when the mortar shells came raining down through the stained-glass skylight, tumbling and exploding directly amongst them, scattering shrapnel and mess tins and glassware and limbs.
There was a moment’s startled pause in the room, a dramatic swish of cymbals, and then the waltz continued, the waiters moving in with stretchers to take the bodies away, the medical students standing around to see if there was anything much they could do, a pair of maids hanging back with sponges and buckets and mops.
And the music was slower then, quieter, and many of the guests were returning to their seats, some of them even fetching their coats and heading for home, and Julia and William were soon the only ones left dancing, with small tired steps, back two three and turn two three, and William was silent and pale-faced in her arms, not meeting her eye, barely keeping a hold of her hand or her waist, his shoes dragging rather than smartly clicking across the polished floor. William? she said, and waited in vain for a reply. The music came to an end, and there was a strange crackling hiss as the musicians put down their instruments and the conductor turned to face the two dancers with a bow. There was no applause, and William broke away from her, not hearing her thank you or acknowledging her smile, lowering his head as he shuffled towards the table by the corner of the stage where his men had once sat. Julia crossed the dance floor for the last time and rejoined her friends at their table. They silently poured her a drink, avoiding her querying gaze.
Oh, she said, as she sat down, as if something she’d not thought of before had only just crossed her mind. Oh. She wondered what the crackling hissing sound could be. A young waiter glided past with a silver tray, turning and holding it out to her, indicating with a nod that the slim white envelope was for her. Oh, she said, again.
She showed David the two telegrams later in the evening, while he sat at the kitchen table drinking hot chocolate, the rain still pounding against the window and traffic sliding wetly through the street. She had them in a brown envelope, at the back of the useful drawer where she kept string and sellotape and candles and cotton wool. The paper was blackened and cracked along the folds, and one of the corners was stained with damp. He read both of them, the one beginning Surprised but happy also, and the one beginning Regret to inform, and he slid them delicately back into the envelope.
People are very resilient you know, she said to him later, when he pressed her about it. People find all manner of ways of working things out. I wouldn’t mind but it was just so quick, she said.
She stood up from the kitchen table, put the envelope with the telegrams back into the cluttered drawer, and headed out of the room.
I don’t think I’ll have any chocolate tonight, she said. Will you be okay to sort things out down here? All that dancing, she said, I’ve worn myself out, I’m not as young as I was. She stood in the doorway a moment and something blurred and drifted in her eyes, as though she was confused, trying to remember what she was doing. He turned in his chair, his bare feet cold on the stone floor, watching her.
Auntie Julia? he said, and she turned her focus back towards him.
Yes dear? she said.
What was he like though? he asked. When you knew him at least; what was he really like?
She looked at him, her hands weakly twisting and untwisting the hem of her long cardigan. She shook her head, as if she was still surprised.
I have absolutely no idea, she said.
9 Contract, wage slip, duty sheet, from Coventry Museum, 1964
They gave him a small rectangular name badge when he started work at the museum, three years after that opening night; its white plastic soon yellowed from sunlight and the nicotine stain of the staffroom. David Carter, it said, Junior Curatorial Assistant. His mother insisted on him wearing it when she took his first-day-at-work photo, and said it was a pity they didn’t give him a uniform as well but she supposed it was all modern these days. He told her that it was only the attendants who wore uniforms, but she said she couldn’t see the difference. She said oh if your father could see you now he’d be so proud, and he said do you think so? Julia, when she saw the photograph, sent him a postcard of the British Museum, with Onwards and upwards! written on the back.
His first day was a disappointment. He spent the morning being shown around the galleries by the Senior Keeper, despite knowing every last inch of the place, and the afternoon sitting in the staffroom while someone tried to work out what jobs they could give him to do. He’d half expected to launch his career with a dramatic discovery in some lost corner of the basement stores, or at the very least to be given immediate responsibility for the design and layout of a groundbreaking new exhibition. But instead he spent the first few weeks doing odd jobs for the rest of the curatorial staff; looking for records in the enormous card-index boxes, taking draft documents to the secretaries’ office to be typed up, checking the mousetraps and the thermohydrographs, keeping the stores spotlessly clean, making the teas and taking away the post. By the end of his first week he had an encyclopedic knowledge not of the archival filing system but of the milk and sugar preferences of each member of staff. It’s not what I thought it would be like, he told his sister, and she told him he’d better get used to it, he was the new boy, and what did he expect without any proper qualifications?
But after a few weeks things started to improve. He was assigned to the Keeper of Social History and cast more into the apprentice role that he’d been expecting. And once the Director had convinced himself that this was a career David was serious about, there was mention of training courses, placements, personal responsibilities. He began to be allowed away on research visits, to Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, as far north as Edinburgh and Glasgow, even Aberdeen. But he still spent most of his time flipping through card indexes, cross-checking records, inspecting stored objects, looking for mouse droppings in the basement, and it was a few years more before the job started to involve any of the work he’d imagined doing when he’d been a twelve-year-old boy poring over hand-drawn gallery designs and displays.
Julia came to see him after a few months, once he’d settled in. He was talking to an attendant in the foyer when she came through the main door; she stopped and looked for a long moment, surprised, she admitted later, by the pounding sensation of pride she’d felt.
Excuse me young man, she said, approaching him finally, Dorothy waiting by the door, I wonder if you might be able to show me around the museum? He turned to her, looking taller than she remembered, looking suddenly much older than the boy who’d visited her so often, and said I’m sure I can manage that Auntie Julia. She took his arm and let him lead her slowly around the first gallery, stopping to look at each of the display cases, asking questions, asking some of the questions more than once. He wondered if there was something wrong with her hearing. Dorothy had been before and hung back a little, noticing at the same time how grown-up David seemed and how much Julia had suddenly aged. She watched him showing Julia the case of medieval artefacts, lumps of pottery and ironware and stonework, most of it found during the recent rebuilding of bomb-damaged sites, scraped out of the mud as new foundations were dug into the ground. She watched him showing her the prehistoric case, a few bones and brooches and artist’s impressions, telling her that he didn’t think they were very reliably dated or sourced. Julia winked, lifting a finger to her lips. I won’t tell if you don’t, she whispered. He moved on to the natural history displays, a whole rack of beetles balanced on nail-heads, a cotton-wool drawer of speckled birds’ eggs, a tray of pinned butterflies, a panoramic landscape crowded with stuffed birds. His enthusiasm dropped when he showed her these; he half turned away even as he dutifully described each panel.
I don’t even know why they call it natural history, he said. It’s not the same at all.
