Graham Swift - The Sweet-Shop Owner

But the one they most wanted, the one they most needed to complete the picture, sat in the living-room and wouldn’t take part.

‘Come out Irene, come on out.’

‘The sun will go in.’

As they left the station for the taxi someone eyed his uniform and his limp. Perhaps they were thinking, ‘Dunkirk?’ Her face looked excited, but it was only the illness. In the taxi he said, ‘What can be done?’ ‘I have some new pills. They help. But there’s no cure really. It’s not like that.’ And, taking his hand, she said, ‘Look,’ and pointed out of the window to an orchard where a man on a ladder was picking apples.

He sat in the deck-chair near the back porch, holding Aunt Madeleine’s ginger cat, glad to be out of his uniform. They didn’t want him in their photographs. He could sit in peace. The garden looked neat, the far end dug for vegetables. Mr Harrison stood close to the window. The lines in his face were reflected in the glass.

‘Come out.’

‘It’ll bring it on again,’ she said, her voice muffled, from within.

Though they both knew, it wasn’t the asthma.

‘Just for a moment. That surely won’t do any harm.’

Mr Harrison moved aside from the window. His hair was combed and smoothed down for the photographs but his face, unseen by the rest of the family, seemed crumpled, and it glared momentarily at him in his deck-chair, accusing. ‘Won’t she come out?’

The cat purred in his hands.

Up the garden the brothers conferred, shifted legs and lit each other cigarettes, like guests when there has been a hitch in the programme which someone else must correct. But they looked uneasy, as if deprived of something they’d bargained for.

‘The sun will go in.’

At the end of the table Mr Harrison spoke about Churchill, about invasion, about the weakness of the French, while Aunt Madeleine, holding a cake-slice, served up ‘Patriot Pie’, an economy recipe from a magazine. Mrs Harrison sat with her fingers on her necklace. Each time Mr Harrison declaimed upon a subject he turned to him and said, ‘What do you think?’ Then,

‘Well, Jack and Paul should be here tomorrow,’ and ‘I dare say you envy them.’

‘Irene!’ Mr Harrison suddenly barked aloud, turning to the window, as if giving an order. Then he said in the voice of someone at a public meeting, ‘Don’t let your brothers down!’

His cheeks quivered. The camera he held in his hand might have been a weapon, a missile he would have hurled through the window. Up the garden the figures stiffened, rallying. What was happening? They wanted her to come out but their gaze seemed to shut her in.

‘Irene!’

Mr Harrison turned, accusing once more, the camera in his hand. ‘What’s the matter with her? You should know.’ He seemed to be really craving for information. ‘You don’t help much, do you?’ — looking with contempt at the cat.

He leant forward in his chair. He would have said, putting down the cat: ‘Now just a minute, Mr Harrison.’ But he saw her eyes, through the window, bright and precarious in the gloom, suddenly fix and hold his, sending little threads between them, taut with warning: Don’t fall. Don’t fall.

No, he wouldn’t enter this particular action.

‘She isn’t well Mr Harrison, you know that.’

The older man stood before him, flexing his shoulders, like a man waiting for his opponent to make the first move so as to crush him blamelessly. He drew breath. Sweat oozed in the crevices of his face, strands of hair fell over his forehead. The war wouldn’t be for him, as it would for many, a temporary curtain lowered over the past. It would be dropped for him for ever.

‘Damn you,’ he said softly.

Paul and Jack raised their cigarettes. Mrs Harrison strode towards the house. ‘If she won’t come out,’ said Aunt Madeleine, taking off her wide straw hat, ‘then that’s the last of the photographs.’

The sun went in. A breeze fanned out over the garden, ruffling the michaelmas daisies, flipping the black tie from Paul’s jacket, shaking the trees beyond the patch which Mrs Harrison and Aunt Mad, soiling their hands, had diligently dug. For an instant they all stood awkwardly, looking in different directions, actors waiting for a prompt.

‘Irene —’ began Mrs Harrison, approaching the window. But she paused. For there she was, emerging from the side of the house, tucking a handkerchief in her sleeve, and coming up to place one hand behind him on the frame of the deck-chair.

‘All right. Where do you want me?’

‘You can’t blame the French,’ he’d said, meeting Mr Harrison’s armed scrutiny, but first swallowing his mouthful of Aunt Mad’s uninspiring pie. ‘After all, they’ve been invaded many times before.’ He remembered his history lessons.

Click. The shutter flicked, drawing its curtain over the past. Paul and Jack, with Irene between. The fair flanked by the strong. Click. ‘Smile, Irene.’ But she didn’t smile. She had come out. She stood where they told her to stand. She took her place in the picture, but she didn’t smile. She breathed heavily.

‘Just one please.’ Mr Harrison was no longer angry. He was apologetic. Standing looking down at the view-finder, his head bent, he had an air of penitence.

‘Ready?’ The brothers leaned in towards the sister. The developed photograph would show her like some captive between two vigilant sentinels.

‘Just once for your brothers.’

She looked towards the camera, and beyond it, past Mr Harrison’s shoulder, to where he sat in his deck-chair. ‘You see, you see what I am doing.’ Her eyes spoke as she looked at him. She steadied her face like a performer. And she smiled.

Click.

Mr Harrison raised his head with a gesture of relief. As if he’d been forgiven.

‘There.’

The shadow of the house had edged up the lawn. Someone suggested tea but Aunt Madeleine thought the sun might go in.

‘How many left?’ said Mrs Harrison.

‘Another two.’

‘One of us all,’ said Aunt Mad putting her straw hat back on her head.

‘Yes, yes.’

‘William will take it.’

They all looked at him as if they’d forgotten he was there.

‘Would you mind, old chap?’ said Mr Harrison. He was buoyant again, once more the master of ceremonies.

‘No.’ He got up, putting down the cat. Mr Harrison eyed his limp which was always more noticeable after he raised himself from sitting.

‘Know how to work it?’

Apples had fallen from the tree and were lying at the edge of the lawn. ‘You shouldn’t waste those,’ Irene said as they drank beer before lunch. Over by the rockery the bottles and glasses were still on the tray on the lawn and wasps were licking them. ‘Not with a war. You must keep them.’ ‘What war?’ Jack said, grinning, lying back on the grass, raising his beer glass so as to catch the sunlight in it. But Mrs Harrison looked away, at the fallen apples.

The figures grouped, composed. Mr Harrison wanted to stand between Irene and the brothers with Aunt Madeleine next to Irene and Mrs Harrison beside Jack and Paul. Irene blew into her handkerchief and sat down on the low wall next to the rockery. She watched the wasps at the beer bottles. ‘Come on,’ said Mr Harrison, afraid perhaps she might succumb to asthma before the picture could be taken. He linked his arm in hers and raised her, as if shouldering a shield. It didn’t matter; it didn’t matter she was ill, that he was forcing her, that the laundry had been bombed and under the composure there was discomposure. So long as the picture was good, so long as the moment was vindicated.

Already, perhaps, he was preparing his memorial.

‘Have you got us?’

‘You’ll have to move further in.’