The Memory Box

by Margaret Forster

  What she couldn’t have known was quite how much to my taste that walk would be. As I took another minor road to Carlisle, a wonderful winding road dipping up and down hills through Uldale and Caldbeck, unfenced for the most part and empty, and with sudden views of the Solway, I thought how what I had seen was imprinted visually on my mind and how I would be able to do that walk over and over again in my head for years to come. I had seen everything with a photographer’s eye, sharply, in a concentrated fashion, and it had been thrilling. Would she have expected me to have this kind of appreciation? She and my father were both architects, and she was an artist, if an amateur, so perhaps I was wrong and it was exactly what she had expected. She may have decided that unless there had been some mighty genetic muddle I was a child destined to have a highly developed visual sense. But that didn’t mean I would also like to walk. The two things don’t automatically go together, and I haven’t in fact done much walking in the way my father did. I never think of myself as athletic or the outdoor type, though I am perfectly fit and do spend a good deal of my working life out of doors. It struck me, as I dropped down from the fells on to the Eden plain, that I would like to walk more, to walk as my father had done. I would come back and plan longer walks and climb the mountains he had climbed, and I silently thanked Susannah for giving me the ambition to do so. Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Scafell – I’d do them all.

  It was odd, in the circumstances, how very much I was being led to thinking about my father. This was his country she’d brought me to, not hers. It was his life, his early life, I was being drawn into, not hers. Why wasn’t she taking me to Scotland, or to places known only to her? I didn’t need to be told about my father. I knew all about him. I had to control myself, stop the tears coming, just thinking about how nice he was. If I’d heard a hundred times how happy Susannah was, I’d heard a thousand times how nice my father was. It used to annoy me, not because I challenged the truth of it (I knew it was quite true) but because ‘nice’ is such an anodyne word. It was a word our English teacher would not allow us to use. She said it was lazy, hardly an adjective at all, and certainly not one worthy of our using. And she was right, it doesn’t convey much. To call my father ‘nice’, to emphasise his niceness above all else, was to make him sound bland and insipid and he was neither. He was clever, kind, cheerful, good-tempered and had a horror of any kind of unpleasantness or confrontation – which is mostly what people meant when they labelled him ‘nice’. He got on with everyone and was always popular. But on the last stretch of that drive, blinking back the tears I couldn’t quite stop, I remembered something my grandmother had said. One day, when I was about six or seven and she was staying with us, as she often did (she and Charlotte getting on famously, thank God), she took me on her knee and said, ‘You have a lovely daddy, Catherine.’ I wriggled off, not liking any more to sit on anyone’s knee, and said, quite crossly I think, that I knew I had, and my grandmother said, ‘Look after him, won’t you? He doesn’t like to be alone. That’s the only thing he’s afraid of. He needed Susannah more than she needed him, he needs Charlotte more than she needs him, and one day he’ll need you more than you need him.’

  I was far too young for this. It all sounded silly to me, and made me feel uncomfortable without knowing why. But remembering this strange little outburst, which was so unlike my sensible grandmother, I wondered if she had been trying to tell me that my father was not emotionally strong and that the women in his life had to be. Always, because of her health, I had seen the dead Susannah as weak beside my father, almost a burden on him. Yet my grandmother, her mother, had definitely said he needed her more than she needed him. She had been sure, it seemed, that he was dependent on her and not the other way round. I suppose I had gradually, without quite realising it consciously, seen that so far as Charlotte was concerned she was right. When he died, one of the first things my mother said was, ‘Thank God he went first.’ It embarrassed me, it seemed such a pious thing to say, and I wished she hadn’t said it. I never thought of asking why she had.

  It was a relief to be on the train at last and able to slump. I didn’t read, just looked out of the window, soon seeing my own reflection as it grew dark. The rucksack with the map inside it was on my knee. I’d almost discarded them both in Carlisle station, dropped them into one of the capacious waste bins, deciding they were now of no use and not worth keeping for their own sakes, or at least the worn rucksack wasn’t. But at the last minute I’d held on to them, out of pure sentiment. They could go in a cupboard when I got back. But their numbers were ticked off – 1, 2 and 3, all attended to, to the best of my ability. Whether it had been worth it I wasn’t sure. The figure reflected in the window looked pretty morose, exhausted too, as though she had been through some kind of ordeal, which in a way was true. My high expectations had exposed me to it. I’d put myself through a process that had depended constantly on imagination and, more than that, having to interpret what it came up with. No wonder I felt drained. A kind of madness had set in and I was at its mercy, unable to stop now I had begun. All I could hope was that the rest of the objects left to me would make fewer demands and lead to more satisfying explanations. Frankly, that contentment I had briefly experienced on Whitehaven’s quayside, and the glow I had felt walking to the holly tree on Melbreak, had faded. I was left with that feeling I hated, of something being just out of reach, not quite within my grasp. I was trying too hard and didn’t know, as I travelled back to London, whether I had the heart to go on.

  I slept for the last hour and dreamed of the shell.

  V

  RETURNING FROM THE north, I seemed to fall into a woeful state of listlessness. I had intended, after I split up with Tony, to go abroad somewhere, but then came those two awful deaths, and day slid into day, week into week; and then there was the box and I’d done nothing about going any further than Cumberland. There was no pressure on me to do anything, that was the trouble. I had no commitments, no responsibilities, no one to demand I pull myself together. I could drift as long as I wanted. It was an enviable position to be in, and yet I found myself wishing I could lose myself in the demands made on a wife or mother. I started to blame Susannah, unfair though I knew this to be. If she’d left me alone, I’d have recovered from my mother’s death and at last gone away to revitalise myself. I needed some proper distraction, but I was too jaded, and too confused about the contents of the box, to go in search of it.

  There was a message from Rory on my answerphone when I got back. He asked where the hell I’d got to and why I hadn’t turned up for that drink we were going to have, he was pissed off with me. I’d forgotten our arrangement, not exactly a firm one anyway, and knew I ought to ring him. But I didn’t want to, even though he was the only relative with whom I still had any regular contact, and certainly the only one for whom I felt any affection. Only with Rory did I feel completely at ease. The pattern of holidays changed after I was about seven and, instead of spending most of them surrounded in my own home by my mother’s nieces and nephews, I went to Edinburgh to stay with Rory. This, I gather, was my own choice. My parents were none too happy about it, but apparently I pleaded with them and they were as indulgent over this as they were in everything. But they thought Rory was a bad influence. He was by then well known to do silly things, sometimes quite dangerous things, and they worried I would copy him. They were right, I did, or if I didn’t exactly copy him I allowed myself to be led by him and admired his daring.

  This was not so very extraordinary, but at the time it was thought bad enough. Once, when we were both eight, he took me hitch-hiking. We got a bus to the outskirts of Edinburgh, I don’t remember where, and then Rory marched me on to a main road where the city boundary gave way to countryside, and we stood and thumbed a lift, or rather I did. He’d made me wear a pretty dress, which I hated, a white thing with a Peter Pan collar and a sash, thin material covered with little blue flowers, saying cars would be more likely to stop for a girl dressed like that than for any boy. No car stopp
ed as I stood self-consciously following Rory’s instructions, but a lorry did. It was a gigantic lorry with wheels so big they towered over us as it ground to a stop and the steps into the cabin were so impossibly high the driver had to get out and come round to lift us in. He asked where we were going and why we were on our own, and Rory came out with incredibly full details to do with sick grandmothers, broken-down cars, lost money and God knows what else. He said we were going to London, where we would be met by our uncle. I hadn’t known this and didn’t even realise it was all part of the lie. The lorry driver settled us in his cabin, which seemed like a house to us, full of all kinds of funny possessions, like a potted plant with a tiny watering can beside it, and two cushions embroidered in Rangers football club colours, and a tray set as if for tea, complete with a dainty net cap over the milk jug. He was a big man, his overall sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular arms tattooed with pineapples, and, though he talked to us all the time, we couldn’t make out a word he said above the noise of the engine.

  Quite quickly, it all stopped being exciting and became very boring indeed. We were glad when after about half an hour the driver pulled into a service station for petrol. He said he was going into the café, when he’d filled up, for a cup of tea and an egg sandwich and would we like to join him. Rory said we hadn’t enough money (another lie – he had a ten-pound note but had been going to wait until this man was in the café and then we were apparently going to run away and find a more comfortable car to travel in). The driver laughed and said he’d treat us and without asking he lifted me out of his cabin, so Rory was obliged to follow. We all trooped into the café and he settled us at one of the red Formica-topped tables near a steamed-up window, then he went to get drinks and food. We couldn’t leave – not that I had any plans to, though Rory did – because he kept his eye on us all the time. We saw him tell the woman behind the counter what he wanted, and then he came back and said he had to ring his wife and he’d be back in a minute. Even then, we were never out of his sight because the telephone was at the end of the room and he faced us while he rang. We saw him talking, but of course there was too much noise for us to hear that he wasn’t ringing his wife, he was ringing the police.

  By the time we’d finished eating, and he’d been told our names were Jimmy (which was what Rory had always wanted to be called) and Valerie (my fancied name), and that we were orphaned twins, the police had arrived. Half an hour and our real names and address later, so had my Uncle Hector and Aunt Isabella. Hector was absolutely furious. The lorry driver and the policemen were amused, but Hector saw no humour in the situation at all. He proceeded to do a very old-fashioned thing, there and then in the café, much impressing the lorry-driving clientèle. He took hold of Rory, who admittedly was slight for his age and offered no resistance, put him over his knee, pulled down his pants, and slapped his bare bottom hard several times. I remember there was a ripple of noise throughout the café, but I don’t know whether it amounted to a collective gasp of admiration or of horror. All I was worried about was whether my turn to be humiliated would come next. It didn’t. We were both taken home and put to bed after more shouting from Hector and a lecture from a tight-lipped Isabella. She felt obliged to ring my parents, and I heard the phrase ‘anything could have happened’ over and over again, plus repeated apologies for Rory’s disgraceful behaviour. I was sent home the next day.

  Rory didn’t improve as he grew older. He was referred to as ‘bolshie’ by his father and grave doubts were cast over his honesty and integrity and all the other virtues his family prided itself on possessing in abundance. Both his parents were Camerons, though in no way related, except presumably several generations back, and they held their family name in great respect, as proud to be Camerons with all they considered this implied as my own father was to be a Musgrave. Rory, by the age of sixteen, was becoming known as ‘not fit to be a Cameron’. He’d disgraced himself in all kinds of ways anathema to them. He was clever, but regularly failed exams; he was never short of pocket money, but was caught shoplifting items he could easily have bought; he got drunk, crashed his mother’s car (which of course he was not old enough to drive), dyed his hair green, had his left ear pierced, wore torn jeans and in general did all the classic wild teenager things so objectionable to his deeply conventional parents. The list of his misdemeanours grew longer and longer. My father used to smile, while shaking his head, as he passed on the latest on Rory from Isabella. He prophesied that Rory would probably turn out to be a hero when he’d finished sowing his wild oats, but in fact he never did finish sowing them. The moment he left his excellent Scottish public school, to which he’d most unsuitably been condemned by his ambitious father, who’d been there himself, he promptly embarked on a life of minor crime.

  It was cars at first. He had his own car, given to him on his seventeenth birthday, a perfectly adequate second-hand Volvo, but that wasn’t good enough. Encouraged by the youths he associated with and learning from them (though that was no excuse), he stole sports cars, changed their number plates, had them resprayed, and resold them. He told me he had only intended to do it once, for himself, but he got away with it so easily he decided to do it again and then again and make money out of it. But the money wasn’t the attraction – though Hector had stopped his allowance by then, so he had to earn a living somehow and had no intention of doing any regular work – and he never pretended it was. He loved the daring of it, the excitement, the pitting of his brains against those of the police (‘no contest’ he boasted). But he had a little sense left in his head, enough to stop the lark before his luck ran out. Abruptly, he switched to trading in antiques, his own idea this time. The trading consisted of keeping an eye on local newspapers, the funeral notices and will announcements, and then targeting widowed old ladies. He would go and visit them and ask very politely if he could help them dispose of any furniture. Because he was entirely unthreatening, still slight in build and blond and with a cultured Edinburgh accent, and by then dressed for the part in a suit, and a sparkling white shirt and old school tie, he was well received. He bought bits of furniture at absurdly low prices and sold them for absurdly high ones. This was not of course criminal, just a form of cheating, if one sanctioned in the trade. He always knew the real value of what he bought and he always knew the old ladies did not. He said he made them happy by giving them his time and listening sympathetically to their woes. But this kind of thing was only the respectable front for a much more dubious enterprise which, when he hinted at it, I told him I did not wish to know about. Whatever it was, he came unstuck in his late twenties and had to leave Edinburgh hurriedly. Ever since, he’d lived in London, though never for long in the same place.

  Rory came to my mother’s funeral, which was good of him. Charlotte had never been sure whether she liked him or not, and he had always sensed this and been wary of her. It was only my devotion to him that made her tolerate his visits later on, when she had heard enough about his wicked ways to justify her unease. But he came to her funeral and was kind and tried his best to comfort me. He told me I was not to forget he was my best friend and would always be there for me. I was touched. Touched, but not fooled. Rory’s concern for me might be genuine – no, it was genuine, I’m sure – but he cared more about himself. I knew that if my needs clashed with needs of his own he would put himself first. Normal, I suppose. He was just a normal man. But ever since the funeral he had been most solicitous and had rung me often, though I knew it wasn’t just because he felt sorry for me. There was self-interest there too. Once Tony had gone, I think Rory fancied himself as my flatmate. He hadn’t suggested moving in outright, but he’d hinted at it. I’d been very careful to give out clear signals of refusal.

  I could never share a flat, or even a big house, with Rory. Not because he is untidy (though he is, horrifically) or because he smokes heavily, but because of his personal life. He has never so far as I know had any relationship lasting more than a couple of weeks, and he says he has never wanted one,
this causes him no grief. He moves on from one man to another, in spite of these being dangerous times, and says this suits his taste perfectly. Perhaps, but without being judgmental, it would not suit me. I couldn’t bear a constant stream of youths passing through my flat. It wouldn’t matter how discreet Rory was, and discretion was not something he was known for, I would hate the presence of strangers. It is hard enough for me to share my living space with someone I love, never mind with those I would not even get to know. Rory ought to have understood that, since he didn’t like sharing himself.

  It is an odd connection between us. We like to be on our own and find it a strain to share with lovers, however devoted we are to them (not that Rory has ever shown much sign of devotion). We don’t like our homes cluttered up with others. The only-child syndrome, perhaps? Always having everything as we wanted it? But I’m sure there are as many only children who go the other way, who cannot bear to be alone and require constant companionship to make up for their years of deprivation. At any rate, Rory, like me, lived on his own but, unlike me, had never bought his own place. He said he couldn’t afford to, but I know there were many times when he had the money to do so. He went on living in rooms not his own surrounded by furniture he’d never have chosen, never properly inhabiting anywhere he lived. These were sad places. He never invited me to any of them, but once I tracked him down and turned up on his doorstep and he was obliged to let me in. It was a basement flat in Kilburn, damp, dark and with walls painted a really lurid purple. He’d made no effort to do anything at all to it and just laughed when I shuddered. He said he wouldn’t be there long, and he wasn’t. I never visited him again. It was too depressing to witness his circumstances.