‘Which boy, Mr Canning?’ Leah asked, trying to join up his disjointed remarks.
‘Who are you, miss?’ Geoffrey asked her, looking at her again with that sudden, disconcerting speed.
‘I… I’m Leah…’ she started to say, but Geoffrey turned to his son, gave his knee a conspiratorial nudge with one hand.
‘Blondes have more fun, eh?’ he said, with a mischievous smile.
‘So I hear,’ Mark agreed, raising one eyebrow at Leah. She took a deep breath, uncertain of how to proceed. Geoffrey’s thoughts seemed to jump about and twitch like nervous sparrows, taking flight, scattering in a heartbeat.
Outside it had clouded over – puffy, mottled, grey and white clouds, fat with unshed rain. The light in the room went ashen, leaching the colour from their faces and from the bright, functional furniture. Mark burst to his feet, quickly switching on the overhead lights as if he couldn’t bear it.
‘Mr Canning? Can you tell me anything about your grandparents? Anything at all?’
‘You’re wasting your time,’ Mark told her flatly, as he came back to his chair. He crossed his legs, picked at the seam of his jeans with one thumbnail.
‘Or anything about a family scandal? Something that happened, before you were born?’ she pressed.
‘Leah…’ Mark protested, wearily.
Geoffrey Canning turned to look at her, a pleasant, uncomprehending smile on his face, eyes slightly worried, as if he knew he had forgotten something important. Leah smiled reassuringly, and squeezed his hand.
‘John Profumo. That was the scandal of the day, my word! Yes. Lovely girl – what a cracker she was!’ he told them. ‘And the other one – the blonde.’ Geoffrey nodded sagely. Mark shook his head incredulously.
‘Of all the things he would remember! He always did have a crush on Christine Keeler.’
‘I guess the chances of him remembering any family gossip he’d heard are pretty slim,’ Leah said, somewhat deflated.
‘The memories are there, it’s just…’ Mark twisted his hand in the air between them. ‘Getting to them. They’re all knotted up. The pathways between memories and thoughts don’t work the way they should any more. It’s all disconnected…’
‘He may not even know anything about the fairy photos. It wasn’t much of a scandal, after all. It was probably forgotten about a couple of years afterwards…’ Leah sighed.
‘Fairy photographs? That wasn’t the thing, Mandy! No indeed. There were big secrets, things we weren’t allowed to talk about. Whenever I asked I was told “fairy photographs”, but that wasn’t it. I heard them talking. That wasn’t the big scandal in our house, oh no,’ Geoff told her, shaking his head adamantly. Leah’s heart beat faster, she gripped his hand tighter and he smiled delightedly.
‘What was the big secret, Mr Canning?’ she asked, intently. Geoffrey leant towards her, relishing the drama.
‘Murder!’ he whispered loudly, eyes as wide as a child’s. ‘Bloody murder!’
A shiver slipped between Leah’s shoulder blades. There was something in the way Geoffrey Canning’s eyes lit up, something in the way he whispered it, as though mimicking exactly how he’d first heard it. She was suddenly sure it was a real memory; that it had happened, and that this crime was what had haunted Hester Canning so. Murder!
9
1911
‘These are… simply marvellous. Marvellous. Truly, the most wonderful pictures,’ Albert breathes, leaning forwards over the table top and putting his face close to the photos, as if unwilling to defile them with his touch. Robin Durrant smiles, his face alight, jubilant with triumph. He seems unable to speak, and instead puts out one hand to grip the vicar’s shoulder. Albert reaches up with his own hand and covers the theosophist’s, grasping the other man’s fingers tightly. For some reason, the ardour in that touch distracts Hester from the pictures, and she moves closer to her husband, putting her own hand gently upon his other shoulder. There they stand, Hester and Robin, either side of the vicar as he sits at his desk with the pictures Robin had taken that very morning arrayed before them, still reeking slightly of the developing chemicals. After a pause, Robin gently removes his hand from Albert’s, but the vicar does not reach up to take Hester’s hand instead. She fights the urge to pinch him, to lean her weight, make herself felt.
Instead she reaches forward and picks up one of the prints. ‘Careful, Hetty,’ Albert cautions her. ‘They are easily damaged by fingerprints and the like.’
‘I shan’t damage them, dear,’ Hester tells him. She examines the photo as closely as she can focus her eyes. The odd, androgynous form, swathed in diaphanous white and with copious hair flying out behind it. In most of the shots it is just a blur, features impossible to make out, form lost in the swirls of fabric. But in two or three, a human-like figure is clear to see, leaping with its thin limbs cast out wide. ‘And is this like the ones you saw, Bertie? The ones you described to me?’
‘Yes,’ Albert says, although he does not sound entirely sure. ‘Though, this one seems to be better formed, and rather taller…’
‘That is only to be expected,’ Robin says, swiftly. ‘I expect, from your descriptions, Albert, that what you saw were some slightly lesser beings than this – perhaps elementals allied to some wild flower or meadow herb. I have seen just such beings myself in the meadows here, and they are indeed smaller and of a less sophisticated form. This, I believe to be the guardian of the old willow tree.’
‘A dryad?’ asks Albert.
‘As it would have been called, in ancient times, yes. Like the tree it nourishes, this elemental being is a larger and more sophisticated entity. I did endeavour to engage it in a dialogue, but it was wary of me, and perhaps wisely so, though I did my utmost to emanate waves of love and welcome towards it.’
‘Perhaps that was rude,’ Hester says, before she can catch herself. Robin glances at her. ‘Well, I mean… if it has lived with this tree in the meadow for many long years, perhaps you, as the visitor, ought not to have bade it welcome to its own home,’ she explains. Robin smiles slightly.
‘Really, Hetty. Don’t be so obtuse. Robin means only to speak in general of his emotional vibrations. There is no social etiquette to be observed here,’ Albert says.
‘Well,’ Hester says, taken aback. ‘I’m sure I didn’t meant to imply-’
‘No, it’s quite all right, Mrs Canning. I understand what you meant. One must of course tread carefully with something as pure and reactive as these beings,’ Robin says, benignly.
‘Look – look at this one. The face is almost discernible. And lovely – quite, quite lovely…’ Albert holds a particular photo up to the theosophist, who takes it and studies it closely, his eyes lost in thought.
‘Lovely indeed,’ he murmurs.
‘Robin – we must publish these at once! The whole world must see them! I shall call the papers myself – is there a particular one you should like to have the pictures first? Can copies be made?’
‘Of course, of course. We shall do just as you say, Albert,’ Robin soothes the trembling vicar.
‘Well, gentlemen, I shall leave you to your… great work. Amy must have got the children dressed by now, and we have promised them a trip into Thatcham to buy sweets,’ Hester says brightly, but if she hopes to cause a stir with her departure, she is disappointed.
‘I’m not sure what to make of it,’ Hester confesses to her sister, as they walk slowly along The Broadway in Thatcham, parasols on their shoulders with the sun beating down on them, almost like a physical weight. Ellie and John lag behind them, squabbling over a bag of liquorice twists. The town is quiet and stifled. From the smithy, the clank of hammer on metal is slow and irregular, as if, however used to the heat he might be, even Jack Morton’s arm is too heavy that day. Those people of Thatcham that are about walk slowly, their faces screwed up against the onslaught. Fat flies buzz around their heads with aggravating tenacity.