Ciaran Carson - The Pen Friend

I’d kept all your letters from the time we’d been together, and after I went through the postcards, I went through the letters, not in any chronological order, for they were all mixed up, though I knew the early ones from the yellowed envelopes that once were plain white, and the later ones that were mauve and pale green and lilac, I’d bought them for you in a little papeterie in the Île Saint-Louis, remember, and I saw myself as I was when I first read those letters back then, as if I were looking over my own shoulder at myself, and I thought I caught a whiff or perfume from each one, whatever scent I had been wearing when I read them first, and though I knew I must be imagining it, it nevertheless summoned up those times for me again. It’s as if we’re beginning all over again. I’ll be in the xl Café next Saturday at noon. After all that has happened, I can’t be sure that you’ll be there too. If you are, you’ll know me. I’ll be wearing the Dinkie pen that first brought us together.

And I will be there, Nina, as surely as I now take up your Dinkie pen again to write the last words of your letter. Ever, Nina. Ever, Angel.

I am grateful to the artist and filmmaker Susan MacWilliam, who generously shared with me her researches into spiritualism, especially the work of W.J. Crawford and Fournier d’Albe. For some ten years she has been developing a body of work that explores the paranormal with reference to ideas of vision and perception, reality and illusion.