The Letter

by Ruth Saberton

  “Bertie?” Mrs Polmartin whispered. “Is that you, love? Are you there?”

  “So cold, so cold, so cold. It’s wet. So cold, so cold, cold. Cold, Ma. Bobo’s so cold!”

  Mrs Polmartin gasped. Daisy felt ice sweep across her body and her scalp prickled. How was this possible?

  She met Nancy’s eyes. Told you, the other girl mouthed.

  The medium’s voice was growing lower and with every word it sounded different. It was much deeper now – masculine, Daisy would have said. The fire was blazing but the room was so chilly she could see her own breath rising in clouds.

  “It’s cold, Ma, and it’s wet. So cold, so cold,” moaned the medium, swaying and rocking now. Her eyes had rolled up under the lids to show only the whites. Even her face seemed altered – twisted and tortured and grotesque in the firelight.

  “Oh love, I’m sorry. I knitted lots of socks and I sent them to you,” Mrs Polmartin sobbed. “We all did our bit to keep you warm.”

  Daisy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. How many hours had they spent knitting socks to send to the troops? She’d wanted to scream sometimes with the tedium of it all and the incessant click-clack of needles ticking in her ears day after day. How did this woman know? Was it all just a lucky guess?

  “Ma! Ma! It hurts, Ma!” The medium’s voice rose to a shrill cry. “So cold, so cold, so cold. The mud, Ma! Where are you? Ma? I can’t move, Ma! Bobo’s cold! Where are you, Ma? Ma!”

  “I’m here, love!” the housekeeper wept. “I’m here, Bobo!”

  Daisy’s skin was covered in goosebumps. The sucking, cloying mud and the cold that bit into the bones, as well as the endless booming of artillery, was the stuff of Kit’s verse. Quite what she was witnessing now she couldn’t say, but she didn’t like it. As the medium shuddered and slumped forwards onto the table, Daisy rose to her feet. She didn’t want to hear any more.

  “Kit Rivers!” Nancy called out. “Is there a message from Kit Rivers?”

  The medium sat upright.

  “I’ll ask my guides,” she said.

  Daisy glowered at Nancy. This wasn’t what she wanted. It felt wrong.

  “Please don’t,” she began, but the medium wasn’t listening.

  “Is Kit Rivers here?” Her eyes closed, the lids flickering and the eyes beneath rolling. Her voice became husky and urgent. “Can Kit Rivers step forward from the afterlife?”

  Daisy was holding her breath so tightly her chest hurt. Don’t be there, she prayed. Don’t be there, Kit! You’re alive! I don’t want to speak to you!

  A log shifted in the grate and there was a pop of resin which made one of the ladies shriek, but the medium didn’t flinch.

  “There’s no one of that name here,” she said, with the same authority as a head teacher. “I have no message or contact from this man and he isn’t known to my guides. He hasn’t crossed over. He hasn’t passed.”

  “What does that mean?” Nancy demanded, but the medium ignored her, addressing Daisy instead. Amber eyes, dark with a knowledge that couldn’t be explained, held hers. The message could not have been clearer.

  “It means Kit Rivers is still alive,” she said.

  Part 3

  Chapter 1

  Chloe

  Where’s the rest?

  I turn the page, frantic to know what happens next, but there’s only blank paper. The hand I’ve grown so accustomed to never wrote another sentence and Daisy’s story stops as abruptly as her calamitous downhill bike ride. I flick through each empty page just in case she missed a couple out by mistake, but I already know this won’t be the case. If the entries stop at this point it’s because she intended them to. Daisy’s time in Rosecraddick was over; a chapter of her life had drawn to a close and a new one was about to start. No matter how many times I flip through the pages or how far I stretch my arm out to reach beneath the floorboards in the hope there might be another tin full of information, I won’t find anything else.

  I feel utterly bereaved. Daisy Hills has vanished – and after all these hours spent reading her thoughts and sharing her adventures, this comes as a shock.

  The voice I’ve been listening to for all this time has fallen silent and has left me with more questions than answers. I’m not ready to say goodbye. I want to know what happened. Did she go to France? Was she able to find out what really happened to Kit? What did she do after the war? Why didn’t she come back for her treasures? There are so many things I need to know, not least what became of her.

  Why did Daisy, and most of Kit’s precious poems, vanish from history? Where did she go?

  I screw my eyes up and try my hardest not to cry, but it feels as though I’ve lost a friend. I know this makes no sense. Of course there’s no logic in crying for somebody who surely died decades ago – but from the moment I opened her diary, Daisy’s been sharing her innermost thoughts and taking me on a journey back in time to the last century. She feels as real to me as any of my own friends. More real now, in many ways: she’s become part of my new life in Cornwall.

  I know about Daisy’s nightmares, her favourite foods, her views on politics, her naughty brother and her dreams of being a writer, but most of all I know about her love for Kit Rivers. Those golden days before the war are perfect moments preserved in faded ink; with every glimpse of Kit there was a burst of joy as she walked across the cliffs to meet him, happiness swelling when she felt his arms close around her. For a while, life had bloomed into something wonderful for Daisy. Her stay in Rosecraddick was no longer a prison sentence with a crotchety old godfather as a gaoler. Instead, Rosecraddick had become the setting for her love story. Her words transform Kit from a stained-glass saint into somebody real: a golden boy from a gilded world, for certain, but one who laughed and teased and loved and who wanted nothing more than to share his feelings for Daisy with the world.

  I wipe my eyes on my sleeve. If only she had let him. If Kit had married Daisy as he’d longed to do, then her story wouldn’t have vanished – and his other poems, the ones she hid away from his horrible mother, would be as well-known as those of Owen and Sassoon. She would have been Kit’s wife and their love story wouldn’t have been consigned to dust and hidden under floorboards. That decision, however selfless, was the one small flutter of a butterfly’s wings that changed everything. The timeline was shifted because of it, and a multitude of chances were lost without ever being discovered.

  I have these thoughts a lot, about the “if onlys” and the sense that the world is loaded with possibilities that slip through our fingers like sand. If only Neil had been diagnosed earlier. If only the chemo had worked. If only we’d had longer. If only Daisy and Kit had been married. How different might our stories have been? Now there are only fragments left, memories disintegrating like autumn leaves and answers always tantalisingly out of reach. The “if onlys” are the saddest things in the world.

  Our story ended the day Neil died. I know all the details. There are no questions left to answer and no gaps history needs to fill. The facts are there for anyone who might want to find them. For Daisy and Kit, however, their story is still waiting to be told. The clues are there if I can solve them. The window in the church. The carvings. The poems Daisy hid away after Kit’s mother burned his letters. There’s so much more waiting to be revealed. My arms are dusted with goosebumps at this thought. I’m so sure Daisy needs to finish telling her story. It can’t end here. It can’t.

  I must have been reading for hours. I remember taking a break at some point, but having been immersed in Daisy’s world I’d not noticed that the evening had since turned to dawn, nor how cold the attic had grown. I’m huddled in the chair and my hands are chilled. When I look up, I’m surprised not to see a fire dancing in the grate or a comfy bed covered in a pretty patchwork eiderdown. That old bedstead must have been hers, and maybe the age-spotted mirror too. How strange to think that a young girl with brown eyes and long red curls once peered into it, pinching her cheeks and trying to pin up her hair bef
ore running down these same treacherous stairs to meet the young man who made her insides fold so deliciously. I’ve peeked behind time’s curtain and now nothing looks quite the same as it once did.

  I glance out of the window into the December gloom. I wonder if I’ll glimpse Daisy running across the garden with a basket swinging in her hand as she races to the gate. Here and now the cedar tree looms against the blandness of a winter’s dawn, but I’m seeing it in the spring moonlight with a young couple beneath, folded into one another and whispering promises. Swimming out of the greyness is the tower over at the Manor, where a handkerchief signal flutters in the breeze. These are views I’ve enjoyed every day since I first came here, but now I’m seeing them through Daisy’s eyes too. Despite the murk, it feels all bright to me, newly minted and sharper with my new understanding.

  I place the diary on the arm of the chair. On the floor are seashells, a marble bottle stopper from a long-forgotten picnic and, most precious of all, the soft lock of Kit’s hair. And of course, inside the tin is the crumbling daisy-chain ring Kit gave her. All these are Daisy’s treasures, so precious that she hid them away for a lifetime. To see them laid before me after reading about them feels almost voyeuristic. I kneel on the floor, splinters from the worn boards catching my jeans, and gently return everything else to the tin. Strange how these objects no longer seem like tatty odds and ends now that they’ve travelled across time. I close the lid, struck by the realisation that the last person to do so was Daisy.

  Did she have any idea that she would never return to collect her belongings? And how would she feel if she’d known that in a hundred years’ time a stranger would be party to her most secret thoughts and would handle her precious things? Would she be angry? Or is she there in the shadows urging me on and willing me to piece her story together? I’m certain it’s the latter. Daisy and I are a century apart, but love and loss haven’t changed. As I loved Neil, so she loved Kit; and as I fought for my husband’s life, so she had vowed to fight for her fiancé’s. The Daisy Hills who swam in her undergarments, who defied convention to see the man she loved and refused to give up on him, wouldn’t want her story to be forgotten. I feel certain of this.

  The morning’s arrived. The view of the bay where Daisy and Kit’s sailing boat once skimmed the waves is pearly and new. I glance at my watch, wondering if it’s too early to call Matt. He’s probably awake but it’s Saturday now and this is family time for him, so I decide to leave it. Besides, before I do speak to him there’s something I need to do, something that’s just occurred to me. It’s a crazy impulse and I could be wrong, but I have to act on it. Maybe Daisy’s urging me onwards? The thought makes me smile as I place her diary on the chair with the biscuit tin beside it. I think she’s just given me a clue.

  I abandon the attic and make my way through the Rectory. I have the sensation that two worlds are overlapping. The landing with the bedrooms and the big bathroom shimmers and I find myself tiptoeing, not wanting to alert Reverend Cutwell to my presence.

  The old stairs creak beneath my tread as though wanting to give my movements away. I grab my coat from where I’d draped it over the banisters, half expecting to bump into Mrs Polmartin and be tutted at for such slovenly behaviour. The people who lived here in Daisy’s time don’t feel very far away at all, and as I pass the dining room I think about the awkward meals eaten there. Reverend Cutwell could still be shut away in the study, penning his latest sermon. If I turn right along the panelled corridor and go to the kitchen, I’ll find Nancy chopping vegetables while Gem, who I know looks just like Neil, will be teasing her and flirting. Merlin the horse will be looking out from the long-abandoned loose box and Clarence will be busy tending to the cutting garden. Each character is so vivid that finding the house empty makes me feel abandoned.

  I’m being ridiculous. How can I miss people I’ve never met and who are long dead? I’m sure Matt would understand; he once told me that history is all about people and their stories, and I wish I could talk to him. As soon as it’s a reasonable time I’ll call him. He’s the only person who appreciates the importance of Daisy’s story. And it is important. She was Kit’s inspiration just as much as the dreadful war that inspired his greatest work.

  The big range will still be smouldering and there’s a couple of hours to go before I’ll need to feed it with logs – the same job that must have fallen to Gem – so I don’t venture to the kitchen just yet. It will seem even quieter now and I’ll be wondering whether shadows of the past are gathering to watch me as I empty the basket and place my kettle on the hotplate. I need to go outside and find out whether my intuition is right or if it’s just my imagination running away with me. My stomach flips over with nerves. What if it’s only the latter? It’s not so long since my wild thoughts were a cause for being signed off sick.

  The longcase clock at the foot of the stairs is ticking away the seconds, now as then, and beyond the window the same weathered gravestones gaze out across the wide sweep of Rosecraddick Bay. Nothing and everything has changed since Daisy Hills put down her pen, placed her diary and the last letter to Kit in the biscuit tin and hid them beneath the floorboard for the very last time. Yet I don’t think this was all she left behind. In fact, I’m certain it wasn’t.

  I pull on my coat, unlock the front door and let myself into the damp Cornish morning. There’s mizzle in the air, and the two seagulls huddled on the Rectory roof look rather fed up, but I scarcely notice the weather. I’m too excited. Like Daisy a century earlier, I scurry across the garden, pass through the gate and walk through the churchyard. It’s too early even for Sue Perry to be up and about. St Nonna’s is dark and silent, the windows dull without the light behind them; they seem to follow my passage like knowing eyes. The path turns left past the church and around to the lane. This was where the Rivers’ carriage collected the family after the Sunday service and where a certain young couple once zoomed away in a shiny Rolls Royce. However, I haven’t come here for those reasons. I’m thinking of something else Daisy mentioned.

  I push the gate open. Droplets tremble on the metalwork before letting go, and my hands are wet and chilled as I step into the lane. They’re even wetter when I start to run them over the churchyard wall, my nails scrabbling at crevices and clawing at weeds. There’s ivy and bindweed lacing the stones, and I rip this greenery away as my hands read each surface as though seeking a message. By feel was how Daisy first noticed something special, I think as my fingers scrabble some more. She’d discovered something that was to become vital for her and Kit as they conducted their secret love affair. Didn’t she write that she was standing by the churchyard wall one Sunday, bidding parishioners goodbye, when she felt—

  A loose stone.

  I feel it too. It’s here!

  In my haste to pull out the wobbling slice of granite, my nails split and I scrape my knuckles – but these things don’t matter. Excitement unfurls deep inside me and even before the stone thuds onto the earth and my fingers have reached into the gap, I know what I’ll find. Something, a beetle perhaps, scuttles over my hand but I don’t care and my fingers don’t recoil. They’re too busy pulling out a small tin embossed with a feminine profile and the date Christmas 1914.

  The Princess Mary Christmas tin! I can hardly believe it’s still here. Daisy and Kit’s hiding place is as good now as it ever was. If I hadn’t found the diary then this tin would have remained hidden for another hundred years, maybe even five hundred more, perhaps even until there are no more years to come.

  I open the lid and, even though I’m half expecting it, what I find within kicks my heartbeat into a gallop and sends my blood whooshing to my ears.

  Curled up tightly and fastened with pieces of frayed velvet ribbon are yellowed pages torn from a notebook and crammed with narrow lines of handwriting. Even my untrained eye knows what this is. I can scarcely breathe, given that what I’m looking at is so precious.

  Resting in my hands, and seeing daylight for the first time in over a
century, are Kit Rivers’ lost poems.

  Chapter 2

  Chloe

  “This is incredible. I can’t quite believe it’s true.” Matt shakes his head for what has to be the thousandth time. “And all the time these were here hidden. All we had to do was know where to look.”

  It’s late afternoon and we’re sitting in the Rectory kitchen with Daisy’s diary, the treasures and Kit’s poems laid out in front of us. I’d read them over and over again as I’d waited for the hands of the clock to creep around to a time that was acceptable to call, and with each line I’d been transported to the Western Front. Kit’s poetry is raw and brutal, and even I recognise a marked change in style and tone compared with his early work. These verses are angry at times, resigned at others. There’s one, entitled Mermaid, that’s so beautiful. It immortalises a girl with long red hair, who captures a young man’s heart before he leaves for war. By the time I’d reached the final line I was so choked I could hardly speak.

  The moment nine o’clock had arrived, I’d called Matt. Having asked about his daughter, who was desperate to have her friends visit and sign the cast now that her broken leg had been pinned, I’d told him about my discovery. He went so quiet that I thought we’d been cut off. Then I realised he was speechless. Once he’d recovered, Matt had asked so many questions I’d not known which to answer first. In the end I’d given up trying.

  “Everything’s here at the Rectory. Why don’t you come and see for yourself when you’re back?” I’d suggested. “It’s all been here for over a century, so a few more hours won’t make any difference.”

  “It will to me. I think I’m going to burst,” Matt had groaned. “I can’t believe it, Chloe, I really can’t. I’m planning on leaving mid-morning, so I’ll be with you sometime after lunch. See what else you can find by then, if you like? I’m half expecting you to track down the Holy Grail now, or maybe Lord Lucan!”