Synopsis:
VICTOR, a retired Yorkshire trade union leader, is dying of leukaemia. He wants to keep this from his wife,SONIA. Instead he calls to his bedside his protégé, the young MAURICE STAPLETON, Professor of Art, in whom he confides, and with whom he attempts to confront 'the big questions'.
SONIA writes letters to him with neither beginnings nor endings, posts them at the bottom of the road, and delivers them to him in the mornings with his other mail. Neither of them talks about the letters. They begin as simple recollections and end as passionate declarations. Through them she reveals a love she was unable to express and, in recalling their glorious life together, prepares him for death.
Excerpt:
"What about the arguments we had? We had our first rows over our first garden. What shape it should be, what should grow in it, which way it should face. You would insist the sun came up in one place while I knew darn well it came up in another. So what did we do? Daft buggers, we set the alarm to get up before sunrise. You were wrong of course. You've no idea how important it was to me to have been right about that. It was my first landmark. Gave me great confidence that did."
Reviews:
Only Wesker, of our dramatists, would presume to prise the heart from its standard slot and hang it so openly on the sleeve. And only Wesker could get away with it.
Benedict Nightingale, The Statesman
