Jane Street
She thought of the rugs she’d left in storage near Battery Park. A voice that came from the stairs made her think she must be in Glasgow, the big house, snow outside, Anne watching from the top window as the little girls in round hats made their way to school. She turned her head on the pillow and smiled to think of it. She pictured Blackpool, the darkroom at the top of the stairs. And she knew he would come. Harry would come and they’d put on a lamp and have a drink.
She sat on the edge of the bed. It was nice to have a place and a young man to help you take down a box. That’s right, she said: the boy Alice had and he’s now a leader of something. Luke. He wears the uniform and has to go out on night flights and what have you. He comes here and it takes an hour or two if the roads aren’t bad. And when she thought of bad roads and night-time all the stories drained away.
There was fog and snow over Germany.
You can forget you’re by the seaside. And good God: you have to keep your wits about you in these places, Saltcoats, Manhattan. You had to keep your chin up. She thought she heard the phone ringing and then Luke appeared in the doorway with a cup of tea. ‘Are we going to Blackpool?’ she asked as he put the cup down.
‘Yes, we are,’ he said. ‘First thing.’ Sometimes her old artistic sense would jump out at him, as if it had waited.
‘I hope you had a camera in that country you were in,’ she said ‘Because that’s a place for documentary.’
‘It was all too real,’ he said, ‘though we struggled to know it.’
‘You know fine well what’s real. Did you and me not argue all day and half the night about it?’
‘About what?’
‘You know fine well. If you want a good photograph stop messing about with models and start marching to a different tune.’
‘Lovely.’
‘That’s what we believe.’
‘Who’s “we”?’
‘Me and you and the rest of them.’
Later, in the other room, Luke lifted Anne’s address book and sat in an armchair by the window. It felt good in his hands. He was amazed by the thickness of the book, all the names and numbers, scribbled or crossed out with different pens. Postcards were stuffed between the pages, images of young women he’d never met, a snap of him as a cadet, and, filed under T, an old black-and-white photo of a small boy. There were people in the address book from other countries, many in England: he realised as he flipped through the book that these were his grandmother’s mystery people. Whole pages were crossed out and the word ‘DEAD’ was written in bold. His mother had told him to find the name Harry Blake and look for a Blackpool number. There were a lot of numbers for Harry, most of them with Manchester telephone codes, and though Harry was dead, none of his numbers was scored out.
‘Who is it?’ the voice said. He was speaking to a woman with a very thick Lancashire accent.
‘My name is Luke Campbell. You don’t know me. But I’m phoning on behalf of Mrs Anne Quirk.’
‘Say again, love.’
‘Anne Quirk. The photographer. She used to come a lot to the house, I believe. Not recently. From Glasgow. She looked after her aunts and would come for a break.’
‘Mrs Blake!’
Luke hesitated. He looked at the address book and saw Harry’s name again and took a breath. ‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Lord Jesus.
Mrs Blake!
’
‘I’m her grandson. I’m afraid she hasn’t been well. I was thinking of bringing her to Blackpool, to get her away for a week.’
‘I knew something was going to happen today.’
The lady was cheerful and Luke thought from her voice that she was probably middle-aged. ‘It’s been ever such a long time since Mrs Blake were down.’
‘Are you the landlady?’
‘I’m Sheila, chuck. It was my mother that ran the house when Mrs Blake was down a lot. Oh, darling. I’m talking the 1970s and the 1980s now. Happen it’s five years at least since we saw her. How is she?’
‘She’s not bad,’ he said. ‘She’s forgetful. But things are changing with her flat up here. I’m phoning from Scotland.’
‘From Glasgow?’
‘No, from Saltcoats. Down at the coast. She’s been living in a sheltered flat down here for years now.’
‘Oh, aye. She flitted. I’m remembering now.’
‘Did she come a lot?’
‘Oh, when I was a girl, love. Mrs Blake would be down here doing her work. Times have changed and we’re not getting any
younger. But her room’s still here any time she wants it.’
‘Her room?’
‘Oh, aye, love. Mrs Blake’s room. She’s always had a room up the top of the house. Some of her things are still locked in the cupboards. It was always her room. Since before my time — during my mother’s time. It’s a little studio flat, actually. It belongs to her and just sits there.’
‘There’s nobody in it?’
‘No, love. Mrs Blake was always happy for us to put guests in there during the season, you know, but we’d always keep it clean for her. We’re not busy nowadays.’ Sheila chuckled. ‘We used to call it the darkroom. Was full of old photographs and trays and that. Aye, it was the darkroom. My mother would say, “Away up with the key and dust the darkroom, I think Mrs Blake’s coming.” Aw, I’m set up. You’re coming down? I always loved Mrs Blake. You’ve made me feel all funny.’
Luke got all the details and answered the lady’s questions about sheets and towels. ‘Don’t you worry, chuck. It will all be ship-shape for Mrs Blake. God love her. The Illuminations are coming on later than usual this year, you probably know. Hurry down. It’ll be lovely to see you both when you arrive. Only the other day my sister was asking about Mrs Blake and I told her, I said, I didn’t even have a number. Aw, it’s made me go all funny. My mother always said, “Now Mrs Blake has paid for the flat, it’s where she works, she’s paid for it, Sheila, so don’t forget to keep it good.” Aw, what did you say your name was?’
He sat up through the night reading her letters, discovering his grandmother’s younger self, a brilliant artist, someone ready to change the world. He examined the stamps, shuffled the blue pages, a privileged onlooker, wanting to make the connections
and miss nothing that might bring her story to him as something he could keep. He saw her slow-burning heartache, her avowals of independence, her return to him, Harry Blake, whose divided nature dominated her life. His grandmother confronted him with an eerie, special power, this person he had loved all his life. He witnessed her spirit survive a series of trials he had never known about, and it made him love her more, while doubting the strength and consistency of men, including himself. He read the whole night long and in the morning he felt ready for the journey.
BEST BEFORE
She didn’t know the word for it. Every time they left she felt the same way but she didn’t know the word. It wasn’t relief and it wasn’t regret, but it contained both, the feeling she had when they gathered their stuff and took their coats and drove their cars up the Shore Road. Maureen would often stand at the window and wish she could call them back, start again, only better this time and happier. But the feeling only lasted until she dampened a cloth and she was now back in her own world, where no one could expect her to care about olives or fancy drinks.