Letters From Prague Read Online Free Page A

polystyrene beaker and let the smell of British Rail coffee waft with a little wreath of steam towards her. She sat back, waiting for it to cool, watching the compartment fill with travellers. Vast nylon rucksacks on aluminium frames were heaved about in the corridor, children ripped open packets of crisps and asked when they would get there; childless couples opened their books. Beside them, two clean Dutch students were settling into their seats. Since the end of term at the comprehensive school where she tried to teach, and at the primary school where Marsha was supposed to learn, Harriet had been ironing, packing, organising the departure of one lodger and the arrival of another, cancelling papers and milk. She had risen this morning at half-past six. Now she let the surrounding activity wash over her. Opposite, Marsha was pulling a sorry face. She’d be all right once they got moving.
    Last-minute passengers were panting up to the doors. Harriet, drinking her coffee, barely took them in. She forgot about Marsha, forgot about the mouse. She saw an afternoon in autumn, twenty-five years ago, two figures on the same platform, both in denim jackets; she saw them cling to each other and kiss; she saw, as the last door now slammed to, Karel, at the window in the corridor, leaning out with, his cigarette, and she running alongside as the train began to move, waving and waving.
    â€˜We write! We write!’
    And they had written: the polished bureau which had stood once in the bedroom of her parents’house in Kensington stood now in the sitting room of her own house in Shepherd’s Bush, and had in its second drawer a wooden box of letters. Each was written on thin cheap paper, each one worn from being unfolded and folded again, read and re-read.
Thank you for writing, I was pleased to hear from you …
I am sorry not to have written, but things have been …
I am afraid that – something crossed out – All is well, but
unfortunately – something crossed out –
I am afraid that it has been a long time since I wrote to
you …
I am afraid that it is difficult for me to write to you at present
…
I am afraid …
I am afraid …
    Then they had stopped. The last worn letter in the box was dated March 1971. Harriet had read it with her dictionary-phrase book, sitting at the plain, light wood desk of her university study bedroom. Her life had changed: A-levels long distant, first-year history exams behind her, new people all around her. One, in particular, she liked the look of, as she had liked the look of Karel. Reading his letter, trying, yet again, to guess what lay behind the formal phrases, he seemed far from her in a way which she knew in her heart was due not only to absence, or distance, but her own preoccupations. He was fading. She had thought that would never happen, but she knew, if she were honest, that it was so.
    And what, she thought then, folding the letter, and putting it back in its envelope, was the point of anything if one could not be honest?
    There was a knock at the door.
    â€˜Harriet? We’re off – you ready?’
    â€˜Coming!’
    She put on her long dark Julie Christie coat and left the room, leaving the letter on the desk, leaving that part of her life behind her, running down the corridor to catch up with her friends.
    Weeks later, feeling almost as though it were a task, she wrote, briefly:
Since it is so hard for us to communicate, perhaps it is better that we do not try, though I shall always remember you with affection and hope that all is well with you …
    She dropped the letter into the campus box next morning, on her way to a lecture, posting it with a card to her brother, who was working for his O-levels. And then, hurrying across the windswept grass and tarmac to the lecture theatre, she forgot about Karel.
    The whistle blew, the train began to move.
    â€˜We’re off!’ said Marsha, waving to her