The Address Book by Judy Mitchell

I flicked quickly through the untidy pages of crossings-out, garish ink and poor writing, eager to replace them with entries reflecting my family and friends. The old book symbolised those early years when we started out together. A rush of new names, new faces, growing families. Divorce and distance had created casualties along the way. Now I wanted to start afresh.

There was a pile of letters and notes at my elbow which I had saved from the Christmas cards, each containing some change, news of illness, new addresses for those who had downsized or moved nearer to family, leaving behind old familiar house names.

I copied out the address of a distant cousin onto a new page of B’s. The house name as beautiful as the Arts and Craft house it described.

            ‘Do you remember that house?’

Her face turned towards me and I saw her smile.

            ‘Yes, lovely place. Beautiful garden. All those roses. I think she’s still there.’

I watched her eyes move towards the window, retracing in her mind the visit we had made to Kent many years before.

Her address book was still here in one of the drawers. This had been her desk. Walnut, Victorian with delicate marquetry and always the smell of beeswax. I put her book next to mine, its index thumbed carefully by her short, neat nails.

I had reached the C’s in my new pages and suddenly remembered her theory.

            ‘What was it you used to say about the B’s and the C’s?’ I asked her with a tinge of cynicism in my voice.

            ‘They always seemed to be the ones to go first,’ she replied seriously. ‘Look at my address book. The Blakes, Browns, Clarks and whole pages of Dodds and Denmans. All gone long before the Moorhouses and the McIntyres and the Taylors. Cowed by the passage of time, I reckon.’

‘What happened to Helen McIntyre?’ I asked her, thinking about the entry in her book for Helen and Peter.

‘The marriage fell apart in the 70’s.’ Her voice dropped to an almost inaudible whisper as she leaned towards me. ‘She found him in bed with her best friend’s husband. Wouldn’t do in those days, of course. One of her girls still lives near her but we didn’t see them for years.’

I put her address book on the desk and turned to the T’s. Her finger pointed to the open page.

            ‘Look at them. The Taylors, the Thornleys. All still upright, tall and broad-shouldered, not like we Blakes.’

I returned to my neat pages in my best writing and suddenly I had misspelt a Welsh address confused by that language’s absence of vowels.

            ‘Write in block capitals,’ I heard her telling me, her eyes looking over the top of her glasses. ‘Easier to read.’

I ignored the advice and continued along the second part of the alphabet wanting to escape the pages of short-livers. At the letter S I left out Aunty Sarah Smith who had died before Christmas and for a moment, I could hear the swell of the voices of the choristers as their words soared into the cold November air at that beautiful service only weeks ago. I had missed having mum at my side that day. Outside the Cathedral, the rain and wind had flipped the last of the autumn leaves into auburn spirals as I left the Cathedral Close, my shoes clattering on the worn cobbles.

I picked up my pen again and added new names to my pages and realised I had reached the last letters. I had never understood why Mum hadn’t crossed out the names of all those who had gone before her.

            ‘They’re part of my journey,’ she had insisted. ‘Mostly happy memories. Lives touched. I hope I have stayed on their lists.’

I looked at her handwriting; bold extravagant. Each letter upright, dancing on an invisible line. Then there was her signature – defiant and steady even in the final years. Diana Blake who had died just before her 97^th birthday.