I didn’t understand. ‘Yes?’ I said.
‘He came here looking for your mother once. Didn’t like to remind John. Actually had the cheek to come asking if John knew her address. Said he had something he wanted to give her. Of course, John had had the heave-ho and didn’t know her whereabouts. He had always thought Senhouse had stolen her from him. Daft, both of them. Well, take your keys. Just thought I’d tell you, don’t know why.’ And she handed over the keys and turned to go back into the house.
‘Miss Graham!’ I called, and she stopped.
‘Miss Graham, is George Senhouse dead?’
‘Dead? Good heavens, no. But he is in a nursing home, I believe, somewhere outside London. Not a well man, but not dead. His sister still lives in Whitehaven, no, in Maryport. I shouldn’t go bothering her, though, she’s a bit of a tartar. It’s going to rain again. You should get back to your car.’
I felt that strange excitement again, that weird sense of elation, as though I was going to discover something crucial to my understanding of Susannah, and I tried hard to caution myself to be sensible and to remember the many disappointments already. But I knew, as I walked rapidly back towards the city centre, that of course I had to try to track down George Senhouse. Maryport was not far away, nearer than Whitehaven, but I didn’t necessarily need to go there at all. I could get the number from directory enquiries, and telephone.
Almost back in the city, I stopped and leaned on the stone bridge and watched the water. The traffic on the road behind me was so heavy and noisy it wasn’t exactly the place to stand and stare, but I wanted to pause and calm myself down, and I liked the river. Luckily, I saw a man taking his dog down some hidden steps and I followed him and walked a little way along the bank in the opposite direction to him. It was too wet to sit on the grass, but I came to a big log and perched there for a moment, just leaning against it. Susannah had been a mere visitor in Glebe House. There had been nothing of her there permeating the atmosphere. She’d been in and out of it all those years ago and left nothing of herself in it, only a lingering wisp of memory in the minds of two elderly people.
I took the address book out of my bag and fingered it. Such a little item, full of half-promises. I ran my finger down the torn alphabet and stopped at M. An hotel in Manchester, another in Malvern. And an address, of course, in Maryport. How simple puzzles are if you know the solution first. I tore the page out and put it carefully in my wallet. I wouldn’t try fitting the name Senhouse to this address and getting a phone number until I was home. Meanwhile, I had something to do. I looked around and found some small stones, and tearing a piece off the street map I made a parcel out of it all, tying it securely with an elastic band I’d used to pull back my hair. Then I threw the package into the river, where it sank immediately and was pulled away underneath by the force of the current. I felt relieved – more than relieved, pleased. Except for this last discovery, the address book had been perhaps the most frustrating of the things in the memory box. If I had been completely mad, instead of only half crazy, I might have set myself to trail round checking every wretched address in it and that would have got me nowhere: it wouldn’t even, on its own, have led me to George Senhouse. The suggestion of mystery about it – that lack of names – had been a cruel trick. I felt, by throwing it away, I was calling Susannah’s bluff, saying: Here’s your poxy book, keep it. It was childish, petulant, but saying this to myself helped me to feel better.
I decided, as I left Carlisle and rejoined the M6, that I would never come back here either. I wouldn’t revisit Edinburgh, or Carlisle, ever again through choice.
XIII
THE MOMENT I got home I sat down with the sheet I’d torn from Susannah’s address book and rang directory enquiries. I didn’t even make myself a cup of coffee or anything to eat, though I was thirsty and hungry, and also exhausted after my long drive. I had to find out at once if anything was going to come of the Maryport address. It all proved so straightforward I felt almost disbelieving – I had the telephone number for a Miss Pamela Senhouse in Maryport in two minutes flat. And I didn’t hesitate. I rang her immediately, before I could remember Mary Graham warning me that she, this Miss Senhouse, was ‘a tartar’.
A voice with a strong Cumbrian accent answered, a youngish female voice, and I knew it couldn’t be the person I wanted. I asked for Miss Pamela Senhouse and instead of asking me who I was or what I wanted, this woman said, ‘She’s took badly. She isn’t here, she’s in Hensingham.’
‘Hensingham?’
‘The hospital. They took her in last night.’
‘Are you …?’ I let it trail off, hoping she’d fill in the information I wanted.
‘Edna,’ she said. ‘I’m Edna.’
‘Oh well, Edna, I’m sorry to hear Miss Senhouse is ill, but what I actually wanted was to ask her for the address of her brother George.’
‘It’s pinned here,’ Edna said. ‘She keeps it near the phone. She’s always forgetting the number and worrying about it, so she pinned it here.’ And obligingly she read out not the address but a telephone number that I recognised as near Brighton, or at least it was a Brighton exchange. I thanked Edna effusively and she said, ‘Who shall I tell her rang up?’
‘A family friend, an old friend of her brother George. She wouldn’t know my name, but it’s Musgrave, Catherine Musgrave.’
‘Wait till I write it down. I’ll forget.’
I repeated my name, hoping Miss Senhouse would find my surname comfortingly familiar since it was as local as her own. I wanted to ask Edna whether she was the housekeeper or the cleaner or a neighbour, but I thought I shouldn’t ask too many questions and I could hear what I took to be a doorbell ringing in the background, so I just said thank you and goodbye.
Dry-mouthed by then but determined to take the last step, I rang the Brighton number. Despite Mary Graham’s warning, I was a little puzzled to find it was a nursing home. Nursing homes, surely, were for very old people, and he couldn’t be that old. I asked for the matron. I was told the Home Manager had gone home, she didn’t live on the premises. I was asked quite sharply who I was and to state my business. I lied and said I was a niece of George Senhouse and could I visit him the day after tomorrow. Permission was given, I could visit any time, but early afternoons were preferred, and since Mr Senhouse was usually asleep soon after six the evening was not a good idea. I put the telephone down, feeling shattered but also thrilled: – the idea of at last seeing this mysterious man who had taken Susannah off to Bequia was just that – thrilling.
After I’d had a bath and eaten something, I turned to my mail, which lay in quite a pile behind the front door. There were stacks of letters from estate agents and I looked forward to going through the enclosed lists of houses for sale when I was not so tired. I had almost decided to choose Chelsea but was still tempted by thoughts of settling higher up the river and getting more for my money. I watered the plants, opened the windows and felt happy to be back, but then I always did – pity the returning traveller whose heart sinks on coming home. Mine always lifted, however good the holiday or expedition. Everything was as I had left it, everything was how I liked it to be. I’d only been away four days but it felt more like four weeks of strain and I was glad to be rid of it. I lay on my bed opening the rest of the post – two cheques from magazines, a letter commissioning me to take photographs for a travel piece on Normandy, and a postcard from a friend in Sri Lanka. Then I attended to my answerphone. It wiped out, for the moment, my excitement about George Senhouse.
The first recorded message was unexpected. I didn’t recognise the voice at all. It was a hesitant, middle-aged female voice, calling me Miss Catherine Musgrave, and though I’m quick on the uptake – too quick, my father used to say disapprovingly – it wasn’t until the message was over that I realised who the speaker had been. It was Tony’s mother. She was calling because she felt I would want to know that her son Anthony – that confused me, too – was very ill. He’d asked for me and she fe
lt it was only right to let me know this ‘in case you want to do anything about it’. Her voice was shaky, but I wasn’t quite sure whether with distress or nervousness. Not an easy thing to do, call your son’s ex-girlfriend, the woman who you knew had hurt him so much, who had sent him packing. I bet she hated me, I bet she had me down as an absolute bitch. I’d be even more of a bitch if I didn’t rush at once to University College Hospital, where she’d said Tony was in intensive care after a car accident. She hadn’t left the time or date when she rang, but the next caller, my dentist’s receptionist, cancelling an appointment, had, so I knew Tony’s mother had rung three days ago. All this time, she would have been waiting to see if I was going to respond, but then surely she would have realised, knowing my job, that I might be away.
I rang the hospital immediately, not giving myself time to think. I shouldn’t need time to think anyway – such a thing should be automatic in those circumstances. Eventually, I got a sister who was prepared to tell me only that Tony was off the critical list and holding his own, but still very ill. She wouldn’t tell me exactly what was wrong with him, so I still didn’t know how he’d injured himself. He was a careful driver, so I felt it must have been somebody else’s fault. But I didn’t really want to know what had happened. It’s odd how most people when they’re told this kind of news go straight for the details. I didn’t want to know, but did I want to see Tony? No. Did I want him to think I didn’t care that he’d been badly injured? No. And what about his mother, shouldn’t I ring her? Probably.
This is how I deal with things these days. People who live on their own do this. I ask myself the questions a partner, or a parent, would ask and then I reply as though I am someone else. Backwards and forwards I go, trying to be sensible and logical, and yet I know that if I had someone to discuss a problem with this would not be how it would go – the discussion wouldn’t be so simple and tidy, and the other person would think of arguments for and against which, left to myself, I did not. I do my best, but it is all a kind of cheating. And another kind is prevarication. I put decisions off and there is no one to tell me I shouldn’t. It was to delay making my mind up about visiting Tony, and/ or ringing his mother, that I went back to my answerphone. I’d switched it off without listening to the end of the tape, even though I knew it was full. Now I went back to it, hoping to be distracted by further messages and through distraction come to some conclusion as to what I felt about poor Tony.
Rory’s voice said, ‘So who’s been playing at the good little niece, then? Ring me – you have a lot to answer for, petal.’ Well, that was distracting. His mother must have rung him. I hadn’t thought I needed his permission to give her his latest number – she was his mother, for heaven’s sake, whatever the situation between them. I’d once asked him, when it emerged he hadn’t even spoken to either of his parents for something like three years, whether he wouldn’t want to know if one of them was desperately ill. I’d pressed him to imagine this, and suggested his response would surely be to want to rush to their side, but he laughed and said I was a drama queen and that I had lurid visions of deathbed reconciliations which were absurd. ‘But you’d go, wouldn’t you?’ I’d pleaded, and he’d shrugged and said if he was asked he supposed he would have to, but it wouldn’t upset him if he couldn’t be found and he missed the chance. He didn’t think the sight of his mother or father on their deathbeds would change anything. The trouble with Rory is that he doesn’t know the first thing about deathbeds. I do. I knew that if he was ever called upon to witness Isabella or Hector dying it would change everything. The vigil, the kind I kept with Charlotte, would alter his feelings. I told him so. He said he very much doubted it but hoped not to be put to the test. He hoped that when the time came his parents would have the decency to die as my father had done, suddenly, with no warning at all, excusing him entirely from being involved.
At least I knew Isabella was in good health and Rory’s flippant tone showed that whatever she’d rung him for was not serious. Had she offered him some kind of olive branch? If so, I intended to claim the credit for any rapprochement between them, though I knew Rory wouldn’t think credit was due. He always maintained the rift between them was an excellent thing – it meant he could lead his own life without constantly being called to account by disapproving parents. All he hoped was that they hadn’t cut him out of their wills, but he was pretty confident they wouldn’t have gone that far, what with their strong belief in family. The money and property they had came mainly from Hector’s family and had been passed down to him rather than earned by the sweat of his brow, so he would see it as his duty to go on passing it down, whatever then happened to it. Or so Rory hoped. Wickedly, I’d pointed out that both his parents, but particularly Isabella, were heavily committed to the various charities they supported and could quite easily leave their pile to them. And Hector, pillar of the Tory party, could choose to fill its coffers with his loot. Rory had no guarantee that he’d inherit a penny and nor did he deserve to. He said that was rich, coming from me, coming from someone who’d inherited a thumping amount without deserving it either, but I said at least I’d loved my parents and never deserted them. Rory said he didn’t know I could be so smug.
Anyway, it was interesting, as well as distracting, to wonder what had passed between Rory and Isabella, so I rang him back there and then. ‘About time,’ he said when he heard me and, before I could stop him, said he was coming round, then put the phone down. I rang him again, wanting to shriek that he mustn’t even think about it, I was exhausted and worried about what I should do over Tony and it was nearly midnight, but there was no reply, not even an answering machine clicking on. I lay on my bed furious with myself. How stupid I’d been, calling him at all. He’d keep me up half the night and never stop talking and bore me rigid. But he only did two of those things. He didn’t bore me; on the contrary, he wiped Tony and my own tiredness out of my mind so entirely that when he’d finished I felt quite calm and knew what I was going to do.
He arrived determined to act out the whole telephone conversation with his mother, fuelled by the bottle of wine he got for himself from my kitchen the moment he came in. We lay on my bed together and he did both their voices, imitating Isabella’s to such perfection it was as though she were in the room. ‘She said, “I would like to speak to Mr Rory Cameron,” in that impossibly prim way she has – you know how she likes to sound all official and curt and always clears her throat first – and I asked who was calling in a really stupid, over-the-top and not even remotely accurate cockney accent, and she said, “I may have the wrong number. Would you kindly inform me if this is the number for Mr Rory Cameron?” I thought about keeping it up and pretending I was some kind of thug and had never heard of this Mister Cameron, but it was too tiring. It all came back how maddening she is … no sense of humour – she’s a sad cow – but anyway I gave up and said, “Mother dear, it is I,” and she went into one of her how-can-you-be-so-silly-and-rude routines and said she had almost hung up. I longed to say why didn’t you, I couldn’t give a fuck, but I said, “That would have been such a shame,” only mildly sarcastically, and she said, “Rory, are you being impertinent?” Oh God, it was so tedious. I had to work really hard not to scream. I asked how Dad was, just for something innocuous to say, and she said he worried about me which didn’t do his ulcers any good or his blood pressure, and I thought, Oh my God, now I’m blamed for giving him ulcers, when really he’s got them because he’s a pig and eats and drinks too bloody much. I was so pissed off I decided to ask her why she was ringing and she said, “Does a mother have to have a reason?” I thought, This one does, darling, but I was very good and said not a word, and she said she’d thought we had an understanding that I would at the very least keep her informed of my whereabouts. I said, I couldn’t resist it, “What are you, my probation officer?” and oh, Christ, that set her off again and I had to jump in before I went completely mad and say I’d thought she and Dad wanted nothing to do with me, that I’d offended
them so deeply by being proud to be gay. Well of course I said that deliberately, hamming it up, and she burst out, “Don’t say that!” and I said, all innocent, “What? That I’m proud? Or gay? Or both?” and she said I knew what she meant and was determined to torment her – me torment her. I was buggered if I was going to put up with that, so there we were, bitching away at each other and any moment one of us was going to hang up and the betting was on moi, when suddenly she said, “Catherine came to stay.” Then she said you and she had had “a little talk”, and it had made her think – and I thought, Well, that’s a breakthrough – and she felt that we should see each other and try to put things right. I took a deep breath and said that I wasn’t clear what she thought could be “put right” and that I was as I was and so far as I was concerned everything was “right” already, and she said, “Rory, you are our son.” I said, “How true,” and waited. I could hear her sort of choking with effort and I waited and waited but she said nothing else and for one horrible moment I thought the old bag was going to cry – oh, dear me. I’d answered the phone in the kitchen and I had to lean backwards and open the fridge and grab a bottle of wine and take a slug to steady my nerves. She obviously mistook the glugging sounds as I poured it down the old throat for some kind of distress signal and she said, “Now, it’s no good both of us getting upset, Rory,” and I managed not to laugh – in fact I managed to say in a most convincingly caring voice that no, it was not. What a pantomime, and all your fault, Catherine.’
‘I didn’t do anything. Don’t blame me.’
The Memory Box Page 23
