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The spasms explained why her handwriting remained childish into adulthood, the speech impairment was why she used emails to contact me. As I delved deeper, I read how two young people lost interest in rock music and Hollywood movies, and wrote of their aspirations. Izzy wanted to travel, and yet, she had married at eighteen, which rather threw cold water on my idea she had deliberately got herself pregnant. I suspected it might have been the other way round, and the marriage was imposed by Nigel; he had rescued one unmarried mother, and a war-widow, and probably felt honour bound to put his daughter on the right path. Colin, perhaps, having not expected it, resented Nigel, forcing his father-in-law into exile.
As for my great-aunt, her wish was buried in one passage – to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Fortunately, the sentences were in English.
Thank you for sending me the obituary. I did not know she won an award for photojournalism or that she lost her life photographing the Blitz. A brave woman. We should both be proud of her. It is sad we do not remember her.
I blinked back tears. My great-grandmother had been a photographer, too. And now I knew why she had died in a bombing raid.
I cannot take pictures or paint. My hands shake too much.
An abrupt hiccough of grief hit me then; in that one sentence she had unknowingly explained so much to me. Loretta had commissioned me to do what she could not, and even though I was still none the wiser as to the purpose of the photographs, she had wanted to do them herself, and that was evident in the stringent details, from the vanishing points she had dictated to the angles of the shot. A photographer at heart, it seemed.
I blew my nose on a tissue and resumed my deciphering, caring little that it was long past midnight.
What Isabel had written was something of a mystery. I only had Loretta’s replies to questions and her perspective of my grandmother. Over the years, the use of symbols and codes had increased to the point I suspected they were fundamental to their communication. Had they plotted to meet up? Was Isabel on the verge of running away to Italy, just as she claimed later in her life? Whatever was missing from the letters, she hadn’t anticipated Colin marrying her. Right up to 1958, there was barely any mention of him by Loretta, just a cursory reference to the man Isabel had met and had thought funny and good company. Loretta had warned her to be careful.
How could I, a twenty-first century woman with different values and upbringing, criticise Izzy’s father for pushing through with the ill-fated marriage? My mother’s life was born from that marriage. I sighed, and it turned into a yawn. I was surrendering to sleep when I spotted a familiar word in among the Italian phrases: Ashby. My grandmother had visited Ashby-de-la-Zouch Castle several times.
There followed a feverish few minutes of thumbing back and forth through the dictionary, piecing together odd words, until I framed a rough translation of what Loretta had written.
You think you see other places, like Italy? I think I can too. Or I listen to them in my mind. When I am still, I travel because my body cannot. What I see are the fantasies of a paralysed young woman. I will try harder. If you can, maybe I can.
The wafer-thin sheet of paper floated on cooled air before resting on the worn carpet. My eyes blurred and one solitary tear escaped. Isabel hadn’t been crazy, and neither was I. Whatever condition Joseph had conjured up in his mind to explain what I saw and felt, it wasn’t unique to me. And if it ran in the family, surely it was a gift to embrace, not run away from in fear? But how could Loretta have known I had it? We’d had no contact before David had introduced us. Nothing in the letters shed light on her motives.
I faced a dilemma in the morning. Did I push on and catch up with Joseph, a man who had in a short space of time captured an essence of my heart, or go hunting in York for an internet point and email Loretta, tell her I had read the letters, that I believed I knew who she was, and ask her bluntly: had she gone looking for me, or was it pure chance that she had found her great-niece? And why, oh why, had I been put on a collision course with Joseph?
Thirty-Eight
Spofforth
There was nothing at Spofforth, not even a toilet, but at least the castle grounds were open all day, allowing me to arrive half an hour after an early breakfast in York.
Banks of cloud drifted across the sky, shielding me from the relentless heat of the sun. The t-shirt formed a second skin, plastered onto me by the weight of humidity. Such a summer as this was unprecedented. The Yorkshire Moors were turning into bonfires, filling the sky with plumes of smoke.
Light picked out the reddish colour of the stonework, the unique randomness of the blocks, the patterns of wear and weathering. As I climbed up a stair turret, I ran my hands along the cool stone and felt each ridge. It helped calm my nerves before I reached a level where I could photograph the great hall from above; Loretta continued to require the unusual, macabre vistas and angles, the bespoke images and minutiae that would only fascinate a keen architect.
Why was this particular castle on her list? Less castle, more hollowed out manor house, it held no fascination for me. With a gentle breeze on my back, the only respite from the heat, I leaned forward and held my breath. Waiting, and… there was perhaps a wisp, a brush against my bare arm, a weird sensation of something floating close by, but looking behind me, there were only tiny flies hovering above the cool stone slabs.
Perhaps there was nothing here for me to conjure up or imagine. My reaction to its absence was ambivalent: horrified one moment, relieved the next. Maybe my reticence since Whitby had more to do with my change of plans, or something else had fundamentally changed me; it felt as though I was waiting for the right occasion and lonely Spofforth wasn’t substantive enough to engage me and, consequently, I was holding back from finding out what I needed to know. Seeking Joseph was more important to me than indulging in imaginary medieval dreamscapes. Maybe his absence was affecting me more than I realised, and without him, I lacked the emotional triggers to drift away.
Back below, on the ground level, the camera resting on the flat of my palm, I peered through the viewfinder.
‘I’m not alone then.’ The deep voice came from behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my sweaty top with surprise. He walked around to face me.
I was in the company of an elderly man with a gnarled walking stick, slate overcoat and a traditional flap cap. He was dressed as though it was the middle of winter and not a shimmer of perspiration on his brow.
‘Sorry?’ I said, politely.
He smiled a near toothless grin and his wrinkled skin looked as if it might shatter with the effort. ‘I don’t like walking about here on my own. Good to ’ave thee company.’
A local man. In the distance, a black Labrador was barking frantically. ‘Here! Robbie, get here!’
The dog bounded over to him at such a pace I was convinced the excited animal would send his master toppling. Instead, the dog skidded to a halt by his feet and licked the man’s boots.
‘Why don’t you like being here on your own?’ I asked.
‘She fell.’ He pointed to the walls with his stick. ‘From there parts.’
‘Who?’
