Artist name - Alexandra Le Rossignol
Instagram @the_apothecary_prescription
Description
The Cigar Box began as a piece of creative writing for my MA. I was fascinated with the empty envelopes and why the letters had vanished. I knew the writer, my husband's grandmother, had left Jersey late in life because of dementia, and wanted to link the missing letters with her missing memories. I looked through family memorabilia and the stories that had been handed down.
The Cigar Box
The lid of the cigar box has been snapped off in an irregular line above the hinge, revealing
the pile of envelopes inside. Each envelope has been carefully opened with a paper knife, softening the edges with a tear. All except one, have been posted from the Channel Island of Jersey and thirty-three were sent to the same recipient, A Le Rossignol Esq. They are a gift from a mother to a son. The cursive writing flows along the envelope under the stamps featuring George V1, each letter connected to the next. All are post marked between May and July 1948, three years after the German occupation, almost a letter a day. I stare at the empty envelopes. Why weren’t the letters kept? I think of the writer. This is a conversation held in silence, only the empty husks of her thoughts remain. Was this a way of ordering her days: marking each day with a new page, the rhythm of filling the pen then sending the words across the paper. She seals the envelope and sticks on the stamps using a damp sponge as it wouldn’t seem right to lick the back of the King. I think of her walking to the post box with the letter in a gloved hand. She posts it carefully through the slot, listening as it falls to join others, then turns and heads home. She will wait for a reply, the deep hunger for knowledge of another’s life, her son does visit sometimes, crosses the short stretch of sea but she fears leaving the Island. She is contained by its beaches and headlands. I am faced by an empty space. What did she write, what news did she share? Can I find her voice, find stories to fill the empty envelopes. I search through family albums and keepsakes and gather fragments to piece together.
I had always thought that I would never leave the island. Too many memories of love and pain. I am not the same now, my thoughts are more like the moth-eaten jumpers I used to wear in the war, bits missing, and I don’t know how to repair them. I have moved to the mainland to be near my son. Devon is green and pleasant, but it is not home. I get confused and have ended up in a care home. Sometimes a tall thin man with receding hair visits me. He says he is my son. I say, but Philip you are dead. He replies that Philip was his brother. I think I used to write letters, if I could only find them, I would regain my memory. I find an old slip of paper in a coat pocket, but it is blank.
Letter One- The Beach
You stand holding hands like the butterfly shells that you have been collecting on the beach. You don’t want to break the connection. You are unfocussed outlines against a bright seascape, fizzing with joy, popping and sliding on the slimy Vraic seaweed on the beach at St. Ouens. Like all children you are seen through the veil of my adult understanding. Have I dressed you the same, you are both wearing knitted or ruched trunks that lose their shape once wet. But one is a boy and one a girl. You were playing hide and seek and as I watched you head for the waves, the breeze lifted the sand, and it formed eddies round your ankles. You turned briefly for this photograph to be taken, then continued seaward. Long shadows lengthening across the wet sand as you run across worm casts and mini estuaries. The sunlight was so strong that your images were burned to nothing the further away you went, unaware of your futures.
I used to have a mouse back in Belvedere Terrace. It nibbled through newspapers and food packets leaving a confetti of words and crumbs in the pantry. It was a little terraced house with a red and cream stripey chimney. Three domed- shaped windows on the top floor and a bay window below, I loved it and my family grew.
Letter Two- Philip
He is running, the warm air slip streaming over his naked body.
- Catch me if you can-
I hear him calling to his younger brother as he dares him to run around the roof parapet which he knows I forbid. He keeps running, and they race back to the beginning and repeat again and again until their lungs burn and their legs give out and they collapse onto the roof tiles. The tiles feel warm and the sun has bleached their hair and turned their skins golden. There is a taste of salt and sweat in the air.
Now the bedroom curtains are drawn to prevent this same sun from hurting his eyes.We take turns watching over him. Through a crack in the curtains a shaft of light illuminates the blue and white jug and bowl and the pile of flannels we dampen to cool you. To one side I can see your paint box. The last picture you painted was of a long tree lined road disappearing into a dot. There are spindly trees on either side and a russet coloured roof. Two figures walk into the distance. Are you walking away from me? You are finding it hard to breathe. I can feel your heart racing as you strain and cough , only able to take in small sips of air as your throat narrows. I hear you calling – Catch me if you can- but I can’t. A door is closing and I don’t have the key.
I am unable to think in sequence. Memories pass by like a ticker tape parade or the poppies that fall silently in the Albert Hall on Remembrance. I find an old newspaper, The Park Mall Gazette of 1905. It talks of a family death from diptheria. A young Doctor giving his life in a London Hospital to save a boy. I crumble the paper into an angry ball. You didn’t save my Philip
Snow Falling
I remember the post card coming just after my little girl was born. It was a long road for the postman, and he came by bicycle. My friend didn’t know we would name her after myself, so she wrote ‘Welcome little girl’. It was stamped Sydenham and had a famous photograph on the front of Ernest Shackleton, her brother. It was the furthest south he got to in Antartica with the Queen’s flag hoisted at 88 degrees 23’S longitude, 162 degrees E. All very patriotic. I can remember the feel of the card and the baby being so small, but I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast today. I can feel snow falling silently, covering words and memories and faces and places. It forms ice that spreads across my mind like on a windowpane.
With no warning I am back on the island. It is cold and I’m looking for wood. It is war time and we are living through the German Occupation.
Philip Braham Le Rossignol died of diptheria aged 12 in 1923.
Letter Three – 1945
The whole island is suffering after years of the German Occupation. I am on my own after the death of my husband. A red cross letter has been sent to the mainland to inform my son. People are dying of malnutrition and the cold. I am going to the nearest beach by foot. There is no heating at home and I need to find some wood. The plywood containers which house red cross parcels have all been distributed to the poor but I am not on the list. It has been ordered by German Command that illicit cutting and gathering of wood is forbidden to all even if it is on your own land. I am taking a risk as I walk down the slope through the dunes hoping to find burnable debris after last night’s storm.
The soles of my shoes are wearing through, and I can feel damp cold sand wriggling with my toes. I have got old gloves on and have put layer after layer of worn jumpers under my coat to stop the wind cutting me to the bone. I have found a sailor’s duffle bag at home and have slung it over my shoulder to carry kindling. I have a rope in my other hand, curled around my forearm. The beach is thankfully deserted and the bag fills. I see a large pine branch, whitened with salt, all its protective bark stripped off by the sea. It is as tall as I am and ungainly. I didn’t bring tools as they could be confiscated. I loop the rope around the middle under the side branches and tie knots I learnt when sailing. I begin the long drag home.
I’ve made it through the dunes and onto the track when I hear the engine. I keep my eyes to the ground as only Germans and a few essential workers have access to fuel. My chest feels tight as the truck stops beside me.
- Where is your home?-
The young driver reminds me of the my son who died, the same floppy blonde hair over the eyes. I am honest as he can demand to see my papers.
- Hop in –
He helps me into the cab and puts my bag and the branch into the back. There is silence between us until we turn into my road, and he jumps out to help me. He is very thin as he too has very little food and his uniform hangs off him.
- Next Wednesday evening we will be doing a radio check here –
He bows with a slight click of his heels, softened by the caked mud on them. I watch him reverse and go on his way. My daughter comes out shaken at what she thinks she has seen. Together we drag the wood into the back garden for privacy.
My mind has gaps. I have missing pieces in my family too. My son died of diptheria, my husband died in the war and the little girl on the postcard became a mother herself. Tragically she died after a hospital fire.They had not realised when they moved her to safety that she had a blod clot after the birth of her second child.The new baby was looked after by the Father and I brought up the older sibling. I never wanted to leave the island but the granddaughter I helped bring up, left for Australia as soon as she was twenty one. So many holes in my life, like those in my war time jumpers.
Shackleton never reached the south pole. He was remembered for how he lead his men and looked after them when his ship Endurance was trapped in ice. I feel trapped too, more and more of my cells are freezing.
