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It is a Christmas card. Just a Christmas card, like the dozen or so indistinguishable ones he’s already binned, Morse tells himself as he picks up the post from the letterbox. Don’t forget the four displayed on your mantelpiece, a small voice at the back of his head mutters.
But no, it isn’t just a Christmas card—for it bears a Barbados stamp. At once unfamiliar, and a tug at his heart. Because he can think of only one person who might have sent it.
The last time he’d seen her, more than a decade ago, she had fittingly admonished him. “Treat the next one better”... the words might have sounded harsh, but they hadn’t been unfair. She had never been unfair, had always been more forgiving than he deserved. And her lovely eyes had swum with unshed tears as she’d spoken those words.
Morse wrenches himself back to the present, swallowing around the lump in his throat as he forces himself to slit the envelope neatly and extract the card enclosed within. A tasteful yet whimsical photograph of a bloom-laden hibiscus bush draped with tinsel and topped with a silver star graces the cover, and he can now feel something enclosed within.
Flipping the card open, he forces himself to first read the enclosed message before looking at the articles that slide out.
Wishing you and yours all the best for the season and a wonderful year ahead.
Fairly generic, he thinks, for all that it is handwritten. More than handwritten—the stylised calligraphic script is truly beautiful, and must have taken both time and skill. Then his eyes drop to the sign-off.
Your friend always,
M.
Yes, she’s always been a true friend. Even when he tried and failed to turn them into something more. No, not failed—that absolves him of too much. He tried, and he hurt her. He also hurt himself, but that was no more than he deserved. But at least he’s learnt from the experience, he thinks. He hopes.
Arranging the card on the mantelpiece beside those from Joyce, Dorothea, Peter, and Max, he turns his attention to the two articles that had slipped out of the card.
The first is a felt poppy, very like the ones they had both worn that long-ago autumn, back when the world had seemed a fairer place and the fireworks on Bonfire Night had been but a dull backdrop to their shared kisses. And he can, even now, remember the flight of fancy in which he’d grabbed her scissors to shape his poppy into a heart before pinning it into her scarf.
This poppy though, it is whole. The felt however has been brushed almost bare in spots, as if it has been touched far too often.
Perhaps it is the one she’d worn all those years ago, then touched time and again during the dark weeks that followed… to give herself hope when all hope seemed lost. And now she’s sent it to him.
Is it too much to read into the forlorn little poppy a message of goodwill and hope? Not hope for reuniting with a love he’d wantonly rejected, but a more general hope that each successive year will be easier than the last… that he will attain a measure of contentment if not happiness.
He knows, has known for years now, that there is no road back to the joys of that autumn of 1966, no escape from the consequences of his actions of 1967. Which is only fair, his heart reminds him. As you sow, so shall you reap. That is as true today as it was eons ago. And so, he turns over the last article, the one that chronicles the happy harvest she’s reaping.
A magazine clipping, it features a low spreading building amidst lush tropical gardens, the white columns of its entrance covered almost completely by a flowering creeper and framing a smiling group of four. The caption beneath tells its own story.
Mrs. Monica Brathwaite, nee Hicks, with her husband Joseph and their 6-year-old twin daughters Prudence and Patience at the inauguration of the Charity Hicks Memorial Hospital for Women and Children. Mrs. Brathwaite serves as Matron at the hospital that honours the memory of her grandmother, who served our community as a midwife for half a century, and credits a generous anonymous donation for advancing this day by at least a year if not more.
And in the margin, a single line of writing in her hand.
Thank you for your belief in me, then as well as now.