THE PHOTOGRAPH
It is a beautiful March morning. The pink gillyflowers beneath my window are in bloom, filling the room with their sweet and heady scent. If I lean close to the windowsill and peer down at the garden bed, I can see the outermost petals, bright with sun. The peach blossom will be next, then the jasmine. Each year it is the same; will continue to be the same for years to come. Long after I am here to enjoy them. Eternally fresh, eternally hopeful, always ingenuous.
I have been thinking about Mother. About the photograph in Lady Violet’s scrapbook. For I saw it, you know. A few months after Hannah first mentioned it, that summer’s day by the fountain.
It was September of 1916. Mr Frederick had inherited his father’s estate, Lady Violet (in an impeccable show of etiquette, said Myra) had vacated Riverton and taken up residence in the London townhouse, and the Hartford girls had been dispatched indefinitely to help her settle.
We were a tiny staff at that time-Myra was busier than ever in the village and Alfred, whose leave I’d so anticipated, had been unable at the last to return. It confused us at the time: he was in Britain, sure enough, his letters assured us he wasn’t injured, yet he was to spend his leave at a military hospital. Even Mr Hamilton was unsure what to make of this. He thought long and hard, sat in his pantry pondering Alfred’s letter, until one night he emerged, rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses and made his announcement. The only explanation was Alfred’s involvement in a secret war mission of which he was unable to speak. It seemed a reasonable suggestion; for what else explained the hospital accommodation of a man with no injuries?
And so the matter was closed. Little more was said about it, and in the early autumn of 1916, as leaves dropped and the ground outside began to harden, steeling itself for the freeze to come, I found myself alone in the Riverton drawing room.
I had cleaned and reset the fire and was finishing up dusting. I ran the cloth across the top of the writing desk, traced its rim, then started on the drawer handles, bringing the brass to a gleam. It was a regular duty, performed each second morning as sure as day followed night, and I cannot say what set that day apart. Why that morning as my fingers reached the left-hand drawer they slowed, stopped, refused to recommence their cleaning. As if they glimpsed before I did the furtive purpose that fluttered on the edges of my thoughts.
I sat a moment, perplexed, unable to move. And I became aware of the sounds around me. The wind outside, leaves hitting the windowpanes. The mantle clock ticking insistently, counting away the seconds. My breaths, grown quick with expectation.
Fingers trembling, I began to slide it open.
Only then did I realise what it was I intended to do.
Slowly, carefully, acting and observing myself in equal measure. The drawer reached halfway and tilted on its tracks, the contents sliding to the front.
I paused. Listened. Satisfied myself I was still alone. Then I peered inside.
There beneath a pen set and a pair of gloves: Lady Violet’s scrapbook.
No time for hesitation, the incriminating drawer already open, heartbeat pulsing against the bones of my inner ears, I slid the book from the drawer and laid it on the floor.
Flicked through the pages-photographs, invitations, menus, diary entries-scanning for dates. 1896, 1897, 1898…
There it was: the household photograph of 1899, its shape familiar but its proportions different. Two long rows of straight-faced servants complementing the front line of family. Lord and Lady Ashbury, the Major in his uniform, Mr Frederick-all so much younger and less tattered-Jemima, and an unknown woman I took to be Penelope, Mr Frederick’s late wife, both with swollen stomachs. One of those bulges was Hannah, I realised; the other, an ill-fated boy whose blood would one day fail him. A lone child stood at the end of the row near Nanny (ancient even then). A small blond boy: David. Full of life and light; blissfully unaware of all the future had in store.
I let my gaze shift from his face and onto the rows of staff behind. Mr Hamilton, Mrs Townsend, Myra…
My breath caught. I stared into the gaze of a young serving maid. There was no mistaking her. Not because she resembled Mother-far from it. Rather, she resembled me. The hair and eyes were darker, but the likeness was uncanny. The same long neck, chin tapered to a dimpled point, brows curved to give a permanent impression of deliberation.
Most surprising of all though, far more so than our resemblance: Mother was smiling. Oh, not so as you’d realise unless you knew her well. It wasn’t a smile of mirth or social greeting. It was slight, little more than a muscular tremor, easily excused as a trick of the light by those who didn’t know her. But I could see. Mother was smiling to herself. Smiling like someone with a secret-
– I apologise, Marcus, for the interruption, but I have had an unexpected caller. I was sitting here, admiring the gillyflowers, telling you of Mother, when a knock came at the door. I expected Sylvia, come to tell me about her male friend, or complain about one of the other residents, but it wasn’t. Rather it was Ursula, the film-maker. I’ve mentioned her before, surely?
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ she said.
‘No,’ I said, setting aside my walkman.
‘I won’t stay long. I was in the neighbourhood and it seemed silly to head back to London without popping in.’
‘You’ve been at the house.’
She nodded. ‘We were shooting a scene in the gardens, the light was just perfect.’
I asked her about the scene, curious as to which part of their story had been reconstructed today.
‘It was a scene of courtship,’ she said, ‘a romantic scene. It’s actually one of my favourites.’ She blushed, shook her head so that her fringe swung like a curtain. ‘It’s silly. I wrote the lines, I knew them when they were mere black marks on white paper-scratched them out and rewrote them a hundred times-yet I was still so moved to hear them spoken today.’
‘You’re a romantic,’ I said.
‘I suppose I am.’ She tilted her head to the side. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it. I didn’t know the real Robbie Hunter at all; I’ve created a version of him from his poetry, from what other people wrote about him. Yet I find…’ She paused, raised her eyebrows self-deprecatingly. ‘I fear I’m in love with a figure of my own creation.’
‘And what is your Robbie like?’
