Songs of Blue and Gold Read Online Free PDF

cupboard where they had always been kept. The photographs of them as a family – such as it was –were fading now, coming loose from the pages. Her father Edward, handsome, bulky, cigarette in hand. Melissa as a baby, as a child. And always her mother’s character behind the lens: busy, no-nonsense, the practical balanced by the creative.
    But the adhesive had browned and slackened its hold; the plastic film which held them flat was brittle now. Bill was right. Their colours had already begun to degenerate into strange olive greens and tan yellows, no longer a true reflection of life. The images were slipping silently away, pressed in books in the dark of cupboards and drawers. Ultimately they would be nothing but colourless compound and some ghostly outlines.
    Searching for anything unfamiliar, she found nothing. Neither was there anything more in the cupboard on the landing.
    She wandered into her mother’s bedroom.
    The book of poems was still where she had left it on the chest of drawers.
Collected Poems
by Julian Adie. A hardback copy in beautiful, almost unread condition.
    Melissa read a few lines, then closed and turned it over. Why had her mother said that she needed this? Or was it just nonsense, like all the other sad peculiarities? There was so much Melissa did not know, and she was conscious that the time for explanations was running out.
    Julian. It was an odd coincidence. She opened the book again at the title page, and this time the handwritten lines in black ink leapt off the page: ‘
To Elizabeth, always remembering Corfu, what could have been and what we must bothforget.
’ The signature was clear and wellformed. ‘
Julian Adie
’. It physically startled her. Whatever did it mean, with its unmistakably intimate tone that was suddenly negated by the use of his surname?
    She flipped to the biographical note on the inside of the dust jacket. Julian Adie was born in Darjeeling, India, in 1914 where his father was a railway engineer. He was educated at Sherborne School. In London, he worked variously as a photographer’s runner, a publisher’s proofreader and a jazz pianist, before publishing his first novel and spending five years in Corfu, from 1935 to 1939. He lived and worked subsequently in Egypt, Rhodes, Cyprus and France. He was married four times.
    A bare outline that told her next to nothing about the man. What was Julian Adie like as a person? Did he have a run of marital bad luck – or would a tally of four wives tend to indicate that he was the one who created the problems?
    â€˜
To Elizabeth, always remembering Corfu, what could have been and what we must both forget.
’
    The cruel irony of the words struck her. At first glance they had seemed merely romantic and intriguing. And what, specifically, was Elizabeth supposed to forget?
    Melissa took the book along with some photographs when she went to the nursing home that afternoon. Elizabeth smiled in her new enigmatic way but ignored the book and claimed she did not know anyone in the pictures. Her cough had improved, and so had her opinion of the nursing home. She was quite enjoying herself, she said, although the tigers in the garden could be fierce.
    And Melissa was aware that she kept her own secrets. She still had not told her mother about Richard.
    The next day, Bill Angell was waiting for her at reception. They went in together. Melissa led the way, confident she had brought a happy surprise, sure that an old friend would provide a welcome stimulus. But Elizabeth stared at Bill wide-eyed as if she was frightened, and Melissa felt guilty once again, this time for not considering her mother’s need for privacy. While he was there, Elizabeth would say nothing, only shake her head. She was thinner, depleted by the chest infection as by her lack of interest in food.
    â€˜I thought you might like this.’ Bill handed her a postcard. ‘I’ve been keeping it to give