Читать книгу So Many Ways to Begin - Jon McGregor - Страница 9

He was going to start with a picture of his father. It seemed as good a way as any to begin. It was the first thing he’d thought of packing before he went off to the funeral, tucking it into a padded envelope to keep it safe. This is my father, he was going to say, holding up the small photograph for someone to see. When he was a young man, he was going to add, before I was born. Well now, someone might say, looking closely, and what are these marks here? And then he could explain, telling it the way his sister Susan always had, the words worn comfortably smooth with repeated use.

It was a story she liked to tell; it made her feel a part of something bigger than herself, tied to a time when there were bigger things to feel a part of. She’d told it again a few weeks earlier, looking at the same picture with a group of her friends after dinner one night. Someone had mentioned seeing it on the way in, and she’d led them all through to the hallway to stand around it, balancing their cups of coffee on thin white saucers while they listened and smiled and nodded, and remembered stories of their own, and went quiet at the appropriate time. Whenever he’d heard her tell the story, people had always gone quiet at the same appropriate time.

It was taken in 1943, she said, gesturing towards the photo, a small black-and-white studio portrait mounted on a greying cardboard surround, a name and number scribbled in soft illegible pencil along the bottom. Just before I was born, she said, placing herself firmly into that generation. He must have had it taken before going away on service for the second time, to the Med, I think, and sent it back from Portsmouth for my mother to put up on the mantelpiece while he was away. Pausing here, as she always did, picturing the man in the strange uniform above the hearth, watching over her and her mother while they crouched under the Morrison shelter in the back room, the ground shaking, firelight flashing past outside, or greeting them when they came home from the public shelter in the morning with the all-clear ringing out down the street, the house safe for another day and the garden strewn with rubble from next door but one. Remembering the morning her mother had tried to explain that a bomb had landed on her grandparents’ house, and that her grandparents wouldn’t be coming round for tea any more.

It was the Med, wasn’t it? she asked, glancing across at him. I can never remember. Everyone turned to look, and he shrugged, smiling apologetically.

Don’t look at me, he said, I’m not a historian, and they all laughed.

Albert Carter, their father, had been twenty-seven when the picture was taken, but he looked a lot younger; fresh-faced, smiling broadly, his skin so smooth that it was hard to believe he’d ever had to shave. His hair was slicked back, with the comb-lines as straight as a slide-rule, and his smile lifted the same creases around his eyes that David could remember seeing as a boy. The uniform looked a little too big for him, hanging loose around the shoulders, and there was none of the formal regalia which might have been expected in a portrait photograph, no spit-polished brass, or epaulettes, or braiding; it was a uniform which looked purely functional, ready for the serious business of crewing a ship into battle.

Of course, Susan said, I don’t remember much about the war, I was too young. All I can remember, really, is this man arriving in the house, like the man in the picture but older and heavier, and not smiling. The others leant in towards the photograph as she spoke, looking at Albert Carter’s fixed and frozen smile. He just appeared, she said, there was no discussion, he was just suddenly lurking about the place, making the house much smaller than it had been and taking up my mother’s time. Smelling unfamiliar and damp, she said, laughing, as though she was unsure what she meant. But that’s the thing I always remember, she said. His not being there and then being there, and nobody asking my opinion. The others smiled at this, as people usually did.

David was going to tell someone this story with the picture in his hand, holding on to it for a moment before passing it over, feeling the rough and crinkled texture of the greying card, turning it over to read the soft pencilled dates and numbers on the back, running his fingers again across the scratches scored into the photograph’s dull surface. Dozens of scratches, mostly too faint to see unless the picture was turned into the light; mostly, except for three deep scars which had split and torn right through the skin of the paper, gouged across the young man’s smiling face.

Susan explained that she’d made these marks, one afternoon when her father had been home for a few months. This was the part of the story where people always went quiet, and looked at the picture more closely, or turned to her and nodded, or smiled wryly because they could guess exactly what she was going to say. She’d been told to take a nap so that her mother and father could have a lie down while the new baby, David, was sleeping. Auntie Julia, whose house they were all staying in until they could find something of their own, was out doing some shopping. Restless and bored, Susan took a small metallic comb from her father’s desk, grabbed the picture from the mantelpiece, and scoured frantically across its surface before making a tearful escape to the bedroom.

The most awful thing, she said, pointing out an ashtray on the hall table to a guest with a cigarette, is that nothing was ever said. The picture was replaced with another one, almost identical, and nobody ever mentioned it, she said.

Goodness, said a woman with a bright red scarf tied around her neck. Really? Susan nodded.

Not a word, she said. We found the damaged original in a box of his things after he died, and I insisted on keeping it. I’ve only recently put it up though, she added. The dinner guests peered closely at the picture for a few moments more, mentioning similar stories of their own before gradually moving back into the dining room.

My mother told me I used to try and drag my father out of their bed, the woman with the scarf said, laughing, and the man with the cigarette smiled at her, nodding.

Anyone want another coffee? Susan asked, as she followed them back to the table.

David stood in the hall for a moment longer, looking at the picture, tracing the scratches with his fingers, imagining the distress of the three-year-old girl which they recorded so well. He looked at the eyes, the smile, the face of the man who had brought him up so lovingly and was now gone, and he turned away.

You’ll be careful with it though? Susan said, later, when he asked if he could borrow the picture for a while. She unclipped it from its frame and handed it over to him, and he told her that yes, of course, he’d be careful. And, I mean, are you sure this is a good idea? she asked, the whole thing? and he told her that yes, thank you, it was.