Southend U3A

Writing for Fun

December 2015

Department HS - Vivian Burdon

[This story continues from last month's story entitled 'It's Our Own Fault']

My dear child,

It's been so long I hardly know where to start. Simple entreaties after your health and wellbeing are of little consequence, such banalities, banished to a simpler time. I hope with all my heart that this letter has found you and that you are well.

It would be greedy I suppose to mention my hope that you are happy but I do hope that you are at least not unhappy. I am trying to catch you and hold your image in my mind's eye of you reading this, my only letter. Do I see you, when, for the first time you slit open the envelope with such belligerence and hatred. Or is it the hundredth time, where I am watching you smooth out the creases of the crumpled and torn pages, each stroke of the paper a gentle loving caress.

Are you in soft flannelette pyjamas, cradling a hot mug of steaming coffee staring out over snow capped mountains? Or perhaps you are chilling on a wooden porch somewhere, sipping cold beer, gazing over copper fields, ablaze in the low evening sun. I fear, my love, that I am so far from the truth for the reality to be bearable for either of us.

This is not the place, however, for me to wallow in the many nightmares I have played out through the years. Whole futures I have created for you from snippets of information gleaned from the underground.

My only desire is to let you know we love you and always have. I need you to know we never gave up on you. They told us not to write, that it would be futile. There must be no communication that may risk breaching the security around you. It was for the best they said. For your father it was intolerable, he never forgave himself for betraying you.

I need you to know that you should forgive him. He worked tirelessly, night and day for the Peace Corps I set up in your name. I am so sorry my love but this letter brings tidings of our capture and his death. It was in the spring of your 43rd year, he was 68 but still so strong, so full of purpose. He was leading the Peace Corps on a new campaign against the HS.

It took years before the chilling truth about the Department of the Heaven Sent began to seep out. The pockets of resistance your father nurtured within the Department's security apparatus has grown and only now brings forth knowledge of the appalling nature of HS operations. Finally the world, or what is left of it, has woken up and united against the insanity of war and oppression.

If you are alive my sweet daughter, then you, and the other five Heaven Sent 'Fertiles' from each of the continents will be released from 'The Hive'. All your progeny will be nurtured by those who visited many years ago. They will provide for the future of human kind.

I hope that day comes soon. I go to my death as an honourable servant of the Peace Corps. My death comes to relive me of my fatigue and grief. Be strong my love, sweet Lilly, others are coming to save you. Trust in them they bring our love.

Your loving Mum

Hazel Carpenter