Matilda writes to Edgar.

[faxpunk]

 

Dear Mr Forqand,

My name is Matilda Green and I am a former princess of Svenia. We met during your state visit to Stockholm in 1986, although you may not remember this very well. I chose to dress that night to blend into the walls, as I wasn’t allowed to be in attendance that night, according to my mother, the queen. But I went because I wanted to eat cake. I was making my way to the cake stand and you asked me to cut a slice for your husband, probably thinking I was a part of the staff. I did as asked, being the naive sixteen year old trying to avoid being detected as the fourth in line to the throne. You thanked me very kindly. Thus concluded our thrilling meeting.

I abdicated my royal position a short two years ago and settled in the Federates of America. But I’m not seeking your correspondence to blither on about my own self! How boring might that be! No, I am intending to find out more about an author dear to my heart, Mr Antoine Lertre. 

During my travels in Slavonia I chanced upon his book, A Tart’s Journey to the East, printed in 1950 in both English and French. What an incredible read it was. The novel influenced my thinking tremendously. Since settling here in the Federates I’ve sought out his other works and was very saddened to hear about his passing some six years ago. It came to my attention that he left his worldly belongings, as well as the rights to his works, to your capable care and thus I write to you today to find out more about the man. Biographical information was quite scarce in the library system near me.

I understand his writing may have been surrounded by an air of controversy, due to the attitudes of our prudish societies. I’m well aware he wrote pornography, and I hope you don’t take offence at me putting that out there in writing. But he wrote it with such life that I wanted to read more. 

So if you would be so kind as to tell me something about your dear friend. What was his personality like? What work of his was he proudest of? Did he marry and settle down or remain a bachelor? Did he write until his dying days?

If the wound of his passing is too fresh, feel free to throw out this letter and not respond at all. I wouldn’t want you to feel burdened by my request.

With endless condolences,

Miss Matilda Green

Dear Miss Green,

I was charmed by your letter. I take correspondence from Lertre’s readers on a monthly basis, but they are most often lecherous old men, who enjoyed his works in their youth and now wish to read more filth. As a fellow lecherous old man, I empathise, but I’ve got more important things to do than provide pornography for the pensioners in the Franc Republic. That, and my French is quite poor these days. But I digress.

I must apologise for not recognising your royal self a decade or so ago. I never got the hang of those ghastly state visits. You must understand, a true Englishman never leaves this country willingly. But my husband did enjoy the cake, and I’m sure you now enjoy your freedom. Miss Green, you must tell me why you left the royal life. I’m the furthest thing from a republican but I’m also a liberal, and feel even royals should enjoy freedom to choose their own path. I support your decision entirely.

As for Mr Antoine Lertre, rest his soul, he was the best friend I ever had, and perhaps in some ways the only true friend I had. He is certainly the only friend I had outside of politics, and friends in politics, well, they only last as long as you enjoy power. His public personality is frustratingly shadowed by his works. The great mistake of his youth was writing pornography under his own name, and later on he picked a pseudonym to write stories of deception, intrigue and murder. Perhaps you have heard of those books as well. Lertre is also known as Mr Anthony Leclerc. 

To those who knew him beyond his works, he was always a very charming, funny man. He was very learned and empathetic toward others. He had his bouts of melancholy, too, but he tried to stay upbeat about life at almost every turn. He wrote throughout his life but never full time. His profession was always in cheese imports, working with his brother and father, with his brother taking over the company after his father passed away sometime in the 1980’s. He was sexually liberal, and I won’t deny that we met in the seedy gentleman’s clubs of Londinium. Perhaps one ought to not reveal such things to an unmarried lady, but you’ve read his work already, miss Green. The things he wrote about are far more corrupting than the things that went on in those clubs. Such was his incredible imagination.

As for love, he loved many in multiple configurations. In the fifties he had one particular love who got away and in some senses he never stopped grieving the loss. When we met I had just gone through a break up of my own. We bonded over such a loss, and though I gained my love back eventually, Lertre let his man go. He was loved and loved back plenty, but he never settled down to marry. 

Out of his work, I think he was most proud of the Slavonian series. I’m not sure if you are aware as the work was only ever published in French. This wasn’t a continuation of A Tart’s Journey, but a series of stories about a rich man who buys a serf and their continuing relationship in its varied power dynamics. My own favourites from his oeuvre are Penmanship, the tale of the two men exchanging letters while unaware they know each other in real life, and Guises, the story of the king who disguises himself in his own kingdom to find the most capable right hand man to join his court.

Ask me anything you’d like, Miss Green. I’m at your service, and relish any opportunity I may get to reminisce about my dear friend. He was truly one of a kind.  

With affection,

Mr Edgar Forqand