She shrugged. “They’re nothing to me now. And they weren’t then, or I would have kept them, wouldn’t I.”
“Like you kept W.E. Logan’s letter to you.”
“Letters. There were several, tucked inside my diary. I took that with me to Paris.”
“Paris? You left Glasgow for Paris? Why?”
Her smile this time included her eyes, which narrowed so much they nearly disappeared. “Why Paris?” she repeated slowly. “My dear, it was 1929. I was an artist, I was an American, cut loose, without much money but free – where would you have gone?”
I met her eyes and smiled back. “Paris,” I agreed. “Of all the places and times I wish I could see for myself – Paris, in the Twenties.”
“Well, then. You understand.”
“Tell me – what was it like? What did you do there? Did you know anyone?”
She raised her eyebrows and looked away. “So many questions! My, my. Where to begin?” She reached with a hand that trembled slightly for her water glass. I waited until she had taken another tiny sip and put the glass back down before I repeated, “Did you know anyone in Paris when you arrived?”
“No. Not personally. But I knew a few names, and it was not hard, then, to fall in with the expatriate crowd. There were certain cafés and hotels where they gathered. And, as a young woman, unaccompanied, reasonably attractive, it was easy to make new friends.”
VIII
For the next hour Helen Ralston kept me entranced and fascinated with anecdotes from her years in Paris. She name-dropped without restraint. I could hardly believe my luck, to be sitting in the same room, talking to someone who had actually attended some of Gertrude Stein’s famous salons. Picasso and Hemingway were both, by then, much too grand to be known – she said – she’d seen them around, though. And she’d been friendly with Djuna Barnes and Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp and Brancusi, Caresse and Harry Crosby, Anais Nin and Henry Miller, and she’d taken tea with Sylvia Beach and James Joyce and his Norah . . . so many evocative names.
At one point I remember thinking she’s a living time machine and at another I could have cursed myself for not having brought in the tape recorder, however idiotic it looked. How could I remember all the details? Would she be willing to relate all these stories again another day? It occurred to me that maybe there wouldn’t be another interview – not that she’d be unwilling to talk to me again, but simply because she could drop dead at any minute. At her age, especially, you couldn’t count on anything.
I wanted her to go on talking forever, to soak up as much of her remembered experiences as I possibly could, but after a couple of hours it was clear she was running out of energy. The pauses for tiny sips of water became more frequent, and her face seemed to sag, and she stumbled often over simple words. Even aware of this, I was too selfish to let her stop; it was only when Clarissa came in and exclaimed at the sight of her mother’s obvious exhaustion that Helen finally fell silent.
“Time for a break,” said Clarissa.
I jumped up guiltily. “I’m sorry, I’ve just been so fascinated—”
“I’m all right, I’m all right,” Helen said, flapping a hand at her daughter. “Don’t fuss.”
“You’re tired—”
“Yes, of course I’m tired – what’s wrong with that? It means I’ll sleep. I’ll have my rest now, and eat later.”
I chewed my lip, watching as Clarissa helped her mother rise from the chair.
“I’m fine, I’m fine, don’t fuss me.”
“I’ll just come upstairs and see you into bed. Excuse us,” Clarissa said as she and her mother moved slowly across the room.
When they had gone out, I wandered aimlessly around the room, gazing out the window at the birds and then looking around at the pictures on the walls – they were highly-detailed drawings of plants, like illustrations from an old-fashioned botany book. I had noticed a bookcase in one corner, and now gravitated towards it. A few familiar spines caught my attention immediately – Nightwood, The Rings of Saturn, Hallucinating Foucault, Possession – all dear friends which I had at home – and then the breath caught in my throat at the sight of a familiar pink and blue spine, the letters of my own name written there above the title. I had to put my hand on it and draw it out, and yes, it was one of my own short story collections.
I was still holding it, bemused and pleased, when Clarissa came back in.
“Out like a light,” she said.
“I’m sorry—”
“Oh, that’s all right, she loved it! But she can’t take much excitement, that’s all. Sad when talking about the past is the most excitement you can know.” She noticed the book in my hands then and gave me a different sort of smile. “I liked your stories. I didn’t think I would – I don’t read sci-fi or fantasy – but yours aren’t really sci-fi, are they? They’re more like myths. I especially liked that one where the mother is born again – what’s it called? – where she becomes a little baby, and her son has to look after her.”
“Thank you.” Always nice to meet a reader, but I couldn’t help the quick stab of disappointment. “I thought maybe this belonged to Helen.”
“Of course it does. She has all your books. That’s just the only one I’ve read – but now I’ll be sure to read the others,” she said quickly.
“Helen Ralston has read all my books?” This was better than winning an award.
“Of course. Why do you suppose she was so excited to meet you? Didn’t she tell you?”
“The conversation didn’t go in that direction.”
Clarissa shrugged and rolled her eyes. “Well. Would you like another coffee? There’s a pastry in the oven. Mum has a sweet tooth, and normally I take a break and join her about now.” As she spoke, we had been drifting together towards the kitchen area, where she now took a cinnamon plait from the oven.
“What sort of work do you do?” I asked.
“Writing – but not like yours or Mum’s. It’s mostly catalogue copy and travel brochures. I used to work in marketing. This is handy because I can do it from home.”
We settled in against the counter, sipping coffee and nibbling the warm, sweet soft pastry while we traded information about our lives, laying the foundations for a friendship. After about a quarter of an hour, her eyes strayed to the clock on the stove and although I wanted nothing more than to go on talking to Clarissa, I knew I was interrupting her work, so I said, “I should be going.”
“You’re welcome to stay,” she said, hesitating slightly. “If you wanted to wait and say goodbye to Mum when she wakes up . . . only I don’t think she’ll have the energy for much more than that.”
“No, that’s all right, as long as I can come back – how about the day after tomorrow? If that’s not too soon?”
“That should be fine. I’ll call you if there’s any problem. I’ve got your number.”
As soon as I got back to the car, I remembered “My Death” still in the boot. I thought of taking it up to the house and handing it over to Clarissa, just to get the problem off my hands, but then decided that wasn’t fair. I’d make a point of mentioning it to Helen next time. I felt I could count on getting a fairly rational response, although whether she’d be happy to have this strange painting back in her possession again, I didn’t know.
Before starting on the long drive home, I went shopping. I bought myself a neat, unobtrusive mini-cassette recorder and spent some more time in the bookshops of Glasgow, this time concentrating on memoirs and histories of Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, searching for and finding Helen Ralston’s name in index after index.
The next day, two of the books I had ordered – Hermine in Cloud-Land and The Second Wife – arrived in the post, so the time passed pleasurably in reading. I was not very impressed by Willy Logan’s first book. The pictures were charming, but by comparison the text strained after charm and achieved only a kind of dated, fey whimsicality. I didn’t care for it and, having met the original of Hermine, I didn’t think that sh
e would have either.
The Second Wife, Helen Ralston’s fifth novel, was a revelation: understated, subtle, psychologically complex, ambiguous and faintly sinister . . . it was just the sort of novel I aspired to write myself, and reading it now, at this fallow period of my life, stirred a creative envy in me. For the first time in ages I wished I was at work on a novel and, although I knew I wasn’t anywhere near ready to start one, I could believe that one day I would be, that the roads of fiction weren’t forever closed to me. Maybe, after I’d finished with Helen Ralston, I’d be inspired by her example to write fiction again.
That night, the unseasonably dry, mild weather broke, and a gale began to blow. I lay awake listening to the keening wind, the rain flung like shot against the windows, and worried. I hated driving in bad weather; I was nervous enough about the narrow, twisting roads in this country when they were dry and the visibility was good – had it been anyone else I was going to meet, I would have phoned to suggest rescheduling. But at Helen Ralston’s age, any day might be her last. I felt I had to go.
By six o’clock in the morning the winds had died, but the rain had settled in, falling heavily and relentlessly from the laden sky. A few hours of that, and the road I lived on would be flooded, impassable. I made a thermos of coffee and a peanut butter sandwich to take in the car along with my heavy weather gear, a flashlight, and the shoulder bag with The Second Wife, notebook, new tape recorder, extra batteries and tapes, and drove off without giving myself time to reconsider. “My Death” was still in its wrappings in the boot, awaiting delivery.
I was tense and cautious, and although the rain had scarcely lessened by the time I reached the outskirts of Glasgow, and the traffic reports on Radio Scotland warned of problems on other roads, my way was clear. Drawing up in front of Clarissa Breen’s house I felt the happy relief of the traveller who has, against all odds, battled safely home again.
“Home is the sailor, home from the sea,” I murmured to myself as I hurried up the walkway. Clarissa, opening the door to my knock, looked surprised and pleased.
“I thought we’d be getting a call from you to say you weren’t going to risk it – this rain is dreadful!” she exclaimed, letting me in.
There was the same smell of coffee and something sweet baking, and the black and white photographs displayed against the mauve walls of the entrance hall looked as familiar as if I’d been coming in through that front door for months. I sighed happily. “Oh, the roads weren’t bad, really. How are you? How’s Helen?”
I had not spoken loudly, but my voice must have carried to the back of the house, because the old woman shouted, “Waiting for you so we can get started!”
“Very bright today,” said Clarissa, behind me, and then murmured, closer to my ear, “A little over-excited.”
“Tears before bed-time?”
“Let’s hope not.”
“What are you talking about out there? She’s my visitor, Clarissa! Let her come through, don’t you keep her gossiping!”
We exchanged a glance, and I was split between enjoying our conspiracy, and guilt over betraying Helen, and then I went on ahead into the big, bright, room.
“Hello, Helen. It’s good to see you again. How are you?”
“Not getting any younger,” she said crisply. Her eyes were sparkling; she looked pleased with herself. “You see, Clarissa, didn’t I say she would come? I knew she wouldn’t be scared of rain!”
“I couldn’t live in Scotland if I were.”
I was soon settled into a chair beside Helen, with a cup of fresh, strong, hot coffee close at hand, and my unobtrusive little tape recorder pointing in her direction.
“I thought we might talk a bit about your childhood,” I said. I had decided to be organized and chronological about my investigations, even though, after reading The Second Wife, I longed to talk about that.
A small sigh escaped her, and I felt I’d disappointed her in some way. “Very well. Ask your questions.”
“Well . . . do you want to start by telling me your earliest memory?”
She looked vague. “I can try. Mostly what I remember are things, not events, so it’s hard to put a time to them. The first house where I lived, where I was born – we were there until I was about eleven – all my memories are there. I could close my eyes now and take you on a tour of that house, describing every room, all the furniture, every nook and cranny, not just how it looked from every perspective, but the texture of the rugs and the painted walls and the bathroom tiles, the smells and tastes as well – but that would be far too boring.”
I felt my heart beat faster in sympathy. In fact, this was exactly how I felt about my own first childhood home, which remained more clear in my memory, more real, than anywhere I had lived since. Those first ten years of life, in which I had so exhaustively explored my surroundings, had given me a depth of useless knowledge, made me an expert in the geography and furnishings of the house at 4534 Waring Street, Houston, Texas, between the years 1952–63. I supposed that other people – unless, like my first husband, they’d moved house every year or two – carried around with them a similarly useless mental floor-plan and inventory – but until now I’d never heard anyone else talk about it.
“I remember, there was coloured glass in the window, a fanlight, above the front door, and when the sun shone through it made a pattern of magical, shimmering colours against the wall. I remember trying to touch the colours, to catch them, and feeling frustrated that they slipped through my fingers – I was too young to understand.
“And there was a wonderful, old, dark wood chest that I was always trying to get into. It didn’t matter how many times I saw inside, that it was only blankets and linens and so on, I would still imagine it was hiding some treasure. That was one of my fancies . . . my dreams and my fancies, now, I remember some of them as clearly as the things that were real. Perhaps my earliest memory was a dream.
“I had a toy. It might have been my first toy, maybe my only one – children didn’t have so many toys in those days, you know, we made do with bits and pieces, cast-off things our elders had no use for, a wooden spoon with a face for a doll, but this was a ready-made toy, it had been manufactured for no other purpose but play. It was a doll made of rubber, an ugly little thing really I suppose, but it was my baby and I loved it dearly. Sometimes I’d put my finger into its mouth to let it suck – because its mouth would open if you squeezed it, and close again when the pressure was released – and sometimes I’d take its whole head into my mouth and suck on it – not very motherly behaviour, but I wasn’t much more than a baby myself, and perhaps I resented having been weaned – at any rate, I wanted something to suck. Once I bit off a piece of its nose – something about the colour and the texture of it convinced me it would taste nice, but of course it didn’t; it tasted of rubber, nasty, although the sensation of chewing it, feeling it slide through my teeth and then catch, again and again, was intriguing enough that I was in no hurry to spit it out. After I’d chewed a hole in it, of course the doll no longer worked properly, the mouth wouldn’t open and shut like before, but that didn’t bother me, I still loved it and carried it around with me everywhere until one day I suppose I must have dropped it when I was out, and my mother didn’t pick it up, and so I lost my baby, my treasure, my first child, you might say.”
She looked at me as if expecting some comment, but I could not respond. I felt almost giddy with déjà vu – only this wasn’t merely déjà vu, but something much stronger and stranger, and it had cut the ground right out from under me. I didn’t know what to think about what I was hearing: could it be coincidence? Lots of children in the past century must have owned rubber dolls and sucked and chewed them to destruction. She hadn’t even described it very well – my doll had been a sort of clown, but hers presumably was a baby.
When I said nothing, she went on.
“I don’t remember when I lost it, how it happened, when I noticed, if I was upset, and I don’t know how long after that i
t was that he came back to me in a dream.”
I noticed the switch from “it” to “he”, and saw my own long-lost clown doll in my mind’s eye.
“It wasn’t a detailed dream, it was just him. He had come back. But instead of being glad to see him, I was frightened, and I screamed and woke myself up. I woke the whole house up with my screaming.
“When I told my mother about it I began to cry. She thought I was unhappy because I missed my doll. She didn’t understand. To have the doll back was the last thing I wanted. I was terrified in case I did by some chance find it again, because I knew . . . I knew it would be like the dream. He would have changed. He wouldn’t be my baby anymore. What the dream had shown me was the familiar become strange, how frightening the ordinary can be. You understand?”
I stared back as if hypnotized and just managed to nod my head. But I didn’t understand. How could this person – a stranger, and of another generation – have had the very same dream as me? Even her interpretation, although different from my own, rang true, so that I thought yes, that was the real reason my dream had scared me.
As I still said nothing, after another little pause, Helen went on talking about her childhood. I hardly listened. I was in a swelter, all confused, frightening emotions as I tried to make sense of this impossible connection between us. I could not accept that it was mere coincidence, that both of us had shared the same experience as children – an experience which had given rise to the same dream, which had been significant enough for both of us to remember it all our lives. There had to be a reason for it; some link, an explanation . . .
And suddenly I remembered what I had, of course, known all along. That dream of mine, that highly significant, personal memory, was no secret. I had written about it. I had put it into a short story which anyone could read – I knew that both Clarissa and Helen had read it, because it was in the volume I’d found in their bookcase.
But what did Helen mean by telling me back my own story as if it were one of her own memories? Was it a joke? A tease? A veiled compliment?
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