I realise that yesterday’s blog was over twice the length of an average piece of ‘A’ Level English coursework, the sort I would once have been marking round about now. I intend today’s to be shorter but I’ve been sorting through some old family photos and as they reach further and further back into the monochrome and sepia eras of my family history there’s a danger my reflections will get longer too. Many people faced with endless weeks have been clearing out drawers, crawling around in attics and probably wading around in damp cellars finding boxes, trunks and old suitcases full of the sort of stuff they knew was there and dutifully intended to sort, should they ever have time. Now they have time and no excuse.
I inherited an old suitcase from my father’s sister, there being no immediate heirs, A first cull of all the pictures inside was executed a few years back with my late father’s twin brother, Uncle Herb, identifying some of the people. Never known for his precision, various characters in white flannels, drooping trilbies and flowery sun dresses were helpfully nominated as, Whojemeflip and whatshisname and, Oh that’s You Know. Deirdre, being more perspicacious has managed to identify my great, and great great grandmother by looking at clues like brooches and hair partings.
There’s a lot of jollity in the pictures. I suppose before the digital age photos were such a rare phenomenon that they were only used to capture special, holiday moments. I’m struck by the casual smiling pictures of my parents, aunts and uncles on beaches, perched on railings, a cigarette hanging from my father’s mouth, his hair forward over his forehead like Robert Redford as The Great Gatsby. All was carefree, relaxed and sunshine. There are the pictures that were taken at Clacton, all on the same road junction at different times. Do you remember the sea-side photographers who pretended to snap you walking along the prom and then charged you for posed pictures? There’s my Dad with open shirt collar and baggy suit, probably in his teens carrying his bathing costume rolled in a towel. (Alan Bennett says somewhere that carrying your swim suit rolled in a towel is a sign of being over 70. Maybe the government should allow us to go swimming so its agents can identify who is vulnerable and at risk.)
By definition we won’t remember our parents in this innocent state; the war and we put paid to that. That life of crowded deckchairs on the beaches, of concert parties and picnics on the grass was gutted by the war, but once into the austerity 50s there is still a bold assertion of the right to have fun. I suppose you don’t need much prosperity to spread a rug in the dunes somewhere and eat corn beef and fish paste sandwiches. The requirement of early photographers that you hold your pose for about 13 seconds didn’t do a lot for spontaneous smiling. I am struck by some very fierce looking women perched like crows in my family tree with centre hair partings, brooches and hair pins that resemble some form of weaponry. Add to this facial expressions that look as if they were formed over some sort of steaming cauldron. It appears that even my great great grandmother disapproved of me even before the 19 Century had turned.
On my parent’s wedding photo, December 23rd 1939 the Auxiliary Fire Service provided a guard of honour and beneath the shadows of the big hats there are some strained smiles. Even my grandmother who clearly felt her daughter could have done better is smiling. But just at the side of the picture, with only her head leaning in, lurking as grim as death is a face as hideous as any hag in pantomime or Macbeth. Black clothes, black hat, eyes glinting through deep wrinkles and crumpled features, she seems like the uninvited guest at the wedding. Is she some spectre from some past misdemeanour, some fairytale curse come to blight the nuptials? I remember asking elderly relatives and no one had noticed her or knew who she was.
Perhaps she was some sinister visitation from the future because most of the young men on that picture would be at war a year later. If so she got it wrong, because they all came back safely, had families and picked up careers. I wish I could scan the picture in and let you see her, though you’ve done nothing so bad as to earn such a nightmare, but my scanner is not working.
I have a family picture which was removed from the wall to make way for Christmas cards. It’s disappeared and I suspect Deirdre who always felt a shadow of gloom when she sat under it. Whether that was because she felt she was being judged by several generations of my relatives and found wanting, or whether it was the tragedies that awaited many of them: death from simple infections, bitter spinsterhood, chronic shell-shock.
There are the people we don’t recognise, the dogs, the holiday resorts, the occasions, the dates. All once important but now dissolved in the fluid of time. So much anonymity, so much unidentified fun that may either be preserved for another generation or ended if I decide to ditch the pictures. So much family story struck out – all the family folk-lore, gossip, laughter, love, scandal – no more – erased from history. For our children they never existed.
All the sorting out that’s going on in homes everywhere – when we open that Pandora’s box that's been stored in the attic, we are releasing regret and nostalgia, fond memories, guilt, embarrassment, uncertainty, history, information, bemusement and curiosity. At the edge of it all that grim old widow peering in, determined to be in the picture.