The Last Letter of Papa Pat

By JS Apsley

 

When I was a young girl, I’d often find my grandfather languishing at the desk in his study jousting with his typewriter, pipe smoke curling around him like a wraith. He was prodigious. Yet, everything he typed, every word on every piece of paper, he then burned in the open fire. Everything that is; save one thin sheet.

 

I called him Papa Pat, and sitting at his desk is my most abiding memory of him. That, and the long walks after school when he’d fill my head with nonsense about the old ways and how there was yet magic in the world. “Magic,” he’d say, “is science undiscovered, my lady.” I loved him for that; that he gifted me the appetite to discover.

 

Some years later, after Papa Pat died, I asked my mother about his writing. She said he was a man who suffered from crushing self-doubt, and that he exorcised those demons by writing nameless unknowable stories. To banish his torments, he’d cast his words to the flames of the open fire. I was amazed to discover he had never shared any of those words, those stories.

 

As we grieved together; it struck me. What about the story he had kept? The memory sparked in my mind like the lighter he used for his pipe. I had been sitting in his armchair, scuffing my little feet against it (though he had asked me not to), trying to copy one of his card tricks.

 

Whatever he had been working on was ripped from the typewriter, and a whole stack of papers consigned to the fire. But then, looking at me with a wink, he placed a fresh sheet of paper in the typewriter, and turned the dial. Watching me, he had clicked and clacked, before producing his page with a flourish. He tapped his finger on the side of his crooked nose, and locked the page in the drawer of his mahogany desk.

 

He had then reclined; at peace, puffing away on his favourite pipe. Leaning forward, he grinned at me like a child at the fair. “That one my lady … that one is a keeper.”

 

I asked him if he would tell me the story in the drawer. “Aye lady, when you’re older. Whether I’m hingin’ in, or past my sell-by-date, I assure you’ll be the first to it.”

 

All these years later, the memory hurtled into my mind, and was all consuming. His study had yet to be cleared, so my mother and I spent the morning hunting high and low for the drawer key; she as curious as I. We could have jimmied it open with a bread-knife, but we agreed, smiling, that would be beneath us.

 

My mother was a little frightened about what we might discover. So far as she knew, he’d burned everything he’d ever written. To learn I had witnessed him lock something away in that drawer was perturbing, and as her anxiety grew, so did mine.

 

Eventually, we discovered the key inside a whisky bottle. I had lifted it to flip through a stack of books, and heard the rattle. I pulled the cork, and the little key fell into my hand, pungent with the remaining fumes of the malt, Bunnahabhain, as it happens.

 

My mother asked me to open the drawer, which I did with trepidation. It slid out effortlessly. Inside; three items. A careworn polaroid of my mother holding me as a child, his old Zeppo, and … a single sheet of paper.

 

With trembling hands, I held it aloft. It was a letter, addressed to me. The words were blurred; I was in tears. Holding this last piece of him hit me like a hammer blow and I grasped, finally, that he was truly gone. All that was left was the smells of his study; the wood, the books, the tobacco, the whisky. But he had also left this letter. “You should be the one to read it,” I asked of my mother. So, she did.

 

Dearest Ellie,

 

I know you’ll come looking one day, my lady. Looking for the story I couldn’t share. It isn’t here, I’m sorry to say. Well, not really.

 

I confess I must have typed hundreds of thousands of words as I searched for it, willing my brain to spoon out that opus I knew was inside me, somewhere. I just couldn’t find a way to get the words out of me and onto the paper in a way which made it sing. I’m afraid that, though I thought my stories were worthy, perhaps I was not worthy of them.

 

They will have to remain stories uncommitted to page; stories that no one will ever read. If the creator alone holds the knowledge of his creation … if there is no audience, then he is a fool. For what is his creation if it exists floating in some dark void of his own making?

 

But it all came clear to me as you were sitting with me today – you’ll know which day when you read this, I hope long years from now. I realised I had already told the story I wanted to tell. It wasn’t written down, but that’s of no importance. I wonder if you know where my story abides. It’s not in this drawer.

 

It’s in you, my lady. You, dearest child, were my audience; the only audience I ever needed. What joy your mother has given me, to bring into the world my beautiful granddaughter, and what joy I took from our walks, when I told you of the old ways; of a time when perhaps magic and science blurred. That’s my opus: our story. You and I, you listening to your old Papa Pat delight you about the magic of the old ways. And perhaps, my lady, perhaps … there may yet be a little of that magic left. So go find it.

 

With all my love, Papa Pat.

 

JS Apsley from Glasgow, Scotland has won the Ringwood Publishing short story prize 2024 for his debut fiction submission, "Immersion", which inspired him to keep writing, and find homes for some of his other work. He has since placed short stories and flash fiction with a number of publishers, podcasts and presses including: Bewildering Stories, Bright Flash Literary, Brussels Literary Review, Loft Books, Lowlife Lit Press, Lovecraftiana, Tales to Terrify, WildSound Horror Festival, and Underside Stories. JS Apsley is the pen name of a non-fiction author who has been published multiple times by institutional publishers such as Edinburgh University Press.