Dear Francis
Hold these words close to your heart. Let no one see but you. Daylight starts to peep at last so I can write. All night I’ve lain on the turf beside McCracken’s Crag and beneath the endless stars. Remember this place? But of course you do. How wonderful it was! Remember how you whispered that the stars that blaze in the Northumbrian night are a billion miles away, that they existed a billion years ago? That we will go to them one day, that we will find folk like us out there. Like us? Imagine if they aren’t like us - they have no wars, they are not cruel, they love the littlest life. And imagine if the other thing you said was true –the stars make music, they call out to us! I listened for that music all the night. There were the owls, the trickle of a stream, the squeaking of those starlings that crowd into the trees around MrCracken’s Farm. And yes, music - distant fiddles, faint lovely singing voices drifting from somewhere to the south… No sound of guns and war, of course. Except in the echoes of the long-ago bloody battles that once raged here, that have caused me nightmares since I was a little girl. And of those vicious mocking drunken voices that chased me from my home. Yes they did that, Francis, just yesterday as the day was fading. They found my secret. What’s that? What’s in that bliddy belly, trollope? Oh, but what a way to tell you, you, who should have been the first to know…
I will write it more calmly. We are to have a bairn, Francis. Does that make you glad? Oh, the baby seems to know I’m calling out to you. I feel it kick. I want you to spread your hand on me and feel that lovely little kicking life! Why so much hatred in the world, my love? Why war back then and war right now and war so deep in people’s hearts? Why so much hatred of this little lovely life?
The sun rises above McCracken’s Crag. I will wander southwards now. I will bear our bairn across the turf, the tussocks, the peat, the rocks. I will head towards the fiddles and the songs. Surely folk who make such music must be kind. Oh, if you could wander too, away from the bullets and bombs and not stop walking till you find us! Our baby sings inside me now. Daddy, come home, it sings. Daddy, don’t die! Daddy, I need you! Come home, Francis. Turn your ears from the noise of war and listen out for us. We’ll be where the music is. Soon I’ll dance our baby on my knee and together like the stars we’ll sing you home.
With all our love,
Elaine, our bairn.
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