Authors: Mairi Wilson
Or later still:
Lake Nyasa, August 1949, Helen’s Birthday Picnic. Standing L to R: Cameron, Fredi, Douglas, Gregory. Seated L to R: Evelyn, Helen, Ursula.
Lexy smiled at Ursula’s sense of propriety. She never said “me” but always gave her name as if the album had been compiled by some absent hand, her own presence in any of the photos nothing more than a happy coincidence. Nor did she use diminutives unless the occasion allowed it.
Fredi
on a picnic became
Frederik Stenberg (Cultural Attaché)
if photographed in his formal capacity, and
Douglas
was most definitely
Dr Campbell
when he appeared professionally.
As Lexy turned the heavy cartridge pages, she began to recognise the faces peering dimly back at her in the flickering light of the citronella candles she’d lit to keep the insects at bay. She began to understand the relationships between the names, the parts they’d played in Ursula’s life, to recognise the recurring faces of Ursula’s inner circle. Evelyn and Helen appeared more frequently than any of the others; Gregory and Cameron only a little less often; then, a little less prominently yet, Fredi and Douglas, Evelyn’s husband. Tennis games, croquet, picnics all featured regularly, as did cocktail parties, fundraisers, balls. But so too did the hospital. Ursula, it seemed, had been, even then, the dedicated professional of Lexy’s childhood, and only occasionally a young socialite Lexy barely recognised.
Somewhere in this circle, this smart set of bright young things, lay the answer to the mystery of Ursula’s son. The frequent recurrence of the Campbell name alongside the photographs gave Lexy heart. The Dr Campbell of the letter she’d brought with her could not, of course, be the same Dr Campbell in the photographs, but he had to be related in some way. Grandson, perhaps, if Evelyn was “Gran”. But she’d find out more tomorrow when she visited the hospital. Returning the letter to Dr Campbell would be the first step towards the answers she was seeking.
Lexy wandered back into the bedroom. She’d risk a look through Ursula’s folder, the one she’d found under the armchair cushion, intriguing simply because it had been in such an odd place. She’d piled most of the paperwork from her backpack on top of the chest of drawers. She couldn’t see the tea-stained folder at first, but before she started to search, her attention was caught by the other two photograph albums. One was clearly marked Edinburgh, which she was not up to just yet, sure it would contain pictures of her mother, maybe even of Lexy herself on one of their visits. But the other had no identifying label, so she decided to take it to bed with her. The diary could wait, her wilting brain more likely to make sense of pictures than words, anyway.
As she lay back against the padded headrest swaddled in crisp linens, she opened the album, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Izzie in profile, laughing, her head tilted back in a pose so familiar Lexy’s stomach contracted and the picture blurred as tears sprang with raw suddenness to her eyes.
She turned the page quickly and immediately realised her mistake as she recognised the faces staring out at the camera in the next photograph. Ursula and Helen, standing in front of a white wall, a house of some description. Lexy could just make out an edge of window to the right, and to the left, a thick bank of flowering bushes. Even though the print was only black and white, she knew it would be a blaze of colour, like the banks of azaleas and hibiscus around the hotel’s lawns. The women were looking straight at the camera, holding a baby between them, their hands clasped over the baby’s chest, their clothes and hair screaming 1940s.
Lexy sighed. Perhaps young, happy women all look like each other and she’d seen her mother in someone else’s features because that’s what her subconscious was most afraid she would see. She turned her face up to the ceiling and let the whirring ceiling fan dry the moisture from her cheeks. She closed her eyes, but a different picture burned brightly on her eyelids now, like a slide from a projector casting its image on a plain wall in a darkened room. Izzie. It wouldn’t fade.
The damage was done, and she wouldn’t sleep now. The shock had rippled through her and left her shaken and wide awake. She turned her attention back to the album open in her lap.
Her breathing deepened and calmed as she studied the image, but then her heart thudded again. Whose baby was it? Hard to tell, the way they stood shoulder to shoulder, each embracing the child. Was it Ursula’s? Or Helen’s? Or someone else’s? Anyone’s. The person taking the picture, or perhaps they were visiting the orphanage and it was one of its babies. It didn’t have to be Ursula’s just because she was one of the women holding it. Lexy peered closely, but there was no way of telling if it was a boy or a girl. No telltale pink or blue in a black and white, now sepia-tinged photograph. No ribbon in the bonnet-covered hair. No frilly dress to be seen beneath the plain knitted baby blanket swathing the sleeping child.
Her hand trembled slightly as she turned the page. More of the baby, but on its own this time. Surely it was the same one: it was hard to tell, but it had to be, didn’t it? And as she looked at the photos of the baby growing up, turning the pages as the child progressed from passive bundle to active toddler, it became clear it was indeed a boy, so it had to be. It had to be Ursula’s son.
Impatiently, Lexy continued to flick through the pages, looking for more of the precise copperplate, a word, a name to give her a clue, to confirm her growing certainty that this was Ursula’s son, but there were no notes, nothing. Nor were there many adults in the pictures. In fact, there was hardly anyone else at all—
There she was again. The ghost of her mother. Grief playing tricks on her as exhaustion tightened its hold on her crammed mind. She blinked, rubbed her eyes, refocused on the picture of a woman sitting in a high-backed rattan chair like the throne of an Indian maharajah, with the infant standing beside her and another baby held in her arms, woman and young boy both staring down at the unseen face adoringly. Helen. It was Helen, but that still didn’t mean the children were hers. The boy could still be Ursula’s son.
Clinging to hope, Lexy continued to turn the pages, saw both children, both boys, playing together as they grew up, more and more people appearing with them. Still there were no captions, no dates, places or names, but having recognised Helen, Lexy began to recognise most of the others populating these captured moments, remembering them from the other album she’d reviewed. Helen and Gregory, Cameron, sometimes Evelyn and occasionally Douglas, even Fredi once or twice. Other children came and went, as did birthday parties, Christmas celebrations, first school uniforms, sports days, school plays and so on through the years. All the usual childhood landmarks were recorded, the boys taller, clearer as time passed and traits of the men they would become began to be chiselled into their faces. Here a photo of Helen and Gregory either side of the boys seated on bicycles; there a photo of Cameron teaching the elder boy to hold a golf club; and yet another of Cameron buried in sand with both boys standing to attention either side of him, spades held like rifles against their shoulders as they laughed at the camera, the family resemblance strong.
It was clear this was a close circle of friends, the boys as much a part of it as each of the adults. Ursula herself had only appeared in that first photo. Had she returned to Scotland by the time the rest of these were taken? Had someone sent them to her as a way of keeping her up to date with … what? The life she’d left behind? The children growing up? Her son? Lexy felt her disappointment bite as she accepted the two boys were clearly brothers, and given Helen’s regular appearance as the one tending to them, holding them, hugging them, she had to conclude they were Helen’s boys.
The first of the colour photographs removed any lingering doubt, or hope, that she’d stumbled so easily on Ursula’s son. It was a formal family portrait, with Helen sitting in the centre, Gregory and Cameron standing side by side behind her chair, and her two sons, one on either side of her, like smaller, younger versions of the men, the elder boy of his uncle Cameron, the younger of his father Gregory. A matching pair of brothers in each generation. History waiting to repeat itself, Lexy thought, and wondered if it had. Gregory disappeared from the photos shortly after that, as did Evelyn and Douglas, and the last few were mainly of the two young brothers, Helen and Cameron appearing only once or twice, before the photos stopped altogether. The final photograph, again a formal portrait, showed the two boys, now almost teenagers, standing side by side, the elder of the two awkwardly holding a baby, which this time, judging by the profusion of crocheted lace tumbling from his arms, was a girl.
Lexy flicked through the final, blank pages of the album. Stuffed in-between the last page and the cover were a handful of newspaper clippings, all about the Buchanan Trading Company, and all dating from the last ten years. David Buchanan-Munro, CEO, and his uncle Cameron Munro, chairman, were pictured in one, opening a new wing at Blantyre Hospital, the Helen Buchanan Wing, in memory of a much-loved wife and mother. Others, older, reported that the company had successfully expanded their South African operation, won a new contract to supply the Church of Scotland Missions, to supply government schools, launched a new transport division. That Cameron had been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Zomba, that David had been appointed president of the Chamber of Commerce. The family and their company seemed to be going from strength to strength, although no mention was made of a brother or sister to David and Lexy wondered what had become of them and, indeed, of their mother, Helen, to have merited the hospital wing in her honour. Her curiosity would need to be curbed, however. Fascinating though the Buchanans seemed to be, she was here to find Ursula’s son, and find out anything she could about her own family.
“Lexy, are you listening to me? Lexy!”
Danny. Danny’s voice. Why was she dreaming about Danny?
“Lexy. Answer me!”
Phone. She was holding a phone. Danny was on the phone. Oh, for God’s sake, again? She sat up in bed, heart thudding so hard it kept the irritation she wanted to feel at bay.
“Danny, yes. Danny. Sorry. What did you say?”
“The flat. You’ve been burgled. Mrs B phoned me.”
“What?”
“They’d kicked in the front door. Mrs B was at her whist club but came back to find your flat door open. She was pretty much hysterical when she phoned.”
“But what … I don’t understand.”
“Burgled, Lexy. Keep up, for crying out loud.”
“Back off, Danny! I was asleep. Do you know what time it is here?” Her anger turned into mild embarrassment as she looked at the clock and saw it was mid-morning.
“Hey, no need to shout. Of course I know what time it is.” He would, she realised. “Listen to me, Lex. Someone broke in to the flat. I’ve been round and it’s a mess. They’ve emptied out all the drawers, cupboards, you name it. Turned the whole place over.”
“Well, I didn’t leave it particularly tidy …”
“No, Lex. This is beyond even you at your best. Really. Someone’s been in there. You’ve been burgled. Well, I say burgled, but …”
Lexy was wide awake now and conscious of a creeping nausea.
“When? When did this happen?”
“I just told you. When Mrs B was at her whist. The police have been round, but—”
“The police?”
“Mrs B called them before I got there. And anyway, of course the police. It’s a crime and you’ll need to have that reference number or whatever for your insurance claim, although …”
“Although?”
“Well, the police were asking if I thought anything had been taken, and I said I couldn’t be sure, of course, but …”
Lexy’s heart was still thumping hard, blood roaring in her head, arms tingling with pinpricks of adrenaline. Her flat. Her
home
ransacked. And she was on the other side of the world. She realised Danny had stopped talking.
“But what, Danny?”
“The police said it looked as if they were looking for something specific. None of the obvious stuff had been taken – TV, music, that sort of thing, it was all still there. But all your books had been pulled off the shelves, opened, and your files were scattered everywhere. Even the freezer, Lexy. They’d pulled everything out of that, too. The cat was going mad trying to get to the fishfing—”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“Apparently people sometimes bury valuables under the frozen peas or something.”
“Dan, for Chrissake, not the freezer. Why would anyone do this at all? To
me
?”
“Look, I don’t really know. But if they were looking for valuables, they didn’t take them. I checked your jewellery and it looked to me like it was all still there. It had been tipped out onto the floor but there didn’t seem to be anything of value missing.”
“How would you know that?”
“Because I gave you half of it. And I was the one who got it all valued for you for the insurance, remember? You said I was fussing, but perhaps now—”
“Not the time, Danny.”
“Well, just saying. Oh, and the cash you keep in the kitchen drawer?”
“Still there.”
“Yes.”
“But what could they possibly have been looking for, then?”
“No idea.”
“What are the police saying?”
“Not much. Asked a lot of questions about you.”
“Like?”
“Just like who your friends were, what you did, you know. Where you were.” Lexy heard the disapproval in that last one.
“I see.”
“I don’t think you do, Lexy.” He was off again. The lecturing.
“Danny, I’m in Malawi. I haven’t run off to a terrorist training camp or set up a drugs cartel in Colombia.”
“They asked me if you’d been behaving oddly lately.” He sniffed. “And I had to say you had been acting a bit strangely. Not been yourself—”
“My mother’s just died. Of course I’m not myself.”
“Well, quite. But not turning up to collect her ashes, even.”