Andrew O'Hagan: The Illuminations

‘I could never stomach them,’ Sheila said. Then she pointed

out the changes, new houses and spots where things had been demolished or done up. They came to a place close to the beach, an art deco building that seemed brilliant and white against the green hill behind. They got out and Anne took Luke’s arm as they walked over the car park.

‘I know it here,’ she said.

Luke smiled. ‘Do you now?’

They walked into the foyer. Luke didn’t know why he felt as if a season was over. There was something new about her, and he admired how confidently she walked on the blue carpet, the look on her face and the feeling of her arm inside his.

‘I danced here,’ she said.

The print gets perfect with dodging and burning. Conceal this part to make it lighter if you like, and this corner, this bright place in the picture, expose it for longer, my love, and after it goes dark we can go to bed. All will be well. Come here, Harry. I waited up. This is your home tonight.

The girls looked around. They didn’t know about Anne’s pictures taken here once upon a time. They just thought it was a treat to see the place in the daytime like this. ‘I could tell you a few stories,’ Sheila said with her give-all laugh. ‘We used to come here to raves in the 1980s and the building would be packed to the rafters. Don’t get me started.’ There were posters up for dance shows and comedians.

‘Palm trees,’ Anne said.

This is your home tonight.

She touched a pillar on their way along and was delighted with it and when her grandson leaned over and kissed her cheek she felt sure they’d spent years together. There was nothing left to be afraid of and the sky was blue as they came outside and put

down their bags by a signpost. The arrow pointed to Cleveleys and Blackpool, the sand was dark brown and the sun took them by surprise. Sheila lifted Anne’s hand and then her sister took the other one and they led her all the way down to the water. Luke hung back by the wall and looked down at Anne and the women together in the wind. Their scarves were billowing around them and they shouted out when Anne’s came off and blew into the air, the scarf going higher, the girls laughing as it stretched up and a hand reached out for the sun.

The author thanks Abdul Aziz Froutan and colleagues in Afghanistan, as well as members of the Royal Irish Regiment, who have been answering his questions since he began

The Illuminations

in 2010. Thanks also to Yaddo, and to Mary O’Connor and the keepers of the Joseph Mulholland Archive at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where he studied the papers of the photographer Margaret Watkins.

Andrew O’Hagan is one of his generation’s most exciting and most serious chroniclers of contemporary Britain and the part it plays in the world. He has twice been nominated for the Man Booker Prize. He was voted one of

Granta

’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003. He has won the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is editor at large of the

London Review of Books

and he lives in London.