Just Henry

by Michelle Magorian

  ‘So what’s this other silent film called?’ he asked, scrambling after her.

  ‘The Battleship Potemkin,’ she said. ‘It’s Russian.’

  Like Metropolis, the second film was also about people rising up.

  Immediately, Henry was on the side of the sailors who had refused to eat meat crawling with maggots, and he was angry when their officers began to punish them for protesting. But when the sailors fought back, took over the ship and brought it and the injured sailors into the port of Odessa, their victory seemed to be a happy one. In the port, ordinary citizens, out for a stroll in the sunshine, observed the battleship entering the harbour. But just as Henry was watching these innocent bystanders, troops of soldiers, sent to crush the mutiny, appeared at the top of the Odessa steps, their long boots marching down in perfect unison as they fired on the unarmed and terrified citizens, the smoke billowing from their guns. An old man was shot and a young mother fell senseless against her pram, causing it to judder down the steps, the abandoned baby inside screaming in terror.

  A dark stain of blood suddenly spread across the smashed lens of an elderly woman’s spectacles, and in the midst of all the horror, a woman carried her little boy, now lifeless, up towards the marching feet to show the soldiers what they had done.

  ‘What do you think?’ whispered Mrs Beaumont in the dark after the film had ended.

  ‘I liked both films,’ said Henry, ‘but this one was . . . ’ he searched for the right word, ‘more terrible.’

  ‘More powerful?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. More powerful.’

  It was late when they arrived back at the club. Young women and bearded men in duffel coats were pushing themselves eagerly into the basement, now packed with people sitting, drinking and talking in a fog of cigarette smoke, or whirling round each other in the tiny space in the middle of the floor. From the platform, four musicians were playing a swinging upbeat kind of music.

  Mrs Beaumont dragged Henry quickly towards a table in the corner, half hidden by a pillar.

  ‘You’re a mite too young to be here,’ she explained.

  In the shadows Henry looked round nervously. He spotted a portly man in an evening jacket smoking a cigarette by the bar.

  ‘That’s the boss,’ said Mrs Beaumont. ‘Oscar told me he would be here tonight.’

  The musicians on stage announced that they were taking a break and the couples who had been dancing returned to the tables or stood by the bar or walls, chatting and laughing.

  ‘Mrs Beaumont, why have we come back here?’ asked Henry. ‘And where’s Grace?’

  Before she could answer, Oscar appeared at the table with lemonade for them, before returning to his place at the bar. He looked quite different from when Henry had last seen him. His suit was black and below his cleanshaven face was a brightly coloured tie.

  ‘You’ll find out,’ she said. ‘Be patient.’

  He noticed that a new group of musicians were coming on to the platform. Among them he recognised the pianist, drummer and saxophonist.

  The musicians glanced at one another, the pianist gave a nod and they began to play. It was just the sort of music he imagined Grace would have liked. It was a shame she was missing it all. Then Henry heard a piece of music he recognised. When they had finished playing, the saxophonist brought a microphone to the front.

  ‘That was Liza,’ he announced, ‘first recorded by the Benny Goodman sextet, and it introduces us to an up-and-coming new singer. Ladies and gentleman, would you please give a very warm welcome to Miss Liza Beaumont.’

  ‘Liza Beaumont!’ exclaimed Henry.

  ‘No, I don’t have a daughter. It’s a sort of nom de plume.’

  ‘Nom de what?’

  ‘I wanted to keep her identity secret in case her family find out and disapprove and also the name Beaumont is known here. And it meant Oscar could persuade his boss to hear her.’

  ‘Hear who?’

  As the saxophonist finished lowering the microphone, Grace appeared, only she was no longer in the clothes she had been wearing when she had arrived. Instead, she wore a long red satin dress with a little brocaded jacket, and her un-plaited hair sprang out round her face like a crinkly black halo. She walked up to the microphone and glanced at the pianist with a smile.

  Henry was stunned. When he turned to speak to Mrs Beaumont, he could see by the expression on her face that she had known all along.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ Henry heard the boss at the bar whisper angrily. ‘Get her off immediately! What does he think he’s doing? Beaumont!’

  Oscar Beaumont was now by the boss’s side and there was more angry whispering. ‘You didn’t tell me your cousin was this age. She’s far too young to be here. This is not a Butlins Holiday Camp talent show!’ Henry heard the boss spitting. ‘I’ll be in enough trouble with the law if it gets out I have American musicians performing here, without this. Do you want me shut down? Get her off now or you’ll be sacked.’

  On stage, Grace looked transported. Luckily the light was in her eyes, so she was unable to see the drama in the darker part of the club. Before Oscar could reach her, she had begun to sing.

  Henry sunk his face into his hands. Now everyone would hear her strange low voice, but when she had finished singing, Oscar still didn’t remove her. Like the other people in the club, he remained motionless.

  ‘And now Liza is going to sing the song Sarah Vaughan made so famous,’ the pianist announced. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Black Coffee.’

  And Grace sang so low that even the people sitting at the tables seemed frozen. This is terrible, thought Henry. How could they be so cruel? As she sang the closing notes, she smiled and turned to watch as the pianist and saxophonist quietly played the song out.

  This was followed by a silence so excruciating that Henry thought he would explode. He was just about to stand up and yell, ‘That’s enough!’ when the whole room erupted into applause and cheers and stamping. They loved her! And he could see that Grace was happy and at home up there on the platform.

  ‘Pip’s right,’ he murmured. ‘She is beautiful.’

  When she had taken several bows and left the stage, the band went on to play the next number and the boss moved swiftly towards their table.

  ‘Mrs Beaumont, I presume.’ And he gave a grim smile. ‘What do you mean by sneaking someone so young under my roof?’

  ‘You wouldn’t have heard her otherwise, would you?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘And now that you have?’

  ‘She’s a jewel. Bring her back next year with a chaperone.’

  ‘She has two with her already,’ said Mrs Beaumont. ‘One of them made the dress.’

  ‘Quite a little conspiracy, eh?’

  ‘Planned to perfection,’ answered Mrs Beaumont.

  Henry and Mrs Beaumont met Grace, Violet and Jessica by the cloakroom. Grace was wearing a large overcoat over her dress.

  ‘They didn’t laugh at me, did they, Mrs Beaumont?’

  ‘Of course they didn’t. But then I knew they wouldn’t. You’ve just spent years of your young life being in the wrong place, that’s all.’

  14. In the dark

  ON MONDAY, IN THE DINNER BREAK, MR FINCH AND HENRY MET in the school darkroom.

  Standing under the red light, Henry gazed stupefied at the shelves on the walls, now stacked with strange equipment and bottles. Below them, two shelves, the width of tables, ran alongside the wooden draining board and the wall opposite. Under the ceiling hung what appeared to be a washing line with metal clips attached to it.

  ‘There’s a wet side and a dry side,’ said Mr Finch.

  ‘The wet side is where the sink is,’ Henry said.

  ‘That’s right. That’s for developing. The other side is for printing.’

  There were beakers, bottles of strange chemicals, boxes of powder, packets of paper, tin trays of various sizes and depths, newspaper, tweezers, a black cylindrical container, and a la
rge machine on the printing side that resembled an enormous black microscope with bellows and lens.

  ‘That’s the enlarger,’ said Mr Finch.

  There was even a thermometer and alarm clock and, standing by the socket, a one-bar electric heater.

  ‘Is the film still in the camera?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I didn’t take it out in case I exposed it.’

  Henry handed him the camera and watched him move a knob at the side under the dim red light.

  ‘I’m turning the spool on which most of the film is now on,’ he explained. ‘I’ll open the camera when I’ve reached the end of the roll.’

  ‘How will you know that, sir?’

  ‘There’ll be no resistance. It’ll move more easily. With a camera like this, you can open it in a dim light. The type of film you use in it will have paper backing, which helps protect the film from any sudden exposure.’

  Henry smiled. It was hard to believe that this was the same person who had been so unfriendly towards him when he first showed him the camera at the photography club. Now Mr Finch seemed eager to explain how everything worked.

  Once the back of the camera was open, Henry could see that the film was wrapped round a spool at the top. Mr Finch levered up a flat metal circle beside it, which drew the pin away from the spool and released it.

  ‘See this sticky band here,’ he said, pointing to a flap at the end of the film, ‘you need to press it down firmly to seal it. You don’t want it unravelling.’

  Henry handed him his new box of film.

  ‘Watch carefully,’ said Mr Finch.

  Henry nodded, sweating with excitement. He had waited a long time for this moment and he was determined to learn as much as possible.

  It wasn’t until the next evening that they were ready to work in the dry side of the darkroom. This time Pip and Jeffries joined them. Mr Finch stood in front of two dishes filled with liquid, peering intently at a thermometer. He placed a piece of paper that had been on the printing frame into the tray of developing fluid on the left. The paper was completely blank. Mr Finch lifted the side of the tray and gently moved it up and down so that the fluid swirled around.

  ‘You need to keep doing this,’ he explained.

  ‘Agitating it,’ added Henry.

  ‘That’s right. Then the picture will develop evenly. I’ll give it three minutes. The black part of the picture will be properly black by then.’

  ‘Mr Finch found out that nine photographs had been taken,’ Henry explained to his friends.

  ‘But I thought you could only take eight,’ said Jeffries.

  ‘Ah, but if you’re canny, when you wind the new film on, you can squeeze in another before the number one shows in the window,’ explained Mr Finch.

  ‘When you see a pointing finger or asterisks,’ added Henry.

  ‘And obviously the man who owned this camera knew that,’ said Mr Finch.

  As faces began to emerge under the fluid, Henry was conscious of a lump in his throat. The picture would either be one of the two photographs Mrs Beaumont’s brother had taken, or one of his. In seconds he knew it wasn’t his handiwork.

  ‘Who are they?’ whispered Pip.

  A group of people were sitting round a table. He recognised it as the one he and Mrs Beaumont had carried downstairs to her kitchen. The people were raising glasses of wine and facing the camera. Hanging above them was a makeshift banner with the words HAPPY NEW 1949.

  ‘Do you know any of them?’ asked Jeffries.

  ‘Yes. That’s Max and Oscar Beaumont. They’re Mrs Beaumont’s sons,’ he said, pointing. ‘The tall man with the white hair is called Daniel. He’s the man who’s coming to show us the films. The woman sitting next to him is Jessica. She’ll be playing the piano. Two of the other men came to see Bicycle Thieves.’

  One had a beard. He was the man who had shouted ‘bebop’ round the door when Salt Peanut was being played at Mrs Beaumont’s house.

  ‘I don’t know who he is,’ he said, pointing to a stocky man with thick dark curly hair.

  Mr Finch lifted the photograph out of the dish with the tweezers, holding it in the air.

  ‘I’m letting the fluid drain off. If you hold it by the corner it helps it drain more quickly. Now we need to wash it before putting it into the fixing solution. We don’t want any of the developing fluid to get into it.’

  Later Mr Finch hung the photograph on the line above their heads, weighing it down with metal clips so that it didn’t curl, and then placed a second piece of paper into the tray on the left. A face emerged which was instantly recognisable. It was Jessica. She was sitting on a rough brick wall, a large leafless tree bending in the wind behind her. A young man in uniform was sitting beside her, his arm around her, while she appeared to be attempting to prevent her hair from flying across her face. They were both laughing.

  ‘That’s Jessica again. The man must be her fiancé, Ralph. He’s the actor who got hold of the black paint.’

  The third photograph to come through the developing fluid was the first one Henry had taken. It was of the children running down the steps in front of the Plaza.

  ‘This is a good one!’ said Mr Finch enthusiastically.

  ‘I had to wait a long time to get what I wanted,’ said Henry.

  ‘Well, your patience has been rewarded, lad.’

  ‘It’s a beauty!’ Jeffries enthused.

  ‘Ah. This one is not so good,’ said Mr Finch, looking at another photograph some time later.

  It was of Grace and Mrs Beaumont crossing the road to the Plaza.

  ‘Yeah. It’s too crowded to see them clearly,’ commented Henry.

  ‘You’re right,’ said Pip.

  They waited patiently for Mr Finch to rinse and fix it and submerge the next piece of paper into the tray. This time it was Mrs Beaumont, caught off guard as she stepped out of the train at Waterloo Station.

  ‘What do you think?’ Mr Finch asked.

  ‘Same thing. You can hardly see Mrs Beaumont.’

  Disappointed, Henry hung back silently while he and his friends watched Mr Finch take it out of the tray with the tweezers.

  ‘I’ll show you how to crop and enlarge it,’ said Mr Finch. ‘That’s where the artistry comes in.’

  When the next two photographs were developed, Henry found himself trembling.

  ‘I like this one,’ said Mr Finch, pointing to the first of them. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Molly. My half-sister.’

  She looked beautiful. Her hair was tangled and there was dirt on her face, but there was an eagerness in her eyes that was compelling. His mum had always said she was bright, but Henry had never seen it before. He had taken it by their bedroom window.

  The second photograph startled him in a different way. It was supposed to be of his mother and it was a good one. She looked tired but pretty, absorbed in hanging some washing on the line in the yard. Unfortunately Gran had managed to be in it too, at the edge. Grimfaced, she was staring down at Molly, her mouth turned down, a cruel look in her eyes.

  ‘Who’s this?’ asked Mr Finch, pointing to Henry’s mother.

  ‘My mum.’

  ‘We could crop this and enlarge it so that it’s all her. Would you like that? It’d make a nice Christmas present.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Henry relieved. ‘That’d be good.’

  Mr Finch was still looking intently at the picture.

  ‘And who’s Shanghai Lil?’ he said, indicating Gran.

  ‘A neighbour,’ said Henry hurriedly.

  ‘M’m. A face that speaks volumes. No love lost between her and your sister.’

  That’s true, thought Henry. But she would never harm Molly. Gran was a good person. It was just a bad photograph.

  Mr Finch glanced at his watch.

  ‘Talking of mothers, I think it’s well past your bedtime, lads. You’d best scarper home before I have your ones on the warpath. I can’t be here tomorrow night, but I’ll get permission for you to come back here after sch
ool. But you must promise to lock up afterwards.’ He turned to Henry.

  ‘I’ll have some of the photographs cropped and enlarged for you to have a look at. Then you can tell me what you think.’

  15. Alarming developments

  THE NEXT EVENING, IT WAS EERILY QUIET WHEN HENRY unlocked the door of the darkroom and switched on the red light. Jeffries began to look at the photographs which were pegged up. Mr Finch had cropped and enlarged several of them. With less background, the faces now filled the bigger photographs.

  ‘These are good!’ said Jeffries. ‘The ones of Molly and your mother are like something out of Picture Post!’

  Henry grinned.

  ‘Yeah, thanks to Mr Finch.’

  ‘I wish Pip could see them,’ said Jeffries. ‘I’ve been racking my brain trying to work out why he didn’t turn up after dinner.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s not like him to skip school.’

  ‘As soon as we’ve finished here let’s go round to his place and see if he’s there,’ said Jeffries, staring at one particular photograph. It was a close-up of Mrs Beaumont stepping off the train.

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘Who’s the man?’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘This man, here, standing behind Mrs Beaumont.’ He pointed to a dark-haired man with a moustache wearing a long coat and trilby.

  Henry shrugged. ‘I dunno. Why?’

  ‘He’s in the photographs in Sternsea and in London.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Look, here’s Mrs Beaumont at the bottom step of the Plaza. There he is on the edge of the pavement.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I remember. There was a man there. So?’

  ‘And here are two of Mrs Beaumont at Waterloo Station on different days,’ said Jeffries. ‘And he’s standing behind her in both pictures. Look, you can see him more clearly now that Mr Finch has cropped the photographs and enlarged the sections she’s in.’

  Henry studied it closely.

  ‘Coincidence,’ he murmured. ‘He was probably going to London the same day.’