Page 119 of Kate and Clara's Curious Cornish Craft Shop
‘That happens sometimes when children come along,’ I tell her knowingly. ‘Your dreams get pushed aside.’
‘They do indeed.’
‘Is this what you’re talking about?’ Susan asks, coming back into the room clutching a tin box about the size of a large biscuit tin.
‘Yes, that’s the one,’ Maggie says, taking it from her. ‘You didn’t know I had this, did you?’ she says cunningly to Susan. ‘I smuggled it in with the few things I was allowed to keep frommyhouse before you sold them all off.’
‘Mom, now you know that’s not how it was,’ Susan says, shaking her head. ‘Stop exaggerating.’
‘That’s how it felt,’ Maggie says, clutching the box tightly to her chest, ‘but you didn’t get this one, did you? No, I made sure of that.’
‘Right, that’s the kettle on,’ her granddaughter says, coming back into the room. ‘Oh, you found it then? What’s inside, Granny?’
Maggie looks conspiratorially around at all of us, as if she’s weighing up whether she can trust us with the contents of her precious box. ‘Inside here are my memories,’ she says quietly. ‘When I can’t remember, I look in here and it’s all there for me so I don’t have to try too hard.’
She carefully prises open the lid of the tin, and lifts from it a few photos.
‘Arty took lots of photos when I was young,’ she says. ‘He bought a camera and never stopped using the thing. He took photos of everything – even had his own dark room set up in the big house so he could develop them, he took that many. It drove my mother mad to always find him clicking away with his little Brownie, but his hobby has turned out to be my saviour.’
She turns one of the black and white photos around towards us and I recognise Clara immediately, likely wearing one of her own creations – a flowery dress with a full skirt. She’s standing beside a bicycle and there’s a picnic basket at her feet.
‘I couldn’t remember this day at all until I saw this photograph,’ Maggie says, ‘but it was taken on my sixteenth birthday. The three of us rode along to the next town and had a picnic on the beach there … It was glorious weather.’ She looks through the photos on her lap. ‘Here,’ she says, holding a photo up to us again. ‘This is me. You’d never have known I was in a wheelchair a few years before.’
We all look at the photo of a pretty girl with long dark hair cascading down her shoulders. She looks incredibly happy as she smiles at the camera.
‘I didn’t know you had all these photos, Mom,’ Susan says, moving towards her. ‘How wonderful.’
Maggie holds up her hand. ‘No, Susan, you can look later. Now it’s time for my soldier friend to look at some photos with me.’
She rifles around in her tin again.
‘Here,’ she says, pulling out another black and white photo. ‘This is Freddie.’
Jack takes the photo from her. ‘It is indeed,’ he says, ‘taken outside his cottage. Can Kate take a look too?’
Maggie nods, so Jack passes me the photo and I see Freddie wearing a similar outfit to one we’d seen him in, standing with his hands in his pockets and looking suspiciously at Arty behind the lens. It was strange – when he’d appeared to us before he’d been in colour and had seemed so real and full of life. Now in black and white Freddie appeared much more removed and from a distant age.
‘Another,’ Maggie says, handing the next picture to Jack. ‘Me painting with Freddie in his cottage.’
Jack examines the photo, then passes it to me. It was almost the same as the scene we’d witnessed together previously – Maggie sat at a table painting next to Freddie.
‘This one is Freddie in full flow,’ Maggie says. ‘He’s nearly finished his painting in this one.’
This time we look at a photo of Freddie standing next to a painting that is propped up on an easel – likely one of Arty’s. He has a brush in one hand and oil paint in the other.
‘Arty gave him that easel,’ Maggie says, ‘because he didn’t have one of his own.’
Maggie continues to pull out photo after photo of Freddie and herself in his little cottage painting, drawing and, most of all, smiling.
‘It haunts me to this day that someone has stolen this kind, lovely man’s paintings,’ Maggie says, gazing at the photos now laid out on the coffee table in front of her. ‘People must know what happened to them. They simply must.’
To my dismay, silent tears begin to roll down her face into the tin box still sitting on her lap.
Her granddaughter shoots forwards with a box of tissues, and Susan rushes to her mother’s side.
‘I think that’s enough memories for today,’ she says, looking with concern at Jack and me as she puts a comforting arm around her mother’s shoulders. ‘Perhaps you should go.’
‘No!’ Maggie cries, pushing both her daughter and granddaughter away. ‘No, I want to know if they can help me find the person who took all Freddie’s paintings.’
