‘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 the
re 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 i
n 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.
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