Adventure lettering on a forearm

The machine arrived on the post coach yesterday, wrapped in a horse blanket and smelling of someone else's pipe smoke. It is a black enamel typewriter with no maker's name left on it and the keys worn pale at the centre, but the ribbon is still good. I typed the word on the first clean sheet just to see the letters sit in a row, evenly spaced, each one striking the page with its small iron opinion. You would have laughed. I spent a full minute on that one word.

The castle is worse than the agent described and better than I hoped. Half the north tower has slid into the moat, but the chapel roof holds, and there is a table under it where the light falls at the right slant for writing. Mr Pringle from the village brings bread on Tuesdays and asks whether I have found the lost treasury yet. I tell him I have found a dead jackdaw and a cracked chamber pot, and that these count as progress.

Here is the thing I did not tell Father. I am not here to catalogue masonry for the Society. I came because I wanted one word in my life that was not already decided for me. Every letter I have typed since spring has been about damp and rates and the price of lime. Today I wrote adventure and then sat with my hands in my lap for an hour, because it looked so small on the page, and so possible.

Write soon, and tell me whether the spare ribbon is still in the drawer under the stairs. I shall need it for the next word.

Yours in ink, Margery