It fell on Victoria and Wilson to clear Lady Benson’s flat after her death. Her children were all living abroad except for Edward, who refused to help and in any case his wife knew he would not have been much use. The work took longer than expected, the cupboards were crammed with theatre programmes and school reports and the minutes of long-defunct committees. In one drawer they found £1,000 in banknotes. This Victoria gave to Wilson. She shook her head but Victoria said, ‘You deserve it, Wilson, truly you do. How long since you came to work for Mamma?’ And when Wilson said it would be thirty-eight years in November, Victoria cried, ‘Thirty-eight years deserves at least a thousand pounds.’ Delicately Wilson suggested that the money might be useful to Victoria with her husband not working, but Victoria said she was well paid, that was not a problem. She was pleased at how open she could be with Wilson.
It was a hard few days. Looking around at the heaps of papers, Victoria cried at one point, ‘Oh, Wilson, there is so much stuff here, shall we just throw it all away, what use is it to anyone?’ But Wilson would not allow that, she would sort through the papers, it would give her an interest. And since she was close to tears, Victoria promised to take another week off work and help her.
They found many letters. But the most curious thing was a pile of photographs of Lady Benson’s children, kept in a large red lacquered box. The children as babies, the children at school, the children in adulthood, alone or posed in groups. As time passed they were shown in increasingly informal Kodak prints.
They sorted the photographs into piles. The smallest was Sophia’s. Some of her photographs were scuffed, one had been torn quite across and then replaced in the box. The next smallest was Irene’s, and included photographs of her paintings. Mark’s pile was much larger, and showed him at every stage of his life, including a fine image of him wearing the uniform of the Diplomatic Corps. But what most surprised them was Edward’s pile, which was twice as high even as Mark’s. It contained a series of little formal images of him as a young boy, each with a date pencilled on the back, evidently sent every year from Canada; and dozens of pictures of him as a married man, including a large set of wedding photographs and a wedding album; and views of him in military uniform; and more recent images.
Victoria and Wilson started this process as though it were a game. ‘One for Sophia. Two for Edward,’ they would say, pushing the photographs across the table. But as the piles rose, they ceased to laugh.
‘Poor thing. She loved Edward so much,’ remarked Victoria towards the end. ‘And he was so unkind to her.’
‘It’s a shame, it’s a great shame.’
‘He never could get over her being his mother. He hated her for it, I think. I suppose we’d better give these photographs to the subjects, don’t you think? Unless you’d like some for yourself, dear Wilson.’
‘I would indeed. I have my eye on some, if I may say so, particularly Miss Sophia in her first nurse’s uniform. Always such a dear girl, that Sophia, I almost brought her up, you know.’
They tied up the photographs in bundles. Later Victoria threw away many of the images of Edward. He was not to know of his mother’s feelings. It would only make him feel even more guilty than he did already.