A hundred years apart
My father was not a man given to personal revelation. Indeed, vast areas of his life have always been a closed book to me. Naturally this had the effect of arousing my curiosity. Let's be honest; nobody likes to be excluded from a secret. Consequently, as a small boy I was always rummaging in the cupboards and drawers of my parents' bedroom, looking for clues, or "prying into his affairs" as my father would doubtlessly have regarded it ...with justice, I suppose. Curiosity is natural in childhood and I think most children go through a phase ("What's this thing, Mummy") of investigating parental belongings. But in my case, because this natural propensity was forbidden, it became negativised and furtive. So, when I see this photograph, there is always a little guilty twinge somewhere that tells me I ought not to be looking at it. I discovered it in the bottom of a suitcase which my father kept beneath his side of the parental bed.
There was no doubting for an instant who this was, for, in the heavy countenance and dolichocephalic skull
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