A Medal for Leroy (5 page)

it for what it was. There, looking up at me, was Papa’s face. The frame was not polished, I noticed, as it always had been before on the mantelpiece in their sitting room in Folkestone. I felt Maman’s hand on my shoulder.

“He looks pleased to see you,
chéri
,” she said.

When Auntie Pish fell asleep soon after, we crept out of her room and drove home. I sat in the car with the parcel on my lap all the way back to London, opening up the wrapping from time to time to look at Papa.

“I’ll polish that frame when we get home,” Maman said.

“I’ll do it,” I told her.

In the end Maman and I did it together, on the kitchen table, with Jasper up on a chair beside us, watching. Maman did the hard work, putting the polish on, and rubbing the tarnish off. It took some doing. Then I had the satisfaction of shining it up, breathing and polishing till it gleamed. Once it was done I took it up to my bedroom and stood it up on my desk. I sat there and stared at Papa. That was when Auntie Snowdrop’s words came back to me – I hadn’t thought about them in a long while. “Always remember, Michael, it’s not the face that matters, not the skin, not the hair, it’s what lies beneath. You have to look deeper, Michael, behind. Look through the glass, through the photo, and you’ll find out who your Papa really was.”

I looked hard into Papa’s face, into his eyes, trying all I could to know the man behind the glass, behind the photo, behind the eyes.

Jasper was with me, snuffling around my feet. I wasn’t paying him any attention, which was why, I suppose, he decided to jump up onto my desk and shove his nose into my face, knocking the photograph over as he did so. I heard the glass shatter as it fell.

“Get off, Jasper,” I shouted, pushing him aside angrily. I’d never been so angry with him before. As I was standing the frame up again the glass fell out onto my desk in several pieces. I’ve often thought since that Jasper might have done it on purpose, because he knew, because he was trying to tell me, because Auntie Snowdrop had told him all about it, and he knew that’s what Auntie Snowdrop wanted him to do. He wanted me to find it, and so did Auntie Snowdrop. That’s why he broke it. That’s what I think, anyway.

It was the first time I’d seen Papa’s face not through glass. He was already somehow more real to me, closer and more alive without the glass in between us. The photo was loose in the frame now, and had slipped down. I noticed there was one small piece of broken glass still trapped there in the bottom corner of the frame. I tried to prise it out with the point of my pencil, but I couldn’t do it. I’d have to open up the frame at the back if I was going to get it out.

I hadn’t really noticed, not until now, but the back of the frame was nothing but a piece of cardboard, held in place by a few rusty-looking pins. All I had to do was to pull these out one by one and the cardboard came away easily enough. I had expected to see simply the back of the photograph, but there was something else there, a writing pad about the same size as the photo. On the front it said, ‘Basildon Bond’, in fancy printing, and below it, written in pencil, in large capital letters:

It took me a little while to cast my mind back, to work it out. This must have been written then about a month or so before she died, because I knew that was in June of 1950. (I checked later in my diary and I was right about that.)

She’d hidden it behind the photo for me to find. Behind the photo! Behind the photo!

Maman called up from downstairs. “
Chéri
, I’ve got to go down to the shops. Have you got that dog up there? I’d better take him with me. He hasn’t had his walk yet. You’ll be all right on your own?”

“I’ll be fine,” I told her. I opened the door to let Jasper out. He didn’t seem to want to go even when Maman whistled for him. She had to shout for him more than once. Even then he went only because I pushed him out – I was still cross with him. He gave me a long last look before he left.
Read it
, his eyes were telling me.
Read it
. Then he was gone, scuttling down the stairs. I heard the front door close after them.

I was alone. I went back to my desk, picked up Auntie Snowdrop’s writing pad, sat on my bed, pillows piled behind me, rested the pad on my knees, and opened it. My heart was pounding. I knew even as I began to read – and I have no idea how I knew – that my life would be changed forever, that after I’d read this I would never be the same person again.

m telling you this, writing it down for you, Michael, because we all have a right to know who we are. I should have told you myself, face to face a long time ago. Early on, when you were little, I always thought you were too young – or that was my excuse. And then as you grew up, I didn’t know how to tell you. I never had the courage, that’s the truth of it. I should have told your Maman too, but I could never quite bring myself to do that either.

Now that I’ve been told in the hospital that time is running out for me, that I have only a few months left, I thought this was the one last thing I had to do. Somehow I had to tell you, and there seemed to me only one way to do it. I would put it all down on paper, and arrange things, if I could, so that one day you would find it and read it for yourself. I did try to point you in the right direction. I did tell you where to look, didn’t I? Look behind the face. Remember?

I could have given it to your Auntie Mary for her to give to you, but I don’t want her to know I’m doing this – I don’t like to upset her. And anyway, as you’ll soon discover, this is between you and me. Your Auntie Mary knows the truth of everything that’s written here – she was so much part of the whole story – but she’s always told me it was best to keep it as a secret between her and me, just the two of us, and so it always has been. That way, she thinks, no one comes to any harm.

Until just recently, until my last visit to the hospital, when they told me, I suppose I always used to believe she was right. But not any more. I think there are some things that are so much part of who we are, that we should know about them, that we have a right to know about them.

If you’re reading this at all, Michael, then it means you’ve found my little writing pad behind the photo of your Papa, just as I intended you to. Please don’t be too upset. Read it again from time to time as you get older. I think it will be easier to understand as you get older. It’s not so much that wisdom comes with age – as we older people rather like to believe. It doesn’t. But I am sure that as we grow up we do become more able to understand ourselves and other people a little better. We are more able to deal with difficulty, and to forgive perhaps. If you are anything like me, Michael – and I think you probably are – I am sure you will become more understanding and forgiving as the years pass. I hope so, because I’m sure that it’s only in forgiving that we find real peace of mind.

I’m writing this as well, because I want you to feel proud of who you are, and proud of the people who made you. Believe you me, you have much to feel proud about. Perhaps my problem has always been that I have never been proud enough of who I am. I am a bit muddle-headed, simple-minded perhaps, and foolish – certainly foolish. I have always allowed my sister, whom I love dearly, to do most of my thinking for me. It’s just how we are and always have been. She’s been the strong one all my life, my rock you might say. I know she can seem a bit of a know-all, a bit overbearing; but as you’ll soon discover, she has looked after me, stood by me when no one else would. There’s a lot more to Mary than meets the eye – that’s true of everyone, I think. I should have been quite lost in this life without her. So here’s our story, hers and mine – and most importantly, yours.

None of this will make sense if you don’t know to begin with how Mary and I were brought up, what kind of home we came from. We were born – Mary as you know, an hour or so before me – way up north in Scotland, in Aberdeenshire, in a grey old house in the countryside miles away from any town. I went into Aberdeen – which was less than twenty miles from our home – just once in my entire childhood, and then it was to the hospital to have my tonsils out. The countryside around us, and our village, was our whole world. We didn’t speak English in our house, but a strange language they call ‘Doric’. Not many people in our village spoke it. A few did, but only very few. I don’t think anyone speaks it any more these days, which is a shame. Father insisted we spoke it, read it, and even said our prayers in it.

Father was a Minister of the Church – the Kirk we called it. He was rather disapproving and distant with us, a stern man. I don’t think I can remember him smiling once. I can’t even imagine it happening. Mother was kind enough with us, but she was very meek and mild. She lived, as we did, under Father’s rules, under his shadow. It became clear to us as we grew up that she had to do what Father said in all things. She was truly fearful of him, I think, as Mary and I were too. He never beat us or harmed us, but he was always a brooding presence. He moved about the house like a ghost. Every time he came into the room it seemed that a cold draught came in with him.

So our childhood was spent mostly outside the house, as far away from Father as possible. Outside – always providing we had done our homework and Father had checked it – we could wander free, just so long as we were back for meal times, our hands and faces clean. The countryside was a paradise for us, and we weren’t alone in it. There were wounded creatures to care for: an owl with a broken wing, a chick fallen out of the nest, a lost duckling, a lizard that had lost its tail. At one time Mary and I had a secret animal hospital in a shed at the bottom of our garden, and lots of little patients. We had woods and fields to play in, hills to climb, streams to paddle in. Here we could lark about without fear of disapproval.

Mary and I became more and more inseparable and protective of one another as we got older. At school we sat side by side and never played with anyone else in the playground unless we had to. I was always better at reading and singing, and Mary could do sums in her head without even thinking about it. We helped one another. So, when it came to homework, we expected to get the same mark, and of course we usually did.