August 1945

Dearest Mary,

I have two shirts, three pairs of socks and underwear (but only two vests), 1 pullover, 1 sleeveless jumper (green), 1 pair of trousers, one jacket which is warm but a little short, and one tie. With some effort, I can keep myself looking tidy.

You’ve always said that you can see everything in my face, but I’ve got a good deal better at setting my eyes since I saw you last.

Did you change the wallpaper in the front room? Ma’s fancy mirror was still on the wall above the mantelpiece, but her china birds were gone.

We were a fair few of us from the West Country there but no-one had come with me all the way. Rob Mester, he didn’t make it, nor Bill Cockburn. Maybe you knew that.

It was a bright day one time. There should have been no bright days there but it’s just another country and the sun shines and doesn’t shine just the same as here. I was in the exercise yard and I held my hand up to the light and could almost see through it to the veins and the bones and the blood.

Kildale, 14th August 1947

Dearest Mary,

I crossed the high moors this week. They are pink in all directions and mostly empty, and the earth under my feet was solid and warm like a baked pot. A day or so ago I came across a girl in a cotton dress picking berries - she looked like you when you were that age - stringy with plaits. 

In the cellars there are empty meat hooks ranged on the ceiling, narrow shelves and shallow cupboards. There are sometimes scratching sounds in the back stairwell - the presence of small beating hearts behind the walls gives me some comfort that I am not entirely alone.

There is a strange house built on the fringe of beach here, almost in the sand itself.  It is large and stolid - the windows are of different sizes, and placed oddly around its four faces as if it had been built from the inside out.  I dreamt that I was in this house last night, you were there and the girls were there too, and there was a fire which trapped us inside. There were stairs and steps in the house, going up right to under the roof but no door to leave by and all the windows were shuttered.