The Illuminations

by Andrew O'Hagan

  ‘Aw, man. Awesome!’ Jack said. The boys looked at each other with big smiles and Luke felt sure it was right to return it all to the realm of fun. They put their long arms into the bag and pulled things out and from the bottom Scott produced a paperback book, Kipling’s Kim.

  ‘This stuff is so cool.’

  ‘Don’t stay up all night,’ Luke said.

  SHEILA

  Anne woke and didn’t know where she was. All the houses had become one house and one time. She could have been downstairs as a child in Canada or was she inside the doll’s house, lighted with the bulb Daddy put there at Christmas? She felt for a moment she might be in the parlour in Hamilton waiting for the doctor, her mother bad with the shakes, and red leaves spinning in the yard. She blinked and heard a rumble under the boards. Jane Street. She thought of the rugs she’d left in storage near Battery Park. A voice that came from the stairs made her think she must be in Glasgow, the big house, snow outside, Anne watching from the top window as the little girls in round hats made their way to school. She turned her head on the pillow and smiled to think of it. She pictured Blackpool, the darkroom at the top of the stairs. And she knew he would come. Harry would come and they’d put on a lamp and have a drink.

  She sat on the edge of the bed. It was nice to have a place and a young man to help you take down a box. That’s right, she said: the boy Alice had and he’s now a leader of something. Luke. He wears the uniform and has to go out on night flights and what have you. He comes here and it takes an hour or two if the roads aren’t bad. And when she thought of bad roads and night-time all the stories drained away.

  There was fog and snow over Germany.

  You can forget you’re by the seaside. And good God: you have to keep your wits about you in these places, Saltcoats, Manhattan. You had to keep your chin up. She thought she heard the phone ringing and then Luke appeared in the doorway with a cup of tea. ‘Are we going to Blackpool?’ she asked as he put the cup down.

  ‘Yes, we are,’ he said. ‘First thing.’ Sometimes her old artistic sense would jump out at him, as if it had waited.

  ‘I hope you had a camera in that country you were in,’ she said ‘Because that’s a place for documentary.’

  ‘It was all too real,’ he said, ‘though we struggled to know it.’

  ‘You know fine well what’s real. Did you and me not argue all day and half the night about it?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You know fine well. If you want a good photograph stop messing about with models and start marching to a different tune.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘That’s what we believe.’

  ‘Who’s “we”?’

  ‘Me and you and the rest of them.’

  Later, in the other room, Luke lifted Anne’s address book and sat in an armchair by the window. It felt good in his hands. He was amazed by the thickness of the book, all the names and numbers, scribbled or crossed out with different pens. Postcards were stuffed between the pages, images of young women he’d never met, a snap of him as a cadet, and, filed under T, an old black-and-white photo of a small boy. There were people in the address book from other countries, many in England: he realised as he flipped through the book that these were his grandmother’s mystery people. Whole pages were crossed out and the word ‘DEAD’ was written in bold. His mother had told him to find the name Harry Blake and look for a Blackpool number. There were a lot of numbers for Harry, most of them with Manchester telephone codes, and though Harry was dead, none of his numbers was scored out.

  ‘Who is it?’ the voice said. He was speaking to a woman with a very thick Lancashire accent.

  ‘My name is Luke Campbell. You don’t know me. But I’m phoning on behalf of Mrs Anne Quirk.’

  ‘Say again, love.’

  ‘Anne Quirk. The photographer. She used to come a lot to the house, I believe. Not recently. From Glasgow. She looked after her aunts and would come for a break.’

  ‘Mrs Blake!’

  Luke hesitated. He looked at the address book and saw Harry’s name again and took a breath. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, Lord Jesus. Mrs Blake!’

  ‘I’m her grandson. I’m afraid she hasn’t been well. I was thinking of bringing her to Blackpool, to get her away for a week.’

  ‘I knew something was going to happen today.’

  The lady was cheerful and Luke thought from her voice that she was probably middle-aged. ‘It’s been ever such a long time since Mrs Blake were down.’

  ‘Are you the landlady?’

  ‘I’m Sheila, chuck. It was my mother that ran the house when Mrs Blake was down a lot. Oh, darling. I’m talking the 1970s and the 1980s now. Happen it’s five years at least since we saw her. How is she?’

  ‘She’s not bad,’ he said. ‘She’s forgetful. But things are changing with her flat up here. I’m phoning from Scotland.’

  ‘From Glasgow?’

  ‘No, from Saltcoats. Down at the coast. She’s been living in a sheltered flat down here for years now.’

  ‘Oh, aye. She flitted. I’m remembering now.’

  ‘Did she come a lot?’

  ‘Oh, when I was a girl, love. Mrs Blake would be down here doing her work. Times have changed and we’re not getting any younger. But her room’s still here any time she wants it.’

  ‘Her room?’

  ‘Oh, aye, love. Mrs Blake’s room. She’s always had a room up the top of the house. Some of her things are still locked in the cupboards. It was always her room. Since before my time – during my mother’s time. It’s a little studio flat, actually. It belongs to her and just sits there.’

  ‘There’s nobody in it?’

  ‘No, love. Mrs Blake was always happy for us to put guests in there during the season, you know, but we’d always keep it clean for her. We’re not busy nowadays.’ Sheila chuckled. ‘We used to call it the darkroom. Was full of old photographs and trays and that. Aye, it was the darkroom. My mother would say, “Away up with the key and dust the darkroom, I think Mrs Blake’s coming.” Aw, I’m set up. You’re coming down? I always loved Mrs Blake. You’ve made me feel all funny.’

  Luke got all the details and answered the lady’s questions about sheets and towels. ‘Don’t you worry, chuck. It will all be ship-shape for Mrs Blake. God love her. The Illuminations are coming on later than usual this year, you probably know. Hurry down. It’ll be lovely to see you both when you arrive. Only the other day my sister was asking about Mrs Blake and I told her, I said, I didn’t even have a number. Aw, it’s made me go all funny. My mother always said, “Now Mrs Blake has paid for the flat, it’s where she works, she’s paid for it, Sheila, so don’t forget to keep it good.” Aw, what did you say your name was?’

  He sat up through the night reading her letters, discovering his grandmother’s younger self, a brilliant artist, someone ready to change the world. He examined the stamps, shuffled the blue pages, a privileged onlooker, wanting to make the connections and miss nothing that might bring her story to him as something he could keep. He saw her slow-burning heartache, her avowals of independence, her return to him, Harry Blake, whose divided nature dominated her life. His grandmother confronted him with an eerie, special power, this person he had loved all his life. He witnessed her spirit survive a series of trials he had never known about, and it made him love her more, while doubting the strength and consistency of men, including himself. He read the whole night long and in the morning he felt ready for the journey.

  BEST BEFORE

  She didn’t know the word for it. Every time they left she felt the same way but she didn’t know the word. It wasn’t relief and it wasn’t regret, but it contained both, the feeling she had when they gathered their stuff and took their coats and drove their cars up the Shore Road. Maureen would often stand at the window and wish she could call them back, start again, only better this time and happier. But the feeling only lasted until she dampened a cloth and she was now back in her own world, where no one could
expect her to care about olives or fancy drinks.

  Next morning she went to Anne’s door and was surprised when the young man opened it. ‘I just thought I’d pop in to see if Anne was all right,’ she said, slipping the skeleton key into her pocket. ‘And I brought in a wee plate of food in case she was hungry. It’s nice stuff: Italian ham and these are called sun-dried tomatoes.’ Luke brought her into the room and she immediately sensed a change.

  ‘How are you feeling, son, now that you’re back?’

  ‘Everything’s good, Mrs Ward.’

  ‘Call me Maureen. You’ll make me feel old.’ She blushed because the young man had travelled the world and he probably hadn’t time for neighbours. But her eye scanned the room and took in the bags and the ashtray. She didn’t know how she would cope when Mrs Quirk went into a home. ‘I’ll miss her terrible,’ she said to herself and it showed on her face.

  ‘I saw your family yesterday,’ Luke said. ‘Those big lads’ll cause you a bit of trouble, eh?’

  ‘Oh, they’re lovely boys,’ she said. ‘So well spoken. I mean, compared to how we were at that age. Very polite. They love to cook. Very busy lives they all have. They live in Edinburgh. My family’s always busy with their jobs and everything.’

  ‘Nice to see them, though.’

  ‘Oh, aye. It’s a breath of fresh air.’

  Luke sat Maureen down and explained. He said Anne couldn’t look after herself any more. He knew they had tried, Maureen and the warden, to keep her here, but unfortunately the time had come to move her into a nursing home. He was going to take her down south and while they were away the flat would be cleared. As he spoke, the tears welled up in Maureen’s eyes and she pinched her lips. ‘I’m not really sure,’ he said, ‘that Blackpool’s the right place to take her. But she wants to go.’

  ‘Don’t mind me, son.’

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Ward. You’ve been so good to my gran. And to my mum and me, as well. I want to thank you for the letters you wrote for her when I was out on service. It meant a lot.’

  She cried very quietly, as people do who are used to crying and don’t think it’s a big deal. She just dabbed her eyes and pursed her lips after everything she said. ‘Oh, it wasn’t a bother to me,’ she said. ‘She’s the best wee neighbour I ever had. A lovely lady was Mrs Quirk. And it’s true, she wasn’t herself and it’s only been getting worse, hasn’t it?’

  Luke’s phone rang and he put up a finger and went into the hall to deal with whatever it was. Anne was lying awake when Maureen put her head into the bedroom. ‘Hello, Anne,’ she said.

  ‘Hello.’

  Maureen lifted the blinds and talked about Scott and Jack and the family’s lovely visit. She tucked Anne in and lifted an empty mug and when she came back from the kitchen Anne had her eyes closed again. Maureen continued to tidy, finding plenty to say to her sleeping friend. She heard when Luke was off the phone. Before leaving the room she folded some clothes over the chair and tidied the top of the bedside cabinet, bending down to pick up something from the floor, a severed picture of a little girl.

  She had good days and bad days. The rabbit was the start of it all getting worse. Luke said he’d heard about it from his mother and saw it on the chair. ‘I used to worry about the rabbit,’ Maureen said, ‘but really she wasn’t so bad at first. She was still at herself. Still trying to put two and two together. But she’s tired now, isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s still with us, Maureen.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘The laughs we used to have in here. She’d have us all in knots. I’m not kidding you. The whole place. She could tell a story, God love her.’

  ‘I’m gathering her things.’

  ‘Right y’are. I’m going to help you get her ready for Blackpool, if that’s all right.’

  They spent the morning together. Luke squatted down by the fridge inspecting the stuff inside, the two shelves stacked with tins of soup and old jars of marmalade and whatever. ‘Don’t bother with that. I’ll do all this with your mum during the week,’ Maureen said. ‘We’ll organise everything. Just take what you need for the journey.’

  ‘We’re going to gather her work,’ Luke said, ‘the best of her photographs for an exhibition.’

  ‘That’s the people in Canada. The curator. I saw that letter. Has your mother come round to it?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘It’s so nice to have family, isn’t it? Like Anne has you. I don’t know where I’d be without my three. My daughter’s a therapist. She stuck in at the school and now she’s got a lovely house in Edinburgh. Ian, my eldest, he’s a wonderful father. Very high up in IBM. He’s all for computers. And the other one, Alexander, he’s a nice guy, too. A bit of a rogue. You don’t get two the same, do you?’

  ‘I’m sure you don’t, Mrs Ward.’

  ‘They all drive. My God, it’s like a car showroom out there when they all come to visit. But I often look at my three and say, well, you didn’t do too badly. It was a struggle but they turned out nice.’

  They worked in silence for a while, then Luke said not to take down too many things before they went, so’s not to alarm Anne just as they were setting out. ‘You might want this,’ Maureen said, handing him the photo of George Formby that had been pinned above the kettle. It had been there during all the time she had known Anne, looking down on them at night as they heated the soup and unfolded their lives.

  THE VODKAS

  Anne was squinting at the light and talking about holidays she had once taken with Harry. She would make comments and then go silent for whole stretches of the road. Luke found the moments of clarity really exciting. It was hard to admit that she was probably quite content generally and not just when she was talking sense and making him feel better. She seemed to admire the passing vehicles and she pointed without words at the mist over the houses on the road to Lesmahagow.

  What is an adult? He’d always wondered. Was it a person who can speak when silent and who invents life, as opposed to just living it? At the wheel, Luke told himself she was the most adult person he had ever known. Some people would argue the opposite: that she had never grown up, that she had never faced things. But he was a happy student again, learning, over the miles, how to read a person by finding what character was available. She was brazen with words and actions no matter how baffled she seemed. No matter how far away she seemed, no matter how lost, she was with him, and he was determined to go with her as she slipped through the past into some brand-new element of the present.

  ‘There’s a reason I like you,’ she said. She added nothing for a moment and then said it again. ‘There’s a good reason.’

  ‘And what would that be?’ he asked.

  ‘You can read into things.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Stop fishing for compliments.’

  ‘I’m not!’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘Then. Some people see a painting. They don’t know what it is. Like that one of the place where the bombs fell.’

  ‘What painting is that?’

  ‘By the man who made his girlfriends have two faces.’

  ‘Picasso.’

  ‘That’s the one. He painted a town.’

  ‘Guernica.’

  ‘Is that what it’s called?’

  ‘Yes, Franco bombed it.’

  ‘I don’t know what I was saying.’

  ‘About how some people look at the painting of the bombed town.’

  ‘They don’t see the truth. They just see the paint.’

  He took a deep breath. He knew as she reached for the words that she was uncovering the old ground of their sympathy. She’d used the example to him way back in the past – of how some people looked at Guernica and admired its form but couldn’t understand why it couldn’t just be an aerial photograph. But form told its own story, she used to say. And now she was struggling to say it again as the road vanished behind them.

  ‘I don�
�t know what it was about,’ she said. ‘Something about the man in Spain who never went on holiday because he hated photographs.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘It’s nice to have that, a person in your family who knows what you’re talking about when you say about your work.’

  ‘That’s nicely put.’

  ‘It’s important,’ she said.

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Deep down,’ she said.

  ‘Drumlanrig Castle’ flashed onto the windscreen with a load of rain and grit. The wet cows in the fields got him thinking of those animals Scullion had liked to talk about, the extinct ones, the Asiatic cheetah, the goitered gazelle. When they passed another service station he thought of the melon stalls by the road in Helmand but the windscreen was now streaked with salt and he turned to her as she woke again.

  ‘Vodka,’ she said.

  ‘Vodka? Well, not in here, Gran. I would’ve brought a hip-flask if I knew you were going to go all karaoke.’

  ‘And tonic,’ she said. ‘Do we have that?’

  After twenty minutes or so he turned off the motorway and stopped in Moffat. ‘Turn around when possible,’ the GPS said. Anne looked down at the voice and he turned it off.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Just the map,’ he said. ‘We’re on a detour.’ He drove into the town and parked across from a cashmere shop. He noticed how curious Anne’s eyes were and how young they seemed for a woman in her eighties. ‘Let me put your gloves on.’

  ‘Cold hands,’ she said.

  The hotel wasn’t busy that afternoon and they got a nice table by the window. Luke came back with two vodkas and tonic and she smiled. ‘I don’t like that,’ she said, poking at the lemon with a finger. He took it out and put it in his own glass and clinked hers.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve got your gloves on,’ Luke said. ‘I don’t want you leaving any fingerprints. I don’t want people knowing I took my granny away and got her drunk.’

  ‘People sing,’ she said.

  ‘Have you been here before?’

  ‘This isn’t Blackpool, is it?’