I have not tried to make a television appeal. I felt I owed it to the unknown mother to make a choice about whether to come forward or to remain anonymous if she hears about my quest through the small ads, or if she comes across my book. Her letter had reached and touched so many of us: my friend the dog-walker, the lady at the statistics office, the Professor’s wife, the graphologist, most of the people to whom I had spoken, and perhaps those of you who have followed my quest. Above all, she had touched me, and I look at my own children and give thanks for them, and I worry about them and their fragile mortality, and I worry about the unknown letter-writer, hidden in the shadows, sharing her grief only with her friend Christine and the shade of Maurice. A grief that in her loneliness she consigned to the ‘dark illimitable ocean without bound’ to float on for evermore . . . But that ocean, ‘Without dimension, where length, breadth, and highth and time and place are lost’, betrayed her and almost immediately spat the bottle up on an English beach.

Perhaps the clairvoyant was right and the Frenchwoman was dead. It was strange that in spite of my researches I had found no real echo of her continued existence. Did I really believe in the clairvoyant’s predictions? I no longer knew what I thought.

But if, somewhere, the letter-writer is alive, then perhaps this book can serve as a clumsy ‘letter-in-a-bottle’ reply.

To Maurice’s mother, wherever you are. The sea brought your bottle to me. I read your letter. It moved me. It made me weep for you and with you. I hope that your grief will grow more bearable with time. I hope with all my heart that you have found happiness.

I wonder if she will receive my message.

‘I too but signify at the utmost a little wash’d-up drift,

A few sands and dead leaves to gather,

Gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.’

Walt Whitman, ‘As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life’, 1860

Original Transcript: The Letter

Original Transcript: The Letter

A tous les navires au large, à tous les ports d’attache, à ma famille, à tous les amis et à tous les inconnus.

Ceci est un message, une prière, le message, c’est que mes souffrances, mes enonces m’ont enseignées une grande verité.