In
place of sorrow he grew a crust of incivility, a shell of resentment
that most whom he encountered found difficult to navigate and
ultimately, almost inevitably, walked away from. This proved to him
without a doubt that he was unlovable and that they, whoever they
might be, were inconsequential and irritating.
There was lodged
within him a grizzled heart made from gritted teeth, clenched jaw,
and snarling lip. He could picture it - the scar across the nose, the
dragged lines around the forehead. This was his heart, woven from
leathery sinew, not pumping blood but rather spitting venom into his
veins. He knew this creature - it bought him solitude, preyed on the
charity of others, stole their generosity, seized it and belittled
it in the same moment. This monstrous heart hated love and kindness
and beauty because these feelings showed him how he was wrong with him. His heart judged and closed down the world, spat at it,
sneered at it, until it became redundant - worse than redundant -
worthless, despicable.
The letter sat
unopened on the mantelpiece for three days. A handwritten envelope.
This implies that a human had generated it. He could tolerate
correspondence from machines because it justified his world view -
machines, computers, corporations simply wanted to take from him. This he understood. The
taking was clear, unambiguous, unsullied by emotion. He used
electricity, they took his money. It was logical.
But this - a
cursive script outlining his name, his location... someone’s hand
had done this. Someone who knew his identity, where he lived, who had
some information to impart or some request that they wished to make -
someone who needed something.
It could only cost
him.
To open and read
the letter would cost him - he would have to allow his mind some form
of engagement in the task, to summon some sort of
energy. Enthusiasm - no, never that. He would have to be prepared to
receive information - to open himself, and receive. What if this
information affected him? How could it not? It already had. Whatever this
information was that this person wished to relay to him, would demand
a reaction, a response. His world would be altered in some way,
threatened, challenged. Tectonic movements may take place. It would
be safer to leave the letter there upon the shelf, unopened - safer
still in the bin.
He took the letter
from its resting place leaning against his father’s clock. He
picked it up gingerly between finger and thumb, his other fingers
spread to avoid contact. He carried it into the kitchen, placed his
foot upon the pedal of the bin. Pressed. Waited until the mouth of
the bin was fully open, dropped the letter in.
An hour later, he
rose from the armchair beside the bookcase in the sitting room and
went back into the kitchen. He had not been able to concentrate on
the BBC Four documentary on the fire bombing of Dresden. The letter
had leached its poisonous, demanding presence into his thoughts. He looked at the
bin. He depressed the pedal again and peered into the black plastic
maw. It had slipped from view. He reached in, moved a plastic bag aside and spotted the letter
slipped beneath it. He gripped the protruding corner and drew the
tea-stained envelope towards him. The paper had absorbed liquid, tea, and
the ink had run, softening the edges of the characters, blurring them
together. It brought an irritation.
“Dah, stupid...!”
he said.
He picked up a tea
towel, dabbed at the envelope but simply made it worse. The wet
paper began to crumble and roll under the contact of the cloth. His
fingers detected a disturbance on the underside also - he turned the
envelope and discovered drops of tomato sauce and a single baked
bean, remnants of his meal from the previous evening. He found the
mess intolerable.
“No, no, no...”
He wiped at his fingers and then at this
reverse side. As the cloth moved across the surface it lifted the
corner of the sealed flap, a small blistered opening, an invitation
to a fingernail to enlarge it.
“Damn you,” he
said and slapped the letter down upon the counter. He knew now the
letter would be opened.
“Not yet, you
bastard.”
He took the kettle
from the hob and filled it at the tap. As the water ran he looked
through the kitchen window across the overgrown patch of grass that
some would have called a garden. Through the fence at the bottom he
could see into the neighbouring property. Two boys were running
around, chasing a ball probably, although he could not see their faces -
just bobs of hair over the fence top and flashes of a yellow t-shirt and a red one, glimpses as they
passed gaps between the panels. There were shouts and laughter, too.
As long as the ball
didn’t come over the fence he could tolerate these boys. He had
been aware of them since they first moved in, without ever truly
seeing them. He had known they were there and were growing up, but as
children they were less of a trouble to him. It was only as people
got older that they became heart-poisoningly annoying and intrusive.
Men, women - all of them just out to take from him, to steal his
peace with their knocking on the door and offering to shop for him.
“Fuck off!” He would never say it, but he breathed it in as he waited for them to leave him alone.
Suddenly the
whistling kettle penetrated his consciousness. He turned, and flicked
the gas off.
“All right, all
right,” he muttered.
And there on the
counter - the letter.
“All right, all
right!”
He crashed the
cutlery drawer open and took out the butter knife he had sharpened to
an edge. He slid the round point under the lifted flap and slit the
letter open across the top.
With fingertip and
thumb he withdrew the folded page within. He lay it on the counter -
he would not be rushed. But the paper immediately found drops of
water that had fallen unnoticed from the kettle filling. Blots
appeared at the corner and rapidly spread across the field of white.
Fearing the ink would once again suffer, he lifted the paper and
shook it.
“Damn! Damn you!”
He opened the
folded page.
Again the cursive
script - younger, female perhaps.
Sender’s address
at the top right hand corner - Well, that’s not something you see
much nowadays.
Underneath the
address, the date - 22nd May 2017. Taken nearly three weeks to get
here, he thought. He picked up the envelope again and studied the
postmark - 19th May. Oh? Someone had forgotten to post it maybe - or
didn’t know whether they should.
Who was this? At the bottom of the page, a signature and printed in capitals beneath it KELLY HARRISON.
Harrison... Harrison?
Just read the damn thing, he thought.
Dear Mr Sanderson,
You don’t
know me, so I hope you will forgive my writing to you, but my mother,
Mrs Evie Wright (née Harrison) gave me your address. She feels it is
time for me to introduce myself, and so do I. She told me about you
and how she now feels bad about how she treated you when she left
with her baby - your baby - me, in 1981.
She hopes you
might find it in your heart to forgive her after all these years. And
so do I.
