The Memory Cage

by Ruth Eastham

  “They followed me to the Den,” he told me, wide-eyed, his painful-looking purple lid all stretched. “Didn’t find it, though. Thank God they didn’t find it.” He gripped me. “I promised Tommie, see. I promised Tommie!”

  “Come on now. That’s enough.” Dad shepherded Grandad into the kitchen and sat him down.

  “There’s been burgers!” shouted Sophie, jumping up and down. “Burgers!”

  Mum scooted around pouring gigantic glasses of orange juice for everyone, as if everything would be all right if we all just had a good strong dose of vitamin C.

  Dad was still in his work jacket and looked really hassled. “Can we all sit down and calm down!”

  Leonard pinched my arm under the table. “Enjoyed vandalizing Grandad’s darkroom, did you, Bosnia Boy?” he said in a hard whisper.

  I shoved him. “I don’t know what you’re on about.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Leonard.

  “Thank God they didn’t find it,” Grandad said to me from across the table. I stroked his hand.

  “Grandad’s darkroom got messed up?” I said.

  “As if you didn’t know,” muttered Leonard.

  “Your grandad says that somebody broke in trying to steal something,” said Dad. “He won’t tell us what. A couple of bottles of chemicals got smashed. The room’s in a terrible state.”

  “We’ll have to call the police,” said Mum.

  “I’ve no intention of calling the police,” said Dad.

  “Why not?”

  Dad drew her aside and lowered his voice, but he was so wound up I could hear every word.

  “Because he obviously did it himself, Hilary.”

  Mum frowned at him. “Now why would William …”

  “He’s getting more unbalanced as the days go on,” Dad went on. “There’s no sign of a forced entry, and only he has the key to the padlock on the door, so who else could it have been?”

  I felt my blood boil. How could Dad think Grandad would do something like that? Why would he? But then I remembered the vicious way Grandad had yanked the photograph from the album and ripped it up.

  I thought about Mr Webb. The anger in his voice when he’d talked about Grandad’s photos. His reaction when he thought Grandad had been developing more of them.

  It had to have been Mr Webb. It had to have been. I wanted to believe it was him, not Grandad. But I knew Mr Webb would have had to act fast if he’d left me, magically broken into Grandad’s darkroom and turned the place over, all before I got back from the vicar’s house. With that bad limp of his, I doubted he could have broken into a run, never mind anything else.

  Leonard slouched out.

  “People in the village have been talking.” Grandad leaned towards me. “But let them think what they want, that’s what I say. They don’t want to hear the truth anyway. Ruddy gossips, they are, the lot of them.”

  “He’s a danger to himself here, Hilary,” I heard Dad say. “We have to do what’s best for him.”

  Mum filled a pan with water and clattered it on to the hob. She lit the gas and blue flames sprang up at its base.

  Grandad gazed at the flames, then looked at me all agitated. “It was on fire. It was all on fire.” He was trembling, getting hysterical. “I was on my way home. Saw the smoke …”

  I held on to his hand more tightly. “It’s OK,” I said. “Shhhh.”

  “My Freda and the baby were in there!”

  “It’s OK, Grandad.” He wasn’t making any sense. What was this about a fire?

  “Alex, I need to talk to you.” Dad’s voice cut across the kitchen, and he was telling, not asking. He strode to the door.

  “But …”

  “Now.”

  I squeezed Grandad’s hand and then followed Dad into the hall.

  He closed the kitchen door behind us.

  We stood facing each other in the narrow space. I listened to the loud ticking of the grandfather clock.

  “Look, Alex.” Dad ran his fingers through his hair, what was left of it. “All this looking at old photos with your grandad, all this stirring up memories …”

  “Mum said I could take photos out of the albums!” I protested. “I need them for Grandad’s scrapbook.”

  “I know all that. I know about the scrapbook.” Dad sighed. “It was a great idea, Alex, but …”

  I didn’t like the way he said “was a great idea”, and I liked the “but” even less. I swallowed and waited for what he was going to come out with next.

  “I want you to stop, Alex.”

  I gaped at him.

  “I want you to stop with the photos and stop with the scrapbook,” said Dad. “You thought you were doing the right thing, but it’s not good for your grandad. All this being reminded about what happened to him in his life. He’s been getting upset, confused. Look at what he did to his darkroom.”

  “But Dad!” I managed to splutter.

  “You’ll only upset him more,” Dad said. He pretended to look like he was the one getting upset. Dad could be so false.

  “Some things are best forgotten, Alex.”

  “I have to carry on!” I couldn’t tell him about my promise. He wouldn’t understand anyway. “Grandad likes his scrapbook!” I blurted. It sounded so lame.

  “Listen to me, Alex.”

  “I have to carry on!”

  “No.”

  I saw Leonard smiling down at me over the top banister. I wanted to slap his stupid face.

  “It’s helping Grandad,” I shouted.

  “I said no. You have to stop.”

  “You can’t make me!”

  “I forbid it, Alex, and that’s the end of it!”

  Leonard mimed hysterical laughter.

  “If I find out you’ve been carrying on …”

  I stood there, not trusting myself to speak.

  Dad let out a sigh. “But if ever you want to talk, Alex … about anything …” His voice trailed off. “Well, you know where I am.” He strode away into his study and shut the door.

  Leonard stuck out his bottom lip and waved at me over the banister. I heard his feet on the landing and his bedroom door bang.

  I stayed there trembling. The ticking of the grandfather clock down the hall seemed to get louder and louder until it was drilling right into my skull.

  I pressed my hands over my ears. I’d promised Grandad, and finally I was starting to find out the truth. If I stopped now, it would all be for nothing.

  When were Dad and Mum going to tell the rest of us what they’d got planned for Grandad, anyway? I thought furiously. They hadn’t even told Grandad that come Saturday he’d be saying goodbye to the only place that had ever been home for him. They didn’t even have the guts for that.

  Leonard’s taunts came back to me. “Get packing, Bosnia Boy.”

  What was to stop them one day saying, out of the blue, We’re fed up with you now, Alex. We’ve decided to get rid of you next week.

  They weren’t going to do anything to help Grandad. They were happy to sit back and let it happen, or pretend it wasn’t happening at all. Now they were even stopping me from doing something to help.

  I found the darkest end of the hall and crouched there, pressing my forehead against the wall.

  I’d been stupid to start all this in the first place. What had I been thinking, anyway? Make a scrapbook of Grandad’s life? Trap all his memories in it? Did I honestly think that would stop him being taken away?

  It was like trying to make a cage for your memories. A memory cage to stop them getting away. But memories don’t want to be trapped. They slip between the bars. Like smoke, like water.

  They get in, as well as out.

  I knew that. Better than anyone.

  But what were you if you didn’t have memories? Memories were what made you who you were. If you lost your memories, you lost yourself.

  You were nothing.

  A ghost.

  Without memories, you didn’t exist.

  I kicked at
the wall. Thumped it with my fists. It hurt, but I didn’t care. I hit the wall again. And again. There was blood on my knuckles, but I hardly noticed. I hated them all. They were going to put Grandad in a home. They were getting rid of him like some old bit of junk for a charity shop. But that wasn’t the end of it. Not by a long way.

  I leaned against the wall, panting.

  I was going to keep making the scrapbook and they could just try and stop me! I’d made a promise to Grandad and I was going to do whatever it took to keep it.

  And if Dad found out?

  I had to make sure he didn’t.

  “I suggest you take your father’s advice.”

  I whipped round to see who’d spoken, and there in the hallway, jabbing her walking stick towards me, false teeth clenched, was Great-Aunt Mildred.

  – CHAPTER 11 –

  THE GRANDFATHER CLOCK

  In the hallway. 5:35 p.m. A ticking off.

  “Take your father’s advice,” Great-Aunt Mildred snapped. “Stop stirring up the past.”

  She pointed her stick at my fist mark on the paintwork. “And you can stop that destructive behaviour right now, boy.” She spoke slowly and loudly, as if I were hard of hearing and didn’t know English. “We don’t do that sort of thing in civilized countries, you know.

  “I let myself in, seeing as the front door was open,” she said. “I’ve got better things to do than wait on your front step in the pouring rain knocking and being ignored, and with all the din going on and the clattering about in the kitchen, it’s no wonder nobody heard me.”

  Nosy Old Bat, I thought. What’s wrong with waiting in the porch? But then I realized our unfriendly fake Great-Aunt Mildred must know something about Grandad’s time during the war. She had to. And there wasn’t any time for polite chit-chat. I plunged in with my question.

  “What happened to Grandad’s brother, Tommie?”

  Great-Aunt Mildred looked at me hard and made a clacking sound with her false teeth. “Ah, now, there’s a story,” she said. “There’s a real drama.”

  Couldn’t she give me a straight answer?

  “That’s what you want to know about, is it? After all these years …” Great-Aunt Mildred looked around to check nobody was about. “I promised your father I wouldn’t say anything.” She glanced towards the closed door of Dad’s study.

  “But you go raking up the past and you get what you deserve, young man.” She licked her lips, like she was on the beach about to open a packet of ham sandwiches that she’d been really looking forward to.

  “Just tell me about Tommie,” I said. “Please.”

  She leaned on her stick and eyed me.

  “At first your grandad William didn’t go to war at all. He pretended to have principles.” She turned her nose up at the word. “He wasted his time on photography instead.

  “Then he lured Tommie over to Dunkirk and got him killed.”

  I flinched. Two different people saying that Grandad had got his brother killed. Did that make it true? I imagined Great-Aunt Mildred gossiping over her garden hedge to her neighbours, spreading lies. That’s what they were, weren’t they? Big fat lies from people with nothing better to do.

  “William even got a medal for bravery,” Great-Aunt Mildred scoffed. “Can you believe that? The soldier who recommended him must have been bribed! Either that or he had shell shock!”

  She gave out a short, dry laugh.

  “William got everything, he did, once Tommie was dead. The house and everything in it.”

  What was she saying? That Grandad deliberately planned to get his brother killed so he could inherit the house?

  Great-Aunt Mildred scowled. “The house wasn’t the only thing he got his hands on.”

  She waddled down the hall and tapped her stick on the door of the grandfather clock. “Did you know that was a wedding present from your grandad to your grandma? Did you know that?” I shook my head and she puckered her lips.

  “Yes, a wedding present to your grandma,” she said in a harsh whisper. “For her first wedding, that is.”

  Great-Aunt Mildred came very close to me, and I could see her painted-on eyebrows and smell the sickly scent of her face cream. It was like the gone-off milk Grandad left out for Moggy.

  Great-Aunt Mildred’s eyes were bright. Her false teeth shone unnaturally white in the dimly lit hallway. “Once Tommie was out of the way,” she whispered, “then our hero William came home to marry his brother’s wife!”

  She leaned back with satisfaction, watching my face.

  I thought about the photo in Dad’s study. Grandma and Tommie. 1940.

  I struggled to get the facts straight in my head:

  1. Grandma married Tommie in 1940.

  2. Tommie died that same year.

  3. Grandad married Grandma in 1941 (he’d told me that himself).

  I didn’t know how I felt about that. It was a bit weird, I thought, but there was nothing that wrong with what Grandad had done, was there? I mean, so what? But even I had to admit, it did seem a bit too soon after Tommie’s death.

  “How did Grandma die?”

  Great-Aunt Mildred sniffed. Maybe she realized she’d got carried away and told me too much already. “Don’t delve into things that aren’t your business,” she said.

  Which I thought was rich coming from her.

  “You’ll not get any more out of me, boy.” She began to shuffle off. “The past is done and dusted. Your father rightly put a stop to your scrapbook nonsense, and you should take his advice and leave well alone.”

  I watched her disappear into the kitchen and shut the door behind her.

  First Mr Webb, now my foul aunt. All saying horrible things about Grandad. I had to find out the truth. What happened to him during the war was a big part of his life story. Too big a gap to leave out.

  Lia was right. I had to get Grandad to tell me about it. And if he wouldn’t, I had to find out for myself.

  But why did there have to be so many secrets? There were too many. They were like brambles, scratching and choking, taking over, making cages round me. I felt closed in, like being in a coffin.

  The loud ticking of the grandfather clock drummed on my brain. It seemed to be mocking me. Tick, tock … Time’s up, Alex. They’re taking Grandad away …

  The ticking got louder and louder in my head until I couldn’t stand it any more.

  I wrenched open the door of the clock and stared at the mess of weights and chains inside. I thumped at the pendulum, and it rocked a little, then went back to its horrible ticking. I was about to punch it again, harder this time, when something caught my eye. Something glinted right in the bottom of the clock’s cabinet.

  I checked around. No Leonard spying through the banister, Dad’s study door still tight shut. I heard Mum and Aunt Mildred’s muffled voices coming from the kitchen, Sophie’s not-so-muffled shrieks. Grandad conspicuous by his silence.

  I reached a hand in and felt around with my fingertips, trying to keep my head out of the clockwork. I pulled out my hand, and when I opened it, there was a key in my palm.

  At first I thought it must be the one that was used to wind the clock. But I saw that that key was already stuck in a hole in the dial.

  The key I’d found was bigger. It was made of a faded silvery metal. As soon as my hand closed around it, somehow I knew which door the key would unlock.

  I didn’t know why it had been hidden there or who had hidden it, but I knew what it was for.

  I took it straight up to my bedroom and hid it under my pillow.

  It was the key to the room of Sophie’s cocodriles and transhlers.

  The key to the locked, forbidden room at the top of our house.

  – CHAPTER 12 –

  PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY

  Under the dining room table. Wednesday, 2 p.m. Head in a tangle.

  “Talk about secrets in the family,” said Lia. “Your Uncle Tommie dies, and some people say your grandad was to blame; then he goes and marries his brother
’s wife virtually straight after!”

  Rain thumped on the window beside me as I sat under the dining room table with the phone pressed against my head.

  It was the first chance I’d had to talk to Lia, thanks to Great-Aunt Mildred making us work in the graveyard, cutting back rhododendron bushes. She’d kept pestering Mum about it yesterday, saying she’d promised the vicar, and how would it look if we didn’t turn up? until Mum agreed that we’d help. Grandad had told me he’d rather chop off his own head and disappeared to the Den.

  Dad was at work, of course, so he got out of it, and the whole morning was used up with Mum fussing about our drenched waterproofs and the dangers of garden clippers, Aunt Mildred nagging, Leonard and Victoria whinging about the lukewarm tea and rubbish sandwiches, Sophie splashing in the mud and getting filthy. Me, trying not to think about all the time I was losing, my head in more of a tangle than the plants I was hacking. I kept an eye out for Freda Smith inscriptions, but no luck. I just hoped the vicar wouldn’t forget about finding that rubbing.

  So finally I’d got to phone Lia and fill her in. The only thing I missed out was the key. Don’t ask me why. Maybe I should have told her absolutely everything. There were less than three days left till Grandad had to go into the home and I needed all the help I could get. But for some reason I held back on the key. Probably it was because I knew she’d say, “Open the door then, Alex! What are you waiting for? Why haven’t you tried it already?”

  The truth was, I wasn’t ready to try that door. I’d hardly slept all night thinking about it. I didn’t want to go in that room. I had a bad feeling about it. A really bad feeling.

  “So, your grandad and Tommie were at Dunkirk in nineteen forty?” Lia paused. “I know about that battle. Dad’s always spouting history at me. There were all these soldiers, thousands and thousands of them, who’d got trapped on the beaches in France, and they had nowhere safe to go and they were being bombed all the time, and all these people went over the Channel in their boats to rescue them. Just ordinary people. All sorts of boats there were, like yachts and fishing boats. It was pretty amazing. Loads of soldiers were saved.”