Read the winner of this year's W&A Short Story Competition...
The Gift
The bureau gleamed, firelight playing on its polished surfaces and brass handles. It fitted perfectly between the two windows of my room. I closed the curtains against the winter darkness. The bureau completed the room, made it feel like home.
I’d dug out a box of photos that Mum had given me and tipped the contents onto the bed, old black and whites mainly. My grandmother, Louisa, had to be there – and she was. About my age, she sat on a beach, wearing a print dress; a wide-brimmed hat shaded her eyes, but I could see she was smiling. I propped it up on the top of the bureau and placed tea lights on either side. The lights made it look a bit like a shrine…
Now for the ritual Grandma and I would perform on the first day of every holiday: the opening of the bureau and discovery of whatever surprise was waiting for me – a set of felt tips? a new storybook? First you pulled out the supports from either side of the top drawer. They slid into place effortlessly. A key had come with the solicitor’s letter. I imagined Grandma’s voice. ‘Gently now’. I turned the key in the lock; the mechanism clicked and I lowered the lid.
Empty. Well, what did I expect? I was 21 now, not six.
Facing you when the lid was down (to be used as a writing table) was an arrangement of six shallow drawers with bead sized brass knobs and beneath them pigeonholes with arched surrounds. These flanked a tiny cupboard, its door decorated with marquetry, its doll-sized key still in place. On either side of the door were wooden book spines, like pillars. The drawers held pencils, pens, paper clips, rubber bands and a stick of red sealing wax that Grandma would light, then allow to drip onto the string of parcels wrapped in brown paper; the pigeonholes held envelopes, letters received, picture post cards and stamps. Now the drawers and the pigeonholes were as empty as the rest of the desk.
I’d fill them with my own stuff – notebooks, pens, postcards, post-its, stamps. My laptop would fit nicely, too. I knelt down, lay my arms on the writing table and closed my eyes, glad my to be on my own, unobserved. ‘You can do whatever you put your mind to,’ Grandma used to say. ‘You just have to want it enough.’ I imagined the faint scent of dried ink, the almond taste of glue. A red box of du Maurier cigarettes was kept in the little cupboard ‘to help me concentrate’ Grandma justified her habit. ‘A bad one,’ she added. Did their scent linger there? I took a deep breath. There was a scent. No, not a scent, a stink! It seeped from the little cupboard and caught in my throat.
A log hissed and spat orange sparks into the blackness of the chimney. ‘You’re such a dreamer,’ Mum used to grumble, ‘just get on with it.’
The key turned easily, the door swung open; a stench of rotting eggs hit me. I buried my face in my sleeve while gingerly reaching my other hand into the space until my fingertips felt something the size of a bar of soap, solid yet powdery. I held it for a second then dropped it on to the hearthrug where it glowed in the firelight.
I left it there, and sat staring at the fire remembering the last day of my last holiday at Grandma’s. I was eight and reluctant to go back home and to school. ‘There are three secret hiding places in the bureau,’ she said. ‘Next holiday I’ll show you. Promise!’
But there was no next time.
They couldn’t be that difficult to find. I tugged at one of the wooden book spines; it wouldn’t budge. I tried the other one, and after some wiggling it slid out. It looked like a slipcase for a hardback book, but there was no book inside. There was, however, an envelope with a foreign stamp, addressed to Miss Louisa MacFarlane, Gloucester Mews, the rest was smudged. A love letter from a long dead lover? An explorer who’d died of a fever, or a soldier killed in the war? Heartbroken, Louisa kept the letter as a memento of a love that was nipped so cruelly in the bud.
The letter was from Lambaréné, in French Equatorial Africa. It was typed.
Dear Miss MacFarlane,
I apologise for taking so long to reply to your delightful letter. The post takes weeks to reach us out here, and there was much to do on our return as there had been violent storms with the coming of the rains that had caused a good deal of damage to buildings and roads and bridges.
I was very pleased to meet you in London, and I am glad that you enjoyed the Bach recitals. The acoustics at the Brompton Oratory are superb. In Dr Wood you have an excellent teacher.
However, I would not consider accepting your generous offer to work in my hospital without the agreement of your Father and the blessing of your Mother. Should you still be resolute in your desire to work with us here at Lambaréné after you have completed your studies, and should your parents be agreeable, I would be delighted to welcome you amongst us. You have to realize that it is a hard life here. The climate is not kind, and we daily witness the effects of poverty, disease and ignorance. Our attempts to counter these are often met with resistance.
I look forward to meeting you again one day, and in the meantime, enjoy your music and for the time being cast aside your ‘wanderlust’.
God bless you. I remain, yours very sincerely,
I stared at the signature. A. Shmatzer? Definitely not a love letter, and nobody had ever said anything about Grandma going to Africa or working in a hospital. Perhaps she’d met Grandpa and gone off the idea. But why keep this letter? I turned on the overhead light and everything looked ordinary, no atmosphere at all.
The other wooden slipcase was the obvious place to look for a clue, but it wouldn’t budge. Pushing my fingers under the arched surround of the little cupboard door, I pulled gently and the whole thing came away - a wooden box smelling of bad eggs. I hooked my fingers behind the second slipcase and eased it out. Empty. Turning the box in my hands I peered at it from all angles. It looked smaller inside than out. I ran my fingers over its internal surfaces until I felt a tiny metal button. I pressed it gently and the top of the box dropped down, revealing a third compartment, barely an inch high. In it was an envelope, For Sophie written in blue-black ink. The letter was dated just three months ago:
My dear Sophie,
You’ve found the hiding places. I knew you would! And I hope this gift makes up in a small way for all the years we’ve been unable to meet, or indeed communicate. I shall explain … but first of all the bar of sulphur...
********
Louisa lifted the bar of sulphur from its box and sniffed. Her sense of smell, along with all her other senses, was going, almost gone now. Nevertheless the sulphur left a foul taste in her mouth. She grimaced. She was tired to her bones, but on mornings like this she felt strong enough to act.
She took a cigarette from its pack – nasty cheap things. Sense of taste had gone too, so why bother with good cigarettes? Why bother with food? It all tasted like cardboard in her mouth, like wartime dried eggs, sawdust-thickened jam. She held the cigarette between her lips. Her hand shook as she fumbled for a match. Every movement was an effort. Her body wouldn’t obey her unless she gave it her full attention, and even then her hands shook, eyes refused to focus, legs to co-ordinate, bowels to move. Her brain mislaid words that appeared hours later, often in the middle of a quite separate train of thought.
She breathed the smoke deep into her lungs, sending nicotine coursing through her arteries, faster than her sluggish blood. Leaning back, she re-read the few words that she’d written to Sophie. She’d get some money as well as the bureau, enough to take her on a trip to Africa, anywhere she fancied, from Alexandria to Zanzibar. Most of all, though, Louisa wanted Sophie to visit Lambaréné.
Supposing, though, the girl wasn’t interested in travel, or Africa. She might even be married, with a husband and babies. In which case she’d most likely want a new washing machine for the nappies. No, not nappies. They were all disposable these days. Should she stipulate that the money was for purposes of travel only? No! In any case they might jet off to a five star hotel in Las Vegas for a fortnight rather than make their way across the deserts and mountains of Africa.
Louisa watched the smoke spiral blue in the early morning light that gilded the few pieces of furniture that she had kept for her care-home room; it silvered the surface of her most treasured possession, a painting of Cecil commissioned at the height of his career, when he crossed continents with the quartet. Or the quintet, she thought dryly - the lovely Evelina at his side, his PA as she called herself, while silly, faithful Louisa stayed at home washing nappies, proper terry nappies that stank, ammonia rising from a bucket of yellowing water. The memory of the smell was enough to make her eyes water. The memory, or the smoke, or the bar of sulphur. Or the picture of Cecil. He’d gone. Then there was Norman, who loved her, and would never leave her. But with Norman came the Brothers who kept her apart from the sinful world. They were all dead now, apart from the child, traced via her carer’s computer.
So, Sophie should have the bureau and some money. The rest would go to medical research: wasn’t AIDS the leprosy of the 21st century? She stubbed out the cigarette. Smoking always helped her think clearly. She resumed her writing, which, despite the trembling in her hands, was still clear:
… the bar of sulphur. I can just see you wrinkling your nose in disgust! But for me it’s a reminder of what might have been. The bureau belonged to my father who died years before you were born. He was a severe man, and I entered his study only by invitation. I’d had your mother by the time he died, leaving me the bureau in his will. In it I found the letter he kept from me for so many years.
Father didn’t expect to die. I, however, do not expect to see the New Year in.
I wonder why he kept the letter from me. Perhaps, like so many men, he thought he knew best. He was proud of my talent, and envisaged a glittering musical career for me – sadly I disappointed him on that score.
In those days they used sulphur to treat infections, and I planned to take this bar with me when I’d sail to Africa to join the volunteers at Dr. Schweitzer’s hospital for lepers. I was so sure he’d write to invite me… I never saw him again.
… I wonder, Sophie, would you visit Lambaréné for me?
Control from beyond the grave? Horrible! She scratched through those words, the ink spattering, and wrote: I like to imagine you crossing the Ogooué River to Lambaréné, or making your way down the Nile, but you must follow your own dreams, not mine. I trust you will do something unexpected, something special.
********
I grabbed my laptop from the bedside table and typed in Lambaréné and Schweitzer. Grandma’s bequest of £10,000 was already in the bank.
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