A Letter Arrives

A Letter Arrives

‘N O GUINEA PIGS!’

Marjie sing-songs as always as she heads out of the door. She’s off to the dentist, probably for some sort of beef-related intervention. It can’t be good for her molars to have all that chewy bovine in her diet. The door has only just closed when it arrives. A small square envelope addressed to

Captain E. Winston, 24 Corporation Street, Birmingham, B17 9NS

Eddie

,

May I begin by thanking you.

It has been so long since I last saw my little sister’s beautiful name on an envelope that, for a moment, I completely forgot that she is dead.

A subtler woman might use a euphemism such as ‘she passed away’ or ‘she has gone on to be with Jesus’, but I like to face life (or death, I suppose) head on and that is the truth of it, I’m afraid. My

sister Elsie (‘Else’ to her friends) died in 2016.

But oh, how wonderful it was to receive your letter. For a moment, I thought she might just come running down the stairs, seventeen years old, all bruised knees and skinny elbows, and scoop it up from the doormat and then run back up to her bedroom with it so that my parents wouldn’t see. That is what she did when the first letters from Mr William McGlew began arriving at our home.

‘Are you in love with the postman, Else?’ I asked her one night when our parents were at a church dance.

She looked up from her book. ‘The postman?!’

Our postman was eighty-five if he was a day. Bony hands. Birdlike neck. Absurd hat. Little shorts all winter long.

Elsie thought for a brief moment. I could see her weighing up whether I would be a worthy confidante and, eventually, she placed her book down, wings spread on the quilt so she wouldn’t lose her place, and went to the top drawer of her dresser. And out she pulled a stash of letters and envelopes.

‘His name is Will,’ she said.

She told me they’d met in Sunday school. She told me they’d had a date on the pier. Told me they had kissed. And because I’m obstinate and competitive and had yet to be kissed myself, I made the mistake of teasing her about it. And she never took me into her confidence again. Not when, after several years of her loving him, William McGlew seemed to have

broken her heart. Not when she appeared to recover. Not when she married, not when she divorced. Not when she fell in love with a gardener she met during one of her longer stays in hospital. I never got the chance to know the secrets of her heart again.

But that’s me, I’m afraid: Brash. And that was Elsie: Unforgiving.

And so, we come to your fair Mr William McGlew. I would imagine his heart also suffered, as this unkind sister did, from Elsie’s reluctance to forgive. And whatever it was that parted them kept them parted.

We drifted apart, Elsie and I. I lost myself in my writing, relocated to London for the noise and the ritz and the glamour. I dived (fairly half-heartedly, I can admit, ha ha!) into motherhood of my only son. And I often wonder, if I had sat quietly (which is rarely my wont) in her bedroom back in 1953 and listened rather than teased, perhaps she would have told me about him. Perhaps we would have stayed sisters rather than drifting into acquaintances and then into nothing.

I will always wonder about Mr William McGlew.

I was too late on the day she died. My flight to Glasgow was delayed and, when I got to the hospital, they said she’d already passed. If my life were one of my novels, I would have made it. Said my final things to her. But instead, I was met with an empty corridor and a stranger in the bay where

she had been. I hoped that if Elsie’s soul was still lingering near, perhaps she would hear the words of her repentant older sister who wished to clear the air and send her, lovingly, on her way. But in my desperation not to cry, all my words got swallowed up, so as I made my way down the corridor, all I managed to whisper was, ‘Sweet dreams, Else.’

After she passed, I gave almost everything to charity, with the exception of the art that she made during her time in hospital and her photograph albums. And as I flicked through faces familiar and unfamiliar, there was William, in monochrome, smiling on what looks to be Margate pier sometime in 1956. And because I cannot bear to read her childhood diary, in case she has written angry words about me, I have had to make my peace with not knowing more than that for the rest of my life. Until, that is, the incredibly expensive postal redirect I have for incoming mail to our childhood house brought to my home in Corfu the words of a kind gentleman with a piece of the puzzle of Elsie’s heart.

So may I end with a beginning. An invitation. I do not wish to entrust William’s precious epistles to airmail. I enclose my address and an invitation for a week of sun at my home. I shall pay for all expenses, flights, sun cream, you name it. I have plenty of bedrooms. Bring a friend! My house will be your home. Do say you’ll come, and we can meet face to face.

It is so very rare that one gets to meet a pirate.

Emmeline Woods x