At any rate, unless she was genuinely senile, confused enough that she couldn’t sort out her own experiences from things she’d only read about, she must have expected me to recognize what she was doing, and comment on it. I recalled her suggestive pauses, the way she had looked at me and awaited a response, and I almost groaned aloud.
What an idiot she must think me!
Maybe she was feeling foolish herself, knowing her joke had misfired, thinking, perhaps, that my dream was not real, but something I’d made up, a passing notion which meant so little to me that I’d forgotten it and took her “memory” at face value.
I couldn’t say anything now – she’d reached high school in her recollections, and it would be far too rude to interrupt her to say that I’d belatedly got her joke – I’d have to wait until she gave me an opening.
Maybe it was because I was concentrating so hard on not missing my chance to speak, but I could not get involved in what she was telling me. It seemed remote and unreal, second-hand, as if she was just retelling a tale she had memorized. Maybe that was my fault: perhaps she felt it was her duty, to get things right and in the proper sequence, and had prepared this potted history for me. But I missed the lively, spontaneous jumble of impressions which had come bubbling up the day before when she’d talked about her years in Paris.
We had soon reached the point where the young Helen Ralston made her dramatic, life-changing decision to leave America and go to study art in Glasgow.
“But you know all that,” she said briskly. “And I’ve told you about Paris . . .”
“Wait, wait.” I held up a hand. “Slow down and back up. You didn’t tell me about your time in Glasgow – not at all. I sort of understand why you went, but not really—”
“What do you mean ‘not really’? I told you, it was because of his letters. I suppose I fell in love with him. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened. I still have those letters, you know! I can show you.”
“I’m not doubting you,” I said quickly. “But what happened after you got to Glasgow – you haven’t told me any of that.”
She gave me a long, hooded look – very like a bird of prey considering whether it was worthwhile to pounce – before she spoke. “But you know, don’t you.” It was hardly a question.
“I’ve read one side of the story. I’d really like to hear yours.”
“I don’t know why. I’m sure you can imagine it well enough. Why is it people are only interested in women because of their connections to some man, some famous man?”
“That’s not true.”
She wasn’t listening to me. “The letters I’ve had from people wanting to know the truth! That’s what they say, but it isn’t the truth they want at all, just gossip. Did Helen Ralston try to kill herself because Willy Logan wouldn’t stay with her, or was she trying o get away from him? Or was it nothing to do with him at all, and he only happened to be there? Something happened – it happened more than seventy years ago – does it matter why it happened?”
“It matters to me – your story is the one I want to hear.”
Her eyes flickered. “Then why keep asking about Logan?”
“I’m not – I don’t mean to. I want to know what happened to you. How you felt about things. Everything. Your childhood, your youth, the time you spent in Glasgow, and Paris, and everything else. I know you weren’t with Logan for long. Not even two years. Out of ninety-six years, that’s not much. But it is a part of your life – the things that happened to you in your early twenties—”
“The truth.”
I shut up.
She leaned forward, fixing me with her deep-set, faded blue eyes, her hands like claws clutching the chair arms. “The truth is that I don’t know why Helen Ralston jumped out of that window – or if she was pushed. It happened to someone else. I don’t remember anything about it.”
I knew that serious accidents could sometimes result in memory loss, but I thought of the way she had given me back my own dream as if it were her own, and I wasn’t sure I believed her.
“Okay. But you mentioned a diary—”
“Yes, and I’ll let you see it. You can see all of them, in due course.”
“Thank you. That will be very helpful. And we’ll leave that day in August. But – would you mind talking about something else that happened before you left Glasgow and W.E. Logan?”
She shrugged her shoulders slightly. “What is it you want to know?”
“About the island. Achlan. I wonder if you could tell me about that.”
There was a sharp click, and we both looked at the tape recorder, which had switched itself off.
“It’s okay,” I said, reaching for it. “I’ve got another cassette in my bag.”
“I’d like something to drink. My mouth is so dry.”
I stood up. “Shall I get you some more water? Or something else?”
“Why don’t you go fetch Clarissa, and we’ll take our break now.”
It was too early; we’d had barely an hour together, and I knew that after the break she’d be bound to go for a nap. My disappointment must have shown, because she gave a small, thin-lipped smile. “Oh, don’t worry. We’ll get back to the island. I promise you, we’ll get back to Achlan.”
Clarissa did not seem surprised when I knocked at her door.
“She was up at six this morning, rummaging through her papers, sorting things out, making notes, muttering to herself. Getting ready for you. Nearly bit my head off when I dared suggest you might not come today, because of the weather. ‘Of course she’ll come! She has to come!’.”
Strangely, a shiver ran through me at the idea of the two of them talking about me in my absence, although there was surely nothing odd or sinister in it.
“Such a shame, when you’ve come such a long way for such a short visit . . . tell you what, why don’t you stay for lunch today, and talk to Mum again later on?”
“That would be wonderful – if she’s up for it.”
“I’m sure she’ll tell you if she’s not.” Clarissa grinned.
Over fresh coffee – decaffeinated for Helen – and slices of apple tart, talk about Helen’s life went on, leap-frogging a couple of decades to London during the Blitz, and the brief war-time love-affair with Robbie, a much younger fighter pilot. He was Clarissa’s father, although he’d not lived to see his only child. I was surprised to learn that Clarissa was sixty – I told her honestly that she looked much younger – but she’d been born during the war, to a grieving single mother.
“I named her after Mrs Dalloway,” Helen informed me. “I was reading that book during my confinement – in fact, I read it three times. It was the only escape I had, a window into the world before the War, London before the bombs fell, before . . .” she trailed off, blinking rapidly, and her daughter stroked her hand.
Helen’s memories of the war years in London were vivid, her descriptions of that time of fear, tedium, deprivation, and passion full of the circumstantial detail I’d missed when she had talked about her earlier life. People said that when you got older the past seemed more immediate and was easier to recall than more recent years, but in every life there must also be periods you would rather forget, and others that you kept fresh by constantly reviewing. Obviously Helen had not wanted to lose a single, precious moment from her short time with Clarissa’s father – from the way that Clarissa listened and smiled and chimed in, it was clear she’d heard it all before – but the affair with Willy Logan was different. Maybe it had been too unhappy, maybe her feelings and her actions then didn’t suit her older self-image. I could well imagine her not wanting to remember what a reckless and troubled young girl she had been, whether she had seduced or been seduced by her teacher. In my experience, such an affair at such an age was too intense and life-shaping to be forgotten, but if anything could wipe the slate clean, I thought, it had to be a near-death experience.
Although Helen announced her intention that we should carry on talki
ng, her energy was clearly flagging, so I chimed in with her daughter to insist that she have a lie down.
“I’ll stay,” I promised her. “Clarissa’s invited me for lunch. I’ll read while you’re resting. We can talk all afternoon if you’re up to it. I’ve brought plenty of cassettes.”
Helen accepted this. “Come upstairs with me. I’ll give you something to read. I’ll show you those letters.”
Clarissa went back to her work while I went slowly upstairs after Helen.
“I’ve kept diaries,” she told me after she had paused to catch her breath at the top of the stairs. “And there’s an autobiographical novel. I never wanted it published, before, but now, maybe . . . You could let me know what you think.”
Her room was a dim, narrow space – an ordinary bedroom whose dimensions had been shrunk by the addition of bookshelves on every wall. There was one window, shaded and curtained. The shelves were deep, double-stacked with books, notebooks, and box-files. The other furnishings were a single bed, a small wardrobe, a bedside table, and something which might have been either a writing desk or a dressing table, but it was so cluttered with a mix of toiletries, papers, medicines, notebooks, tissues, books and pens that it seemed unlikely it was used for either purpose now.
“My memories,” said Helen. “We got rid of a lot when I moved up from London, but I had to keep my favourite books, and all my papers.” With a heavy sigh, she sank down onto the bed. Then, with a groan, she struggled to rise again. “My diaries. I was going to show you . . .”
I put a hand on her shoulder, pushing her gently down again. “I’ll get it. Tell me where to look.”
“Thank you, dear. If you don’t mind . . .” She lay back, putting her head down on the pillow with a sigh of relief. “They’re on my work-table. Desk. The whole lot. You’re not ready to read them all, not yet, but you could look at one now, I think. Well, why not? Let me think. Which one? Hmmm.”
Her eyes closed. I watched her uncertainly, feeling a mixture of affection, amusement and exasperation as I realized she was falling asleep. I opened my mouth to call her back, but just then she gave a tiny, stuttering snore.
I turned to look at the table, and saw the pile of notebooks she must have meant. She had been intending to give me one to read. I picked up the one on top, a hardbound black and red book with lined pages. There was nothing marked on the cover to indicate its contents. I opened it to the first page, a flyleaf where she had written her name and the year, 1981. Oh, far too late.
I put the notebook down carefully to one side and reached for the next in the stack. This one was much more battered and obviously old. It had a blue and white marbled cover with a square in the centre of the front cover where it said COMPOSITIONS. I’d had one just like it in high school in the late 1960s, and had used it to record my most intimate feelings, all the daily emotional upheavals, the first stirrings of sexual interest – to my misery, unreciprocated. How I’d poured my heart out, the protestations of my elaborate and undying love for the golden Yale – sometimes, long ago as it was now, I could still remember the particular bittersweet flavour of that feeling, the ache of unrequited love. And then, in the same year – things happened so rapidly in youth – there had been the mutual attraction between me and Andy, and the pain of being unloved had been assuaged by passionate love-making in the back of borrowed cars. My descriptions of what we’d done must have verged on the pornographic – even now, the idea of someone else reading about my first love affair horrified me. I suppose it was the thought of the contents of my own, so similar-looking diary, which made me set this one aside without even opening it to check the date.
As I did so, I dislodged a stack of photographs lying on top of the next notebook; they slithered in a watery rush down the side of the notebook-tower.
Shooting a quick, nervous glance at the figure in the bed behind me, making sure that she still slept, I gathered them up. They were all old, black and white snapshots of people, most of them posed in some outdoor location. They were identified on the backs with pencilled dates, names or initials.
LONDON 1941 ROBBIE
I recognized Helen, skirted and hatted amid pigeons at the base of some statue, holding on to the arm of a uniformed young man. As I peered into the distant grey shadows of his face my heart gave a jolt: in the curve of his mouth and the line of his jaw I thought I could see a resemblance to Allan. The likeness to Clarissa was obvious, and it dawned on me that this was why I’d felt so immediately drawn to her. Her father looked a bit like Allan, and she reminded me of him, too.
I glanced quickly through the other pictures, usually able to pick out Helen by her distinctive looks. Some of the other figures were also familiar: Djuna Barnes, Peggy Gugenheim, James Joyce. I caught my breath. In an English garden Helen Ralston stood, beaming triumphantly beside a tall, shy, elegant, faintly bemused-looking woman. There was no need for me to turn over the photo to check the name written on the back – Virginia Woolf was unmistakable.
Brilliant! My heart pounded with excitement. I wondered if she’d let me use these pictures in my book and immediately knew the answer. Of course she would – why else had she sorted them out, if not to give to me? With so many well-known names to toss into my proposal, I felt the biography was a done deal. Helen Elizabeth Ralston, The Forgotten Modernist. As I gathered the pictures up and stacked them neatly again my eyes turned greedily to the pile of old journals.
The one now on top was a slightly odd size, narrower than the contemporary standard, bound in some stiff black cloth, and as I reached out to touch it I somehow knew that this was one of her earliest notebooks, from her Paris years.
Without even pausing to question my right to do so, I picked the book up and opened it.
There was no date on the first page and, as I flipped through, I got the impression that it was one continuous narrative, for it wasn’t broken down into entries like a diary. It seemed to be told in the first person, and there were long passages of description, but also conversations, set off with single quotes and dashes. Maybe this was the autobiographical novel she had mentioned?
Helen’s handwriting was small, neat and angular, but despite its regularity it was not easy to read – especially not in the dim light of her bedroom. I flipped ahead a few pages and moved a little closer to the covered window, trying to find something I could make sense of. I saw that, despite the cramped and careful handwriting, she used her notebooks the same way I did, writing on only one side of the page. (I wondered if she had continued this profligacy during the war, with paper rationing.) The blank sides weren’t wasted; for me they provided a space for notes, second thoughts, later comments, trial runs at complicated sentences, reminders, lists of interesting words and of books I wanted to read, occasionally quotations from the books I was reading, or ideas for stories, and as I flipped through the book, concentrating now on the ‘other’ pages, I could tell that Helen worked just like me.
These pages were easier to read since there was less on them. I managed to puzzle out a few quotations: there were lines from Baudelaire – his French followed by her rough translation – a paragraph from The Golden Bowl and two from The Great Gatsby. A list of British and American authors might have been one of my own “must read” lists, with the difference being that all of them were still alive in 1929. I wondered if she was reminding herself of books to look for, or people she wanted to meet.
The next list was something else. I read it again and again, trying to make some other sense of it than the personal meaning it had for me at first glance:
YALE
ANDY
IRA
MARK
JOHN
JIMMY
PATRICK
JOHN
CHAS
ALLAN
Nine masculine forenames, one of them repeated twice. The names of the ten men I had loved.
How could Helen Ralston have known that?
She couldn’t; it wasn’t possible; not all of them. My hus
bands were a matter of public record, and plenty of people knew that I’d lived with a man called Mark for three years. Although my affair with Ira was ostensibly secret, I had dedicated my first book to him, and, invited to contribute to a magazine feature called “The First Time”, I hadn’t bothered to disguise Andy with a pseudonym. But Yale? Or the fact that I’d been involved with two different men called John? And nobody knew about Chas.
Could it be coincidence? Another writer, drawing up a list of names for characters, stumbling so precisely on those most meaningful to me?
I couldn’t believe it.
I saw stars and jags of light in front of my eyes as I carefully replaced that notebook with the others.
Somehow, I got out of that stuffy little room, filled with the sound of an old woman’s shallow breathing, without bumping into anything or falling over, and made my way down the stairs. I was halfway to the front door, driven by terror, before I remembered my bag with all my things, including my car keys, was still in the kitchen.
Although I desperately wanted to sneak away, I couldn’t. I went back to the big room to fetch my things, and then, after a moment of concentrating on my breathing, knocked at Clarissa’s door.
The sight of me took the smile off her face. “What’s wrong? Is it Mum?”
“Your mother’s fine, she was sleeping when I left her. I’m afraid I’ve got to go – something’s come up—” Unable to think of a convincing lie, I patted my shoulder bag as if indicating the presence of a mobile phone.
Clarissa’s expression relaxed, but still she frowned. “Oh, dear. I hope it’s not anything—”
“Oh, no, no.”
“You’re so pale.”
I tried to laugh. “Really? Well, it’s nothing terrible, just – kind of crossed wires, complicated to explain, but I have to be back there this afternoon. So – if you’ll apologize to your mother?”
“Sure. You’ll come again?”
“Oh, of course.” I turned away from her as I spoke. “I’ll phone in the next few days to arrange a time . . .” I felt like crying. I had liked her so much, and now I wondered if her seeming friendliness was part of some Byzantine plot, if she’d somehow been helping her mother to gather information about me, if they were stalkers, or planning something . . . but what? And why?
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