The Unseen(86)

‘Never play near the well. The ghost of a boy lived in it, you know. A little dead boy,’ the old man muttered, his voice growing thin and brittle.

‘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.’