Alan Goodwin - Gravity's Chain

I should have finished there. I should have slipped the pages back and put the box in the wardrobe to wait for another God knows how many years before I returned to look at them again. It wouldn’t have been hard. Clumsily I withdrew one of the letters, all fingers and thumbs as though picking an index card from a filing drawer.

When I was away, Mary wrote frantically as though it was her job and failure to send a regular letter was a disciplinary offence leading to dismissal. How I treasured them, reading every line over and over as I sat in the freezing front room of Mrs Grey’s home. In the summer I’d read them as I sat in the evening sun listening to blackbirds singing in the garden. The future seemed so simple back then, mapped out and manageable, all boxed up and ready to go. An academic career, a settled, ordered life and my first girlfriend who I thought would be a wife. I was at ease with my talents. However, that was before Caroline. She saw what was inside me and picked it out like the most skilful oystercatcher prizing open a shell. Mary thought the shell beautiful and was happy to look at the outside; Caroline wanted the pearl.

I pulled the pages from the envelope. The paper, creamy and thick, was different from all the others. This letter was from a different era. I read the painfully familiar lines, not even realising I was crying until the first tear dropped from the end of my nose.

Jack,

So finally I’m able to write. The last time I wrote to you was a week before you were due to return from Cambridge at the end of last year. It was an exciting time; I don’t think I’d ever looked forward to something quite as much as the thought of you arriving at the airport. I went to sleep thinking of that moment and awoke with the very same thought. Whenever I look back at what has happened I find it so ironic that, having survived all those months apart, everything should go wrong within just two weeks of your return. Perhaps there’s something meaningful or symbolic about that, but I’ll leave that to you, because I’m probably too stupid to recognise whatever it is.

I have written this letter a hundred times in my head and started almost as many times on paper. Always I’ve tried to avoid clichés, but I’m sorry, I can’t so you’ll just have to put up with the obvious. I think you might owe me that at least. There’s no other way to say you’ve broken my heart, because that’s what you’ve done, Jack—you’ve broken my heart. It goes without saying that I’ll never forgive you or Caroline. I just wish I knew why you did this to me. Did you think we could still all be friends? Did she think sisterly love (yeah, some joke, I know) would see us all through these ‘difficult times’?

Well it won’t.

Nothing you say, or do, can ever heal my pain. Oh yes, I can just see the two of you, sitting in Cambridge (yes, I do know that much), in your sophisticated love nest, laughing at me as you read this. Mocking me as you have some high-level ‘intellectual’ discussion about silly old Mary. After all, the two of you are soooo mature and worldly. It must be lonely on that mountaintop. What was it Caroline said? ‘You must realise, Mary, Jack lives on another level, and he needs someone to nurture him.’ She didn’t say that I was unable to do that for you, but then she didn’t need to—did she? The two of you had made that bloody obvious.

The mature thing to do would be to wish you well, but I don’t wish you well—so I’m NOT going to say it. In fact, I’m not sure what it is I wish you. My thoughts swing from the evil to the weird, from some strange kindness because of what we once had, to hate, but in the end it will do me no good to wish you ill, so I leave it in some kind of neutral.

I wish so much that none of this had happened. It’s probably my fault for mapping out such a detailed future for us so early on. Perhaps our foundations weren’t strong enough. But all the time we were together it all felt so good and so right. Whatever else happens in life I do know that some-how this first love will have been the best.

This is the last letter I shall write to you. I’d like to think it would be the last time we’ll ever be in contact, but somehow I know that’s not going to be the case. Our paths will cross, Jack. Our paths will cross again.

The question is: who will be the sadder that day?

C aroline, you should have a look at this…oh God, she’s really hurting.’

‘Who?’

‘Mary, she’s written a letter.’ I held out the three pages like Neville Chamberlain with his Munich peace papers. ‘It’s her farewell statement to us.’ Caroline sat next to me, indifferent. ‘You should read this, it’s really awful.’

‘What did you expect?’ She sat with one foot curled under her bottom as though nurturing it for hatching.

‘Read it.’

‘I don’t want to.’ She uncurled her leg and stretched the stiffness from her knee and ankle. She fetched a cigarette packet and ashtray from the table then, hips swaying, returned to the old sofa. She had slimmed down since we’d first met: a student diet and English winter had taken their toll. Our sofa sank in the middle where its springs were broken and the brown velvet covering was worn bare. When Caroline sat next to me we rolled together. I enjoyed the sudden contact.

‘Aren’t you curious about what she says?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I got my own letter.’

‘When?’

‘Today. I just didn’t want to share it with you.’ She registered my astonishment, took the letter, read it and replaced it in my unmoved hand. When she sat back, the movement released an old musty smell from deep within the bowels of the sofa and her nostrils flared. A look of momentary disgust darkened her face. This was a familiar look brought on by our bed-sit. But when she saw my frown, she smiled and touched my cheek with the palm of her hand. ‘Does it worry you what she says? Are you hurt?’

‘No, I’m not worried, not hurt.’

‘You shouldn’t be. She didn’t understand you and so the two of you were doomed. It was just a matter of time. Now she’s just being petty and pathetic. Worse than pathetic actually.’

‘Do you feel any guilt, Caroline?’

‘No. What happened was meant to be, Jack. There was no hope for the two of you. It was just a matter of time.’

‘But she’s your sister. Don’t you feel anything, don’t you feel any pain?’

‘She’s not my sister any more. I’ve disowned her and it’s mutual.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘It’s in my letter. Yours is mild in comparison to mine, she saved the best for me. Well, that’s fine, I want nothing more to do with her and she wants nothing more to do with me. It’s all right, Jack, there’s no need to look so worried. We’ve all made our choices and now we move on. What’s gone is gone—Mary’s gone. All that remains is for me to now tell her how I feel.’

I nuzzled into her shoulder. The sofa smell was replaced with the sweeter scent of her perfume. In the eight months since the afternoon in her Titirangi house I’d been with her almost every day, yet my feelings for Caroline were as fresh as if we’d just met.

That day in Titirangi. When I left, dazed and tired, my senses worn to bursting, I knew things were different. Something very large had shifted inside as though someone had entered my head and rearranged the furniture. The walls were the same, but everything else was different. I knew immediately what had to happen: I needed to go straight to Mary, confess, end it with her and accept the consequences. There was pain to experience, anger to negotiate and all the shit you get when you hurt someone as deeply as they can be hurt. I should have been exposed to all that. I should have witnessed all I was responsible for. But halfway there I lost my nerve and returned home instead. Through a torrid rainstorm, with the old wipers of my father’s car failing to clear the deluge, I convinced myself it was best that I went home and saw Mary another day. I ran away and no amount of tinsel could alter that fact.