Cecelia Ahern - The Gift & Thanks for the Memories

‘He’s handsome,’ Kate whispers. ‘I support your stalking campaign one hundred per cent, Joyce.’

‘It’s not a stalking campaign,’ I hiss, ‘and I’d have done this if he was ugly.’

‘Can I go in and listen to his talk?’ Kate asks.

‘No!’

‘Why not? He’s never seen me; he won’t recognise me. Please, Joyce, my best friend believes she is connected to a complete stranger. At least I can go and listen to him to see what he’s like.’

‘What about Sam?’

‘Do you want to mind him for a little while?’

I freeze.

‘Oh, forget that,’ she says quickly. ‘I’ll bring him in with me. I’ll stay down the back and leave if he disturbs anyone.’

‘No, no, it’s OK. I can mind him.’ I swallow and paste a smile on my face.

‘Are you sure?’ She looks unconvinced. ‘I won’t stay for the entire thing. I just want to see what he’s like.’

‘I’ll be fine. Go.’ I push her away gently. ‘Go in and enjoy yourself. We’ll be fine here, won’t we?’

Sam puts his socked toe in his mouth in response.

‘I promise I won’t be long.’ Kate leans into the stroller, gives her son a kiss and dashes across the road and into the Gallery.

‘So …’ I look around nervously. ‘It’s just you and me, Sean.’

He looks at me with his big blue eyes and mine instantly fill.

I look around to make sure nobody has heard me. I mean Sam.

Justin takes his place at the podium in the lecture hall in the basement of the National Gallery. A packed room of faces stares back at him and he is in his element. A late arrival, a young woman, enters the room, apologises and quickly takes a place among the crowd.

‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you so much for making it here on this rainy morning. I am here to talk about this painting. Woman Writing a Letter , by Terborch, a Dutch Baroque artist from the seventeenth century who was largely responsible for the popularisation of the letter theme. This painting – well, not this painting alone – this genre of letter-writing is a personal favourite of mine, particularly when in this current age it seems a personal letter has almost become extinct.’ He stops.

Almost but not quite, for there’s somebody sending me notes .

He steps away from the podium, takes one step towards the audience and looks at the crowd, suspicion written upon his face. His eyes narrow as he studies his audience. He scans the rows, knowing that somebody here could be the mystery note-writer.

Somebody coughs, snapping him out of his trance, and he is back with them again. He is mildly flustered but continues where he left off.

‘In an age when a personal letter has almost become extinct, this is a reminder of how the great masters of the Golden Age depicted the subtle range of human emotions affected by such a seemingly simple aspect of daily life. Terborch was not the only artist responsible for these images. I cannot go further on this subject without paying lip-service to Vermeer, Metsu and de Hooch, who all produced paintings of people reading, writing, receiving and dispatching letters, which I have written about in my book The Golden Age of Dutch Painting: Vermeer, Metsu and Terborch . Terborch’s paintings use letter-writing as a pivot on which to turn complex psychological dramas and his are among the first works to link lovers through the theme of a letter.’

He studies the woman who arrived a little late as he says half of this and another young woman behind her for the second half, wondering if they are reading deeper into his words. He almost laughs aloud at himself at his assumption that, first, the person whose life he saved would be in this room; secondly, that it would be a young woman; and thirdly, attractive. Which makes him ask himself what exactly was he hoping to come out of this current drama?

I push Sam’s stroller into Merrion Square, and we’re instantly transported from the Georgian centre of the city to another world, shaded by mature trees and surrounded by colour. Burned oranges, reds and yellows of the autumn foliage litter the ground and, with each gentle breeze, hop alongside us like inquisitive robin redbreasts. I choose a bench along the quiet walk and turn Sam’s stroller around so that he faces me. In the trees bordering the walk I hear twigs snapping as homes are being constructed and lunch prepared.

I watch Sam for a while, as he strains his neck to see the remaining leaves that refuse to surrender their branch, far above him. He points a tiny finger up at the sky and makes sounds.

‘Tree,’ I tell him, which makes him smile, and his mother is instantly recognisable.

The vision has the same effect as a boot hitting my stomach. I take a moment to catch my breath.

‘Sam, while we’re here we should really discuss something,’ I say.

His smile widens.

‘I have to apologise for something,’ I clear my throat. ‘I haven’t been paying much attention to you lately, have I? The thing is …’ I trail off and wait until a man has passed us by to continue. ‘The thing is,’ I lower my voice, ‘I couldn’t bear to look at you …’ I trail off as his grin widens.

‘Oh, here.’ I lean over, remove his blanket and press the button to release his safety straps. ‘Come up here to me.’ I lift him out of the buggy and sit him on my lap. His body is warm and I hug him close. I breathe in the top of his head, candy, his wispy hairs so silky like velvet, his body so chubby and soft in my arms, I want to squeeze him tighter. ‘The thing is,’ I say quietly to the top of his head, ‘it broke my heart to look at you, to cuddle you like I used to, because each time I saw you, I remembered what I’d lost.’ He looks up at me and babbles in response. ‘Though how could I ever be afraid to look at you?’ I kiss his nose. ‘I shouldn’t have taken it out on you but you’re not mine, and that’s so hard.’ My eyes fill and I let the tears fall. ‘I wanted to have a little boy or girl so that just like when you smile, people could say, oh look, you’re the picture of your mummy, or maybe that the baby would have my nose or my eyes because that’s what people say to me. They say I look like my mum. And I love hearing that, Sam, I really do, because I miss her and I want to be reminded of her every single day. But looking at you was different. I didn’t want to be reminded I’d lost my baby every single day.’

‘Ba-ba,’ he says.

I sniffle. ‘Ba-ba gone, Sam. Sean for a boy, Grace for a girl.’ I wipe my nose.

Sam, uninterested in my tears, looks away and studies a bird. He points a chubby finger again.

‘Bird,’ I say through my tears.

‘Ba-ba,’ he responds.

I smile and wipe my eyes as yet more stream down.

‘But there’s no Sean or Grace now.’ I hug him tighter and let my tears fall, knowing that Sam won’t be able to report my weeping to anybody.

The bird hops a few inches and then takes off, disappearing into the sky.

‘Ba-ba gone,’ Sam says, holding his hands out, palms up.

I watch it fly into the distance, still visible like a speck of dust against the pale blue sky. My tears stop. ‘Ba-ba gone,’ I repeat.

‘What do we see in this painting?’ Justin asks.

Silence as everyone views the projected image.

‘Well, let us state the obvious first. A young woman sits at a table in a quiet interior. She is writing a letter. We see a quill moving across a sheet of paper. We do not know what she is writing but her soft smile suggests she is writing to a loved one or perhaps a lover. Her head tilts forward, exposing the elegant curve of her neck …’

While Sam is back in his buggy, drawing circles on paper with his blue crayon, or more likely, banging out dots on the paper, sending wax shrapnel all over his buggy, I produce my own pen and paper from my bag. I take my calligraphy pen in my hand and imagine I’m hearing Justin’s words from across the road. I don’t need to see the work of the Woman Writing a Letter on the canvas for it has been painted in my mind after Justin’s years of intensive study during college and again during research for his book. I begin to write.