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He Writes to Her

The letter is formal, it is twenty years since he last spoke to her. They have never written. He’s a scientist now, has left the classroom with its noisy children and works peacefully in his white labcoat among the test tubes. It is a quiet life. On Monday evening there’s chess, on Tuesday there’s bridge, Wednesday’s the night he goes to the library, Thursday’s the play on Channel 4, Friday night he has a drink with the boys from the Institute. For six minutes each Saturday morning he makes an approximation of love with Mary then takes his binoculars up into the hills and goes bird-watching. Often he takes the daughter. Mary is a good wife and an exemplary mother, she works part-time and devotes the rest of her time to their daughter. When the girl’s out with her father on a Saturday afternoon, Mary cleans the house from top to bottom then does the crossword. David likes his daughter who snuffles quietly beside him as they wait for the Lesser Golden Plover. She is allergic to the pollen-rich grass. Sundays, after Jean’s been to chapel (they don’t go, to her sorrow) she comes to them for lunch. Dinner she calls it. After lunch, it’s the rugby on the telly. Lately he’s taken to falling asleep while he watches.

Just before he licks the envelope closed, on impulse really, he picks up the photo from his desk, the one taken of him at work in his labcoat for the article in the journal. He’s grey now, but prematurely, an interesting contrast with his unlined face and his bright, direct eyes. As she slides him from the envelope it’s her he’s looking at. Straight at her. In the next room, the Syrian, whose violent love has turned to violent everything, is dying. She shows him the letter, the photo. If he comes here, he whispers from the bed, I will kill him.