Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

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 nothing 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.’