The Illuminations

by Andrew O'Hagan

  ‘A staff nurse, eh. She’s qualified.’

  ‘I’m going to make her proud, Captain. I want to become sergeant and then we’ll buy a wee house.’

  ‘That’s a goal, Doosh.’

  ‘Awesome.’

  Luke sensed he wanted to say more. More perhaps about life in general and whether the captain had somebody special and would he like to settle down with her some day and buy a house? It was all on Dooley’s face but he was too shy of the captain’s privacy. Dooley wished he could summarise their friendship and his emotions were rushing into the moment. But he wasn’t easy like the Scouser when it came to feelings so he just put his arm around the captain and said it was a great night. ‘I feel fucken magic,’ he said as he got up and joined the others on the dance floor. Luke watched his comrades-in-arms and thought them the best young men in the world. He realised how young they were and put two twenties under Flange’s glass.

  As he walked home, he looked out and saw a hill of deckchairs stacked at the end of the pier. He looked over the sea and wondered if it might be one long dream, his family, his friends, the lives they tried to live. It was strange, but the dark water seemed experienced and alive, as if conscious of the people on the shore, as if it could see to the heart of things. The Ferris wheel was still but the lights blinked as he walked down the Golden Mile. There was no sound but the sound of the waves. This was Blackpool. The lights were part of the town but the moon was simple and white up there, and he loved how it shone without frailty over the sea and the coast.

  HARRY’S VERSION

  Sheila stood on the second-floor landing with a mug of Lucozade in her hand and a cigarette going. You could smell bacon all the way up the stairs and it was a fine morning if you believed the sunlight. ‘Oops,’ Sheila said, spilling a drop, her hands busy as she spoke, wreathing the air with smoke and fizz. ‘This carpet needs doing. Happen it’s only three years old. Would you believe that? It’s these young ones coming up and down in their boots. My mother ran it old-fashioned, you know, kippers for breakfast, two to a bed but she’d want to see the wedding ring.’

  ‘She was strict, then?’

  ‘Always wore a pinny, me mam. But good to the guests. She put a wireless in every room.’

  ‘Who did the bird drawings?’ asked Luke.

  ‘That’s father. He loved birds. All his books are still in the cabinet down in the lounge. He was like Mrs Blake, an artist at heart, really. When she pointed a camera at something you really knew it was captured.’

  Luke was pleased as he listened. According to Sheila’s mother, who didn’t have kids at the time, Mrs Blake was famous one summer for haunting the cafes of Blackpool. It must have been the summer of 1962, she said. ‘The town was full of teenagers, they were always fighting and some of them drove their scooters up and down the front, and Mrs Blake was making a study of them.’ Apparently, the darkroom was like an art gallery at the time, rows of photos pinned up around the walls and the smell of chemicals, good God, Sheila’s mother thought she might have to say something. ‘But Mam knew it was important for Mrs Blake to get on with her work,’ Sheila said. ‘She photographed all these youngsters and their hair.’

  You couldn’t resist Sheila. She said her mother spoke of all the places where Mrs Blake used to take pictures. Putting down the mug, she began to count them off on her fingers. ‘The Shangri La cafe on Central Drive. The Hawaiian Eye cafe on Topping Street. Redman’s Cafe in Bank Hey Street. The Regal Cafe on Lytham Road.’

  ‘Wow,’ Luke said. ‘You’ve some memory.’

  ‘And Jenks Cafe in Talbot Square.’

  He took care to close the door. He put down the newspaper and the groceries and turned to see Anne sitting up. He made tea with lots of milk and he buttered the rolls and put ham inside them. Anne liked it, chewing quite happily, introducing sips of tea after every bite. She saw the day when she would run down to get the breakfast for Harry. And when she came back carrying the sausages or the bacon wrapped in paper, the bread, the brown sauce in a bottle, she would hesitate at the top, knowing he was inside the darkroom waiting for her. She could picture it: how she stood there, how she kissed the door before going in.

  ‘Did you black out the windows?’ she said to Luke.

  ‘To let you sleep?’

  ‘For processing. Harry and the blankets. Just like they did in the war. Harry was in the war, you know.’

  ‘So I gather.’

  ‘He flew planes.’

  Luke tried to imagine the darkroom as it used to be, when it was invested with all the ambition in the world. He tried to see it: a studio, a love nest, a place of light music and waiting.

  Anne had spent time with the women. You could tell. She seemed restored a little to her old self, less agitated after an evening of vodkas and songs down in the lounge. She spoke more that morning. It was as if her spirit had been encouraged by like-minded souls, the sort of people who take the elderly at their own estimation. The women loved memories of every kind and they weren’t minded to frisk them for accuracy. ‘Harry had medals,’ she said to Luke. ‘Because of the war.’ She paused to have another sip of tea. ‘And you’re in the war, aren’t you?’

  ‘The war’s over now,’ Luke said. ‘For me, anyway.’

  He took her cup and plate. She began to doze and before long she was snoring into the pillow. He stood in the room and felt odd to be at the centre of Anne’s lost horizons. The night before, on the way back to the guesthouse, he imagined the sea must be conscious, and now the room had memory. These thoughts were strange expansions of an old faith, like ghosts returning to their rightful place and living now with him, part of the person he’d become. He felt watched in the room as he cast his eyes up to the ceiling, just as he felt watched when he walked along the prom. Looking up, he saw the shape of dead moths in the frosted bowl of the ceiling light. They had flown too close and been there for years. His phone was buzzing in his pocket but he assumed it was the boys and didn’t answer. He felt he had said goodbye, so when he took out the phone and saw texts and missed calls, he just pressed the button and turned off the phone.

  He opened the cupboards. The files were dusty, the labels peeling. One cupboard was full of glass beakers and chemicals, droppers, lengths of tubing and packs of Ilford paper. His gran once told him that Harry mixed chemicals the way people in films did cocktails. Sheila knocked on the door at one point and suggested he go downstairs and have a coffee. Her sister was with her and they carried fresh towels. It was another aspect of Sheila’s character: the no-nonsense approach to difficult necessities. They wanted to wash Mrs Blake and take her into the toilet. ‘Go and have a cuppa,’ she said. His gran woke up and stared at them. ‘We’re due to throw a good old Pippa Dee Party in here, aren’t we, Mrs B?’

  Anne slept again that evening with the bed freshly made and the radio turned up a little. He’d arranged with Sheila to stop down for a chat. When he turned up in the hall at seven o’clock she already had her coat on and announced that her sister would go up and sit with Anne. ‘I need a touch of fresh air,’ she said. ‘You don’t mind, love?’

  ‘No, let’s go,’ he said.

  Walking along the prom, Sheila said Anne was still lagging from last night’s festivities. ‘The lounge got lively after you left,’ she said. ‘She’d a few drinks, Mrs Blake. A dark horse, that one. Confused, though, eh? Doesn’t really remember anything in order. Gets mixed up. She kept thinking I was my mother and in the end I just said fine.’

  ‘It’s got worse.’

  ‘Mind you. She still comes out wi’ things. And you’ll be like, “Lord Jesus, where did that come from?” Then she goes back into herself.’

  ‘That’s the pattern.’

  ‘Bless her.’

  They walked to the Pleasure Beach. Sheila was telling him how a popular ride called the Derby Racer had been scrapped a few years back. ‘That was something in its day,’ she said. ‘You could hear the squeals for miles.’ The lights still amazed Luke but there was n
othing harsh in them any more, no reminders of tracer fire. It was just life repeating itself in a northern town and he was glad to be part of a million bulbs.

  ‘Sheila,’ he said. ‘Why does she have that room?’

  ‘It’s like I told you,’ she said. ‘Your grandmother actually owns that bit of the house.’

  ‘You didn’t say that.’

  ‘Well, she does. She rented it at first. Just a bedsit, you know, when she first started coming to Blackpool. But then my mother and father hit rough times. Mrs Blake’s aunts died one by one up in Glasgow and eventually she got some money and one of the things she did … she bought that part of the house. It wasn’t a lot of money. But my mother was in a lather at the time and your gran has always helped with the bills coming in. Off-season we used to sit and wait for Mrs Blake’s cheque. And it would always come until it stopped about a year ago.’

  ‘I always suspected something. My mother knew. She wouldn’t really talk about it.’

  ‘We’re going back forty-odd years,’ Sheila said. ‘I was only a baby when the arrangement started.’

  They sat down on a bench. He could tell Sheila wasn’t sure how much he wanted to know. More revellers went past and she sent a smile after them, girls in pink safety helmets.

  ‘Tell me about Harry.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. Where do I start?’

  ‘I know he’s my grandfather. I know they were never married. It’s nice of you to call her Mrs Blake.’

  ‘My mother always insisted on that.’

  ‘I know he was married to somebody else. Before coming here, I read some letters she kept. Letters from him. He was married to somebody in Manchester. Not Anne. Did he let her down?’

  ‘It was awful.’

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have brought her here.’

  ‘Never think it was wrong,’ she said. ‘In spite of everything she always loved it here.’

  ‘That’s what I hoped.’

  ‘That man Harry,’ she said. ‘He were bloody deluded. That’s the word, isn’t it? Deluded. My mother always said so. She got the full story about that man, and, one time, she and my dad went over to Manchester to give him a piece of their mind. They went to his office.’

  ‘He made things up?’

  ‘All those stories about the war. My dad was a lot older than my mother and he did fight in the war, so he couldn’t stand all that stuff that came out of Harry Blake’s mouth.’

  ‘About flying spy planes?’

  ‘Oh. Spy planes. He’d worked in a chemist’s shop in London processing film. That was his war. A dodgy ear is what he had. The marvellous Harry with all the medals. And then, according to my dad, he got himself into Guildford College, didn’t he? A course in photography. The first, I think. I don’t know how he got in. Night school, I suppose. Guys who had flown in the war went there because it were near the base. That’s where Harry got all his stories – from those men.’

  ‘And Anne knew?’

  ‘She always knew. But she loved him. And when you love somebody that much, well, you need to believe them, don’t you? She wanted to protect him, or something like that.’

  ‘And he met Anne here? It said in the letters.’

  ‘That’s right. He was teaching photography at the college in Manchester. The end of the 1950s this was.’

  ‘She came to a lecture of his.’

  ‘I think that’s right. Dad had all the facts.’

  Luke leaned back on the bench. He told her it looked like Anne’s life had been one long bid for freedom. From her own family in Canada to the career in New York. Then from the big house in Glasgow to Blackpool. She was always trying to rescue her youth from her family, trying to rescue her talent. ‘It sounds like he was her last chance,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Sheila said.

  She lit a cigarette and blew out the smoke, narrowing her eyes at the sea as if it helped her remember. ‘Three children he had,’ she repeated. ‘And my mother said he courted Anne, you know, here in Blackpool, taking her out and that, introducing her to people. And you can imagine what it must’ve been like for Anne to have someone just then. It was all domestic stuff in Glasgow. She couldn’t leave.’

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘The old dears were bedridden.’

  ‘But that wasn’t her problem.’

  ‘Apparently, it was. She’d promised her father. There was nobody else. Her family was all gone by then.’

  ‘So Harry was a godsend? He knew about photographs.’

  ‘Exactly. A godsend. He believed in her. My mother said she’d a lovely Canadian voice back then.’

  ‘You can still hear it faintly. It’s nearly seventy years since she lived in Ontario.’

  ‘The accent’s strong in Scotland. You’re going to lose your accent if you stay there too long.’

  ‘She still has traces.’

  ‘I can hear it.’

  ‘She got pregnant,’ Luke said.

  ‘She did, yeah. And you know what? I was telling you this morning about her haunting the cafes, taking pictures and doing work for a big magazine. My mother said she’d never seen her so happy as she was that summer. She’d got herself back. She was doing new things. It was looking great. Then she fell pregnant and he scarpered.’

  ‘He just left?’

  ‘He came back, but not much. There would be these long gaps. Me dad went looking for him. Harry was married, of course. He had the wife and the kids in Salford, as you say. I think my dad felt sorry for him, in a way. It happened to a lot of couples back then. Harry got Anne pregnant and then went back to his wife. I remember my dad saying that Harry was one of those people who live their lives through other people. All those lies about his war service and everything.’

  ‘But he got her back to photography,’ Luke said.

  ‘That’s true. He wasn’t all bad.’

  ‘And he loved her.’

  ‘He filled her head full of dreams. But I’ll tell you something: in all the years, she never spoke a word against him.’

  ‘She was faithful to him.’

  ‘Yes, she was.’

  ‘When you read his letters,’ Luke said. ‘You see he wanted great things for her, things he couldn’t get for himself. That’s love, isn’t it?’

  ‘She had the talent.’

  ‘He helped her become herself.’

  ‘If you say so. He’s your grandfather. And you’re bound to want to see the good in him, just like she did. It’s only natural.’

  ‘Your own father—’

  ‘He understood that people can get lost. To him, Harry was a smart fellow who just got lost in his own circumstances. He didn’t like what he did – or the lies he told – but he believed that Harry was a victim of everything that happened at the time, just as Anne was.’ She paused. ‘It’s not always the right people who take hold of your life. Half the women I know had men like that, but they got over them, and she didn’t.’

  ‘Well, she did,’ Luke said. ‘By turning him into something good.’

  ‘Something better. She was an artist, after all.’

  Luke considered it. ‘The great Harry,’ he said. ‘She speaks about him with such reverence.’

  ‘Well, that’s the way she felt about him. He had a gift for making connections between people. People say he was a good teacher. He opened up something in her and if that happens, well—’

  ‘It can last for your whole life.’

  ‘In some cases, yes.’ Sheila sniffed and pushed back her hair. ‘Maybe Dad was right: you have to try to understand people like that, people who can’t have the life they want and are always making it up instead or running away.’

  ‘Yes,’ Luke said.

  ‘After a year or two, after she’d had the twins, they tried to make it work. They went on a few holidays together, him going up to Scotland in secret, you know, behind the wife’s back. The twins were very small. And it was on one of those holidays—’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘You said “twi
ns”. My mother had a twin?’

  ‘You didn’t know, love?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mrs Blake had twins.’

  ‘That can’t be true,’ he said. ‘Are you sure?’ Sheila dropped her cigarette and leaned forward to step on it.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Mrs Blake had twins to Harry Blake. A boy and a girl. The girl was your mother and the boy died in an accident.’

  Luke just stared into space. He felt he’d arrived at a familiar place of which he had no knowledge whatsoever. ‘Holy fuck,’ he said.

  Sheila felt it was getting cold so they went for a drink in the bar of the Seabank Hotel. There was a screen on the wall which advertised the bus-runs coming from Scotland. Pick-ups in Partick, Airdrie, Motherwell, Dundee, Irvine and Ayr. The hotel was full of elderly people. ‘It leaves me not knowing who I am,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The information about the boy. About my mother having had a brother.’ He took a sip of his beer and looked up at the screen and then back at the table, and when he sighed it seemed to include everything. ‘When you think of it, Blackpool’s really a suburb of Scotland, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘It’s a suburb of a lot of places.’

  He waited. ‘What happened after the boy died?’

  Sheila’s mother and father had tried to help Anne because she couldn’t cope. The aunts weren’t fit enough to help her with the child and it was after they died that Anne bought the room. ‘Your mother was left with the neighbours in Glasgow half the time. Poor girl. I think Mrs Blake paid them to look after her. Lord Jesus. It’s all me mam and dad spoke about for years. Mrs Blake felt it was her fault, but it was nobody’s fault. Never really got over it. She stopped taking pictures.’

  ‘That was the cause?’

  ‘That was it. She turned away. And for years she would come down here. She was always by herself.’

  ‘In the darkroom?’

  ‘Stopping there for weeks at a time.’

  ‘And he didn’t come much, did he?’ Luke said. ‘That was plain from the letters, too.’