‘You see, if the name’s rare enough, it’s worth a shot. I can’t try Mavis Jones or even Vera Palmer – but Veronica Ricketts or Vincent Dias, no sweat.’
‘But there must be hundreds.’
‘Twenty, thirty of each. We’ll get them.’
‘So many letters?’
‘You give up so easily. I’m telling you, we have the technology. I’ve spent the last two hours mastering the program,’ he says, looking faintly annoyed when I glaze over. ‘I think I can export the names and addresses from the Info Disk and then print them straight onto labels. All we have to do is stuff and stick.’
34 Lillieshall Road
Clapham Old Town
London SW4 OLP
ARE YOU THE LOUISA HERON WHO LIVED IN CLAPHAM IN 1961?
DO YOU KNOW OR ARE YOU RELATED TO A STANLEY OR LOUISA HERON?
25th April 2003
Dear Louisa,
Please forgive this letter coming totally out of the blue but I wonder if you can help me. I’m trying to trace a Louisa Heron who lived in our house (with Stanley Heron) in Clapham during 1960 and 1961.
I should explain: I’m writing a book which is a biography of our house (34 Lillieshall Road) in Clapham, South London and I’m trying to find out as much as I can about every single person who has lived in this house from the day it was built in 1872 through to the present!
If you are not the Louisa Heron who lived here, then I’m sorry to have bothered you and there’s no need to get back in touch. But if you are the Louisa Heron (or if you know Stanley or Louisa Heron) who lived here, then I would love to talk to you – I could obviously travel to see you. I would love to show you the house now and also hear your memories of what it was like to live in then. It may seem like an odd request but anything at all that I can find out will be helpful (and fascinating!) to me. Even better, if you had any photos from that time then that would be wonderful … needless to say, you’ll get a copy of the book which will be published in 2004.
You can reach me by writing to this address – or else phone me any time on the number above and I will of course phone you straight back.
With very best wishes and hoping to hear from you,
Julie Myerson
The kids help him stuff and stamp envelopes. Raph does his batch in front of the Test Match on television, sitting slumped backwards on the pink telly-end sofa, a bunch of envelopes and labels on his dirty knee, drained banana milkshake glass by his side.
Chloë takes a bundle of envelopes in a Sainsbury’s bag and marches up to the High Street to catch the 5.30 collection. Betty goes with her, bouncy with excitement, holding her end of the lead in her mouth. ‘Leave it!’ Chloë orders and the dog immediately lets go of the lead and then, two seconds later, grabs it again.
The letter we send out is carefully worded. It makes it clear that there’s absolutely no need to reply if you’re not the one we’re looking for. All the same, I come home next day to find thirteen messages on the answer-phone from people apologizing for not being the ‘right Stanley Heron’ or the ‘right Thomas Kyle’ and wishing me luck with the project.
And then the letters. From a Thomas Kyle:
Regrettably I cannot help you in your search. My father was also called Thomas Kyle (Scottish like myself), as far as I know never left Scotland and Has Been Dead these 33–34 years …
A Gerald Sherrif says:
I’m sorry but I have never lived anywhere else but Carlisle and don’t expect to as I am now eighty-seven, but I do hope you find the gentleman you are looking for in the near future.
A Stanley Heron goes still further:
About myself: I was born in Coxhoe and have lived here all my life. I am 78 years of age and would have returned your call but am not very clear on the phone and so I apologise for not replying sooner. I am NOT the person you are looking for and I have never been to Clapham ever. I am a retired chartered chemist and the only Louisa Heron I know is my granddaughter. I am sorry I haven’t been of much help to you but please understand that I have AT LEAST made this effort to write to you today. If I HAD been the person you are seeking I would have been happy to supply you with any information I possessed but I am afraid I am NOT HE.
I wish you luck in your endeavours to find the RIGHT Stanley Heron …
Yours sincerely
Stan Heron
These letters and phone messages are peculiarly and unexpectedly touching. I realize that actually they’re a part of what I’m trying to explore: the fact that all of us badly want to be part of a story, to be the Right Person, the One someone’s looking for. Don’t we all, at the end of the day, just want to connect our lives with the lives of others and experience that satisfying symmetry of time and place that comes from being notified, written to, called to account?
It’s touching, but I’m no further on. I wait for the Right Gerald Sherrif or Thomas Kyle or Aston McNish to ring.
A warm evening. Supper over, Jake’s loading the dishwasher – ‘Do I have to?’ – and Betty’s rounding up the two younger kids in the hall.
She runs fast at one, then another, three short sharp barks as if she means business, though of course she doesn’t. She has no idea what she means. She just likes the chase, the noise, the sense of cause and effect. Like when she rounds up the ducks on the pond in Battersea Park – swimming round and round in a circle, ears flat, until she has a flock of mallards clustered in the centre and then realizes she doesn’t know what to do next. It’s no good being a Border Collie in central London. Like being a trained heart specialist forced to clean bedpans in A & E.
I pour a glass of wine and wait till nine-thirty to phone a woman in Jamaica called Veronica Ricketts. When there were no Veronica Ricketts on the Info Disk, I remembered that John Pidgeon had mentioned he thought he bought the house from a West Indian. Jonathan looked up the Jamaican phone book on the web and handed me a piece of paper with the name Veronica Ricketts and a number circled in red.
‘OK,’ I yell down to kids and dog, ‘you have to be quiet now!’ I dial the number, wait.
The bleep of the phone. One. Two. Three.
‘Yeah?’
‘Excuse me, is this Veronica Ricketts?’
‘Yeah.’
The line’s crackly and there’s an echo. I explain what I’m doing and ask if she’s ever lived in London.
A pause. ‘Don’t think so, no.’
‘In Clapham, London? I mean in England?’
‘Nah.’
‘You definitely never lived here?’
‘Don’t believe I did.’
‘You mean never?’
‘Uh – never, don’t think so, nah.’
I apologize for disturbing her and she puts the phone down with a click.
‘Well?’ says Jonathan.
‘She said she’d never lived in London.’