Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson

Author:Anne Youngson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

Bury St. Edmunds

September 6

Dear Anders,

All is calm. You will see that this is a letter, in an envelope, and this is because I have something to send you. I will explain.

* * *

Thank you for the story. When I had read it I went to the chest where I keep all the old pieces of fabric and clothes I know I will never use or wear again but which I cannot bear to throw out. My brother’s bedroom curtains are in there. They have a gray background and a pattern of black sailing boats with blue or red sails, made simple in the way an Impressionist painter might make them simple, not like a cartoonist would. My sister and I had pink curtains with flowers, and as a child I was frustrated that I was not allowed to have curtains like my brother’s, which you could look at again and again and each time the boats would be different. Sometimes they looked ready to sail away and sometimes they looked fixed and sullen. Sometimes they did not look like boats at all but like lines and shapes that could be anything you wanted them to be. When my mother redecorated the room, I asked for the curtains and meant to hang them in this attic bedroom where I have my sewing machine and my desk, where I write these letters, but they did not fit the windows, and I prefer not to have curtains up here, but to be able to see the sky, without impediment. So I put them away in the chest.

The dress I told you about, the one that I wore to the opera with Bella, is also in the chest. There is a scarf Bella bought once, when we were together, that is cerise silk with a pattern of small sequins sewn on to it. She decided almost at once that it did not suit her and tied it round my neck instead. I wore it all that day, but never again. I love it for how vibrant it is, how exuberant, and I can imagine it might suit me, if I had the other clothes to wear with it that would make it look like a carnation in a bowl of mixed garden flowers. If I wore it with the clothes I own, it would look like a carnation in a bowl of dried leaves.

Perhaps I should stop thinking “dress,” “scarf,” “curtain” when I look at these things, and think “rag,” then turn them into patchwork. Having thought this, I have snipped off a bit of the curtains to send you, as I cannot paint a good enough picture with words.

* * *

What I wanted to say about music is not about music at all, but about poetry. It is a part of my life as music is a part of yours. This is something else I feel I owe to the Tollund Man. I might never have started to read poetry if Seamus Heaney had not written a poem about him.

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