Fourteen
Albert runs up the graveyard cradling the small scrap of paper on which is written the message. It is creased and thumbed and the writing is smudged but it is the most sacred object he has ever held. He has shown it to everyone he has met, even those who barely know him. Dearest Dad, Am in the best of health. Thinking of you always. Keep smiling. Kitty.
For a while, fifteen, twenty minutes on the journey to the graveyard, he dropped his guard and shared his joy with whoever was at hand, showing them the folded letter with the printed lines and Kitty’s childish hand, running his trembling fingers under the words, asking, as if he meant it, whether they had heard from any of their own. Without realizing it he has returned the island to its old ways, revisiting the discarded laws of easy familiarity and friendship.
‘Am in the best of health’ he had read with a pride that momentarily had quite overwhelmed his entrenched distaste, and there was no one who did not admire the note and wish him and his daughter well, those on better acquaintance vouchsafing that Rose would have been pleased too. “That’s where I’m off to now,” he told them, bringing his fingers up to his beret as he hurried off.