Free The Illuminations by Andrew O’Hagan

up what she called his ‘little conchological cabinet’ – a term out of Charles Dickens, she told him – which was where he kept shells he’d found and bits of broken plate from the sea. The glass cabinet described theirshared interest in the gathering of facts, their attempt to know life not only by our mistakes but by artistic ordering. When Anne returned from her travels in England she would often bring a new shell or a fancy nugget of Victorian crockery. And she always brought sherbet or a stick of rock from one of the sweet shops. ‘Remember, Gran,’ he said to her last time he was home, the time with the sherry, ‘remember that group of starfish we put in the conchological cabinet?’
‘I liked the stars,’ she said. ‘And one time Jayne Mansfield came to turn on the lights in Blackpool.’
He took her hand by the window. She looked down as if their joined hands formed an element with a life of its own. ‘No, boss,’ he said, laughing. It was the first time he knew she must be getting ill. ‘I’m talking about something in the shape of stars. I mean these creatures that are shaped like stars in the sky and I found them on the beach, remember?’
There was puzzlement on her face for a second and then she smiled as if all the confusion had now cleared from her mind. ‘I know what you’re saying,’ she said. ‘I’m not daft. It’s about the shape of things.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You trained my eye.’
‘I know the cabinet you’re talking about. We made it together.’
‘You guided me.’
She smiled and drank the sherry down. Then she peered into the window glass and said, ‘I lost you.’
‘It was all art, you said. The cabinet.’
‘Giving shape.’
‘Knowing what’s behind appearances,’ Luke said. ‘That’s the photographer’s gift and you have that and it’s a wonderful thing.’
She pecked like a chicken and gave a kiss to the air. ‘We knew the right thing to do with the shells and that’s why we’re pals, why we’ve always been pals,’ she said.
‘And plates,’ Luke had said. ‘You brought those bits of broken plate with the tiny blue patterns and the plates had been washed in the sea for a hundred years or … just fragments. Tiny bits. But I used to imagine them as whole plates laid on a Victorian table with a family sitting down together.’
They looked at each other. He knew he’d be off to Helmand in a few days and wondered if she’d ever be the same again. She raised a finger as if he had finally struck a chord. ‘I could take a picture of that dinner you’re talking about and you could help me,’ she said.
‘I’d love to. Will we do that? Will we get out your cameras and make a brilliant picture?’
Luke lay in the heat of the Vector and wondered why his mother and his grandmother had never clicked. His gran had made too much of the men in their lives, and so had he, and he began to see it as a form of harassment that had affected his mother. Yet he and Anne were friends. He lay back mulling it over and tipped into the kind of sleep where ideas feel like revelations until they slip so easily away.
THE RIDGE
Private Flannigan always set out his tent like a perfectionist. Mosquito net, maggot bag, folded corners: a big lumberjack of a guy pressing down his little corners. He was a born soldier. ‘What’s happening?’ he said when Luke appeared in the camp rubbinghis hair. The captain was carrying a book and he leaned on an old stone wall.
‘Nothing much.’
‘Did you get the head down?’
‘A few zeds, aye.’ Luke began to smile when he saw the delicate way Flannigan was handling his kit. ‘Hey Flange,’ he said. ‘Is this you preparing your evening toilette ?’
‘Bite me,’ Flannigan said. There was evening primrose in the cracks of the wall and Sergeant Docherty was scraping off a sample for his collection. He was also finishing off an argument, just as Luke came in. ‘They thought they were going to get Belgium in two years,’ he said.