The Memory Box

by Margaret Forster

  There were no boats out there at sea. Behind me, in the harbour, all the bays were full, crammed with boats of every size jostling and jangling in their shelter together. There were no people either. Trudging up on to this headland I had seen no one. I had been granted a privacy and sense of isolation I had rarely known. I was frozen and the rain had found a way into my boots, which were slowly filling with it. But I went on lying there, inert, wondering if this was how people died of exposure, died on mountains or in the wilderness because they became too apathetic to move, because they gave themselves up to those particular forces of nature which threatened to overwhelm them – and were in the end pleased to do so.

  In my inner pocket, beneath the layers of waterproof, were the three feathers. It could not have been a day such as this when Susannah found them. The beach below might, for all I knew, be littered with seagull feathers, but nobody could possibly pick them up in these conditions. No sane person would be outside at all. I was not acting in a sane way myself. Any nearer the edge and I could be blown off, sent plunging down into the greedy sea. I knew I had taken no photographs worth having. I hadn’t captured anything of what lay beyond the camera even if I had caught a fleeting impression of the turmoil. Everything on film would be flat, unable to record what I felt: a sort of awful fear. I found myself clutching the grass and imagining I was sliding down the slope.

  I had never before allowed myself to imagine Susannah’s fear, but lying there, reduced to such a pitifully feeble state myself, merely through exposure for a prolonged period to cold and rain, an image began to steal over me. She had surely been afraid. She had known that her heart muscles were failing, they had been failing for years, and that at any moment the main pump of her heart might stop (as it did) without further warning. My grandmother endlessly mourned the fact that, a mere five years later, a heart bypass could have saved her, but at that period nothing could and she knew it. It was a matter of time before she grew weaker and weaker. The fear would have grown, fear of death, fear of the process of dying, fear of leaving me. I felt suddenly paralysed with her imagined fear and ready to weep at the thought of it. I’d never once before felt sorry for her.

  It was only with a great effort of will that I switched off this wretched mental meandering and stood up. At once the wind slapped me down on to my knees and I gasped with the shock. Much more slowly, I raised myself again, swivelling round so that the wind was behind me. I think of myself as physically strong; I’m proud of my fitness, but collapsing the big umbrella, struggling to get it out of the ground, was so hard that I was panting before I watched it being torn from my grasp and sent catapulting ahead, a lethal weapon with its spike foremost. My camera bag I pulled over my body, the strap over my shoulder and across my back and chest, keeping the bag itself in front of me. Then I set off, half-stooping, trying to walk slowly but instantly bullied into a jumpy run by the wind. I was soon hot with the strain of trying to hold myself back and the rain, coming towards me as I turned, at last found its way down my neck. Some of the time I had my eyes closed and prayed I would not stumble. Then, as I came down from the highest point, I felt the wind slacken. I hit a pocket of calm between two inclines and rested. The remaining descent was easier, and soon the danger I’d felt on the top seemed absurd. It was only wind, only rain.

  I came to the market square, quite deserted except for a few seagulls, and cut through to Queen Street and made my way to where I was staying. The streets were empty, though it was only late afternoon, the gutters running with rain water to such an extent they were like streams. Mrs Robinson, opening the door reluctantly, said, ‘You’re wet,’ in tones of annoyance. She made me take my boots and waterproofs off in her vestibule, tutting with exasperation as the puddle grew on the tiled floor. I apologised and said I would mop it up, and she said that would be a good idea but I’d better have a bath first or I’d catch my death. When I came down half an hour later she had in fact done the mopping up herself. My jacket and trousers hung dripping on the back of the door and she’d stuffed wads of newspaper into my boots. I apologised once more for the trouble I’d caused and thanked her. The meal that night was soup, her own, and kippers, both good. Then I went to bed, paying her bill first and saying I would slip out early in the morning without disturbing her. She still had not betrayed the slightest curiosity about me.

  It was only eight o’clock by then, but I was so tired. I didn’t even think of reading but put the light out straight away. I could hear the seagulls again. They had come in from the sea with the dark and had taken possession of the rooftops, resting from their labours. The wind did not seem so strong and the rain no longer drove against the window. Mrs Robinson had said the worst was over, and then had gone on to boast that this storm had been nothing compared with what she had known. ‘We’re used to it here,’ she said, with some pride. ‘We think nothing of it. If you lived here, you’d get used to it.’ Lying there, so drowsy, so glad to be safely in bed, I didn’t think so. How could I have allowed myself to be carried away, thinking I’d find significance in the feathers of a gull?

  Before I fell asleep, I thought of my flat, my home in London. There would be cars going up and down my road in Crouch End, and the restaurants and cafés all along the Broadway would be brightly lit and packed with people for whom the evening had barely begun. Here, there was no human sound outside. Nobody walked the streets on a night like this. There were no lights to make a nonsense of the darkness – it was never really dark in London. And time was different here. Every hour was felt. Time didn’t seem to me to whizz by but to plod on, and yet I was in a town, not a deserted village. Some people would love the peace of it, the absence of noise. They would declare this town wonderfully, mercifully tranquil and extol the benefits of its calm centre. What would have happened if my father had returned here with Susannah, his first wife, and I had been born here? What if my paternal grandmother had looked after me in my early years and Charlotte had never appeared?

  I woke up to the shock of strong sunlight coming through the thin curtains. I could hardly believe it, but jumping out of bed and going to the window I saw that the sky above the opposite rooftops was an intense, Mediterranean blue with not a cloud in sight. I was outside in minutes. It was only seven o’clock when I put my stuff in the boot of my car and set off to the sea. I went the way I had come the day before but covered the distance in half the time, walking rapidly where previously I had been obliged to crawl, battling against the wind. The sea that fresh, new morning looked magnificent, not calm so much as swollen, a great, smooth, heaving mass of dark blue, gently undulating and breaking on the shore with hardly a murmur. Already, the harbour was almost empty. I could see the boats bobbing up and down beyond the walls that had protected them, chugging cheerfully down the coast and out into the Irish Sea. I walked along the quay, along the top of the wall, bending like an arm round the inner harbour, loving the worn slabs of sandstone, worn by wind and rain and age more than by feet. I went right to the end and then I stopped beside what I took to be a sort of beacon, and looked towards the headland where I had been the day before, suffering.

  It looked so green and peaceful up there. Scores of seagulls wheeled overhead, quite startlingly white now against the blue of the sky and their screeching dominating the air. Their movements, the arcs they made, seemed leisurely, the frantic whirling of yesterday forgotten. They were lovely to watch, exhilarating to follow with the eye, and when one or two landed near me and perched on the sandstone I thought them beautiful, not ordinary at all. Their feathers seemed sleek, they glistened in the sun, and they strutted so confidently to the brink of the wall before soaring effortlessly into the sky. Was this how Susannah had seen them? Had their exuberance in flight made her heart lift? Had she merely wanted me, some time in the future, to share the delight she had felt as a young, happy woman on a morning such as this? It seemed perfectly possible. The feathers did not need to symbolise more than that – the sea, a beautiful morning, the freedom of the gulls a
nd how it made her feel. I took the three feathers from my pocket and caressed them. How brittle they were to the touch, as sharp-edged as the day she had found them, and it didn’t after all matter where that was. The points were sharp enough to draw blood if I stabbed them into my hand. I hesitated, then I threw them into the sea. They fluttered towards the water slowly, seeming to stop and rest in the air every now and again, and then one after another came to rest gracefully on the surface and were carried away. I followed their lazy passage until I lost them, until I could no longer see the specks of white, and then I followed instead a swarm of birds racing towards the horizon, low over the sea, crying shrilly.

  Suddenly, everything felt so satisfactory. I had made a little ceremony of the feathers, given them back to Susannah, not in any fit of petulance or resentment but in a spirit of acceptance. What I felt I’d accepted was that she’d loved the seagulls, for whatever reason, and the sea they haunted, wherever it was. That morning, I loved them too. I took dozens of photographs and felt so buoyant as I went back to my car, knowing I’d accomplished something. I was hungry, but had no intention of going back to Mrs Robinson, though for the first time the thought of her bacon and eggs was quite tempting. I found a café and made do with toast, lots of it. Then I drove out of Whitehaven and into the fells, choosing a minor road I hoped would be free of traffic. It was. It was the most seductive road with hills ahead and mountains behind them dramatically silhouetted and before them open moorland. I could have driven along it for ever, and as it was, made slow progress since I stopped so often to take photographs. Now, I felt near my father just as watching the seagulls I had felt near Susannah.

  I felt my decision to follow the route on the map in the memory box had been made for me. If it had rained again, I would have gone straight back to Carlisle, but the splendour of the morning drew me on. I had filled the rucksack with bread, cheese and apples before I left Whitehaven, packing it with all the enthusiasm of a child. I hadn’t intended to use it at all, despising it for what it was, a poor imitation of a real rucksack, but I was in such good spirits the shabbiness of the material and the uselessness of the thin straps no longer put me off. Even its stains seemed distinguished and its flimsiness attractive. I couldn’t wait to put it on my back and set off. I watched a few clouds come sailing over the highest mountain as I drove along the side of Crummock Water – was it Great Gable? I wasn’t sure – and worried the weather was about to change, but though more joined them, they were small and puffy and white, and the sky was still mostly blue when I parked at Buttermere, just before the village.

  Once past the Bridge and the Fish Inns, I walked at first through flat meadows joining the two lakes (or rather separating them) and then crossed a stream and followed a rocky path along the lake for a mile or so. I didn’t need to look at Susannah’s map. The way was obvious. I could enjoy instead the sight of the rowan trees, thick with red berries, strung in raggedy lines above the lake and the reflections of the fells on the other side showing clearly in the still water. Turning away from the lake, on a path still distinct, I began to climb up a pass but without any sense of struggle – it was easy going. There was a stream cascading down the fellside at a terrific rate, its water startlingly white and frothy as it bounced off the rocks, and I stopped to wash my face, gasping at the icy cold of it. I didn’t look back until I got to the top, wanting the full surprise of the vista I knew I would have. I forgot about Susannah when I saw it at last. The lakes were blindingly bright in the sun, but what made me stand quite still and hold my breath were the shadows cast by the mountains. The brutal bulk of Red Pike to my right threw a black cloak over all the green below, turning the limes and evergreens into sludgy browns and darkening the clear waters of the streams. Beyond the shadows everything sparkled, and when the sun began to lift itself, just as I was about to turn away, and rose above the mountain, I saw the blackness fade rapidly and all the hillside seemed to shout with relief. Even the rocks took on colour – the side of Red Pike was not after all black but ochre and silver, the stones full of a metallic glitter, and high up the redness of the soil which gave it its name stood out richly.

  Now I did take out the map. From here, Susannah – and, surely, my father – had not gone on towards Ennerdale, as I would like to have done, following the path still, but had turned right, following the valley along the side of Melbreak. I could see no path, but her directions on the map, the red line, were quite firm. I stepped out in what I thought was approximately the right direction and was soon ankle-deep in mud. I was crossing a marsh, with no track visible through it. But then, after half a mile or so, I saw the path appear, quite broad, stretching all the way down the valley. She didn’t seem to have gone all the way down, though. Her route was marked as stopping at the Mosedale Holly Tree. I could see this tree, the only one in what was a most barren landscape and yet far from spectacular. It was, I thought, a stunted-looking tree, hardly worth the importance of a label on an Ordnance Survey map. Walking along the path, which for a while kept high up before descending at an angle, I felt in the heart of the fells, enclosed by them, shut off from the glories of the lakes, but with no feeling of claustrophobia. I liked the emptiness, the dun brown of the bracken, the coarseness of the grass flattened by sheep. I dawdled along, feeling secure and relaxed, my ears singing slightly with the silence broken only by a lone bird and the odd cry of a sheep. When I was level with, but above, the holly tree I stopped and sat on a boulder. There was no one to observe me. For miles and miles I was the only living being and it thrilled me to know it.

  I left the rucksack on the boulder and scrambled down to the tree, taking only my camera with me. The holly tree was not stunted at all. It was quite large close up and the shape more like an oak tree. Its roots were strong and between them were large rocks, like seats. I chose one to sit on and felt as if I were under a canopy, awaiting some ceremony. If it had been raining I would have been quite sheltered, and that is how I did feel: sheltered, hidden. The grass was short, the ground almost bare under the tree, a magic circle of smoothness, while outside it all was rough, the grass thick and tangled. I looked up, through the dense branches. There were few berries, but the holly leaves had a sheen on them which gave a brightness. What had Susannah found here? Peace? Protection from the elements? Had she buried something where her red cross stood out on the map? The young Rory would have thought so, but not I. So what other explanation could there be for it? That something had happened here, some moment of revelation? I looked about me slowly, taking in the sweep of the land down to the bed of a stream and then up again towards the pass to Ennerdale, where it narrowed at the top. It was at first sight, and even second, so barren and yet as I stared and stared I saw different kinds of vegetation, different kinds of exposed soil and rocks. I had thought there were no flowers at all, but then looking at the patch of ground upon which I was sitting, and which to anyone walking above it was also surely flowerless, I saw tiny, starlike, frail yellow flowers hidden in the grass and the longer I looked the more I saw. It was a question of looking and finding.

  I took out Susannah’s map again. Why did the red dots not continue down the valley to Loweswater or double back to Crummock Water? She couldn’t have stayed here for ever, she had made her way back somehow. Maybe they had camped, she and my father, and this was where they had pitched their tent – but no, they never camped, I knew that. My father loved climbing and walking, but his love of the outdoor life didn’t include roughing it. He liked a comfortable bed at night. I went on sitting there, pondering, for a long time, yet I wasn’t feeling as irritated or frustrated as I might have been. If there was a mystery to be solved and I was failing to solve it then that, in this case at least, was Susannah’s fault. But I was beginning to think the only mystery was why she had appeared to want to make it into one, with her red cross and exclamation mark. She was teasing me. I could take being teased, taught how to do so by Rory long ago.

  Meanwhile, I had to decide what to do. I had, at som
e point, to go back to my hired car and drive it the forty-odd miles to Carlisle to catch the train home. I couldn’t sit under this holly tree for ever ruminating. Going back the way I had come, I could be at the car in little over an hour. Going ahead, and round Melbreak, where I could see a clear path on the Ordnance Survey, would at least double the time. But I chose to do that, disliking the idea of retracing my footsteps and liking the prospect of the unknown ahead. I also felt quite liberated once I’d left the tree. I was free of Susannah’s instructions and making my own way and I enjoyed the vague feeling of defiance. And it was a beautiful walk, taking me round the end of Melbreak and through a wood until I came out on to a grassy path so smooth it looked as though someone had taken a lawnmower along it. All the way back to Buttermere I had the lake, Crummock Water, snaking ahead before me and the path stayed so high I had the illusion of flying over it. I had made a round trip and it felt satisfying and complete.

  My legs ached by the time I reached the car and I was glad to sit down. The expedition had taken me four hours, but it was still only two o’clock – plenty of time to return the car and catch a train. I took a minor road, marked yellow on the map, over Newlands Haus to Braithwaite and from there skirted Keswick, then drove along the west flank of Skiddaw. I knew Skiddaw was the first of the real mountains my father had climbed, when he was absurdly young, four or five. He’d climbed them all by the time he met Susannah but, of course, she could never climb any with him. The walk round Melbreak to reach that holly tree would have been a triumph for her (was that cross and the exclamation mark to say so, to raise a cheer for her own achievement, never to be exceeded?). She’d never been strong enough for tough stuff. My father, according to my grandmother, had always tried to make her conserve her strength and energy, but she had sometimes resented his protectiveness and been wilful. Maybe the walk to the holly tree had been an instance of this. She’d perhaps wanted me to do that walk precisely for this reason, to show me she wasn’t always feeble, that once she had been able to stride out and had shaken off attempts to persuade her not to risk it. She wanted me to know she had pushed herself and relished the effort.