The Last Letter From Your Lover, Page 36

  When Anthony said nothing, Don leaned over and fiddled with the radio until static defeated him. He examined the end of his cigarette, blew on it, making it glow. "De Saint says we have till tomorrow. Any later than that, and we have to wait four days for the next scheduled flight." He spoke as if there was a decision to be made. "You could go, and we'll pull you off if she deteriorates."

  "She's already deteriorated." Clarissa's cancer had been shocking in its swiftness. "She's not expected to last the fortnight."

  "Bloody bus. Look at it, taking up twice the road." Don wound down his window and threw his cigarette into the soaked street. He brushed the raindrops off his sleeve as he closed it again. "What's the husband like, anyhow? No good?"

  "Only met him once."

  I can't stay with him. Please, Dad, don't make me stay with him.

  Phillip had gripped his belt like someone hanging on to a life raft. When Anthony had finally taken him back to the house in Parsons Green, he had felt the weight of those fingers long after he had handed him over.

  "I'm very sorry," he had said to Edgar. The curtain merchant, older than he had expected, had eyed him suspiciously, as if some insult had lain in what he'd said.

  "I can't go." The words were out there. It was almost a relief to say them. Like finally being given the death sentence after years of possible reprieves.

  Don sighed. It might have been melancholy or relief. "He's your son."

  "He's my son." He had promised: Yes, of course you can stay with me. Of course you can. It's going to be all right. Even as he said the words, he had not fully understood what he was giving away.

  The traffic had begun to move again, at first a slow crawl and then walking speed.

  They were at Chiswick before Don spoke again. "You know, O'Hare, this might work. It might be a bit of a gift. God knows what could have happened to you out there."

  Don glanced sideways.

  "And who knows? Let the boy settle down a bit . . . you can still go off into the field. Maybe we'll have him to stay. Let Viv look after him. He'd like it at ours. God knows, she misses having children around the place. Christ." A thought occurred. "You're going to have to find yourself a bloody house. No more living out of hotel rooms."

  He let Don ramble on, laying before him this mythical new life, like stories on a page, promising, soothing, the fellow family man emerging to make him feel better, to hide what he had lost, to quell the drum still beating somewhere in the darker regions of his soul.

  He had been given two weeks' compassionate leave to find himself somewhere to live and to shepherd his son through his mother's death and the dour formality of her funeral. Phillip had not wept in front of him again. He had expressed polite pleasure at the small terraced house in southwest London--close to his school, and to Don and Viv, who had thrown herself into her role as prospective auntie with relish. He sat now with his pitiful suitcase, as if awaiting some future instruction. Edgar did not telephone to see how he was.

  It was like living with a stranger. Phillip was anxious to please, as if afraid he would be sent away. Anthony was at pains to tell him how pleased he was that they were living together, although he felt secretly as though he had cheated someone, been given something he didn't deserve. He felt horribly inadequate to deal with the boy's overwhelming grief, and struggled to function in the face of his own.

  He embarked upon a crash course in practical skills. He took their clothes to the launderette, sat beside Phillip at the barber. He didn't know how to cook much more than a boiled egg, so they went each night to a cafe at the end of the street, huge, hearty meals of steak and kidney pie and overboiled vegetables, steamed puddings swimming in pale custard. They pushed the food listlessly around their plates, and every evening Phillip would announce that it had been "delicious, thank you," as if going there had been a great treat. Back at the house, Anthony would stand outside his boy's bedroom door, wondering whether to go in or if acknowledging his sadness would only make it worse.

  On Sundays they were invited to Don's house, where Viv would serve a roast dinner with all the trimmings, then insist that they play board games after she had cleared up. Watching the boy smile at her teasing, her bullish insistence that he join in, her enfolding of him into this strange extended family, made Anthony's heart ache.

  As they climbed into the car, he saw that even as Phillip waved at Viv, blowing kisses from the front window, a solitary tear rolled down his cheek. He grasped the steering wheel, paralyzed by such responsibility. He couldn't work out what to say. What did he have to offer Phillip when he still wondered hourly whether it wouldn't have been better if Clarissa had been the one to survive?

  That night he sat in front of the fire, watching the first television pictures of the freed Stanleyville hostages. Their blurred shapes emerged from army aircraft and huddled in shocked groups on the tarmac. "Crack Belgian troops took a matter of hours to secure the city. It is still too early to count the casualties with any accuracy, but early reports suggest at least a hundred Europeans died in the crisis. There are many more still unaccounted for."

  He turned off the television, mesmerized by the screen long after the white dot had disappeared. Finally he went upstairs, hesitating outside his son's door, listening to the unmistakable sound of muffled sobbing. It was a quarter past ten.

  Anthony closed his eyes briefly, opened them, and pushed open the door. His son started and shoved something under the bedspread.

  Anthony turned on the light. "Son?"

  Silence.

  "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing." The boy composed himself, wiping his face. "I'm fine."

  "What was that?" He kept his voice soft, sat down on the side of the bed. Phillip was hot and damp. He must have been crying for hours. Anthony felt crushed by his own parental inadequacy.

  "Nothing."

  "Here. Let me see." He peeled back the cover gently. It was a small, silver-framed picture of Clarissa, her hands resting proudly on her son's shoulders. She was smiling broadly.

  The boy shuddered. Anthony laid a hand on the photograph and smoothed the tears from the glass with his thumb. I hope Edgar made you smile like that, he told her silently. "It's a lovely photograph. Would you like us to put it downstairs? On the mantelpiece, perhaps? Somewhere you can look at it whenever you like?"

  He could feel Phillip's eyes searching his face. Perhaps he was preparing himself for some barbed comment, some residual charge of ill feeling, but Anthony's eyes were locked on the woman in the picture, her beaming smile. He couldn't see her. He saw Jennifer. He saw her everywhere. He would always see her everywhere.

  Get a grip, O'Hare.

  He handed the picture back to his son. "You know . . . it's fine to be sad. Really. You're allowed to be sad about losing someone you love." It was so important that he get this right.

  His voice had cracked, something rising from deep within him, and his chest hurt with the effort of not letting it overwhelm him. "Actually, I'm sad, too," he said. "Terribly sad. Losing someone you love is . . . it's actually unbearable. I do understand that."

  He drew his son to him, his voice lowering to a murmur: "But I'm so very glad you're here now, because I think . . . I think you and I just might get through this together. What do you think?"

  Phillip's head rested against his chest, and a thin arm crept around his middle. He felt the easing of his son's breathing and held him close as they sat, shrouded in silence, lost in their thoughts in the near dark.

  He had failed to grasp that the week he was due to return to work was half-term. Viv said without hesitation that she would have Phillip for the latter part, but she was due to go to her sister's until Wednesday, so for the first two days Anthony would have to make alternative arrangements.

  "He can come with us to the office," said Don. "Make himself useful with a teapot." Knowing how Don felt about family life interfering with the Nation, Anthony was grateful. He had been desperate to work again, to restore some semblance of n
ormal life. Phillip was touchingly eager to accompany them.

  Anthony sat down at his new desk and surveyed the morning's newspapers. There had been no vacant posts in Home News, so he had become reporter-at-large, the honorific title designed to reassure him, he suspected, that he would, once more, be so. He took a sip of the office coffee and winced at the familiar awfulness. Phillip was going from desk to desk, asking if anybody would like tea, the shirt Anthony had pressed for him that morning crisp on his skinny back. He felt suddenly--gratefully--at home. This was where his new life started. It was going to be fine. They would be fine. He refused to look at the foreign desk. He didn't want to know just yet who they had sent to Stanleyville in his place.

  "Here." Don threw a copy of the Times at him, a story circled in red. "Do us a quick rewrite on the U.S. space launch. You're not going to get any fresh quotes from the States at this hour, but it'll make a short column on page eight."

  "How many words?"

  "Two fifty." Don's voice was apologetic. "I'll have something better for you later."

  "It's fine." It was fine. His son was smiling, bearing a loaded tray with almost excessive caution. He glanced toward his father, and Anthony nodded approval. He was proud of the boy, proud of his bravery. It was indeed a gift to have someone to love.

  Anthony pulled his typewriter toward him, fed carbons between the sheets of paper. One for the editor, one for the subs, one for his records. The routine had a kind of seductive pleasure. He typed his name at the top of the page, hearing the satisfying snap of the steel letters as they hit the paper.

  He read and reread the Times story and made a few notes on his pad. He nipped downstairs to the newspaper library and pulled up the file on space missions, flicking through the most recent cuttings. He made some more notes. Then he placed his fingers on the typewriter keys.

  Nothing.

  It was as if his hands wouldn't work.

  He typed a sentence. It was flat. He ripped out the papers, rethreaded them into the cylinder.

  He typed another sentence. It was flat. He typed another. He'd shape it up. But the words resolutely refused to go where he wanted them. It was a sentence, yes, but nothing that would work in a national newspaper. He reminded himself of the pyramid rule of journalism: most important information in the first sentence, fanning out in lesser significance as you went on. Few people read to the end of a story.

  It wouldn't come.

  At a quarter past twelve Don appeared at his side. "You slung that piece over yet?"

  Anthony was sitting back in his chair, his hands on his jaw, a small mountain of balled-up paper on the floor.

  "O'Hare? You ready?"

  "I can't do it, Don." His voice was hoarse with disbelief.

  "What?"

  "I can't do it. I can't write. I've lost it."

  "Don't be ridiculous. What is this? Writer's block? Who do you think you are--F. Scott Fitzgerald?" He picked up a crumpled sheet and smoothed it out on the desk. He picked up another, read it, reread it. "You've been through a lot," he said finally. "You probably need a holiday." He spoke without conviction. Anthony had just had a holiday. "It'll come back," he said. "Just don't say anything. Take it easy. I'll get Smith to rewrite it. Take it easy for today. It'll come back."

  Anthony gazed at his son, who was sharpening pencils for Obits. For the first time in his life he had responsibilities. For the first time in his life it was vital that he could provide. He felt Don's hand on his shoulder like a great weight. "What the hell am I going to do if it doesn't?"

  Chapter 26

  Ellie stays awake until four o'clock in the morning. It's not a trial: for the first time in months everything is clear to her. She spends the early evening solidly on the phone, cradling the receiver between neck and shoulder as she watches her computer screen. She sends messages, calls in favors. She wheedles, cajoles, won't take no for an answer. When she has what she needs, she sits at her desk in her pajamas, pins up her hair, and begins. She types swiftly, the words spilling easily from her fingers. For once she knows exactly what she has to say. She reworks each sentence until she's happy; she shuffles information until it works in the way that has the most impact. Once, rereading it, she cries, and several times she laughs out loud. She recognizes something in herself, perhaps someone she had lost for a while. When she has finished, she prints out two copies and sleeps the sleep of the dead.

  For two hours. She is up and in the office by seven thirty. She wants to catch Melissa before anyone else is there. She showers away her tiredness, drinks two double espressos, makes sure she has blow-dried her hair. She is brimming with energy; her blood fizzes in her veins. She is at her desk when Melissa, expensive handbag slung over her shoulder, unlocks her office door. As her boss sits down, Ellie sees the barely disguised double take when she notices she has company.

  Ellie finishes her coffee. She nips into the ladies' to check she has nothing on her teeth. She's wearing a crisp white blouse, her best trousers, and high heels, and looks, as her friends would say jokingly, like a grown-up. "Melissa?"

  "Ellie." The surprise in her tone manages to carry with it a mild rebuke.

  Ellie ignores it. "Can I have a word?"

  Melissa consults her watch. "A quick one. I'm meant to be talking to the China bureau in five minutes."

  Ellie sits opposite. Melissa's office is now empty of everything except the few files she needs to make that day's edition work. Only the photograph of her daughter remains. "It's about this feature."

  "You're not going to tell me you can't do it."

  "Yes, I am."

  It's as if she's primed for this, already teetering on the burst of bad temper. "Well, Ellie, that's really not what I wanted to hear. We have the busiest weekend of the newspaper's life ahead of us, and you've had weeks to get this thing sorted. You really aren't helping your own case by coming to me at this stage and--"

  "Melissa--please. I found out the man's identity."

  "And?" Melissa's eyebrows arch as only the professionally threaded can.

  "And he works here. We can't use it because he works for us."

  The cleaner propels the Hoover past Melissa's office door, its dull roar briefly drowning the conversation.

  "I don't understand," Melissa says, as the drone fades.

  "The man who wrote the love letters is Anthony O'Hare."

  Melissa looks blank. Ellie realizes, with shame, that the features editor has no idea who he is either.

  "The chief librarian. He works downstairs. Used to."

  "The one with the gray hair?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh." She's so taken aback that she briefly forgets to be annoyed with Ellie. "Wow," she says, after a minute. "Who'd have thought?"

  "I know."

  They mull this over in almost companionable silence until Melissa, perhaps remembering herself, shuffles papers on her desk. "Fascinating as that may be, though, Ellie, it doesn't get us past a very big problem. Which is that we now have a commemorative issue, which needs to go to print this evening, with a great big two-thousand-word hole where the lead feature should be."

  "No," says Ellie. "There's not."

  "Not your thing about the language of love. I'm not having a recycled-books piece in our--"

  "No," says Ellie, again. "I've done it. Two thousand wholly original words, on the last letters of people's love affairs. Here. Let me know if you think it needs rejigging. Are you okay if I pop out for an hour?" She has begged them from her friends, relatives, friends of relatives, from the problem pages of her own newspaper. They are funny, sad, and in two particular cases, heartbreaking. It is a heartfelt paean to the lost art of letter writing, and to lost love.

  She's stumped Melissa. She hands over the pages, watches the editor scan the first, her eyes lighting as they do when she reads something that interests her. "What? Yes. Fine. Whatever. Make sure you're back for conference."

  Ellie fights the urge to punch the air as she walks out of the office. It's not
that hard: she finds it almost impossible to move her arms emphatically while balancing on high heels.

  She had e-mailed him the previous evening, and he had agreed without demur. It's not his kind of place; he's all gastropub and smart, discreet restaurant. Giorgio's, across the road from the Nation, does egg, chips, and bacon of unknown provenance for PS2.99.

  When she arrives, he is already sitting at a table, oddly out of place among the construction workers in his Paul Smith jacket and soft, pale shirt. "I'm sorry," he says, even before she sits down. "I'm so sorry. She had my phone. I thought I'd lost it. She got hold of a couple of e-mails I hadn't deleted and found your name . . . the rest . . ."

  "She'd have made a good journalist."

  He looks briefly distracted, waves the waitress over, and orders another coffee. His thoughts are elsewhere. "Yes. Yes, I suppose she would."

  She sits and allows herself to examine the man opposite, a man who has haunted her dreams. His suntan doesn't hide the mauve shadows under his eyes. She wonders absently what had happened the previous evening.

  "Ellie, I think it would be a good idea if we lay low. Just for a couple of months."

  "No."

  "What?"

  "That's it, John."

  He's not as surprised as she'd thought he'd be.

  He considers her words before he replies. Then, "You want . . . are you saying you want to end this?"

  "Well, let's face it, we're not some great love story, are we?" Despite herself, she's dismayed at his failure to protest.

  "I do care about you, Ellie."

  "But not enough. You're not interested in me, in my life. In our lives. I don't think you know anything about me."

  "I know everything I need to--"

  "What was the name of my first pet?"

  "What?"

  "Alf. Alf was my hamster. Where did I grow up?"

  "I don't know why you're asking me this."

  "What have you ever wanted from me, other than sex?"

  He looks around. The builders at the table behind them have gone suspiciously quiet.

  "Who was my first boyfriend? What's my favorite food?"

  "This is ridiculous." He compresses his lips in an expression she has never seen before.