Undertaking Love

Chapter Twenty-Eight




Dora opened Ivan’s wardrobe, determined to fill the charity bag with clothes. His cupboard was stuffed to the gunnels with clothes than hadn’t seen the light of day for at least ten years. He wouldn’t even realise that she’d thinned it out.

Ivan’s distinct and comforting smell floated out as her fingers skimmed several immaculate suits from times long gone. She lingered as she recalled happy memories of carefree days. Of weddings and tea dances. She couldn’t toss those out.

Daunted, she moved onto the shelves. She could always come back to the suits again afterwards.

Up on the top shelf, she moved aside his gardening pullovers and threadbare checked shirts to feel around in the back. Belts and braces. A shaving brush. A chipped shoehorn.

Dora tutted. It was no wonder Ivan could barely close his cupboard doors. The ridiculous man hoarded everything.

A square edge bumped against her fingers, and she dragged the package forwards to get a better look. The sight of the yellowing bundle of envelopes held together with a frayed blue ribbon made her sigh. It had been a good many years since she’d last looked at these, and many more again since she’d written them.

She sank down on the edge of their neatly made bed and stroked the ribbon with her arthritis-riddled fingers. The liver spots and wrinkles that covered the back of her hands hadn’t been there when she’d penned the letters. She’d been young, and strong, and madly in love with her handsome soldier.

A faraway smile curved her lips as she touched the top envelope, date-stamped 1943. She could still picture her younger self so clearly, full of excitement about the dress her mum had given her as a seventeenth birthday gift. Sunshine yellow, a deft alteration of one of her mother’s favourite evening dresses. Dora had loved it with a passion, and had waited impatiently for Ivan to come back on shore leave to see her in twirl in it. She’d worn it the evening he proposed.

She still owned that dress. It was wrapped carefully in tissue paper in a box at the back of her own wardrobe, along with a very similar bundle of letters.

Her replies from Ivan, tied with an equally frayed yellow ribbon.

It had always been her favourite colour, and even now Ivan grew only yellow flowers in their front garden as an unspoken expression of his love. Daffodils in spring, and glorious huge double-headed roses throughout the summer months. Even in wintertime, the garden blossomed with the heavy scent of lemon winter sweet and fragile yellow hellebores. He wasn’t a man for overblown speeches or big romantic gestures, but from the moment they’d met, Dora had felt cherished and loved beyond measure.

He’d never wavered an inch.

She hauled herself onto her feet and tucked the letters back into their place at the back of the shelf without reading them. She knew them well enough anyway. Just holding them in her hands had been sufficient for today.

She closed the doors of Ivan’s wardrobe without throwing out a single thing.

He could keep every last moth-eaten shirt if it made him happy.