5
‘Are you coming up?’ Adam asks from the top of the staircase that magically appeared from the attic once we opened up a little trapdoor in the ceiling. ‘Or do you want me to start passing boxes down to you?’
After we finished lunch, we looked through Adam’s grandfather’s study.
Adam said he was keeping all the books that lined the walls, so other than the rather large grandfather clock, an oak writing desk, a couple of interesting paintings and the cabinet full of action figures and comic books, there wasn’t too much of interest to me.
We looked inside the desk, where there was a lot of paperwork, but, again, nothing of interest, so we climbed the stairs again and made a beeline for the attic.
Adam seemed a bit hesitant at first, but once he found the light switch and he could see properly, he described it as quite a spacious area, which to my enormous relief didn’t appear to be packed to the rafters with junk, as many attics and lofts are.
‘How much is there?’
‘Other than a lot of boxes, there’s some suitcases and a few bits of old furniture.’
‘We may as well get it down, then. It’s all got to be sorted.’
Adam begins to pass the contents of the attic down to me.
‘You don’t have to go through all this, you know?’ he says when we’ve been emptying the attic for about ten minutes. ‘You’re really only here for the good stuff, I know that. It’s up to me to sort through all this junk and see what might be important.’
‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘Anything we find could be of interest to me. Yes, I need to make a profit for my business on some things. But I’m also looking for interesting items that might not be worth as much, but could have a fascinating history.
’ I reach up to take an old vintage suitcase from him.
‘Whoa, that’s a heavy one. I assumed it would be empty. ’
‘Sorry,’ Adam says, looking apologetically down from the attic opening. ‘I probably should have said. This next case is pretty heavy too.’
I take the second suitcase from him, but this time it really is heavy so I don’t quite get hold of it properly. It falls from my hands onto the floor next to me and the lid flies open.
‘Are you OK?’ Adam asks, poking his head out from the attic entrance.
‘Yes, I’m fine. Sorry about that. Oh, there’s some photos.’ I bend down and lift up a couple of the pictures that have fallen from the case. ‘In fact, it looks like this whole case is full of old photos and albums.’
Adam climbs down the ladder and peers inside the case with me.
‘I don’t know about you, but I could do with a break from that attic for a bit – it’s very musty up there.
Why don’t we take a look through these for a while?
Maybe they’re just what you’re looking for to tell you more about my grandfather? ’
We sit on the floor either side of the suitcase and begin pulling out bunches of photos tied together with ribbon and string, and old photograph albums with leather covers and thick black pages displaying a mix of black-and-white and colour prints.
Luckily for us, the backs of many of the photos have been written on in black ink with dates and names.
‘I think this must be a photo of your grandfather outside his bank,’ I say, handing him a photo of a smart-looking man in a suit standing outside the Lloyd’s bank building in Sidney Street, one of the main shopping thoroughfares in Cambridge. ‘It says George, June 1974 .’
‘Yes, that’s him,’ Adam says, looking at the photo. ‘I remember him still looking a bit like that in the late eighties, early nineties – slightly smaller flares on his trousers by then, though! They’re some humdingers, aren’t they?’
We both smile at the man. While the rest of his brown suit is smart and tailored, the matching flared trousers overhanging his brown lace-up shoes would easily date the photo for us, even if this information wasn’t helpfully noted on the back.
‘These are from my grandparents’ wedding day,’ Adam says, passing me an open album.
I look down at the photos and see a young couple looking extremely happy in front of a church. Underneath the photos, in neat handwriting, is written Lily and George, Wedding Day, June 1952 .
‘My mother was born two years after that in 1954,’ Adam says. ‘She was thirty when she had me.’
We continue looking through the photos and see more of Adam’s family.
‘Is this you with your mother?’ I ask when I spy a photo titled Susan and Adam, Easter 1984 . ‘You don’t look very old there – a couple of months maybe?’
Adam takes the photo album from me and gazes longingly at it.
‘Yes, that’s her.’ He runs his finger gently across the photo. ‘I’ve never seen this before.’
‘I’m pleased I made you go up into the attic now,’ I say quietly. ‘I was feeling a bit guilty when you were lugging all those boxes down.’
Adam lifts the photo from the album. ‘I’m going to keep this,’ he says, still looking at it. ‘Maybe get a frame for it too.’
‘I think that’s a lovely idea. Perhaps there’s some more buried in here you can put aside to frame.’ I look at the album again. ‘Oh, what’s this?’
Hidden behind the photo of Adam’s mother, there seems to be another photo – but it’s much larger than the others, so I can only see part of it. ‘I think there’s another, bigger photo hidden behind these others,’ I say. ‘Look, it’s trapped between the two pieces of paper that make up the page.’
We begin to remove the other photos – carefully so we don’t damage them – and, piece by piece, as though we are doing a jigsaw in reverse, a new photo begins to reveal itself.
‘Ooh, who’s this?’ I ask as we pull the photo from its hiding place.
This man looks a little like George did in his bank photo, but, this time, instead of a loose brown suit with flared trousers, the man is wearing a top hat, a black tailcoat, a waistcoat with a pocket watch, and some striped trousers.
‘Is it your grandfather in fancy dress, do you think?’
‘It does look a bit like him, I suppose. But, no, this is someone different. I think this might be my great-grandfather. Wait.’ He goes back to a previous pile of photos and finds a black-and-white photo of a man in a smart 1940s-style suit along with a dapper-looking trilby hat perched jauntily on his head.
He reads the back of the picture. ‘ Archie, Cambridge, 1939 . He was actually Archibald Darcy – I do know that much about my great-grandfather. Do you know where this was taken in Cambridge?’
I take the photo from him. Alongside the old cars and the familiar sight of gowned students riding bicycles, I recognise one of the many famous buildings Cambridge possesses.
‘He’s in front of the Senate House,’ I say.
‘You’ve probably seen it on King’s Parade.
It’s where the students’ graduation ceremonies are held every year. ’
I hold the 1939 photo next to the one that was hidden in the album.
‘It looks very much like the same man in the two photos, doesn’t it?
But how can it be? Even though it’s taken in exactly the same place as the previous photo, there’s a horse and carriage in the larger one, and all the people in the background are dressed like Victorians.
Perhaps it’s another relative of yours?’
‘Maybe, but the guy in this Victorian photo looks the spitting image of my great-grandfather in the wartime one, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes, he really does. Perhaps it’s his father, so your great-great-grandfather? Actually, he must be even further back than that if he’s from the Victorian times.’
‘Does it have anything written on the back of that photo like some of the others do?’ Adam asks.
I turn the photo over. ‘It says Archie, Cambridge, 1850 .’ I look at Adam. ‘That can’t be right, though? Are there two Archies in your family, do you know? Is Archibald a family name passed down through the generations?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Adam says, taking the photographs from me and comparing them. ‘And definitely not two Archies who look exactly the same. Someone must have got it wrong. Maybe he is in fancy dress?’
‘That wouldn’t explain the horse and cart next to him, and all the other people in Victorian clothing in the background, would it?
And here’s another odd thing – I’m not sure photography was even invented by 1850.
Even if it was, it wouldn’t have been a common thing, and I highly doubt there would have been a photographer roaming the streets of Cambridge in 1850 using a portable camera – even an early prototype – and the end results would never have been as clear and sharp as this photo is. ’
‘But why would someone write 1850 if it wasn’t?’ Adam asks. ‘It doesn’t make sense?’
‘Maybe your great-grandfather liked recreating scenes from different eras through Cambridge for some reason? Was he a bit of an eccentric, do you know?’
‘Not that I know of. But then I don’t know all that much about him, to be fair.’
‘I wonder if there are more hidden photos in the album?’ I say hopefully, turning the page over.
To my delight, yet again behind some other smaller photos, we find another larger picture hidden between the two layers of the thick black page.
‘It’s exactly the same size as the last one,’ I tell Adam as I gradually uncover the picture bit by bit. ‘And it looks like the same man again.’
‘Where is he this time?’ Adam asks.
‘It’s Cambridge again. Down by the river – he looks like he’s about to go punting.
’ Our mysterious Archie is this time wearing a striped blazer, a straw boater and pale trousers in the black-and-white photo.
In his hand he’s holding a long punting pole.
‘He looks like he’s wearing twenties clothing this time. But it’s definitely him again.’
‘How can you tell?’ Adam looks at the latest photo.
‘Look just here,’ I say, pointing at Archie’s face. ‘He has a mole on his cheek. You could see it in the Victorian photo too. You can’t quite make it out in the 1939 photo because it’s much smaller, but on these big ones you can.’
‘Well spotted. You must have good eyesight; I can hardly see it.’
‘It’s definitely there. I’m convinced this is the same man. Does it say anything on the back this time?’
Adam turns over the photo. ‘ Archie, The Backs, Cambridge, 1928 . What’s the Backs?”
‘The Backs is what we call the river here in Cambridge where it runs along the back of the universities,’ I say.
Adam nods. ‘It looks real enough once more. But why take photos of yourself in all these different outfits? And why go to the trouble to mock up the backgrounds too. I mean, look at the girls in the punt behind him on this photo – they look just like flapper girls, don’t they?’
‘Their outfits are pretty accurate, yes, with their cloche hats and short hair. I should show these to Luca – he’d soon tell us if they are genuine outfits or not.’
‘Are there any more hidden photos?’ Adam asks. ‘Or is this it?’
We look through some more of the albums and find another four hidden photos – all taken from different eras, but all featuring the same man who, without doubt, looks exactly like Adam’s great-grandfather, Archie.
‘That’s six altogether,’ I say, laying them all out next to each other. ‘There’s something else that’s just occurred to me.’
‘What’s that?’ Adam asks, still looking over the photos.
‘If these photos are all of Archie, I wonder if it’s also the same person taking them?’
‘You mean the person holding the camera?’
‘Yes. Someone had to be taking the photos. Even if this is a hobby that your great-grandfather had, recreating different time periods for photographs, he must have had an accomplice. The selfie certainly wasn’t invented until mobile phones became popular, and there weren’t cameras around in the forties that could take a timed photo without a photographer. ’
‘But why go to so much effort and then hide all the photos away in the albums like this if they were just a bit of fun?’ Adam looks over the photos again.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps he was embarrassed by them for some reason?’
‘And why are they all so big, when all the other photos of Archie are smaller? I’m sure it wasn’t common to get … what …’ Adam lifts one of the photos up. ‘A4-size photos as standard back then?’
‘Unless they were printed out by someone with their own photographic studio, or even just a darkroom,’ I reply, thinking about this. ‘If someone had access to their own developing process, the results could have been as large as they wanted them to be.’
‘True, I suppose.’ Adam sighs. ‘I guess we’ll never know now.’
‘Well, I’m sure he had fun taking the photos. I told you attics could be interesting places, didn’t I? I guess we ought to get on with sorting through your grandfather’s things, though – time is getting on.’
‘Yes, I suppose we had.’ Adam glances at his watch.
‘But I could sit quite happily looking through these old photos all afternoon. I’ve never seen them before.
Look at this one, for instance.’ He lifts another photo from a pile.
‘This is Archie again. It says on the back he’s in 1940 this time, which makes more sense.
Cambridge again, and he’s with a woman.’
‘Is it his wife?’
‘Nope, this one is his wife.’ Adam reaches for another photo. ‘See – Archie and Violet, 1928 . It’s their wedding day.’
I take the wedding photo from him and see the now familiar, but much younger, face of Archie smiling back at me with his new bride on his arm.
‘This is taken the same year as the punting one is supposed to be, yet Archie looks a lot younger in this photo than in the one taken by the river. How can that be?’
Adam shrugs. ‘You tell me?’
‘And this wedding photo is nowhere near the quality of the other photos of Archie we’ve found. It’s much more sepia-toned and fuzzy than the others.’
‘The photo I have here looks quite formal,’ Adam says, looking at the first photo again.
‘Archie standing side by side with a woman, in front of an aeroplane of all things. He’s wearing a suit, but she is wearing some sort of uniform.
’ He squints as he examines the photo in more detail.
‘Funny, she looks a bit like you, actually.’ Adam passes me the photo and I glance at it.
Then, like Adam, I take a closer look. He continues to speak.
‘It says on the back her name is Dorothy.’
‘Dotty,’ I say at the same time.
He looks at me. ‘What do you mean Dotty? It says Dorothy and Archie on the back. RAF Duxford, Cambridge, 1940 .’
‘Don’t you remember?’ I ask, my heart racing. ‘I told you that my great-grandmother was stationed at RAF Duxford in the Second World War; her nickname was Dotty, but her full name was Dorothy …’