Ghosts of the Marolles

It's a faded, stained, shabby card, but still pretty.
On the front, a tied bouquet among marigolds, pebbles and grass; a pink parasol, a straw hat with a pale blue delicate flyaway ribbon.


At the bottom, in gold twirling letters, the words 'Vive Maman'.
On the other side a short hand-written note:
"Dear Mama, I am going to try very hard to become a perfect little girl. Lots of hugs, Beatrice'.

I wonder why Beatrice wrote it. There's no address or stamp on it so it clearly wasn't posted. Perhaps she left it somewhere for her mother to find, to surprise her. Had she been naughty, perhaps? Was this her way of saying sorry? I imagine this little girl, all bright-eyed, giddy with excitement, waiting for her mama's reaction - an embrace, perhaps, a kiss.



And I imagine Beatrice's mama discovering it, holding it to her breast, her heart swollen with love for the daughter who did her best, with careful joined up writing, corrected in places, a few crossings out. Her little girl.

I found it in a grubby rain-soaked cardboard box with other cards, letters and documents piled on top of pots and pans, cracked earthenware, broken glass ornaments, tarnished cutlery, brown, torn newspapers.

There are hundreds of similar boxes and crates carelessly slung on to the cobbles here each day by the flea market traders of the Marolles. And among the knick-knacks, the pottery, the jewellery, the old records, the magazines, the electrical cords, cables, plugs and paraphernalia, among the mountains of cloth, among the antiques and the tat, there are treasures like the card from little Beatrice - discarded remains of countless precious lives played out in words and pictures.


Photograph albums, portraits, letters, telegrams, greetings cards, birth congratulations, wedding celebrations, some faded, torn, black and white, long distant, others garish, bright, in glorious technicolour, modern. Everywhere evidence of past lives lived.

A stern little girl on her confirmation day, an even sterner looking matriarch, white-haired, in the black lace of mourning, a dashing besuited young man with screen-idol good looks, young couples on their wedding day, soldiers in their uniforms, sombre children in formal pose, fat babies in knitted sailor suits, newborns in flowing christening robes.
Who are they? What did they become? Surely it must be that their descendants are strolling the streets of this city not knowing their history is being so casually hawked, destined for the bin when the picture frames have been filled with new faces.





In one album lie the carefully filed and captioned photographs of a 1969 family holiday to Greece, complete with airline tickets, a map, leaflets from various attractions they visited: here we are on the beach, in a hire car, at the Acropolis, by the pool. They are delightful, filled with beaming, happy faces.

Another album, dedicated to a trip to America in 1975, has on each page in stencilled lettering identifying a place visited: 'Washington', 'South Carolina', 'Alabama' 'Huntsville' a picture of a Red Indian with 'Cherokee' beneath it, a guide to 'The World's Largest Space Exhibit'.




And in another box piles and piles of blue Airmail envelopes. I pick one. The original address is Illinois, but there's a redirection to Manhattan. How did it get here? How did all of them get here?

A gust blows up and some of them scatter into the air, land on the cobbles and are trodden under foot. It's a little overwhelming and I resist the urge to snatch the whole box, find a quiet space and try to digest, record, them all.



As I leaf through them the vendor opens a battered suitcase, turns it upside down and pours...pictures, papers and documents tumble into another cardboard box. I see certificates, exercise books, what looks like school project work and hundreds upon hundreds of envelopes filled with negatives.



I pick up an album, a wedding album, I'm guessing 1950s. The pages fall open on a large photograph, the bride and groom in the back of the wedding car. He is gazing at her adoringly. She returns the gaze bashfully. I lift the album, show the stallholder. 'Who are these people? Where did all this stuff come from?' He shrugs.

Job lots cleared from homes of the dead.

 It could overwhelm to dig too deeply...you might never leave, you might buy up the whole place to explore all these half-lives, and it could drive you mad not knowing the beginning, never knowing the end.

In another box a pile of correspondence, secured with an elastic band. And there's something about the starkness of the postcard on top. A pattern-free, colour-free business-type postcard and the message is type-written:

"Dear Jeanne, I've written twice and have not received a reply. I think of you all the time and this silence tortures me. What is it? Sickness? A change of address? What do I know? Quickly, please, send me word and let me know you are well, I won't rest until I hear from you. Yours, affectionately, Christian".

I think I must spend a few minutes staring at this card, willing it to give up its secrets.
The questions rise and froth like bubbles in shaken fizzy water. Scenarios, stories, possibilities, so many endings for the story of Jeanne and Christian. But they are no good to me, I want the real one.

I see another woman browsing through a hessian, bound wedding album. She catches my eye and something passes between us. A kind of guilt, like being caught reading someone's diary. We are gawpers, voyeurs
.




And yet I buy some of the cards, because once I've read them I can't not buy them: the note from Beatrice to her mama, one from 'Your little Camille' sending 'huge kisses' to her Papa.

I also buy a 'Happy Anniversary' card sent on September 9, 1939, popped in the post eight days after Germany invaded Poland.

This card holds me. Six months after it was sent the Nazis invaded Belgium. The couple's address is on Avenue Louise, a matter of doors away from what was to become the headquarters of the Gestapo.

 We cannot imagine what happened next. We cannot imagine.

Everyone has a story Thomas. And I see them in all the boxes, the crates, the cartons, scattered on the cobbles, picked over but in the main ignored. We can't keep everything and they are, after all, only words, only pictures. But if only they could talk.

xxx