The Telegram

Mo hated this time of day.  She sat by the front window, watching the snow falling, a cup of tea cradled in her hands, waiting.  She had been in exactly the same place forty years earlier, since then she had risen every day at six thirty to be sat down, ready.

That fateful day, she had watched expectantly, hoping for a letter.  Her heart had leapt as the postman had stopped, opened the green wooden gate and walked down the path, a letter in his hand.  He had not stooped to push the letter through the box, but had knocked.  The postman was delivering a telegram, not a letter. The phrases were burnt into Mo’s mind, as if she still held the paper.

“We regret to inform you… …Missing presumed dead.”

Ever since then she had waited, prepared for the inevitable second telegram confirming her husband’s death.  As time passed, the waiting had become harder not easier.  When everyone around was in fear of a similar message; it had been different.  Deaths were common and the grief could be shared. A time to mourn and then life continuing, the spirit of the Nation supporting you.

Mo had never remarried, always fearing her husband would turn up alive.  She worried about her war-widows pension, little though it was.  If, by some miracle, he was still alive, would she have to pay it all back?

When war came, her husband had been one of the first to join up, not waiting to be conscripted.  Everyone had cheered as the men had marched down the street to enlist, waved on the dockside as they boarded the ships to cross the ocean and fight.

Mo had gladly taken her husband’s place in the small factory near their house.  They manufactured much needed bicycle chains.  Then as war progressed, the small change to the machines to produce machine gun magazines.  The pattern was repeated with all her neighbours, the men went to war and the women replaced them in the factory.

Through victory and defeat, the nation had pulled together, the spirit always indomitable. Then, when it was nearly all over, the telegram.

After the war, as the men returned, they took back their old jobs.  Mo was forced to leave the factory and survive on her meagre pension.  In honour of a hero’s widow, the employers had let her remain in the house at a low rent.

Mo still lived in the same small house, still shopped at the same market every day, buying bargains to eke out her small wage.  The small factory had been taken over, conglomerated, amalgamated and finally demolished. In its place stood a towering office block, the headquarters of Tokamura Industries.  Mo did not know where the bicycle chains were made now.

The war had taken her husband and then her job.  Now the directors had grown tired of looking onto a run down suburb from their offices and penthouse suites.  Now they were going to take Mo’s home.

The young man had been so kind when he came to see her.  He knew all about her and had brought a large hamper of goods.  He had sat with her, drinking tea and chatting.  He explained about the new office block.  How Mo would be rehoused in a warden controlled flat, how much better her quality of life would be.

Mo did not care about quality of life.  All she knew was her small house, filled with memories, replaced by another faceless tower block.

The postman delivered a letter next door.  Mo never received letters.  Her friends and relatives all dead, or moved away.  Today the postman hesitated at the end of her path, pushed open the rotten wooden gate, and trudged through the snow to Mo’s front door.

He stopped and knocked.  This was the letter Mo had dreaded, the eviction notice, the end.

She opened the door, took the letter, recorded delivery.  He waited as if wanting a tip, holding out his clipboard for a signature.  He was the age Mo’s grandchildren would have been, if she had had any children.  She took pity on him and invited him into the warm.

Mo poured him a cup of tea and then slowly opened the letter.  As Mo read, expecting the worst, she grasped her chest and the letter slipped from her hand.  The letter floated to the ground, but Mo dropped like a stone.

The postman sat there, stunned, not knowing what to do.  He finally knelt down, there was no pulse, no breathing, no telephone to call for help.  He panicked and picked up the letter to see what could have caused such a tragedy.

He read, amazed.

“We are happy to inform you your husband Ling Ho Choi has today surrendered.  He has continued to fight for his Emperor, in the jungles of a small island off Singapore.”

© NiC Roworth – 8th January, 1997