The Last Letter From Your Lover, Page 37

  "No. You have no interest in me, apart from how quickly I can get my clothes off."

  "Is that what you think?"

  "Have you ever cared about anything I've felt? What I've been through?"

  His hands lift in exasperation. "Jesus Christ, Ellie, don't paint yourself as some kind of victim here. Don't act as if I'm some villainous seducer," he says. "When did you ever talk to me about feelings? When did you ever tell me this wasn't what you wanted? You made out you were some kind of modern woman. Sex on demand. Career first. You were"--he fumbles for the right word--"impenetrable."

  The word is strangely hurtful. "I was protecting myself."

  "And I'm supposed to know that by osmosis? How is that being truthful?" He appears genuinely shocked.

  "I just wanted to be with you."

  "But you wanted more--a relationship."

  "Yes."

  He studies her, as if he's seeing her for the first time. "You were hoping I'd leave my wife."

  "Of course I was. Eventually. I thought if I told you how I really felt, you'd--you'd leave me."

  Behind them, the builders begin to talk again. She can see from the surreptitious glances that they are the topic of conversation.

  He runs a hand through his sandy hair. "Ellie," he says, "I'm sorry. If I'd thought you couldn't handle this, I would never have got into it in the first place."

  And there's the truth of it. The thing she has hidden from herself for a whole year.

  "That's just it, isn't it?" She gets up to go. The world has fallen in, and, weirdly, she's stepping out of the rubble. Still upright. Unbloodied. "You and I," she says. "It's ironic, given what we do for a living, but we never actually told each other anything at all."

  She stands outside the cafe, feeling the cold air tighten her skin, the smells of the city in her nostrils, and pulls her mobile phone from her bag. She types a question, sends it, and without waiting for a reply, sets off across the road. She doesn't look back.

  Melissa passes her in the lobby, her heels clicking neatly on the polished marble. She's talking to the executive editor but breaks off as she passes Ellie. She nods, hair bouncing around her shoulders. "I liked it."

  Ellie releases a breath she hadn't known she was holding.

  "Yes. I liked it a lot. Cover front, Sunday for Monday. More, please." And then she's in the lift, back in conversation, the doors closing behind her.

  The library is empty. She pushes the swing door to find that only a few dusty shelves are left standing. No periodicals, no magazines, no battered volumes of Hansard. She listens to the ticking of the boiler pipes that run along the ceiling, then climbs over the counter, leaving her bag on the floor.

  The first chamber, the one that had held almost a century's worth of bound copies of the Nation, is entirely empty, aside from two cardboard boxes in the corner. It feels cavernous. Her feet echo on the tiled floor as she makes her way toward the center.

  Cuttings Room A to M is empty, too, except for the shelving units. The windows, set six feet above the floor, send glittering dust motes swirling around her as she moves. Although there are no newspapers here now, the air is suffused with the biscuity smell of old paper. She thinks, fancifully, that she can almost hear the echoes of past stories hanging in the air, a hundred thousand voices, no longer heard. Lives moved, lost, twisted by fate. Hidden within files that may remain unseen for another hundred years. She wonders which other Anthonys and Jennifers are buried in those pages, their lives waiting to be swung by some accident or coincidence. A padded swivel chair in the corner is labeled "Digital Archive," and she walks over to it, swinging it one way and then the other.

  She is suddenly, ridiculously tired, as if the adrenaline that had fueled her for the last few hours has drained away. She sits down heavily in the warmth and the silence, and for the first time she can remember, Ellie is still. Everything inside her is still. She lets out a long breath.

  She doesn't know how long she has been asleep when she hears the door click.

  Anthony O'Hare is holding up her bag. "Is this yours?"

  She pushes herself upright, disoriented and a little giddy. For a moment she can't work out where she is. "God. Sorry." She rubs her face.

  "You won't find much here," he says, handing it to her. He takes in her rumpled air, her sleep-shrunk eyes. "It's all in the new building now. I've just come back to collect the last of the tea things. And that chair."

  "Yes . . . comfy. Too good to leave . . . Oh, God, what's the time?"

  "Quarter to eleven."

  "Conference is at eleven. I'm fine. Conference is at eleven." She's babbling, casting around her for nonexistent belongings. Then remembers why she's there. She tries to gather her thoughts, but she doesn't know how to say what she must to this man. She glances surreptitiously at him, seeing someone else behind the gray hair, the melancholy eyes. She sees him through his words now.

  She gathers her bag to her. "Um . . . is Rory around?"

  Rory will know. Rory will know what to do.

  His smile is a mute apology, an acknowledgment of what they both know. "I'm afraid he's not in today. He's probably at home preparing."

  "Preparing?"

  "For his grand tour? You did know he's going away?"

  "I'd kind of hoped he wouldn't. Not just yet." She reaches into her bag and scribbles a note. "I don't suppose . . . you have his address?"

  "If you want to step into what remains of my office, I'll dig it out for you. I don't think he leaves for a week or so."

  As he turns away, her breath catches in her throat. "Actually, Mr. O'Hare, it's not just Rory I wanted to see."

  "Oh?" She can see his surprise at her use of his name.

  She pulls the folder from her bag and holds it toward him. "I found something of yours. A few weeks ago. I would have given them back earlier, but I just . . . I didn't know they were yours until last night." She watches as he opens copies of the letters. His face alters as he recognizes his own handwriting.

  "Where did you get these?" he says.

  "They were here," she says tentatively, afraid of what this information will do to him.

  "Here?"

  "Buried. In your library."

  He glances around him, as if these empty shelves can provide some clue to what she's saying.

  "I'm sorry. I know they're . . . personal."

  "How did you know they were mine?"

  "It's a long story." Her heart is beating rapidly. "But you need to know something. Jennifer Stirling left her husband the day after she saw you in 1964. She came here, to the newspaper offices, and they told her you'd gone to Africa."

  He is so still. Every part of him is focused on her words. He is almost vibrating, so intently is he listening.

  "She tried to find you. She tried to tell you that she was . . . she was free." She's a little frightened by the effect this information seems to have on Anthony. The color has drained from his face. He sits down on the chair, his breath coming hard. But she can't stop now.

  "This is all . . . ," he begins, his expression troubled, so different from Jennifer's barely disguised delight. "This is all from so long ago."

  "I haven't finished," she says. "Please."

  He waits.

  "These are copies. That's because I had to return the originals. I had to give them back." She holds out the PO box number, her hand trembling, either from nervousness or excitement.

  She had received a text message two minutes before she went down to the library: No he isn't married. What kind of question is that?

  "I don't know what your situation is. I don't know if I'm being horribly intrusive. Perhaps I'm making the most awful mistake. But this is the address, Mr. O'Hare," she says. He takes it from her. "This is where you write to."

  Chapter 27

  Dear Jennifer?

  Is this really you? Forgive me. I have tried to write this a dozen times and I don't know what to say.

  Anthony O'Hare

  Ellie tidies the not
es on her desk, turns off her screen, and, closing her bag, makes her way out of Features, mouthing a silent good-bye at Rupert. He is hunched over an interview with an author who, he has complained all afternoon, is as dull as ditchwater. She has filed the story about surrogate mothers, and tomorrow she will travel to Paris to interview a Chinese charity worker who is not allowed to return to her home country because of controversial comments she made in a British documentary. As she wedges herself into the crowded bus home, her mind is on the background information she has gathered for the piece, already organizing it into paragraphs. It feels good to be thinking this way again.

  On Saturday she will meet Corinne and Nicky at a restaurant none of them can really afford. They will not talk about John, Ellie has decided; it is the first relationship she has ever ended that she does not feel the urge to dissect for hours afterward.

  "I see his latest book got a terrible review," Corinne says when Ellie answers her phone. Corinne rings her most evenings. Ellie knows it's just to make sure she's okay. She doesn't know how to make her friends believe her when she says she's fine.

  "I hadn't noticed."

  She tidies her flat as she talks, the receiver wedged between chin and shoulder. She has decided to redecorate. She has been emptying her home of clutter, driving to and from the dump with the detritus of several years stuffed into cardboard boxes. She is unsentimental about what she throws away.

  Corinne sniffs. " 'Unconvincing dialogue,' apparently. Personally I always found his stuff very derivative."

  Ellie empties a drawer into a black garbage bag as Corinne talks.

  She has specifically asked not to write for Books just now.

  Dear Anthony,

  Yes, it is me. Whatever me is, compared to the girl you knew. I'm guessing you know our journalist friend has spoken to me by now. I'm still struggling to comprehend what she has told me.

  But in the Post Office box this morning, there was your letter. With the sight of your handwriting, forty years fell away. Does that make sense? The time that has passed shrank to nothing. I can barely believe I'm holding what you wrote two days ago, can hardly believe what it means.

  She has told me a little about you. I sat and wondered, and hardly dared think that I may get the chance to sit and talk to you.

  I pray that you are happy.

  Jennifer

  It's the upside of newspapers: your writing stock can rise stratospherically, twice as quickly as it fell. Two good stories and you can be the talk of the newsroom, the center of chatter and admiration. Your story will be reproduced on the Internet, syndicated to other publications in New York, Australia, South Africa. They liked the letters piece, Syndication told her. Exactly the kind of thing they can find a market for. Within forty-eight hours she has had e-mails and a few handwritten letters from readers, confiding their own stories. Within a week, a literary agent has rung, wondering if she has enough of the letters to turn into a book. They have penciled in a date for lunch.

  Melissa wants a follow-up feature, using the new material. It is, she says, the perfect example of connecting with your readers. She uses the words "interactivity" and "added value." As far as Melissa's concerned, Ellie is back in the game. She suggests Ellie's name in conference when someone mentions an idea that needs a good thousand words. Twice, this week, her short features have crossed to the front page. It's the newspaper staffer's equivalent of winning the lottery. Her increased visibility means she's more in demand. She sees stories everywhere. She's magnetic: contacts, features, fly to her. She's at her desk by nine, works till late in the evening. This time, she knows not to waste it.

  Her space on the great oval desk is gleaming and white, and on it sits a seventeen-inch nongloss high-resolution screen, and a telephone with her name, clearly marked, on the extension number.

  Rupert no longer offers to make her tea.

  Dear Jennifer,

  I apologize for this tardy reply. Please excuse what may seem to you like reticence. I have not put pen to paper for many years, except to pay bills or record some complaint. I don't think I know what to say. For decades now I have lived only through other people's words; I reorder them, archive them, duplicate and rank them. I keep them safe. I suspect I have long forgotten my own. The author of those letters seems like a stranger to me.

  You sound so different from the girl I saw at the Regent Hotel. And yet, in all the best ways, you are so evidently the same. I am glad you are well. I am glad I have had the chance to tell you this. I would ask to meet you, but I am afraid you would find me much removed from the man you remember. I don't know.

  Forgive me.

  Anthony

  Several days previously Ellie had heard her name shouted a little breathlessly as she made her way down the stairs of the old building for the last time. She had turned to find Anthony O'Hare at the top. He was holding out a piece of paper bearing a scribbled address.

  She had skipped up again, to save him further effort.

  "I was thinking, Ellie Haworth," he said, and his voice was full of joy, trepidation, and regret, "don't send a letter. It's probably better if you just, you know, go and see him. In person."

  Dearest, dearest Boot,

  My voice has exploded in me! I feel I have lived half a century not being able to speak. All has been damage limitation, an attempt to carve out what was good from what felt destroyed, ruined. My own silent penitence for what I had done. And now . . . now? I have talked poor Ellie Haworth's ear off until she stares at me in stunned silence and I can see her thinking: Where is the dignity in this old woman? How can she sound so like a fourteen-year-old? I want to talk to you, Anthony. I want to talk to you until our voices croak and we can barely speak. I have forty years of talking to do.

  How can you say you don't know? It cannot be fear. How could I be disappointed in you? After all that has happened, how could I feel anything other than acute joy at simply being able to see you again? My hair is silver, not blond. The lines on my face are emphatic, determined things. I ache, I rattle with supplements, and my grandchildren cannot believe I have ever been anything but prehistoric.

  We are old, Anthony. Yes. And we do not have another forty years. If you are still in there, if you are prepared to allow me to paint over the vision you might hold of the girl you once knew, I will happily do the same for you.

  Jennifer X

  Jennifer Stirling is standing in the middle of the room, wearing a dressing gown, her hair standing up on one side. "Look at me," she says despairingly. "What a fright. What an absolute fright. I couldn't sleep last night, and then I finally dropped off some time after five and I slept right through my alarm and missed my hair appointment."

  Ellie is staring at her. She has never seen her look like this. Anxiety radiates from her. Without makeup her skin looks childlike, her face vulnerable. "You--you look fine."

  "I rang my daughter last night, you know, and I told her a little of it. Not all. I told her I was due to meet a man I had once loved and hadn't seen since I was a girl. Was that a terrible lie?"

  "No," says Ellie.

  "You know what she e-mailed me this morning? This." She thrusts a printed sheet, a facsimile from an American newspaper, about a couple from New Jersey who married after a fifty-year gap in their relationship. "What am I supposed to do with that? Have you ever seen anything so ridiculous?" Her voice crackles with nerves.

  "What time are you meeting him?"

  "Midday. I'll never be ready. I should cancel."

  Ellie gets up and puts the kettle on. "Go and get dressed. You've got forty minutes. I'll drive you," she says.

  "You think I'm ridiculous, don't you?" It's the first time she has seen Jennifer Stirling look anything other than the most composed woman in the entire universe. "A ridiculous old woman. Like a teenager on her first date."

  "No," says Ellie.

  "It was fine when it was just letters," Jennifer says, barely hearing her. "I could be myself. I could be this person he remembered. I was
so calm and reassuring. And now . . . The one consolation I have had in all of this was knowing there was this man out there who loved me, who saw the best in me. Even through the awfulness of our last meeting I've known that in me he saw something he wanted more than anything else in the world. What if he looks at me and is disappointed? It'll be worse than if we'd never met again. Worse."

  "Show me the letter," Ellie says.

  "I can't do this. Don't you think that sometimes it's better not to do something?"

  "The letter, Jennifer."

  Jennifer picks it up from the sideboard, holds it for a moment, then offers it to her. Dearest Jennifer,

  Are old men supposed to cry? I sit here reading and rereading the letter you sent, and I struggle to believe that my life has taken such an unexpected, joyous turn. Things like this are not meant to happen to us. I had learned to feel gratitude for the most mundane gifts: my son, his children, a good life, if quietly lived. Survival. Oh, yes, always survival.

  And now you. Your words, your emotions, have induced a greed in me. Can we ask for so much? Do I dare see you again? The Fates have been so unforgiving, some part of me believes that we cannot meet. I'll be felled by illness, hit by a bus, swallowed whole by the Thames's first sea monster. (Yes, I still see life in headlines.)

  The last two nights I have heard your words in my sleep. I hear your voice, and it makes me want to sing. I remember things I'd thought I'd forgotten. I smile at inopportune moments, frightening my family and sending them running for the dementia diagnosis.

  The girl I saw last was so broken; to know that you made such a life for yourself has challenged my own view of the world. It must be a benevolent place. It has taken care of you and your daughter. You cannot imagine the joy that has given me. Vicariously. I cannot write more. So I venture, with trepidation: Postman's Park. Thursday. Midday?

  Your Boot X

  Ellie's eyes have filled with tears. "You know what?" she says. "I really don't think you need to worry."