Dear Annie...a letter I found

Here's a letter I found inside a book (Voltaire's Candide):

Dear Annie,

It is a long time since I last heard from you: I hope you've been well.

My room is at the end of a long corridor, and overlooks the courtyard. It's small and I have to lie on the bed to take my shoes off. I have a wardrobe, a small desk, a chair and a bed. I love the wardrobe, which is a dark wood thirties thing, Utility issue. I can sit inside and enjoy the dark silence. If you come and visit we could sit in it together. You'd like it's mysterious smell, dust and wax combined.

I sit at the desk and look out the window. Usually I hear little from the courtyard save the sound of water running down the drains. There's frosted glass on most windows but at times, I catch the creaking sound of a frame moving and the face of one of my neighbours appears, usually a pasty woman, with grey fair hair, a face suspended in the indeterminate period that strikes some women, older than twenty -five but younger than sixty. Sometimes it is another face, the face of a little plump girl: her fresh pink mouth smiles, her eyes are tiny bright black dots in her fleshy face.

Also, twice I saw a Siamese cat, perched with absurd elegance on the seat of an old bicycle... so the atmosphere is tranquil, like a Dutch painting: I wouldn't be surprised to see a clog-wearing servant appear with a white smock and bonnet and broom at any moment, clogs clicking on the cobbles.

I'm fighting the goblins still, but we have reached a sort of truce: the room has been divided in two.

We marked the floor with a white chalk: theirs are the areas between the door and my furniture- though the place is so small that to reach my furniture I must always trespass and, moreover, the chalk line cuts the left side of the bed (the only way we could realise complete parity of room area), so I have to be wary when I sleep not to let my body stray over to the side. But that was the best compromise we could find. At least they aren't shrieking all the time.

I hope to see you soon,

T. 

I suppose I wrote the letter some years ago in Camberwell.


Illustration: Arched Windows, monotype, 45 / 61 cm, 2003

When All's been Said and Done - an Annie Story

I`m walking down Piccadilly. The weather is atrocious. A wind blows in gusts across Green Park.

Sometimes I hate myself. I have periods of psychic pain. Sometimes I feel as if the world is full of violence, and my mind is just numb from it. At other times I`m overcome by anger, I want to use the energy of that but I can't find an outlet.

Occasionally, I have flashes of Annie. Annie and myself, mostly just talking.We shared a dreadful flat in Camberwell and we were mostly depressed.

So what? We loved each other.

One day Annie awoke and said, "What the fuck is going on?"

"What," I said.

"I mean," said Annie, " What are we doing. It`s all so shit. we aren't`t going anywhere.

"Oh fuck," I said. I was sort of hoping she wouldn`t notice how bad it all was.

We were living in a little flat in Camberwell which we shared with some guys from Morocco who never spoke to us. It was all a bit squalid and strange and neither of us had much in the way of work or money.

In the Garden - An Annie Story

*

In the garden

One of the places I went with Annie was a garden. It had walls and you could stroll about in it. I was impressed by the range of flowers and the strong mature trees. There was a charming Yew hedge and even a little rose garden. 

 But as we strolled admiring the fine lawns and Annie became increasingly silent, pensive even and I had begun to wonder if there was anything amiss.

 “Annie, why are you so silent,” I asked, “you are like a walking brick.”

 “Well…”said Annie. 

 “Yes?”I said. 

 “Well,” continued Annie, “it is just that the garden is so very beautiful but we will have to leave.” ‘Yes,” I said. “That is surely unfortunate. We shall have to leave and return to our squalid flat in South London.”

 “Mmm…” murmured Annie. sadly. 

 “Hmm,” I responded, in what I thought was an appropriately sympathtic fashion. 

 But as we walked down the path a large monster appeared, like a snake with eagle wings and talons. 

My dear, we fled!

*

I Love You - An Annie Story.

"Do you often think about escape?" asked Annie.

" Don`t so much now, but I used to. I used to think about it all the time, and sometimes the desire to escape became so strong that I wanted to commit suicide."

Annie began laughing. "You are quite preposterous," she said.

*

A pause.

*

"I love you," I said.

"Do you? Do you really?" said Annie.

"Yes. I do. I love you more than anything."

"Really?"

"Yes. I do, I really do."

At the Shore - An Annie Story

I remember once we were sitting around waiting by the shore, waiting for something to happen. It`s a bit like that here. You can spend doing not much and it seems to be ok.

"Do you like to watch the boats coming into the harbour? "

"it always makes me feel so sad", she said.

I laughed. "You are so sentimental". It was one of those complements we proffer which is disguised as a criticism. Perhaps we fear loss of our status within the relationship if we allow out lover to believe we admire them, as if admitting this would lend them power over us.

"Oh don`t be silly," said Annie. "It isn`t sentimental in the least."

And as the yacht drew closer to the quay I could better make out the expressions of the mariners, and they were filled with incredible weariness. One might doubt that their voyaging had given them any pleasure whatsoever.

The Summerhouse - An Annie Story

So, I said

Yes, said Annie

I was standing there looking at the shop windows, thinking how sorrowful they were. I remembered a conversation with Annie. With Annie, everything had a certain brisk likeliness. She didn’t care whatsoever what anyone else thought either, except so far as it entertained her.

I was thinking about this time we’d been in the woods at the back of her parents’ house. The woods were ash and beech. We used to go there to smoke cigarettes when we were 16.

I wonder if her parents knew about the smoking? They were liberals and reasonably wise, and I think they did know, but thought it a minor sin, not worth creating bad feeling over. That was a good thing about Annie’s house, you felt that you were in the world of adult choices.

There was a rotting summer house. You could sit there in when it rained, hidden from the house by laurel bushes. One evening I’d taken some whisky there and sat listening to the wind softly hushing in the trees and it grew darker I’d felt this romantic frisson, which I had chosen not to act on. I still wonder if Annie had felt a frisson too? I know I chose not to act on it because I was young and knew it and knew that I wasn’t ready for that sort of thing, but, idiotically I am unable not to regret it.

On reflection, I think Annie had probably known what I was feeling, being able to sense things like that, but she didn’t think of me in that way. She thought of me more like a brother.

I remembered being with Annie in the creaky summerhouse with the smell of damp timber and having conversations like that.

The Smoking Man- An Annie story.

*

   I’m at the bus station an hour early waiting for Annie in the little restaurant. There’s a guy there, sitting, smoking. That’s all he’s doing- smoking very slowly, puff puff puff, puff. The cigarette is held quite daintily between his index and middle fingers at their ends (I wonder how it occurred to him that that was the easiest way to hold a cigarette? Surely there is less chance of it being crushed if you hold it in a v, like Churchill and his cigar?). He holds the smoke in for along time. His lungs must be big or his throat long or both, because it seems forever before the smoke comes out, first in a long jet of smoke, like the smoke form a steam train.. Then after a while, it drifts out in a soft cloud. It lingers there. The face of the guy isn’t sad but somehow I imagine that it ought to be. I wish I weren’t like that, thinking people should be sad for no reason at all. It’s so still in the restaurant that the smoke hands around lingering before it disperses too. I guess it’s what he likes doing most. He’s got some beer in a bottle there, but he’s not sipping. Annie won’t be here for an hour but I couldn’t think of anything better to do than wait in the bus station. I thought that maybe if I went to the bus station I’d be closer to her.

*