The Lost Letters of William Woolf

by Helen Cullen

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, “The Siege of Ennis”.’

  Enid’s family and friends from England watched in amazement as Seamus’s contingent rushed forward and began to form orderly rows in sets of four; they weren’t to remain bystanders for long, however. Seamus’s mother circled the room, canvassing and cajoling, until everyone was on their feet. William and Clare partnered up with Seamus’s Uncle Niall and Aunt Audrey.

  ‘Don’t look so frightened,’ Audrey laughed, as he swapped places with William. ‘You stick with me, and Niall will look after your good wife, there.’

  And, with that, they were off, Seamus’s father calling commands in Irish from behind his accordion: Amach! Isteach! Brostaigí! Brostaigí! William had no idea what he was saying but allowed himself to be swept along by the beat. His and Clare’s feet found the rhythm and followed the pattern as they moved in lines up and down the room, swinging around in circles, crossing partners and ducking under arms to meet the next row of four. He caught Clare’s eye as a giant of a man spun her so fast in his arms that her feet left the ground; she was doubled up in laughter when she staggered back into position. This music didn’t tolerate melancholia; it was just the tonic they needed.

  For the last dance of the evening, the DJ played ‘Careless Whisper’ by George Michael; Clare and William sat together and watched Enid and Seamus slow-dancing in the centre of the floor while their friends linked arms in a circle around them. ‘I’m not sure that DJ Cliff Seacrest has really listened to the lyrics,’ William joked. ‘Maybe that wasn’t the best choice of song to end the evening.’

  He stopped laughing when he saw Clare’s eyes flood.

  ‘William, there’s something you should know.’ She moved her chair closer to him and picked up his hand in both of hers. She started again: ‘I haven’t …’ But she never finished her sentence, because Audrey and Niall interrupted her.

  ‘Come on!’ Audrey called. ‘They’re doing the going-away.’

  She pulled Clare to her feet and on to the dance floor, where, two by two, all the guests formed an archway for Enid and Seamus to run through before they left for their honeymoon. As the DJ cranked up the volume for Cliff Richard to serenade them with ‘Congratulations’, the bride and groom were stopped every few feet by couples dropping their arms to trap them and smother them in final well-wishes. William and Clare locked hands and bobbed along to the music while waiting for the newly-weds to reach them.

  ‘What were you going to say, Clare?’ William shouted at her over the din. ‘Are you okay?’

  He was relieved when she nodded, smiling now once again.

  ‘It was nothing. I was just going to say I haven’t felt this happy in such a long time.’

  Enid and Seamus drove away in his green Peugeot 205, tin cans and old soccer boots clattering from the exhaust and white balloons filling the back seat. The wedding guests stood waving until they had vanished from sight up the quays. Clare and William strolled alongside the river.

  ‘I don’t feel ready to go back to the hotel yet, do you?’ Clare asked as she hesitated outside the welcoming glow of the Boulevard Café on Exchequer Street.

  William pushed the door open and they found a table in the window, where they watched revellers cavorting through Friday night. Every so often, a flash of red hair would dance past and catch his eye, despite himself, but he tried his best not to react. They ordered two hot whiskies for a nightcap and shared a basket of hot, fresh bruschetta. Sitting as they once had many years before, shy but hopeful, William was optimistic, albeit a little wary of saying too much. The day had been perfect; he didn’t want to spoil it now by talking once again about worries that had been too big to squeeze through their front door.

  Clare leaned across the table and brushed a curl behind his ear.

  ‘Oh, William, maybe we should just pack it all in and move to the south of France or something. We could open a boulangerie, or a chocolaterie, and descend slowly into middle age, plump and happy, while we live the good life. No Tube. No clients. No letters!!’

  His stomach flipped a little at the thought of a fresh start with this woman; he savoured for a moment how beautiful she looked in her silver dress. What was he doing still scanning the streets for Winter when his incredible wife was right here in front of him?

  ‘We should do it. Let’s just go. Anywhere. What’s keeping us in London, really? We could just go and start again.’

  Clare pulled her hand back into her lap and sighed. ‘William, you know it’s not as simple as that. We can’t just run away and hope all our problems get left behind. They would just come with us and set up camp in Provence, or wherever we were, and we’d feel even worse.’

  He reached for her hand once more. ‘I know it seems mad, but maybe a fresh start is all we need?’

  She took a deep breath and squeezed his knee under the table.

  ‘I hope so, William. I really do.’

  ‘And maybe we could even think again about starting –’

  ‘No!’ she snapped. ‘Don’t even go there. We can’t try to make a baby into some kind of bandage to paper over the cracks in our relationship. We’ve only just –’

  He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

  ‘Okay, let’s drop it for the moment, but I really want you to think about it. Not just for my sake. If you’re really sure you don’t ever want to have a child, then that’s fine. I know we can have a great life together, regardless, but please be sure you aren’t just saying no out of fear, or stubbornness, or lack of faith in me, because we would work it out. I know we would. People in much worse situations than ours manage every day.’

  She busied herself pouring them glasses of water from a carafe.

  ‘Okay. I hear you,’ she replied. ‘But can we please talk about something else? Let’s pretend we’re just two people on a date. Tell me things about you that I’ve forgotten I know. Let’s not try to fix everything in one evening. Let’s just be glad we’re here.’

  The waiter came and cleared the empty bruschetta basket. When he left, William nudged his glasses further up the bridge of his nose and asked, ‘Have you ever read Ulysses? I tried to start a book club of the classics in college, but there wasn’t much interest.’

  Clare laughed.

  ‘I’ll never forget your face when I walked in. You looked like you’d been caught red-handed, stealing biscuits or something.’

  He shook his head at the memory.

  ‘I was so mortified. The rejection of no one coming was hard enough to endure on my own, but to have a witness, and such a gorgeous one, well, that hurt!’

  All of a sudden, the lights dimmed and the waiting staff meandered their way through the restaurant with a cake and sparklers, singing ‘Happy Birthday’.

  Clare leaned into William and whispered, ‘How embarrassing. I would die if that was for me,’ but the performance came closer until she was laughing in shock as they screeched, ‘Happy birthdaaay, deear Clllllaaaaareeee, Happy birthday to you.’ She stammered a protest but the head waiter made her stand up on a chair to blow out the candles. The restaurant cheered while she tried to modestly hold her skirt down as she climbed back into her seat.

  ‘You absolute rotter! I can’t believe you did that to me! It’s not my birthday for five months!’

  Clare was beaming, despite her embarrassment. Was this all they had needed all along? A little fun? A little time away from the pressures of playing out the self-inflicted roles of their marriage?

  As they strolled back to their hotel, they were happy, arms entwined, feet in step, and after they turned out the light later that night, Clare fell asleep on her spot on William’s shoulder and, for what felt like the first time in a very long time, she felt like she belonged there.

  XVII

  The telephone ringing on the night stand seemed part of Clare’s dream at first. Who could be calling at this time? She shoved William to wake him, and nestled further into her pillow. He groaned at her, but groggily picked up the
receiver. The night receptionist told him how sorry they were to disturb them but there was an urgent call from London. William shook Clare awake. They had left the hotel number on their answering machine in case the hospice called about Clare’s mother. It had to be them. ‘Clare, wake up! I think it’s about your mum.’

  She sat up in bed, confused by the hour and the worry in his voice.

  ‘What is it? What’s going on?’

  ‘I think it’s the hospice. The receptionist is putting them through.’

  Clare turned on the overhead light and pulled a blanket around her. William watched her as he held the receiver to his ear, impatient to know what was happening but afraid of what was coming. Why would something bad have to happen now? A man’s voice slurred down the phone. He was shouting over the din of a noisy pub.

  ‘Clare, is that you? It’s me. Clare?’

  ‘No, it most certainly is not. This is William. Her husband. Who is this? What is this about? Why are you calling at this time of night?’

  ‘Oh, it’s you, is it? The cuckold! Well, you should know, William, that she doesn’t want you any more. Not really. Why don’t you just let her go? She’s too good for you. I could give her the life she deserves. You’re wasting her –’

  William threw the receiver down on to the bedspread. ‘It’s for you,’ he said, and walked into the bathroom, where he sat on the edge of the bathtub in the dark.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Clare called after William as she scrambled across the blankets to reach the receiver.

  Through the bathroom door, William heard Clare whispering under her breath before slamming down the telephone. He waited for her to rush to him, but the moment stretched on. That was when he knew she had been lying to him. He walked back into the bedroom and plucked his shirt off the floor. Struggling to button it with his fumbling fingers, he realized he had put it on inside out. Clare stumbled towards him, her feet tangled in the discarded sheets, and tried to stop him pulling on his trousers next.

  ‘William, stop. Let me explain. It’s not what you think.’

  He staggered away from her, the red of his face deepening.

  ‘How long have you been sleeping with him?’

  ‘William, it’s not like that …’

  He raised his voice.

  ‘If you don’t tell me the truth right now, I will walk out of here, and I swear you will never see me again.’

  He watched the tears start to stream down her face, but the sight of them repelled him now. How could he have been such a fool? His instinct had told him there was more to what happened with Maxi, but he just hadn’t wanted to believe it.

  ‘It was just the one time, I swear. He came down to collect me from Wales –’

  ‘From Wales? He was with you that whole time? For –’

  ‘No! He just offered me a lift home, and then we ended up having too much to drink and stayed an extra … It wasn’t planned, William, I promise. I’m so sorry. Please … it just happened –’

  ‘Is that the best you can do? Just stop it. You made a choice. I never thought you could become such a walking cliché. The fancy lawyer with the big car and the house in the country he bought with his trust fund. You just couldn’t resist it, could you? You’ve been trying to crawl up that social ladder your whole life, and when he handed it to you on a plate you just couldn’t say no. So much for us.’

  The colour drained from her face; she sobbed, making big, gulping noises. William stormed around the room, picking things up and throwing them back down.

  ‘You’re like a total stranger to me. And the lies you’ve told. You must think I’m such a fool … A right cuckold, as your boyfriend himself said. You bare-faced lied to me and lived with it day after day.’

  Clare sat down on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands.

  ‘Maxi shouldn’t have said that,’ she whispered.

  ‘Don’t say his name!’ William slammed his fist into the pillow, which was still warm from where he had been sleeping moments before. She stood up, tried to put her arms around him, but he pushed her away with such force that she splayed across the bed. He stopped himself from reaching out to her.

  ‘I wanted to tell you!’ she cried. ‘I did! But I didn’t know if we could survive it, and I thought it was better just to try and put it behind us, because it was just that one time.’

  He stood over her, his voice cold now.

  ‘Why would I believe anything you say? You could just be confessing this much for now, until I find out the next grizzly detail. And anyway, Clare, once is enough! You’ve never had a one-night stand or slept with anyone you didn’t care about.’

  She knelt on the bed and tried to pull him towards her.

  ‘William, please. Tonight still happened – the things we said we meant. Please don’t give up on us now!’

  ‘I’m not the one who gave up on us, Clare. If you knew how hard I’ve tried not to get pulled out of our marriage …’

  He stopped himself before he said too much.

  ‘What is that supposed to mean? William?’

  ‘Nothing, it doesn’t mean anything. I’m going home and, lest there be any doubt in your mind, you are not. Hopefully, Maxi will let you stay with him. I’m sure he’ll be only too delighted.’

  ‘No, William. Please don’t go!’

  Her shoulders heaved as she watched him, gulping in deep breaths of air.

  William struggled into his socks and shoes, distractedly checked his blazer for his passport, clutched his satchel by its handle and walked out, leaving the rest of his belongings behind. Clare followed him into the hallway and shouted after him. The hotel porter delivering champagne next door looked away, embarrassed at seeing her in her nightdress, her distress.

  William didn’t turn around but called over his shoulder, ‘Don’t you dare follow me!’

  Despite his fury, it was gut-wrenching to listen to her crying as he walked away. He kept staring straight ahead so she would not see the tears that were rolling down his face, too.

  XVIII

  After William left, Clare curled up in a ball on the floor of the hotel bedroom. She couldn’t crawl back into the bed where they had lain together. Her mind flitted from rage at Maxi to anger at herself. Now that she was faced with the bleak consequences of what she had done, the thought of Maxi repulsed her. How could she have been so cavalier about her marriage? Had she felt so secure in William’s devotion to her that she thought it would be possible to play out her experiment without any retribution? The last thing she had wanted to do was hurt William – what had possessed her? What upset her most was the realization that, inebriated as she was when she invited Maxi to her room, she could even then feel regret prickling along her spine, but she had forced her own hand. She was compelled to follow through and see what another life, another Clare, might feel like. Fraudulent. Now, she knew.

  The claustrophobic hotel room overwhelmed her; she couldn’t wait there until morning, driving herself more and more insane with thoughts of where William might be, cursing her mistakes. How could she have done this to him? Deep down, she knew that if their marriage dissolved now, it wouldn’t be only because of what she had done, but she couldn’t tolerate the idea of this being how things ended between them. She couldn’t – wouldn’t – bear the burden of that on her shoulders alone. Not when they had been so close to finding each other again. It was a shock to realize how much she wanted to save their marriage when faced with the reality of losing William for ever. For months, she had lived with one foot already out of their front door, and now she wanted to barricade herself inside. She tried to quieten the conflicting voices in her head. Was it just fear of the unknown that trapped her? Or did she really want to make her marriage work? Everything had become so confused.

  Clare departed for the airport to wait for the first early-morning flight back to London. Maybe William was doing the same thing and she would see him there. Packing their suitcases, her heart was in ribbons as she folded his trousers
and shirt, balled his stripy socks and laid them in his suitcase. She pulled on his discarded T-shirt and breathed in the still-living scent of him before slipping into the night, pulling both their cases, enveloped in her big blue jumper with the crooked white stars.

  In the taxi on the way to the airport, the driver tried to coax her story from her. Where was she off to? What had brought her to Dublin? She tried to shut down his questioning with murmurs about ‘some bad news from London’ and ‘being called home unexpectedly’, and stared out of the window to avoid his eyes in the rear-view mirror. The streets were filled with people spilling out of pubs on Wexford Street into the pouring rain. The drops cascading down her window blurred the lights and smeared the colours across the pane. She had stopped crying. For now. Watching the tears of the city sky streaking down the glass, it felt as if the heavens were crying for them, but she didn’t feel she deserved their sympathy.

  In the deepest, quietest part of herself, she knew that William was right. A part of her must have wanted this to happen, willed for something irretrievable and powerful to force them to stop the procrastination, desperate for redemption, rejuvenation, salvation. Her mind scattered thoughts like ashes in the breeze. How could she ever expect him to respect her again? To trust her again? How would she ever be able to respect herself? She rustled in her handbag for a compact, smoothed some concealer on the dark circles under her eyes and traced a ribbon of red across her lips. Little threads to keep herself sewn together for what lay ahead.

  At the airport, she scanned the departures area for William, walking through Duty-free in a robotic state. What would she say if she found him? Would he cause a scene? Blank her? Was there any chance he would take her in his arms? Instinct told her no. It was going to be a long walk back from here to the couple kissing in the shadows of a wedding that day. If they could ever find their way. She hoped that her legs had the strength to carry her.