Script lettering in a heart on the ribs

The Harlow Street sign came down on Tuesday, the whole of it, and I've been turning the old board over in my hands ever since. Mr Pargeter wanted the gilt scrolls scraped out and something plainer put in, but Mrs Pargeter said she'd not have her name looking like a bill of lading, so I was given a week and a free hand with the brushes. You'll laugh, but the thing I kept coming back to was how the capitals wanted to curl back on themselves, as if the letters were trying to hold on to each other.

Thursday I drew it out on brown paper first. A heart, the way you'd draw one for a Valentine's card, and then I wrote the words inside the loop so the ascenders became the top curves and the long tails swung down to make the point. I put two small hearts into the gap at the centre, outlined only, no fill, because a solid heart inside a loop of black script looks like a bruise. Father would have said I was wasting paper. He'd have been right, mostly.

Mrs Pargeter came in on Friday with a cup of tea she forgot to drink and stood at my elbow for an hour. She didn't say much. When I finished the last stroke she traced the tail of the letter with one finger, not touching the wet paint, and said, "That's the first thing anyone's written in this town that looks like it means it."

I didn't tell her the heart was meant for the post office sign, the one I never got to paint. I've kept the brown paper. It's in my coat. Write back and tell me whether the Bishop Street lettering is still wrong, and whether Mother has stopped asking after the shop.

Yours, Walter