The Libyan Letters

VI

It was some time before Havers was able to find a means of replying to the Captain's most unexpected letter. Havers had picked up very passable Arabic during the course of the decades he'd been forced to spend in Libya since his deathday. Mr Hassan, on the other, could not speak English, never mind write it, and a little French was his only other language.
It transpired, however, that little K had 'the Julian touch' (learned and practised over many centuries while breaking people's treasured ornaments when they had been rude enough to walk through her ghost-form), and she could operate a typewriter quite well, if Havers pointed out which key to press and provided she didn't have to write more than 15 words a day. This produced a rather stilted form of communication but Mr Hassan was eventually able to post the resulting letter 12 weeks and three days after his own brush with the everlasting. No one but Havers, least of all little K, had the first idea what the letter said.
The commotion its arrival caused at Button House can hardly be described but when the hubbub had died down, Alison opened it and placed it on the drawing room table, neatly held down with paperweights at the corners and discreetly turned to leave the room.
'No, wait Alison. I should very much prefer you to stay – I've spent more than enough time hiding away, and besides, I can't think of anyone better to lend a little moral support. I fear I may need a great deal of it', he said, visibly steeling himself before stepping up to the desk and commencing to read:
'Dear Horace (if may)
There was no Redmond.
Loved you.
Was so disappointed that you seemed to feel somthing for me, as I did for you, but that you said no thing. As older man / more senior officer I felt had to let you speak first. You not. My letter from N Africa a last atempt to spur you to onesty by making you jelus, by making you think you would lose me if you not speak truth. Forgive me.
It worked tho.
Never stopd thinking of you.
I love you always
Wm'
Alison discreetly watched the Captain read from the other side of the room. She thought she saw a tremor of emotion run through his body. She bit her lip anxiously. It didn't look like good news.
Suddenly there was a great rush of light, a rainbow column of swirling colour into which the Captain's form, twisting and stretching fantastically, dissolved; then a confused flash of his face, glowing, twisting in the column, then another face, a handsome young man, tanned, smiling, then the whole whirling mass shot upwards, disappearing through the ceiling in a whorl of joyful sparks ... and the Captain was gone, finally and irrevocably gone.