The Illuminations

NEIGHBOURS

Snow was falling past the window and in her sleep she pictured a small girl and her father in a railway carriage. The train passed into Ayrshire and the girl looked at nothing over the fields, losing herself in a sense of winter and the smell of soap on her father’s hands.

It’s cold, Mog

He carried a light for her all his life and proved she was easy to love. Maureen opened her eyes and found that sixty years had gone by in an instant. Snowflakes poured from the street lamp like sparks from a bonfire. The night was empty and there wasn’t a sound in the flat except for the echo of yesterday’s talk shows.

This weather would put years on you

The sentence ran through her mind and then she wiped her eyes. Things are slow at that hour and you can easily miss a knock at the door or someone calling your name. Her memory had taken her to another place, where snow blew around a vanished train, and now she was home in her own warm bed and already tense for the day’s share of things sent to try her. Her thoughts came out at night like mice and the old scratching woke her up.

How hard can it be to stop what you’re doing for five minutes and dial your mother’s number? I could be lying dead, thought Maureen. You give them the best years of your life and then you get the sob stories, the hard-done-to stuff, as if you hadn’t given them everything under the sun.

She moved the pillows up. They have short memories. No she didn’t take them to art galleries and no she didn’t sit down with the homework. She was too busy putting a meal on the table. Short memories, she thought again, looking to the window. Some day she would write something down on paper from her heart, just to tell the truth. Her father often said it was good to write a letter because it’s something people can keep. They can look at it again and think about what they did. And they can write back and say sorry because they think the world of you.

It wasn’t even five in the morning. She reached for the clock and knocked over a pile of audio books. ‘Some people have too many friends to be a good friend to anyone,’ she said. Then the sound registered, a knock at the door. She swung her legs and waited to hear it again, then she was up, putting on a cardigan and turning on the lamps. Maureen told herself the roads would be bad unless the lorries were out with the salt. She couldn’t find her carpet slippers and she kept the door-chain on.

‘It’s you, Anne.’

Anne was her neighbour, eighty-two, and a bad sleeper. She had taken to wandering the corridors at night. Her neighbours often saw her shadow passing their glass doors, but they were used to upsets. It was a sheltered housing complex and none of the residents was young. The flats had front doors onto the street but the other doors, glass ones, led to a common area made up of a breakfast room, a reception, a launderette.

‘It’s me, Maureen. I’m so sorry.’

Maureen undid the chain. Anne was fully dressed, biting her lip. The ferns behind her made it look as if she had just walked in from the woods. But Anne always looked like she’d seen the world. She had beautiful skin. And her skirts were always made of the best.

‘Good God,’ Maureen said. ‘You’re like somebody dressed for a summer dance. Come away in.’

‘I won’t come in.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Can I borrow your tin opener?’

Anne was holding a tin of Heinz tomato soup. It didn’t do to argue with her at a time like this, so Maureen went off to find her slippers. When she came back Anne was in the middle of saying something about how she loved Blackpool and how the Illuminations were the best thing about it, the night when they turned on all the lights. She wanted to see it again. She put her arms across her chest and tapped rapidly at her own shoulder. Maureen had seen that before.

‘Come on, then,’ she said.

Anne’s flat was like a palace. Maureen loved the story it told, not that she knew it, but a person with taste always has a story. Once they were inside, Anne walked to the microwave and turned round. ‘The rabbit wants his dinner,’ she said. ‘He’s not had a thing all day.’

‘Who?’

‘The rabbit.’

Anne nodded towards the breakfast bar. The rabbit was ceramic, about six inches tall with green eyes and crumbs of bread at its feet. Maureen noticed the snow falling past the window in the living room. The rabbit looked creepy. ‘Now, Anne,’ she said, ‘we need to make sure we’re not telling stories.’

‘I know it’s daft,’ Anne said. ‘But it’s okay. He’s only sitting and it’s cold outside.’

‘But, Anne …’

‘He’s awful hungry.’

Anne’s mind opened onto itself. She thought of water for a second and the warm baths she used to draw.

Children don’t like it too warm. The same as a photographic solution in fact, one hundred and twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit. That’s what you want. Let the chemicals dissolve in the listed order and make sure it’s not too hot or the solution can’t take it and the image will be blurred.

Maureen looked into the rabbit’s eyes.

‘This is his favourite,’ Anne said. ‘Soup is all he ever wants for his dinner.’ Then she wiped the tin with a damp cloth and handed it to Maureen. ‘Some of these things have a ring you can pull, but this one doesn’t for some reason.’

BLACKPOOL

In a photograph pinned above the kettle, the face of George Formby was peeking round a door. ‘Turned out nice again!’ it said in ink under his name, a curly signature. He was smiling for the whole of Britain. The electricity sockets were covered over with Elastoplast, and the rings on the cooker were out of bounds, too, taped over with a saltire of white plastic tape. Maureen thought it was like the stuff the police put up around the murder scene in those crime dramas. No hot kettles or rings. It was Jackie the warden’s decision, and it was made, Maureen knew, in consultation with Social Services. They were sorry but Anne just couldn’t operate these electrical goods because she might burn herself. Maureen warmed the soup and Anne stood back ready to say something. ‘I’d like to take him to Blackpool, by the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea,’ she said, half-singing. ‘I always thought I would end up there.’

Anne was fine most days, but she was changing. The rules at Lochranza Court stated clearly that any resident incapable of working a kettle would have to be moved to a nursing home. Nobody wanted that. Every few months it happened to one of the residents, but Anne needed her friends. ‘That’s right, Maureen,’ said Jackie. Anne added somehow to the dignity of the place, with her past and her pictures and all her nice cushions. So the warden was in cahoots with Maureen, at sixty-eight the youngest resident in the complex. They pretended it was still fine for Anne to be in the flat by herself, but she wasn’t able to use the kitchen. The microwave was okay.

Maureen was looking at the rabbit again.

‘Once upon a time, I used to go to restaurants,’ Anne said. ‘Fancy ones. In New York. Now it’s “ping” this and “ping” that. The cooker doesn’t work. And the rabbit doesn’t like his soup cold.’

‘How do you know that, Anne?’

‘Well, it’s me that lives with him.’

Anne used to read lots of books. Somebody said she was a well-known photographer years ago and Maureen could believe it. You knew by the way Anne arranged her lamps — and by the lamps themselves, the beautiful shades — that she had travelled. She had the kind of rugs you can’t buy in Saltcoats. You just don’t see rugs like that. And what a lovely radio she had by the sofa next to all those paperweights showing Blackpool in the old days. When Maureen visited the flat next door she always went round looking at the faces of the people in the framed photographs. She loved seeing them caught in the middle of their interesting lives. That was a thing. People who didn’t know Maureen immediately had her respect, as if not knowing her was part of their achievement.

THE MUSEUM OF HARRY

Anne talked about him with the kind of deference that keeps its own counsel against the living. There was nobody wiser than Harry. And he did look like a man in charge, peering from holiday snaps taken on the Isle of Arran. They weren’t snaps, actually, but carefully taken photographs, developed, printed and framed with love, and they tended to involve the sky or the sea or a beautiful mixture of both. The one hanging over the telephone table showed the Pladda lighthouse at the end of a field of blue-bells, and by her bed she had Harry sitting near a loch. He was smoking a pipe and looking down at a model aeroplane in his hands. His smile was a private note to Anne. They might have been hiding out from the world.

‘I owe everything to him,’ she once said.

‘Is that right?’

‘My history begins with Harry.’ She looked happy to say it.

‘That can’t be true,’ Maureen said. ‘What about everything else? Your childhood and your career?’

‘It began again with him. That’s how it felt.’

Maureen didn’t know what she was looking at in the photographs but she was certain they showed contentment. She herself had never been with a man with that kind of patience. The longer she looked at the photographs the more she could tell Harry was a generous person who had wanted to bring out Anne’s intelligence. Maureen had seen things like that on television and it was lovely to think about. She looked out the window and imagined the coast was filled with Harry.

He had never lived in Saltcoats. It seemed he had died in the 1970s, but the details were sketchy and Maureen felt it would test Anne’s patience to ask for more information. It didn’t matter.

It was just nice to know there were men like that in the world. ‘This one’s my favourite.’ Maureen picked up a black-and-white portrait from the 1950s. It showed a man in a short-sleeved shirt sitting at a bar with a bottle of beer in front of him and an empty camera case. A monkey was eating nuts out of his hand. ‘Exotic,’ Maureen said. The man was young in the picture and so was the Queen in a poster tacked to the wall behind him.

‘That’s my Harry at his best,’ Anne said. ‘He was serving with the army in Singapore.’

‘But that’s an English bottle of beer.’

‘It’s Singapore, Mrs Ward.’

Maureen knew when to let things go. A full bowl of soup sat between them and Anne stared at it as if she was remembering something important. ‘Don’t drive tonight,’ she said. And when Maureen told her she didn’t have a car Anne just looked blank and said, ‘That’s true.’

It was around New Year that Maureen had first noticed Anne getting mixed up about dates. At Lochranza Court they often saw the onset of dementia, but with Anne it was different because she appeared to be trying to climb out of herself before it was too late. Whatever vessel Anne had sailed in all her life, it began to drift and that was the start of it all. She rolled into a darkness where everything old was suddenly new, and when she returned to the surface her life’s materials were bobbing up around her. ‘We all have flotsam, Mum,’ said Esther on the phone. (Esther was a therapist.) ‘No matter how we weight it and sink it to the bottom, it comes loose. And that’s what’s happening to your nice lady next door.’

THE RABBIT

Maureen poured the soup away and her neighbour sauntered over to stare at the bright red splashes in the sink. Anne spoke about a book she and her grandson once read. He was doing it at university and she bought a copy. She couldn’t remember the book’s name but the man in the story was Sergeant Troy and he wore a nice red coat. Maureen washed the bowl and was quietly amazed.

Anne sat on the sofa. She looked at the window, her hands neatly clasped in her lap. ‘The rabbit was out there in the cold,’ she said. ‘He was by himself in the middle of the road.’

‘When?’

‘At Christmas. The snow was falling. Nice, if you like snow. But rabbits don’t.’

‘Don’t they?’

‘No. Not a bit. Or the dark. They don’t like the dark. They like to be out playing with the other boys.’ Anne said she’d been standing at the window not doing anything, just looking into the road, and she saw the rabbit come from the dark at the top of the shore. ‘It came from the bandstand where the Punch and Judy thing used to be.’

‘Just there, beside the beach?’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘And it just hopped up the road. I was watching it. And you know what, Maureen? It stopped and looked at me. Just looked. Then it kept going. Disappeared.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that through the snow.’

Maureen had finished washing up and she leaned on the breakfast bar with both hands. ‘Don’t think about it,’ she said. ‘You had better get some sleep or you’ll be shattered tomorrow.’

‘But he’s all right now. He likes it here.’

Maureen got her friend into bed and closed the blinds. Anne wanted the rabbit on the wicker chair but Maureen said no and got an unhappy look. ‘You’re not in charge,’ Anne said, leaning back. She stared into the corner at a pair of old suitcases and recalled the day one of the cases was sitting on the station platform at Preston. It was a long time ago. It was raining. She stood that afternoon and looked back at the Park Hotel, where she’d just had tea with Harry and he’d told her about his other life. He drove back to Manchester and she waited for the train to Blackpool, her heart racing, the suitcase filled with negligees and film spools.

I’ve got the flat for good, Harry. And all the beakers are there and the safelights. All the solutions. Paper. Everything we need. It will do as a darkroom but a place to stay as well. It will just be ours. We can spend the night, in the summer.

‘Go to sleep, Anne,’ Maureen said.

‘You’re not the boss.’

Before closing the door, Maureen looked at a picture of a handsome young man in uniform that hung above the light-switch. ‘That’s Luke,’ Anne said, her eyes shining.

‘He’s a fine boy.’

‘He’s a captain in the British army.’

SALTCOATS

Maureen went out every day to buy milk. On her way to the Spar she passed the empty boating pond and looked over to Arran; it was nice to be out in the fresh air; the island was clear and

romantic, like one of those pictures you could buy for over the sofa. The mountains were covered in snow and the top of Goat-fell looked dangerous, as if the man in the Milk Tray advert was about to come down on his skis. She used to like that man in the black polo-neck who raced down mountains and dived off cliffs to bring the lady a box of chocolates. In the summer, Arran was a totally different place because the hills were brown and cheery and if the sky was blue it seemed the whole island was close enough to touch.

Maureen considered herself the warden’s deputy. It wasn’t a real job or anything like that but she could help the older ones with their laundry. She watered the plants and went for the milk, tasks that gave her a feeling of usefulness she had missed. When Ian, Esther and Alex were children she seldom had a minute to herself. If she wasn’t ironing shirts she was filling in school forms or making beds, or cooking. But people looked after their kids in those days. You put in the work and enjoyed their young years. Not like nowadays when everybody’s harassed and the mothers line up at the school gates in their giant jeeps. Her three walked to school. But by the time Esther was fifteen it was all over with the parenting. Finished. And one by one they left the house with their LPs and their T-shirts. That’s what happens, Maureen thought. That’s how it is. You kill yourself looking after them and then they get up and leave you.

She never imagined she’d end up in a place like Lochranza Court, but it had been six years and she was used to it. Her house in Stobbs Crescent had got too big and then a couple of druggies smashed the patio doors one night and stole her television. She was terrified. In the morning there was broken glass all over the carpet and her ornaments were scattered around the garden and

the gate was nearly off its hinges. Maureen remembered looking at all this and seeing that her old life was spoiled. After a few weeks, Esther drove over from Edinburgh to try bringing a bit of calm to the situation. She could see the point of a new house but not an old people’s home.

‘It’s not a home,’ Alex said. There was booze on his breath. ‘Get a grip, Esther, it’s not a home. It’s retirement housing.’

‘That’s right,’ Ian said. Esther knew the matter was settled when Ian backed the plan. (Ian worked with computers, as Maureen often liked to remind them. By this she meant he was always likely to be right. ‘And he keeps up his annual membership at the gym.’)

‘It’s sheltered housing accommodation,’ Ian said. ‘She’ll have a door onto the street, like a normal person. But the other door goes into the complex, where all the people can have breakfast together. There’s a warden. It’s safe. And there’s a tropical plants area.’

‘People die in there,’ Esther said. ‘Every day. And she’s only sixty-two.’

‘What’s dying?’ Alex said. ‘People die every day all the time.’

Ian made a face like he couldn’t understand what was wrong with people. ‘What?’

‘Everybody dies.’

‘Not if they look after themselves, they don’t.’

‘It’s a home,’ Esther said. ‘I’ve got patients, Ian, and I’ve seen what happens when they give up. They dwindle. And Mum’s prone to depression. She’s been closing down her life since we were teenagers. She’s gone from marital crisis to infirmity without a break in between, and that makes me sad, Ian, because I’d always hoped for a bit of optimism. A bit of hope. Just once to see our mother happy.’

‘You know everything,’ Ian said. ‘Keep that shit for your patients, Esther. She’s not asking for gold. She wants to be safe at night and this place is the answer.’

Maureen never heard the details of this argument, but Alex later gave her a few clues and it upset her to think of them not getting on. She didn’t want the boys being too hard on Esther just because she was different. Esther had a lot on her mind and she sometimes blamed people, that was her problem, and you have to remember, Maureen noted, that Esther wasn’t too happy in her own life, not nearly as happy as she liked to think, and she sometimes took it out on other people. It was only natural. When you had a big job like Esther’s, people could expect too much. That’s right. Esther was her own worst enemy.

On her way back from the Spar, hugging the milk, Maureen saw the street lights switching off. In winter it was often dark when she went out and getting light as she returned. She liked the sudden change of atmosphere and the sense of a new day beginning. Only when she went to cross the road to Lochranza House did Maureen spot the fire-engine and notice that smoke was escaping from an open window. Jackie the warden was standing out in the car park with a clipboard, the elderly residents gathered around in their dressing-gowns.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what’s the matter?’ Maureen said, putting the milk down on a bench.

‘It’s Mr MacDonald in 29,’ Jackie said. ‘Burnt the toast again.’

‘Oh dear,’ Maureen said.

‘Evacuation.’

‘Heaven help us,’ said Mrs Souter from flat 24. ‘Is this what they call an evacuation?’

‘It has different meanings,’ Jackie said.

Anne was sitting on the bench. There was a suitcase at her feet and a smile on her face. ‘It’s not that bad,’ she said, looking at the sea. ‘Beautiful lines over there, don’t you think?’ Maureen had wandered back to pick up the milk she’d left on the bench. ‘It’s all nice when you stop and frame it,’ Anne went on, ‘the people and the horizon and everything. If we wait long enough we’ll see the

Waverley

sailing past.’

NATURAL LIGHT

One day Anne asked for an outing and Maureen took it upon herself to see that the trip went well. It was a constant battle in Maureen’s head, the wonder of central heating versus the benefit of fresh air, but she was happy to do all the zipping and buttoning required for a walk into town. Ian dropped in on his way to work to change a light bulb in his mother’s airing cupboard. ‘What are you up to today?’ he asked. ‘Going down Shenanigans for a few pints with the biddies?’

‘That’ll be right,’ Maureen said. ‘It’s too cold to go out. Plus there’s nowhere to go.’

‘Really? You could go to the pictures. If I wasn’t working I’d go to the pictures every day.’

‘It’s too dear,’ she said. ‘Plus you have to go to Kilmarnock and all the films are about sex or blowing people up.’

‘Awesome,’ he said.

‘Plus, I am working. That living room won’t vacuum itself and the plants out there are begging for water. Somebody’s got to do it and it might as well be me.’

She needed him to think her enjoyments were few and far

between. But after Ian left she went in to help Anne choose a dress and a coat and sensible shoes that would grip. Anne talked about the clothes that once belonged to her aunts who had lived in Glasgow: ‘Atholl Gardens. Number 73. I’m talking about a place with fourteen rooms,’ Anne said. ‘You don’t get houses like that nowadays.’

‘Was it nice?’ asked Maureen.

‘I’m talking rheumatism. Varicose veins. And chests of drawers full to overflowing with corsets and what have you.’

‘You should wear a cardigan under your coat.’

‘There were six floors. The moths had a great time and God knows how many coats they ate.’

‘Put your scarf on.’

‘A scarf’s like a friend, isn’t it?’

Maureen smoothed Anne’s hair. ‘I was always telling them to get rid of stuff,’ Anne added. ‘But they wouldn’t, Maureen. They couldn’t bear to get rid of so much as a pair of stockings.’

‘Is that right?’

‘My father was never out of the church. That was before Glasgow, mind you. In Canada. He was looking for God, up there in the church. My mother didn’t keep well. She had the disease that makes you shake. She stayed in her bed and I think she died in that bed.’

‘In Canada?’

‘That’s right. I was young then.’

The rabbit sat on the sofa with a tea towel tied around him and Anne stopped to look over.

‘I think we’ll leave him behind today,’ Maureen said. Anne offered no argument but said again that she had been a child in Canada, something about ice on the road to Dundas.

Anne sometimes looked at things and you felt she was developing a picture in her mind’s eye. ‘That was the old bathing pond,’ she said, measuring the light as they walked into town. ‘And I think rock ’n’ roll groups used to play there in their suits — the Marine Theatre.’

‘Groups? I don’t think so.’

‘All the girls would scream,’ Anne said. After a few more steps, they stopped. ‘Don’t let me miss the post again today.’

‘What?’

‘The post. I always send a cheque. Never miss it. They’ll be waiting for a cheque in Blackpool.’

This was a mystery to Maureen. She’d heard Anne speak before about people in Blackpool who were waiting for money. She mentioned it on the phone to Anne’s daughter, Alice, who just sighed and said she didn’t want anything to do with it. It was clearly a part of Anne’s life that was off-limits or stuck in the past, but the dementia was bringing it out and Maureen wanted to know more, in case she could help.

‘Who, Anne? Who’s waiting for a cheque?’

‘A nice man and his wife.’

‘And who are they?’

‘Never mind,’ Anne said. ‘I’ll do it myself.’ They walked on and Maureen told herself not to take it personally. It was part of the illness. She could only do what she could do. Anne had her own wee things to contend with and didn’t really need the post office.

Alice lived up the coast and Maureen knew it had been a risk to phone her that morning. But she thought Alice might like to drive down and take over after lunch. It was a stressful situation because Anne undervalued her daughter, as she heard said on

television, and the daughter had self-esteem issues and the family was dysfunctional. But two wrongs don’t make a right and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Maureen sometimes heard herself sounding like a wise person on a talk show and it made her feel modern that she understood people’s problems. ‘I think it’s healing the way you always tried to keep in step with your grandson,’ she said.

‘In step?’

‘Yes, with Luke. Before he went into the army.’

‘Books,’ Anne said. ‘He studied literature and it was lovely stuff.’

‘You read all those books?’

‘Oh, yes. We used to buy them at Dillon’s. And we’d discuss them when he came over to visit me.’

‘It’s a surprise when a boy like that chooses the army.’

‘I thought he’d be a somethingologist,’ Anne said, ‘but men don’t always get to be what they want to be.’

On their way down Sidney Street, Maureen told Anne it would do her good to see her daughter. ‘She just wants to put me in a home,’ Anne said. ‘She just wants to get the keys to the flat.’

‘That’s not true, Anne. They wouldn’t give her the keys. Our place isn’t for young people.’

Maureen thought it was a true saying: you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. Anne looped her arm through hers and they stopped in at the newsagent so that Maureen could buy some mints. The magazine rack was full of faces that Maureen knew off the telly and Anne stared past the men’s magazines to a shelf stacked to the ceiling with Airfix boxes.

The Candy Bar wasn’t busy. Maureen was all smiles, leading Anne by the arm through a group of empty tables. ‘We’re waiting

for a part in

Charlie’s Angels

,’ she said to the waitress, ‘so mind and keep the strawberry tarts away from us today. We’re watching the figure.’ Maureen peeled off her friend’s coat and put the scarf inside the sleeve. She sniffed the scarf before tucking it in, liking the perfume, the essence of Anne. Then she went round to her own side and placed her purse on the table.

‘This is my treat. Ian left me a wee tenner this morning so we’ll let him buy us our tea.’

Anne was looking at the light coming off the teaspoons. It was a familiar process for her, looking at objects and the way the light picked them out and changed them. Her mind fell back to when she first met him. He was giving a talk about documentary photography and capturing life on the street. He spoke at the Masons’ Hall not far from the tower and his cheeks were flushed as he stood on the stage.

You were a lovely speaker. You had the audience in the palm of your hand for the best part of two hours.

They went for a drink at the Washington Arms that night and he began to tell her a story about himself, a story that never ended. Even after he died the story continued and became something she added to herself. She liked to think of him walking on the promenade with his back to where he was going, looking at her, talking with his hands.

A man called Cotton worked at the Air Ministry. That’s right. He got planes off the ground, Spitfires and Blenheims. Your eyes burned naming them. You were never a bad man, Harry. Not really. The planes did photographic intelligence at a height of 30,000 feet. They were the first, the first of their kind you said and I’m saying watch where you’re going. You nearly tripped. It seems there was fog and snow over Germany …

‘Anne, that’s the salt, hen. Not the sugar.’ Maureen was smiling as if to say that it didn’t matter. Anne had ripped the salt sachet instead of the sugar and poured it into her tea.

‘It’s nae bother,’ the girl said and she took the mug away and came back with a fresh one.

‘We stopped for ice-cream,’ Anne said, remembering Harry. She could see his scarf blowing in the wind. ‘There was a jukebox inside and it played the new music.’

Maureen stirred her coffee and then turned her attention to something new. She spoke with a changed expression. ‘I’m worried about my three. It’s these children they have. They run riot.’

‘Grandkids is the good bit,’ Anne said. ‘You can love them but you don’t have to take all the blame.’

‘And that Kirsty one. Ian’s wife. She hired an au pair. An

au pair

, just to look after the child while she goes to the hairdresser.

The hairdresser

I mean, is it me, Anne? Is it me that’s half-daft? Weak. They got that from their father: they can’t stand up to these women.’

‘Are you divorced, Maureen?’

‘Oh, years ago. He’s dead, to me anyhow. Lives in Stirling with someone. I don’t want to know. They can’t pull the wool over my eyes.’

‘You like being upset, don’t you?’ Anne said. The question came innocently and Maureen thought it was part of her illness.

‘Families,’ she replied. ‘They take it out of you. If I won the lottery I think I’d just go and lose myself in Spain. To hell with the lot of them. They could come and find me.’

‘Harry flew planes during the war,’ Anne said. ‘His were called Lysanders.’

‘Is that right?’

‘They flew in secret out of a place in Devon. All hush-hush. That’s how he learned his trade, going into Germany and France during the night to take pictures of factories and docks. They got medals because every night they put their lives at risk, eh? That was Harry.’

‘That’s something to be proud of, Anne.’

‘I think it was hard for those men to live with what they’d done. Keeping it secret all the time.’ Anne said it softly.

‘Are you all right, Anne?’

She drew a deep breath and made a motion with her hand. ‘There used to be a lovely gypsy in Blackpool who could tell your future.’

It was amazing to talk to Anne. She had all these pieces in her life that didn’t really fit together, and when she was talkative she said things that made you think her life had been quite complete. Yet everybody has their problems. Maureen didn’t know what the trouble in Anne’s family was all about but she knew instinctively how to treat it as important. Alice came into the cafe looking nervous, looking televised, unwinding her beautiful scarf as she walked to the table. She’ll be on one of her diets and won’t want any cake, thought Maureen.

VIDEO GAMES

Alice’s doctor in Troon had said something lasting. He said the thing with dementia was that it trapped the sufferer in vagueness and spoiled the offspring’s hopes for a satisfying closure, especially if the relationship had been difficult. Alice had lived with a mother who thought her daughter lacked something, and now,

aged fifty, Alice wondered if she couldn’t mount one last attempt to change her mind.

The problem was that Alice slightly agreed with her mother’s view of her. Anne possessed a little mystery and a good imagination while Alice had always been a little demon of reality. Even as a teenager Alice could see those traits in herself: first to correct, last to believe, and always resistant when asked to imagine the impossible. She wanted proof that something was valuable, needed evidence beyond the word of some artist, and for years she prided herself on this distrust, as if it was a gift to be so hard to fool. Nowadays, when she looked in the mirror and pouted and shook her hair, she sometimes got a glimpse of the person other people saw, a certain sourness, a gleam of small-mindedness. Alice knew she was better than her demeanour, but it was hard to prove.

She was saying how she’d recently gone to Luke’s place in Glasgow. He had one of those modern flats near Central Station, the kind with underground parking, bushes and an intercom. He wasn’t there that often because of serving abroad or being down at the barracks in England, but he’d been up for what Alice called ‘the Christmas period’. ‘He didn’t come down to Ayrshire,’ she said to her mother, ‘unless he came over to see you without telling me.’ She shrugged and smiled, looked at Maureen. ‘It’s always a possibility,’ she added.

She went on to say it was more likely he’d been up boozing in the city with his squaddie pals and then returned to Helmand without anyone noticing. Maureen nodded. She felt that was the kind of thing men did, they came and went, never realising how much they were hurting people. Such a sensible-looking young man, too, in his tunic and green beret. ‘It hasn’t changed in years,

that flat,’ Alice was saying. ‘You should see the mess. He gave me a key but if he thinks I’m going up there to clean for him, he’s got another think coming.’

Anne was irritated. She drank her tea. An old sentence ran in her mind whenever Alice was giving one of her speeches. ‘She knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.’ Luke was like her and not dull or small like his mother. He was someone who loved pictures, shells, and all sorts of things. He loved to fly away. She could recall seeing the start of an artistic temperament in the boy and being delighted. It had spelled out a closeness between them. He once dropped in from school to tell her that Lysander was not only the name of a fighter plane but a Spartan warrior, and it remained with her, the way he smiled, the way he ran into the living room with his big open eyes.

‘He’s a cut above the usual kid, my grandson,’ she said.

‘He might be a cut above,’ Alice said, ‘but you should see the state of that flat of his.’

Alice didn’t go into it, didn’t say that when she’d opened the door to her son’s flat, she suddenly felt safe. His mail was piled in the hall and she gathered it all up. She put it on the kitchen top next to some empty beer bottles and a book called

Kim

She went round dusting and she loved loading the dishwasher and making the bed. She boiled the kettle and she enjoyed choosing a cup and placing it on a saucer. She loved cleaning an ashtray and taking it out onto the narrow balcony and smoking a cigarette, looking over to the glass roof of the railway station. Luke was in a desert at that very moment and he was probably shooting a rifle or riding in a tank and she was here, waiting. It wasn’t the life she wanted for him. And she was sure that was one of the reasons he wanted it for himself.

‘Such a nice flat, but what a mess.’ This was what she chose to say to the women. ‘It’s the same every time I go up. Not just a mess, but a man-mess. I can understand socks and all that. But it’s the bottles of beer and the cables — oh my God, the cables.’

When she walked around the flat that day, Alice had worried that maybe her son didn’t really know how to live. He was one of those people whose sitting room is full of travel stuff and suitcases, duty-free bags, washing kits, as if he didn’t really live anywhere and just wanted to be in transit. Those people are sort of homeless, she thought. They don’t know how to belong or how to be at peace with themselves. They live out of bags; they eat on the run. And there’s no dignity or order in that kind of life. To not know where the clean towels are kept or that you have cutlery in the drawer; it’s no good, she thought, it’s a half-life.

‘What are the cables for?’ Maureen asked.

‘Video games,’ Alice said. ‘Just everywhere. Those handsets, you know. Cables like you wouldn’t believe and all these DVDs out of their cases. I think he just gets into Glasgow and goes to the flat and smokes that stuff. The ashtrays are full of it. Hash. And he plays those games, the ones that have soldiers on the cover.’

‘Leave Luke alone,’ Anne said suddenly. ‘He’s old enough to look after himself.’

‘He’s twenty-nine.’

‘That’s old enough.’

When Anne looked up, ready to scrutinise her daughter, she noticed Alice had some kind of light stuff under her eyes. It’s one of those make-up pens that are supposed to take years off your age, thought Anne. One of those concealers you can buy. She’d seen them in magazines and thought it was silly to touch up your pictures.

PLANES

The younger women made allowances. Maureen inclined her head the way the interviewers did on

The One Show

and created a little moment between her and Alice. ‘It must be very frightening for you,’ she said, ‘knowing Luke’s out in that horrible place.’

‘You get used to it,’ Alice said. ‘I went through it all with his father. You just pray the same thing won’t happen to him.’

‘Did he die, Alice, your man?’

Anne got in quickly. ‘His name was Sean Campbell.’ She put her hands on the table and began smoothing them.

‘That’s right, Mum.’

‘I’m not daft,’ Anne said. ‘I know who Sean is.’

Alice pursed her lips. She felt better for not jumping down her mother’s throat. Then she lowered her voice in the manner of a considered and patient person. ‘My husband Sean was killed in Northern Ireland,’ she said. ‘He was serving with the Western Fusiliers, the same regiment that Luke is with now, and they were on patrol in Belfast, you know. And there was this place, the Divis Flats, where a bomb went off. There was a primary school just there and it was playtime but the kids weren’t out and the bomb went off and it killed Sean.’

‘Holy Mother of God,’ Maureen said.

‘That’s right.’

Anne heard what they were saying but she didn’t want to hear it and thought instead about the cafes she used to go to with Harry. Oh, the lovely places. She also thought about bombers and things from history that existed for her now as evidence of someone she used to be. When the women at the table paused she looked up. ‘Was that 1940?’

‘Sorry, Mum?’ Alice said.

‘The Sean thing.’

‘It was 1987,’ Alice said. ‘Luke was only five.’

‘Then she met

somebody else

,’ Anne said. She liked to talk about Alice as if she wasn’t there. ‘Another man.’

‘That’s not fair, Mum. I didn’t go out of the house. Not for ten years, I didn’t go out. Luke was at school.’

‘You were living in Glasgow?’ asked Maureen.

‘Glasgow, yes. We lived in Kent Road. It was a wee flat Sean and I bought when we got married.’

‘You got a pension, though,’ Anne said. She was staring at the crumbs on her plate. ‘Somebody always gets the pension.’

‘I was a widow with a small boy,’ Alice said. ‘A widow. My husband was dead and it was —’

‘Husband.’

‘Yes, Mum. My

husband

, Sean.’ She turned back to Maureen and was keen to finish the story. ‘I didn’t meet Gordon until Luke was settled at university.’

‘At Strathclyde?’

‘That’s right. Luke went to the University of Strathclyde. And the next thing we knew he had applied for army entrance and he passed the exams down south and went to Sandhurst.’

‘When was that, Alice?’

‘It was 2001. I remember he went in September 2001 because it was just after the thing in New York.’

‘It was planes,’ Anne said.

‘That’s right,’ said Maureen. ‘It was on TV.’

‘The Royal Western Fusiliers,’ Alice continued. ‘You pick the regiment you want during officer training. Sean liked being with the Scots and the Irish, boys from there or the North of England.

And so does Luke. I can tell you it’s not what I wanted for my Luke.’

‘The North Pier,’ Anne said.

They just ignored her. It was now part of the routine, to assume Anne was now and then speaking to herself.

‘Those planes went over Jane Street,’ Anne said, lost in her own thoughts. ‘That’s where I used to live in New York.’

‘Mum says she lived in New York,’ Alice said. ‘When she was a young woman. Before me.’

‘Jane Street,’ Anne said. ‘I took pictures. I took them for J. Walter Thompson. Colgate.’

‘Everything was before me,’ Alice said. At times she felt that her mother might suffocate her with the past. Yet she went silent, admiring the mix of periods, wondering if her mother’s neighbour really had any notion of the places that Anne had been to in her busy life. Sometimes Alice would just be sitting like this and she’d suddenly realise she was in pain, without really knowing where it came from.

JANE STREET

It was a rainy night when Maureen heard tapping through the wall and knew Anne must be up to something. ‘It’s all slush outside,’ she said as she opened the door to Anne’s flat. She had used the skeleton key and made a bit of a noise so as not to frighten her when she came in. ‘It’s all slush. Are you there, dear? Are you all right?’

Anne was sitting in a dining chair. The room was lit with a single lamp. She had a hammer across her knees, a pool of tacks

in her lap. ‘My mother didn’t keep well,’ Anne said, turning as Maureen came in. ‘She was an awful one for headaches.’

‘You came to live with the aunties?’

‘That’s right. I came to Glasgow to look after them. Aunt Anna. Aunt Grace. Four of them.’

‘You came from New York?’

‘When I was a young woman,’ Anne said, ‘I took nice pictures. At night you could see the lights on in every building.’

‘That must have been nice.’

‘Yes. Before I met Harry.’

‘And when exactly did Harry die, Anne?’

She took one of the tacks from her lap and tapped it into the wall in front of her, then she turned. ‘The hot summer,’ she said. ‘All the children were outside in their bikinis and what have you. Squeezy bottles filled with water. Running about in the sun soaking one another.’

‘And what happened to your photography?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘All that talent of yours?’

‘I don’t remember.’

She sat back in the chair and looked at the shadow she’d created with tacks on the living-room wall. The rabbit was on the carpet but it seemed neglected and Anne didn’t mention it.

‘I brought you some scent,’ Maureen said. ‘A wee bottle that was sitting in a drawer next door. I won’t use it.’

‘You always put on too much perfume.’

Maureen could be hurt by some of the things the old people said but she knew they didn’t mean it.

‘But I don’t wear this one,’ she said. ‘Esther brought it from France but it’s too strong for me. I used to like strong ones.’ She

took it over to Anne and unscrewed the top so Anne could have a sniff.

‘France, did you say?’

‘Aye.’

‘I don’t know about France,’ Anne said. ‘More like the kind of thing they wear in Manchester.’

The winter had given Maureen lessons in patience and they were lessons she felt she probably needed. She and Alice had a conversation on the telephone and agreed that Luke’s going off to Afghanistan had seen the beginning of a change in Anne. It was odd. All this Harry stuff and talk about Blackpool. All this about war planes, about Canada and New York and the old aunts. Anne was fading away and becoming known at the same time and Maureen was there to see it happening. It was fast at first and then slow. That morning Anne was looking at the picture of Luke on the wall of her bedroom and said, ‘These are the men I know.’

When Maureen was installing the new perfume in Anne’s bathroom she happened to notice two more suitcases and several boxes on top of the linen cupboard. They must have gone with Anne from house to house. Using the towel-rail for assistance, she stood on the toilet seat and reached up to put her hand into one of the boxes. Right at the top, Maureen found a photograph that appeared silvery in the bathroom light. It showed a kitchen sink with old taps and a pair of breakfast bowls waiting to be washed and a milk bottle filled with soapy water. The sink and its contents shone like nothing on earth and Maureen held it out in front of her, trying to imagine the young woman who could make a picture like that.

‘Good Lord, Anne,’ she said, returning to the living-room. ‘I had

no idea you kept even more of these old suitcases. They have labels on them, those beautiful old labels you used to get. It says:

Anne Quirk, 12 Jane Street, New York

That must be you.’

‘That was me.’

Maureen’s own mother had been self-sufficient at the end and didn’t want help, but Anne was different and full of surprises, like the miracle of that photograph, thought Maureen. She helped Anne into bed. She spread the covers and leaned in to put off the lamp.

‘I need to send a cheque or a postal order,’ Anne said.

‘Everything’s all right.’ Maureen tucked her in and felt glad that she and Anne were the great pals of Lochranza Court. It was lovely to know a person who doesn’t want to judge you all the time.

‘But it needs to be sent to Blackpool,’ Anne said. ‘They have two daughters and one’s called Sheila.’

‘Who are these people, Anne? Can I help you?’

‘They’re my friends. She’s the landlady.’

She enjoyed looking at Maureen’s face, how it became lively when things were upsetting, how she always had something to say. Maybe Maureen was a shopkeeper, the way she came to her room with soup and milk. And maybe she could help her send the money to Blackpool.

Don’t forget the Scotch tape, Harry. And if I were you I would get some cotton wool. Bert phoned and said there’s an editor who wants the youth of today. That’s what they’re looking for. I was out half the night at the cafes and these pictures, Harry, you’ll like one or two, I’m sure you will. These teenagers. You wouldn’t believe them. On Saturday I’m photographing a group at the Fleetwood Marine.

Maureen stroked her hand. ‘Away to sleep,’ she said. ‘There’ll be another day tomorrow, if God spares us.’

‘Harry said he would come.’

‘Away to sleep.’

Maureen wandered back to her own flat. It must be good to know that your husband was something in the world and that he loved you. Must give you a good feeling, Harry saying your name as he flew over the fields and saying your name when he lay down beside you at night.