When I got back to Judy and Stephen’s that night, the house was empty so I decided to make a start on emptying the Carluccio’s cool-bag in the kitchen. I tore a recycling bag off the roll and tipped out the bag on the worktop. I cut open an envelope with the scissors and took out a wad of rough green paper towels. I looked at them fondly and put them in the bag for recycling.
We’d never worked out why Nancy counted napkins, tissues and toilet roll or why she kept them. While it was baffling, it was also touching. I didn’t understand it. Nancy was a good woman, a lively woman, intelligent and interested in people. It didn’t seem fair or logical that she had got dementia but life is random and frighteningly unpredictable.
I got into the rhythm of sorting. Newspapers, tissue paper, paper napkins, paid bills, vouchers for the Co-op, wrapping paper, used envelopes, new envelopes. And then, to my absolute amazement, I unfolded a letter on pink notepaper beginning: My Sweetheart.
I was so surprised that I folded it up again quickly and laid it on the table, feeling some of the superstitious doubts that Jack had expressed, because the letter wasn’t meant for my eyes. It was private. People’s secrets and endearments should die with them.
And yet – where would history be if the evidence of it was destroyed?
I sat on the bar stool to think. It wasn’t just the fact of reading Nancy’s mail that was putting me off. I was a coward, too; I was missing her and protecting myself from an emotional love story whose ending culminated in death and illness. I didn’t want to let in any more sadness right now.
I heard voices outside, and Mark, Stephen and Judy came in, flushed with the cold, surprised to see me surrounded by papers.
‘What’s all this?’ Mark asked, putting his arms around me and pressing his cool cheek against mine.
‘Nancy’s letters.’
Judy put the kettle on.
Not just Nancy’s; Richard Buchanan’s too. These were in white envelopes held together with a rubber band. The top one was addressed to Nancy c/o Le Meurice, Paris. I slid it out of its envelope, heart thumping. My Sweetheart. I couldn’t bear to see—
‘Anything juicy?’ Judy asked.
‘No,’ I said quickly, putting it back, suddenly protective.
‘Pity. You’d have thought—’
‘They’re private, aren’t they?’ I said, hoping for a bit of moral guidance.
Judy glanced at me. ‘Yes, that’s true,’ she agreed with less enthusiasm.
‘Don’t waste your time on them – you’re supposed to be writing your sequel,’ Mark said, nuzzling my hair. ‘Bin them.’
‘Don’t bin them,’ Judy said. ‘Burn them. It’s safer, if they happen to be indiscreet.’
If they were burned, they were gone forever.
‘Yes.’ I swept the letters and the remaining Jiffy bags back into the cool-bag to look at them later, and put the recycling bags outside like the good future daughter-in-law that I was.
When I came back inside Judy was saying to Mark, ‘That’s one thing you’re not going to have to worry about after we’ve gone, darling. All our personal correspondence has been by text and email.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ he said.
Stephen was indignant. ‘I always give you birthday cards and Valentine’s cards,’ he reminded her.
‘Sure, you give me cards,’ she conceded, ‘but they all say the same thing – “I love you”. They’re not even signed.’
‘I don’t sign them because you know they’re from me,’ Stephen said.
I smiled. ‘Do you keep them all?’ I asked her curiously.
‘No, I don’t keep any of them – I get a fresh supply every year.’
I laughed, loving her confidence.
I zipped up the cool-bag and took it upstairs. I wasn’t going to bin them or burn them. The letters were my responsibility. Jack had told me to do what I liked with them and I hadn’t decided what that was yet.
Mark was having a session on a climbing wall the next morning and after breakfast I went back up to the bedroom and tipped the letters out again. I sat on the bed contemplating them. If Nancy and Richard had wanted them to be destroyed, wouldn’t they have done it themselves?
After a few minutes I came to a decision – I would curate them. But I would see them as literature rather than reality.
I already knew the story; I was familiar with the overall narrative and the long-term fallout – a broken marriage, a vindictive ex-wife, a guilt-ridden father, a bitter son. I was aware of the plot.
As I was reading the letters, I found the characters. A middle-aged woman falling in love for the first time with her beloved man, who, despite public condemnation, never sees her through anyone’s eyes but his own.
Nancy wants him. And despite the age gap, Richard wants her too. But she shares her torment about the fact that she is too old to have children; he loves his son Jack and for that reason alone they know that nothing can happen. Their idea is to love each other for a little while, that’s all, and then they will let each other go.
The lies we tell ourselves.
There was a desperate letter from Richard: Penelope has found out.
There had been so many, many reasons his wife should have found out earlier that he’d convinced himself she knew and didn’t care. But that’s not how it was. Penelope didn’t know and, now that she does, she cares enormously.
A yellowed press cutting from the Camden Journal was witness to Penelope publicly burning Nancy’s books outside Kentish Town station. And another one stating that she had been charged with stealing property from Kentish Town library. Penelope is worse than broken-hearted; she’s insulted. It’s not just about the infidelity, she says, although that’s bad enough. But with an older woman? An uglier woman? A treacherous writer who has blatantly betrayed her feminist principles?
There is a letter from Nancy apologising to Richard because they can’t go anywhere without being looked at, without comments being made. And another written after they go to Morocco for a holiday and the curious rug-sellers offer them mint tea and ask if she is his mother and he says no, patiently, over and over while the men remain curious and disbelieving; she thanks him for this.
Through all this, though, I could see that Richard Buchanan loved her. He tells her so. He loves her character and her audacity and her courage. He loves her in bed and out of it. He longs for the days he can be with her.
I opened all the envelopes right then. Nancy had kept everything: notepads and notebooks; spiral-bound, perfect-bound, loose leaf. There were diaries, Filofaxes and address books; cards that had come with flowers, the Order of Service for Penelope’s funeral and invitations to weddings, letters, adverts, final demands. Nancy had kept bills and corner shop receipts and charity appeals. One package held Christmas cards, signed and unsent. There were letters that Jack had sent, cards to Daddy, paintings done at school, school photographs, school reports.
I came across Richard Buchanan’s obituary, five years previously: Survived by his only son, Jack Buchanan, and his second wife, Nancy Ellis Hall.
Jack had told me that the affair happened because Nancy was ruthless and his father was weak; as though they went into it blind and unthinking.
But Nancy understood herself better than he knew.
I could see from the letters that Nancy never expected Jack to forgive her, or for anyone else to, either. She willingly gave up all that she had been for Richard. She shouldered the guilt because it was the price she paid to be with the man she loved and she was proud to pay it. She lived with her own culpability, accepted it and never tried to justify it even to herself.
Ruthless; yes. But in among her letters and notebooks I found treasure that moved me to tears, insights, stories of a love that was solid, constant, reliable; a wellspring for good.
It was afternoon when I surfaced tearfully from the past in a daze, disconnected, a time-traveller.
Through Nancy I’d seen it for myself and understood it at last as she’d described it; love, the divine, that source of deepest, richest joy and laughter.