More Than Love Letters (11 page)

Mrs Edgar from next door gave me some of her self-seeded foxgloves – she says they come up in her garden like weeds; they would take over if she let them. They also remind her of old Benjy, because he had that heart problem, you remember, when he got old, and she had to give him digitalis, she says, which is made out of foxgloves. She buried him among them, too. Anyway, I’ve found a few spaces, and they will add a bit of height and colour in the summer. When I was a girl I always liked to watch the bees crawling inside them, in Mum’s garden at home.

I put on that album by The Beat tonight, Petey. I haven’t had our old vinyl records out for ages – it was quite a little nostalgia session. I just played it quietly, after Margaret had gone up to her room. I wanted to be on my own – I suppose I didn’t think it would be her kind of music, and I know it’s silly of me but I didn’t want her to hear ‘Stand Down Margaret’! We really used to hate that name, didn’t we? But she’s so young, I don’t suppose she thinks of that association . . . When it got to ‘I Can’t Get Used to Losing You’ I missed you so much that I had to turn it off.

Love you always,

Cora xxx

 

 

From:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent:
4/5/05 21:49
To:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]

 

Dear Becs,

Guess what? He phoned me up tonight! Mr Slater – Richard, I mean. I hadn’t expected him to do anything more about it after our last meeting, not after he’d already found out for us about getting designated as Nasreen’s appropriate temporary accommodation. But he called me after work – he actually apologised for phoning me at home, said he’d got my number from Emily in the Witch House office, and he hoped that was all right. All right! I was just so impressed that he’d taken the trouble. He sounded different on the phone, Becs – younger. I think it was not being able to see the suit and tie, so that all you noticed was the hesitancy. Because now I come to think about it he always talks very hesitantly, not as if he’s shy exactly, just doubtful. It’s rather endearing really – and odd for a professional wordsmith like a politician, don’t you think? Well, what he wanted to tell me was that he has fixed up a meeting for us – him as well as me, I mean – with the chair of the borough council’s housing department, Mr Nicholls, on 16 May. He’s made the appointment for 4 p.m., because he remembered that I teach in primary school, and said he thought I could be free by that time of day, which is very thoughtful of him. All I could think to say was thank you and that he needn’t have bothered, but he just said that he thought Mr Nicholls (whom he calls Ted) would be more likely to agree to the designation with him there, so that he could see he was supporting us on this. I wasn’t sure about him at first, so I’m glad to know that he really does care about ordinary people like Nasreen.

It has really cheered me up, because I had been a bit down in the dumps earlier. Last night I got another call from Helen in the hostel. Quite late it was – I had already gone to bed when she rang. She hadn’t taken anything this time, nor cut herself, but she was pretty desperate. No tears – she doesn’t seem to cry much, in fact, which surprised me at first because I’d always pictured people with depression crying all the time – she was sitting on her bed in her nightie, hugging her knees and rocking to and fro, and her face had this fixed, blank expression, with her eyes staring at nothing. It was difficult for her to speak at all, to begin with, she had to sort of unclamp her teeth – you could tell they had been set tight together. She just whispered, ‘Hold me.’ It was all she could say at first, and we sat together like that for what seemed like an hour, though I guess it was only about twenty minutes (I didn’t like to look at my watch).

And then gradually she started to talk, about how at night-time she is afraid to go to sleep. It’s like a fear of losing control, she says – she’ll be in bed with her eyes closed and as soon as she feels herself drifting off panic seizes her and she wakes up with a jolt. It’s so sad, because I adore that sensation – that delicious moment of slipping into unconsciousness and letting go, it’s one of the best feelings in the world. But for Helen it is terrifying. She says it is because that’s when her father used to come into her bedroom, in the night when she was asleep, and when she was a kid she used to think that if she could only stay awake it wouldn’t happen, and then she started to get scared of going to sleep. I find it amazing that someone who is afraid of falling asleep should be capable of taking an overdose. But maybe it’s because really it isn’t the falling asleep that she’s scared of, it’s what follows, it’s the waking up. Anyway, I stayed until she had dropped off, and then crept out. I left the light on. She’d asked me to, said she always sleeps that way. I don’t even want to think about what demons the dark must hold for her.

Sorry, again, for the depressing rant. How are you? How are things with the unparagoned Declan?

Love,

Margaret xxx

 

 

From:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent:
4/5/05 22:20
To:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]

 

Don’t ask, Margaret! We had such a great weekend, in bed and out (though mainly in, I must admit). At one point, at a moment of . . . well, let’s just say, at an apogean moment, I found I was saying his name and then into my ravished and treacherous brain, all unbidden, came those words that you have to remember not to say without careful forethought, and I almost didn’t remember not to say them. He was giving out really positive signals, too, about doing more things together, and he said that his brother is coming over the weekend after next, and I should come to dinner and meet him. And we all know that meeting a sibling is definitely on The Scale. Obviously nowhere near the top, with the heady heights of your own key, lending you his card and PIN or tea with the parents, but it’s an established early rung, like letting you see him naked without breathing in and clenching. So of course I made all the right positive noises back, and it was all fixed up for Saturday night.

But then I saw him yesterday – we took Zoe to the multiplex after school so we could conduct our own discreet search for the Golden Ticket during
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
. And when he was driving me home he happened to mention that his brother’s name is Elliot! Mr E himself! Declan couldn’t understand why I had suddenly gone cold on the idea of meeting him, and he turned equally frosty. By the time he pulled the car up at my flat, poor Zoe probably needed her thermals on, sat in there with the two of us.

I quite like ‘unparagoned’, though – have a 6 for it.

Hugs,

Becs xx

 

 

From:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent:
4/5/05 22:28
To:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]

 

Dear Becs,

Are you a woman or a . . . um, small pusillanimous mammal beginning with ‘w’? If you feel the way your brain was telling you to tell him you do, then you can surely have dinner with Elliot without succumbing to his alphabetical attractions! Call Declan and fix it.

Your ‘apogean’ moment scores 5.5 – though I hope in real life it rated higher.

Margaret xxx

The Hollies
East Markhurst

 

9 May 2005

Dear Margaret,

I just wanted to say thank you again for coming over at the weekend. It meant such a lot, and you were such a help. I really don’t know what I would have done without you. I still can’t think how it happened, though I’ve gone over and over it in my head. I wasn’t doing anything foolish. I’d had my dinner, I’d finished the little bit of washing up, and was going to make myself a cup of tea. I was just reaching up to get the teapot down off the shelf, where it lives, you know, over the fridge. Maybe I hadn’t quite got the frame standing square as I leaned on it, but as soon as I got hold of the pot I found myself off balance, and I suppose I couldn’t manage to save myself by grabbing on to the frame because of the teapot in my hand, and then my legs went and the next thing I was on the kitchen floor. You will laugh at me, but the first thing I remember thinking was how glad I was that the teapot wasn’t broken, because your grandad bought it for me when we went to Weston-super-Mare one year. He saw me admiring it in the shop and he nipped back later and got it without me knowing, and then gave it to me when we got back to the boarding house. Lying there, I didn’t know the ankle was sprained to begin with, it was all such a shock, but I did know I couldn’t manage to get myself up. I was so grateful to you then, love, for the mobile phone, which was in my cardigan pocket, so I could call Mrs Dorling from the corner, and of course she took one look and said I needed an ambulance. It was only when I got to the hospital that I realised I was still wearing my pinny.

I wasn’t sure if I should phone you, when your mum couldn’t come. I knew she wouldn’t be able to really, not on a Saturday afternoon, she would never have got back for Sunday, and I know your dad starts with Early Communion at eight o’clock, and she has his breakfast to get for him first. It was Mum who suggested you, and with Kirsty already gone home and not due back until today, I couldn’t think what else I could do. And I’m so glad I did call you, dear, even though it put you to such a lot of trouble, coming all that way on the train like that at the drop of a hat, when you are at school all week and probably have a hundred other jobs to get done at the weekends. They would have sent me home in an ambulance if you hadn’t come to the hospital to escort me home on the bus, but I don’t think I could have managed to get myself to bed on my own, nor to sort out my dinner on Sunday. And it’s funny how taking a tumble like that shakes you up – not just the sprained ankle and the bumps and bruises, it gives your confidence a knock, too. Even today I keep thinking I’m going to go down again. Well, at least it might make me take more care!

When Kirsty came this morning, I asked her to go in the spare room and strip the bed, and I couldn’t believe it when she said it was all stripped and the bedspread put back, and no sign of your dirty sheets. I couldn’t understand it at all – it was Kirsty who said you must have taken them home with you to wash, you naughty girl. Kirsty could have put them in the machine for me, and I’m sure you are busy enough without extra laundry to do. Kirsty brought me two more library books this morning, too, which is terribly considerate of her. But to be honest I’m not sure they are my kind of thing. One has a picture of just the bottom half of a girl on the front cover, doing the hoovering in a miniskirt and stiletto heels, and she appears to have a half-empty wine bottle in one hand. I quite enjoyed one she brought me last week, but I find it such a distraction to be told in every chapter what shade of lipstick the heroine is wearing, and the name of the shop where she bought her blouse.

I’m feeling a bit tired tonight, so I’m sorry this isn’t a longer letter, or a more interesting one. Oh, except I forgot to say to you when you were here, those tablets you sent me for my cold seemed to help a bit. It certainly cleared up quicker than they sometimes do. I’d never heard of that echinacea until a little while ago – Donna gave some to Josh on ‘The West Wing’ recently and I was wondering what it was. I cannot understand why those two don’t get together – they would make such a lovely couple, don’t you think? You are a treasure anyway, Margaret – I hope you know that.

Love from Gran xx

From:
Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent:
10/5/05 22:26
To:
Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]

 

Dear Becs,

In that parallel universe which is the Great British Primary School, we had our Nativity Play this afternoon. In the grand democratic tradition it was decreed that every child must take part. The complex troop manoeuvres involved in marshalling three hundred and eighty four to eleven year olds in numbered detachments on and off a stage measuring approximately two metres by four were carried out with awe-inspiring precision, according to a battle plan devised by Mrs Martin the deputy head.

My lot were mostly elves, attendant upon a somewhat unorthodox worshipper at the feet of the Christ-child in the form of Mother Christmas (played by an enormous, rotund girl of African-Caribbean heritage in Year 6). They looked very sweet, I must say, dressed in red and green, with their pixie hoods that we had made in class last week, and their rosy crimson cheeks. There was no need to apply make-up to most of them today, after my colleague Karen mistook acryllic modelling paint for the hypoallergenic face colours before yesterday’s dress rehearsal. The anomalous Momma Christmas and her little helpers were joined by the more traditional incongruity of forty tutu-wearing snowflakes on an arid Middle Eastern hillside, while a gesture towards multi-culturalism had Zach Goldberg (brother of David in my class) carrying a hanukkiah along with his shepherd’s crook, and Deena Sachdeva appearing among the host of goodwill-bearing angels as the goddess Lakshmi, with a plastic lotus flower in her hair. The real show-stopper was a diminutive boy in Year 4 who played Herod with commanding vigour, his threat to slay all the first-born boy-children rendered only slightly less plausible by his swinging his feet back and forth on a cardboard throne several sizes too large for him.