The letter

Other people’s garbage. That’s what I deal with every day.

They come into the Job Center and offload their personal share of the pitiful detritus of a creaking society into my brain-pan and leave feeling a little bit better.

I, on the other hand, feel worse. There isn’t a single uplifting thing that floats past my eyes and ears in any working day. I get abused at least once a day, but the security guy Hamid is huge, so problems usually disappear quickly.

Stamp, arrange, re-arrange, stamp. Next!

A few nights a week I help clean the Roundhouse after the band audiences leave. I took on the job so I could save for a new guitar. All the dirty secrets, all the couldn’t-give-a-damn-about-the-planet plastic beer containers, all the condoms both unused and (retch) used. How they manage to have sex in public is beyond me, but it seems to happen. All the sweet wrappers and dropped knickers, lost wallets and phones, single shoes, wigs, hats, shirts, teeth, belts, iPods, charger cables…

 That night it had been a grinding goth metal-fest from Estonia. There wasn’t a single color aside from black in the entire crowd. The spotlights shone into the audience would have shown ghoulish white faces that hardly ever saw the sun floating among a blackness of black leather, lace, extravagant black hair, corsets and the heaviest of thick-soled shoes. They left the venue and disappeared into the night as if they were the night and the sun never shone.

I put my headphones on and joined my miserable late-night compadrés in lifting the hundredweight of garbage and sluicing the dried beer and Jägermeister off the floor. Goths, it seems, are just like everyone else. They couldn’t give a damn.

The trick is to sweep it all into a pile in the center of the floor and then shovel it into big bin bags. I had the edge route. Around the outer wall, the stairs, the front of the stage, back up to the main doors. As I went, Jude the rude Australian and Bingo the Croatian gambler would turn and turn about take a pile from me and sweep a radius of garbage into the center. It was a well-choreographed process, almost a dance. They could have made a musical with our elegance and sophisticated banter if we weren’t so clumsy and incoherent from over-work and lack of sleep.

Every now and then one of us would pick up something out of the ordinary and say what it was. “Wallet.” “Tenner.” “iPod.” “Ear-ring.” “Dental plate.” That sort of thing. It was worth keeping your eyes open.

My broom bumped a skirting board that had been loose for months, ever since I started the late night job. On the next sweep the hairs of the broom caught under the board. “Ach!” I yanked the broom. Anything that disturbed the pattern of sweeping, sweeping, sweeping was a frustration too far unless it was worthwhile loot. I yanked again. The broom came free but the end of the board also snapped out a few inches from the wall and didn’t snap back. I was about to kick it back into place when I saw the edge of a piece of paper lodged behind it.

I reached down and pulled it out. An envelope. Addressed on the outside in a young hand to ‘Mark Peterleigh Farnish, Lower Sunningdale, Melton Mowbray’.

“Letter,” I said and waved it.

“Letter?” Jude said and leant on his broom.

“Letter?” Bingo said too. Letters aren’t all that common in the 2020s.

I opened it and started reading the letter written in the same young hand.

“Read it out meathead,” Jude said with his inimitable light-hearted cheeriness. So I did.

“Dear Mark

I love you so much."

"Aaah," my workmates chorused. I read on.

"You have taken my heart and made it your own, even though I know your mother disapproves of me. You have also taken another part of me, and this letter is to tell you that I am pregnant with our child. My heart is so full of love for you and the baby that I cannot tell you how happy I am. I know this will be a surprise but I know you love me and that you will also be very happy, whatever your mother thinks. Please call me on the phone number on this envelope after 5pm tonight.”

I looked at the envelope. There was a phone number written on it, but it looked like an old number – Oxford 0092 865 377. Under the phone number she had also written her full name – Elizabeth Marjorie Fulmingham.

I held up the envelope and pointed to the number. The lads nodded.  “I am staying with my Aunt and Uncle. My parents have thrown me out of the house – you know what my old man is like! To hell with them – we can make our own way in the world together. Love will conquer all!”

“She’s drawn a little smiling elephant thing there,” I said. They nodded. It’s what young girls do, or at least used to do a few decades back.

“I am giving this letter to my buddy Jane Parsons – she is going to a concert tonight but she promised she would give it to you in the morning as she has a lecture with you. I am catching a train to Oxford now. When you call we will make our plans. We will get a small flat somewhere and I will get a job. You must finish your university of course and in a few years we’ll be able to buy a place of our own.

“I am so excited for the next chapter of our lives together. I know you’ve said you are not one for marrying but maybe one day… My body aches for you and my soul flies on wings of love and adoration to your arms until we meet again.

All my love

Lizzie  

17 June 1968”

“All right you lot, move those brooms!” the foreman yelled from the mezzanine. I jammed the letter in my pocket.

We left at 1am, heads down, collars up against another drizzling London night.

At home the next evening I thought it would be interesting to find out what happened to the young lovers. The internet is a wonderful thing for the inquisitive and downright nosey.

I found a Mark P. Farnish living in Harnhill outside Cheltenham. Couldn’t find his wife’s name though.

I searched for the loving and pregnant Elizabeth…and found a death notice for someone of that name who had died in August 1968.

“Sadly missed, greatly loved, Elizabeth Fulmingham. Gone but never forgotten. From her loving aunt and uncle James and Meredith Fulmingham.”

I had a sickly feeling in my stomach. I searched further for Mark Farnish and found a picture of a smiling couple at a Cirencester business event in 2010. ‘Local hotelier Mark Farnish and his wife Jane, daughter of renowned trainer Harry Parsons celebrate their 40^th wedding anniversary…’

I stared at the PC screen for a while. Did Jane lose the letter? But it was so completely shoved behind the skirting board! Did Jane hide the letter to ensure Mark was free for her to pursue? Was there another explanation?

...

Did I burn the letter and wish I had never found it?

Or did I mail it to M and J Farnish, Upper Street Farm, Harnhill, Cirencester with a copy of Lizzie’s death notice?