A Death in the Family Read Online Free PDF Page A

moment of rapport between us.
    ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘I’ve got the photos for you – the formal ones, anyway. I believe there’s an old album somewhere, with snapshots in it. I haven’t had a chance to look it out for you yet, I’ve got a nasty feeling it’s up in the attic in one of the old suitcases there. But I will have a look. Anyway here are the ones I expect you’d like to see.’ I laid them out on the sofa and he came over to look at them.
    ‘Yes, these are certainly useful. What I would like to do is take copies of them.’ He reached over to the table. ‘Now I do have a digital camera here,’ he said producing it, ‘so I propose making copies with that. If, however, I cannot get the quality of reproduction I would like, I will ask you if I may borrow them so that they can be taken out of their frames and reproduced professionally. I imagine there is a competent photographic shop in Taviscombe that could do such a thing.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘there’s a very good one in the Avenue.’
    ‘Good.’ He picked up the group photograph. ‘I myself have a copy of this. I believe each member of the family was given one and mine, of course,belonged to my father.’ He indicated a boy of about ten dressed in a sailor suit, the collar slightly awry. He looked a pleasant child, not staring straight at the camera, as the others were, but casting a sidelong glance at what was going on somewhere out of the picture. I wondered if he had ever, in later life, cast that clear gaze upon his son and, if so, what conclusion he had drawn.
    ‘Now,’ Bernard was saying, ‘if you could kindly draw back the curtains so that I have the optimum light, I will see what I can do myself.’
    Taking the photos took a very long time. They had to be arranged, rearranged and arranged again in different lights. The curtains had to be drawn, put back and drawn again. Fortunately Janet did most of the arranging, but it made me feel tired just to watch her. Finally, when he had exhausted every possible combination and actually taken the photos he called me over to look at some of them through the little viewfinder at the side.
    ‘They’re very good,’ I said, ‘absolutely marvellous. It must be an exceptional camera to get that sort of result.’
    ‘It was given to me by the staff as a retirement present,’ he said.
    ‘How lovely,’ I said. Though inwardly I wondered if the large sum of money necessary to buy such a splendid camera was an index of how delighted they all were to be rid of him!
    He fiddled about with the camera for a littlelonger and then pronounced that some of the pictures weren’t as clear as they might be so he proposed taking the originals away. I agreed readily, hoping that this might be the end of the exercise but, alas, he then produced one of his charts with names and dates and began to cross-question me about them. What little family history I did know was completely obliterated as he droned on about all the Samuels, Johns, Williams, Marys, Marthas, Janes and Louisas. It was not helped by the fact that the same names occurred in successive generations, so that after a while I was utterly confused and gave up trying to make sense of any of it.
    ‘According to my sources it would seem that John Prior married twice,’ Bernard was saying, ‘firstly in 1865 to Charlotte Mavor, born 1847. They had issue: John, born 1866 and Edward, in,’ he consulted his papers, ‘1868, which is the same date that Charlotte died, presumably in childbirth. He then married in March 1872 Elizabeth Lindsey, born 1849…’
    But I wasn’t attending. I was thinking of poor Charlotte, dying at 21, leaving her little boys to be brought up by a stepmother, almost as young. I hoped Elizabeth had been as kind as the young stepmother in Charlotte M. Yonge’s book.
    ‘The entry in your Bible, however,’ Bernard was saying, ‘has the marriage taking place in
July
1872. Can you account for this