* * *
There were more reels of film over the years that followed, more projections on to lime-washed walls and stretched white bed sheets, and moving among the flickering light from the projector was a girl. The colours of her hair and her face were dulled to grey, her words muted, and her movements sharp and jerky, but it was the same girl who had once walked across the village green in the low morning light. It was her, but her alone.
These films were short and silent, no more than hazy glimpses into the girl’s life – but there were many such films across the next twenty-five years. In the first film the girl sat on an unmade bed, her long white nightgown clinging to her ribs, and an untouched meal on the floor by her feet. On the floor was a stack of novels, bookmarks peeping from the pages and a single lace glove resting on top. To one side of her was a door, padlocked and bolted from the inside, and to her other side was a window, the midday sun streaming through a narrow chink in the curtains. She moved shakily, leaning over to nudge the fabric and peer anxiously through the glass, to the world outside that she seemed to fear. There was no more to the film than this, but it was an image that was old and grainy, like a fading memory, and there were more films to come.
In another film the girl stood by the same window, her back to the glass. She wore a smart skirt and blouse, a flag – the Union Jack – clutched to her chest. The curtains were pulled wide and a gust from the open window caught a strand that had come loose from her neatly pinned hair. The walls and ceiling were flickering with the shadows from the street outside, and she smiled excitedly, glancing over her shoulder as if distracted by the world through the window. Then she turned to wave the flag through the open panes, her lips forming calls and cheers to people that she saw below.
In the next film she appeared under an ornate stone archway, the sun casting a halo around her long white dress. She wore a thick band of lace across her forehead, a rose fixed in her hair and she held a bouquet – a cascade of lilies from her hands. A tall man with dark hair stood next to her, his arms linked with hers. They laughed as the wind caught her veil, and he brushed the waves of taffeta from his morning suit.
She appeared again sitting on a packing crate, wiping her hands on her paint-spattered overalls, a patterned scarf knotted above her forehead. There was no furniture in the room but it was grander than the one she’d had before with high ceilings, a large hearth with an elegant mantelpiece, and bay windows that looked out across a city of pale stone gables and pointed spires. On another packing crate tin mugs were clustered round a champagne bottle, and she took one mug and raised it in a toast to the man who sat beside her.
But these were not all of the films, for there were more – films that showed birthday parties and Christmases, a new motorcar pulling on to the driveway and a tabby kitten in a basket. There were friends who smiled and waved, elderly relatives clutching gifts, babies and children – events both big and small captured forever on to film.
And as the girl’s surroundings changed, so too did she. Her hunched and bony body became strong and upright as she grew into the woman she was meant to be. Her face became more rounded and she began to hold her head high. Her clothes changed from skirts that fell to her ankles to ones that barely covered her thighs, her hair falling fashionably to her jaw line.
Then the films themselves changed – the images suddenly crisper as if seen through different eyes. The cine camera that filmed these new images was a newer and better model, the movements on the screen now smooth and natural with no jerks and flickers.
And then the woman appeared for the last time. In this final film she sat on a settee, the luxurious velvet fanning out behind her in the shape of a scallop shell. She wore a skirt that fell just below her knees and a single string of pearls around her neck, her hair framing her face in soft waves and her cheeks darkened with rouge. Then she was joined by the man she’d married, his dark hair now shot with a wide streak of grey and little round spectacles perched on the end of his nose. He took her hand and they smiled, not just for the glassy lens, but for the people they knew would see them in the years to come, their eyes gazing out to a future they could not see.
And then there was no more.
* * *
It was Francis who told me that the camera cannot lie. Yet there are things that his cine cameras did not see. In all the films that were shot over the years – from the girl in the nightgown glancing nervously to the window, to the smart woman on the scalloped settee – there was always someone who stood behind the camera, slowly cranking the handle or framing the shot. It was to this person that the woman turned when her husband looked away – and when she was sure that he was not looking, she would dip her shoulder to show the jut of her collarbone under her blouse, raise her eyebrows, or blow a kiss from her painted lips. These little gestures would be seen as daring or playful to the people who would view the film over the years, but they hinted at a secret side to this woman – something that was hidden away from the respectability of married life. For there were so few ways that she could express the kind of love that she felt for the person behind the camera – a love that had to be kept private in an age when society had forbidden it.
Then there were the details caught on film but never noticed: three tin mugs on the packing crate next to the bottle of champagne, three places set at the dining table for Christmas dinner, and the three pairs of slippers set out in front of the fireplace. And after a while these items started to appear in fours.
And there were the things that always appeared in the background of the shot or were so small that they would never be seen as more than tiny blurs on the screen, yet it was often these unremarkable items that held the most meaning. There was the lucky rabbit’s foot that the girl held in her hand as she glanced through the curtain on to the world that she feared. There was the pile of envelopes tied with a ribbon that sat on the coffee table by the scalloped settee – letters written and addressed but never sent. There was a postcard propped up on the elegant mantelpiece – a village green with a church, maypole and a row of small cottages, the windows of the last one hidden by the branches of an oak tree. These were mementos from a place that the woman had once fled – a place she could only return to when she no longer feared it.
And sometimes the woman’s eyes would lose their focus and a smile would flicker across her face, as if her thoughts were lost in a place she had once known and people she had once loved. Then her smile would fade as she thought of the years that had passed since she had been to that place and lived among the people she now missed so much.
When the time was right, she would return.
Agnes
1937
33
That afternoon I saw Waldley Court again. It flashed past my carriage window, speeding away from me into the distance, but I was able to look upon it for just a moment and glimpse the tall, twisted chimneys and the hollow window frames, the long brick wall and the charred rafters of the old stable building. Then just as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone again as the train plunged back into the darkness of the cutting.
The morning in the courtroom had left me exhausted and my journey home had been plagued with memories so vivid that I had fancied the past was somehow all around me. I had been glad to see Waldley Court again, though. It was a place that had always remained remote from the new housing estates that were overrunning the town and, with just a glimpse of its twisted chimneys, I could recall a time before I had lost my husband and daughter – a time that I had once felt safe before the country was ravaged by the Great War and influenza, a gentler era that could never be recaptured.