The Skeleton Tree by Diane Janes (reading women TXT) 📕

first appeared as a backdrop to what was evidently a christening party, presumably Ronnie’s, as there was no sign of any other young children. The group had gathered alongside the sundial in the front garden for the shot, but big hats must have been in vogue that year, for the women’s faces were all in shadow, while the baby itself was no more than a bundle in its mother’s arms, trailing ghostly white lace.

‘I wonder what colours those dresses were,’ Wendy said. ‘It’s such a pity that everything is in black and white.’ It was strange, she thought, the way nothing had really changed. The sundial was still there, the rose bushes a perfect match for the ones she had recently planted herself, and in the background the front door stood open invitingly. The whole party might have dressed up twenties’ style and slipped into the garden to take the picture that very afternoon. On another occasion a family group had posed outside the front door, like a pre-enactment of the shot Bruce’s father had set up just weeks before.

Though the albums had belonged to Dorothy, she had evidently been in close touch with her sister because many of the photographs were of Elaine and her family, particularly Ronnie, who as Dorothy’s godson presumably merited special attention. As a result, his progress was lovingly recorded: a small boy holding a wooden sword aloft, a taller boy in a school uniform, a youth in a Roman toga worn for a fancy dress party, in the uniform of a Boy Scout, and eventually a young man who looked rather dashing posed astride a motorcycle above a caption which read Ronnie, July 1939.

The last few pages were devoted to Dorothy’s pre-war holiday in the Lake District, which included shots of Joan waving from a pleasure steamer. Between the last page and the back cover someone had slipped a loose enlargement. It was face down, but there was a sprawling diagonal message across the back, the writing far more flamboyant than Dorothy’s. For Aunt Dodo. See you soon. With love from Ronnie.

Joan turned it over and Ronnie smiled up at them, his eyes forever focussed on something just above the photographer’s left shoulder. Unbearably young, handsome and confident.

The war years marked a downturn in the number of photographs. ‘You couldn’t get the film,’ Joan explained.

The post-war era contained fewer appearances by Elaine and her family, but enough for Wendy to mark some changes. Ronnie and Dora were absent, while Bunty, Elaine’s remaining daughter, had grown tall and slim, sported a heavily lipsticked mouth and a fiancé called Bill Webster. Elaine’s surviving son, Hugh, though bearing some physical resemblance to the lost Ronnie, seemed like a pale imitation of his brother as he posed self-consciously with a cricket bat. There was a difference in Elaine Duncan too. She was still slim and elegantly dressed, but her face appeared to have lost the art of smiling. It was strange, Wendy thought, the way it seemed as if she was and yet was not the same woman.

Joan said quietly, ‘When you’re young, you are more resilient. Terrible things happen, but you can get over them. Life went on and I used to assume that Aunt Elaine must have got over what happened to Ronnie and come to terms with the fact that Dora would never come back, but since I’ve been widowed, I’ve come to realize how wrong I was. There’s never a day goes by when I don’t think of my George, but of course you can’t tell people that. And although everyone is very kind, they don’t really want you to go on about it. “Get over it” … that’s the expression, isn’t it? You can get over illnesses, but I’m afraid there’s no cure for death.’

‘You just have to live with it … Sorry, that was an awfully stupid thing to say.’

They turned back to the albums, which had moved into a third generation of christenings. There were Bunty and Bill Webster, wearing fashions Wendy recognized from her own childhood. Joan’s wedding to George Webb was lavishly recorded, before she sailed away for years of exile in South Africa and Canada, but glimpses of The Ashes became increasingly rare as Dorothy’s encounters with her sister and the extended family either happened less frequently or went unrecorded.

‘Mother died in 1964,’ Joan said. ‘So that’s the end of her albums. I was abroad mostly, but I’ve managed to find two more photographs of Elaine. Apart from the family groups at various weddings, where she’s just a speck in the background, that is. I don’t know who took this one.’ She handed across a shot of a couple sitting in deckchairs at some unidentified resort. ‘I suppose someone sent it out to us. People often used to include a few snaps with their letters. There’s Aunt Elaine and Uncle Herb. That’s Hugh’s wife, standing up behind them, so it was probably Hugh behind the camera. And this is the very last one.’

Wendy took the proffered snapshot. This time it was of Elaine alone, sitting in the courtyard at the back of The Ashes. She was occupying a sturdy-looking, square-backed canvas garden chair which had flat wooden arms on which she had rested an elbow. She looked very old, her face wrinkled, almost skeletal, framed by grey hair in a tight perm. The fingers which had strayed up to touch a string of beads around her neck were bony. She was wearing a navy and white polka dot frock and the broad blue shoes of the geriatric over thick, pale stockings. There was a white cardigan draped around her shoulders in spite of the sunlight. On her wrist was a delicate ladies’ watch, the image so precise that the time – a quarter to three – could be made out. Elaine, though unsmiling, had inclined her head slightly to one side in what appeared to be a single concession to a photograph she didn’t want to have taken.

‘Thank