The Illuminations

HOLIDAYS

Anne opened her eyes and saw the blue sky and the inviting tracks of a passing plane. She blinked, sat up and recalled an old song they used to sing about airline tickets to romantic places. It was warm and the sun played silver over the Firth of Clyde and shone on the windows of the foreign coaches as they made their way to Largs.

And still my heart has wings.

And yellow was the room where she loved him. Down from Glasgow she would wait there in Blackpool and sometimes he didn’t arrive. He just didn’t come, she said to herself, and she’d be sitting there with a shopping bag full of breakfast, the square slice, the plain loaf. And sometimes he changed his mind and he would turn up late, good grief, the middle of the night chucking stones at the window and she’d throw down the key. He’d come up the stairs and she’d bury her face in his neck and say nothing. Oh, the relief. And never to mention the sadness or the fright she’d got. She could still smell his Old Spice and was so glad she had waited.

Nobody ever tells you the natural world has all the answers and keeps count of all the days. They don’t tell you — you work it out. One minute you’re getting on with your tasks, the jobs and the life and all your goals and one thing and another, then, just like that, you notice the smell of burning leaves as you walk past

the playing-fields. The seasons seem for a long time to ask nothing of you, but eventually you must brave their familiarity. Most of the time she felt distant from her old artistic self, but some days, especially in sunshine, the feeling came.

A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces.

She was in a deckchair outside reception. ‘Blackpool’, she said to the warden, ‘was often hotter than Spain. I want to go back.’

‘Was it hotter, Anne?’

‘Oh, yes. Hotter than any place. I used to say to my Harry, “You could fry an egg on the pavement down there.” He never believed me. But it was always hot at that time, in the seventies.’

‘The 1970s.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Our Audrey goes to Faliraki,’ the warden said.

‘What’s that?’

‘Greece. Same place every year. Same hotel. She says the drink’s dirt cheap.’

‘Oh. We didn’t have those places.’

Mrs Auld from flat 25 came out to curse the weather. It was never right for Mrs Auld. ‘They’d let you just go down the beach there and get burnt to a crisp.’

‘Who’s they?’ the warden said.

‘You know fine well. The government.’

‘What’s the government got to do with suncream?’

‘Everything, Jackie,’ said Mrs Auld. ‘You mark my words. They keep it back, the government. They make it too dear for pensioners to buy. And we all burn to a crisp, so we do.’

‘Oh, Dorothy!’

‘I’m telling you. It’s true. We’ve all got cancer because of these English prime ministers.’

‘That’s ridiculous. And half of them are Scottish.’

‘Mark my words. I’ve got liver spots on the backs of my hands that I didn’t have before.’

‘Are you going on the bus thing?’ asked Anne without opening her eyes or looking over.

‘The bus run? I am that,’ Dorothy said. ‘I certainly am. The bus is taking us all to Gretna Green first thing in the morning. Just for the day. You should come, Anne.’

‘No.’

‘You’ll miss yourself. A walk about and a nice fish supper. If we get the sun it’ll be lovely.’

‘Unless you get burnt to a crisp,’ the warden said. She liked to tease the residents as much as possible and stop them from getting down in the mouth. There are never enough jokes to go round.

‘Aye, well, don’t you worry. I’ll be shelling out for the good stuff,’ Dorothy said. ‘Ambre Solaire: that’s me.’

‘Oh, you’re that hard done-to,’ the warden said.

‘My family think I’m trapped in here,’ Dorothy said, offering a sudden new bend to the conversation. ‘They feel sorry for me. They do. But I love it in here. I’m going to Gretna. I have days out and I have breakfast every day with the ladies. I don’t mind telling you — it’s a great place, this. It would never occur to my family that it was the years living with them that made me feel trapped. And now I’m free, so I am.’

Anne opened her eyes. ‘More power to your elbow.’

‘More suncream to your elbow,’ the warden said.

The warden and Mrs Auld left Anne alone again and she closed her eyes to think about the speech. She wished she could write things down or look at the old contact sheets, just to help her remember. But that was against the rules of the Memory

Club. You weren’t allowed notes. The point was not to run past the window but to stop and admit things.

THE MEMORY CLUB

They met every Friday and sometimes more, if a doctor was coming in to see them. Anne said it was the nicest day of the week because she liked stories and the way the residents got into conversations about what they all did when they were young. She tried to speak up and some of the old agony about appearing in public had gone. That Friday, it was her turn to lead them off and the district nurse said it might be good to go back to when she was small. There were always biscuits in the lounge for the Memory Club and Anne lifted one and dunked it into her tea without ceremony. ‘A lot of the times when you do this the biscuit drops into the tea,’ she said.

‘I know,’ the nurse said. ‘It happens to the best of us, so it does.’

‘Well I’m just saying I don’t mind,’ Anne said. ‘You can fish it out with a spoon.’

‘Oh, Anne!’ said Mrs Auld. ‘That’s not memories!’

‘I never said it was.’

‘You did.’

‘I never. I’ve not started talking yet.’ The ladies sat in a circle of chairs with one old man, Alex, asleep in his. Alex used to be in charge of the Saltcoats Darts Club. The district nurse said he was a great singer in his day and had won trophies at national level.

‘For singing?’ Mrs Auld asked.

‘No. For darts. But the club is mainly known for the social side and they have some good singers.’

‘I’ve never heard him sing,’ Mrs Auld said. ‘I’ve heard him snore plenty, right enough.’

‘Okay,’ said the nurse, folding her hands in her lap. ‘Today it’s Mrs Quirk’s turn to talk about her early days. And it’s exciting actually because it involves foreign parts, I believe.’

‘Africa!’ Mrs Auld said.

‘It’s not,’ Anne said.

‘Yes!’

‘I never went to Africa,’ said Anne. She knew Mrs Auld wanted it to be her turn to lead off every week. She was a torn-faced woman, always moaning and then marrying another one.

‘Just let Anne speak, Dorothy.’

Anne’s problem was the Friday meeting always made her think of memory rather than remember. She thought sketchily or vividly of the artists she had loved and supposed that was kind of remembering, but it was what they said, actually, the material and the ideas, the fact that they took an interest in making things permanent, this was the kind of thing that flooded Anne’s mind on a Friday. The connections were personal and she couldn’t always express them. ‘There was a woman called Louise,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask me what else she was called. She made spiders.’

‘Is this one of your artists?’ the nurse asked.

‘That’s right,’ Anne said. ‘From France. Wonderful woman. And she made rooms and she built spiders.’

‘Art’s boring,’ said Dorothy.

‘Quiet now. Let Anne speak. Now, what do you remember about this person? Did you read about her maybe?’

‘I remember lines. She said the old …’

‘All right. That’s a start.’

‘The old thing …’

‘Take your time.’

‘Louise was her name. She said the oldest secrecy is being alone.’

‘They talk in riddles,’ Dorothy said.

‘We’re going to ignore that,’ the nurse said. ‘This is Anne’s week and she can say what she wants.’

Dorothy picked up a custard cream off the saucer and leaned back in her chair. ‘It’s up to her,’ she said. ‘I don’t know about artists. She’s educated, I suppose. That’s where all the trouble starts.’

‘Quiet, please.’

Maureen came into the lounge holding the hand of the lady from number 19. She sat the old lady down. ‘Shush,’ she said. ‘We’re being very quiet. We’re not here.’

‘But you are here,’ Anne said. She noticed Maureen was wearing her old wedding ring. She did that sometimes: Anne understood fine well and said to herself it was just Maureen’s way of cheering herself up. She claimed not to care about the father of her children — it was so long ago — but people who like drama also like props. Dorothy kept running her hands over the Yamaha organ beside her. Her fingerwork showed you she could play a tune if the machine was turned on.

‘Anne’s talking about an artist she likes.’

‘Lovely,’ said Maureen, picking some lint off her skirt. ‘Because she’s a dark horse, that Anne. Believe you me. She knows all about that kind of thing because she lived in New York.’

‘Don’t help her,’ the nurse said.

‘I know where I used to live,’ Anne said. ‘And you’re going to give us advice about how to stay warm and how we should never open the door unless the chain is on, aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m not, love. We’re doing memory today.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘You were talking about artistic people.’

Anne took a deep breath and then a sip of her tea. ‘My Luke is in the army,’ she said. ‘In the war. He used to be a private but now he’s more than that. He’s always been good at noticing. When he was six years old and his goldfish died I told him we could bury it and he said … he said he didn’t want it in the ground or down the toilet. He decided to put the goldfish in a bag and place it in the freezer.’

‘Aw. That’s nice,’ said Heather, a quiet Christian lady who always attended.

‘To keep it,’ Anne said.

‘Not much use,’ said Dorothy. ‘You can’t eat a goldfish. You know what you have to do with a goldfish? You have to flush it away and get another one before they even see it’s gone.’

Anne just looked at her. What a silly woman. And then she remembered what she was talking about.

‘Do you get letters from Luke?’ the nurse asked.

‘I’ve got one in the room,’ Anne said. ‘It came this week from a camping place. He’s not dead.’

‘Not at all,’ said Maureen. ‘Luke is doing very well and he’s liking it over there. Blue paper, he writes on. We read it together and then we wrote a reply, didn’t we, Anne?’

‘The woman was called Louise,’ Anne said. ‘She was French and her other name was like the Communists.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

‘Calm down, Dorothy.’

‘She knows her stuff,’ Maureen said.

‘It’s because she’s been abroad,’ said Dorothy. ‘That’s where it all starts.’

Anne continued. ‘She said a woman should have her own journey … her own … thing …

un itinéraire unique

.’

‘She’s speaking foreign now,’ Dorothy said. ‘Did you see? That’s it: she’s speaking foreign.’

‘I have lots of souvenirs,’ Anne said. She made the remark and put down her cup and saucer, as if everything was now settled and for the best. She saw a little sprinkler throwing jets of water over the yucca plants in the botanical trench. She was aware of the warm light coming through the ceiling and knew it was good for the plants. Anne had the words that Friday afternoon and was happy to answer the nurse’s questions.

‘You were born in Canada but your parents were Scottish?’

‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ Anne said. ‘It was a big house in Hamilton called Clydevia.’

‘Hamilton in Canada?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And the house was named after the River Clyde?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Were they posh people?’

Harry wasn’t from posh people. He liked the workers. He grew up near a brush-making factory in King’s Cross.

‘What did you say?’ asked Anne.

‘I was asking if your people were posh.’

‘They were religious. My father owned stores but he wouldn’t open on Sundays. I remember us all brushing … those big red leaves you get in Canada. Trying to sweep them up. Trying to catch them. They whirled about the yard in the fall and we ran in circles.’ The money had come from Glasgow cotton-spinners and she remembered the aunts coming over one time to help her mother, when she was ill. Anne always felt she owed it to the aunts

to come and help them when their time came. ‘I had to leave my career in New York,’ Anne said, ‘but I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘But that was later,’ the nurse said. ‘We were talking about your childhood.’

‘They helped my mother.’

‘And what about your daddy?’

He sent her typewritten notes whenever he went away on business, always signed: ‘I love you, Daddy x.’ She could see them today. He fixed up a small light bulb in the doll’s house by her bed so that she could leave it on while she was sleeping, the perfect house, the perfect house to dream by, and it would stand there no matter what happened in the world. The child and the adult too lived in sympathy with the landing light. Her mother went mad when the jerking took over, when nobody could help her any more, and one day she simply disappeared from their lives. And so it was that whenever Anne pictured the house called Clydevia she was really picturing the doll’s house. ‘It was lit with a bulb,’ she said again. ‘And that’s what my father did and I think that’s enough for now.’

Maureen looked moved by what she’d heard. She felt close to Anne when it came to certain things and put a hand on her sleeve.

Often prints for hanging and exhibits require a generous amount of fixing up and retouching. To prevent markings from showing, you should follow a certain treatment. This method works best with dead matte paper without any sheen. That was Harry. He could spend hours retouching because that was his thing. You don’t mind me saying that, love? I never told you about the doll’s house because I wanted our house to be the first.

A young man wearing a boiler suit came into the lounge

carrying a pole and he winked at the nurse. ‘Afternoon, ladies. I won’t be a minute, I’m just checking the smoke alarm.’

‘What’s that?’ Dorothy said.

‘It’s a big pole, missus.’

‘Jeezo,’ Maureen said. ‘They’ve got all the technology nowadays.’ The man got two beeps out of the alarm and seemed satisfied with that. Dorothy played a few silent notes on the organ and the elderly man continued sleeping in the chair.

‘Then what happened?’ asked Maureen.

I might be daft, but I’m not as daft as I look, Anne thought when Maureen asked for more. She knew that her daughter and Maureen were always talking on the phone. And they wouldn’t be talking about Luke or any of the important things because that would be unlike Alice. They would just be gossiping about Anne’s pension book and probably talking about the photographs Anne had in the darkroom.

‘You need to go easier on Alice.’

Maureen had said that to Anne the day before. And that was a sign, thought Anne. That was definitely a sign. Alice had always wanted to turn Anne’s neighbours against her. She’d tried to poison Luke’s mind but he was off fighting, so he wouldn’t be bothering with all that nonsense. Anne believed nowadays that her daughter’s main goal was to put her in a nursing home. Alice blamed her for everything. ‘I don’t remember anything else,’ she said to the nurse, thumping the arm of the chair. The nurse pretended she was startled, then spoke with her eyes down.

‘Aw. I think you do, Anne. I think you remember artists you used to like. You spoke about them last time. Maureen was helping you, remember? Because she says you were a very talented photographer.’ Anne found it hard sometimes to tell the

difference between Luke and Harry. And she found it hard to separate pictures she had taken herself from ones she just loved. The young man in the boiler suit had finished what he was doing and he just sat down with them. Nobody seemed to mind because he was nice and he was young and Anne was an open book.

‘I wanted our house to be the first,’ she said.

‘What house is that?’

Anne waited. It took a while. ‘When I left Canada I was only seventeen. The place I went to was a summer camp for photographers. A nice place. Upstate New York. We all wore sailor suits and that kind of thing. One of the girls became very good. Her father had owned a store as well and she loved taking pictures of people. It was a famous place by a lake and we were happy there. That was our lives at the time. We didn’t need men and we were young and it was easy to be happy. You woke up that way. And one of the teachers in the colony had taken a famous picture of horses pulling a carriage through the snow.’

MY LUKE

The young man with the pole stood up. ‘I’m just listening to you,’ he said to Anne. ‘Is your name Mrs Quirk?’

‘It is,’ Maureen answered, leaning forward. ‘Mrs Quirk. And you’re the man from the council, aren’t you?’

‘Aye. My name’s Russell. I’m here to check the smoke alarm.’ It turned out his older brother had gone to the same university as Luke. ‘My big brother did politics at Strathclyde,’ he said, ‘and he knew your grandson, Mrs Quirk.’

‘Luke is in the army,’ Anne said.

‘Jesus,’ the young man said. ‘We had the radio on in the van and they were saying another soldier got killed.’

Maureen looked up. ‘In Afghanistan?’

‘Another one, aye,’ the boy said. ‘It was on West Sound. They say he came from around here.’

Maureen was looking at Anne but it wasn’t clear if the young man’s news had got through to her, then Maureen noticed a spot of colour on each of her friend’s cheeks. ‘My Luke’s over there,’ Anne said. ‘He’s called Luke Campbell but he’s from Glasgow.’

The young man rubbed at his ear and stepped back. ‘Well, obviously they’re talking about somebody else.’

‘Obviously,’ Maureen said.

Anne’s eyes went to the pinboard where some of the cards still remained from Easter. She felt tired suddenly and wished she could lie down on the bed she and Harry had bought that time in Blackpool.

THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF HARRY BLAKE

The next day a child brought in a tortoise and it sat in Anne’s lap at the breakfast table. She liked the feeling of its paws. ‘He’s all right,’ she said when the boy tried to lift him off. ‘I’ll tell you something, dear. At one time I could’ve run right past this creature. Long ago, I was quick. You wouldn’t have seen me for dust.’

After the toast and marmalade, Jack from flat 19 began talking about the blackout. Anne shuddered when he first used the word. He said it again: ‘You know, the blackout. When they had to board up all the windows.’

‘That’s right,’ Anne said. ‘That was before I came to live in Glasgow with my aunts.’

‘What year was that?’

‘I couldn’t tell you. There was a new war on. They said they wouldn’t let the ships pass through.’

‘Suez.’

Another of the men looked up. ‘So that’s 1956,’ he said.

Anne’s experience at the Memory Club had ignited her curiosity or irritated her, she couldn’t decide. It was odd. There was just so much detail in a person’s life and you did well to get rid of the half of it. If you were any good you protected yourself by holding on to this and forgetting that. And even the bits you keep are best kept in silence.

These foolish things remind me of you.

She used to say it to Luke when he was a boy. ‘You’ve got to live a life proportionate to your nature,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to find out what that means and then stick to it.’ She could still see the boy’s eyes, ready to understand, even if he couldn’t yet. That was Luke. ‘Never worry a jot about what other people are going to say,’ she said to him. When he later decided to join the army it was a shock to many people but she didn’t hesitate to come after him and shake his hand. She remembered the time she got the plane and went all the way to England to see him graduate in his nice red sash and they walked round a church.

‘My Harry flew Lysanders,’ she said to the others at the breakfast table. ‘I know that much. They were painted black to beat the radar. Nobody knew where the airstrip was.’

‘It’s nice nattering to you, Anne,’ said Jack from number 19. ‘Because you’re educated.’ Maureen came in with the news that Mr Obama was disliked by quite a lot of people. She said it as she

cleared away the breakfast things, believing the TV news was private and that it was her choice to spread it about, after the toast. The others could always tell when Maureen had just been speaking to one of her children because the rims of her eyes were pink and she became efficient.

‘This is more than one load for the dishwasher,’ she said. It was obvious Maureen resented them all using a separate knife for the butter and the jam. Jack cast her a look as if to say, ‘Who gives a toss about cutlery?’ That calmed her down a bit and she sat down to listen, even though her hands were shaking.

‘So was your Harry in the RAF?’ Jack asked. When he asked that question it was Maureen who reacted first: she put down her cup and her eyes moistened again. At the same time, Anne looked a little flustered and flicked the edge of the tablecloth.

‘Not just that,’ she said.

When Maureen thought about Anne in the future, her mind would settle on this moment, when she saw Anne looking helpless about Harry and the Royal Air Force. It appeared to Jack that Anne simply couldn’t remember what it was her husband did. But there was some kind of notebook on top of the ottoman in Anne’s bedroom, and she asked Maureen, very precisely in that moment, if she would kindly bring a folded piece of paper from the front of the notebook. When Maureen returned with it, Jack had moved on from that part of the conversation. But Anne thanked Maureen and unfolded the paper, on which was typed a single-spaced biographical report. Harry must have typed it years ago. The paper had a heading across the top that said, ‘Manchester Polytechnic School of Photography’. Anne smiled, she had confidence in the evidence she was about to give, and her clear voice gave dignity to the stops and starts.

Harry Blake was born in 1920 at King’s Cross in London. His father was a train driver and his mother worked in a brush factory off Caledonian Road. He went to school locally and then into the RAF. He flew Blenheims and Lysanders doing solo reconnaissance work in World War II, mainly photographic work as part of the RAF’s special operations 161 Squadron. This was abysmal work flying a jet-black aircraft into enemy territory from RAF Winkleigh in Devon. Terrifying missions were also flown out of St Eval in Cornwall. Harry Blake would often photograph German installations using moonlight for navigation and many times he delivered agents to France, landing in fields lit with only three torches. After the war Mr Blake attended Guildford College — handily only a few miles from RAF Farnborough — where he helped found one of the first photographic schools in Britain. He was later decorated for his war service before taking up a teaching position in Manchester. He is credited with supporting a new generation of British documentary photographers.

Anne folded the piece of paper and placed it under her saucer.

‘He was some man,’ Jack said.

‘He was certainly that,’ Anne said. She looked over at Maureen as if daring her to say otherwise. ‘That’s what you call loyalty. Sticking with people. And loyalty’s just the same as courage.’

‘Well,’ Jack said. ‘You have plenty of words. I’ll say that for you, Anne. You have more words in you this morning than Heather’s had in sixty-odd years of marriage.’

Maureen frowned. ‘Now, Jack. What was that Anne was saying about loyalty? Don’t speak ill of Heather. You’ve got to stick by your family, haven’t you?’ Anne was staring into the plants. And after a few moments Maureen was off on one, rattling away

before crashing her cup down on her saucer. ‘Stick by them? Hell as like. You stick by them for years and what thanks do you get? Wouldn’t give you daylight in a dark corner. Talk about selfish: you could be lying dead.’

Maureen was upset because one of her kids hadn’t sent her a birthday card. Esther was always busy and it was good to be busy but it hurt Maureen to think that her own daughter couldn’t stop and buy a card. Maureen was a slave to Hallmark and she’d never met a flowery card she didn’t like. It was the way her family expressed emotion, sending cards with nice words printed inside, and Esther had no right just ignoring it. No right at all. After all the things Maureen had done for her and all the sacrifices.

Anne’s mind was somewhere else, dreaming about The Beatles. They walked down the promenade in their silver suits and the girls came after them and the light was perfect that day. Jack turned over his newspaper and gave a low whistle. ‘That Abramovich thinks he can buy up the world,’ he said. ‘And it’s always the Russians that cause the trouble. Look at Afghanistan. It was the Russians that started all that. Brezhnev. Remember him? Brezhnev and his tanks upsetting all those people and now we’ve got to go in there and sort it all out. It’s a scandal.’

‘They would send word, wouldn’t they?’ Anne said. ‘If anything had happened to my Luke?’

‘Of course they would,’ Jack said. He folded the newspaper while staring into space and then turned to Anne. ‘It’s amazing to think about your husband and your grandson both being war heroes. They say talent often skips a generation.’

‘Not in this case,’ Maureen said. She was finally glad to have a new subject and felt wise about family. ‘To be fair. Luke’s father was a soldier in Northern Ireland and he died.’

‘Is that right?’ Jack said, turning to Anne. ‘You never mention him.’

‘It’s my family she’s talking about,’ Anne said. She was obviously put out by Maureen taking over and parcelling out facts. ‘Our Luke’s a soldier,’ she said, ‘but really he’s a bit of a thinker, more like my Harry than like his father, who was a nice fellow but had none of that.’

‘Your grandson’s a clever one?’

‘That’s right. He could always give tongue to an idea.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yes. He can see what happens behind a photograph.’

‘That’s nice,’ Jack said.

‘Oh, it’s everything,’ Anne said.

JUNGLE

Anne liked to use the laundry room because it was spacious and it had a big drier and she felt she was going on an outing when she went along the corridor with her washing basket and her powder. It was important, Anne used to say, to feel that you had your independence. You could close your back door or you could join the others, it was up to you. Nobody forced you to spend time in the common area if you were having a bad day or couldn’t remember the names. Some days are like that. Some days you are just muddled and every day is different.

It was a long walk down the corridor and the lights would come on at night because of the sensor. She sat in the reception area. She placed her things on the ground and just looked at the plants. The gardener from the council had made a sunken forest

with a border of breeze blocks. A forest of yucca, jades, banyan and palm grew all the way to a glass ceiling and you could see stars up there, as if they, too, belonged to Scotland. Anne loved looking into the tangle of plants at Lochranza Court. She felt it was alive with shadows and stories that couldn’t be captured in words.

Someone to love, someone like you.

The corridor was quiet at night, but even if someone passed Anne wouldn’t notice because she was so absorbed in the plants. It was silent but she could almost hear the busy life of the undergrowth. She forgot why she was out. Her basket of washing would often be sitting there in the morning and the warden would find it and know it was Anne’s.

HER OLD SELF

She left her washing the day she read out Harry’s biography and her mind was a bit unsettled. Harry didn’t come often enough. It was only a car journey and she’d promised an editor some prints. She’d been back in her flat for a while and the rabbit was looking at the microwave. She was going to use the speakerphone to tell the night warden there was a noise at her front door but then she realised she could answer the door herself, so she got up and took off the chain. ‘Mrs Quirk,’ the voice said when she opened the door. ‘It’s me, Russell. I was round today to test the smoke alarms. Can I come in and talk to you for a minute?’

Maureen heard them speaking through the wall. It didn’t happen often because Anne didn’t have many visitors, since her grandson was away on service and her daughter wasn’t that

welcome. It was nice to hear because Anne used to have such a lot to say, and now she went up and down because of her health and she could be silent for days. Maureen turned down her television and guessed it was a man’s voice; maybe one of the neighbours had taken her in a cup of tea. That’s nice. Maureen continued to watch television in silence. Nothing in the room was old, no pictures, no wood and no books, nothing with a memory. Esther had once asked her why she had no photographs of her grandchildren. And nothing of her own mum and dad, especially her dad. ‘They just gather dust,’ Maureen said, ‘and the shops want a fortune for frames nowadays.’

She had gone that morning to see the warden in her office. She kept her own cup and saucer there, but, for some reason, that day, Maureen didn’t bother with tea. ‘We should have a drink,’ Jackie said. ‘It’s your birthday. It’s a nice glass of fizz we should be having.’

‘Birthdays. I’m past caring about them.’

Jackie closed the door and they spoke about Anne.

‘How long?’ Maureen asked.

‘I don’t know, darling. Maybe a few months. It’s a shame because we’ve tried to keep her here. Her mind’s so alive. We’ve really tried. But it’s getting to the stage where she can’t cope in the flat. Even with you and me covering for her.’

‘She can’t do the cooker.’

‘The kettle. She can’t work the kettle.’

‘And then there’s the rabbit.’ Maureen kept biting her bottom lip in an unconscious display of pity. ‘She’s not quite as bad with the rabbit,’ she said. ‘She still likes to know where he is, but she’s not trying to feed him the way she was before the summer.’

‘You always say “him”,’ Jackie said.

‘Well, that’s what Anne does.’

‘The whole thing’s horrendous, Maureen.’

‘I know.’

‘To see it happen to such an intelligent woman.’

‘I know. Feeding the rabbit. It was me opening the tins. But she seems to have moved beyond that now. I don’t understand it. Every day she’s different and some days she’s like her old self.’

‘She can still talk. And she has a strong imagination. That’s probably what keeps her going.’

‘But it probably makes her seem better than she is.’

‘Exactly,’ Jackie said. ‘It’s mild dementia, but it’s progressive. That’s what the health workers are saying. The people at the Memory Club are monitoring the whole thing, to see how bad she is. We’ve been hiding it …’

‘The whole community’s been hiding it. We don’t want them to take Anne into a home.’

‘It’s always the end,’ Jackie said. ‘But then, you can only cover up for so long. Then you’re not doing the person any favours at all, really. You have to let them go.’

‘Oh, don’t say that,’ Maureen said. ‘Not yet, Jackie. She’s still all right and we can —’

‘I’m just saying,’ said Jackie. ‘It can’t go on for ever, and these health workers, they know what they’re doing.’

‘Yes.’

‘We can’t have residents setting fire to things.’

‘No.’ They sat in silence for a moment. ‘Maybe my Esther would have an idea of how to make it easier,’ said Maureen. ‘She’s very well qualified and she has a secretary.’

‘Aye, well,’ Jackie said. ‘It’s worth a try. But Anne will be moving out at some point, Maureen. That’s just a fact, hen, and you need to start preparing for it.’

Maureen was staring at the desk. ‘I saw some of the pictures she took when she was a young lassie,’ she said. ‘Unbelievable, Jackie. You really wouldn’t believe them if you saw them. Just taking an ordinary thing like an old sink full of dishes and making it, well, you know, I don’t know anything about these things.’

‘Beautiful,’ Jackie said.

‘That’s the right word: beautiful. As if life was just pictures. Like things you would see in an old magazine, you know? And when I asked her about her photography she said it was one of the things her late husband Harry did for her when they were young. He was a teacher and he taught her the new methods. She said it was Harry’s technique that made the photographs special.’

‘Is that right?’

‘That’s what she said. He knew about chemicals.’

‘Oh, my,’ Jackie said, ‘it’s great to have a man who knows things.’

Maureen replayed the conversation in her mind with the sound down and the mumbles coming through the wall. She didn’t know what she’d do if Anne ever left Lochranza Court. Maureen recalled when she saw her with a whisky in a crystal tumbler and thought, Good God, here’s Anne. A wee lady she is and she knows her own mind.

BEFORE THE WAR

The young man was nice and he made his own tea by pulling back the tape from the cooker and boiling a pan of water and finding a tea bag. Anne noticed his face was red but it calmed down. He looked like all the boys look nowadays with their cropped hair but he wasn’t wearing a boiler suit like before and his shoes were

polished. She sat down and said to herself that the fellows can certainly iron their shirts nowadays. He had things to say about the courage of the soldiers and he felt they were doing an amazing job and he said it took something special to sign up and go out there and fight.

‘They have to go,’ she said. ‘It’s the war.’ The boy put down his cup and adopted a serious expression, which caused him to blush again and look worried.

‘Mrs Quirk, I said something today and I shouldn’t have said that in front of you. I’m sorry.’

‘What’s that, dear?’

‘I said about the news. That a soldier from around here had died in Afghanistan. It was on the radio in the van. And I shouldn’t have said that, Mrs Quirk. I listened to the report again. I’m sure it’s nothing to do with you because they always contact the families first.’

‘The men have to show courage,’ she said. ‘And go and fight for their country.’

‘Mrs Quirk—’

‘That’s what Harry said. And he was right. You take it on the chin and that’s true, son. You have to stand up and be counted. You’re all the man you’ll ever be. And when you get the call, that’s you.’

‘I’m daft sometimes. And it’s been bugging me since yesterday …’

He looked a little bit like some of the photographers she used to know. They were always out on the streets, those guys. They wanted to get away from studios and portraiture, all that stuff, lights and props, airbrushing. They were always young and confident. ‘You work for the Council?’

‘That’s right.’ He was a nice-looking man. He looked like

the photographer Roger Mayne. She remembered seeing him in Manchester with Harry one time, this thin-faced, serious man with a lock of dark hair falling over his brow and these pictures he’d taken of children in London.

‘Those were fine pictures,’ she said.

‘They said the soldier who died was part of a big operation to do with a dam. I wrote it down.’ He took a note from his pocket and read from it. ‘The Kajaki dam. They said it was a big job to bring electricity to the Afghan people.’

‘I thought I was an old hand,’ she said. ‘Then I met Harry and all the younger ones. I’d been away from it for a while, looking after them in Glasgow. Then I came to Blackpool and met Harry. He changed the way the pictures looked. He showed me how to bring out the light, the eyes, the background, you know, and he taught everybody.’

‘Are you talking about your husband, Mrs Quirk?’

‘Harry. You remember him?’

The boy took his cup to the sink and ran it under the tap while Anne talked about them, the Young Meteors, the group of photographers surrounding Harry at Manchester in the 1960s. It did occur to Anne that the boy might be too young but he seemed part of it, the men who worked for

Picture Post

and for Kodak and … maybe she was boring him.

‘I’m really sorry, Mrs Quirk,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you and I should watch my mouth.’

‘You’re okay.’

He stared at her. It took him a moment. Then he stroked her hand and said he met a lot of elderly people because of his work for the council. His eyes were young. ‘I hope that wasn’t your Luke,’ he said. ‘My brother said they would definitely come

round and tell the family ages before it was on the radio.’ He stood up and picked up his keys from the breakfast bar. Anne hoped he would stay because she wanted to talk about what to do with the stuff that was still down in the darkroom. It was nice to take pictures of children, she thought: they were only small for a short period of time and then it was over, wasn’t it?

Maureen noticed it had gone quiet next door during the time she was on the phone to Alice. She didn’t feel guilty but she hated to think it troubled Anne. It wasn’t as if Maureen didn’t have a family of her own: they were a full-time job, three grown kids and grandchildren into the bargain, and she only phoned Alice to make sure she understood everything that was happening. Since the rabbit, some people, some neighbours, had said that Anne’s daughter was too absent. But Maureen understood families and she wasn’t afraid to use the phone to try and help. It was late in the conversation that she turned to the day before.

‘Have you heard from anybody?’

‘Should I have?’

‘Not especially, no.’ Maureen pursed her lips and gathered herself. ‘That nurse was in again this week,’ she said. ‘Yesterday. They like to get your mother talking about her childhood and all sorts.’

‘All sorts is right,’ Alice said.

‘The illness makes her confused.’

‘She’s always been confused when it comes to the past. The fact is, Maureen, my mother’s always had issues with her memory. That’s what makes this so …’

‘Heartbreaking.’

‘Sad, yes. It’s sad. Sad for us. Because it’s now too late for my mother ever to face anything. If I was being unkind, I’d say that her illness has caught up with her character.’ Maureen sometimes

felt a twinge at the idea that the criticism coming from Alice was general, as if Anne’s daughter was making comments about all mothers when she spoke about Anne and her problems. ‘Now she’s fantasising about a rabbit,’ added Alice, ‘but she was always fantasising about something. We’re used to it.’

‘The rabbit comes and goes.’

Alice responded with clarity. The people on TV, thought Maureen, are seldom so clear. ‘We’re used to my mother having relationships that keep us out. It’s one of her things. At least, it’s one of her things with me.’

‘You’re a mother yourself,’ Maureen said.

Alice swallowed hard and let the implication fade. She had never been the mother she wanted to be — it wasn’t allowed. And now she had to depend on the next-door neighbour to keep her informed about what was happening in her own family. It was pitiable, really. Anne had failed as a mother on nearly every front, but fantasy would carry her all the way. Everybody, including Alice’s own son Luke, would pity the sad life of sacrifice she had framed so perfectly for their eyes. Alice knew better. But why did that knowledge feel like a curse?

‘Mother seems to have told you a lot,’ she said.

‘That’s what it’s for, the Memory Club.’

‘And she spoke about Harry?’

‘Oh, yes. A lot about Harry.’

Alice felt that people kept her out of having information until she didn’t want it any more. ‘Well, thank you for phoning, Maureen. I really appreciate you taking the trouble.’

‘It’s no bother,’ Maureen said. They paused. The call hadn’t gone well, but Alice didn’t want to appear angry.

‘I pray for them at morning Mass,’ she said. It was clear that

Alice needed to take strength at the mention of Harry.

‘Were you his child, Alice?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He got her pregnant.’

Each wanted to hang up, but they kept hoping for something more, a clever development in the conversation that would turn it into something nice. Maureen said her father was the person she missed all the time. ‘We used to run away to Glasgow together when I was wee,’ she said. ‘Just me and him and we had the whole day to ourselves. He used to take me to the perfume counter at Arnotts. We’d buy soap. And on the way back …’ She paused and Alice felt kindly towards her. ‘I always wished the train belonged to us and that we’d never have to get off.’

‘I had none of that,’ Alice said.

‘He called me Mog.’

‘I don’t think my father even remembered our names.’

‘Whose names?’

‘Ours,’ Alice said. She spoke reluctantly, feeling that she had gone far enough with Maureen. There was such yearning in Alice’s voice, as if she wished more than anything for things to be certain, but she knew they couldn’t be. ‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

ALWAYS

It was only a fraction of the stuff from Atholl Gardens, but the linen was washed and ironed, laid out and tied with blue ribbon, looking like old stories that had yet to be told. Over the TV set Anne draped an Edwardian tablecloth that had come from Canada

after the death of her mother. She placed the ceramic rabbit on top of the tablecloth to hold it down and then she glanced at him while she moved between the bundles, unfolding the material and holding it up and tutting.

Jane, Jessie. Wait a minute. There was Grace. And Anna. Nobody came to the house in Glasgow once they were gone. It was just me up there. Before Luke was born I would build a fire because the pipes were frozen. My fingers used to get cold and they were stained with developer most of the time. I went to the camera club, that’s right. I used to massage that stuff into my fingers to stop the irritation. Camphor ice.

She didn’t notice her neighbour enter but didn’t flinch when she saw her. ‘Good heavens,’ Maureen said, stepping over the bundles. ‘Did you decide to have a wee spring clean?’

‘Stuff from the aunt-hill,’ Anne said.

‘I thought I heard a man’s voice earlier.’

Anne seemed distracted. ‘We were talking about camera work. I had to come back from New York and I didn’t want to come back, Maureen. I wanted to take pictures.’

‘You were very good.’

‘It’s in there somewhere.’ She pointed to the bathroom. ‘A lot of negatives and things like that.’ All of a sudden she seemed upset. She lifted a pillowcase and dabbed her eyes with it. ‘But Jessie used to read to them all in their beds at night,’ she said.

‘Who did she read to?’

‘The aunts.’

‘And could you get away sometimes and see Harry?’

‘I drove a car then.’

‘Oh, I wish I could drive,’ Maureen said. ‘I never took the test, you know. We took the train. My dad loved trains and we were

always on them. Away days, they called them. I was an only child. He used to squeeze my hand and say I was his favourite person. Just like that.’

‘I had a nice father, too,’ Anne said.

‘We were lucky.’

Anne looked up as if she suddenly appreciated Maureen. ‘I’ve always had good neighbours,’ she said.

Maureen put her to bed and then went to bring a cup of tea from next door. She placed a sleeping pill on the saucer, to see if it didn’t relax her, but it turned out Anne was fast asleep when she got back so she just took it herself. She felt Anne was on her own, really. She had all these people and all these stories but it didn’t amount to much. You have to be ready to put the past behind you and learn to rely on yourself.

That’s what I did, thought Maureen. I never needed a man to make me into somebody. No way. I could stand on my own two feet. But her mind changed as she handled the cold linen. She didn’t want to admit it, but she understood how it sometimes took another person to turn you into your better self. And that’s what happened with her and Anne. In the old lady’s company she felt more like the person she ought to have been. Anne’s interests touched Maureen, revealing a bit of her to herself. Maureen had just finished the audiobook of

Wuthering Heights

and she thought of it as she looked at Anne lying asleep. She couldn’t imagine unquiet slumbers for a woman with that kind of nature and all this linen.

Maureen lifted a nice glass from the trolley and poured herself a whisky before coming back and sitting by the bed. It sometimes confused Anne to hear Luke’s letters, but Maureen wanted nonetheless to read them to her in a good, clear voice, capturing the

words he’d written down. With the glass balanced on her knee, she took out a folded letter from the pocket of her cardigan.

I told all the boys to write letters so I better write one myself, eh? This is the one and only Captain Campbell here of the 1st Royal Western Fusiliers writing to you from the roasting desert.

As she read aloud the clock was ticking and the whisky tasted of smoke. The letter was full of news.

So that’s it, really. We’re in Camp Bastion and getting ready to push off. I’m not allowed to tell you where we’re going but it’s a good one. I’ve got the usual team here, Flannigan, Dooley and young Lennox, who spend all day playing ping-pong and slagging each other off. The major is here too and is doing his best for us, so if anything happens to me you’ll know it’s just bad luck. Main thing is I’m thinking of you. Keep smiling, Luke.

Maureen finished the letter and put it away. It said a lot for a young man that he could write a letter like that. Just to let the people at home know he loved them, just to do the right thing when it’s dangerous and he knows they must be worried with all the stuff they see on television. She poured another whisky and walked to the window. Half the things her own family said they probably didn’t mean. They were all right, really. You have to forgive people if you want to get along, yet it wasn’t the future she had expected with her children. She’d thought it would be holidays abroad and big dinners by the pool with all the women asking her opinion.

The darkness outside made a mirror of the window and the room looked back at itself as Maureen sat sleeping on the sofa

with the tumbler in her hand and the linen stacked beside her. She opened her eyes with a start and found the siren was sounding. She got up slowly and went over to wash the tumbler and place it on the dish-rack before going into the bedroom. ‘In the name of God,’ said Anne.

‘It’s the fire alarm,’ Maureen said. She unhooked Anne’s dressing-gown from the back of the door and brought it to her. ‘We’ll have to go into the courtyard and be counted.’

‘What is it?’

‘The fire alarm. This is every other day. I bet you it’s that Mr MacDonald again in flat 29.’

‘McDonald’s? Like the hamburgers?’

‘No, it’ll be toast. But a pest, Anne. Why he insists on making toast at midnight I’ll never know.’

CHIAROSCURO

The road was black out there and the sea was black and the shore was blacker than the road. Anne could see the people gathered in the courtyard and the scene was entirely made of light as it passed through the glass doors of the reception area. Anne saw how the light picked out the eyes and the cheeks and the ears of the people standing against the blackness. She’d seen charcoals like that, where a person’s eye was a dot of white and a nose was nothing but the smallest stripe.

Housecoat, slippers. And somebody said: ‘Effing freezing out here, Jack.’

‘What time is it, then?’

‘Better ask the warden.’

Anne knew it wasn’t a fire. It wasn’t a house on fire. It was Mr MacDonald from flat 29.

You want fresh chemicals touching the film. You have to agitate the tank, keep it moving, swirl it, Anne, that’s the secret if you want good contrast. Get the chemicals rolling but not too much, darling, or there will be blemishes. Right there. Oh my the safelight’s out, love, would you believe it? Go down to Woolworth’s, would you not, and see if they’ve got the bulbs, ruby-red. And get the other ones for later. It says here: ‘A yellow-green or orange safelight is used for bromide papers and lantern slides, and a yellow or amber safelight for contact papers.’ He was serious and then not. Keep your hands to yourself, Harry; oh stop it now, you’re daft.

Anne was shivering in the cold and Maureen came up with a blanket to put round her shoulders. ‘This is a bloody pantomime,’ Maureen said with a look on her face. ‘The third time this month. They should tape up his cooker. I don’t see why your cooker’s taped up Anne and his is still going and all he ever does is set fire to things.’

‘Oh, stop it, Harry,’ said Anne.

‘This has been a long and complicated day for you,’ Maureen said and she stroked Anne’s cheek.

‘We could walk along the prom.’

‘Not tonight, Anne. It’s awful cold.’ But then she took her neighbour by the arm and walked just a little way down the path leading to the bandstand. Anne looked and smiled to see the warm colour on Maureen’s face, the street lamps drawing out her eyes and the black distance making a perfect background as they walked along the front. Two yellow blinks appeared out there in the part of the sea where the water was darkest. Anne stopped and Maureen stopped.

‘What was that light?’ Anne said.

‘The Isle of Arran.’

To Anne it was all the walks. She couldn’t name them perhaps but she could see them in her mind. The ones she took as a child by Lake Ontario with her mother and father. The boating pond at the Menier Camp where she strolled with a Leitz Leica, 1948. It was all of these and other places as the night enclosed the promenade and the lighthouse again blinked twice. ‘I had a friend,’ she said. ‘We used to go rowing in the boating pond. A long time ago. They called us the Two Annes.’

THE ADDRESS BOOK

They didn’t need the fire brigade. It was all done with a phone call and an opened window. Anne, back in the flat and sitting up looking through the pages of her address book, found postcards of places she had liked when she was no longer young.

Campbeltown.

Girvan.

Blackwaterfoot.

Oban.

She knew of a morning in Oban with curls of butter at the guesthouse table, porridge and oatcakes, mackerel paste. The house was high on the hill above the port, under the pine trees, a place to be with Harry. Looking at the postcard, it wasn’t the house that came back to her but the breakfast table and the night before, the sound of him asleep. She read a story in an old, water-damaged book she found in the bookcase. She couldn’t have said the title of the book or the name of the guesthouse, but she could

remember the story about the Lady Appin, who kept a painting of her lover in her private bedroom, a soldier who then died in the foreign wars. Anne couldn’t have told you his name any more, not a whisper now of his name, but Lady Appin locked her door and wept for a year and picked at the paint until the canvas was totally blank. ‘Maybe I can live,’ she said, ‘because now he lives nowhere but in my mind.’

She placed the postcards at the front of the address book. It had been with her since her days in New York and later she got it bound in red leather. She opened it at the letter T and a photograph fell out, a black-and-white snap of a boy and girl. After staring at it for a long time, Anne went and got the scissors and slowly cut the photograph in half, placing one piece in the book and dropping the other to the floor.

By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea.

You and me. You and me.

‘Documentary work is the future. It’s the truth, darling, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,’ he said. One time he left a note pinned to the door of the flat in Blackpool saying he’d just driven over on the off-chance and would be back for the Illuminations because Jayne Mansfield was turning them on and a Canberra bomber was doing a fly-past.

‘All my love. See you Saturday.’

When she was with him he only had one life. She fell asleep playing that song in her mind about the beautiful sea, his eyes in front of her, Harry’s eyes. When the room was dark a single beam fell onto the bed from outside and lit the address book, where a cut picture of a young boy lay on the open page.