The Letter

by Ruth Saberton

  I’d laughed as I’d ended the call, and then I’d spent the rest of the morning rereading the poems and bits of the diary. By the time Matt arrived, I knew the story off by heart and had explored the Rectory from top to bottom, replaying scenes and trying to picture the house as it had been back in the early twentieth century. It was hard to be in the kitchen without imagining Mrs Polmartin ruling the roost or Nancy daydreaming about Gem. When I returned to the attic, fully intending to carry on with creating my studio, I found myself rooting through the piles of junk stacked in the corners, just in case there was anything there that might have belonged to Daisy once. There wasn’t, but it was enough just to look out of the window towards the Manor and picture a handkerchief blowing in the wind and imagine how her heart must have lifted to see it.

  Matt hasn’t stopped reading since he sat down at the table. He can hardly bear to take his eyes off these precious items – and when he first saw the poems I thought he was going to pass out. A mug of stone-cold tea sits beside him, the second one I’ve made that’s been neglected, and the plate of biscuits is also untouched. I nibble one but I’m far too keyed up to eat, and I know that Matt feels much the same as I do. When he picks up the poems, the paper trembles in his hands. He has yet to read the diary in full, of course, but as he turns its pages I see him blinking hard. I realise that I like him even more for being as excited about these discoveries as I am.

  Hold on. What do I mean I like him even more? Do I have feelings for Matthew Enys?

  He’s an OK bloke. You could do a hell of a lot worse, remarks Neil, who’s leaning against the range, his arms folded across his chest and with an amused curl to his mouth. You have my blessing, Chloe, and it’s nearly Christmas. Better stock up on the old mistletoe!

  At least, I think this is what Neil says. It’s hard to tell because he’s flickering like the picture on an old analogue TV set with poor reception, and the wintery light pouring through the kitchen window makes it hard to see him. He’s less distinct than usual but he doesn’t seem to notice or mind. Oddly, neither do I – although a few weeks ago the thought of Neil disappearing completely would have panicked me. So too would the teasing about mistletoe and other men. He may have gone but his words linger, and I find that I feel at peace.

  I glance down at the rings still sitting on my left hand. Unlike Daisy and Kit, Neil and I did have some time together as husband and wife. It wasn’t nearly enough but at least we had it, and for that I’ll always be thankful. Poor Daisy’s pretty ring was never joined by a simple band of gold. I’ve been blessed. I see that now.

  “Chloe?”

  Matt’s voice pulls me back to the present. The diary is shut and the poems are stacked neatly beneath it, the weight of the book resisting their urge to curl up again.

  “Sorry, Matt. I was miles away.”

  I wait for him to ask what I’m thinking about, but I should know by now that this isn’t Matt’s way. Instead he reaches across the table and gently wraps his hands around my wrists, his fingers skimming the pulse points. My heart shivers.

  “You’re amazing, Chloe.”

  “Hardly. I was just tidying out the attic. I didn’t do anything clever.”

  “Is that what you truly think?” He shakes his head. “You really have no idea quite what you’ve found, do you? Chloe, this is huge! There are twenty new poems here from one of the most talented poets of the last century. It’s like finding a new play by Shakespeare! Some of us dream about this kind of thing! I know Kit’s work hasn’t really had the recognition it deserves, but after this… Well, it’s bound to make people look at him in a whole new light.”

  I remember how Daisy teased Kit for his literary pretensions and likened him to the Bard. How she’d smile now to hear this!

  “Home Fires. Regret to Inform. Madness. On Salisbury Plain. These are really something else. There’s a rawness in them and they’re so bleak, but beautiful nonetheless.”

  “He was writing for Daisy. Kit wanted to tell her everything.”

  “Sometimes you feel that way about a person, don’t you? There’s no logic to it but you know that they share your way of thinking and match you thought for thought. It’s a mutual sympathy that can’t be explained or denied. Maybe it’s even predestined?”

  As he says this, Matt’s fingers continue to skim my flesh. My breath catches and, unnerved, I slide my hands away and retrieve the poems from underneath the diary, hoping he hasn’t noticed just how startled I am. While I do my best to regain control, I uncurl each piece of paper gently, smoothing it with my fingertips and marvelling at how, after all this time hidden in the wall, they appear as though they were written only yesterday. I locate Swimmers and Mermaid and lay them out as flat as possible, aided by cutlery and salt and pepper shakers as makeshift paperweights.

  “Daisy’s story’s here too,” I point out. “Without her, I don’t think Kit would have been able to write so openly. Or, if he had, he wouldn’t have been able to show anyone else what he’d written. You said the other poems only survived because they were sent back with his personal effects. I’d bet anything that those ones were also intended for Daisy’s eyes only, rather than for his parents.”

  “You’re right. Who would want their parents to read about the ugliness of war and the suffering? Then again, why would you want the woman you loved to know of such horrors? It seems cruel.”

  “It was because she was the woman he loved. Kit wanted to share everything with Daisy. She says that in her diary. They’d agreed that they had to have total honesty if they were to build a life together. Marriages have to be based on honesty, don’t they? Otherwise why bother?”

  A shadow crosses his face.

  “You’re right. There’s no point otherwise. No point at all without honesty.”

  Matt’s wife cheated on him, didn’t she? Oh, well done for reminding him, Chloe. Nice one.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  He holds up his hands. “Hey, it’s fine. I’m OK with it. Well, maybe not OK exactly, but it’s ancient history and it’s true what you say: honesty is the most important thing. These poems are honest. I just wish we had Kit’s letters too. Can you imagine?”

  “I can, but maybe some things should remain private?”

  He nods. “True. I can’t believe that Lady Rivers threw them in the fire. What a terrible and spiteful thing to do.”

  I see Daisy falling to her knees and reaching into the flames, not caring that the heat burned her fingers as she tried to save the precious letters.

  “Daisy writes that Kit’s mother looked afraid,” I say. “Maybe she thought she had to destroy the letters to make sure Daisy never returned to the Manor?”

  “What could she possibly be afraid of? The worst had happened. Her son was dead. Whatever marriage the Rivers might have had in mind for him, it would have been irrelevant with him gone. I mean, it’s not as if Daisy was a threat to their plans anymore.”

  “I know. It doesn’t make any sense to me either. I’m just telling you what Daisy thought. You’ll see it for yourself when you read the diary properly. It’s all in there.”

  “I’ll be up all night doing that,” he promises. “I’ll sit at Lowenna’s bedside and read until morning. This is going to change everything, Chloe! It’s already altered the way I see Lady Rivers. I’ve always had this picture in my mind of a grieving mother who worshipped her son and spent her last years fading away from heartbreak, with her only consolation being creating memorials to him – hence the walled garden and the window in St Nonna’s – but now I’m having a rethink.”

  I think of the beautiful window in the church with the angelic Kit being raised to heaven. The stained-glass version of Kit doesn’t look like the kind of young man who would defy his parents to marry a lower-class girl, tear about in his father’s car or make love to his girl in hay barns and sailing boats. If it wasn’t for the clumsy stained-glass daisy, this key part of Kit’s life would have been totally erased.

  “Those m
emorials are made in the image Lady Rivers wanted to leave of her son,” I say. “But there’s the daisy in the window which we know was added later on. Somebody put it there, Matt. Somebody else knew the truth and wanted to make sure she wasn’t forgotten – but who? Kit was dead, Gem was dead, and Daisy seems to have vanished from history.”

  “Her father? Her brother? Maybe Daisy told them? She spoke to her father about becoming a nurse, so maybe she told him about Kit too?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or how about Reverend Cutwell? He was her godfather. Perhaps it was him?” Matt runs his hands through his hair in a gesture I’ve come to know means he’s thinking hard.

  “Seems unlikely,” I say doubtfully. “Daisy’s godfather disapproved of the relationship and I can’t imagine he would have changed his opinion. Anyway, would he still have been alive? I had the impression he was frail.”

  “One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that, when you rule in the most unlikely scenarios, you sometimes discover that they’re not quite as unlikely as they first appeared.” Matt delves into his big leather satchel and pulls out a notebook and pen. “There are no records of the addition to the window, not according to Sue anyway, and so far I’ve not unearthed anything. We’ll have to start at the very beginning and make a list of possible contenders.”

  “We?”

  Matt smiles at me, a slow smile that makes my stomach fold over like cake mix turned with a wooden spoon.

  “Absolutely we. You’re a part of Kit’s story too.”

  “Am I?”

  “Of course! You’re the person who found Kit Rivers’ lost poems. More than that, you’re the one who found his fiancée’s diary and discovered this amazing love story which puts everything into context. This is a huge find! People are going to discover Kit’s work for the first time and they’ll fall in love with the story behind it.”

  I feel very protective suddenly of Daisy and her diary. I know she wanted to be a writer and thought carefully about her words, but what she wrote was personal. She never expected anyone else to read it. How would she feel if her private thoughts and the moments she shared with Kit were to become common knowledge? Would she be pleased? Horrified? Angry?

  “It’s their story, Matt. Shouldn’t it stay private?”

  “Lots of it will definitely remain that way,” Matt assures me, “but the thing is that the Daisy element makes Kit Rivers human, if that makes sense? He’s a person who loved and laughed and drove too fast and did all the things young guys do. He wasn’t a paragon or a saint any more than the rest of us – and sometimes there’s a danger of that happening with these First World War poets. So many of them paid the ultimate price and it’s hard not to see them as saintly. Your discovery’s made Kit come alive, Chloe. He’s no longer a distant figure in a stained-glass window or a sombre young man in uniform frozen in sepia. He’s real. So yes, you’re woven into this tale as much as any of the others.”

  I hadn’t thought about it this way. The concept of being stitched into Kit and Daisy’s story along with Nancy and Gem and all the others makes my head spin. It’s as though there’s always been an invisible thread pulling us all together. Neil Pencarrow’s there too, because without his love and his name and even his loss I would never have come to Rosecraddick and would never have started to wonder about the daisy in the window. Something led me here.

  Of course it did, Neil says softly. He’s in the doorway, although he’s fading even as the words drift through my mind. Did you ever doubt that for one moment? Nothing happens by mistake, sweetheart, but by design. It’s just a matter of how we look at things.

  Sitting in the Rectory kitchen, at a table where I’m certain Daisy shelled peas and dreamed about Kit, I’m struck by the sudden realisation that life isn’t a sequence of haphazard events at all. Everything that’s happened, every kink in the road and every crossroads I’ve reached, has brought me to this point. Some of it was painful, some of it was wonderful and some of it I barely noticed beneath the minutiae of day-to-day living, but it’s all placed me here with Daisy’s diary and Kit’s poems spread out before a man who occupies my thoughts far more than I ever expected.

  Matt and Neil are both right. I was meant to come to Rosecraddick. It’s the place where my story will also unfold.

  Chapter 3

  Chloe

  Matt took Daisy’s treasured items back to Exeter with him a short while ago. He needs to untangle the legalities of who owns the newly discovered poems, and before he departed he spent an hour on the phone. The poems were found on Church property, but given that Eunice Rivers-Elliott bequeathed her distant relative’s work to the Kit Rivers Society, it seems likely the poems belong to them – although Matt says this needs legal clarification and not just asking Sue Perry. The ownership of the diary, the tin and Daisy’s final letter is also a grey area. Are they Mr Sargent’s? Mine? Or do Daisy’s relatives have a claim – if indeed she has any relatives? I call the letting agents, who are adamant that the landlord had given them written permission to clear the house. They promise to check with their client and get back to me just in case, so I have to be happy with this answer, although I already know I don’t want to part with my find.

  As the evening creeps in I pull the curtains, light the lamps and wonder what on earth I’m going to do now. There’s a part of me that’s itching to start searching for Daisy, yet there’s also another part of me that’s afraid of what I may find. For the time being, she’s still eighteen, with wild red curls, a merry freckled face and a steely determination that fills me with admiration – and I’d like her to remain that way. I guess I feel that she belongs to me at the moment. Only Matt and I know about the diary and the poems, and I hug this secret knowledge close to my heart. There’ll be time enough for the academics to pick it over.

  “What will you do now?” I’d asked Matt as he’d carefully placed the diary, letter and poems in his bag and tucked the biscuit tin under his arm.

  “Drive back to Exeter,” he’d replied. “I’ll read the diary properly once Gina goes and while Lowenna sleeps.”

  Matt had been trying to wind his scarf around his neck one-handed. It wasn’t working well, so I’d stood on my tiptoes and done it for him. The scent of lime and basil and masculinity had made my senses reel and I’d wanted to reach up and find out how his dark stubble would feel against my fingertips. Unnerved, I’d stepped back – but not before I’d seen something flare in the depths of his eyes. It had looked a lot like desire and my heart had quailed. Whatever it was that was between Matt and myself, I wasn’t ready for it. Maybe I never would be.

  “And then what will you do?” I’d asked, keeping my distance and tucking my shaking hands into the sleeves of my sweater.

  Matt had looked down at me. His mouth had curled upwards and his kind grey eyes had crinkled at me.

  “About what, exactly?”

  “The poems of course!” I’d said. My heart was thudding and I had no idea how to calm it down.

  “Ah, yes, the poems. What else?” Matt had said wryly. “Well, first off I’m going to speak to a solicitor about who owns the poems. Then I’ll call a colleague of mine from my time at Oxford, who’s something of an expert on the Great War poets. He’s written several books on them and he’s as good a place to start as any. He’ll know exactly what to do to check whether these are authentic.”

  “But the poems are genuine!”

  “Of course they are. We both know that, but he’ll be able to confirm it, which has to be done. Then I suppose the future of the poems is in the hands of solicitors and the Kit Rivers Society. I should imagine they’ll want to publish them in due course and there’ll be a lot of interest in Kit’s life and poetry. I’ll be honest, any publicity at all will be very good news for Kernow Heritage Foundation as well as for the Kit Rivers Society.”

  “And Daisy? Will you pass her diary to your colleague as well?”

  I was holding my breath because so much was pinned on Matt’s a
nswer. I’d have been hugely disappointed if he’d been happy to give her diary away so soon and let strangers pore over the pages of her thoughts and dreams. It may be irrational of me, but I feel that Daisy belongs to us for now and that we’re the only ones who can find out her story. Surely Matt’s fizzing with excitement at the thought of tracing her?

  “Daisy’s your call,” Matt had said softly. “You found the diary and her belongings, not me. I think you’ll have to see what Mr Sargent wants you to do. But if he’s happy for you to have Daisy’s belongings, then I’d love to help you find out more and piece the story together, just as I’d love the story of her romance with Kit to form the foundation of what we do at the house – but that’s a long way off yet. We’ll need to try and trace her, which will take time. Then Daisy’s family, if she has one, may want a say on what happens next. How about we focus on tracing Daisy Hills while the literary world does its thing and the legal people decide who the poems belong to?”

  I’d liked this idea. It had integrity, although I wouldn’t have expected anything else from Matt. Then he’d kissed me on the cheek, so fleetingly I thought I might have imagined it, and was gone into the gathering dusk. Once his headlamps had sliced through the gloom, I’d returned to the attic, where I’d sat in the chair staring out across to the Manor until the very last of the light was gone and the world was blotted out by nightfall. I would have stayed there for hours, lost in thought, but just now a frantic hammering on the front door made me spring to my feet and race down the stairs.

  By the time I throw back the bolts, my heart’s crashing against my ribs. It does so even faster when a potted spruce tree is thrust into the hallway.

  “Surprise! And don’t say you don’t want it, because I won’t take no for an answer. Nobody should be without a tree at Christmas!”

  It’s either a talking tree on the Rectory doorstep or Sue Perry holding a non-talking one in her arms and shoving it at me. Needles pierce my sweater and narrowly miss my nose, so I step back hastily. Call me old-fashioned, but I quite enjoy having two eyes.