Letters From an Unknown Woman

by Gerard Woodward

  ‘It’s good to see the shops rebuilt at last,’ said Tory. Branson looked at her as though she’d said something ridiculous. For the last couple of years Tory had felt as though she was on a different wavelength from her son: nothing she said seemed to interest him, and most of what she said he seemed to find baffling. She was a little surprised that he had been so insistent on her coming with him today.

  ‘Won’t you feel silly with your mummy there, and all those strapping blokes knocking seven bells out of each other?’ she had said.

  ‘I don’t care, you’ve got to come.’

  ‘I don’t think any of the other would-be boxers will have their mummies there.’

  ‘I’m not going on my own.’

  Another slight pang of disappointment, to add to the one about his lack of height. Branson didn’t want to go to the gym on his own, but he had done other things on his own, he had caught a train all the way up to London, sneaking out of school to do so. He had walked the length of Charing Cross Road, all the way from Trafalgar Square to Bloomsbury. He had found Donald’s flat, the one he shared with the educated Mr Wilde. Oh, yes, Branson had done many things on his own by now. He had even got a Saturday job as an assistant to Bill Welch, Donald’s old partner, and was learning the painting and decorating trade. He came home caked in the same decorative muck that used to cover Donald – plastery fingers, hair stiff with gloss paint, nails in his shoes, and always that pong of turpentine.

  She would have done everything she could to stop Branson seeing Donald, and certainly from following his footsteps into that messy profession, if she’d thought there was the least chance she would be successful. And so she didn’t.

  Tory stole another glance at her son, standing awkwardly beside her at the stop. Not tall, certainly. He would never be tall. By pure coincidence, it seemed, he resembled, in height if nothing else, Donald.

  The bus arrived. They got on.

  *

  The task of removing Donald from Tory’s life was a long and complicated one. In the end she had resorted to a method that also had its associations with George – starvation. She began, simply, by denying him food. It was less immediately violent than the first method she had considered, that of killing him. On the afternoon of their discovery, in the gents’ lavatory, of a stock of Donald’s so-called ‘memoirs’, in fact a near perfect transcription of her letters with only the names changed, she had come home in a blind fury. All the way Grace had followed her (or, more accurately, walked in front of her, backwards), trying to make her stop and think about what she was doing.

  ‘There’s to be no discussion, Grace. I’m just going to kill him.’

  Grace had realized quite quickly what had happened, knowing, as she did, all about the letters. ‘Don’t you think you should think about it?’

  ‘I am thinking about it. There is an axe in the shed. I was thinking of using it a long time ago, and I didn’t. But I think I will use it now.’

  Would she ever have used it? Tory thought probably not, that it was more than just an accident of circumstance that had prevented her becoming an axe-wielding murderess, crazed to a comical degree, lampooned by her own fury into something quite ridiculous. If she thought about it more she could see all the improbabilities – especially if Grace had still been with her – of fetching the axe out from the shed, marching into the kitchen (there was no refuge for Donald now – with Mrs Head downstairs he had only the dining room or the upstairs bedroom to occupy), to raise the axe above Donald’s inattentive head (probably reading the racing pages – betting on the horses had become his latest interest). Then what? He looks up just in time to see the blade flash before his eyes, as it bisects them perfectly, his face falling away in two symmetrical halves (or as near as possible for Donald, whose face had steadily lost its symmetry over the years). What a terrific horror that would have been, more horrible, probably, than anything Donald himself had seen during the war, but he would have been responsible because he had proved himself to be on the side of the bad people after all, and the blow wouldn’t just have been for his sneaky, sleazy betrayal, but for all the wrong things he’d done since coming home, and most of all for taking Tom’s future away from him.

  It wouldn’t have happened. Instead the axe would have melted away in her hands at the thought of Branson, of her own capacity for betrayal.

  But it had never got that far anyway. When she arrived home, she opened the door to find Donald standing in the passageway, as though he had been waiting for her. She could see by his demeanour that something was seriously wrong, and she thought she knew what it was.

  ‘Mama?’ she said.

  Donald nodded before adding, quite unnecessarily, ‘I am afraid Mrs Head is now Mrs Dead.’

  And thoughts of axes, of revenge, of any sort of action directed at Donald, except to say, after a moment’s deep crying, ‘How could you make a joke out of it?’ disappeared from her mind, and instead she was filled with the appalling task of removing her own mother from her life. It hadn’t occurred to her before that that was what you had to do when a loved one died – remove them. Somehow she had imagined that everything involved with the disposal of a life was organized by outside agencies – undertakers, hospitals, doctors, the borough council – but, no, these people all have to be marshalled and cajoled and would apparently be quite content to let the dead linger on indefinitely among the living. Oh, she supposed they would have done something eventually, but it was she who had to instigate everything – and then there were her mother’s things, among which, Tory realized, was the house itself. Luckily her sisters, happily and prosperously married, were not insistent upon the portion of their mother’s estate that was tied up in it, and Tory was allowed to continue living at 17 Peter Street.

  Donald had not made things easier for her by describing her mother’s dying moments in great detail.

  ‘She was making these awful moaning sounds. I kept asking her what the matter was, but she wouldn’t say anything, lying on her side on the bed, moaning, like she had a really bad stomach ache. And she kept opening her mouth wide as if she was going to be sick, but nothing came out, then another moan – really deep moans. You wouldn’t believe it was a woman making those noises – she sounded like Paul Robeson, like Al Jolson. I’ve never heard a sound like it …’ Donald speculated that it was not Mrs Head’s voice at all but the voice of Death himself, speaking through her, because it was the last noise to come out of her mouth, but for a brief gushing sound, as a stream of near-clear liquid poured out that, for the briefest moment, made Donald think of a thing he’d seen at a funfair on the Common once, when a slot machine gave its prize of silver tokens through the glazed mouth of a clown. And then he said Mrs Head’s eyes changed colour, by which he meant the pupils dilated until the whole iris became black, and since Mrs Head’s eyes had, until then, been getting lighter and lighter in their shades of blue, this was a very noticeable change. Tory didn’t know why she had allowed Donald to give her this information, this verbal portrait of her mother’s dying moments, a cameo of her departure, an anecdote of death told with all the urgency of a saloon-bar raconteur. She supposed he was just trying to enable her to share the experience she had missed, and that he seemed sure she regretted missing.

  ‘You should have let me know. Why didn’t you get me?’

  ‘How could I get you? You were at work.’

  ‘You could have come.’

  ‘Why do you always forget about my leg, Tory? Why do you always forget about it?’ Tory had no answer. She had never forgotten about his leg. He could have got to the lavatories by other means – he could have hailed a taxi, got a neighbour to drive him down. ‘And leave Mrs Head to die alone? Is that what you would have wanted? Besides – how could I have come to tell you? You work in a ladies’ lavatory.’

  Tory shouted at the ceiling. ‘It is not completely out of bounds – men are allowed in in an emergency. I think it would have been acceptable in such circumstances.’

  �
��I’m not going in a Ladies, not even if my life depended on it.’

  Mrs Head was buried next to Arthur, in the graveyard of St Andrew’s, Clifton Road, attended by a large and respectful crowd of people who were mostly strangers to Tory, though their names were familiar when she discovered them – Aunty Emily and Uncle Albert who were younger than Mrs Head but looked twice as old, George Washington (whose family had always so revelled in the name, and which went some way to making up for his rather shabby, achieve-mentless life), the Dunders, the Bacons, the Popes, the Hills. Tory hadn’t seen the Hills since she was a child, and was amazed at how high and broad they had become – more like mountains, Donald had joked. There were friends, too. Mrs Head had somehow maintained a wide circle of friends without ever disclosing their existence to Tory. How had she done it? There was an art to it, surely. Apart from the familiar faces of Lippiatt and Richards and Allen and Wilson, there was Mrs McGillicuddy, Mrs Pewsey, Mrs Finny, Mrs Dark, Mrs Wise, Mrs Randall, all with their jovial, chatty husbands. The church could hardly hold all the mourners. Neither could the house in Peter Street, but Tory had been able to secure the upstairs rooms at the Rifleman, who put on a decent spread of corned-beef pasties, sprout terrines and Roquefort footballs.

  It was around this time that her thoughts began returning to the book. Dressed in mourning black (‘extravagant, illogical and unChristian’), floating among guests with a tray of kipper pâté rolls, a thought suddenly occurred to her: how many people in this room might have read Letters To Her Husband? How many copies were on sale? How many public conveniences stocked them? Every attended gents’ lavatory in the land?

  As soon as the guests were gone, she confronted Donald.

  It was hard for Tory to say what hurt her the most – the fact that he had done this thing, of publishing her letters, or that he seemed so surprised at her anger. ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ he said, raising his eyebrows, showing no sign that he was embarrassed at having his little enterprise discovered. ‘You always said you wanted to be published …?

  This rendered Tory speechless. She could do nothing but fold her arms and let her mouth form an outraged oval. That he could even think of comparing what he had done to the possible future publication of her novel, as though she could derive any sense of fulfilment from that …

  ‘You’ve got fans, old girl. All over the country, all over the world. This book is selling like hot cakes. It’s being translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish. They’re all paying up front. We’re going to be rolling in it, rolling in it.’

  By now Tory was in control of herself, and talked calmly to Donald. ‘May I ask if you showed my letters to people in the prison camp?’

  ‘Of course I did, old girl. We all showed each other our letters from our wives, especially if they had saucy bits in them. There was a racket going on. You could rent out letters in return for favours, or even food and treats – there was no harm in it. I could see these blokes getting loads of stuff from each other and from the guards just for showing a letter from their missus that didn’t even say that much. I needed some letters to help me. That’s why I kept asking. I was only trying to hold my own. And then you really let rip, old girl, and started writing letters like none of us had ever seen before. Those letters were like gold dust to me – I could get anything I wanted for them, anything. You were famous all around the camp, and around every camp I went to, Tory Pace, the hottest bit of stuff in the free world. I had blokes asking if they could see your photograph.’

  ‘And did you show them?’

  ‘No, I didn’t have a picture of you on me, so I showed them pictures of Flora. Don’t worry, your identity’s safe.’

  ‘Have you told your sister this?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t.’

  ‘How many copies have you printed?’

  ‘You’ll have to address that question to my agent.’

  ‘If by “agent” you mean that devious little wastrel Mr Wilde then I would rather not speak to him. You must tell me.’

  ‘But I don’t know anything about it. Harry handled it all.’

  ‘You must have an idea.’

  ‘It’s a French publishing company. Harry speaks good French – he’s an educated man, like I keep telling you, a literary man. He has connections, he knows people. He said something about the first print run being five thousand copies.’

  Tory’s heart sank even further. Her shame multiplied five thousand times, dispersed all around the country. ‘You must tell me where they all are.’

  ‘Why, Tory? No one will ever know you were the author. I changed the names – didn’t you see? You’re Gertie Truelove in the book.’

  As though he had provided her with some sort of gift, that grotesque, horrible name. He could not have thought of a more unpleasant one if he’d tried for a hundred years. Yes, of course she was Gertie Truelove, twin sister of Charlotte Maugham, her darker side.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re getting so upset about. You came up with those letters – some of the blokes I showed them to handed them straight back, saying they didn’t want to read any further. Disgusted, some of them were. I had to be careful who I showed them to after that.’

  ‘I suppose Mr Wilde took great delight in them.’

  ‘Harry certainly has a discerning eye for the more colourful end of the literary spectrum.’

  Tory had to keep reminding herself that Donald was, or had been, a reader of Plato.

  ‘He said that this French publisher, who publishes some pretty strong stuff, had some doubts about whether to publish them or not. Anyone found with copies could end up in jail. How does that feel, to have written something illegal?’

  ‘But the censors let them through,’ said Tory, indignantly.

  ‘Things can be said in a private letter that can’t be said in a book – you must know that.’

  ‘Well, I may have written the letters but you have written the book. That makes you the criminal, not me.’

  ‘It’s a pretty fine distinction, don’t you think? If you get me into trouble over this, I’m bringing you down with me.’

  ‘In which case our best course of action is to ensure that all copies of this book are destroyed. Donald, you need to tell me who published it and where all the copies are. I cannot allow it to be distributed.’

  ‘Like I said, speak to my agent.’

  ‘Damn your agent – and stop calling him that, he’s nothing more than a spiv. You speak to him. Why should I?’

  ‘It’s all underground, Tory. We’ll never be able to track down all the copies.’

  Underground. Was it really as simple as that? A question of visiting every attended gents’ lavatory in the land, every barber’s shop?

  *

  She didn’t get much further with Donald. It was not possible to convince him that he had done anything so seriously wrong. If she castigated him for doing it, he reminded her that she was the author of the letters, which reminded her that she had written them under the influence of her affair with George Farraway, that large parts of them were verbatim transcriptions of his lovemaking utterances, that many of the scenarios described were accounts of their own lovemaking – did Donald recognize this? It was always these things that robbed her of her full-blown ability to be outraged; she could not quite bring herself to the brink of true anger and hurt. And then Donald would add to the problem by questioning to whom the letters belonged. Who, after all, owns a letter? The author or the recipient? Tory supposed there were lawyers somewhere who could answer the question, but she couldn’t. Donald insisted the letters were his own property and that he could do what he pleased with them. He was, he said, being very generous in offering to share the profits with her.

  She did manage to persuade him to show her where his own stash of copies was hidden. They were in the mahogany escritoire, in the locked cupboard underneath. Thirty copies, along with her original letters in a box file.

  Books are not easy to burn. Tory discovered this as sh
e set about constructing the first bonfire ever to flourish in the backyard of 17 Peter Street. They sit in the flames like big blocks of ice, refusing to ignite. To get them to burn properly you have to break them open, tear the spines apart so that they flail with all their organs exposed. Even then you fear that chunks of text might survive, might be readable to anyone picking through the cold embers. Tory felt alarm when, once the fire had got going, large portions of text, still burning, were being carried into the air by the updraught. This act of burning might turn out to be another form of distribution, in fragmentary form, but who knew where those bits of pornography might land, how far they might be carried, and have enough surviving text to be readable, identifiable?

  It took Donald to point out the irony of the situation. ‘To think we fought a war just to prevent this sort of thing happening. I never thought I’d live to see the day that book-burning became a practice in my own backyard.’

  Mrs Wilson popped her head over the fence. Tory hadn’t given any thought to the preparations for this event, and there was washing hanging in neighbouring gardens. She could just see the top of some tightly curled heads bobbing up and down beyond the fences, as scintillatingly clean underwear (oh, these new washing powders: never before had smalls glowed so resplendently and with such little effort) was quickly rescued before the ashes and smoke of Tory’s letters poured down. She apologized to Mrs Wilson, informing her that she was just getting rid of some of her mother’s old things, which brought out a sympathetic response.

  ‘No, there’s no point in clinging on to things, is there, dear?’ she said.

  *

  Tory could not help but notice the rising ground where the wash had been buried all those years before. It seemed that all Donald’s enterprises could go nowhere but back to an elemental form, into the earth or the air. The paving slabs had never settled over that dreadful whisky but were forever uneven, and now they used buckets of water to wash the book ash down the storm drain.