The Letter

by Ruth Saberton

  Matt nods. “I see. So, what do you have to paint for these book covers?”

  Actually I have no idea. It seemed pointless checking, since I didn’t think I could do it.

  “I’m not sure. My agent’s emailed the brief.”

  “Is there any merit in just seeing what it is? You may have a really strong gut reaction either way. You say that a part of you is longing to start again. Maybe this will inspire you? I’m a big believer in trusting your heart.” He looks up at me from under dark eyelashes starred with rain, and my own heart does something strange: it feels as though it rises a little. I feel… hopeful.

  “I guess that wouldn’t hurt,” I agree.

  “You can log on to my laptop if you like?” Matt offers. “It practically runs on steam, which drives the twins mad because they can’t play Minecraft properly, but it can just about cope with a few emails. We can get a coffee too. I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to freeze out here.”

  The cold from the bench is seeping into my bones and the sea mist is drenching me by stealth. The idea of being inside, warming my hands around a mug of coffee and listening to the chatter of the other volunteers, is suddenly very welcome. Together we walk back to the house. Light spills into the gloomy morning from the diamond-paned windows and inside the hall a fire crackles merrily in the grate, filling the room with the scent of woodsmoke. Several volunteers warming themselves by the flames call out cheery hellos.

  “I like to think it would have smelt just the same in Kit’s time,” remarks Matt, after we’ve greeted everyone and made our way through a narrow passageway to the back of the house. At one time this would have been part of the warren of sculleries, larders and kitchens. The flagstones are dipped from centuries of wear by leaden feet and in the kitchens the ceilings are still dark from long-ago smoke. At the farthest end, by a small window overlooking the garden, a spiral flight of stone steps vanishes intriguingly into a solid wall. I wonder what colours I would use to create the sense of half-light and shifting centuries? Somebody’s placed a poinsettia on the window ledge and the bold splash of crimson against the greyness of stone, together with the sharp green ivy fringing the window, makes me catch my breath. I know exactly how I would paint this scene, and I need to see if I’m right.

  Is my gift coming back?

  Matt’s set up a makeshift office in an airy room at the far end of the passageway. At one time this would have been the still room, where the lady of the house would have overseen the distillation or making of medicines and tinctures. Now it’s “still” in the sense that it’s far away from the main activity and a place where hopefully he isn’t disturbed too often. Matt has a desk piled high with folders, papers and heavy books. There are also two wooden school chairs heaped with yet more folders, and in the corner a small electric heater is doing its best to take the chill from the air. In addition, a couple of filing cabinets have been dragged in from where they’d been abandoned in the old coach house, and there’s a battered suitcase rescued from the attic as well as some faded sepia photographs of Kit in uniform. The place feels homely and welcoming and I know this atmosphere comes from Matt. He has a gift of setting people at their ease. Look at how readily I spoke to him earlier.

  “It’s buried here somewhere,” Matt says, shuffling some papers together and pushing books aside to locate the laptop. “Excuse the mess. I know it’s shocking.”

  “It obviously works for you,” I say.

  “Yep, I know where most things are, but I know I’m pretty chaotic. It drove Gina mad. Then again, most things seemed to in the end.”

  Neil was a neat freak and I know I drove him round the twist with my havoc. He was always restacking the dishwasher if by chance I’d got near it, or sorting out the mess I’d caused in the cutlery drawer. If it would bring him back to me, I swear I’d never muddle up the knives and forks again.

  Matt switches the laptop on and while it buzzes awake he scoops more folders and papers from the chair so that I can sit down. I do so carefully because I don’t want to cause an avalanche or be concussed by knocking down a pile of books. While I navigate my email folder, which is overflowing with correspondence I’ve been ignoring, Matt fetches coffees. He peers over my shoulder as he sets my mug on the table. Coffee sloshes onto the desk, adding another brown ring to the Olympic circles already decorating an envelope.

  “Another bad habit,” he grins.

  “There seem to be quite a lot!”

  “Far too many. Did I mention I can’t screw the lids on jars either?”

  “I’m amazed you’ve made it this far.”

  “Yeah, it’s been tough. The Marmite suffered dreadfully. Anyway, don’t let me disturb you. Looks as though you’ve got a few emails to work through.”

  He isn’t kidding, but I’m not even going to attempt trawling through all these today. Instead I scroll through until I find Moira’s email, marked urgent with a scarlet flag. I open it and scan the brief and, as I do, something very odd happens: my stomach flutters with excitement. I peer more closely at the screen and read the details again just in case I’m mistaken and the stomach butterflies are actually terror – but no, this feeling really is the delicious realisation that the project at my fingertips couldn’t be more perfect for me.

  I have to hand it to Moira: she’s good.

  “Everything OK?” Matt asks, and I realise I’ve been staring at the screen in silence for some time.

  “Yes, thanks. More than OK, actually. I think this might be something I can do – want to do, even!”

  “Really? That’s fantastic! What is it?”

  “It’s six covers set in an old manor house. Mullioned windows, courtyards, spiral steps, walled gardens…” I turn to him and see my own delight reflected in his shining eyes. “Can you believe that? What are the chances?”

  “I’d say it’s meant to be. Serendipity and all that.”

  This is exactly how I feel. Already half in love with Kit Rivers and Rosecraddick Manor, I’m now picturing the scenes I want to create and dreaming of the colours and shades that will bring my ideas to life. The first piece of artwork is flowering in my mind’s eye: a latticed window overlooking a garden, with the sea in the background beyond the squat tower of St Nonna’s. I’ll sketch it as it is now and then transport it to the spring when the flower beds pop with colour and sunlight gilds the water.

  “This is the first brief,” I say, and Matt reads it over my shoulder. “Any ideas of where I could begin?”

  “So you’ll do it then?”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “I know the perfect spot to start with this. Shall I show you? It’s a bit dusty and cobwebby but I’m sure you’re used to that now.”

  I print the brief out, fire off a quick reply to Moira and then follow Matt up the grand staircase to the first floor. This is the oldest part of the house and where the rooms link to one another. We wander through to the farthest chamber and then he opens a cunningly concealed door in the wooden panelling.

  “A secret room!” I exclaim. “I’d never have known it was there.”

  “You just need to know where to look,” says Matt, smiling at me encouragingly. “Maybe it’s a metaphor? Anyway, come on.”

  Behind the low door is a narrow flight of creaky wooden stairs. Matt has to lower his head as he climbs but, being shorter, I manage easily. At the top is a small chamber overlooking the garden. Matt pulls the heavy shutters open and through the ivy and a cage of iron lattice I spot the Old Rectory and the wise grey church.

  “Whose room was this?” I wonder.

  “We’ve no idea. This is the tower and part of the original manor house. It must have been a bedchamber once, but not in Kit’s time,” Matt explains. “I’m assuming in Kit’s time the Rivers family used the newer wing, as it’s far more convenient. This older part of the house is awkward and tucked away and we’ve not really done much with it. It was probably used for storage back then. There’s no electricity either and it’s also quit
e a long way from the nearest bathroom.”

  I walk over to the window and lean against the sill. The wood’s crumbly beneath my fingers and peppered with the nibbles of long-dead woodworm. Some parts have even fallen away. This room up in the tower is an old and secret spot, the perfect place to hide away to write and dream.

  This was Kit’s place. I’m certain of it – and when I glance down at the windowsill I know for sure that I’m right. There’s no doubt at all.

  Scratched into the wood, so close to the stonework that it could easily be missed, is the unmistakable outline of a carved daisy.

  Chapter 11

  Chloe

  “I can’t believe I haven’t noticed that before.”

  Matt stares at the carving. There’s no mistaking what we’re looking at. This crude flower is exactly like the one I found in the church, which can only mean one thing: someone from this household carved them both.

  “Could the stained-glass window be linked to the carving in the church, after all?” I ask.

  “It would certainly seem that way. The daisy in the church window’s a much later addition, though.” He pushes his dark hair back from his face as he peers at the flower more closely. “This looks identical to the one we saw in the church.”

  “Do you think Kit carved it?”

  Matt spreads his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I have no idea.”

  “And there are no clues in his poetry?”

  “None whatsoever. Believe me, I’ve been back over every single poem and studied every line. I’ve gone cross-eyed looking for mnemonics or acrostics but there’s nothing. My fear is that whatever this means was lost with Kit.”

  Kit carved this daisy. I know he did. The room has the most beautiful views, even on a gloomy winter’s day, and there’s a sense of stillness and peace. I can even see the attic windows of the Old Rectory and the melon slice of Rosecraddick Bay. I’m certain Kit wrote up here. And how do I know? Because I feel that I can paint here. It feels creative.

  It feels right and I know I’m not the first person to think like this.

  “He left no diary or letters either, or at least not as far as we know,” Matt tells me. “Any belongings of his must have been tidied away by the family or thrown out when the house changed hands. We only have the poems because his mother had them published. The Kit Rivers Society own those now and all the publishing rights to them as well.”

  “How come?”

  “Kit’s last remaining and very distant relative, Eunice Rivers-Elliott, died in the early 1960s. She left the Kit Rivers Society the body of his work, all the rights to it, and also the rights to any more poems that may come to light. Sadly, that hasn’t happened, and it probably never will, but we live in hope. I can show you the original poems sometime, if you like?”

  “I’d love to see them. But surely Kit wrote home from the Front? There would have been letters?”

  I’ve seen countless exhibitions featuring time-faded ink on notepaper; these letters are usually displayed in glass cabinets next to photographs of the young men in uniform, shiny faced with youth and hope, and amid the scarlet splashes of paper poppies.

  “If he did then Lady Rivers didn’t keep any of his correspondence. She didn’t even keep the telegram that said he was missing.”

  I’m a little confused by this because I have belongings of Neil’s that I could never part with. Surely a mother would feel this way too?

  “Isn’t that a bit odd? You’d have thought she’d treasure all Kit’s possessions.”

  Matt shrugs. “The Colonel died in the early 1920s and Lady Rivers passed away in the next decade. That was when the house was taken over by a distant branch of the family, who decided to rent it out and who later sold it. People weren’t so sentimental about the past as us and lots of things were thrown out. Kit’s belongings would have been included in that, I suppose, and probably his mother’s personal effects too. The worry I always have is that his early work must have been lost and other poems as well. I find it hard to believe he only wrote eight.”

  “But the Manor’s attics are full of stuff,” I point out, feeling well-qualified on this score having spent days lugging furniture around the dusty and dim rooms. As well as the schoolbooks, I’d found biscuit tins crammed with cigarette cards, a recipe book bristling with yellow cuttings, and a beautiful hat with drooping scarlet feathers. The people who’d lived at Rosecraddick Manor hadn’t worried about throwing things out; they’d just shoved them in the attic and forgotten about them.

  “Maybe we’ll find something that helps in all the junk?” Matt’s saying. He gives my shoulder an encouraging squeeze. “That’s the whole point of going through it all so carefully and taking expert advice. Who knows what treasures we’ll find next?”

  I study the simple carved flower and feel a tug of sadness that the significance of something once so important, something that meant enough to be scratched in at least two places and commemorated in another, has been lost.

  “I hope we can find the answer to what this meant.”

  “We’ll keep sifting away and see what we can find out,” Matt says staunchly. “Welcome to the exciting world of historical research. Something will hopefully come to light at some point, just like this has today. This is really exciting, Chloe. It’s another piece in the jigsaw. Albeit a very slow one!”

  We make our way back through the house. Matt returns to his office and I’m pressganged by Jill into cleaning the kitchen. As I work, my head is full of questions I simply can’t answer, and I distract myself by running through Moira’s brief again and planning my preliminary sketches. I’ll start with the window in what I’m calling Kit’s Room. Then maybe a view of the Manor through the wrought-iron gate? That would look intriguing and romantic, I think. And the walled garden glimpsed through the just-open door could work.

  “Right. I’m breaking for lunch.” Jill straightens up and unties her headscarf. “Coming for a bite to eat and a cuppa?”

  “In a bit,” I say. To be honest I’m not in the mood to listen to gossip about who said what to whom in the village shop or hear discussions about grandchildren. Instead, I want to return to that quiet tower room. I’m longing to fetch my sketch pad, pick up a pencil and lose myself in soft 2B lines, and this fills me with growing impatience. I need to get sketching. I wonder if Matt has any paper?

  I tip my bucket of grimy water down the sink, the same sink where scullery maids in Kit’s time would have scrubbed pans until their fingers bled, and then peel off my Marigolds, feeling glad I live in the twenty-first century. While my fellow volunteers brew tea and munch their sandwiches in front of the fire, I return to Matt’s office on the hunt for some paper and a pencil. My heart’s hammering against my ribs as though I’m about to run a race, and I laugh at my own ridiculousness. I’m going to do a simple sketch. There’s nothing to worry about.

  Matt’s not at his desk. Maybe he’s with the Project Manager and talking to the builders who are in to quote? Or perhaps the book-restoration guy’s arrived?

  I dither in the doorway. Maybe I should just go back to my work in the attic?

  You’re procrastinating, Neil scolds. He’s standing by the old sink, arms crossed and with a stern expression on his face. Grab a pencil and get on with it!

  My husband was always bossy. Why should death stop him? Shaking my head, I overcome my reticence and help myself to several sheets of printer paper, a book to rest on and a pencil. That’s all I need to make a start – that and a huge dose of courage. When I look up again Neil’s gone, so before I can change my mind, I retrace my steps to the first floor, through the linked rooms and up the hidden stairway to the tower room.

  The rain’s eased off now and the sea fret’s lifted, revealing the world beyond the Manor. A finger of sun gilds the pewter sea and lights the ivy around the window to a vivid emerald. My breath catches; it’s magical. I’m sure this spot inspired Kit and I have the strongest feeling it’s going to inspire me too.

&n
bsp; Go on, says Neil. He’s standing by the window and smiling encouragingly. You can do this, Chloe. I believe in you.

  “You always did,” I whisper, but he’s already gone. Imagined though they are, his words warm me from head to toe as I sit down opposite the window and lean my back against the wall. The pencil feels as thick as a tree trunk between my fingers and my head’s spinning.

  I take a deep breath and wait for the strange alchemy between eyes and lead to begin. Slowly, tentatively at first, the pencil tip begins to make marks on the paper, feathering lines and cross-hatches as textures build and shading steals over the whiteness.

  It’s happening! I’m drawing again!

  Of course you are, says Neil, from just over my shoulder. Did you ever doubt it for a second?

  My pencil’s skating across the page as though it has a mind of its own. I draw and draw and draw until my fingers ache and each sheet of paper is full. It’s as though a floodgate has been opened. I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop! I can still do this!

  “There you are. We were getting worried.”

  I jump, having been so engrossed in sketching that I hadn’t noticed Matt’s arrival. I hadn’t noticed much at all except the need to draw, which is as instinctive and vital as my need to breathe. How long have I been sitting here? The sky beyond the window has grown gloomy and the corners of the room are thick with shadows. It feels like minutes but it must have been hours. I blink at him, dazed and disorientated.

  “Hey, you’re freezing.” Matt crouches down beside me and places his hands over mine. His breath clouds as he speaks and suddenly I realise just how cold I am. My fingers are numb and I’m trembling. Up here I’m far away from any heating and my hoody isn’t enough to keep off the chill.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him.

  “You’re not,” Matt says firmly. “Come on, we need to get you warmed up.”

  He gently unpeels my fingers from the pencil and, with my hands in his, raises me up. Pins and needles gush into my legs and I stagger against him. I feel lightheaded, as though I’ve been drinking, and for a few seconds the room spins while Matt steadies me.