Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

after the death of her mother. She placed the ceramic rabbit on top of the tablecloth to hold it down and then she glanced at him while she moved between the bundles, unfolding the material and holding it up and tutting.

Jane, Jessie. Wait a minute. There was Grace. And Anna. Nobody came to the house in Glasgow once they were gone. It was just me up there. Before Luke was born I would build a fire because the pipes were frozen. My fingers used to get cold and they were stained with developer most of the time. I went to the camera club, that’s right. I used to massage that stuff into my fingers to stop the irritation. Camphor ice.

She didn’t notice her neighbour enter but didn’t flinch when she saw her. ‘Good heavens,’ Maureen said, stepping over the bundles. ‘Did you decide to have a wee spring clean?’

‘Stuff from the aunt-hill,’ Anne said.

‘I thought I heard a man’s voice earlier.’

Anne seemed distracted. ‘We were talking about camera work. I had to come back from New York and I didn’t want to come back, Maureen. I wanted to take pictures.’

‘You were very good.’

‘It’s in there somewhere.’ She pointed to the bathroom. ‘A lot of negatives and things like that.’ All of a sudden she seemed upset. She lifted a pillowcase and dabbed her eyes with it. ‘But Jessie used to read to them all in their beds at night,’ she said.

‘Who did she read to?’

‘The aunts.’

‘And could you get away sometimes and see Harry?’

‘I drove a car then.’

‘Oh, I wish I could drive,’ Maureen said. ‘I never took the test, you know. We took the train. My dad loved trains and we were

always on them. Away days, they called them. I was an only child. He used to squeeze my hand and say I was his favourite person. Just like that.’

‘I had a nice father, too,’ Anne said.

‘We were lucky.’

Anne looked up as if she suddenly appreciated Maureen. ‘I’ve always had good neighbours,’ she said.

Maureen put her to bed and then went to bring a cup of tea from next door. She placed a sleeping pill on the saucer, to see if it didn’t relax her, but it turned out Anne was fast asleep when she got back so she just took it herself. She felt Anne was on her own, really. She had all these people and all these stories but it didn’t amount to much. You have to be ready to put the past behind you and learn to rely on yourself.

That’s what I did, thought Maureen. I never needed a man to make me into somebody. No way. I could stand on my own two feet. But her mind changed as she handled the cold linen. She didn’t want to admit it, but she understood how it sometimes took another person to turn you into your better self. And that’s what happened with her and Anne. In the old lady’s company she felt more like the person she ought to have been. Anne’s interests touched Maureen, revealing a bit of her to herself. Maureen had just finished the audiobook of

Wuthering Heights

and she thought of it as she looked at Anne lying asleep. She couldn’t imagine unquiet slumbers for a woman with that kind of nature and all this linen.

Maureen lifted a nice glass from the trolley and poured herself a whisky before coming back and sitting by the bed. It sometimes confused Anne to hear Luke’s letters, but Maureen wanted nonetheless to read them to her in a good, clear voice, capturing the

words he’d written down. With the glass balanced on her knee, she took out a folded letter from the pocket of her cardigan.

I told all the boys to write letters so I better write one myself, eh? This is the one and only Captain Campbell here of the 1st Royal Western Fusiliers writing to you from the roasting desert.

As she read aloud the clock was ticking and the whisky tasted of smoke. The letter was full of news.

So that’s it, really. We’re in Camp Bastion and getting ready to push off. I’m not allowed to tell you where we’re going but it’s a good one. I’ve got the usual team here, Flannigan, Dooley and young Lennox, who spend all day playing ping-pong and slagging each other off. The major is here too and is doing his best for us, so if anything happens to me you’ll know it’s just bad luck. Main thing is I’m thinking of you. Keep smiling, Luke.

Maureen finished the letter and put it away. It said a lot for a young man that he could write a letter like that. Just to let the people at home know he loved them, just to do the right thing when it’s dangerous and he knows they must be worried with all the stuff they see on television. She poured another whisky and walked to the window. Half the things her own family said they probably didn’t mean. They were all right, really. You have to forgive people if you want to get along, yet it wasn’t the future she had expected with her children. She’d thought it would be holidays abroad and big dinners by the pool with all the women asking her opinion.

The darkness outside made a mirror of the window and the room looked back at itself as Maureen sat sleeping on the sofa

with the tumbler in her hand and the linen stacked beside her. She opened her eyes with a start and found the siren was sounding. She got up slowly and went over to wash the tumbler and place it on the dish-rack before going into the bedroom. ‘In the name of God,’ said Anne.

‘It’s the fire alarm,’ Maureen said. She unhooked Anne’s dressing-gown from the back of the door and brought it to her. ‘We’ll have to go into the courtyard and be counted.’

‘What is it?’

‘The fire alarm. This is every other day. I bet you it’s that Mr MacDonald again in flat 29.’

‘McDonald’s? Like the hamburgers?’

‘No, it’ll be toast. But a pest, Anne. Why he insists on making toast at midnight I’ll never know.’

CHIAROSCURO

The road was black out there and the sea was black and the shore was blacker than the road. Anne could see the people gathered in the courtyard and the scene was entirely made of light as it passed through the glass doors of the reception area. Anne saw how the light picked out the eyes and the cheeks and the ears of the people standing against the blackness. She’d seen charcoals like that, where a person’s eye was a dot of white and a nose was nothing but the smallest stripe.

Housecoat, slippers. And somebody said: ‘Effing freezing out here, Jack.’

‘What time is it, then?’

‘Better ask the warden.’

Anne knew it wasn’t a fire. It wasn’t a house on fire. It was Mr MacDonald from flat 29.

You want fresh chemicals touching the film. You have to agitate the tank, keep it moving, swirl it, Anne, that’s the secret if you want good contrast. Get the chemicals rolling but not too much, darling, or there will be blemishes. Right there. Oh my the safelight’s out, love, would you believe it? Go down to Woolworth’s, would you not, and see if they’ve got the bulbs, ruby-red. And get the other ones for later. It says here: ‘A yellow-green or orange safelight is used for bromide papers and lantern slides, and a yellow or amber safelight for contact papers.’ He was serious and then not. Keep your hands to yourself, Harry; oh stop it now, you’re daft.

Anne was shivering in the cold and Maureen came up with a blanket to put round her shoulders. ‘This is a bloody pantomime,’ Maureen said with a look on her face. ‘The third time this month. They should tape up his cooker. I don’t see why your cooker’s taped up Anne and his is still going and all he ever does is set fire to things.’

‘Oh, stop it, Harry,’ said Anne.

‘This has been a long and complicated day for you,’ Maureen said and she stroked Anne’s cheek.

‘We could walk along the prom.’