Dear Rosie Hughes: This is the most uplifting and emotional novel you will read in 2019!
To: Lieutenant Rosanna Hughes RN, British Army Headquarters, Kuwait
Date: 7 January 2003
Oh, my Jesus Christ, Rosie. I’ve just found out you’ve gone to war!
Before I go on, it’s me, Aggie Braithwaite. (I know it’s been an uncomfortably long time since we spoke.)
I bumped into your dad in the village shop this morning and I knew something must be wrong because he was turning a squidgy mango over in his hand and staring glassy-eyed into the ‘past its best’ fridge. Bearing in mind your dad is from that generation of Yorkshiremen who would never dream of buying a mango (not even a squidgy one) I asked him if he was OK and he said, ‘Oh, I’m bearing up, lass, considering.’. I thought, shit, someone must be dead. So, I followed on with, ‘Considering what, Mr Hughes?’. And then he told me how you’d flown to Kuwait yesterday – with the Army. What were you thinking, Rosie? No-one looks good in khaki. Not even you.
The last time I bumped into your Dad was about eighteen months ago in Midhope. He was at the Chinese picking up a sweet and sour chicken. I broke open a fortune cracker and wrote my number and address on the back of the paper – did you get it? He told me you and Josh were living in a thatched cottage in Devon and you were working at the Met Office in Exeter. But now I hear you’re back in the Navy as a reservist and you’re getting divorced? Eh? I’d heard you left the Navy ages ago, so I’m utterly confused and believe that the world must finally have gone topsy-turvy bonkers bananas mad, because many things that I’m hearing do not make sense:
1. What’s a sailor doing in the desert? Surely this is a misnomer?
2. Unless you’ve taken up body-building, your physique and personality are not equipped for combat. If you were built like me (an Amazonian Warrior Goddess) it would be different.
3. You don’t have the name of a war hero (and I’m an author, so I know these things). How can someone called Rosie go to war? It’s too soft. Surely you should be sitting in a cosy cottage toasting marshmallows, playing that violin of yours to twenty children?
4. As founder member of the Charlie’s Angels (Huddersfield Division) I know for certain that you’re a bit of a scaredy-cat.
In sum - Rosie Hughes at war? It doesn’t make sense.
Despite my best efforts, I didn’t get much information out of your Dad. He had to rush off because he had parked on double yellow lines and had lent his dashboard disability sticker to your Aunty Joan – she’s got fluid on her knee due to a nasty fall down the steps of the mobile library. But he told me about the forces electronic bluey letter system and pressed your BFPO address (and the mango, bizarrely) into my hands before he disappeared, which I saw as Kismet (the address, not the mango) because I’ve been desperate to get in touch for ages, but when you didn’t phone or write after I gave my number to your dad, I thought it was best to let it go. But now that you’ve gone to war, all that silliness seems irrelevant, and I just wanted to write and say, ‘hello’, ‘take care’ and ‘what the fuck, you idiot?!’
But enough about you. My own life has been a series of bad decisions meshed together by good intentions, and you will not be surprised to learn that I still haven’t managed to nail it, and by ‘it’ I mean that thing called love. I’ve moved back to Midhope and I’m a writer, which despite being my lifelong dream, bores me to death. I joined the operatic society again with the hope of bagging myself a leading man (I never learn), but all of the men are either spoken for or just plain boring, and anyway that casting bitch at MAOS gave the part of Maria in The Sound of Music to Jessie Cartwright! So, I told them to fuck right off. I mean to say, Jessie Cartwright? As Maria? Please!
It was exactly like that time in lower sixth when they gave the part of Juliet to Cheryl Brown just because she was light enough to stand on the balsa wood balcony. And to rub insult into injury, they’ve offered me a consolatory part playing a nun, and I don’t mean the pretty one. They offered me the part of Bitch Nun, the one with a face like crumpled steel. Honestly, Rosie, Jessie Cartwright has a weak, tinny voice and – mark my words – she will struggle to reach the back row. But I suppose she’s impish which fits the stereotypical image of Maria. When will people realise that the real Maria was a buxom, single-minded, man-eater who got chucked out of a nunnery for being a slapper? And I bet she was a total bitch with those kids once she’d got a ring on her finger. And answer me this: who else but me (in West Yorkshire) could play a buxom Austrian ex-nun who shags a sea captain? I nailed that audition. I did my usual Ella Fitzgerald impression and banged out, Puttin’ On The Ritz (great number for ‘filling the stage’ with song and dance), followed on nicely by With A Song In My Heart for the emotional pull. (Mrs Butterworth was actually crying when I closed the final line.) Basically, I nailed it, only to hear, ‘We’ll let you know.’
We’ll let you know?!
Apparently, I can’t just rock up in Yorkshire after ten years of absence and expect to be a leading lady.
Why? Why can’t I?
But they aren’t completely daft as they fully expect me to plonk my fat backside on the piano and accompany all the rehearsals – what a cheek! Anyway, I’ve told them to stick the part of ugly nun – and their piano – up their arses. I’m not remotely suitable for the role and I refuse to play her, it’s degrading. Shaun Jones asked me if I’d like to start doing my Ella tribute down the club again (I think he felt sorry for me) but I can’t face it. I’m done with singing. Anyway, it doesn’t matter as I’m fleeing to Scotland soon.
More anon.
Love, Aggie
P.S. Any hunks over there? If there are, don’t forget, he has to be tall. Despite my best efforts soaking myself in the Dead Sea for ten hours on retreat last year, I have not shrunk.
P.P.S. On a serious note, I know we haven’t been in touch for (what?) fifteen years, but I decided to go for a light (let’s pretend nothing ever happened and we were just gossiping over tea and cake) tone to this letter. Do you mind? I know things need to be said to clear the air properly, but can we be in touch while you’re away without raking up the past – at least, for now?
Bluey
From: Rosie
To: Aggie
Date: 3 January
Oh, Aggie.
It was just brilliant to get your letter, and it’s a crazy coincidence because only yesterday I was in the General’s evening briefing, drifting off, thinking of you, wishing we were in touch, and here you are – swear to God! I was thinking about the time we went to the Proms in Leeds on a Sixth Form night out. That woman in the balcony leant forward to wave to her friend and her false teeth fell out and landed in your pint! Hilarious. It could only have happened to you. Did you drink the pint after you fished the teeth out? Probably.
Like you, I’ve also been wanting to get in touch, but when you didn’t reply to the invitation I sent for my wedding a few years ago, I thought, perhaps, you hadn’t forgotten (or forgiven) what happened that last summer before we went to university. I confess that Dad did give me your address last year. The fortune cookie made my throat catch. It said, ‘A friend asks only for your time, not money’ but at that moment, my marriage had just broken down – amongst other things of equal catastrophe – and I suppose I wanted to hide away. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I made up my mind to come and see you before I left for Kuwait, but I bottled it at the last minute and decided it would be best for us to catch up when I get home, when I’ve got more time.
Like you said, though, let’s park all that for the moment. But I would just say this: if you kept away because of what happened with Simon, then I’m truly sorry. He can be a bit of an inconsiderate shit sometimes, but if it’s any consolation I honestly don’t think he means any harm.
So, why am I in Kuwait with the Army? Temporary insanity is all I can put it down to.
When Josh and I decided to separate, I couldn’t bear the thought