I held the dragon lighter steady as she lowered the tip of her cigarette into the flame. ‘He made great unhappinesses for my mother.’ She inhaled, then blew out a quivery sapling of smoke. ‘Even today, to forgive is difficult. At your age, I went to school in Bruges and saw my father at weekends only. He had his illness, his music, and we did not communicate. After his funeral, I wished to ask him one thousand things. Too late. Old story. Next to your head is a photographic album. Yes, that one. Pass it.’
A girl Julia’s age sat on a pony under a big tree, before colour was invented. A strand of hair curled against her cheek. Her thighs clamped the pony’s flank.
‘God,’ I thought aloud, ‘she’s gorgeous.’
‘Yes. Whatever beauty is, I had it, in those days. Or it had me.’
‘You?’ Startled, I compared Madame Crommelynck with the girl in the photo. ‘Sorry.’
‘Your habit with that word diminishes your stature. Nefertiti was my finest pony. I entrusted her to the Dhondts – the Dhondts were family friends – when Grigoire and I escaped to Sweden seven, eight years after this photograph. The Dhondts were killed in 1942, during occupation by the Nazis. You imagine they are Resistance heroes? No, it was Morty Dhondt’s sports car. His brakes failed, boom. Nefertiti’s destiny, I do not know. Glue, sausages, stews for black market men, for gypsies, for SS officers, if I am realistic. This photograph was taken in Neerbeke in 1929, 1930…behind that tree is Zedelghem Chateau. My ancestor’s home.’
‘Do you still own it?’
‘It no longer exists. The Germans built an airfield where you see, so the British, the Americans…’ Her hand made a boom gesture. ‘Stones, craters, mud. Now is all little boxes for houses, a gasoline station, a supermarket. Our home who survived half a millennium exists now only in a few old heads. And a few old photographs. My wise friend Susan has written this. “By slicing out this moment and freezing it…”’ Madame Crommelynck studied the girl she’d once been and tapped ash from her cigarette. ‘“…all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”’
A bored dog barked a garden or two away.
A bride and groom pose outside a flinty chapel. Bare twigs say it’s winter. The groom’s thin lips say, Look what I’ve got. A top hat, a cane, half fox. But the bride’s half lioness. Her smile’s the idea of a smile. She knows more about her new husband than he knows about her. Above the church door a stone lady gazes up at her stone knight. Flesh-and-blood people in photographs look at the camera, but stone people look through the camera straight at you.
‘My producers,’ announced Madame Crommelynck.
‘Your parents? Were they nice?’ That sounded stupid.
‘My father died of syphilis. Your encyclopaedia did not say that. Not a “nice” death, I recommend you avoid. You see, the era’ (‘era’ was a long sigh) ‘was different. Feelings were not expressed so incontinently. Not in our class of society, anyhow. My mother, oh, she was capable of great affection, but tempestuous anger! She exerted power over all who she chose. No, I think not “nice”. She died of an aneurysm just two years later.’
I said, ‘I’m sorry,’ like you’re s’posed to, for the first time in my life.
‘It was a mercy she did not witness the destruction of Zedelghem.’ Madame Crommelynck raised her glasses to peer closer at the wedding photo. ‘How young! Photographs make me forget if time is forwards or backwards. No, photographs make me wonder if there is a forwards or backwards. My glass is empty, Jason.’
I poured her wine, with the label showing properly.
‘I never comprehended their marriage. Its alchemy. Do you?’
‘Me? Do I understand my parents’ marriage?’
‘That is my question.’
I thought hard. ‘I’ve’ (Hangman gripped ‘never’ and wouldn’t let it go) ‘I haven’t thought about it before. I mean…my parents’re just there. They argue quite a lot, I s’pose, but they do a lot of their talking when they’re arguing. They can be nice to each other. If it’s Mum’s birthday and Dad’s away he gets Interflora to bring flowers. But Dad’s working most weekends ’cause of the recession, and Mum’s opening this gallery in Cheltenham. There’s like this cold war over that at the moment.’ (Talking with some people’s like moving up higher screens of a computer game.) ‘If I’d been more like an ideal son like on Little House on the Prairie, if I’d