Dear Hugh,

THIS is the only letter I have written to you. Yet you were the only literate person in the house who wrote, kept in touch with his far-flung family. You were the status symbol for 6, Fashoda Square. The man, who, dressed in his Sunday best, wore a suit and a trilby hat; more than that, owned two Sunday trilby hats and one for work. Worked as a ganger, the foreman on a building site.

You knew all about weight and length, could calculate size. It is only now, as I write that I realise that is how your darling sister Mary (Aunt Mary) in America could get my gifts so right. Were you there in the moments we opened those parcels, in the years after the war, that delighted and confused us? Did you see my eyes light up as I stuffed my tiny fists in my mouth to stop myself shouting out in anticipation of what the parcel, covered in stamps and airmail stickers, would reveal? Or were you at work and my thanks had to be saved until you, the lodger, came home to my granny’s house? I can’t remember.

Although we just managed you must have told Mary that we only had the bare essentials; owned nothing extravagant or exquisite. But the parcels changed all that. Inside were large tins full of sweet peaches. “What’s a peach?” I asked granny. “Try one,” granddad said and the sweetness of it still lingers. As does the scent of the Spam luncheon meat, the corned beef. What a change for you and the other men of the house to take sandwiches, filled with meat.

Did you know that the packets of dried cake mix defeated us, granny and I? It is only today that I understand why. Granny O’Brien was semi-literate, Granddad O’Brien was illiterate and I was in the early stages of reading, so the instructions on the packet were indecipherable. We did read “Just add an egg” but refused to believe it was that easy to make a chocolate cake. Too ashamed to ask you to read it, it remained unopened.

What I also want you to know is that 60 years later I still remember the one gift that never fades from my memory. Hugh, you must have gauged my size and weight, adding my age, for Mary to buy the perfect blouse. I unwrapped the tissue paper slowly, not daring to expect anything lovely. Inside its folds lay a soft white chiffon blouse with a Peter Pan collar, short puffed sleeves, with small mother of pearl buttons down the front. As if that wasn’t enough to delight, it had hand-painted cockerels placed here and there with diamante eyes. Yes, diamante eyes. Can you imagine my joy? Beneath the paper was an under slip of smooth taffeta, something I had never before seen or knew existed.

Did I smother you in kisses when you came home from work, I doubt it. I would have been home by then. I hope when Aunt Mary made that one visit from America I remembered to thank her. I still have that one blackand-white photo of us all that you took with your Brownie box camera. However, this thank you is for you because your letters to her must have been full of descriptions of us, your surrogate family, in England. I think we meant more to you than I ever realised. It’s too late now for a personal thank you but I want you to know, to record, that I remember the blouse and when I do, I remember you, your thoughtfulness, kindness, and I am still grateful.

With love, Maureen Maureen Glover, Kenmare, Kerry