Shaken, he returned to reading the bundle of numbered pages Kate had sent him:
My parents are terribly upset, of course, and so am I. Ethie was not a happy person, but we loved her. I hope and believe that she is happy now, and in a better place. We held a quiet little funeral for her in the church at Lynesend, but we all wished we could have taken her home to Hilbegut. After the funeral we went down to the putchers and threw some flowers in the river. The tide whipped them away so fast, tiny daffodils and primroses looking so lost on that vast river. Mummy couldn’t stop crying. She said that no one ever gave Ethie a bunch of flowers in her whole life and she had to die before she could have one. None of us understood Ethie, but she was secretly very clever and loved to read, and her favourite book was The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley.
This morning I had another shock. Mummy and I were clearing Ethie’s bed, and there, under the mattress, were all your letters, unopened. Mummy said Ethie had always gone running to meet the postman while I was at work, and she must have taken your letters and hidden them. I was devastated to think that my own sister could have done that. Why, why did she want to hurt me so?
A rush of anger engulfed Freddie’s mind. He visualised Ethie’s pale sparrow hawk eyes and sent her a furious message with the power of his thought. ‘Leave us alone, Ethie. Go into the light and don’t ever come back. And if you try, I’ll have something to say to you. I’ll be waiting.’
He read on.
Please forgive my family, Freddie. They are part of me and I feel responsible. I’m sure that in time we shall get over it and that happy times will come again.
I would have loved to welcome you here on your new motorbike, but of course you didn’t know that. Will you come another time? There’s so much more I want to tell you, and I want us to have another picnic together, and next time we shall go to the sea. I want to be with you when you see the real sea for the first time! And I want to see the stone angel. Fancy you making it look like me!
I wish I could move back to Somerset, but I must stay and help my parents to get over Ethie’s death. I hope you will write to me again, Freddie, and tell me all about your work and your life, and I hope that next time I shall write you a more cheerful letter!
Love and God Bless
From Kate xx
He read the letter again, this time extracting little sparkles of light and hope from it. She hadn’t mentioned Ian Tillerman. And she’d called him ‘dearest’ Freddie. Not ‘dear’. ‘Dearest’. That felt warm and special. He stared at the word for a long time, drinking in its meaning like a man in the desert with a beaker of cider. He stared at the ‘Love and God Bless’ and the two kisses. Then he folded the letter and stuffed it back into his pocket, over his heart. Despite its sad news, it was precious, with precious grains of hope like the heads of golden barley he had gleaned from that field so long ago. Grains of gold that would nourish and heal.
But be careful, he thought, and remembered another line of Yeats.
‘But I being poor have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.’
Chapter Twenty
TREAD SOFTLY
Freddie reached under his bed and dragged out a small leather suitcase. He wiped off the dust with his hanky, and put the case on the table. It had belonged to Granny Barcussy, and as soon as he touched it he could feel the swift warm vibration of her. He’d rarely opened it since Levi had given it to him. The burning grief he’d felt was somehow trapped inside, so he’d put it away under the bed, and now his mind was on fire with the need to find something he hoped was in there.
He unclipped the two rusty clasps and lifted the lid. It squeaked and flopped back, releasing a faint scent of old lavender bags and damp. A few silverfish darted across the dark book covers, escaping from the light. Gingerly he searched inside the books, flipping the gold-rimmed thin pages; he shuffled through a box of letters and cards with crinkled edges. Nothing. Surely he couldn’t have lost something so precious?
Disappointed, Freddie took everything out, laid it on his table and stared at the cream and brown emptiness of the case. Last to come out was a flat brown paper bag, the paper eaten away in little lines and blotches by the silverfish and the damp.
He heard Granny Barcussy’s voice, clear as glass, and there she was, sitting in his chair, her crocheted green shawl around her small shoulders, her knobbly hands on the table, her eyes smiling at him. ‘It’s in the cloth,’ she said, and her image melted away into an apple-green radiance that left Freddie feeling invigorated. He picked up the paper bag and carefully slid out the dark blue cloth. The satiny fabric had been beautifully ironed and he’d never dared unfold it in case he spoilt it.
Smoothing it with his hands he remembered watching Granny Barcussy sitting in the candlelight on winter evenings stitching the cloth with gold and silver silks, so close to the candle that it illuminated her hair like cobwebs of gold. She’d embroidered the sun, moon and stars in each corner, and little curly clouds and flying birds around the edges.
‘What are you doing it for, Granny?’ he’d asked, and she’d said, ‘It’s a poem cloth, a love story, about a man who dreams of marrying a beautiful woman. It’s like a prayer, a prayer for your dreams.’
Freddie wanted the poem now with an intense spiritual hunger. It said everything he felt about Kate, and he could only remember the last three lines. He wanted all of it. Conscious of the rough, stained skin of his big fingers, he unfolded the cloth, spreading it out over his bed. In the centre, in perfect condition, was a piece of cardboard cut from a fag packet. Shaking with emotion, Freddie took it to the window to read the poem Granny Barcussy had inscribed on it in her tiny neat writing. That was it, he thought, satisfied. A prayer for his dreams.
He tucked the square of cardboard into his wallet. Then he took the dark blue cloth downstairs, past Annie who was asleep in her chair, and out into the summer twilight. The western sky was apricot and deep turquoise, with one bright star. Freddie put both hands on his carving of the stone angel and repeated the poem silently, and he could feel the words in his hands, percolating into the stone where he wanted them to stay forever. Then, with the deepest reverence, he draped the embroidered cloth right over the stone angel and left it there.
Like the ghost of a long ago ocean, the white layers of mist covered the Somerset Levels turning the hills to mystic islands. The windows of Monterose Hospital reflected the pale morning sunlight. It was an imposing building, looming over the summit of the town, and today it had an air of expectancy as if to welcome the attractive young woman who was walking up from the station, her red shoes tip-tapping smartly, her skirt swinging, her dark eyes alert with excitement.