it wasn’t two different people they loved, necessarily, but the two different lives they offered, the two different versions of themselves that they could potentially become. Do we all need someone to see the potential in us for us to be able to fulfil it?

  He was wearing a faded red tartan shirt with frayed cuffs and threadbare patches over the shoulder blades; it was Clare’s favourite. The first night they spent together, a button had popped free from it while Clare was nervously undressing him. The next morning, he found her sitting cross-legged on the bedroom floor in her nightdress, concentrating fiercely as she sewed it back on. A little white wicker sewing basket was opened beside her. Her grandmother had bequeathed it to her, along with the silk dressing gown Stevie had lost, a set of bone-handled cutlery and an unfinished patchwork quilt. Every so often, she told him, she would pour a bag of materials on to the living-room floor in a fit of reverie and spend an afternoon quietly sewing hexagons together while being serenaded by Nina Simone. Ever since Clare had inherited the quilt, the order and logic of the pattern had gone awry; she had no patience for following the formula of yellows together, blues together, reds and pinks together. Her hexagons placed fuchsia stripes beside sunflower-yellow gingham, cornflower-blue floral connected to forest-green spirals, scarlet polka dots married to purple paisley. It was the disorder of multicoloured silks, cottons, corduroy and velvet that absorbed her, incompatibles forced together with unexpected but beautiful results. William remembered the first day he found her standing over the quilt, rearranging the newly sewn pieces into clusters of seven and placing them in rows underneath their ancestors.

  ‘What do you think? I haven’t attached them yet. This is the moment where I always lose my nerve, when they are joined for ever on to the whole.’

  She held up the quilt by the top corners and was completely hidden behind it.

  ‘Gosh. It’s huge. How big do you want it to become?’ he asked.

  Clare turned to face him, a puzzled look on her face, as if the end result had never occurred to her before. ‘It has become a bit of a monster, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be finished, if I’m honest. I guess I’d like it to be big enough to cover the whole bed and touch the floor all around it …’

  She laid the quilt back down flat on the floor. William crouched over it and spread his fingers over the different fabrics.

  ‘How long did your grandmother work on it?’ he asked.

  Clare knelt beside him, surveying the work.

  ‘She started it when she first went into the nursing home, but she died six months later. Instead of people bringing her bunches of grapes or crossword puzzles, she asked for material – pieces from old clothes or curtains or whatever they had. These patches here are from my first baby blanket, and these were taken from my gran’s old nursing uniform. She loved the stories being sewn into the fabric. My mother hated it. She thought it was creepy. “A blanket full of ghosts”, she called it.’

  William smoothed away creases in the cloth.

  ‘Have you any more stories here?’ he asked.

  She leaned across the quilt to point as she explained.

  ‘This peach one is the lining of a bridesmaid dress from my parents’ wedding. My Aunt Polly brought that in … and this sea-green silk was an old cravat of Daddy’s he used to wear on Sundays. I cut this red poppy material from the dress I wore on my graduation from secondary school. It was my favourite at the time, but I spilled blackcurrant juice all down the front of it that night and the stain would never lift. This section here came from Flora’s christening dress, and these were cut from a nightgown with rainbows all over it that she loved. I’ve quite a few patches mixed in now. I was the one most interested in helping her. The rest of the family thought it was too sentimental, and I think they felt silly bringing in their old bits and pieces. Come on. Help me fold it.’

  They held two corners each on opposite sides and joined them together. William kissed her forehead over the fabric that divided them and said, ‘I’m sure that’s why your gran wanted you to have it and would love the fact that you’re going to finish it.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she answered. ‘But she’d never understand why I wouldn’t want to make it nice. Granny was black and white, rich and poor, good and evil, birds of a feather flock together, but me, I want the quilt to be as random and uncontrollable as the street out there is, as full of colour and contradictions and clashes as Brick Lane Market on a Sunday.’

  He realized he hadn’t seen Clare sewing in a long time; all her hours and minutes were absorbed by work, or sleeping to recover from work. He forced himself to stop twitching the curtains like an overzealous neighbourhood-watch man and walked downstairs to open a bottle of red wine. He hadn’t eaten; the butterflies in his stomach weren’t interested in food. Instead, he took down two goblets from the cupboard and placed them on the kitchen table, before changing his mind and returning one, not wanting Clare to think he was presuming anything.

  A small wooden button dangled from a thread on the cuff of his shirt. He let it knock a delicate note against their pinewood kitchen table, twisting his wrist slowly left and right to make a rhythm. It reminded him of being a child and watching his grandfather taunt a small ginger kitten with a ball of purple wool. William thought it was cruel how the puppeteer allowed the hysterical creature to tangle its tiny paws in the wool before dragging it away with the kitten’s little furry bottom bouncing along behind. He wanted to ask him to stop, but he was more worried about being called a cry baby than he was about the comfort of the entangled kitten. He snapped the button free, but it slipped through his butter fingers and rolled into obscurity beneath a cupboard. William ducked his head beneath the table to make a half-hearted scan across the floor. His eye was caught instead by a lump of green propped against the skirting board; it was the final remnant of Clare’s last bowl from Sorrento. He crawled under the table and retrieved it, before bumping the back of his head on the table rim as he clambered back up to standing. The fragment of green sat in his open palm, winking at him in the light, a lost eye looking at him in a state of confusion. He squeezed his fist around it and dropped it into his shirt pocket.

  He was debating whether he could pour himself a glass of wine, or whether he should wait, when he heard the front door slowly open. In his haste to hide away the bottle of wine, his foot caught on the leg of a stool and he crashed to a fall. Smithereens of glass scattered across the floor as the Rioja formed gloopy puddles on the white tiles. Clare chased the sound of the crash into the kitchen and screamed when she saw William lying there in a red, sticky mess. He staggered to his feet, his trainers sliding in the wine while he steadied himself and said, ‘I’m sorry. It’s just wine. I slipped. It’s fine.’

  William ran his hands under the cold tap at the kitchen sink to clean away the sticky wine. He peeled off his cowboy shirt, tossed it into the washing machine and began sweeping up the glass, smearing scarlet stains across the floor as he worked.

  ‘The grout is the most important thing,’ she said. ‘Make sure you clean between the tiles.’ She stepped into the kitchen and rooted around in the cupboard beneath the sink until she found a bottle of bleach. She mixed it with washing-up liquid and hot water in a Tupperware bowl and passed it to William, along with a scouring pad. ‘Are you okay to do the rest? I’ll walk around to Mr Patel’s to get us another bottle. Do you want anything else?’ she asked.

  William shook his head as Clare gingerly stepped over the smeared tiles and escaped through the front door. As the power of his elbows fought the strength of the stains, he scrubbed as if the ability to wipe away the darkness in their marriage depended on the force of his will. Could he stem the flow of love that was trickling away, a slow but persistent stream, from what was once a deep, unfathomable lake?

  It took Clare longer than it should have to walk to the corner shop, choose two bottles of wine from the range of four, dither over whether to buy some peanuts or crisps and make her way bac
k to the flat. When she let herself in, the kitchen had been restored to order and William was waiting in the living room, now wearing a Beatles T-shirt and a striped woollen scarf. It seemed an odd combination, but she let it pass.

  ‘Do we have to listen to Leonard Cohen right now? I think he might push me over the edge.’ William walked to the record player, and turned the volume down before he lifted the needle.

  ‘What will I put on instead?’

  ‘Does there have to be anything playing? What could possibly be an appropriate soundtrack?’

  William closed the lid on the turntable and stood against the fireplace.

  ‘We always have music playing, that’s all. It feels weird to have the flat totally silent.’

  ‘It’s not silent – we’re talking, aren’t we?’

  Clare knew exactly what he meant, though; music was always playing in the background of their lives. She just didn’t want to associate any songs, any band, with tonight, the night they might decide to finally call it a day. Was that what she wanted to happen? She remembered making a mix-tape to play if they came back to her flat after their first date so many years before, trying to choose artists who didn’t remind her of any other boyfriends or evoke any memories, either happy or sad. She remembered the thrill of discovering a tape that William had made in her locker at university. Each and every song felt like a little piece of magic, a tiny planet of hope and discovery. She had been full of questions. Why did he choose that song? Are those lyrics about me? What do these songs make him think of? And to see his handwriting on the sleeve notes, the curves and strokes and shape of the letters. Clare didn’t want a ‘Night I left William for ever’ soundtrack, songs that would haunt her afterwards, creeping up on her in the supermarket, or on the radio while she was driving to work. She sat in their overstuffed caramel-coloured armchair and pulled their crocheted Afghan blanket around her, as she always had. How much would she tell him of what had happened in Wales? Did everything have to come out now?