The Letter

by Ruth Saberton

  I shudder to think that you were in that sucking mud that you wrote about. The noise of the shelling shrieks through every line of your verse, and your images of men turned to carcasses haunt my dreams until I wake up screaming. It’s my old childhood nightmare that I now know was a premonition.

  My love, they say they never found you. Where are you now? I cannot believe that you are gone from me. Surely I would feel it? There are men who have seen such sights that they have lost their senses, and others cannot even remember their own names. Are you one of them, my Kit? Are you waiting for me to come and find you, take your hand and lead you back? How can I come and find you? Where did you go?

  I have searched and searched and tomorrow I will begin again. I will never stop.

  xDx

  To my beloved Kit,

  Missing you becomes worse as time passes, not better. I’m so lost without you. I miss your letters. I miss your touch, I—

  “Please don’t read any more, Chloe. I think you’ve read enough now.”

  Matt places one hand over mine and with the other he gently slides the letters from my grasp. We’re sitting in the car, still parked outside Dave’s flat, but I’ve already opened a few of the envelopes in the hope of finding an answer. There’s no way I could have managed to wait until we got back to Cornwall. The letters I’ve read so far are ones I plucked at random, darting back and forth across the decades, but they’re enough to prove that Daisy spent the rest of her life missing Kit and searching for him. She never gave up and she never looked at another man.

  And she left his poems hidden, in the faith that he would return for them…

  So Matt’s right: I don’t need to read any more of them to understand Daisy’s situation. I look down again and realise that I’ve been crying. Tears have splashed onto the paper and soaked into the decades-old ink. It’s hard not to be moved by Daisy’s words, even though she wrote them a lifetime ago. It’s poignant too that the rounded handwriting I recognise from her diary matured into neat script and finally began to tremble with old age.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have read any of the letters, but I hadn’t been able to resist. I’d hoped against hope that I might find evidence of some kind of resolution, if not a happy ending exactly. Instead, Daisy’s loss is as raw at the end of her life as it was the day Nancy Trehunnist inadvertently broke the news. It’s almost too much to bear, to think that Daisy – the bright and vibrant Daisy of the diary, who freewheeled down hills and had strong views on women’s suffrage – spent the rest of her days pining for Kit and refusing to give up the hope that he would return to her. It’s as though I’ve tapped a bottomless well of grief that’s rushing out of me with such force I hardly know whether it’s Daisy and Kit I’m weeping for or Neil and myself. Maybe it doesn’t matter? Loss is loss.

  “She never gave up on Kit,” I choke through my tears. “She kept her promise.”

  Matt passes his hand over his face and exhales. “All those years of studying history is one thing, but this is different. This is real.”

  I nod. I’ve read books and worn poppies and seen films, but until now the war was removed from my own experience and I could be appalled and saddened from a distance. Having read the diary, Daisy and Kit feel like friends and the horror of the First World War has become personal. Their lives and those of their friends in Rosecraddick were changed forever. As soon as I opened the hidden diary, their tale was woven into my own. The biting grief in Daisy’s letters is the same emotion that’s often found me staring wide-eyed into the darkness or made me cry until I all but pass out with exhaustion. If there had been hope that somewhere Neil was alive and waiting for me to find him, would I have given up? Or would the slim chance that he could have lost his memory or been stranded somewhere, maimed and unable to reach me, have sustained me for decades?

  I know the answer to this of course, and my heart bleeds for Daisy. I would never have believed it before now, but having that small flicker of hope is even worse than the finality of death.

  “Oh, Matt! She never found him. All those years of searching and all those years alone. What a terrible, terrible waste.”

  Matt doesn’t reply. Instead, he leans across to the passenger seat, pulls me into his arms and holds me while I cry. I bury my face in the soft wool of his sweater and breathe in the comforting smell of him, mingled with the scent of his fabric conditioner, until my heartbeat slows and my sobs abate. Then he wipes my tears away with his thumb and drops a tender kiss onto the crown of my head.

  “What a waste of all that love and potential,” he says eventually. “I can’t imagine for a moment that Kit would have wanted Daisy to mourn him for the rest of her life.”

  I think of the Kit I’ve grown to know from his poetry and from the diary, and I’m convinced Matt’s right. The young man who once held Daisy close and told her that she was free to love again should he not return would have wanted her to be happy. Kit Rivers loved Daisy and true love isn’t selfish.

  “Of course he wouldn’t,” I agree. “But the thing is, Matt, Daisy never knew for certain that he was dead. There was never a body or any evidence. All she knew was that he was missing in action. It wasn’t conclusive.”

  Matt sighs. “I think it was, Chloe. Imagine the carnage at the Front when shells exploded. Many soldiers were never identified.”

  “But she was so convinced he was alive, wasn’t she? It’s hard to believe she was wrong all along.” I shake my head. “It sounds crazy, but Daisy knew he wasn’t dead. She said she would have felt it here.”

  I press the heel of my hand against my breastbone as I say this. How can I describe the dull ache deep inside that’s always present when I think about losing Neil? There aren’t any words for it, but I know Daisy would have felt it too if Kit had been killed in action.

  “Denial?” Matt suggests.

  “It was more than that. She knew in her heart that Kit was alive, and that was what sustained her. It doesn’t make sense otherwise, Matt. Daisy wasn’t stupid! She was bright and educated but I think she was realistic too. She must have had the strongest conviction he was alive. She and Kit were soulmates.”

  “Were you and your husband soulmates?”

  Matt’s question takes me by surprise.

  “Sorry. That was unforgivably rude. You don’t need to answer that. It’s none of my business. I wasn’t meaning to compare…”

  The words fade awkwardly and he looks away.

  Matt Enys has become my friend and my confidant, and somehow slipped under my defences and into my heart. I half expect Neil to lean over from the back seat and challenge me to say something, but he’s increasingly reticent lately so it seems I’m on my own.

  Except I’m not on my own anymore. I’m here with Matt.

  It’s time to talk about my past, otherwise I could end up searching for something that’s eternally out of my reach. Neil isn’t coming back, and I need to accept that. Our lives pass in the blink of an eye, don’t they? Daisy’s sad story doesn’t have to be mine. It’s time I stopped being afraid of the past and instead allowed it to become a springboard to the future.

  “It’s OK, Matt,” I say softly. “I’m happy to talk about Neil. I’d like to tell you about him.”

  I reach for Matt’s hand and weave my fingers through his, savouring the comfort such a simple touch brings and the sweet relief that follows when his hand squeezes mine. As we sit here with our hands linked, I think about the invisible bond that’s growing between us – something that’s so much more than a physical connection. It’s slow and steady and I trust it. It doesn’t have the urgency and the fire Daisy and Kit shared, and it doesn’t have the history Neil and I had, but that doesn’t make it any less valid or precious. Love can come in many guises. And I know now that I’m in love with Matt Enys. It’s gentle and tender and has crept up on me, but it’s love all the same.

  “Neil was my best friend,” I begin. “We started dating at school as teenagers and we grew up together. He knew me bette
r than anyone and I knew him inside out too, but soulmates?” I frown as I think about this. “I’m not sure that was how you’d describe us! We argued and we were opposites in many ways. Sometimes I could have throttled him, and he probably felt the same way, but I loved him with all my heart and I know he loved me too. I couldn’t imagine being without him. He was part of me, if that makes sense, and when he died something of me died too. Nobody will ever share those memories with me again or recall the silly sayings or all the daft stuff we got up to in our teens. When I lost him, it felt as though I lost myself too.”

  Matt’s fingers tighten. “You sound like soulmates to me.”

  “Neil would tell you off and say you were being sentimental using an expression like that! He wasn’t very good at being romantic. Putting the loo seat down was his idea of romance.”

  He laughs. “No woman will ever understand just what a big deal that is. It’s actually very romantic! But seriously, I know it’s not a macho way to think but I do believe in love and in soulmates. Just don’t tell the fishermen in the pub that, OK?”

  “It’s our secret, Romeo!” I tease. “Besides, I bet they’re all secretly very romantic when they’re at home. Neil did his best, but red roses and slushy words weren’t his thing. He was more of a practical person. Too practical at times. Soulmates and the concept of fate wouldn’t really feature in his way of seeing the world.”

  I pause here. Matt doesn’t need to know about the neatly made will, the clothes and the shoes all sorted out for me, the list of instructions regarding bills and pensions. Neither does he need to know how Neil told me over and over again that I had a whole life to lead and that he expected – no, demanded – that I lived every minute of it.

  “I want you to marry again and I want you to have children and a wonderful life,” he’d ordered me just days before he slipped away. His face was thin, the cheeks sunken, but his eyes had burned with the same determination that had persuaded me to go out with him all those years ago and that had ground even the formidable Moira down. “I mean it, Chloe. I don’t want you wasting years mourning. If you do, then I swear to God I’ll come back and haunt your ass until you get back out there again. I need to know you’ll be happy. I need that, Chloe! I need it! Otherwise it’s all a waste. Love has no limits and it shouldn’t be buried. If you don’t carry on then what’s this been about? If you love me then you’ll love again. That’s what I want you to do! Can’t you see why it’s so important?”

  I couldn’t, and I hadn’t honoured what he’d wanted. How could I when I’d missed Neil so much that even opening my eyes in the morning was too much of an effort? I’d been so angry with him too, for saying such awful things. How could he even think of me being with another man? Didn’t he care? Didn’t he love me?

  Only now, sitting in this old Land Rover, with my hand in Matt’s and with Daisy Hills’ heartbreaking letters scattered on my lap like fallen leaves, do I truly know that it was because he loved me so much that Neil said these things. My future happiness was his legacy: he was the one who’d shown me that love was possible and wonderful and the reason for it all. Neil didn’t want both of us to stop living when one of us died. Rather, he’d loved me so much that he wanted me to find happiness; he’d given me the hope that it could be found again.

  Matt’s waiting for me to speak. He doesn’t harry me or seek to fill the silence. His index finger skims my hand and then he raises it to his mouth, brushing my palm with his lips and gently folding my fingers over it as though sealing the kiss for me to find later. All the time his eyes hold mine and I see such tenderness and understanding there that my heart swells.

  “None of this means Neil didn’t love me,” I conclude softly. “I think love comes in many different forms and I believe we can love more than once in our lifetime too. Maybe Daisy would have found that out if she’d known for sure about Kit. Perhaps she could have been happy with Dickon, even? He spent his life alone because he never got over the wrong he felt he’d done her.”

  “So many wasted lives,” Matt says. “Gem, Kit, Daisy, Dickon and goodness knows how many others.”

  I glance at the carrier bag filled with Daisy’s letters. Over fifty years of missing Kit and hoping to find him. It’s not a tale unique to her either: I can imagine that countless other heartbroken young women did exactly the same. Maybe some were lucky and did find their men, either recovering in a sanatorium or resting beneath a simple marker of white Portland stone. Those kinds of stories would have sustained Daisy in her search, just as much as her conviction that Kit was still alive. I wonder though, did her belief that he was alive fade with the years? It was such a driving force to begin with.

  “The road can fork at any point. There are so many possibilities, aren’t there, and so many ‘what ifs’,” I say to Matt.

  In answer he lets go of my hand and cups my face, his head close to mine and his lips just a kiss away.

  “And what if I said I’m in love with you?” Matt asks. “What if I tell you that you’re in my every thought? What would you do then?”

  His questions shimmer in the air like a heat haze. I see the road ahead of me split and I know that whichever path I choose now will lead me in a very different direction.

  If Matt said he loved me, what would I do? My breath catches and possibilities ripple like wheat in the wind because I know the answer. I reach out and touch his cheek.

  “I would do this,” I say, leaning forwards and brushing his mouth with mine. “And then I would say that I’m in love with you too, Matt Enys. That’s what I would do.”

  Matt rests his forehead against mine.

  “I think that sounds like the perfect course of action,” he whispers.

  Then he kisses me, deeply and as though he never wants to let me go, and I wind my arms around his neck, melting into his kiss and losing myself in his touch. There’s no more need for words. I know that wherever this fork in the road takes us we’ll find our way there together.

  Chapter 10

  Chloe

  Time is a strange creature. When Neil died it hung as heavy as wet woollens on a line. I would lie on my bed and wonder how I would make it to the end of the day. To think beyond that was to peer into a void too terrifying to contemplate. My life without Neil yawned wide open before me, empty and unrecognisable, and I had no idea how I would ever manage to negotiate it. Somehow, though, the days became weeks and then months, until I woke up one morning and I realised that almost three years had passed.

  Rosecraddick is full of contradictions. In some ways it’s a timeless place. Restless waves race up the same beach where Daisy and Kit met, and the same bells ring in the same church tower. The seasons melt into one another as the farmers and fishermen work to the ancient rhythm of the land and the tides. Yet in other ways change comes faster than I ever expect. Once my first Christmas at Rosecraddick had passed, it was a mere blink of an eye before the snowdrops shoved their way through the frosty earth and primroses speckled the verges. Daisies as pretty as their namesake now foam on the banks and nod in the sea breezes, and I wonder whether Dickon planted these as a bittersweet memorial to the girl he felt he’d wronged so badly.

  As Easter approaches, the biting winter chill of the Rectory is fast becoming a memory. I find myself opening the windows and filling the old house with fresh salty air that lifts the rugs and blows the curtains, so that the place feels as though it’s breathing. I fill jugs with gaudy yellow daffodils, which I carry up to the attic and paint. I even throw caution to the wind and turn off the cast-iron radiators. Most nights now Matt is here to keep me warm, and there’s nothing nicer than snuggling up under the covers together and listening to the waves break in the cove.

  So, spring is coming and life is returning in a way I suspect is metaphorical as well as literal. When Matt and I drove back from Oxford with Daisy’s letters and the faded photos, I made a conscious decision that it was time for a new beginning. The fork in my path was very clear to me and there was a choice to
be made. I could follow Daisy’s example and focus on the past, dedicate myself to it and become a breathing memorial to grief, or I could do what my husband had asked of me and start living again.

  As Matt had driven us both home, I’d rested my hand on his knee – and when we’d eventually arrived at the Rectory, the violet shadows stretching across the lawn and the ancient cedar tree black against the sky, I’d taken his hand and led him up the stairs to my bedroom.

  “Are you sure?” Matt had whispered as we’d paused outside the door. “Is this what you want?”

  In answer, I’d reached up and pulled his head down to mine and kissed him. It was a kiss that told him just how badly I wanted him to stay. There had been no need to say any more. I’d opened the door and we’d held each other close until dawn’s paintbrush had streaked the sky gold and pink and a new day had arrived. Maybe even a new world? I’d curled against him and listened to his gentle breathing, and I knew I was moored in a safe and calm harbour.

  We’re taking things slowly. I’m still raw with grief at times and although I never see Neil anymore he’s never far from my thoughts. Sometimes I need to be alone to think about him and reflect on how much my life has changed. These are the times when I climb the stairs to the attic and paint myself into a trance, finding peace in the strokes of my brush and the swirl of colours on canvas. Moira has nothing to worry about with the commission because the pictures almost paint themselves. While I work I slip back into Kit and Daisy’s era, seeing the manor house through their eyes as I recreate the long-lost world of England before the Great War. This has to be some of my best work and I know that if Neil were here he would tell me so. I will always miss him, but when I think of him now I feel so thankful for the years we did share and the memories that still make me smile. Daisy and Kit never had the luxury of time. It’s funny how their story has made me see my own anew and even reroute the direction it was heading in.