There is a hall in my friend’s house full of pictures of family, their friends, the famous people they come into contact with through work. When I stay, on sleepless nights I like to walk up and down it, slowly learning a new face in the low light. Most of these are people I will never meet, dead and gone many years ago. Some are far off and distant, leaving their portrait behind as a leaving gift, ready to take on a new continent. Not so many months ago my face was put up there; the three of us, in the corner. It was always the three of us in the corner.
It had started as an exercise one night when I felt lonely and lost. Learning these faces so formative and crucial to Nick’s development seemed a way to be closer to him, and I imagined I would understand him better. I panic sometimes. One day, after being particularly intrigued by a woman in a dark fur coat with white blonde hair who wasn’t looking at the camera, I asked him who it was. He showed me that on the back of each picture was a name, dates, and brief description. He said that his mother kept it for “The Grandchildren”, a term he’d always hated but understood. This was being kept for future generations, for people in the family who, like me, would never get to meet this hoard of influences and history. Polaroid, oil painting, Kodak snap, pencil sketch, digital printout, we all had those neat little numbers and a sentence or two with minimal grammar. Condensed history.
Nick told me I could take them down to look if I liked, and his mother would be pleased that I knew, but to be careful not to move them. It just seemed wrong. I agreed.
When I was having a particularly bad night, I would allow myself one photo, and pick a face I felt I’d grown to know as well as I ever could. It became a little ceremony; first I’d ask their permission politely, and if I felt I was being allowed, I’d bring the picture away from the wall. There was never much written there, and I always always wanted more, but somehow it was just enough.
“Lilly Easdale, family, 1843 - 80. Taken ‘74. Pianist, gin drinker.” She smiled in such a curious manner I’d looked at her photo for weeks and weeks, never ready to look yet.
There was a young blond lad with a tshirt jogging toward the camera. He appeared to be laughing. “Alex Martendale, 1984-04, friend. Taken 03. Artist. Lovely human being.” The last sentence had been written on in black ink, and not the blue biro used previously. Over this in dull pencil markings were the word “BASTARD” in capital letters, and whoever had done it obviously tried to remove it at a later date- the blue underneath was smudged.
There was a photo of a rather famous musician at one of his first stadium shows, glossy but unframed by the edge of one wall, up by the ceiling. He wore heavy sunglasses and rather unflattering facial hair. “Max North. 1987- Family.” The full stop was indented heavily.
Almost all of the people on this wall were smiling. It seemed as though it were done on purpose, each person frozen there in some kind of happiness, as though the togetherness of this great web of people were a celebration. It was comforting to see so many natural smiles in one place. Nick says he thinks of that wall when he’s away from home with work.
“They’re all genuinely happy photos. I’ve looked at every single one, known all of them that were put there in my lifetime, and there isn’t one forced or false smile there. It’s comforting. It reminds me my home is a place that other people feel safe and happy. It’s not just my home.”
In some strange, indirect way, that moved me. It was a homage to a family, that assembly of happy faces. They were all part of a long-spanning, close family. I’d been a part of Nick’s life a few years, and I’d known his parents for an even shorter time, yet I’d earned my numbers, my place in the ranks. I’d promised myself I would never look at the back of my own photo to see what was written. I imagined this was a terrible romantic acknowledgement to the way others see me and the skewing of my vision of myself and blah blah blah. One night, after too much vodka and a takeaway, I indulged and told Jamie about my strange little ritual.
“I’m not being creepy am I?” I asked, breaking the heavy theatrical mood I’d made.
“No. I like it. ’s nice” came the reply through half a mouthful of doner meat. “Seen yours by’t way.”
“Oh?”
“Mm. ’s on our picture. Nice.” I looked at him for a moment, not questioning whether I wanted to hear, but trying to get rid of the double vision. He was wiping bits of garlic sauce off his face with his hands, and I really wish I hadn’t. “Yeah, sweet. Thought so and all.”
I never asked what was on it, but I guessed enough from what I’d been told that it was affectionate, and not as factual as Lilly’s or blunt as the one Max North garnered. I’ve been tempted to take it down from time to time, but the maddening sweetness of not knowing pulls my hands back.
This is proof they think well of me. That’s enough.
