Page 21 of Right Place, Right Time
‘Is it his wife?’
‘Nope, this one is his wife.’ Adam reaches for another photo. ‘See –Archie and Violet, 1928. It’s their wedding day.’
I take the wedding photo from him and see the now familiar, but much younger, face of Archie smiling back at me with his new bride on his arm. ‘This is taken the same year as the punting one is supposed to be, yet Archie looks a lot younger in this photo than in the one taken by the river. How can that be?’
Adam shrugs. ‘You tell me?’
‘And this wedding photo is nowhere near the quality of the other photos of Archie we’ve found. It’s much more sepia-toned and fuzzy than the others.’
‘The photo I have here looks quite formal,’ Adam says, looking at the first photo again. ‘Archie standing side by side with a woman, in front of an aeroplane of all things. He’s wearing a suit, but she is wearing some sort of uniform.’ He squints as he examines the photo in more detail. ‘Funny, she looks a bit like you, actually.’ Adam passes me the photo and I glance at it. Then, like Adam, I take a closer look. He continues to speak. ‘It says on the back her name is Dorothy.’
‘Dotty,’ I say at the same time.
He looks at me. ‘What do you mean Dotty? It saysDorothy and Archieon the back.RAF Duxford, Cambridge, 1940.’
‘Don’t you remember?’ I ask, my heart racing. ‘I told you that my great-grandmother was stationed at RAF Duxford in the Second World War; her nickname was Dotty, but her full name wasDorothy…’
6
Adam steadily blinks at me while he tries to process what I’ve just said.
‘Are you suggesting that this is a photograph ofmygreat-grandfather andyourgreat-grandmother?’ he asks, his eyes now wide. ‘It can’t be … can it?’
‘I know, it sounds crazy, but I’m sure this is her. I have seen a few photos before and even you said she looked a bit like me.’
Adam takes hold of the photo again and studies it. ‘Shedoeslook like you. What are the odds they both knew each other?’
‘Bit crazy, isn’t it?’
‘Too right consideringwe’veonly just met. So this really is your great-grandmother?’ He looks up at me.
‘It is.’
‘We definitely know this is my great-grandfather, because the other photos say Archibald Darcy on the back and there’s the newspaper clippings too.’
‘What newspaper clippings?’
Adam reaches behind him and pulls an old scrapbook out of the suitcase. ‘Here, I had a quick flick through when we were first looking at the photos.’
He passes me the scrapbook and I open the front cover. Inside are pages of newspaper clippings, mainly from the 1930s and 1940s.
Professor Archibald Darcy– a clipping from theCambridge Daily Newsstates –of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, welcomes new students at the beginning of the Michaelmas Term.And there’s a photo of Archie in a tweed suit, a long gown and a mortar board.
Professor Archibald Darcy opens the new wing of the Cavendish Laboratory. Professor Archibald Darcy on why Cambridge University is the best in the world for the study of Physics– and it goes on, with clipping after clipping from mainly local newspapers, until the surprising headline inThe Timesnewspaper ofProfessor Archibald Darcy, formally of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, goes missing.
‘Have you seen this?’ I ask Adam as I tap the page. ‘It says your great-grandfather went missing in 1945. Did you know?’
‘It does ring a bell,’ Adam says, screwing up his face trying to remember. ‘Someone might have mentioned it to me at some stage – I can’t really recall. What else does it say?’
‘Professor Archibald Darcy has been reported as missing by his wife, Violet. The professor was last seen leaving the university grounds on Thursday. Cambridge police are investigating the matter, but there are currently not thought to be suspicious circumstances surrounding the professor’s disappearance.’
‘Can I see?’ Adam has a quick read, then looks back through a few pages of the album. ‘It says on this newspaper clipping that he resigned from the Cavendish Laboratory in 1940, but they didn’t know what he was going on to do.’
‘Bit odd, isn’t it?’ I ask. ‘He left a distinguished and I imagine well-paid job that was clearly very well respectedboth within the university and the city, and then a few years later he disappeared?’
‘I don’t know – these things happen, don’t they?’ Adam says, clearly not quite as intrigued by the possible mystery as I am. ‘Perhaps he had a breakdown or something, and went off the rails for a bit. It was wartime after all. Today we’d be more likely to recognise it as mental illness and he’d be given help. But back then it was either covered up or just not diagnosed as such.’
I shouldn’t be, but I’m surprised at Adam’s empathetic and informed reaction.
