Wildfire ~ George Harrison

Chapter 5: The first dance

A week had passed since I had had tea with George and I had seen him every day since. Somehow every day when I came home from work, he was sorting out the mail in the hallway downstairs. On Monday I had greeted him, taken my post and I had walked upstairs, but from Tuesday onwards I had stopped to talk with him. It was easy to talk to him, easier than I had expected, easier than it was to talk with Kathleen sometimes.

But every day, once back in my own flat, when I leaved through the mail sorted by George, I found a small, folded-up piece of paper. It wasn't a letter, but a little note written by George himself. He must've sneaked it to my mail slot when he sorted the mail each night.

It was such an uncommon thing that at first I hadn't even noticed it. Only when I leaved through the post upstairs and opened up the piece of paper, I thought had slipped in somehow, did I realise it was a letter.

It wasn't much of a letter at all. It was more of a collection of mindless scribbles he had jotted down on a piece of paper, assumingly whilst bored at his mysterious job. The letters seemed to come directly out of his brain, written down without a filter, without giving the words a value. The base of them was the same, but every day he wrote different things. After two letters I looked forward to them and he didn't disappoint.

Monday, 9 September '63

Dear Charlotte,

I had a great cuppa tea today. You would've liked it, as creamy as they should be. The digestives weren't up to par, though. I told Paul which brand he should get and he didn't, the tosser. Doesn't he know McVities are the only right ones?

Heard a great band on the radio today. I think you'd like them. You mentioned liking jazz. They're not jazz, but it's still great music. I'll see if I can find a record of theirs.

Anyways, I liked talking to you this weekend. We should talk again.

Sincerely,

George

George was in the hall every evening I came home from work, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. On Thursday I caught him getting up from a sitting position on the stairs as I walked in.

On Friday I missed him. I had gotten a headache around lunch and was dismissed early by my boss. I came back to a quiet building at two. There was no one home except for Mrs Goldberg, who I could hear tattering on the phone. The post had come, but hadn't been sorted by anyone, so I did it. A wave off disappointment washed over me when I discovered the lack of a letter from George and I couldn't quite figure out why. I had known him for a week and before Monday I had never gotten a letter from him. It was foolish to be disappointed.

I had drawn myself a bath and let the warm water and flowery scent of my bath soap calm me down and take the headache away. I had taken the letters with me and reread them one by one, as I had done so many times this past week. His slanted and crooked handwriting seemed to calm me down in its own special way.

After reading the letters, I'd stayed in the bath a while longer, until the water had cooled down, my muscles had completely relaxed and my headache had waned. Wrapped in nothing but a bath towel, I had walked to my room and sat down on my bed, allowing myself to close my eyes for just a minute. It's never just a minute, is it?

I woke with a startle, hours later, the sun now much closer to the horizon. The clock on my bedside table showed me it was after six. Normally I would've been home for half an hour already, meaning I had missed George.

'He left another one for you, Charlotte,' Kathleen announced as soon as she opened the door of our flat an hour later. She discarded two other letters that had come in the mail today on a side table and handed me the small folded-up piece of paper that I had now come to known.