S. C. WORRALL was born in Wellington, England and spent his childhood in Eritrea, Paris, and Singapore. Since 1984, he has been a full-time freelance journalist and book author. He has written for National Geographic, GQ, The Times and the Guardian. He has also made frequent appearances on Radio and TV, including the BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent; NPR and PBS. He speaks six languages and has lived in or visited more than 70 countries. The Very White of Love is his debut novel.
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First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Simon Worrall 2018
Simon Worrall asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008217525
Version: 2018-09-17
For Nancy and Martin
Je lève mon verre
Her hands are clasped in the blue mantle of heaven
And the sea, her haven, is flecked with the white of love
‘OUR TRUE BEGINNINGS’ BY WREY GARDINER
It was decorated with red roses and tied with a piece of red ribbon, a battered, cardboard chocolate box at the bottom of my mother’s wardrobe. I lifted the box out and put it on the bed next to a pile of her clothes we were donating to charity. Inside were bundles of love letters, yellow with age, tightly bound with string, fastened with tiny knots, as if those knots alone could hold them in place.
Back at my cottage in Herefordshire, I erected a makeshift altar in the window of my study, which overlooked the pub garden and the Black Mountains beyond. For an altar cloth I laid one of my mother’s favourite blue shawls over the top of a chest of drawers, placed a vase of wild flowers and some mementos of her life: a silver bracelet she had bought in Singapore; some of her notebooks and poems; a photograph of her, aged five, sitting with a white, cotton bonnet on her head, in a field of daisies. At the back of this improvised altar, I placed the box of letters and two white candles.
Her death was still new and raw. So the box lay unopened for almost two weeks. I sat by the kitchen window watching the river flow past, hoping it could take my sadness with it. I was a motherless child in my fifties. Divorced. Anchorless. Winter was coming. I went for long, lonely walks across frost-covered hills. In the evening, I doused myself with wine and nicotine, falling asleep to the sound of otters whistling on the riverbank, under a moon that shone like a silver penny on a bolt of black satin.
Then, one rainy afternoon when I was stuck indoors, I untied the knots.
Contents
19 SEPTEMBER 1938: Whichert House
22 OCTOBER 1938: Whichert House
CHRISTMAS EVE 1938: Whichert House
25 APRIL 1939: The Oxford Union
25 JUNE 1939: The River Isis, near Oxford
6 AUGUST 1939: High Wycombe Railway Station
3 SEPTEMBER 1939: Blythe Cottage
23 SEPTEMBER 1939: Whichert House
3 DECEMBER 1939: Whichert House
13 DECEMBER 1939: Levant, Sussex
CHRISTMAS DAY, 1939: Blythe Cottage