The Museum of Forgotten Memories

by Anstey Harris

  The claustrophobia of the situation overwhelms me. I need to get outside. I need to think. ‘Could you keep an ear out for Leo if I go for a walk? He won’t budge from his console and, of course, there’s no door between our flat and yours.’ I don’t want to be in her debt but if I don’t get outside and breathe my head is going to explode.

  ‘It would be a pleasure.’ She smiles a charmless smile, like one of the predators in the cases, white teeth and dead eyes.

  *

  It takes a good twenty minutes to find the chapel but the walk gives me a good idea of the gardens and how far they stretch. It also reminds me how static I’ve been, how much my limbs long for some exercise, almost as much as my mind longs for some quiet. Maybe once we are settled and I’m less worried about Leo, I can run around here in the mornings, wake my body up.

  When I finally find it, I wonder if I’ve accidentally walked past the edge of the property and into the town itself. I had expected a tiny, humble, building but this is in a similar vein to everything else at Hatters: ridiculously grand and inappropriately huge. The chapel is, to all intents and purposes, a church. The arched doorway is protected by a stone porch with a metal gate across its front. I push the catch of the rusty gate, expecting it to be firmly shut, but it moves easily under my fingers and lets me in without so much as a creak. I’m surprised Araminta doesn’t keep more doors locked. And then I realise, with a feeling that makes my stomach lurch, that I don’t know what Curtis was convicted of or how long ago.

  *

  Inside, there is a cool quiet breeze I hadn’t expected. The same flat damp scent of ancient paper, tinged with the visceral smell of aged leather, that floats around the circular library makes me sniff deeply, once, twice.

  The peace in the tiny chapel is overwhelming. I feel as if part of the house has accepted me, as if this place could be my ally.

  I slide, sideways, into one of the old oak pews. Faint cobwebs string between the hymnal rest in front and the pew, a trap to keep out unwanted visitors or at least to warn the residents of their presence. I wave my hand through the gossamer and it vanishes.

  The wooden seat is clean. There must be some visitors to the little chapel or it would be far more run-down, far less welcoming. I rest my head on the empty shelf in front of me, my forehead cool against the smooth wood. It has been a long time since I have had a moment to think, a second to myself.

  I thought I would cry if I stopped moving, if I stood still. I imagined I’d be swallowed by the jaw-clenching anxiety that has been nibbling at the corners of my mind and the muscles of my face since we got here. Maybe if I were in another place I might, but this chapel, I don’t know why, gives me the first sanctuary I’ve had since we arrived.

  I’m as far from spiritual as it’s possible to be – ‘deeply irreligious’, Richard once called me – but here in the silence I can feel history everywhere, coating my skin, asking no questions. It’s a new departure for me. I resist spirituality where I can, preferring instead to give to charity or work behind the counter of a thrift store for a few hours. It was Richard who insisted Leo have a godfather. I thought the idea was preposterous, although a tiny – silent – part of me wanted to recognise Simon’s part in this story.

  ‘Traditionally,’ Richard said, ‘a godfather steps in and marries the widowed wife – the mother of his godchildren – should the father cark it.’ We were lying in bed, one each side of a sparkling baby Leo who was wrapped in a baby sleeping bag like a giant cocoon. Leo was plump and robust, so different to the stringy chicken he’d been at birth. At six months, he’d already defied so many of the doom-laden prophecies we’d been warned of when he was born. The feeding problems we’d been almost guaranteed had never materialised and Leo fed as if every meal was his last – a miniature of Richard.

  ‘And that’s why you’ve got to choose someone utterly reliable. Someone who will focus on a challenge. Like Simon.’

  ‘I’m not marrying Simon. Not even if you’re dead.’ I touched Leo’s forehead to check he wasn’t too hot. Our draughty Victorian terrace was just about warm enough to risk peeling his chubby thighs out of the sleeping bag. He kicked his feet in relief.

  ‘My godfather was called Valentine.’ Richard raised his eyebrows at me. ‘My father moved with some pretty dodgy sorts, and Valentine was some kind of flash millionaire my parents met in Cannes.’

  I kept very quiet, Richard so rarely talked about his father. His mother, long-divorced and living on a remote stretch of coast in Wales, was emotionally, as well as physically, distant. She and Richard had never been close.

  ‘If you look at my birth certificate – the long one – the one you’ve never seen . . .’ Richard grinned, ‘you will see that that pair of numpties made “Valentine” my second middle name in the hope that the playboy millions would make their way to me when he died.’

  ‘No!’

  Richard nods, his dark eyes wide.

  ‘You let me marry you, and bear your son, and you never told me your middle name was Valentine. Richard Valentine Hugo Lyons-Morris.’ I laid back on the pillow, laughing.

  ‘Richard Hugo Valentine, actually.’ He caught one of Leo’s little feet in his hand and bent his head down to kiss the toes. ‘Which is why I am plain old Richard Morris on my passport.’

  ‘And what happened to Valentine?’

  ‘They never saw him again. And I never got so much as a Christmas present.’

  I blew a raspberry on Leo’s arm and he chuckled. ‘Weren’t Daddy’s parents silly?’ I asked him and he beamed back at me. ‘You should look him up, Richard. He might have left you money. Us money. I wouldn’t have to go back to school after my mat leave. No more Year Four: Heaven.’

  ‘Shall I do a search on the internet? Sixties playboy, Valentine, Europe.’

  ‘You could try.’ I knew Richard wouldn’t, but I did. Of course, there was nothing there. I called Richard ‘Valentine’ for as long as I could until it got on his nerves. That was back when Richard still laughed, back when he could still take a joke. Fabulous days.

  *

  I get up and walk down the aisle of the chapel towards the altar. I wonder if people were allowed to marry here: there must have been funerals – the floor is studded with memorial stones. There are long names and Latin inscriptions, there are wives and daughters, husbands and sons. Some of the dates reach far further back than the chapel possibly can, perhaps the result of some Victorian genealogy. There are Morris family members buried everywhere in here: I step carefully over their stones set in the floor of the aisle. Just in front of the altar there is a huge white marble plaque. It says, in perfect lettering “Loveday Charles Stapleton Morris” and I presume, from his position in the church, that he paid for all the rest of it.

  There is a small step up to the altar area of the church – I’m sure it has a name but I’m not familiar enough with churches to know what that might be. To the right of the step is a lectern with a large leather-bound book on it. I open the book, half-afraid that its ancient pages will crumble under my fingers. The paper is thick and heavy. It is a ledger and records the births and deaths of the Lyons-Morris family.

  I turn to the end first, at least, the end of the entries – which are far from the end of the book. There is a certain self-assurance, or is that arrogance, in believing that your dynasty will continue long enough to fill the pages of a ledger this big.

  There he is, my tiny baby written huge on the page in curling letters:

  Lyons-Morris, Leo Richard Charles. Born, Islington, London, 2001.

  I’m annoyed – but not surprised – that whoever wrote this put the ‘Lyons’ back in. And then another thought blows in like a draught through the silent chapel: it is that legacy, this certainty, that has rescued Leo and me from homelessness. It is being part of this dynasty that shapes him, makes his ancestry as special as he is. Here, in the peace, that legacy feels more of a safety net than a burden and I wonder if Richard might have thought differently of it all if
it wasn’t for his illness.

  I trace back.

  Lyons-Morris, Richard Hugo Valentine. Born, London, 1961. Died, London, 2016. Missed always by his loving family.

  My Richard Hugo Valentine, with his death date there to remind everyone of the terrible tragedy it was. I don’t know who would have written the words after it: Richard’s grandfather died decades before he did.

  I feel a hot anger that someone made that assumption: that no one asked me about the anger or the sadness or the guilt or the confusion. That no one asked me what verb I would use to describe our loss. Richard is missed always, of course he is, but whoever wrote those words did not know the story – they cannot know what happened.

  The book is a litany of sadness: I suppose such things always are over time. Two lines above Richard’s name is his grandfather’s:

  Lyons-Morris, Hugo John Loveday. Born 30th September 1895 at Hatters. Died, Hatters, 1990. He did his duty to his king, his country, and his family. Fidelis servus.

  Even my schoolgirl Latin knows that fidelus means faithful. A faithful servant. I suppose that’s a good thing to be. It makes the entry for Geoffrey seem spiky.

  Lyons-Morris, Geoffrey Hugo John. Born 23rd July 1930 at Hatters. Died, France, 30th October 1975. To God’s judgement we commit him.

  I know that Richard’s father died in a car crash: one that Richard described as ‘inevitable’. And that’s pretty much all I know, apart from that he went off when Richard was young and rarely, if ever, made an appearance in Richard’s life. The six words of his obituary do little to enlighten me any further.

  It’s a strange idea that, however disparate the three men were in life, they are reduced to these lines, to covering two pages with four generations of their family. A family tree that has Leo on the end of its newest, and I hope strongest, branch.

  I’m glad he doesn’t know how much rests on his shoulders.

  *

  At each side of the altar are choir stalls and, in the absence of any other living humans, I sit in the one on the left, looking back down the church as choir boys must have done on hundreds of Sundays over the centuries. My only companions are the quiet, still, dead, the strange male line that skirts around the issue of wives and mothers, that presumably had no daughters. At least – no matter what their differences – they are all peaceful now.

  I close my eyes and rest my head on the chalky white paint behind me. My sigh is long and heartfelt and rustles through the stillness. It ripples with the echo of all the other sighs that have brought us here.

  *

  Richard’s illness arrived quietly. We were on holiday. We were the handsome couple on the promenade, laughing: him, taller than average and immediately appealing; bright white teeth in a broad smile and brooding dark features that offset his instant likeability; her, carefree, loving the early years of parenting, the daily magic; they walk together, her happiness evident on the outside, her short brown hair expensively cut and chic and between them a sturdy little boy swings on their hands. The little boy is precious in a miniature yellow oilskin and striped leggings.

  Back then, Richard and I – and little Leo, beautiful Leo – looked like the family everyone would want to be. Most importantly we were the family we wanted to be.

  ‘Did you see that man?’ Richard asked me. His smile had disappeared. He looked, and I struggled to find the word at first, bewildered.

  ‘What man?’ We were fighting our way down a busy French seafront, trying to keep together and still swing Leo up in the air without damaging any of the multitudinous passers-by.

  ‘The guy in the hat. There.’ Richard pointed at a man strolling away from us, deep in conversation with the women beside him. ‘He was talking about me.’

  ‘You don’t speak French.’ I laughed at him, trying to turn it into a joke. The words themselves made a joke but something in Richard, some light that should have been twinkling, had gone out. His face was pale. ‘He wasn’t, Richard – he didn’t even look at us.’

  ‘I want to go back to the hotel.’ He was adamant.

  Luckily it was before Leo had much in the way of speech and if he wanted an ice cream he was too little to tell me, so we got away with all going back to the hotel. In the room, Richard lay on the bed pretending to be asleep.

  ‘What about dinner?’

  ‘You go. Take Leo. I’m not hungry.’

  I tried a few times to persuade him to come but he clearly wasn’t going to move. I ate goat cheese salad that night, walnuts sticky with honey, my jaw tense with anger. Leo ploughed his way through a baby portion of mussels and chips, juice up to his elbows. In the morning, Richard was his normal self – except that he refused to talk about the beach incident.

  I told Simon about it when we were home. The three of us were in the pub and Richard had gone to the loo.

  ‘And he wouldn’t talk about it again, that was it. But I swear nothing happened. The man didn’t so much as look at him.’

  ‘Rich was probably hungover,’ Simon said. ‘Beer fear.’

  I shook my head. I knew something was wrong, even then, even when it was a fleeting glimpse of what he would become. It was a premonition to the hospital stays that tormented him, the medication that blunted him. That moment the illness entered our lives was only that, a moment, but it had wriggled its way in and it had started to burrow. Most of Richard’s illness was background, quiet but always there: a nervousness watching him standing on a train platform; a slight unpredictability when faced with change; the flicker of a shadow walking past our lives. That day was different: the day the ball started rolling, faster and faster, towards the end.

  *

  I open my eyes, aware that time has passed and yet stood still while I’ve been in here. In front of me, scratched into the back of the choir stall are the letters RHVL-M. Richard sat here. The ghost of the boy Richard sat here long enough to scratch his name into the wood with a penknife. I trace the smooth letters with my fingers and my heart.

  Chapter Seven

  My sleep is fitful and interrupted. For almost every minute between 3 and 5 a.m., I was composing single lines about my life: the kind someone – generation after generation – has seen fit to attribute to each man in Richard’s family. Who will write Leo’s? It kept me awake for a long time.

  From: Simon Henderson

  To: Cate Morris

  Subject: Oh . . .

  Mail: That Good, eh?

  You can do this, my friend. You have been through so much worse: kept body and soul together in the darkest days. You survived before by putting Leo first – as I’m sure you’re doing now. Don’t write it off – give it a chance. Don’t forget to be kind to yourself as well – I wish I could help.

  Sx

  The chapel has stirred something in me. In the dark – and most lonely – hours, apart from Simon’s message from the other side of the planet, I thought about those letters carved in the wood: wondered how many pieces of Richard, how many tiny ghosts, I will find here if I look. There is more to this place than animals and books, than scientific instruments and old cannons. I commented on the cannons outside the front door when I came in last night.

  ‘The plural of “cannon” is “cannon”.’ Araminta smiled at me in sympathy: as if I had committed a terrible faux pas.

  ‘Every day’s a school day,’ I said and gave her a smile with all the depth in it that she reserves for me. ‘The cannon are quite remarkable.’

  I walked back the long way and came along the front side of the house, from the museum door to the front door that Leo and I used on the first day: a row of cannon – straight from the deck of a ship and dulled to a mottled verdigris – point out across the gravel to the wide paddock. They looked particularly incongruous when I saw them this morning, with two pints of milk delivered to the step they are guarding.

  ‘Do you want cereal?’ I ask Leo as he comes out of his bedroom. He is up very late for him and I can see from his puffy eyes that he’s still tired.

&
nbsp; ‘Don’t want breakfast. I’m busy.’ He is pulling on his trainers in what passes for a hallway. His backside knocks the green baize curtain as he does up his shoes. Leo has dressed in a hurry: mustard-coloured T-shirt with red trousers and a green waistcoat – he looks like a traffic light.

  ‘That’s good to hear. Busy doing what?’

  ‘I’m going to see Curtis. In the garden.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ I think of the cloud of foul-smelling smoke around Curtis, of the smudged blue tattoo on his neck. ‘Not today. We’re going to the shops today. Whatever you think.’

  Leo bangs the sitting room door as he comes in to illustrate his unhappiness. ‘I want to help Curtis in the garden.’

  ‘I was wondering if the local shop does comics. I mean, you are going to get behind on your stories if . . .’ I trail off and pretend to be absorbed by the view outside. I’m surprised to find it genuinely is absorbing if you give it a moment or two: the planting – now that I’m staring at it with the soft focus I reserve for when I’m ignoring Leo – is far more planned than I’d realised. The trees have been meticulously measured, pruned and lopped in the past so that they look effortless, elegant, against the setting of the long green lawns – despite the neglect they suffer from now.

  Leo taps his hands on his thighs, but it’s a thoughtful tap, not an angry one. His frustration at my parenting abilities is ebbing now that he’s remembered he’s a fortnight out on his superhero stories.

  ‘It might be a good idea to go to the shops.’ He nods his head, but the dialogue doesn’t include me, yet. ‘Curtis will like comics too.’ He looks up at me. ‘Okay. But I want to get breakfast first. I need my cereal.’

  Sometimes it’s worth pointing out the things that were my idea in the first place, but other times – like this – it really isn’t.