The Museum of Forgotten Memories

by Anstey Harris

  There were a few raised markers in some of the tests, but none of them claimed to be definite, just that they might indicate a higher risk of Down’s syndrome. We concentrated on the words ‘might’ and ‘risk’ rather than worrying unnecessarily. And then, in the last scan of my pregnancy, they found that Leo had a tiny hole in his heart, tiny but still a significant danger for his minuscule body. That was far more of a worry than any chromosome condition might or might not be.

  Richard was in robust health back then, a strong and emotionally intelligent man. I know he was as frightened as me, but he covered my hand with his, meshing a finger between each of mine. ‘Down’s syndrome isn’t going to kill him,’ he said, ‘so let’s not worry about that.’ The unspoken part of the sentence was, ‘But a tiny anomaly, measured in micromillimetres, could.’

  Leo has spent nineteen years proving what an extraordinary man he is but his first fight, the one he and Richard did by themselves in the early hours of that cold February morning was his hardest. Leo was taken into surgery for his first heart repair when he weighed less than two bags of sugar. I was spared the worst of it by a general anaesthetic and three blood transfusions.

  Richard, who thought he might lose both of us, sat in the waiting room, looking anxiously up and down the corridor for anyone wearing surgeon’s scrubs; hoping for one who’d saved his wife and one who’d salvaged his son.

  By the time we were all reunited, Leo’s eyes were open. We knew by then that the ‘maybe’ diagnosis was a real one, but we also knew our baby was out of danger for the time being. Tiny beads of water glistened like crystals between his long eyelashes, and his black pupils searched round the shapes of us for focus.

  ‘He’s absolutely perfect,’ Richard whispered. ‘We’ve hit the bloody jackpot.’

  *

  I’ve sat in my bedroom since lunchtime, and Leo in his. We can’t sustain that for the rest of our lives. Leo is grumbling to himself, mostly about me, and occasionally throws his arms up in despair. I’ve tried to settle him to read, to draw, but he’s too agitated by all the recent change, and too bored without anything properly organised to do. The only people who can improve our lot are us.

  ‘Come on.’ My jolly let’s-do-this face is only skin deep but it’s better than moping in here all day. ‘I invoke the Nice Day Rule.’

  ‘It’s not a nice day,’ Leo says. ‘It is – in fact – a very boring day. A bad day.’

  ‘Let’s change that then.’ I pull on my trainers. ‘Come on, we’ll check out the gardens, then we’ll go and do some shopping. What would you like for supper?’

  Leo runs through a list of options as he puts his shoes on. ‘Anchovies, tomatoes, peppers. And linguine.’

  I wonder, without much faith, whether the village shop has anchovies or linguine. ‘Great choice. Come on.’

  *

  We head right at the bottom of our stairs and into the long corridor that leads to the library – there must be doors somewhere along here that lead to the garden. We could go through the tiny one at the end of the kitchen passageway, but I’m trying to avoid Araminta.

  Leo has bucked up a little and is ahead of me, his commentary lighter now – some of it is even sung.

  We follow the arrow-shaped signs that direct us to ‘the library’ – we both enjoy books. Suddenly, about twenty feet or so away from me, Leo stops. He is bathed in light, haloed amber and glittering. I see him raise his head, look upwards towards the sky. He spins – slowly – on the spot as I walk towards him.

  This is the huge glass dome. We are standing underneath metre after metre of glass, curving up and away from us into a perfect bubble above our heads. All around its circumference, from the ground up to what must be midway up the first floor of the house, are shelves and shelves of leather-bound books, perfectly arranged and squeezed in next to each other in matching sizes.

  Ladders scale the cliffs of books, reaching up over shelf after shelf and, every now and again, a banner flies like an injured bird, dramatic colours hanging limply. There is an air of dust about the place, the upper reaches can’t have been cleaned for years and the brass poles that the banners hang from are tarnished and dull.

  Leo shouts out. ‘Woo hoo, woo hoo.’ And the sound doubles back to us in the huge space. It’s another Richard thing, something he always did in tunnels or underpasses or, with enough booze inside him, Tube stations. Did he learn that here too? Leo’s sounds bounce back to us, growing fainter, and I imagine that I hear Richard’s voice in harmony with it.

  The afternoon sun is settling and it casts a line of coral light around the point where the shelves meet the glass, almost as if the whole library is on fire, lit from the tips of these delicate pages.

  Around the edges of the library there are carved wooden booths, each one containing a desk and one or two chairs. Twenty people could easily sit and work in this room and I can only assume they must have done once. Each booth has an animal head mounted onto a shield above the desk, caribou, elk, a moose stretches its huge antlers over one of them.

  Exactly as I assumed, two wide French windows open from the library on to the lawn and, when I push them, they swing open. When we step down the four stone steps we are directly opposite, although still a fair way away from, the golden statues in the lake. They could be skating right at us and they both make direct eye contact with me. It is unnerving.

  Outside the sun is still warm on the wide lawns. We zigzag across between light and shade. The majestic trees that I saw from my bedroom window are much more impressive at close quarters and very old. Some are traditional English trees that might, apart from the even spacing and elegant angles, have found their way here by nature – oak, beech, a chestnut that spreads its wide branches over a dappled circle of grass. Others are evidence of Hugo’s travel or maybe those of the generations before him: the vast Chinese monkey puzzle I saw from upstairs, its crooked branches rambling out and upwards, and a fig, prehistoric knobbled leaves bent over to the ground, its tangled branches heavy with unripe figs.

  One tree, which I don’t recognise, has strange hairy fruits hanging from it. It isn’t until I reach up and hold one in my hand that I realise they are kiwi fruit – Chinese gooseberries – a plant that I had no idea could grow in the UK, let alone outdoors. Perhaps they only can in this enchanted place.

  Up close, the statues are breathtaking. They stop just short of life-size, everything about them perfect but reduced by, perhaps, 20 per cent. They are a boy and a girl, or a man and a woman – but from their fine features and their lithe limbs, I’d say they’re in their late teens or early twenties: Leo’s age. They each wear a version of a toga: short and gathered at the waist, with – for her – a knotted rope, and – for him – a belt with a short dagger hanging from it. The detail is incredible. Their gold skin stretches around their features, clearly alarmed, clearly running. Their hands are fastened tight together, whoever they’re running from or to, they are doing it as one.

  The water they skate across is less elegant. There are a few ragged waterlily leaves trying their best to dominate the surface, but the pond is dark and green with slime.

  ‘Don’t like it.’ Leo stands with his trainers at the very edge of the pond.

  ‘Be careful, it’s slippery.’

  He gives me a withering look. ‘These are my best trainers. I’m not getting them wet.’

  I don’t want to go back to the mood we were both in upstairs. The sensible option is to find something else to look at, something away from the water. From upstairs, I could see a long red-brick wall with a pale green door in it: presumably the old kitchen garden. The same wall is ahead of us, only a couple of hundred yards away. In front of it, the female peacock turns to look at us, as if beckoning us in.

  Maybe, I hope, as we cross the lawns towards it, we might finally find our refuge behind that gate.

  Up close, the gate is an old blue door, eaten away at the bottom by some hungry rodent, and flaking with curled leaves of ancient paint. Th
e catch is peeling and rusted but clicks open easily enough. The door itself sticks at the top but yields to a light ‘thump’ from the heel of my hand.

  If I were a member of the public or a museum visitor, I would take its reluctance as a sign that I shouldn’t go in, and that adds to the idea that this might be our sanctuary.

  Inside, the plants are extraordinary. Huge ferns droop over the paths and green bananas hang in upside-down bunches from the tall palm trees. Grasses as high as my head swish and sway in the afternoon breeze and enormous green leaves, the size of tabletops, stick up from the flowerbeds. Everything is savage and wild and yet, at the same time, tamed and kept away from the flagged path we are walking on. The smells are those of a hothouse, exotic and fragrant; flashes of colour catch at the edge of my line of vision and a parakeet circles, screaming, overhead.

  ‘This looks like dinosaur land,’ Leo says, a slight nervousness in his voice.

  ‘No dinosaurs, I promise. It’s amazing though, isn’t it? Look – those are real bananas.’

  ‘Why are they green? Bananas are yellow. Or horrible and black.’

  ‘It’s not sunny enough for them to finish growing, to ripen. That’s why all the bananas we eat are grown abroad.’ We are still walking along the path, it takes a sharp right-hand turn and we follow it.

  This side must have been the hothouses. There are brick-built greenhouses, bigger than most people’s houses, all missing panes of glass here and there. The plants inside have taken over but I can see edible fruit hanging from the tangled vines – tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers. They look like coloured birds peeking through the foliage and I think of the still displays inside the museum.

  ‘Look at that.’ I point them out to Leo. ‘We could come here in the evenings to get stuff for our tea.’

  There is another smell on the evening breeze: a smell I know from London – not one I expect to smell here. On a bench at the end of the hothouses, his back against the wall and his eyes closed, is a young man. In his hand is an enormous spliff and he blows out puffs of cannabis smoke like a long slow dragon. His legs are stretched out in front of him and his face turned up towards the fading sun, the back of his head is entirely hidden by the hood of his jumper.

  ‘Excuse me?’ I say in my best teacher voice. ‘Do you have permission to be in here?’

  He jumps up, flings the joint to the floor and grinds it with his trainer. ‘Sorry, I thought I was on my own.’

  He isn’t very old, a little younger than Leo probably. He has a round silver ring through his lip and as he moves his head, I notice a smudged blue tattoo on his neck.

  Behind him, a blackbird hops onto a garden fork to watch us.

  ‘Should you be in here? This is private property.’

  ‘I’m Leo,’ Leo says in his best friendly voice: I shoot him a death stare.

  ‘I’m Curtis,’ says the boy. ‘I’m a volunteer here. I dig the garden.’

  ‘I don’t care who you are: you can’t sit in this garden taking drugs.’ All sorts of thoughts fly through my mind: the priceless animal skins, the statues. I wonder whether Araminta stops to vet her helpers at all.

  ‘Is that drugs?’ Leo asks, pointing to the dog end on the ground.

  ‘It’s . . . it’s stupid, mate. Forget it.’ Curtis at least has the good grace to backtrack.

  ‘I have come to live here,’ Leo says.

  ‘For a short time . . .’ I want us all to be clear on this.

  ‘And I need to make some friends . . .’ Leo continues.

  Curtis rubs his nose with the sleeve of his hoodie. The jumper is a dusty dark blue and has frayed string hanging down from the collar. ‘Araminta told me you were coming. There aren’t many people our age round here. Are you on TimeQuakeTwo?’

  Leo nods and an exchange I can’t understand follows.

  ‘LeoLion123.’

  ‘HogBoy2004. You on tonight?’

  ‘Yes.’ Leo looks at me, his face set in a frown of determination. ‘What time?’ he asks Curtis.

  ‘I’ll be on as soon as I get home. I only live in the village.’ Curtis nods at Leo, ignores me completely, and walks out through the pale blue garden door.

  Chapter Six

  Leo can’t wait to get back. His plans to cook linguini are abandoned in favour of an evening playing online video games with Curtis and a pasta sauce from a box in the cup-board. I’m furious on every level and so, unfortunately, is Leo. I have had to cajole and bargain even to get him to eat supper with one hand while he plays his computer game.

  I sit beside him on the sofa to look at my emails on my phone.

  To: Cate Morris

  From: Simon Henderson

  Subject: You’re in then . . .

  Mail: You’ve seen it now so you’ll kind of get why I didn’t warn you. To be honest, there wasn’t much I could say. I gave it serious thought and decided Rich would want you to see the legacy of his family exactly as it is, see who they are first-hand. And now you have. You could call it bonkers, or you could call it a glorious investment in the wonders that our planet has to give and a record of a life none of us can begin to imagine. When I went there, all those years ago, there were researchers from every corner of the globe beetling about in the attics, uncovering packing case after packing case of skeletons, measuring the bones and sampling the genes. I met a guy recently who’d been there, who was one of those scurrying researchers. Did you know that only one in ten humans is left-handed, but half the chimpanzee population are – 50 per cent. Why would that be? They’re our closest relative. His research took him to Rich’s grandfather’s collection: that’s amazing. What a legacy.

  Sadly, none of us have got the money they had back then (or I’d pack up my fish data and be on the next plane over to help you guys settle in). At least now you can see what they spent it on. Amazing, eh? That’s some vision Rich’s grandfather had, and I think Rich would be glad that Leo’s part of it now.

  I never knew what went on between Rich and his grandfather. One day they were best friends and Rich went down to Hatters all the time, the next it was history. Your guess is as good as mine and I don’t suppose there’s anyone still there who would know.

  Keep smiling, mate. All three of you are in my thoughts.

  Xxx

  PS. Rich didn’t live there as far as I know but he knew everything there was to know about it.

  It’s time Leo did something else instead of gaming. ‘You’ll get square eyes,’ I say, sounding painfully like my parents, back in the day.

  ‘Curtis and Mrs Minta are my only friends from here. All of them. I don’t have any others.’ He smacks his hands down onto his thighs in protest. ‘And I want to play my game with Curtis.’

  ‘You’re not exactly “with him”,’ I say as part of my losing battle.

  ‘You said playing games with Dean was the same as being with him. You did.’

  My frustration is boiling over. The trip to the village shop wasn’t going to change the world but it would have been nice to see another human being. There is no way to shift Leo from this machine.

  ‘Look.’ Leo points to the screen. A man swings through a jungle not unlike the kitchen garden where we met Curtis. Underneath him, a second man crouches low in the undergrowth, watchfully. A tribal drum beat bangs out as a tinny sound from Leo’s headphones. ‘That’s me, in the trees, and Curtis is watching, being very, very careful of me.’

  The figure in the undergrowth raises a warning hand, his camouflage jacket no more colourful than Curtis’s real clothes. Leo bangs the pause button and leans forward. I can see him holding his breath.

  From the next tree, the one Leo was about to swing into, a huge dinosaur head appears, teeth wide and dripping with something awful. I can hear its roar leak out of the headphones.

  ‘Phew!’ shouts Leo at the top of his voice. And then, more quietly and into his microphone, ‘You saved me.’

  I can’t hear what Curtis replies, except that it ends in ‘Bruv’.

 
I write a quick reply to Simon in an effort to feel listened to.

  From: Cate Morris

  To: Simon Henderson

  Subject: FFS

  Mail: Do you want to know what my favourite part of the museum is right now? The first glimpse of civilisation when you turn the last corner of the drive.

  Xxx

  I sigh as the message leaves and take the plates downstairs.

  Araminta is in the kitchen, of course she is. I swear she listens to my every movement in order to appear, ghostlike and silent, beside me wherever I am.

  ‘Am I in your way?’ I gather up the plates I’d put down on the side ready to wash.

  ‘No, I’m only getting a drink.’ She glides past me to the fridge, where she takes out a milk bottle, the old-fashioned sort, glass and delivered by a milkman.

  ‘You still have a milkman here?’ I ask. I haven’t seen one of these bottles in a decade.

  ‘A lot of the old ways are better for the environment.’ She glares at my four-litre plastic carton in the fridge door.

  ‘While Leo isn’t here . . .’

  ‘Where is Leo?’ she asks: there is accusation in her voice.

  ‘He’s playing on his games consol. He’s playing an online game with one of your volunteers – Curtis?’

  She nods. ‘That’s good, Curtis is a nice boy.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that. Do you normally let your volunteers smoke cannabis in the gardens?’

  She glares at me. ‘Firstly, no – obviously we do not – and I will have words with Curtis. Secondly, he’s not a volunteer – he’s on Community Service.’

  I am speechless. I have moved my son from inner-city London to hang out with a drug-taking convicted criminal.

  ‘And he does it very well. He’s a hard worker.’ Araminta turns her back to me and pours milk – from her recyclable glass bottle – into a pan.

  I don’t want this boy to be Leo’s only friend. It makes all my failures that much louder, brings all my mistakes crashing and banging into my head. This wouldn’t happen in our old lives, it really wouldn’t. In London all sorts of people appear – briefly – on one’s horizon before going off at a tangent. Leo and I managed his environment at the centre of a huge community and he had options: he could make his own, safe, choices. Here, there are so few people, such a small pool, that that isn’t the case anymore.