Letters

“i wanted to write a letter
not one letter
but a string of letters
organised into phrases
and sentences
just so there's no confusion
there's always so much
confusion
so lots of letters
to create words
that hang from each other
in description and explanation

BUT

i didn't know where to send it
i don't have his address
i don't know where he is
i know where he was
but if he's going to get the letter
i have to know where he is
not where he was

i asked my mother and she said
'he's dead'
i asked my sister and she said
'he's dead'
i asked at the post office and
they didn't know what i was talking about

BUT

still i wanted to write the letter
i had to write the letter
the letter was inside me
my body a big envelope
unaddressed
empty because there is no letter
not yet
cos i can't write the letter
until i know where to send it
so it's the concept of the letter
that fills me up
and occupies my body envelope

i don't know what it is that i want to write
in the letter
to the dead man
with no address
i don't know how
to address him
so instead i write to you
some letters that
barely add up
but that's ok
cos they're not numbers
but i have your address
and you're not dead
cos you still get hungry
and cold
and letters.”

My father always stuttered, well, not stuttered as such but had a speech hesitation. He was also embarrassed by his accent. Whilst not broad Geordie, the remains of his working class roots still echoed around his mouth. He wanted to be a professional man, not regarded as a brickie. He was also quite nervous and shy. Before big events, or when things were bothering him, he would cough, right from down in his chest, big hacking coughs, that always ended in his throat with a retch. Mother took the piss out of these. She thought them to be attention seeking in some way.

When Matt and I got married Father had to make a speech. I remember him doing it, slowly, deliberately, each word formed as if he were rolling putty to glaze in a new window. I was embarrassed at the time. I fiddled with the edging of the table cloth. He sounded ridiculous. Why would anyone talk in those clipped tones? It was like a comedy sketch from a Carry On film. I hated them and the fact he seemed like that. Stupid man. Why could he not just sound affable and easy? Everything about our family was such a performance.

Mother began to clear out the loft. She was disposing of 'stuff'. Father had kept a general clutter, very tidily, but he hoarded things. To be frank, he was a bully. Mother had never been allowed to administrate anything. He decided what was what, but after his death, she really came into her own, determining to live whatever life she had left the way she wanted.

The first thing to go was the picture of 'The Fighting Temeraire', which had dominated our sitting room for a number of years. Then she started on his record collection. He had tortured her with The Band of the Blues and Royals' every Sunday for decades. 'Hands Across the Ocean' was a particular favourite. She hated it. I liked it no better, but the vinyl belonged to Father and it had a certain weight to it. I did not feel a rubbish tip was the most appropriate place for this memory, no matter how awful. And then the wholesale slaughter started; books were boxed up, including his navy bible, medals were whipped from safe drawers and slung into plastic bags, photographs were removed from frames and thrown away. I begged her to stop, but she refused.

“You have it then,” she spat out. She was like a cat, all raised fur and extended claws. “You loved him so much, you bloody well have it”.
“What are you on about? Why do you have to turn this into a fight?”
“Shall I tell you something about your father?”
Oh God, here we go, I thought. It was like she had been nursing this huge boil for years and now she was ready to lance it. “I don't want to know mother, I just don't want to know.”
“I don't care. I don't see why I should be the only one ...” she eyed me sideways. “Do you know what he did on your sister's wedding day?”
“I don't want to know. Why are you insisting on telling me things I don't want to know?”
“While I was in the house ...”
“I was three fucking year's old. I can't remember.”
“I know you can't remember, but you should know.”
“Why should I know? What purpose does this serve?”
“Making the salad ...”
“Answer my fucking question.”
“And he was in the garden ...”
“What FUCKING purpose does this serve?”
“When Paulette came in ...”
“I'm not listening. I'm walking away now.”
“Oh you'll listen my girl,” she said, grabbing my wrist as I tried to get past her, “Crying her eyes out”.

I looked at the floor. I looked at the wall. I stared through the french windows and into the back garden. It was grey out there. Winter had set in, with its damp dullness. The few plants that remained withered above ground. Strange how the begonias had survived the autumn, their leaves virtually intact, rich, red, shiny brown. They seemed succulent, not like the Busy Lizzies, whose foliage was thin and delicate.

I noticed the noise had stopped and mother was tugging on my arm. Her face was upturned. She had shrunk in old age and I stood above her. Her lips were surrounded by thin lines that carved pinches. Maybe, as a younger woman, she had pouted. I could not imagine that somehow. Before I was born she elected to have all her teeth removed. A gummy mouth is not sexy. Mothers are not sexy. When she stumbled over words she used to say “I haven't got my teeth in”.

She was still looking at me.
“I don't know what to say.”
That seemed to satisfy her.

And then there was the trunk. She brought it every time she visited. We emptied it, she returned home with it, and arrived with it on the next occasion. Today we were ploughing through old letters, tablecloths, things that were not quite ornaments but had been wrapped in up paper napkins. Why would anyone keep complementary cologne provided by an airline? I could not understand my father, or his odd obsessions.

She hauled out a beige, marled box. My wedding album. “Here, you might as well have this.”
“Don't you want to keep it? I've got already one. This was your's and dad's.”
“What do I want with it?”
“I dunno, it's just usual for the mother of the bride to keep it, otherwise I've got two.”
“Well I have no need for it.”
“OK, alright,” there was no use arguing with her. I put the box on the end of my bed.

Her visit continued in the normal way. She insisted on washing the dishes, cooking the dinners and nagging the children. No matter how nicely I asked her she smoked in the kitchen, preached Daily Mail politics and drank like a fish. The only respite was the jigsaw puzzle. Golden silence. We set it up on the big, wooden bread board. She did the corners and edges, but I made up the little sections of pictures. We never did it together. That was the thing about us. We could not be in the same room, worrying at the same task. Either she would start talking, or I would start talking, and within minutes we would be at each other's throats.

“You're just like your father.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

It was chief amongst his stories. How they had not known I was expected until right at the last minute. He said that, in his hurry to get to the hospital, he had torn the exhaust off his car. She said I came at nine minutes past one, in the middle of lunch. She even managed dessert.

The lacy part of the tablecloth was difficult, all that detail. She was better at the flowers, working out their subtle shades. She pulled her glasses down to the end of her nose and peered over the top of them. I watched her hunched shoulders from a shadowy corner. The children buzzed around her. She always had words for them. I hid behind the doorway to hear “When your mommy was little ...”. She never told me. But with the jigsaw, we did not need any words, we just had to do, be co-operative, and more importantly, delicate and precise with each other.

Building the picture took days. All those little pieces that had to be arranged in order. Mistakes were made, but they did not last, you cannot go very far up a blind alley with a jigsaw puzzle. We admired the achievements of the other, not having to directly address them, only to be rejected, instead, we quietly beavered away, knowing that somehow, in some way, it all fitted, and would look like the fairy tale painting on the front of the box.

When the last piece was slotted into place she left.

I do not have cupboards in my house, so everything has to be sorted and stored in an appropriate place. All the stuff that does not have an apparent use, or is not beautiful enough to be displayed on our crammed shelves, is put up in the loft. I never go in the loft. Strange, creepy place.

I flicked idly through the wedding album. There was Uncle Frank, long dead, and Aunty Margaret, recently dead. I looked young and stupid, but I do not think I was, except for my smile perhaps, that evidenced a certain nervous enthusiasm. Underneath the album, tucked away at the bottom of the box, were a couple of things father had kept; the ribbon from my bouquet, a dried rose, and his speech, written on lined paper in ink.

“Ladies and gentlemen (pause), we are gathered here today to celebrate the marriage of Christina Lesley to Matthew James (pause). It is always difficult for a father to give his daughter away, especially when she is his youngest (pause, turn to face Christina, smile at her), but I am confident that she will be happy (smile at Matthew). So, ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding, and join me in wishing the bride and groom every happiness in their future (pause, wait until everyone is standing up, raise champagne glass, speak firstly and clearly). To Christina and Matthew (sit down).”

I heard him, as I had heard him then, with his speech hesitation. Looking at the curl and stretch of his writing I could see his hand in mine. Father had not taught me to write, so I could not understand how he had influenced my shapes. Maybe my hand moves in the same way as his, and our letters must always lean forwards because we are constantly struggling to speak, because we constantly struggled to speak. I folded the paper gently and put it back where I had found it.

Looking at the other things, mother had thought of to dispose into my care, my eye caught on to the book of calculus. I had used it as a child. Brown covered, faded and marked by use, from being in my satchel or his hands. Turning the soft, cream pages I saw his notations, in small pencil, blessing the margins with a moment of thought. I wanted more.

“Yes hello,” she said irritably on answering the telephone.
“Is mother there?”
“MOTHER, MOTHER, M-O-T-H-E-R!”
Why did my sister not cover the mouthpiece when she shouted.
“What?”
“It's Christina on the phone.”
There was a click as mother lifted the handset.
“Hello.”
“Hi, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Are you well?”
“Yes, I'm fine.”
“And the children?”
“They're fine.”
“And Matt?”
“He's fine.”
“So everything is fine with you? Eighteen years of education and you only have one word?”
“Mother, I'm in a hurry.”
“Who phones someone up when they're in a hurry?”
“Me, obviously, because I always get everything wrong.”
“Oh don't be so ridiculous.”
“Please, can I ask you the question?”
“Well, as long as you've the time.”
“For Godsake.”
“And there's no need to be taking the Lord's name in vain.”

I slammed the telephone down.
“You alright love?” Matt shouted up.
“Yes, I'm fine, really fucking fine, totally and utterly fine. Shit me, I'm so fucking fine that I've just won first prize in the fucking fine awards.”
“I was only asking.”

In the bathroom, under the sink, there was a gap just big enough for my body, if I folded my legs up and bent my head to one side. I sat there, on my hands, letting the cold porcelain ease the red, hot scratches on my forehead. 'It's not fucking fine, it's not fucking fine,' as I said it I banged my head against the wall. Felt good. Could feel the small injury. I was not looking to crack my skull.

I never managed to ask mother for father's letters, that he had written, weekly, to me, for ten years. I knew they were in a box, somewhere in my parents' loft, along with mine, that I had written to him, weekly, for ten years. I wanted them so much I ached. I needed to know what he had said and what I had said and how we were like each other. I thought perhaps I could find that in our communication, and then maybe I would understand why he loved me and why she hated me.