Without a Trace

   “Dear Herbert, everything I own I leave to you. Since it is your responsibility now, it is up to you what you are going to do with it. Don't feel embarrassed when you go through the letters in the safe, actually I want you to read them. I want you to know what I wasn't able to talk about. Not even with you. God bless you, you have always been like a son to me.” And enclosed the key of the safe.

    The man who wrote me this letter and whom I called 'uncle', was dead. From the moment on he heard that he was not going to recover from what he thought was a cold, it only lasted two weeks before I had to say goodbye to him for ever.

He was not my uncle, people who did not know us mistook us often for father and son, but we were not related; he was a friend of the family and I knew him all my life.

    The relationship struggled when I was a teenager but this was also the case at home with my parents who passed away a few years ago and who I loved. The bond with uncle Martin grew stronger and stronger and his loss hurts me more than I expected. That he left me all his belongings, means more to me than I can and will explain. Yet it will be strange to go through it.

    Although we shared emotions, we were both also introvert and the private emotions were us. It is strange that he wanted me to read the letters.

   It was 8 PM and a very cold night when I closed the curtains to keep the dark world outside. I added logs to the fire, poured myself a whiskey and sat down in what had always been 'my chair' and which was never reupholstered; it felt like a good old friend that embraced me.

The large box with the letters stood on the floor next to me. All bound with a string and on top a list with numbers that corresponded with those at the envelopes; he catalogued them all with dates.

    I hesitated to open the first one, it felt uncomfortable. I did not know what their content was, if it were personal letters to him and from whom. There were no stamps, someone must have delivered them. Right then I did not even notice that the handwriting looked familiar.

Staring at the envelopes did not reveal much and after a deep breath I started reading.

    The early morning light peeped through the curtains. I kept the fire burning all night until the last log and the last letter dated May 1995.

Fifty years of letters, one every month, that makes 600 letters. Each envelope contained one sheet of paper, written both sides and I read it all during a night I was not even aware of the time. I was more than surprised when I finished the last that it was 8 AM in the morning. The content was so fascinating and yet so odd and questionable, that I forgot all about time, even where I was. Or to finish my first Whiskey and I stared at the little bit that was left in the glass.

I rested my head against the back of the chair, closed my eyes and thought about what I read and if I was able to understand it.

    This was all a month ago and it is today that I am ready to tell you something about it and still this is not going to be easy. First of all I need to mention that the letters my uncle left me, were not written by someone else; it were his own letters to himself. His address at the envelopes was in his own handwriting. How odd you will think and you are probably right until you understand that it was his way to write a diary. Still a strange way to do it; the average diary writer would start with “Dear Diary”. Not uncle Herbert, he started with “Dear Herbert” and ended with “For ever yours”. No, this is not funny, actually it is very tragic, as well the content as the writing to his own address. And I have to admit that after reading the letters I doubt very much if the story that started in 1944, is true.

    In 1944 uncle Herbert was stationed in France where he fell in love with (his words) a beautiful French girl named Marie. She answered his love and promised to move with him to his country but they were young and there was a war going on although it looked like Hitler was going to loose. But their love for each other grew stronger and stronger and when France got liberated, Herbert moved with his infantry to Holland. The night before he left was their first intimate night. It were very passionate hours; as if they knew they were never going to see each other again. In the very early hours of the day of departure, Herbert left Marie with the promise to come back to marry her. Tears were shed on both sides and than one long kiss before he disappeared in the fog that lay as a blanket at the fields and the ruined houses.

    In 1945 Herbert returned home and never talked about what happened during the war. He never mentioned the horrible fightings, the death of his comrades, the liberation of France and Holland and never mentioned Marie.

Of all the letters he wrote, he wrote one to Marie but never received a reply.

I know now he sent her his address and promised her to go to the station every day, hoping to see her arriving by train.

    He kept his promise and spent much time at the small local station famous for it's candy pink colour that somehow beautifully blended with the natural colours of the countryside. Unfortunately it closed in the early 70's and is now surrounded by woodland.

    The only time Martin wasn't there was when he was taken into hospital with a pneumonia 2 months after he arrived home from the war.

A busy time for my parents who worried about Herbert's health while my mother also gave birth to me; their one and only child. This was also the time Herbert started his strange diary in which he not only expressed his deep love for Marie (if she ever existed) but also his love for me as if I was his own child.

   Maybe it was the chaotic and dramatic period just after the war that a new life of a baby, although it was the son of his best friends, made him aware of the future and the love in his heart, not killed by the terrible things he saw. Or maybe indeed his love for Marie.

    I am now at the end of Martin's story that may not look spectacular to you but which revealed more about his character to me. Because he was introvert, I never got to know what his real feelings were. He trusted these feelings to paper and than passed them on to me. Please understand that I can not go deeper into this, I am introvert as well.

    Yet he left me with a few questions. For instance why did he stop writing after 50 years? Is this because it was an important mark after the war? These 50 years of freedom were celebrated in Europe with veterans visiting the countries they fought for everyone's freedom. Where so many gave their lives.

Photo: @gioboretti (Instagram)

    And why was there an empty envelope at the bottom of the large box? An envelope with a different handwriting and a large safety pin with a blue ribbon?

And the strange address with only the name of the village and “Martin at the pink train station”???

    One day I will read the letters again, maybe I will find the answers.

Word of thanks: the photo of @gioboretti (Instgram) inspired me to write this story and I was given permission to use the photo as an illustration for which I am very grateful. Thank you Gio!

Links: please visit the beautiful Instagram Account of Gio Boretti and listen to his beautiful guitar compositions at his YouTube account.

Note: the story is pure fiction! A figment of my imagination!

Helen 

Trapped (short story)

   'Young and Happy'.... words from another world.

   Followed by 'Old and Sad'? No... I am not old nor sad. I am forgotten, yes, but so is she and I did nothing to accomplish that. Well, nothing... If agreeing to make her happy helped to accomplish it, then that was my little share. But not on purpose.
Knowing what I know now, I definitely wished I had my share in her end but the stupid fool I was, did not recognise the signs.

   Please accept my apologies, I know I sound confusing but that is exactly what it was.
Let me start at the very beginning. When we met, we were young and I felt attracted to her because she was the opposite of what I was. She was beautiful and full of life. She liked partying, dancing and laughing and had many friends. Her energy was almost unbelievable and to me like a glass of sweet bubbly wine.
The bubbles found their way to my heart and brains; I entered a whole new world and I loved it.

   Still I never understood why she liked me enough to live with me. I was astonished when she asked me to dance with her on a party I never wanted to be but dragged to by a few friends who thought I needed to have some fun. I hated the crowd, the cigarette smoke, the make up of all the girls and I hated the Charleston. The latter because I do not have a feeling for any form of rhythm.
I hated her make up too but my heart decided to fall in love with her and the pace of my life changed.

   We married, moved to her house and continued partying. With her money! I gave up my job and did not even feel ashamed. In those days you were a gigolo if you did not earn the income and your wife provided the money. That she clearly insisted was a good excuse but I should have known better...
And when I started to enjoy myself, surrounded by her friends, celebrating her way of life, spending her money on parties and travelling, she announced out of the blue she was sick and tired of this way of living and wanted a change.
   At first I tried to persuade her to skip a few parties and going to bed earlier but she said this was not going to change much. What she needed, she said, was a different life, a total change.
I talked and talked but had to give in to her ideas of changing.
She (not we) sold her house and bought a house in France of all places!

   Did she understand that her friends stayed in Derbyshire? Yes, she did but knowing them they would come over for holidays for sure.
What ever I said, she always had an answer and off we went, driving in front of the removal van packed with our belongings.

   And indeed friends came to visit us but thought it was less fun than at home. They asked me what was wrong with my wife as she was less fun too. I explained she was tired and things were going to change for the better. But it did not.
   She got more and more demanding and bossy, hardly smiled and took a great effort in commanding me. Soon came the day that friends stayed away, local visitors didn't come by any more and going out stopped. We became prisoners in our own house. Pardon, her house.
I longed for a life of my own but with any attempt to go out on my own, she reminded me I was going to spend her money. And she never failed to remind me that I lived in her house.

   Silly me, where the average spectator would have noticed long ago that I was treated as a doormat or almost a slave, I still tried to see the bright side of life and still believed that one day she would become her old self again.
It never occurred to me she successfully took control over my life. She humiliated me until I was nothing more than an insect under her shoe. An insect to play with, to pull it's wings out.
Cruelty enjoyed her, it even made her laugh again but what a horrible laugh.
It started with a smile of which I thought was the beginning of her recovery. It took so long to realise she only smiled when I suffered but at this point I could not reverse our life's, let alone mine.
Her control over me was beyond the point of change.

   Maybe it was a blessing what happened next, when she asked me to bring her suitcases from the attic. She said she hurt her back working in the garden and she suddenly decided we needed a break.
I was relieved and pleased and hurried upstairs while she was preparing a meal.
I hoped we were going to leave soon and took all the suitcases to our bedroom, starting to fill mine with my clothes and carried them to the car in the garage behind the house.

   We had a lovely meal and for the first time in years she behaved normal. She even kissed me for carrying the suitcases and asked me to come to the garden to view all the work she had done so we could leave the garden on its own until we returned.
I kissed her in return and followed her happily, looking forward to our unexpected journey.
We walked through the garden and admired the flowers until we ended up at a large hole, hidden between roses and hedges. She stood still and with a smile explained she wasn't finished yet, the hole was for the pruned branches and old leaves. If I was kind enough to inspect it being large enough?
   Happy to please her I bowed and inspected the hole. Therefore I did not see it coming, the blow on my head that knocked me inconscious. Even worse, the blow that killed me but not before I heard her last loud laugh that scared the crows in the trees. The crows that screamed my death song.

   But there is no rest for the wicked and wicked she was. She filled the hole, replanted it and walked back to the house. She took a shower, put her cloths in a bag in her suitcase with her other cloths.
   She carried the heavy suitcases downstairs, all on her own and to the car.
When she tried to unlock the car, she noticed that she had left the keys upstairs and went to get them.
To her anger, they were not upstairs and she was very certain they were not in her pockets when she undressed. The only thing she could think of was that she accidentally packed the keys in one of her suitcases.
   Annoyed about her own stupidity, she left the bedroom to hurry downstairs; she wanted to leave the house as soon as possible. But this was a mistake. Instead of walking down the stairs, she started to run and already on the second step, slipped. She tried to hold on to the banister but could not reach it any more. Her scream was an echo of that of the crows earlier that evening and ended abrupt when her head hit the tiled floor.

Photo: @urbexsud (Instagram)

    She was silent, for ever. She created an environment where nobody was ever going to look for her. She distanced from all her friends and neighbours. She became her own victim, never to know she lost the keys in the grave in the garden. The grave she filled with her own hands.

   The car and the suitcases still wait to be collected, covered in thick layers of grey dust only disturbed by spiders catching their food in large webs.


  
Word of thanks: the photo of @urbexsud (Instagram) inspired me to write this story and I was given permission to use the photo as an illustration for which I am very grateful. Merci beaucoup!!

Link: please visit the beautiful Instagram account of @urbexsud
Note: the story is pure fiction! A figment of my imagination!

Helen