A Surprise Letter

One Tuesday morning last autumn, I woke early and, as usual, felt very pleased that it was going to be a day off work, which I could spend reading, writing and doing my washing. An ordinary Tuesday.

After breakfast I heard the letterbox snap and went to the door without much enthusiasm. It would probably be the usual fliers, promotional stuff, nothing personal. Then I saw something which sparked my interest. it was a cream envelope and the paper was of a very superior quality. My name was printed on it with the correct address. Could it be a circular? I turned it over and saw the address of a solicitors I’d never heard of: Green, Blackwood and Murgatroyd.  I sat down in the window seat where I had placed my mug of coffee, opened the letter and read it. 

It told me that a relative of mine had died and that they had left me the contents of a storage unit. I was puzzled because the name of my deceased relative was unknown to me – Mrs Emily Alice Ridewood. Emily Alice had lived in Taunton, miles away from my own Yorkshire home. However, the storage unit in question was actually on the outskirts of Bradford, my city. The letter also told me that I could collect the keys to the storage unit from a local solicitor at my earliest convenience. 

I read the letter three or four times to give time for this strange and exciting news to sink in. The name Emily Alice Ridewood was new to me. I had no knowledge of any distant relatives.  I needed to do some digging…

A few phone calls to family members revealed little except that Emily Alice had been my mum’s second cousin.  I engaged the help of my best friend, Margaret, who went online to discover more information. Sure enough, Emily Alice had been born in Bradford in 1920. She had grown up in the same street as my mum; one of several in the rows of back-to-back houses behind Lister’s Mill. My mum, eight years older, had sometimes looked after Emily when she was growing up. In 1939, Emily had married a young naval petty officer who was sadly killed when his aircraft carrier was attacked by a Japanese kamikaze pilot, not very long before the end of World War II.

Emily had discovered that I was the only living relative of my mum, of whom she had been really fond. Emily had never remarried but had settled in the south of England as a nanny and then a housekeeper to a large family.

So far so good. I was beginning to warm to Emily already and really cherished the connection with my mum.

A few days later, I contacted the local solicitor and collected the keys to the storage unit.   Margaret came with me. It was my first visit to such a facility, and I found it a bit creepy; all those big containers and locked doors and the grey, utilitarian decor. It looked like something from Soviet Russia.

We sorted out the paperwork with the chap in charge and he told us how to find Emily’s possessions.

With a mixture of excitement and trepidation and a certain amount of unease, I unlocked the door. In the storage unit, underneath the large, deep green dust sheet, was a beautiful ornate antique bureau. I gasped. It was so lovely with intricate marquetry depicting woodland scenes. There were trees, flowers, grasses and small animals all made out of delicate shapes in wood veneer in a riotous variety of golden shades. The legs were curved gracefully and were abundantly decorated with tiny flowers in the same wood veneer.

The desk had obviously been well cared for. There was not a mark on it and the wood glowed richly. There were several compartments and drawers of various shapes and sizes. Most of them were empty but in one of them we found a small bunch of keys. Some of the drawers were locked even though most of them were empty. 

However, in one of the larger compartments in the centre of the desk, we found a box covered in a rich purple velvet. One of the keys we had found fitted the lock of the box but we decided not to look at it immediately but to take it home.  We returned to the reception desk and  arranged to have the bureau delivered to my home.

We left and on the way back my mind was full of Emily and her treasures. What would this box reveal about Emily? I thought of her as a child being looked after by my mum. I thought with sadness of her as a young widow and of her life in service with this unknown family. Was she homesick for Yorkshire? Did she eventually have a happy life? Would I know her better when the contents of the box on my lap were revealed?

Arriving home Margaret and I first of all put on the kettle for a cup of tea. We looked  around my spacious garden flat near Manningham Park, discussing how to rearrange the furniture to give my newly acquired antique bureau a home. 

Margaret and I sat at the kitchen table looking out at the autumnal colours in the garden, and I was reminded of of the richly coloured decoration on the precious desk which was now mine.

We placed the purple velvet box on the table between us and unlocked it with the small tarnished key. Before opening it we mused together about what it would contain.  Letters? Possibly. Jewellery? Also possible. Photographs? Hopefully. 

There were five items in the box; a packet of letters tied up with string, a wedding ring and engagement ring, a photograph, and a sealed envelope. 

The photograph was of a wedding party. As was the custom in the 1930s, the group stood in front of a curtain in a photography studio. The young bride, Emily, who was only nineteen, her husband, a little older, in his naval uniform and a few other guests. To my great delight the maid of honour was my own mother, looking radiant. 

Despite my joy at seeing my mum, I was, of course, much more focused on Emily, for it was she who had unlocked her memories for me. 

The wedding ring and engagement ring I assumed to have belonged to Emily. They were so small and delicate, a thin gold band and a silver one with a single tiny diamond.

The letters were the most poignant. They were the letters she had received from her husband during his time at sea on the aircraft carrier, HMS Indomitable. No eloquent phrases here, no love poems, no opening of his heart to his young wife. Instead the letters were simply expressions of his affection for her and responses to the day-to-day news she had given him in her letters. Mundane possibly, but in his simple words the love he had for Emily shone through.  He even occasionally corrected the spelling mistakes she had made in her letters to him, gently and with humour.

Finally, I opened the sealed envelope.  In it Emily had written how she had come to own this antique desk.  It had been given to her on her retirement by her employers.  The family she had worked for had been  descendants of Russian emigres who had left Russia before the Revolution, which is why they were able to take some of their possessions with them, including this desk. Another document in the envelope gave full details of the provenance of this piece of furniture. This meant of course that it was an extremely valuable antique and Emily intimated that if I wished I could sell it.  I didn’t want to – it was so beautiful and so  full of history.  What was most precious to me in this legacy from Emily was the brief glimpse into her life and the connection it gave me to a piece of my own history.

Above is the first story I have written as part of the creative writing class I have joined