For a lot of people, Christmas provides some respite from the pain of their day to day existence. It can offer hope, bring sadness, remind us of good and bad times and conjure up memories. Michael Morrison, the main character in my forthcoming novel The Choreography of Ghosts, chooses to spend time looking back at what was and considering what might have been. Here is a section from the book...
THE collection of photographs in front of him displayed little in the way of humour.
He lost himself in thought, the pictures coming alive as he commentated to himself: “Us four at Christmas, two round a table raising a glass, my brother and me on the floor playing with toys; me in a scruffy back yard, head stooped, thinking far too deeply for a child of that age; all of us on holiday in Bridlington, my brother on a donkey on the sand at Blackpool, both of us with ice-creams on Scarborough sea-front; both of us in the identical bottle green jumpers mum knitted for us — him smiling, pleased, me looking not pleased in the slightest — me with a monkey in front of the tower in Blackpool; me in my first cricket whites, bat in hand; all of us at grandma and grandads, Christmas hats on, pulling crackers at the table, all of us at grandma and grandads, Christmas hats on, pulling crackers at the table, but grandma no longer there; all of us with Christmas hats on, pulling crackers at a table at our house, because there was no grandma and grandad...”
The images brought back associated memories, unfulfilled dreams; standing proudly in a new Leeds United football strip as a child, still able to fantasise that one day he might play for the team, a shot of him playing cricket, aged around fourteen, hoping he may one day make it into the Yorkshire side, an earlier one of him playing a table football game, another sitting at an old second-hand typewriter bought for him one Christmas, believing this was the first step towards him being a journalist or maybe even a writer.
He had informed the careers officer at school that was what he wanted to be, only to be told he was better at maths than English and a job in the bank was the route to explore. He smiled at the clothes he wore as he moved through his late teens and into his twenties, his first wages affording him several impulsively purchased designer shirts, and he remembered the increasing amount of time he would take to prepare for a night out. In the hope of what, he was no longer really sure.
Those identical bottle green jumpers knitted by his mother for himself and his brother came to mind again, as did the intense sadness that surrounded him at the time, at home, at school, at play, when he could bring himself to play. Bottle green jumpers, two bottle green jumpers. “If one of the people in a bottle green jumper should accidentally fall...”
The 1970s’ wallpaper in their terraced house survived well into the eighties — way longer than those jumpers — as did the brown sofa he was pictured on with a black and white cat they had for many years on his lap. It had been a long time since he had thought about the early decor of the house they lived in for three decades and he shook his head at the passing of so much time.
There were shots from work parties. He looked happy but unwell, gaunt, almost haunted. There were colleagues he loved, that when he moved on he said he would keep in touch with, but invariably did not. There were colleagues he despised and some he barely remembered, their names and minor impact on his life prompted only by the pictures.
How quickly time goes. How quickly we go through time, he thought. He could hear his father telling him that the years fly by as you get older, his response one of laughter and contempt as the concept appeared ridiculous. It no longer did so. It also now seemed that time moved at different speeds. He could recall almost word for word a conversation he had with a fellow primary school pupil before they posed for a school photo more than forty years ago with no idea what life had in store for them and the thought that so many hours, days, months and years had disappeared since then caused him to shiver.
He was not sure whether the music he had chosen to play was deliberately relevant or accidentally so, but he briefly stopped what he was doing as the singer poignantly revealed that the faces on the pictures he had been looking through now meant nothing to him.
Travelling through the years the images became sparse as the people on them passed away, he reached his self-conscious teens, no longer wanting to be photographed, and then, apart from the odd holiday snap, did not bother with a camera for years, eventually only having one on his phone.
Although he never made notes on his phone he was reasonably adept with the camera functions — and with all his pictures now digital they would be wiped from history forever at some point in the future when he was no more. He would be erased too, leaving behind little evidence of his own existence. Maybe it was time to do something about that.
Likewise, these shots in celluloid, in albums and loose, would eventually be found and tossed away, whole lives dispensed with in an instant. Instant pictures from an instant camera, instantly disposed of. No memories.
That thought briefly saddened him, until suddenly he visualised the photograph of the Bianchi family outside their house. Then he saw the letter.
He had received it around two weeks after his return from Padria and it was the only contact he had from her after the party. He picked it up with some hesitation and as he held it, both hands, his arms and his torso shook. His chest heaved as it dawned on him he was touching something her fingers had left imprints on, something she had poured her heart into writing, something that had brought tears to his eyes when he first read it. Something to which he had not replied.
His mind flashed back to that precise moment, when he found out, found out for certain what had happened to her. He had fervently clung to the hope that she would return. That on his first day back lecturing at university after the summer break spent worrying, fretting, panicking, she would be sitting there smiling, hanging on to his every word as if nothing had happened, taking notes as he spoke, texting him as the session ended, asking to meet for a drink or a bite to eat, and they would simply carry on as normal. As normal — what would that be? What could that be?
When the call came that the principal had bad news, he intuitively knew what it was. Of course he knew.
One of the students, Marianna Bianchi, who he was aware some of the staff had taught in their tutorial groups, had died back home in Italy. She had, in fact, it was believed, taken her own life. The news must be broken to the other students in tutorials, lectures and discussion groups and... and... and... and... Morrison heard no more.