Souvenir

My father died, and after the funeral and all the legal matters were over and done with, my mother asked me to help her clear his things out of the house.

I’d been busy on a project at work, and by the time I got round to calling on her a few days after her phone call, she’d already put all his stuff in bin bags and plonked them in the hall.

“Why don’t you want to keep any of this?” I said, picking my way past the bags.

“It’s all up here – all the stuff I'd like to remember anyway,” she said, tapping her temple with a finger. “Do you fancy a cup of tea?” I knew that was code for ‘stay and have a chat’.

We went through to the kitchen and she made us strong black tea, which we had with some of her home-made apple and blackberry pie.

“How’re you keeping, mum?” I said. I was already feeling a bit guilty about not being there for her enough at that tricky time. I needn’t have worried.

“Good. Sad, of course – you don’t spend fifty-three years with someone and not miss them – but I also feel … kind of free. Does that sound callous? Does it make me a bad person?”

“Of course not!” I said. In fact, I didn’t expect her to be moping around mourning because I knew what their relationship had been like – at least I thought I did. It had seemed comfortable, but never really passionate, or even very warm; I don’t think I ever saw them kiss, for example. On the other hand, I found it a little surprising that she could be okay with the loss so soon. I didn’t mention this, naturally.

She seemed heartened by my response – in effect a blessing for her muted reaction to my father’s death.

We talked through two pots of tea, then I told her I needed to be getting home, which wasn’t a lie; I had work to do on the project.

“Before you go, love, can you do me another favour?” she said, laying a hand on my arm.

I thought it might be something difficult – physically or emotionally – and braced myself.

“I’ve cleared all his stuff out of the study – I’m going to use that room for my painting, you see. But he’s got … he had all the shelves in the cupboard and the drawers lined with old wallpaper. It’s all worn and dingy. I was wondering if you could change it. I’ve got some spare paper from when we had the living room done. I’m hopeless at things like that – cutting and fitting. Do you think…?”

It sounded like a good hour’s work.

“Can I do it at the weekend, mum?”

“Oh, all right, love, never mind. I’ll have a go myself.”

I knew that strategy. It never failed to work.

“Come on then. Show me what you want.”

We went to the study. She pointed out the shelves and drawers to be lined, and she gave me the paper and a pair of scissors.

“Thanks, love. I’ll put the kettle on.”

I got straight down to it. The first thing I tackled was the top drawer of my father’s desk, where I knew he’d kept things like my school reports and certificates, and family photographs. It was empty – I assumed everything had been put in the bin bags. I pulled the old wallpaper lining out and that’s when I saw it.

Under the paper was a single black and white photograph – old, faded, and dog-eared. It was of a woman, who wasn’t my mother.

I could hear my mother coming through with the tea-tray, so I stuffed the photo in my pocket. As soon as I’d done it, the photo, and my action, felt illicit somehow.

We drank tea and chatted some more as I finished off the task in hand.

I lugged the bin bags out to the car and said goodbye. I could see her in the rear-view mirror, waving from the door as I drove away down the street. She was still waving when I turned the corner onto the main road.

I dumped the four bin bags in my bedroom and fixed myself a drink before settling at the dining table to do my work. It didn’t take long for the photo to start burning a hole in my pocket, so I took it out and inspected it.

The woman was wearing what looked like military fatigues, leaning against a car in the countryside, smoking a cigarette. By the model of the car – I could tell it was a Citroën from the chevrons on the grille – I dated the photo to maybe the 1940s.

She had collar-length dark hair and smiling eyes. There was a faint trace of smoke coming from her full lips, pursed in a half-kiss. It was only a snapshot of a moment in time, but I got a real sense of intimacy between the subject and whoever was taking the photo. And the obvious question arose in my mind: would that have been my father?

I turned the photo over. There was nothing, except a small round stamp in faint blue ink and a hand-written reference number:

Dubois, St. Malo.

SL 3825/45

I knew my father had served in the infantry in the Second World War, and in France, too. The fact that he’d apparently hidden this photo under the lining of the drawer begged many questions. I put it away in my own desk drawer for the moment; I had a deadline to meet on the project.

On subsequent evenings, I went through my father’s things, keeping some – football programmes, my school reports – and discarding others – old newspapers and magazines, even older utility bills. I found nothing that might shed light on the identity of the woman in the photo.

I half thought of asking my mother, but only half; if she hadn’t known about the woman, then the discovery might come as something of a shock. But the mystery was beginning to bother me.

I googled the name from the stamp, cross referencing it with magasin de photographie and studio photographique. I soon found a shop called Dubois that seemed to fit the bill, in the centre of St. Malo; from the Google ‘street-view’ images, it looked past its prime. I could have tried e-mailing, but it would have been complicated to explain what I wanted, especially as even I wasn’t sure what I really wanted.

I had some holiday due, and with the project done and dusted, I took a week off. After spending a couple of days helping my mother with a couple of new jobs she’d discovered needed doing, I booked a train ticket to Portsmouth, and a ferry ticket to St. Malo.

It was one of those days when high winds make the rain fall horizontally. The crossing was a nightmare – I couldn’t manage to keep my breakfast down – and I got drenched waiting for a taxi at the port. But eventually, the cab dropped me outside 35 Rue Broussais.

As I was waiting for my change, I looked out at the front of the shop. There were a number of dusty old portraits in the window, but beyond them, inside the shop, I could see a figure moving about.

A bell above the door announced my entrance, and the figure I’d seen stopped what he was doing at the counter to take me in. He was perhaps in his late sixties or early seventies, with white hair and thick glasses. I don’t think he was impressed: my hair was messed up from the rain, and my face must have looked a sight from my indisposition on the ferry.

“Bonjour,” I said. I studied a bit of French at school, and I’d been mentally practising on the train. “Je voudrais … er …”

“You can speak in English,” the man said, putting me out of my misery. “We get many tourists here, so…”

“Thank you!” I said. I think my relief and gratitude softened the man’s mood, which had been stony; he smiled.

“How can I help you, sir?”

“Well … I have a photograph…”

I took it out and showed him. He gave it a cursory glance and turned back to me with a questioning look.

“I would like to find out about this woman. You see, my father died, and…”

I paused because as I said before, I didn’t really know what I wanted from this expedition myself. The man evidently thought I was fishing for sympathy.

“I am very sorry.”

“Er … thank you. Yes, well … I think the photo may have been developed here.”

I turned it over and pointed to the stamp.

“Yes?” The man didn’t know what I wanted either, naturally.

“Can you confirm that?”

“Yes.”

The expression ‘blood out of a stone’ sprang to mind. I decided to leap in.

“Do you happen to know who this woman is?”

He was shaking his head before I’d finished the question. I shrugged my shoulders and reached over to retrieve the photo, but he picked it up off the counter.

“I can find out who the customer was, though.”

“You can?!”

“Yes. I took over the shop from my father when he died. He was a very meticulous man, organized. And he kept detailed records of all his work. You see, this number on the back tells me when it was developed – 1945 – and it tells me the customer’s initials, and where I can find their details in the archive.”

“You still keep records from that long ago!”

“Oh yes. It was my father’s passion, so, you know… One moment, please.”

He disappeared into the back of the shop. I spent a few minutes admiring the old cameras behind the counter, until he returned with a card in his hand.

“You are in luck, monsieur. The customer’s name was Mademoiselle Sylvie Laurent. Here, I will write the address down for you.”

“Thank you … er … monsieur,” I said, “but I imagine she may no longer be alive.”

“Oh, she is alive! I know her – or I know of her. St Malo is a relatively small town, you see. Now, I do not know if this photo is of her, but if you are interested, you may check … here.”

And he handed me a slip of paper.

I thanked him profusely and left the shop, hailing the first cab I saw. It took me out of town and onto the coast road. Five minutes later we were pulling up outside a neat little cottage, with a well-kept garden in front.

I paid the driver and stood at the gate, wondering how I would broach the subject. I knew that if it had been me – if a stranger had turned up at my house on such a personal mission – I would probably have dispatched them promptly. But I had come this far, so I rang the bell at the gate.

I had to ring it a second time before an old man came from the back of the house and hobbled over to me. He was dressed like a gardener.

I put my O-level French into practice and told him that I wanted to speak to Madame Laurent. Obviously, I didn’t know if she would still be using that name – if she’d married, the Mademoiselle Laurent would have changed. But the man turned, hobbled off, and went into the house through the front door. A minute or so later, the gate opened with a buzz and I walked up the path.

I entered a gloomy hall with a narrow corridor leading to the back of the house. The old man was at the end and beckoned me on. The gloom gave way to the brightness of a lovely living room that looked out onto a garden – as well-kept as at the front – and beyond it the sea. The rain had stopped and the sun was peeking through the clouds.

The man stepped aside to allow me in. Sitting in an armchair at the French windows was a grey-haired lady, and I knew immediately that it was her – the woman from the photograph. It was her eyes, her mouth, and her defiant air – even as withered as she was.

“Bonjour,” she said, but then slipped immediately into English; the gardener must have known I was a foreigner from my atrocious accent. “Please come in and take a seat. Would you like a coffee?”

The offer put me in mind of my mother, but I declined it.

“Are you Madame Laurent? Silvie Laurent?”

She frowned, naturally uncertain of why I was there, and what was to come next.

“Yes. What can I do for you, young man?” she said. I noted a heaviness in the way she spoke, as if her long life was weighing on her shoulders.

“My name is Timothy,” I said. “Timothy Wilson.”

Madame Laurent looked at me blankly.

“My father was Albert – Bert Wilson.”

There was a pause while the name sank in, then her face broke into the most magnificent smile.

“Bert? My Bert?”

Though the ‘my’ was not a total surprise, it still caught me off guard.

“So you remember him?”

She shook her head, but not in negation.

“How could I forget him?!”

She looked out at the garden, remembering. The smile got broader, if anything. I left her to her thoughts until she was ready to re-engage with me.

“So, your father is dead?” She must have assumed this was why I’d sought her out.

“I’m afraid so.”

“I am sorry. But how did you find me?” she asked.

I took the photo out of my pocket, showed her the back and the stamp, then turned it over and handed it to her.

She put on her glasses, which were hanging on a chain around her neck, and gazed at the photo. I watched her face and the flood of emotions that passed over it – surprise, amusement, tenderness, sadness. And, as an undercurrent to all those emotions, the unmistakable glint of love.

After a while, she pressed the photo to her chest and told me her – their – story: how the Allies had forced the Germans out of the town in 1944, how she had helped as part of the Resistance, how the troops hung around to consolidate positions, how she met my father, how they fell in love.

“This photo was taken in the countryside near here. It was such a beautiful afternoon. We were so young.”

She continued to tell me stories about them, how, in the end, my father was called back to England, and how – in the confusion of those post-war months – they lost touch.

“Did you ever marry?” I asked her.

“No. No, I never did,” she said, and shifted her gaze again to the garden.

When she seemed prepared to talk again, she turned back to me and I could see that her eyes were moist with tears.

“Is your mother still alive?” she said.

“Yes.”

“What is her name?”

“Margaret.”

“That is a nice name. And tell me. How did you come by this photograph?”

I explained and she nodded, a smile now back on her lips.

Soon afterwards, I told her that I had to go. She asked for a hug, which I gave her with pleasure. She wanted to give me back the photograph, but I said she could keep it.

“They made such a lovely son,” was the last thing she said to me.

When I left the room and was walking down the corridor towards the front door, I thought I could hear sobs, but that might have been my imagination.

On the way back to England, I mulled over the meeting and its implications. I thought I had now some insight into the relative coldness of my parents’ relationship. Needless to say, I told my mother nothing; the regard with which she held my father would remain the same.

But I knew that across the channel, another lady would now have her own insight into those lost years. And I like to think that in the winter of her life, she would treasure the fact that with the help of an old, faded, dog-eared photograph, my father had always remembered her with affection.