Girls Behind the Camera

by Adele Geras

  Cecily is enchanted when she meets Rosalind, a photographer, and begins to help her at her studio. When Cecily’s father finds out, he’s furious, and forbids Cecily from returning.

  But Cecily longs to learn more about this “art of the future” and become a famous photographer herself. Can Cecily find the courage to follow her dreams?

  Set in Victorian London, Girls behind the Camera is a beautifully-crafted tale of hope and ambition

  For Finn, Colm and Marcella Keating

  Contents

  About this book

  Dedication

  Floorplan of 6 Chelsea Walk, 1895

  Chapter One: Ghosts

  Chapter Two: Mossy is Missing

  Chapter Three: Meeting the Templetons

  Chapter Four: A Room Full of Magic

  Chapter Five: The Poor da Pontes!

  Chapter Six: A Surprise for Cecily

  Chapter Seven: Papa is Displeased

  Chapter Eight: The Bright Family Portrait

  Chapter Nine: Rosalind and the Doll’s House

  Chapter Ten: The Bright Family Photograph

  Chapter Eleven: Cecily is Puzzled

  Chapter Twelve: The Birthday Party

  Chapter Thirteen: Telling Aunt Lizzie

  Chapter Fourteen: In the Nick of Time

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  More inspirational stories from 6 Chelsea Walk

  Usborne Quicklinks

  Cecily Bright and her friend Amy Chistlehurst had come home from school and were sitting in the nursery of Number Six, Chelsea Walk, talking about whether the house might be haunted.

  “I’ve lived here all my life,” said Cecily, “and that’s twelve years. Papa was born in this house nearly forty years ago, in 1857, and he’s never seen a ghost either.”

  “Have you asked him?” Amy wanted to know. “Perhaps he has seen one and doesn’t want to frighten you by saying so. You say your papa told you it was a school for young ladies more than a hundred years ago… If the house has been lived in for so long, someone must have died here during all that time.”

  “Schoolgirls don’t die while they’re at school. Or at least, I’ve never heard of such a thing.” Cecily looked away. “But my mother did…she died upstairs in her bedroom.”

  Amy’s eyes widened and she put a hand over her mouth as if she wanted to stop the sound coming out, but it was too late. The dreadful words, the ones she ought never to have uttered, had been spoken.

  “I didn’t think!” Amy turned scarlet with shame and ran to hug Cecily. “It just slipped out of my mouth before I could stop it…oh, I’m sorry. Will you ever forgive me, Cecily? I’m so thoughtless. Please say you’re still my friend. I’d hate not to come here and play with you. Imagine if we couldn’t see one another whenever we liked! How would I escape my brothers and sisters?”

  “You’re forgiven,” Cecily said. “Though I don’t think you should speak so about your family. You’re lucky to have them all. We rattle around in this big house, Papa says. Just him and me and Sam… Since Mama died, it’s been very empty and quiet.” She smiled at Amy. “I wish there were such a thing as a ghost in this house. I wish my mama would come back.”

  “Only restless spirits return.” Amy sounded very sure of herself. “Your mother must be at peace.”

  Cecily thought that being at peace sounded very pleasant. She herself was always, even at her happiest, aware of the fact that she had no mother and this meant that there was a little grief mixed in with everything she felt. She also knew that Papa was lonely, however much she tried to be a companion to him and no matter how often he told her that he was perfectly content.

  John Bright worked as a clerk in lawyers’ chambers, near St. Paul’s Cathedral. He had friends with whom he went for walks sometimes, or who occasionally came to Number Six to play cards. He even had what Nanny Mildred called “a lady friend”, whose name was Ellen Braithwaite. She was the sister of a colleague of Papa’s and whenever Cecily thought of her, she felt her spirits drop. Miss Braithwaite was not plain, but not pretty either. She wore clothes in colours that weren’t colours at all, in Cecily’s opinion: grey and fawn and dun and shades of red and blue that were so dark you could hardly tell them apart from black. Miss Braithwaite wasn’t very talkative, nor was she altogether silent. She was of medium height, had light brown hair which she wore done up behind her head in a round bun and was in every way completely unremarkable. She shared Papa’s interest in exploration and the study of nature and all the latest scientific discoveries. Whenever she came to the house, they spent a great deal of time in the study, poring over maps and charts and she helped him to arrange and classify his small collection of fossils. Cecily could tell that Miss Braithwaite was devoted to Papa and she feared that Papa might grow used to her and perhaps even fall in love with her and ask her to marry him. She decided to confide in Amy.

  “You remember Miss Braithwaite?”

  Amy nodded. “I have seen her often and she’s just as you describe her.”

  “I fear she may fall in love with Papa. She might even persuade him to marry her.”

  “Never!” Amy said. She sounded very confident, and Cecily was relieved. Amy went on: “Miss Ellen Braithwaite sounds extremely dull, as well as looking quite plain. Your papa is far too clever to marry such a person. And my mama says gentlemen like pretty ladies. Miss Braithwaite cannot be called pretty, so there is no need for you to worry.”

  “But they like the same things.”

  “One likes the same things as many people and yet one doesn’t fall in love with them. Love is…” Amy sought for the right words. “Love is mysterious and unfathomable.”

  Cecily thought that perhaps her friend was quoting from one of the romances to which Mrs. Chistlehurst was devoted, but she allowed herself to be reassured. She’d dreamed of her father marrying again, and while she’d often imagined the ceremony and had even drawn sketches of the dress she might wear, she was not sure she would be happy if someone else came to live in the house with them. Mama had gone, but if Papa married again, his new bride would certainly want to be their mother, hers and Sam’s. That was out of the question, for no one could take Mama’s place.

  Mary Bright died after Samuel, Cecily’s little brother, was born. She fell ill with a fever after the birth and within two days she had gone for ever, leaving Papa and Cecily alone with a tiny baby to care for. Aunt Lizzie, who was now Cecily’s favourite person in the whole world after Papa and Sam, had taken leave from her work in Sussex, where she was a gardener for a family who lived in a fine mansion. She’d moved in at once to help them. Grandmother Findlay, Mama’s mother, travelled to London for her only daughter’s funeral, but returned to her chilly house straight afterwards. She was old and infirm now and the Brights rarely went to visit her, in her house near Edinburgh. Cecily found her a difficult person to like, even though she was a relation. When Cecily first met Amy, she realized what a very small family she and Sam had in comparison with other people, though perhaps the Chistlehursts, with their abundance of aunts and uncles and cousins, were a little unusual themselves.

  In any case, Aunt Lizzie was the best aunt in the world and Cecily would not have exchanged her for a brace of other relatives. She stayed for a few weeks after the funeral and the first thing she did was hire Nanny Mildred to look after the children and be a housekeeper to Papa. Florrie, the nursery maid, was a young girl when she came to help Nanny, and now that Cecily and Sam were a little older, she was a maid of all work. Together with Cook, Nanny and Florrie looked after the house and the family, and Cecily was grateful for their presence.

  “Mama was the prettiest person in the world,” Cecily told Amy. “When she died, I was
only six. That’s how old Sam is now, and he seems such a baby still.”

  Cecily could remember how the house had looked and felt just after Mama’s death. What she would never forget – what was still there even now if you knew where to look for it – was the sadness everywhere, which seemed to take up the space that used to be filled with laughter and the sound of happy voices. Papa became suddenly much quieter. He was kind to her even when he must have been as sad as sad himself. She could recall going into the bedroom to see the new baby, when Mama was ill. How pale she’d been! Her skin was almost the same colour as the pillows.

  Cecily shivered. She said to Amy, “I do know what Mama looked like, of course, but it’s becoming harder and harder to remember everything and sometimes I have to look at the picture in the drawing room before I can bring her face to mind.”

  There was one daguerreotype of her father and her mother on their wedding day in the front parlour. Cecily sometimes stared at this picture, trying to match up her memories of her mother with the pretty, but somehow stiff and formal-looking person in the frame.

  “Even when I look at her portrait,” she went on, “it’s not exactly her. I remember how happy I used to feel when she laughed and played with me and I think of her every night before I go to sleep and then sometimes…”

  “Sometimes what?” Amy prompted her friend.

  “Nothing. Let’s play with the doll’s house.”

  “But I have to go now, Cecily.” Amy sighed. “I promised Mama I would be home early today.”

  “Then I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

  Amy ran down the stairs to the front door and Cecily waved from the landing. Then she went into the nursery again. She’d been about to tell Amy that she sometimes fancied she could feel Mama’s lips soft on her forehead; her hands smoothing the eiderdown. And I think I can hear her voice, Cecily told herself, and the songs she used to sing to lull me to sleep. Perhaps it was a good thing she hadn’t mentioned that to Amy. It would only have set off more talk of ghosts.

  I’m lucky, she thought, that Amy lives next door. The Chistlehursts were the nearest thing to the family in Little Women that Cecily had ever met. This book, by Miss Louisa May Alcott, was a great favourite of both girls and Amy had indeed been named after the Amy in the novel, though she agreed with Cecily that Jo was easily the best of the four March sisters. Amy was, unlike her namesake, the eldest of four children. She was very pretty, like her fictional counterpart, though not as vain. She had no intention of putting a clothes peg on her nose while she slept to improve it and coax it into a more fashionable shape. She was small and dainty, too, and Cecily (who was tall and not at all dainty and had red-gold hair which fell down her back in a riot of curls when it wasn’t bound up in plaits for school), felt large and awkward next to her. Amy had two younger brothers called Albert and Edmund, and a baby sister called Daisy. It fell to her, she always told Cecily, to look after these little ones far more than was fair.

  Amy also had a mother and father who were both alive and well and seemingly happy to live in the untidy and, according to Nanny Mildred, “rather rackety” household next door to the Brights. Amy and Cecily had met at school and because both of them liked the same lessons and laughed at the same things, they became friends at once. Amy was braver than Cecily, and was also very good at thinking of exciting games to play, which often involved dressing up and acting.

  Cecily was crouching on the floor of the nursery, thinking how lucky she was to have such a good friend and happily rearranging the furniture in her doll’s house, when the door flew open and Sam ran in, weeping. She sighed. Cecily couldn’t ignore her little brother when he was so distressed. He was making a great deal of noise with his sobbing. Should she remind him of his pocket handkerchief before he dragged his sleeve across his very damp face? Perhaps not. Instead, Cecily stood up and gathered Sam into her arms.

  “Stop crying,” she said, “and tell me what’s happened.”

  “Mossy’s lost. I’ve called her and called her and she won’t come.”

  Mossy was Sam’s new kitten. Cecily knew that even though the pretty little black and white cat had been a present from their father to Sam at Christmas a few weeks ago, she was the one who was really in charge of Mossy’s welfare. Sam loved her, but he sometimes forgot to go down to the kitchen and remind Cook that it was feeding time. Cook said she was far too busy to worry about a cat and whether or not she ate her meals regularly.

  “A cat must earn its keep by eating mice,” she said, sniffing a little at the inconvenience of having two children getting under her feet. But Cecily knew that no mouse could possibly be as tasty as the morsels of meat from the Sunday roast which she had to cut up into very small pieces. Sam was too young to handle the knife. He didn’t mind his sister helping with the care of Mossy, and Cecily had more patience than her brother when it came to sitting still and reading her book quietly whenever the kitten decided that a lap was just the place for a long sleep. And now Sam’s darling…her darling, too…was lost.

  “When did you last see her?”

  “A long time ago. Let’s go and look outside. Maybe she’s run away down the road. I think she has, Cecily.”

  “Why do you think that? Mossy doesn’t like the cold and there’s snow on the ground today.”

  Sam hung his head and wept even more noisily. “I opened the door. I wanted to go and make a snowball. I think Mossy ran out. I tried to stop her.”

  “You think? Aren’t you sure? Come, Sam, tell me the truth. I won’t help you unless you tell me exactly what happened.”

  Sam had let Mossy out. Cecily stood up. There was nothing for it. They’d have to go and ask permission from Nanny Mildred to go and look for her.

  “Maybe,” Sam said, “Mossy’s found a door open and run into the warm?”

  “We’ll have to knock at every house and ask if they’ve seen her. Let’s go and tell Nanny and fetch our coats and outdoor shoes.”

  Nanny Mildred had given the children strict instructions. They weren’t to knock too loudly on doors; they were to introduce themselves very politely, say clearly where they lived and ask whether Mossy had been seen. If she had not, then they were allowed to ask whoever they were addressing to keep an eye out for the silly creature. “Silly creature” was what Nanny often called Mossy, and Cecily saw that Sam frowned whenever he heard her say those words.

  “And,” Nanny added, “you must remember to say thank you as you leave. No one likes strange children appearing out of the blue. They might think you were up to mischief. I shouldn’t like that. No, indeed. I rely on you, Cecily, to take care of your brother.”

  “Yes, Nanny,” Cecily said. “We’ll be very good, I promise.” Cecily took her brother’s hand as they left Number Six. She noticed that however worried he may have been about Mossy, he still managed to enjoy brushing the piled-up snow from the black iron of the railings near the gate.

  The snow had fallen yesterday. It was far too late for such cold weather in Cecily’s opinion. February the fifteenth was almost springtime, she thought, but here was the snow, making all the trees sparkle as though white diamonds had been scattered through the branches. The cold, glittering stuff crunched under their boots as they made their way along Chelsea Walk. Usually, whenever they went anywhere together, Sam never stopped talking and asking questions but he was silent now. It was nearly three o’clock and soon the sky, which was already mauve and darkening, would be quite black and the street lights would be on. They had to make sure, Nanny Mildred said, to be back before Papa returned home from his work.

  Cecily was used to being the person who looked after Sam, and she was careful never to tell anyone how she wished that there was someone to look after her. If we had a mother, she thought, as they peered into every front garden, looking for what might be a kitten’s footprints, she’d be out here with Sam instead of me. I’d be upstairs in the nursery still, with the da Pontes. Mama had given Cecily the dolls for her sixth birthday and she’
d named them all before she died. They were called after the da Ponte family whom Mama and Papa had met while they were on their honeymoon in Venice, before Cecily was born. Mama had told her all about them and even though Cecily had been younger than Sam was now, she remembered every word. The da Pontes were bakers. Papa and Mama da Ponte had a little boy called Paolo and a little girl who was Magdalena, or Maggie for short, and they also had a baby whose name Mama couldn’t recall. It had been Mama’s idea to call her Bambina. This meant “little girl” in Italian. It was also Mama who suggested that a house for the dolls to live in would be a delightful addition to the nursery, and the wood for making it had arrived in the house before she became ill.

  After Mama died, Papa began to make the doll’s house for Cecily. He put it together all by himself, hammering the wood late at night, down in the basement of the house. Then, when it was finished, he brought it upstairs, to the nursery. Cecily had helped her father to decorate each room. She’d chosen the papers for the walls and Papa had cut and pasted them to the wood. There were so many beautiful patterns to choose from and Cecily finally decided on a paper (designed by Mr. Walter Crane, who was a famous artist and wallpaper designer, much admired by Mama) with parakeets and pomegranates on it for the doll’s house drawing room, and one covered in cabbage roses for the bedrooms. The five da Pontes lived there very happily. She’d been about to put Bambina da Ponte into her new cradle when Sam came bursting into the room with the news of Mossy’s disappearance.

  Cecily wondered whether it was true that because she was twelve, she was too old to be playing with dolls. Twelve, she’d begun to realize, was a strange sort of age to be. Her teachers, her father, Nanny Mildred and every adult she knew didn’t seem able to make up their minds about it. Sometimes it was: “Oh, Cecily, you’re much too grown up for that,” and then “that” was things like playing with her dolls, crying too easily when she felt sad, or being frightened to go to sleep without a nightlight. But sometimes it was “No, Cecily, you’re much too young for that!” Then “that” became things like, for example, riding on the omnibus with Amy to visit the Science Museum. You needed a grown-up to go with you…you were too young. You were too young, also, to overhear conversations between adults, though she and Amy had managed to pick up a great deal of information when their elders weren’t paying attention. When Amy came to visit, Cecily quite liked arranging the dolls around their dining table and pretending they were grand society folk having dinner parties and love affairs, but Amy soon tired of these games and persuaded her friend to do something more interesting, like playing at ladies and maids. Or practising writing love letters for when they fell in love, which would be quite soon, she felt sure. Or pasting scraps into a large scrapbook, or writing long plays full of murder and passion and then acting them out. Or, as she had this afternoon, trying to persuade her to go ghost-hunting in the rooms on the second floor of Number Six.