As Joely picked up the next letter, she was aware of the deep pain in her shoulder pounding in time with her heartbeat and spreading its ache into her neck and her head. It was draining her, making her feel nauseous again, but she was determined to go on. However, she didn’t start reading straightaway; instead she kept a discreet and cautious eye on Freda as the older woman’s eyes moved quickly over the pages she was holding.
Joely saw her flinch, and her jaw tightened for a fraction of a second before she appeared to return to the start of the letter. She read it again, more slowly this time, taking in all it was telling her, absorbing it into what she already knew. Someone else’s story was trying to erase her own, and her own brother was providing a stronger and more honest voice to the events Freda had presumed to know so well.
Eventually, Freda put the letter aside as if it had meant nothing, changed nothing—maybe she was telling herself it wasn’t real. Whatever was in her mind, her eyes were unreadable as she stared at Marianne, who was so engrossed in her task that she seemed to have forgotten anyone else was in the room.
Joely fumbled with the next letter and closed her eyes for a moment as a spasm of pain flared through the break in her shoulder. When eventually it receded, she felt her mind start to clear and as she breathed more freely she began to read.
Oh, Marianne, Marianne,
Why have you not told me this before? Why has no one allowed me to know that I am to be a father? Are my parents aware of this? Why would they keep it from me?
You and I have created a child. I want to write those words a thousand times and shout them out loud in joy and in fear.
Since receiving your letter I have experienced more heartache and longing than I’d ever imagined possible—and most of the time I’ve been in here those emotions have been my constant companions. There have been many others but those two, along with a love as deep as oceans, are what connect me to you.
Yes, my angel, my heart is as connected to you as you say yours is to me. I have resisted telling you this because I didn’t want to tie you to me, to give you hope for a future that cannot be the way you want it to be. We will discuss that another time, but right now all that matters is the baby and how much his or her arrival will mean to us both.
You say you are due to give birth sometime in the next two weeks and it is half-killing me to know that I can’t be with you. I am already picturing myself holding it in my arms while you look on and our love wraps itself around the tiny being we have created.
Marianne, my beautiful, perfect angel; my joy and inspiration. Since being in here I have been unable to listen to music in the way we used to, and I have written nothing, but now I know that I can. I shall try to compose a melody for our son or daughter and I’ll send it to you so you can play it for them. Do you have a preference, Marianne? Would you like a boy or a girl? I keep asking myself that question, and I find that I don’t mind at all. Although I can’t help imagining a little girl who looks exactly like you. Even as I write that I can hear you saying that you would like to have a boy who looks like me. (Poor him if he does—ha ha! This is the first time I have laughed in so long that it has taken me by surprise and now I am laughing again. This is what you do to me, my Marianne, you bring light into the darkness, and warmth into the chill of these miserable walls.)
My conscience tells me that I should still be urging you to forget me, to stop my selfishness and free you to find the happiness you and our child deserve. But I find myself unable to do it. I have so many letters from you now and your love for me pours out of every line as sweet as music, and as sincere as each beat of your heart. I treasure each one of them as deeply as I do the memories we share. I read them over and over, picturing you, as you write them, hearing you, smelling you and always loving you. They are my sustenance and solace, Marianne, my blessed escape from these hellish times. Yes, I have tried to stop you from writing them, but for your sake, never for mine.
No, I will not do as you ask and tell you about my life in here, it would be like sprinkling a foul disease into a pool of purity and innocence. The time I spend writing to you and thinking about you is my haven and I will not allow anything in here to taint it.
I am sure you’ve already considered what having a child will do to your education, and I confess it concerns me a lot. You say your parents have been supportive from the start, that they have never tried to persuade you to give the baby up either in the early days or after it is born. Have you discussed your education with them? Will they continue to support you if you want to take your O and A levels and perhaps go on to university? I know money isn’t a problem for them, but it isn’t for my family either, so I shall write to my parents today to ask them to do what they can to support their grandchild.
I’m sorry I must end this now, my darling girl, as I have duties to fulfill, and also I want it to get to you as quickly as possible. I am sure it will be read by somebody else before it leaves here, but I don’t see any reason for anything to be crossed out, or for it to be withheld.
I hadn’t realized until now how freeing it would feel to write to you; holding myself back from you has put me in a prison of another kind altogether. By the next time I write I shall have composed a melody for our baby so I will be able to send that too. I only hope that the censors can read music and don’t think the notes are some kind of code.
Please put your hands over the baby and sing Bob Dylan’s “Paths of Victory.” Or, if you don’t feel like singing perhaps you will play a recording of Brahms Symphony No. 3 in F Major. I play this often in my head and remember you as my private ballerina. If you have a piano you could play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’” and remember how you made me laugh the day you surprised me with it.
How long ago that seems.
A la prochaine, ma Marianne,
David
Joely put the letter aside and reached for the photograph again. There was so much in her mind and in her heart—questions, feelings, all kinds of imaginings—that it wasn’t easy to go to any one of them first. She wished Jamie was here so he could read this letter too, could know how joyful his existence had made his father, how it had released a young man from his prison, but of course he would read it, if he wanted to. She’d like to call him now, and tell him to come, but that must be her mother’s decision.
She looked up as the door opened and Callum came in with a tray of tea and biscuits. Her stomach rumbled reminding her that all she’d eaten during the past seventy-two hours was the croissant she’d had this morning and a snack bar when they’d stopped at a motorway services for fuel. How could she have forgotten about food when it was normally such a passion for her?
“I thought you might be needing this,” he said, carrying the tray to the coffee table.
“Thanks.” Joely was hardly able to wait, but as she tried to sit forward a burst of pain made her gasp.
“You need to lie down,” Callum told her quietly. “You’re still recovering from the fall and you look exhausted.”
“I’ll be fine once I’ve had some tea,” she assured him. She glanced at her mother and saw that Marianne hadn’t even registered Callum coming into the room. She was staring at the laptop screen either searching for the right words to help her continue her story, or so lost in her memories that her fingers had simply stopped trying to convey them.
Freda was already filling the cups, again as if she was the host, and after passing one to Callum to give to Joely she helped herself to another. The third was left on the tray for Callum to take to Marianne.
“Thanks.” Marianne murmured so softly it was as though she was afraid that any spoken word would interrupt the flow of those in her head.
Going back to Joely, Callum said, “Can you take any more painkillers yet?”
She nodded. “I think so. They’re in the kitchen.”
He came back with them and a glass of water and perched on the edge of the coffee table in front of her. As he fed her the pills he said, “I’m worried about you. What you’ve been through . . . Don’t underestimate it. You need to rest.”
“I will, don’t worry.” She allowed her eyes to meet his and felt a swell of emotion as he held her gaze in spite of her first thought going to Martha. When had he last been in touch with her? What had made him end the relationship? And why was she so close to tears?
Tiredness, she reminded herself, and perhaps some delayed shock.
Realizing Freda was watching them she picked up the second letter and passed it over. None of this was going Freda’s way, but at least she was hearing the truth from her brother so she could hardly refute it.
“Andee rang,” Callum said softly. “She’s tried contacting Edward, the nephew. It seems he’s skiing in Switzerland, but she’s left messages for him to call you or me asap.”
Joely nodded and drank some tea. “Did she say how her mother is?”
“Apparently nothing to worry about.”
Feeling Andee’s relief, she said, “That’s good.” She looked at him again and was almost overwhelmed by a longing to go and lie down with him, to fall sleep in his arms and wake up to discover that all that had gone wrong between them was a dream. “Have you heard any more from Holly?” she asked.
“Only that she lost her bag but now she’s found it again.”
With a smile, Joely said, “Sounds like her.”
“Your phone’s fully charged,” he told her, “do you want it in here?”
Joely thought about it. “Not really,” she replied. “If Edward calls I’d rather you took it to explain what’s happened.”
“Sure. I’m making great inroads with my emails out there,” and touching a finger to her cheek, he left.
After Joely had drunk the rest of her tea she gave herself a moment to feel its warmth combining with the painkillers to begin reviving her.
She looked over and saw that Freda was frowning deeply as she read David’s second letter, and her mother had begun to type again. Joely wondered what this was all leading to, if Freda would be able to accept that she’d got it wrong about Marianne, if the false narrative she’d constructed for herself was going to feel as though a main character had turned on her to take over the story and leave her . . . where?
Returning to the bundle she opened the next letter and saw that it was dated a month after the last one, so the baby would have been born by now.
My darling Marianne,
Thank you for bringing our beautiful son to meet me; and thank you for letting me choose his name. Are you sure you like James? Or Jamie if you prefer. As I said while you were here I didn’t want to name him after a relative or a favorite musician, I want his name to be completely his. I’m sorry I forgot to laugh when you suggested we call him Wolfgang in honor of Mozart, I was so overcome by him and by you that I seemed to lose a sense of everything else.
I didn’t think it was possible for you to be even more beautiful than I remembered, but you are. Perhaps it’s being a mother that has given you a deeper and more captivating radiance. I’m sure it is. I wish my family would agree to get to know you, they would understand then why I love you so much. They make me ashamed for the way they are turning their backs on their grandson—they are refusing to believe he is mine, but I know that he is. It is their loss and one I am sure they will come to regret.
All the time you were here you talked about our son’s little ways and how they made you think of me, and as I watched you laugh and pout and kiss him I kept thinking of how wrong it was for you to be somewhere like this. It’s no place for a baby, or for you, my darling girl. I know you must have heard the shouts and jeers, the awful things that were said and I need to protect you from that.
You have made me the happiest man in the world, don’t ever be in any doubt of that, but now I have to ask you not to come again. This isn’t how I want to get to know my son, nor is it how I want him to get to know me. We must create wholesome and beautiful memories for him untainted by images of his father in prison.
I know you are going to find this hard, Marianne, but I have decided for your sake, and for our son’s, not to send you any more visiting orders. Please understand my reasons, and please know that it is only because I love you so much that I am doing this.
If you continue to write I will, of course, write back and I will always cherish any news of our son, but I want you to think about this carefully. There is a wonderful and fascinating world out there for you to explore, one full of opportunities and hope, and so very different to the one I am in. I want to think of you embracing that world, taking all it has to offer and showing it all to James. I don’t want to picture you sitting at home writing to me, or taking long train journeys to this dreary part of our country to snatch an hour where we can.
Please think about this with your head and not your heart, Marianne, and try to put what’s best for Jamie first, and any time spent here will never be good for him. Or for you.
Tonight I shall fall asleep thinking of you in Paris and how happy we were there. I noticed you were wearing our ring when you came. Do you remember we chose it because the moonstone symbolizes love?
David
As Joely read through the next few letters it soon became apparent that Marianne had persuaded him to change his mind about visiting. In fact, she’d clearly made her way to Dartmouth with the baby at least once a month for the next several months, and seeing her and his son became, in David’s words, “the focus of my world, the reason to live.”
It surprised Joely to realize that her grandmother often drove Marianne all the way there and waited in the car for the single hour allowed for young Jamie to get to know his father. It was also her grandparents who’d paid for Jamie’s care while they worked and Marianne continued with her studies.
The letters were moving in so many ways, including their humor, which, though infrequent, was made all the more touching for its rarity. It mostly came in the form of a tease for something Marianne had once said, or done, or in a prideful boast about his “magnificent son.” From the way he wrote commenting at length on something she’d told him, or answering her questions carefully and honestly, it was easy to imagine Marianne’s letters to him. What he never told her anything about was his life inside the prison. It was only possible to gauge something of it from his assurances that the bruising on his face, or his loss of weight, or his sadness were nothing for Marianne to worry about.
His disappointment and anger at his family for the way they continued to refuse to meet their grandson, or communicate in any way with Marianne and her parents, was almost palpable from the words he used. And his pride and relief that Marianne had achieved no less than eight O levels—a year late because of pregnancy—mattered as much to him, it seemed, as the miraculous emergence of Jamie’s first tooth.
He sent lists of songs and symphonies for her to listen to and play to their son, and told her how much he loved the way she wrote out the lyrics of his favorite ballads so he could hear them “inside the shell of quiet I create for myself.” They exchanged poems, many by Keats and Shelley, and when Marianne sent him Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How I Love Thee” he said it had moved him to tears. He thanked her over and over for the photographs she sent of Jamie—until suddenly, surprisingly, he asked her not to send any more. There was no explanation, and Joely wondered if other inmates had mocked or even destroyed those he already had.
After that the tone of his letters began to change, there was more sadness in them than there had been before, more concern for the way her contact with him must be holding her back, and for how his prison record was going to affect their future if they tried to build a life together.
I know this is hard for you to read, my love, and it’s hard for me to write, but my record will always show me as a convicted sexual deviant, worse a child sexual deviant, and that isn’t what I want for you and our son.
It was apparent that Marianne had written straight back to tell him that they would change their names and move to America or Australia where no one knew them, because in his next letter he asked her to listen to “California Dreamin’.” They could be safe and warm in LA.
However, by the end of that same letter he was sounding sad again, and even querulous as he feared for the kind of man he would be by the time “this hellish experience is over.”
There is a lot of hate for me in here because of the kind of crime I committed. Even the warders despise me.
After that the letters ran out and as Joely looked over to her mother she was already afraid that she knew why. Marianne had stopped typing now and was sitting with her head in her hands.
Going to her Joely put a soothing hand on her back and leaned in to rest a cheek on her head. Freda shouldn’t have made her mother do this, she had no right to; it was time for her to leave.
“No,” Marianne protested quietly as Joely asked Freda to go. “She needs to read what I’ve written, you both do,” and getting to her feet she carried the laptop out of the room.
Realizing she’d gone to the printer, Joely looked at Freda, who hadn’t spoken in so long it might have been easy to forget she was there. The letters she’d read were piled loosely on the table in front of her, but the thoughts, the feelings, the memories they’d engendered were packed so tightly inside her it was impossible to know what they were. Surely none were good for there was no doubt now that her family had not behaved kindly, or even honorably, toward Marianne or Jamie. Nor could she begin to question her brother’s devotion to “the love of his life” as he’d frequently described Marianne, and their son.
Joely said, “According to those letters your mother went to visit him several times so she must have known how he felt about—” She stopped abruptly as Freda’s arm rose to cut her off.
“You have no right to discuss my mother, or my father,” she snapped. “We have not yet heard the whole story.”