Alice and Huntly

(Remember Huntly? He spies on Alice Greyling next door. He is married and quite happy in that. But he also remembers a time when he loved Alice - and these days he writes her letters that he afterwards burns in the grate of his fire. Here is his most recent letter. Remember, too, that yesterday Alice went for a drink with fellow teacher Dodie Bredwell - probably she did... at least he asked her.)

A LETTER FROM HUNTLY

Dear Alice

You looked different today. Not so sad. And you were speaking to yourself. Of course, I could not hear what you were saying, but your lips were moving and they seemed to be giving shape to the air and so I thought you must be speaking.

I fancied I heard what you said and invented the words. I played them out in my head. You were telling a story about something from the past. Something you only just remembered. A night when a boy stood below your window. Remember how he woke you? And small stones thrown against the glass back then, and your moonlit face at the open curtains, laughing at the boy looking up, laughing at my upturned face. And in this time where we are now you did laugh, standing there in your underwear, like I have seen you a thousand other mornings, except a hand raised to your mouth cupping laughter. How strange is that? It made me laugh, too.

You stood taller, Alice. Today taller. Straighter. As though there was a weight lifted from your shoulders, a weight that has made you too quickly old. Not old today though. Taller and straighter and younger. There is most certainly a change. I wonder what it could be that has made this alteration in you after so long a time.

Was your hair different, perhaps. Writing this and trying to remember how you were this early morning, I think there was something about your hair. Brushed in another way from how you usually brush it. There was no clasp or ribbon holding it back from your face. I am certain of that. But maybe you had pushed it behind your ear, tucked it there as you did when you were a girl. Yes, that was it. And it made your face look younger.

I am made glad by it. Whatever it is that has brought out this change in you, it cheers me also. That can be how it is with joy; it is infectious and spreads so easily from one person to another, even with nothing said. Just by looking. I say ‘joy’ for that is what it looked like. Quiet and barely held in. And I felt it too. Something of it. Now, I almost feel like leaving the house and being in the street. The first time for six years. The first time since…

Maybe if I am there in the street when you come home from work you will stop and speak to me. Not like that blue-moon night, for we are older now and not who we were then. But passing the time of day with a pleasant comment on the weather and on how things are in the town and on the difference in you.

But then the world in my head is built on maybe’s that never were. If that sounds less than happy, believe me it is not that. I do not complain at my lot, for I have a great deal to be thankful for. And now there is joy in Alice Greyling’s face and that is something else for which I think I am grateful.

With love