What colour are your eyes? They are almost black, of course; I remember. I pray that they look upon this earth still; that they look upon its summit, even; and then recall that you and I are heathens with no one to pray to, and must content myself with hoping.’
‘All the leaves are fallen now, with no word of you, and so I know I must wait another winter — as you warned me I might, so I cannot call you cruel’; ‘What hope blooms in me with the coming of this spring! I shall see you again, surely, in a matter of weeks, you cannot be far now’; ‘We have been taking tea out in the garden, these last warm days, as you and I used to — it seems an age ago, another time. Everywhere life at its fullest, yet you are absent still from my side and the green world is grey to me until you return.’
‘Where does this letter find you? Will you come home safe to me? May I hold you to your promise, Edward? As I have been true to mine. I am waiting.’
Julia reads each one, and wonders if they could bear a different sort of scrutiny, a harsher light; if they would withstand the transition to print, if a woman’s courage and hope can be called history. Taking up the stack, shuffling them carefully to align the edges, the bundle she reties seems a very frail weight. She remembers the three of them sat on the bed together, knowing what Emily could not — that her hope, by the time of these last letters, was already misplaced.
Squashed up together on the soft mattress, Mum in the middle, making a dip that the two of us leaned into. Outside the open window, always sunshine, a willow shuffling, the breeze pale green, the old song — willow, weep for me… the scent of clean linen, of lavender, my mother weeping, mother singing willow weep for me…
Maggie, her mother, hovers at the edges of her memory and haunts the rooms too, absorbed into the past. There was lavender growing in the garden once, and it flourished all over the house for a time; Maggie brought it in by the bunch, stuffing it in bottles and bowls. Julia clipped a sprig to lay on the coffin and imagined she could smell it burning when she saw the smoke rise from the crematorium as they drove away. When they moved in last year she wrenched it out of the soil, while it was still winter, before it had time to flower (Simon came home to find her muddied and panting in the dark, unable to explain herself, and laughed at her, fond and nervous). And now with a similar wrench of will she banishes the scent from her mind.
The contents of Box 004 are lying upon the floor. She reads over her inventory, glances over the morning’s notes. She has tried to bring it to account. She has tried to redeem the day, to give it meaning, to stay true to her purpose. The work of the last hours is arrayed in a neat line, and accounted for. She has reckoned dates, materials, origins, costings where she knows enough to estimate; she thought she would feel neat and clean, like Simon’s labels, but it leaves her feeling faded, dirtied, like the cardboard box lying on its side emptied of promise, become ordinary. These boxes of treasure that she rummaged as a child now just a succession of artefacts that she cannot place a value on. What use is it all, after all; what purpose in disturbing the dust? These relics and facts and guesses cannot come near to the sum of the man she is seeking. They are not the man that strides through her dreams, and they are nothing like the Edward that Emily remembered; he is more than the sketch of a silhouette, and will not be constrained in her mind by that outline.
Is there no other way to approach him? She must not give in yet again to
ennui — a word she prefers to less glamorous, more worrying alternatives (why can she barely keep her eyes open through an afternoon? Surely not because she can’t think of anything worth staying awake for. Not that). She stands and takes up the second diary. She knows the story so well that she cannot
‘All the leaves are fallen now, with no word of you, and so I know I must wait another winter — as you warned me I might, so I cannot call you cruel’; ‘What hope blooms in me with the coming of this spring! I shall see you again, surely, in a matter of weeks, you cannot be far now’; ‘We have been taking tea out in the garden, these last warm days, as you and I used to — it seems an age ago, another time. Everywhere life at its fullest, yet you are absent still from my side and the green world is grey to me until you return.’
‘Where does this letter find you? Will you come home safe to me? May I hold you to your promise, Edward? As I have been true to mine. I am waiting.’
Julia reads each one, and wonders if they could bear a different sort of scrutiny, a harsher light; if they would withstand the transition to print, if a woman’s courage and hope can be called history. Taking up the stack, shuffling them carefully to align the edges, the bundle she reties seems a very frail weight. She remembers the three of them sat on the bed together, knowing what Emily could not — that her hope, by the time of these last letters, was already misplaced.
Squashed up together on the soft mattress, Mum in the middle, making a dip that the two of us leaned into. Outside the open window, always sunshine, a willow shuffling, the breeze pale green, the old song — willow, weep for me… the scent of clean linen, of lavender, my mother weeping, mother singing willow weep for me…
Maggie, her mother, hovers at the edges of her memory and haunts the rooms too, absorbed into the past. There was lavender growing in the garden once, and it flourished all over the house for a time; Maggie brought it in by the bunch, stuffing it in bottles and bowls. Julia clipped a sprig to lay on the coffin and imagined she could smell it burning when she saw the smoke rise from the crematorium as they drove away. When they moved in last year she wrenched it out of the soil, while it was still winter, before it had time to flower (Simon came home to find her muddied and panting in the dark, unable to explain herself, and laughed at her, fond and nervous). And now with a similar wrench of will she banishes the scent from her mind.
The contents of Box 004 are lying upon the floor. She reads over her inventory, glances over the morning’s notes. She has tried to bring it to account. She has tried to redeem the day, to give it meaning, to stay true to her purpose. The work of the last hours is arrayed in a neat line, and accounted for. She has reckoned dates, materials, origins, costings where she knows enough to estimate; she thought she would feel neat and clean, like Simon’s labels, but it leaves her feeling faded, dirtied, like the cardboard box lying on its side emptied of promise, become ordinary. These boxes of treasure that she rummaged as a child now just a succession of artefacts that she cannot place a value on. What use is it all, after all; what purpose in disturbing the dust? These relics and facts and guesses cannot come near to the sum of the man she is seeking. They are not the man that strides through her dreams, and they are nothing like the Edward that Emily remembered; he is more than the sketch of a silhouette, and will not be constrained in her mind by that outline.
Is there no other way to approach him? She must not give in yet again to
ennui — a word she prefers to less glamorous, more worrying alternatives (why can she barely keep her eyes open through an afternoon? Surely not because she can’t think of anything worth staying awake for. Not that). She stands and takes up the second diary. She knows the story so well that she cannot
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