The Museum of Forgotten Memories

by Anstey Harris

  I shrug. ‘They just don’t – as far as I know. It’s part of their culture to pass on the ways of how to do it. And then – and this is my favourite part – when your mother dies, or maybe your grandmother – you take her stone and you put it into your mouth with your own and hold it there.’ I love this idea. I imagine every word my mother ever said washed across a stone, smoothing its edges, leaving the tracks of its passage like an invisible gramophone ridge. Then I think of my words: words of kindness, love; words of loss and sadness; words of wonder at all the crazy and beautiful things the world has given me. It would be lovely to know I still had them all here.

  ‘But how did Colonel Hugo get them? Surely these are someone’s stones? Someone’s heritage.’ Another woman is bending forward, peering through the glass at the little heap of smoothed stones. She is wearing flat sensible lace-ups, halfway between sneakers and shoes, and the white of the laces reflects in the glass in front of her. She looks up at me with genuine concern.

  I’ve read this; the bigger picture of Colonel Hugo’s ethos is explained in the foyer. ‘These were stones without a home, from lines that had died out or from girls who took their mother-in-law’s stone, which happened in families with no daughters.’

  I deliberately stand in front of the case to say the next bit – as if I know the details off by heart and they’re not in tiny script behind my legs. ‘Colonel Hugo bartered with a village elder to get them. Every human-related item in this museum has been paid for – in various forms – and the transactions are all documented in Colonel Hugo’s accounts from the time. They’re available for you to look at in the central library.’

  It’s an amazing legacy: a one-hundred-year-old register of Fair Trade, of an old-school explorer recognising that the people he was meeting had as much right to the property and heritage as he did to his. Maybe this should have been the thing Malcolm tried to sell to his group as a reason to visit the museum. Maybe I could try with future visitors. There is the collective gasp I expect as the group walk into the centre of the library room. The books stand sentinel in their neat rows, challenging anyone to know more about Art, or Medicine, or Geography than they do.

  In this room, the books are the stars. The shelves reach up and up, the only way to see the top shelves is to tip your head back as if you were looking at the sky. Even then, you wouldn’t immediately notice the rail that runs around the inner edge of the cupola, and the spidery ladders that disguise themselves with the spines of the books that lead to it. The books line the sides like the cells of a beehive, a honeycomb of leather, and paper, and words.

  The spider-eye lens of glass leaks in light at all angles. It is a bubble of pure blue today – a perfect view of a cloudless August sky. The gilt lettering on the spines dances in the reflected sun, glitters up and down the walls.

  ‘How many books are in here?’ It is Thierry, Malcolm’s friend. He is staring upwards and moving backwards in tiny circles to take it all in, a bewitched waltzer in an enchanted ballroom.

  ‘I honestly don’t know. And I can’t begin to imagine what they’re worth – what might be here. They’re mostly non-fiction, but they come from all over the world. Malcolm, do you know any more than me?’

  Malcolm shakes his head. ‘To be honest, I never came in here much. It’s impressive and all, but the animals, the history, the real things – they’re more me than the books.’ He points a finger towards the vast shelves. ‘I think that’s why he did it.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘I think all the other rooms, all the collections and the travels, I think they’re all the pictures of what these words describe. We’re a rural community. People travel now, get away and see bits of the world – my late wife and I went to India three times. But that was unthinkable in my parents’ time. For someone like me to see anything outside the country, outside the county even.’ His eyes are misty and I wonder how many of those glasses of wine he emptied. ‘But my parents came here. They wouldn’t have read the books – they would have thought they were too precious – but they got a great idea of the world from seeing the way it had been laid out for them. Wonderful, really.’

  ‘Did you know Richard?’ Suddenly it is the question I most want to ask Malcolm, the first person here who has freely given up information.

  ‘Bless him. Not well, of course – he was a lot younger than me. But I knew him when he was little.’ He takes hold of my hand for the shortest moment. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened to him.’

  I give a little smile of thanks. ‘Was he here when you used to visit?’

  Malcolm laughs. ‘I used to see him when I came up to call for Minnie. I had a bit of a crush on her, between you and me, but she wasn’t interested. She doted on Richard when he was a little boy.’

  Chapter Nine

  To: Cate Morris

  From: Simon Henderson

  Subject: Before I Go

  Mail: Phew, that sounds a bit more like you – try and keep that up.

  Sorry to say, I’m going to abandon you as well in a sec – two-week field trip to find fossils. I know, I know, but I like them. And we need the past to understand the future. Fact.

  My team are picking everyone up on the way and I live on the mountain side of the city so I’m last onto the charabanc. I’m looking forward to it in that same way that I never stopped enjoying rugby tours . . . Big kid.

  Thanks for the photo of Leo in his hat, I’ve sent it on to my mum – she does like to be kept informed of her great-godson’s progress. She says she’s going to find some old ones of Rich and me and scan them in on her iPad. Ninety-two years old and scanning on her iPad: I’m proud of her!

  Hope all is good and getting better.

  Sx

  I can trace the pivot of our lives to a Christmas. Not our last Christmas together, it would turn out, but the last one in our beautiful home. In unopened letters that Richard kept from me and in muttered phone calls he passed off as interviews with mental health professionals, the fabric of our lives was being eaten away as surely as if termites were gnawing at the footings of our house, multiplying in the damp darkness, turning their blind eyes upwards to stare through the floor.

  The Christmas tree always stood in the same place in our old sitting room. Richard had been painstaking in his attention to detail when he renovated what had been the Edwardian parlour. Its high ceilings and original features were part of what had attracted us to the house from the off. When we’d seen it that first time, almost derelict and empty but for curled carpet and a smell of cats, he’d hugged me with an electric current of joy, imagining those Christmases with our clutch of children: two or four or however many we were lucky enough to have. Our eventual reality, our one perfect boy, lived up to every pulse of that wishing.

  The tree was always real, tall and bent at the top to get its whole length into the room. I loved the way I would forget it was there until I opened the sitting room door and was engulfed in that scent, the oily resin that leaked into the air from its needles. The elegant tree of my imaginings had morphed, over the years of Leo’s little life, into a multi-coloured mishmash of crepe-paper bows and playschool paintings, cluttered mementos of happiness, of achievements. My one concession to style was the lights, always white, winding their way from the very top – squashed against the ceiling – down and down and down to the wide prickly lower branches. Richard would moan, an exaggerated wail of despair – and say that that many plugs in so many gang sockets would blow the house up or double the electric bill, or anything else he could think of. And then we would stand back, admire the tree, and feel the warmth of our home, our lives together.

  For the whole of that last year in the house, Simon had been in Mexico on a research project. It had made Richard’s Christmas to know that he’d be home and with us for the celebrations, lifted him from a rigorous gloom that had followed him for weeks.

  Leo had gone to bed wide-eyed with wonder, his rosebud lips in a permanent smile at the tree, the lights, the promi
se of presents. We tucked him in with his stocking on top of his bed covers, and told him how the big sock would rustle in the morning, over-stuffed and heavy on his legs.

  I was in my element. My three favourite people on the planet under my roof, the downstairs hearths lit – the chimneys finally lined and swept and ready for a real old-style

  Christmas after years of work. The house was almost finished bar two bedrooms on the top floor that we could pretend weren’t there. In the end, it was a whole Christmas of pretending.

  ‘Are you cold?’ I asked Simon as soon as he got in. ‘Is it still warm in Mexico?’

  ‘Not where we were. It was bloody freezing in the mountains. But we had good tequila.’ He put his rucksack on the kitchen table and dug around in it. ‘Like this actually. Not for export.’ He pulled out a brown glass bottle, wrapped in an old T-shirt. ‘All the way from deepest darkest Mexico to this little corner of London. And I’ve got some bits for Leo – one from my mum and a couple from me. Hers is wrapped but, you know . . .’ He grinned at me and I passed him the coloured paper on its roll and the kitchen scissors.

  Richard poured tiny glasses of tequila, and they sat in a row on the table. We were being careful with alcohol, trying to drink enough to make our celebrations feel like their usual selves but not enough to tip Richard’s delicate stability.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Richard and he smiled like he meant it at last. He was more animated than I’d seen him in a while. Even getting the glasses out without being asked was a small victory, more like his real self. ‘How long are you staying, Si? It’s so great to have you here. To have you home.’

  ‘I’ve got to see my mum a bit, and I fly back on the third. But maybe – if you guys can bear it – I’ll stay for a few days with her after Boxing Day and come back to you for New Year?’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Richard. ‘We can go up to Ally Pally like the old days.’ We used to watch the fireworks from Alexandra Palace before we had Leo, the three of us huddled together in the cold, drinking from the same bottle or – in another century – sharing cigarettes from the same packet. ‘Leo’s old enough to enjoy fireworks now.’

  Later, while Richard stacked the dishwasher, Simon and I took a tour of the house and the more recent renovations. Out of his earshot we were able to be honest.

  ‘Thank you for coming back,’ I half-whispered in the glass bathroom. ‘It’s done him the world of good, seeing you.’

  ‘He’s not as bad as I thought he’d be. Not as bad as last time I was here. I’m pleased. He’s almost the real him, fragile, but very nearly himself.’

  Simon’s visit had been the result of furtive emails between us, discussing Richard’s condition, his prognosis, whether Simon could help. It wasn’t the spontaneous trip back to the UK Richard believed: there were so many secrets slipping in and out of our house that winter.

  I knew that Simon had hoped for the boisterous Richard, the booming laugh of his party persona, his boundless energy for life. I had accepted the change, mourned the part of him that was lost but I’d had time, had seen him quietly shrink.

  ‘Are all the fireplaces finished?’ Simon asked, trying to talk about solid life, rather than the fear we were all carrying. ‘Does this one work?’

  We were in our bedroom. It had started to look like something from an architect’s brochure. The perfect cornice, restored and whitened, the sash windows tightened against the winter rain and slightly misted with condensation from the en suite bathroom. Simon leaned down and put his hand to the chimney inside the fireplace. ‘Is this one open too?’ he asked and swiped his hand in the space to check. There was a rustling noise. ‘What’s this?’

  Simon held an envelope in his hand. Behind him, I could see the corner of another one, brown paper, and slightly above that, more white. I stepped across to the fireplace.

  When I put my hand into the chimney, I could feel the crush of paper, the jumbled and tightly packed letters – all unopened. Each one was addressed to Richard. Occasionally they had my name on too. I pulled and pulled. They tumbled down from the chimney. Not Santa Claus, not gifts, not the magical reindeer and the jingling bells that Leo was dreaming of.

  Simon and I sat on the bed, the huge stack of bills – because we could see that was what they were – between us.

  ‘I’ve never heard of half these companies,’ I said. ‘I don’t even know why they’re writing to us. We certainly don’t owe them anything.’

  But we did. One by one we opened the envelopes, we did half of them upstairs and then – once we knew how awful the situation really was – we took the rest downstairs, to Richard, to read together in the kitchen.

  The repossession notice was near the bottom of the pile, close enough to the nightmare being over that I thought we might have got away with it. Then I read that there had been a hearing: our creditors had been present and, when we looked at the letter more carefully, we were in a house that now – already – belonged to the bank. They had only not got round to evicting us because of the festive season.

  I thought of my son asleep in his perfect bedroom, of my huge and tasteful Christmas tree, my glass bathroom. I thought of all of the secrets and all of the lies. The last letter, the repossession one, had been signed for. Richard had taken delivery of it from a bailiff, signed to say that was so, then hid it up the chimney.

  Richard was silent, his face told me nothing – not that there was anything left to explain.

  I screamed at him, livid. ‘How? How could you have let this happen? This is our fucking home.’ I sobbed into my hands, unable to look at him.

  He stood, without a word, pushed his chair neatly under the table, and went to bed.

  ‘I’ll cancel my flight,’ Simon said.

  *

  I check my phone occasionally during the tour, but no word from Leo. I arrange it so that Malcolm and friends can spill out into the garden and I can go and find him.

  At first, I think they’ve gone. But when I walk right into the kitchen garden, I find them with their backs to the low brick wall of the orangery. They are tearing tiny pieces off their sandwiches and throwing them to the glossy black crow who hops around collecting the crumbs.

  ‘Is that the same crow from the other day?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s Curtis’s friend,’ Leo says.

  ‘Crows can remember human faces.’ Curtis says – his voice barely audible – but then sinks back into the anonymity of his hoodie.

  Outside the kitchen garden wall, I can hear the coach party: inside it is quiet enough to pick up the tap-tapping of the matt black beak as the bird pecks the ground. The tangled honeysuckle that has entirely taken over the cold frame and the flowerbed next to it sweetens the air and makes everything balmy. The turned-over earth that Curtis and Leo have dug is a fresh brown against the summer colours all around it and the damp cold earth looks like respite from the summer heat.

  ‘You’ve done so much.’ There isn’t a weed or a clod to be seen in the perfect soil. ‘Have you had enough, Leo? You must both be exhausted.’

  ‘I’m in the middle of helping.’ Leo looks away from me to emphasise his point. ‘I’m not finished.’

  ‘We’re dead-heading next,’ Curtis says quietly. ‘That’s not very hard work.’

  I wish we hadn’t got off on the wrong foot, that I’d never seen him smoking the cannabis. There’s no sign of it now: this house is starting to feel like it might all be about second chances, about new beginnings.

  ‘Enjoy the dead heads,’ I say to them. ‘And text me if you can’t find me, Leo. I’ll be somewhere in the house.’

  *

  I walk back in through the double doors that lead into the Japanese collection on the far side of the library. The room is ornate and oriental. Sideboards and panels of intricate marquetry line the walls, and vases as tall as me stand by the windows.

  The French doors I’ve walked in through are part of a long window that runs all the way, floor to ceiling, down one side of the room. If I hadn’t ju
st come in from a classic English garden, I could believe I was on the veranda of a long low bungalow in the Japan or China of a hundred years ago.

  The walls are papered with exquisite silk fabric, threads of silver and gold run through it and the tiny embroidered stitches that make up its pattern are incredible. The scenes in each piece are as detailed as a fine drawing; the petals of tiny flowers, light falling on water, shadows of tall trees – all picked out in sparkling silks. Two huge jade dogs, as high as my waist, guard either side of the fireplace. The information board on the wall tells me that ‘Colonel Hugo started his own collection with a trip to Japan on his eighteenth birthday. Before that, his father had been an amateur collector of anthropological material. When Hugo went to fight in the First World War shortly before his nineteenth birthday, his parents started building the museum as we see it today, in the hopes that he would return in one piece: he did come back, decorated for heroism, and determined to acquaint his fellow countrymen with animals and cultures from all the corners of the world that they would never see. He was also, by Armistice Day, the youngest ever Colonel in the British Military.’

  Everything I learn about Hugo, the military career, the gifts to the community, this whole extraordinary museum, makes it seem stranger and stranger that Richard didn’t speak to him. He sounds like an amazing man, he sounds like a kind man.

  There is an alcove at the end of the room, underneath a smaller archway. And as I walk towards it I realise, for the first time, that I’m not alone.

  The man turns round and sees me at the same moment that I notice him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ we both say, though there is no need to be. There is something intimate about the silence in this opulent room. I feel as if I’ve broken in, invaded his privacy. His flushed face shows he feels exactly the same.

  On the back wall of this ante-room is a cabinet made of sculpted red lacquer, each shelf holding a tiny carved object. ‘Netsuke – pronounced nets-gay’ reads the card. ‘Carved ivory and boxwood, Japan, 17th century.’ The tiny sculptures are a few inches long, polished smooth and as translucent as boiled sweets. Each one is more intricate than the last: a tiny rat with perfect fur; a miniature sailing ship packed with drowning sailors, their anguished faces perfectly gouged out of the bone. There is a cart on its way to market, piled high with bamboo chicken cages, and so tiny it would fit easily inside my closed fist. They are exquisite.