The attic smelled of old newspapers and damp cardboard and dust. It is a sad business, sorting through the debris of a life. My mother had dumped her past underneath the roof in old suitcases and cardboard boxes, carrier bags and an old tin trunk. Most of it was rubbish, but I found my father's wartime uniform neatly folded in the trunk and smelling of mothballs. The medal ribbons on the breast had faded ,the commando badge on his beret tarnished. He was a war hero; my boyhood was shadowed with stories of how he had killed a dozen Nazis with his bare hands. Sometimes he frightened me. I pulled the trunk lid closed. Edging carefully along the roof joists,I moved back towards the trapdoor.
Then I saw it, stuffed under the angle of the roof -- a beach bag, printed with a loud marigold pattern, grubby now and faded. That was the bag we had taken down to the beach ...I remembered the sunshine which struck you like a blow, and the screaming of the gulls... For no reason I can explain, I grabbed that bag of remnants, rather than any other, and climbed back carefully down the ladder.
The bag smelled of that perfumed dust that seems to collect on everything after years of neglect. I found a deflated beach ball and a picnic basket, and there, at the bottom was a camera. My camera.
It was a Box Brownie, covered in black leatherette. The lens was a little bullseye of glass and the only two controls were a press-button shutter release, and a black plastic knob to wind on the film. I held the camera at waist level and peered down at the viewfinder; and, out of some long-buried reflex, I turned the film advance. There was tension there.
I realised there was a film inside the camera. Undeveloped. I tried to think back to the last time I had used the camera. It must have been some time in the summer of 53 or 54, when we went to Wales for our summer holidays..... I remembered the clouds piled up like meringue, and the sharp, salty smell of seaweed... So, of all the things my mother had left behind in the world, I took my camera, a trophy rescued from the past.
"It was a special job, you understand," said the man in the shop, "So we developed it by hand, rather than putting it through the machine." He handed me the wallet of photographs. "That'll be five pounds extra, I'm afraid." I waited until I got home before opening the packet. Twelve black and white photographs. They had all come out, then. Carefully I laid them out in order on my desk.
Frame 1
A path leading downhill to a clump of furze bushes, and beyond that some cliffs, slightly out of focus. It was Wales. We went there for our holidays two...or was it three times...in the early fifties. A little family hotel looking out over over a bay shaped like a keyhole. There were five of us- Mummy, Daddy, me and Fliss...and Uncle Tasker. He was a friend of Daddy"s from the war- his best friend. I liked Uncle Tasker. He was a big man with a red face and a moustache and he was always ready to play beach cricket even when the others didn't want to. He had little squinty eyes like shiney black currants and he always called me "the sprog"- but I didn't mind. It was like a private joke between us.
Frame 2
Further down the path. Four figures in front of me. Daddy is in front, with the picnic basket and Fliss is hurrying behind him, clutching the shrimping nets. They were always together, Daddy and Fliss; he called her "The Princess." They have almost reached the stile which led onto the steep cliff path down to the beach. Mummy and Uncle Tasker are further back, looking out to sea. His right arm is pointing at something on the horizon, his left hand resting lightly on her shoulder.
Frame 3
The beach. We have found a patch of fine sand among the pebbles. Mummy has set out the picnic. There are sandwiches on plastic plates, fruit, and tea in china mugs. Mummy is reaching across to Daddy, offering him an apple. Fifty years later, I admire the graceful curve of her arm, the pleading half smile on her face. But Daddy has turned away and doesn't seem to have noticed her. He is looking down at Fliss, rumpling her hair. She looks so much like him, even though she's a girl and younger than me. I don't look like anyone much-- except Mummy, perhaps, and my eyes are very dark, where hers are grey.
Frame 4
Beach cricket. It's me, standing at the wicket, toes digging into the sand- so someone else must have taken the shot. I have a feeling it was Uncle Tasker. Daddy is walking away, ball in hand. He looks over his shoulder and smiles and there is a look in his face that I can't quite understand. Then he turns, takes a couple of quick paces and bowls me a yorker. I squint into the sun, trying to see the ball. I take a wild swing, and then shout with pain as the ball hits me square across the wrist.
The memory slides away from me here. There was an argument, I think, between Daddy and Uncle Tasker. I thought they were just pretending, to jolly me out of my hurt. But now I'm not so sure.
Frame 5
Mummy clearing away the picnic things. She looks sad. Uncle Tasker is standing behind her. He looks sad too. There is no sign of Daddy and Fliss.
Frame 6
A long shot of Daddy and Fliss. They are shrimping in one of the rock pools.
Frame 7
The end of the afternoon. Mummy and Fliss throw long shadows as they head back across the pebbles towards the cliff path. Mummy is looking back over her shoulder at me. Her mouth is a thin line. Maybe she is not looking at me, but at Daddy and Uncle Tasker, who are somewhere behind me.
Frame 8
The cliff path from three quarters of the way up. Daddy and Uncle Tasker are just starting to climb, Daddy first. They do not seem to be talking.
Frame 9
A view over the bay from the stile. Clouds have piled up, squat and heavy, along the horizon. The sea looks flat as a sheet of lead. All the sunlight has drained of the sky. I remember feeling hot and sticky, knowing that a storm was about to break.
Frame 10
Mummy and Fliss running up the path to the hotel. They do not stop to look behind them.
Frame 11
The fading light is almost too much for the camera to cope with. The bottom third of the print is almost black; the rest is an undifferentiated grey. It is the cliff top again and the sky. And yet....there is something against the skyline...a tree perhaps...
My mother's magnifying glass is still in her work basket with her needles and embroidery thread.
It is not a tree. Through the glass I can see two tiny, matchstick figures, standing against the sky. Daddy and Uncle Tasker. One of them seems to be reaching out to the other, who looks to be hunched forward, hands by his sides. Through the glass it looks as though the figures are signalling in some grotesque semaphore.
Frame 12
I must have taken this last shot within seconds of the one before. The same thick line of clifftop. The same pale grey sky. Only this time I can only see one matchstick figure through my mother's glass. He looks as though he is reaching out over the cliff.
We never went back to Wales. Things were never the same. Uncle Tasker's death somehow destroyed those subtle bonds which had held the four of us together. Only Fliss and my father remained close. My parents made the best of things until I was old enough to go to boarding school, and then they divorced. Surprisingly, my father was awarded custody of his daughter.
It was forty years before I could ask my mother what had happened. I was too late. She already had that wary look which marks the onset of Alzheimer's. "It was all in the paper, dear," she said, "Your father was a hero. And after all Uncle Tasker was his best friend. He would come and comfort me when your father was away at the war."
The camera never lies. It leaves nothing out, puts nothing in. It tells the truth. You have to work out what that truth is.
Ian Stuart,
Osbaldwick,
York