Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dearest Maddie,

If operating a wireless depended on the operator having a cool and empty head, I could’ve never done the job. I was (and am) always only thinking of you. I often wish to hear from you as soon as I think of you—if there were a way to conjure your response as I write, that's what I want. The immediacy of reply. But then you’d be run off your feet writing back and have no time for anything else, not even sleep, as there is no moment that I don’t think of you. 

You know I have a fervent imagination. I put it to use. One well-trod reel is this: after the war, you take me to meet some friends of yours from school days, local girls, all unremarkable and uninteresting to me save for their history with you.

“Queenie,” you say (for in all my daydreams thus far, I've yet to give myself the thrill of hearing my real name from your mouth. It would undo me), “this is Bess, Mabel, and Joan.”

“Yes,” I say. “I’ve heard about you.” And then I smile and am silent, for I’m confident they know nothing about me, that you’ve never mentioned me. We’re our own secret.

Meanwhile, they’re left to wonder just what you’ve said about them—is it admiring? Honest? Unsparing? Do they figure often? I float above these questions, held aloft by the surety that what you and I have is undefinable. You might as well braid words into a rope and lasso a star than explain me to these girls, but I spend hours thinking of how you might try. 

I wish you could see yourself as I see you. At once as beloved and comforting as a nursery toy, and yet as splendidly beautiful and remote as a star. Something I came to depend on and something I’ll never again possess. The memory of our first meeting is rubbed as smooth and fuzzed as my old stuffed rabbit from when I was a child—how you looked, what you said. I hold onto it.

Don’t misunderstand me, I love the Maddie I’ve built for my imaginary conversational partner. But sometimes I want you in front of me—touchable, existing, breathing, looking back—so badly I ache. And then I lay down and ache again, this time for your chest to rise and fall in time with my own, for your hair to tangle with mine, for our feet to twine together. 

It’s not all high-minded adoration with me. Sometimes I want to lick a stripe between your breasts up your chest to your neck, wreathe you with shiny spit. Press my fevered face to the inside of your soft thigh. Nip at the calluses on your thumbs and then soothe them with the flat of my tongue, worship those hands that I chafed to keep warm so many times back on the airfield before we knew what real terror was and hold them as long as I want. 

Even here in my cell, I get lucky sometimes: I dream of you. In the dream, there is no war and no rations and so I wear red lipstick, scads of it, an indecent red, and leave a necklace of kisses at your collarbone, down your body, at your waist, the edge of your knickers, beyond. Since there is no war, there is no fear of the blitz, so I keep the lights on to see what I’ve done, what you let me do. 

Some nights I curl on my side with my hands clasped between my thighs for warmth and pass the hours thinking, if not happily, than certainly thoroughly, of how you’d marshal the meagre resources here towards conserving body heat. I’ve no doubt your brisk, businesslike determination would keep both of us warm.

Other times I imagine you here with me as a dog, breathing softly in sleep, every so often pushing your head into my hand in comfort. Although maybe it’s me that should be the dog. Dogs are famously desperate for their owner’s attention and solely devoted to their owner’s happiness—two things I want so badly, your attention and your happiness—I could cry for it, if Von Linden had left me any tears to spare. I fear it’s cruel to reduce your freedom down to following me from room to room. But for myself, I can think of no greater happiness than if I should be always under your feet. 

I know you think me brave, Maddie, and I sometimes am, but it’s always quick and for an audience. Now there is no audience. My bravery is a flash bang, it dazzles. It’s a diamond I've used to cut glass, hardened to a point. It doesn’t last. I’d take my cloak of flash and glamour off in a second, I’d be a little grey mouse, if it would give me back to you. But I must keep my brave cloak on a while longer and use the diamond’s point to write this—  

Ours was the great romance of my life. That we never committed it to words makes no difference. Your heart, your mind—your very being—was laid open to me and in return I gave you myself. What is more transformative than that?

There. Now that I’ve written it all down, I will tear this letter into small pieces and fold them smaller still. I will eat them and then dream of a world where you, with your clever hands, are able to retrieve them—easy as flying—easy as dying. 

Your Julie