‘You kissed Amy,’ she says.
‘But I love you, and before you say it words do matter. They’re not pointless. If they were pointless then they couldn’t start revolutions and they wouldn’t change history and they wouldn’t be the things that you think about every night before you go to sleep. If they were just words we wouldn’t listen to songs, we wouldn’t beg to be read to when we’re kids. If they were just words, then they’d have no meaning and stories wouldn’t have been around since before humans could write. We wouldn’t have learnt to write. If they were just words then people wouldn’t fall in love because of them, feel bad because of them, ache because of them, stop aching because of them, have sex, quite a lot of the time, because of them. If they were just words, Frederick would not search desperately for Derek Walcott.’ I take a breath, and when she doesn’t say anything, I keep going.
‘I might have kissed Amy, but I’m telling you now, I love you. And you do love me,’ I say, waving the letter. ‘This has your signature on it. A person might call it a contract.’
‘There’s a date on it, though. I don’t think you can hold me to a contract I signed three years ago in a state of sugar madness,’ she says.
‘I don’t think you can date a letter like this. A love letter, by definition, should be timeless or what’s the point? I love you, but only for that moment and then my love expires? What’s the universe’s problem with forever? It lets the geese get away with it.’
‘The geese?’ Rachel asks.
‘They mate forever.’
‘Well, that’s actually not strictly true,’ she says, and then she interrupts herself, takes hold of my t-shirt by the collar, and pulls me close.
‘That was a very nice speech,’ she says.
‘I got a bit carried away.’
‘I liked it.’
‘You are my best friend. You are the best person I know. You are spectacular, Rachel Sweetie. I love you,’ I say again, and then I kiss her.
Later, much later, at a time that is unknown to me at this point, I will unbutton Rachel slowly. I will kiss her collarbone, and think of watermelon in summer, explored down to the rind. I will hope, and imagine, that I can see our lives from above the universe, and we are spread out together, all along the fixed points of our life.
But at this moment, it is a kiss. It’s a kiss that continues while we put the Prufrock and her letter back in the Library. It is a kiss that continues while I lead her up the stairs for some privacy. It is a kiss that continues through the years.
But at this moment, it is just the start.
Later, in bed, she leans over to check her voicemail.
‘I left some messages,’ I say.
‘So it seems,’ she says.
‘I felt it important you understood the situation.’
‘I think I do.’
‘So we can be together? You’ll be with me?’ I ask.
‘Okay,’ she says.
‘Okay?’
‘Okay,’ she says, and it’s that easy. I don’t have to beg, I don’t have to convince her I’m worth it. It’s just okay, and our future starts.
She asks me if I gave Frederick the Walcott we found today. I haven’t yet, so we go downstairs where everyone is still in the garden, drinking champagne and saying goodbye. Frank is there too, holding a crow bar, and the door between our garden and his shop has been prised open. Better late than never, I guess.
I don’t know how Mum came to be here now. Later, I will find that she came to the shop to get the Dickens. As guilty as me, as sad as me, despite still thinking that selling was the right thing to do.
Now I’m just glad that she’s here.
Rachel and I take seats and I hand the Walcott to Frederick. From the way he holds it this time, I’m almost certain it’s his, but he tells us, sadly, that it’s not. Even when the shop’s gone, I’ll keep looking, I tell him. He thanks me, and accepts the offer. ‘I think perhaps,’ he says, ‘it’s the looking that keeps her alive.’
We sit here missing the bookshop before it’s gone, working out the logistics of what to do with stock. ‘Can’t we keep the Letter Library?’ I ask.
‘It’s huge, Henry,’ Dad says. ‘I already have copies of all of those books. That’s why I want the catalogue.’
‘We could house it,’ I say. ‘In the shed.’
‘What shed?’ he asks.
‘The shed of wherever we all move together.’
He smiles, and waits for me to catch up.
‘We’re not all moving together?’
‘I thought I might travel. See Shakespeare’s country, and some plays in the West End. Keep going from there to Argentina. Perhaps learn Spanish and read Borges without an interpreter before I die.’
‘You’re not dying.’
‘Well, not immediately, Henry. None of this is your fault. Your mother is right,’ he says, taking her hand. ‘We make very little and none of us can live on dreams.’
‘You need some dreams,’ Mum says.
‘Dreams and a little money,’ he says.
Mum’s crying as much as any of us and I know this is just as hard for her. I catch her looking at me after a while. ‘You’ve grown up,’ she says, when I ask her what she’s thinking. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’
Rachel
soft thoughts pass between us
Henry was in the middle of a rant when I pulled him close and kissed him. He was waving my letter and querying the validity of a love that’s date stamped.
I had a whole speech planned. I was going to make him explain, point by point, with sub points, why he’d decided it was me and not Amy that he loved. How did the turnaround happen exactly? I was going to ask for proof.
But then I decided proof was overrated and possibly not possible. It would likely just spoil the moment – a moment I’ve been waiting for, for a long, long time.
So I decide to take control of the situation and kiss him. It felt as though we were trapped in honey. And the rest of what we did, and how it was, and the words that were said, are secret.
Lying in Henry’s bed, life is not like it was before, and there are things other than death that draw lines and markers. We move in and out of sleep and talking. Henry’s window is open, and the warm night drifts through. I put my feet on the ledge to feel it.
Soft thoughts pass between us. We are the books we read and the things we love. Cal is the ocean and the letters he left. Our ghosts hide in the things we leave behind.
Henry and I go downstairs after a while, to give the Walcott to Frederick. It isn’t the one he’s looking for. It’s out there, though, Henry says to him, and promises to keep looking. Frederick says it’s the looking that keeps her alive, and I understand completely. I must search for Cal always in the things he loved.
Later, when I walk inside, the Walcott is sitting in the Letter Library, facing out.
There’s a letter in it, and it’s for me. I know it before I open the book.
Dear Rachel
I hope you don’t mind that I’m writing to you. But I have been thinking about our conversation and the death of your brother, and the great sadness that you must be feeling.
As you know, I lost my wife twenty years ago. Sometimes I feel as if I have lived without her for a decade, and sometimes I feel as though I lost her just a minute before.
I write lost, but I have grown to hate that expression. She was not a set of keys or a hat. Losing her is the equivalent of saying that I have misplaced my lungs.
I know you understand what I mean; I can see it in your face. There comes a time when the non-grievers go back to life, even some of the grievers go back, and you’re left trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.
What’s the point in living on past the point when those we have loved have left us? And how can we ever forgive ourselves for letting them go? Without Elena in the world, time did not exist. A world without time is a terrible thing. There is no certainty. Days could move quickly or slowly, or not at all. The laws of the universe have been tinkered with, and you are blindly wheeling.
But you know this already, Rachel.