Then, blackout.
The camera springs to life again in the airport departure lounge. Quite the film-maker, my father pans across the shuttered shops – perfume, surf wear, expensive sweets and snacks. They are all closed because it’s 4 a.m. and no human wants to buy perfume or overpriced swimming shorts at this hour. My mother is asleep on a chair; she is almost translucent. I am sitting beside her, crying.
‘Don’t cry, sweetheart!’ my father says, and I look up at the camera.
Then, blackout.
There’s incredibly shaky footage of the plane taking off from the window, but because of the darkness all you can see is red and white dots shaking and then disappearing down the bottom of the screen. ‘And we’re off,’ my father says quietly into the camera, as though it is a secret they’re sharing. Then he turns the camera on me. I’m holding on to Benni tightly. I have my nose pressed against his beanbag snout.
‘It’ll be okay, pickle,’ my father says softly.
Panning from the front door and around the living room, where there are boxes and suitcases and a distinct lack of furniture, my father narrates, ‘Well, here we are!’ And he does a tour of the house – the kitchen with only one working lightbulb and the bathroom, where the previous owners have left peach-coloured toilet paper and a shower radio in the shape of a seahorse, then into the bedroom with the double bed, where my mother is unpacking clothes. Then he goes into my bedroom where, clutching Benni, I am finally asleep.
The camera turns on about a week later, as I run in through the front door of the house in my new school uniform. Having not worn a uniform at my school in Örebro, I am strangely proud of my blue jumper and my pleated skirt in the colour of sadness.
‘Lenni’s smiling!’ my father narrates to the video camera. ‘How was your first day?’
I hold up a lollipop to the camera – it’s one of those pink and yellow chewy ones and I’m smiling as though nothing in the world could ever top this moment.
‘Did you make any new friends?’ he asks. I open my mouth to answer and then, blackout.
May Flowers
ELSE AND WALTER were sketching the wooden mannequins Pippa had placed on our table. Beside Else was a single long-stemmed white rose, tied with a black ribbon. It was fluffy. Like candy floss gathered up on a stick. She and Walter were avoiding looking at each other and I was quite sure that under her tasteful make-up Else was blushing.
Pippa smiled when she saw the rose, but didn’t say anything. Instead, she placed a mannequin in front of me and explained that artists use the mannequins to get the proportions of a human body right. She let me draw a face on mine with a felt tip – I gave him a pair of wide eyes and a grin. I arranged him so that his arms were up in the air, waving to the mannequins on the table opposite. Then I drew shoes on him, with the laces done up in a bow. I gave him a smart shirt and tie. I imagined he was courting a mannequin on the opposite table.
In the quiet, Margot was painting. She filled her canvas with yellow flowers. I don’t know their names, in English or in Swedish, but they were beautiful. It was as though she had access to a private field of yellow flowers that only she could see. They crowded together so tightly that there were only a few gaps of white space left on her canvas. They were so bright they seemed to generate their own light.
St James Hospital, Glasgow, 11th May 1953
Margot Docherty is Twenty-Two Years Old
He was so chubby when he was born that he didn’t fit into any of the clothes we had brought to the hospital. My mother had knitted him a whole wardrobe of outfits. Her favourite was a pair of dungarees (in private, Johnny had said, ‘What will the child want with woollen dungarees in summer?’) but the only thing we could get on him was a yellow hat, and even then it would only stay on for a short while before it rose up and eventually popped off his head.
Johnny had borrowed a camera from his boss, Mr Dutton, for the day. At the glassworks, they took a photograph of every installation they did and they had a wall for customers to examine their previous work. Johnny said it helped build confidence. The camera was boxy and much heavier than it appeared. It had dials and numbers that Johnny had promised Mr Dutton he wouldn’t meddle with.
‘Smile,’ he said. And I did. Holding the human we had made. Wrapped in blankets and wearing only a nappy and a yellow hat.
We named him David George, the first name for Johnny’s father and the second for the King, who had died the year before. Good role models, we thought then. I have had many years to think about it, and I wonder if the name had too much turmoil in it – both men dead, both so strongly connected to the war. David had died in 1941 and King George had been the one he was fighting for.
Davey had been in the world for about three hours when my mother came to the hospital with a bunch of yellow carnations. ‘April showers bring forth May flowers,’ she said as she kissed me on the cheek, the flowers pressed between us giving off a glimmer of sweetness and sunlight.
My father wasn’t with her. He had entered a voluntary treatment centre for men with shellshock. He wrote sporadically, and I felt guilty that I was relieved when his latest letter didn’t mention any imminent plans to come home.
‘Smile,’ Johnny said again, and my
