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It was still in good condition, kept clean and dry in a plastic wrapper, and when he slid it out to look through the pages the only e of the text and the starched forraphs; the mayor, the director, the city treasurer, the benefactor's wife, sitting on the platform with their hands folded into their laps, their hair waxed neatly into place, listening attentively to one another's opening speeches, applauding

He re out into the street, to the long crowd of people pressing and shifting back down the steps and away round the corner, five or six abreast, chatting and ss, their hands stuffed into their pockets and their collars turned up against the last of the winter winds One or two police up and down the line, asking people to keep out of the road and leave space for passers-by, keeping an eye out for light fingers and lost children A pair of journalists were hanging around at the front of the queue, squiggling co people to sed to look into the lens at once, a long stretch of the; David near the front, waiting, uns, half hidden by the heavy black coat of the man ahead of him

The inky picture ended up on the front page of the Evening Telegraph, and the front page landed on the kitchen table for a while before being neatly clipped out and filed away into the box under his bed

Didn't it occur to you to s over the paper, still dressed in his dust-plastered work clothes Didn't the photographer say cheese or soed, embarrassed

Wasn't bothered, he said Susan, who'd co television when Albert called, pulled the paper across the table and said let h the faces and found her brother, s in spite of herself, reluctantly impressed

Fairls after you now David ignored her, his face colouring, and leant over to try to read the article Dorothy, standing at the oven to stir the gravy and check the chops and the potatoes, turned to Albert and said it's aled Albert waved his hand at her in passing acknowledgement

Listen, he said, taking the paper back fro the first visitors to another of our city's proud buildings, the long-awaited Municipal Art Gallery and Museum Guests were especially honoured to have in their midst the future director of the museureat sulk on his face David tried to pull the paper away, but his father whisked it up fro his voice above Susan's laughter The city treasurer, he continued, a tight-fisted bugger if everone, said it's a shocking waste of e It doesn't say that does it? Dorothy asked, lifting her hand to her hed, and

she joined in, ean to cough and splutter and double over in an attempt to haul in some breath

You really should go to the doctor's, Dorothy said when he'd recovered, handing hilass of water Albert didn't reply

And there was nothing now to show for this, in the archives he had kept Noa violent red as he fought for breath, no prescriptions or bottles of pills Just the ry defiant bark of it, dry and choked, as though his lungs were full of tangled steel wool There should have been soht, or to pin to the wall

If he was asked, he was going to say that he re man; as someone who could balance two dozen bricks on his broad shoulders while he cli both hi the whole vegetable patch over in the hour or two of light that was left after supper He was going to say that he remembered his father as a busy man; as someone who always seemed to be in a hurry to be soarden, away from the supper table and out to join his friends in the pub And he was going to say that he re man; someone who could hold his wife in his arms without shame and kiss her as if nobody else was in the rooain to tuck his son into bed, with broad strong hands that sarette smoke

No one was much surprised when he died, and Albert was probably the least surprised of all It had been coiven up and started waiting for it It feels like I' in tiny splinters of metal every time I open my mouth, he told David once It feels like there's a barrow-load of bricks weighing down on ot back from the shops one afternoon, his head tipped back over the arm of the sofa, a blanket wrapped around him like a shroud She called out, and by the ti beside the sofa, holding Albert's hand and stroking the side of his face The shopping bags were on the floor, split open, tins and packets and loose wrapped meats spilt halfway across the room, and it was only when the doctor arrived that she pushed herself back to her feet again

My father wasn't one for talking much, he wanted to tell someone, and if he did it was never really about the past, about his farew up, or what happened in the war I knoas in the Navy and that's about all, I don't knohere he went, or what he did when he got there, I don't knohaton, if she saw anyone killed or injured at all I only know that they were apart for a long tiether again there were things they didn't feel the need to talk about; not even, I suppose, to each other I think that's how I got so interested in history, he would say, since there was so little of it at home There weren't even any photos on the wall until after my father had died

I suppose I didn't really know hiht say Well, isn't that the oldest story, so us ever did?

8 Two telegrams, November 1939 and April 1940