An Old Photo
I liked the idea of how the photo of a person never known, could have a huge influence on someone’s life.
I’ve never had a father, not one that I could remember. All there has ever been is the big square black frame with its photograph of a young man, a boy almost. His eyes in shadow, looking into the sun,so I can’t even tell what colour they are. He’s smiling. He looks happy, carefree even, in his Navy uniform.
When I was just a baby they burned him alive, my smiling carefree father on a ship in a bay in a place that nobody had ever heard of before, thousands of miles away from home. The Falklands.
And now I can see them from the deck of the cruise ship that has brought my mother and me. A string of islands, low lying and windswept. They don’t look much.
The cruise was my idea, my treat for my mother’s birthday. I can afford it. I was spotted, by a model agency, when I was sixteen, and I have my own agency now. I was never in the film star and drugs league, but still, yes, I’ve done pretty well, and I had an idea, a hope, that it would bring us together, resolve old issues. We would embrace each other, understand each other at last and walk off into the sunset arm in arm, mother and daughter to the sound of piano music. That sort of thing.
It has been a disaster really. Up until the boat we were good. We flew out to Rio and had a few days there. I was pleased that Mum bought herself some nice holiday clothes. Not the usual neat navy and white look, but some loose dresses in bright colours. We did all the tourist things, and even went to a Latin dance club. I thought this is going to work.
But on the boat there was a group of other widows going out on their trip of a lifetime, and they homed in like vultures on mum and gathered her in. The bright clothes stayed in the wardrobe and the clothes suitable for visiting war graves came out, back to the neat navy and white. The cotton polyester. This meant that she had to keep “rinsing them through” as she called it, and with two women sharing a cabin there isn’t much space for dripping and drying. And the nagging started. I don’t take enough care of my clothes, I am too free and easy with my money, I wear too much makeup, I don’t eat enough, on and on progressing to the tired old complaints about my not finishing my education, and what would happen to me when my little bubble of success burst as it surely would. All the old old stuff. And so we rubbed along, like two pieces of sand paper. I kept out of her way as much as possible, and she had her new friends, to sit and reminisce with so she didn’t need me did she?
I couldn’t bear the way she slipped so easily into their world of sympathetic platitudes. The vocabulary of public grief. Was I jealous? They had, after all, had something in their past, a memory to hang onto. All I had was an image, made by chemicals on paper. The worst thing though for me was how those muted conversations took me straight back to sitting unnoticed in somebody’s front room, when voices would be lowered and heads inclined and the references to “that poor little mite” that I wasn’t supposed to understand, or feel.
We had three days on shore once we reached the islands, and a programme had been well arranged with visits to some of the sites of battle and of course the memorials, and the gravestones. Mum and I laid ourtributes, and we cried. Separately. There was also a trip out into the bay where it happened and we dutifully tossed out flowers into the sea. Somehow that didn’t affect me. We didn’t have to forgive the sea, or placate it, the sea was not to blame. Death had come from the sky. There had been no shipwreck.
The hotel was right on the beach, pleasant and simple. It was nice to have a proper bedroom for a few nights, and feel firm ground under our feet. I did a lot of walking. Watched the birds, and listened to the wind. The anger wouldn’t go away – it just boiled away close to the surface with the dull sadness beneath it. I looked at the photo smiling in it’s frame on the chest of drawers by her bed. They killed you, I thought but they left us crippled for life, walking wounded, badly wounded. The two of us.
On the second night, the wind was racketing around the building and I lay awake listening to it. Then I heard her leave her bed, but she didn’t go to the bathroom. I lay quiet listening and I heard her go out, closing the door quietly behind her. I had to follow her. I pulled on the clothes I had left on the chair, just to annoy her, probably, put on my coat and wrapped a scarf around my head. I felt guilty, but I couldn’t stop. Where could she be heading? It was two o’clock in the morning. Peering over the banister I could see her letting herself out of the front door. What was she doing? Did she sleep walk? I didn’t know.
I slipped out of the door and the wind hit me full in the face with an icy shock. I pulled my scarf tighter around my head and followed. Not too closely. Though she too had her head down and shoulders bent into the wind, and wouldn’t have seen me.
She stumbled over the pebbles down to the sea. I longed to run out and help her, but I was afraid. There was a determination in her dogged march to the water’s edge and I was afraid. There was a moon and the sea glowed in its light, the crests of the waves glittering as they dropped down onto the beach with a great crash and rattle of stones. I waited.
She got near to the edge and I saw her throw something into the sea. I could hear her voice faintly as the wind whipped it away. And then she bent down and picked up a pebble and threw, no, that’s not strong enough, she hurled it with all her might out into the waves. And then another, and another and another, and all the time I could catch the broken sound of her voice.
I stood frozen. I should go to her, surely this was the time. But here was my elderly mother behaving like a mad woman at the edge of some foreign ocean and I couldn’t move or speak. When she turned back I slipped into the Hotel and when she came quietly into the bedroom and considerately undressed in silence, I managed to breath quietly and evenly. Asleep, obviously. I sweated the rest of the night out in my fleece and leggings. I hadn’t had time to take them off and didn’t dare to stir.
I woke up in bright sunlight.. Mother was already dressed and gone down to breakfast. Why does it feel so awful to sleep in your clothes? I sat on the bed feeling frowsy and slow witted, but I was awake enough to notice that the photograph, and its black frame, was gone.
We hardly spoke in the dining room. Mother looked pale and had dark circles under her eyes. She had decided to go back to the ship with the vultures in the morning , and I decided to stay on until the afternoon boat.
It was about four thirty when I went wearily down to our cabin. There was something in the way of the door and I had to give it quite a push to get in. I could hardly believe my eyes. My mother had obviously seized the opportunity of my absence to get me properly organised, The doors of the wardrobe hung open and my chest drawers were open and empty. There was my mother kneeling on the floor surrounded by my clothes, and on the bed little piles of underwear, tee shirts, etc. all sorted and neatly folded.
She looked up at me so guiltily, and tried to get to her feet, but she stumbled back against my bunk. I put my hand out to help her, but we both went flying. I was so angry. I think I could even have hit her, but as we capsized together I suddenly saw again the picture of my mother looking up at me like a naughty little child caught with its fingers in the jam jar, and I started to giggle. And she looked at me and I felt her shoulders begin to shake too, and we fell back onto the bed onto the neatly sorted knickers bras and tee shirts, and we clung to each other and we laughed and laughed and laughed … until we cried.
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