The House of Memories

by Monica McInerney

  Just to recap on some of your points last night:

  I promise I do know how hard you’re working.

  I promise I do know how much you miss seeing the kids.

  I promise I do know I have it easy being home with them.

  I promise I do know I never have to feel guilty about missing sports events or plays or teacher meetings. (The plays can be VERY boring, mind you. I’m not excusing myself. Just saying.)

  I also know that I am the luckiest man in the world. I have you and I have Sophie, Ed, Reilly and Tim. (All right, Snip too.) I promise I never forget how lucky I am, especially when I think about Ella and Aidan and Felix.

  I’m sorry, Lucy. I love you.

  Yours, from the doghouse,

  Charlie x

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dear Diary,

  Hi, it’s Jess!

  I’m on the plane! I’m on my way to London!

  It felt funny saying goodbye to Mum and Dad. I’ve talked about going for so long, and now I’m on my way, but I’m scared.

  I’m really scared, actually.

  My dance teacher says you have to focus, and you have to believe in yourself.

  My counsellor said the same thing. I went to see her one more time before I left. I’d started having the nightmares again. She said it wasn’t surprising, that a traumatic event will always rise up when your defences are down. She said I can’t demand forgiveness from Ella, or from Aidan, but I can try to forgive myself. Just say those words, over and again, she told me. I forgive myself.

  But I don’t. How can I?

  I will think about London instead. Exciting London, centre of the musical-theatre world. I know I have a lot of hard work ahead of me, but I am a hard worker and I am talented and I am —

  Guilty.

  I am determined. Determined. Talented. Confident.

  When I’m on the stage everything feels okay because it feels safe and I know exactly what I’ll be doing next, what step I’ll be taking. I’ve always loved it up there. I love the way I feel when there are people smiling at me and being happy for me.

  I wish there was someone in London I could stay with, even just for the first few weeks. I’ll find my feet after that, but it would be nice to think that I’d be with a familiar face, someone who believes in me. Mum and Dad will be cheering me on, I know, but they’ll be on the other side of the world. I wish that Boston was the centre of the musical world, but of course I don’t have an American passport and maybe Charlie wouldn’t be that glad to have me around all the time. I know he’s really busy with his own family, but I’d lend a hand in between auditions. If he was around too. I haven’t told my counsellor this, but since it happened, I haven’t been able to be around kids on my own. I’m too scared something bad might happen again. I know it was an accident, I know that, but what if something like that happened again, if I was looking after one of Charlie’s kids one day and —

  I can’t think about it.

  It’s strange that Ella is in London too. It’s strange that Mum didn’t tell me. I forgot to recharge my phone the other day and I had to use Mum’s laptop to check my emails. I wasn’t snooping. Mum’s emails were already open, but I saw one from Ella saying she wasn’t in Western Australia any more, that she was in London staying with her uncle in Paddington. I kept waiting for Mum to tell me, but she didn’t.

  Anyway, I’ve worked out what to do after I land in Heath-row. Dad said he’d pay for a taxi for me, but I’m going to catch the fast train, the one called the Heathrow Express that goes straight into Paddington Station. Where Ella is. But it’s a huge city. I won’t see her. And there’s no way she will want to see me.

  I’ve just been told to turn off my phone and any other electronic devices! I’m on my way!!!!

  All for now,

  Jess xxxxoooo

  Chapter Sixteen

  By the start of my second week in London, I’d found a kind of rhythm to my days. I got up early and cooked breakfast for everyone. Once they’d all left for the day or gone back to their rooms to study, I cleaned and cooked some more. In the afternoons, I made myself leave the house. I drew up a list of nearby museums and art galleries. On my way to the first of them, the Handel House Museum on Brook Street, I passed the Liberty department store. I stopped so abruptly, the person behind bumped into me. I apologised and moved out of the crowds.

  A month after Felix died, Lucas had sent me a card. It wasn’t a sympathy card with lilies and flowers, woodland or even a teddy bear. The image on Lucas’s card was of rolls of Liberty fabric, side by side, forming a tapestry of colour. The photograph and his message inside – I am always here if you need me, Ella – had helped me more than he could have known. I’d carried the card with me since, tucked inside the notebook I always had in my bag too. I’d started to write down all my memories of Felix, funny things he’d done, moments from his life. Lucas’s card marked my page. I reached into my bag now. I’d written on so many pages the card was almost at the back of the notebook. I held it in my hand as I pushed open the heavy wooden doors of Liberty. I walked past the flowers and through the accessories and makeup sections. I didn’t take the old-style elevator. I walked up the wide wooden stairs to the first floor, to the second, and finally, to the third until there I was, in the Liberty fabric department.

  I’d thought the image on Lucas’s card was beautiful. The real thing was even better. The walls were filled with bolts of fabric, arranged in perfect rows. It was like a wonderland of colour. There were patterns and prints, pastels and bright shades. I reached out and touched them, running my finger along the cool material —

  ‘May I help you?’

  It was the assistant, all good manners and crisp dress.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you. I’m just looking.’

  She gave me a nod, a quick smile. She was clearly used to people standing there just looking.

  I stayed for nearly half an hour. There was so much to see. Some prints I realised were the trademark Liberty florals, feminine and pretty. But there were also shelves of new designs, each like a painting: tiny delicately etched flowers, swirls of colour, deep, rich shades. Beside the fabric was a display of buttons – hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of buttons – each like a small jewel. There were so many colours, shapes, designs: for heavy coats, for summer dresses, for children’s clothing – teddy bears, elephants, ladybirds. There were Christmas buttons on sale still, too: mistletoe, little gift-wrapped presents, Santas, candy canes, even a tiny glass button made in the shape of a delicate snow-flake —

  A snowflake.

  I gently picked it up and turned it in my palm. It was only plastic, not glass, but it looked like a diamond to me. Lucas’s present for Felix’s first Christmas had been a snowflake jumper. It arrived on the 23rd of December, as the temperature in Canberra reached 30 degrees Celsius. We managed to keep it on Felix long enough to take one photo – me holding him as we stood in front of the open refrigerator.

  ‘Say freeze!’ Aidan said as he took the shot.

  That photo was on Lucas’s wall too.

  I bought the snowflake button. The shop assistant reached for a bag but I stopped her. I paid and put it in my pocket. I walked around the section again, drinking in the colours once more. It felt as if I was applying some kind of a balm to my eyes, simply by looking at beautiful things.

  As I walked down the wooden stairs again, I recalled a woman I’d heard speak at the one grief clinic I’d attended. Her husband had died suddenly. She had never gardened in her life. That was his job. But in the months afterwards she became obsessed with growing things. Not flowers, or shrubs, but vegetables. ‘I’d never realised how beautiful they were,’ she said in the meeting. ‘All lined up in perfect rows. The way the buds come, the colour of the tomatoes, the green of the beans, the yellow of the pumpkins. I couldn’t get enough of them.’ I now knew what she meant.

  I walked from Liberty to the Handel House Museum. I stayed for more than an hour, moving from room to ro
om, reading the information on every exhibit, talking to the volunteer guides, hearing details of the thirty-six years Handel had spent in London from 1723 to 1759. He had composed Messiah in this house. I also learned something surprising. In the 1960s, Jimi Hendrix had lived in the same building with his English girlfriend. One room of the museum had a joint display: Hendrix photos and memorabilia on one side of the room, Handel sheet music and memorabilia in a glass cabinet on the other. As I left the museum, I looked up. On the wall above me were two blue commemorative plaques, one for each of them. I wondered whether Lucas had known that. It would amuse him too, I knew.

  I’d needed to take a tour like this. I needed to find new places to visit. I’d already discovered that my personal landscape of London – parts of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, the restaurants in Queensway, the pubs on Bayswater Road, even the row of seats beside Marble Arch – was too heavy with memories. Not memories of Felix. That was one consolation of this city. I’d never been here with him. The city was filled with memories of Aidan. We’d met in the final weeks of summer, when the days were still warm, the sky bright until ten o’clock. We’d fallen in love gradually, in different parts of the city, as we went out for drinks, had dinner together, went on long walks, had picnics. I could have mapped our courtship via our favourite pub, restaurant, park, cinema. I couldn’t return to those places. I needed to find ones I could think of as mine, not ours.

  In a cafe off Regent Street, I picked up a discarded brochure advertising guided walking tours that promised to show me hidden parts of London. I took out my pen and circled six of them. They would help keep me busy too.

  I joined in the first walk the following day, after I’d finished my morning of housework. It was a two-hour guided tour of the grand area and houses of Mayfair. I heard historical facts and celebrity anecdotes, visited churches and Berkeley Square. The guide pointed out the Connaught Hotel, Annabel’s nightclub, foreign embassies and the former residences of writers, prime ministers, scientists and scholars. In Grosvenor Square, opposite the American Embassy, I stood apart from the group as the guide pointed out the memorial to the victims of 9/11. Written across the top of the simple wooden structure was a quote: Grief is the price we pay for love.

  I walked back home through Hyde Park. The sun shone briefly as I reached Lucas’s street, turning the long terrace of houses into a glow of white. As I came closer, I was struck by how rundown Lucas’s house looked. Not just compared to the houses I’d seen in Mayfair, but compared to the rest of the houses in his terrace. They were all painted a rich white. His was a flaking cream. Their doors were glossy, brightly coloured. His was a faded blue, the fox door knocker getting more lopsided every day. The terrace was like a row of gleaming teeth spoiled by a rotten one. Not that I dared say that to Lucas. He loved this house. And he was planning the renovations, wasn’t he? As soon as he had the money to pay for them. As long as the money wasn’t jeopardised by the thefts …

  I gave him a progress report that night. It was the first time I’d seen him in two days. For a house full of people, we all managed to successfully avoid each other. There were signs that the tutors were coming and going (mail collected, shoes left in the hallway) and even clearer signs that they were working their way through the meals I’d left for them in the freezer (a sink full of dishes). It was obvious their study and tutoring schedules kept them busy. I knew Lucas was spending hours in the British Library at present too, researching his latest paper. He was surrounded by notes when I knocked on his door. I once again declined his offer of a drink, sat opposite him in front of the fire and delivered my update.

  ‘The good news is I’ve finally interviewed them all. The bad news is I think they all have a motive. Money.’

  ‘They get paid very well, Ella. Higher than average teaching rates and free accommodation too.’

  ‘Then perhaps it isn’t about money.’

  ‘Why else would they do it?’

  ‘As a kind of protest?’ I told him all they’d said about their clients. That the common thread was how spoilt they thought the children were, how indulgent the parents were, how much all of the clients had. Perhaps the thief was stealing simply because they could. Because they thought the clients already had too much. That they wouldn’t miss the items.

  ‘Lucas, I might be wrong. We don’t have any proof they’ve anything to do with the thefts at all.’

  ‘No, we don’t.’ He hesitated. ‘Have you had a chance to look in their rooms?’

  I knew he was using the word ‘look’ when he meant the word ‘search’. I’d done it that morning, trying to convince myself it was part of my job as housekeeper. Accompanied by a very noisy vacuum cleaner I found at the back of the hall cupboard, I went through their rooms one by one. I found several missing cups, a surprising amount of cutlery, more than a dozen brown apple cores, some evidence that activity of a romantic nature was taking place (I felt like a prying mother as I noticed the pack of condoms on Peggy’s bedside table), wine glasses, empty bottles and, in Darin’s room, a bright-orange traffic cone obviously taken from the roadworks nearby. I didn’t find a map, a necklace, a figurine, a ring or a real Rolex watch.

  ‘Perhaps I’m wrong,’ Lucas said after I’d finished my report. ‘I hope so. Please keep your eyes to the ground, Ella, won’t you? Or do I mean ears?’

  ‘I’ll use them all,’ I said.

  We sat in companionable silence for a moment, both of us staring into the fire. It was throwing out a gentle heat, the flames flickering rather than flaring, their light a twisting mixture of orange and red. Across from me, Lucas took out a folder of work and began to silently read.

  Observe.

  I made myself catalogue all I could hear around me. Lucas’s quiet breathing. The faint sound of traffic. A dog barking. Music from a house further down the street. The crackle of the fire, the occasional shifting of a log. I shut my eyes to concentrate better. I heard a far-off siren. Another dog. The flick of paper as Lucas turned the page.

  I used to love sitting quietly in the living room in Canberra while Aidan was working on one of his translations. I liked to watch him turn one language into another. I’d occasionally see him consult dictionaries but mostly I’d marvel that he could have so many words in his mind, that he could without hesitation find the one he needed. Sometimes, I’d be editing too, and the room would be filled with the gentle sound of pages turning, the scratch of our pens, as we both read, made notes. When Felix was a baby, when I was on maternity leave, the happiest I ever felt was when the three of us were in a room together, Aidan reading or translating a document, me sitting in a comfortable chair, Felix sleeping on me. There is nothing to compare with the feel of a baby – your own baby – asleep on your chest. His little body would move up and down, so slowly, as I breathed. I would blow gently on to the top of his head and see the dark strands of hair lift and fall. Every now and then his eyelids would flicker or he would move, just the slightest bit. A shimmer of a dream perhaps, or an itch, or the start of growing pains, but it always made me smile. I’d press a gentle kiss on his head, or hold him that bit tighter, marvelling again at how his body seemed to fit mine exactly, in the same way that he looked exactly right, the perfect fit, when Aidan was holding him. Our baby. He’d come from our bodies. He made us happier in our own skins.

  Another memory came to me, of Aidan trying to bath Felix for the first time. I’d done it at the start, Aidan declaring he was too nervous of dropping him, of him slipping through his hands like a bar of soap and flying across the room. After watching me for the first fortnight, he decided to try it for himself. I helped him set up – the plastic bath on the kitchen table, towels spread around, the water lukewarm. Aidan undressed Felix so gently, his face a picture of concentration. He carefully lifted him up and then down, slowly, slowly, into the bath, a toe, ten toes, then an ankle, another ankle, all of it in slow motion. I was watching Aidan, trying not to laugh at his serious expression or make any comment about how tightly he
was holding Felix. It was a vice grip. After a minute, Felix was still barely in the water. It was going to be a long night. I glanced at Felix’s face at the exact moment he looked up at Aidan. His expression was a combination of furrowed frown and a ‘Dad, get on with it, would you!’ roll of his eyes. It was a coincidence, I know, he was probably just yawning, but it was so perfect, so exactly what he must have been thinking that I laughed out loud —

  ‘Ella?’

  I opened my eyes, blinked, and brought myself back to Lucas’s living room.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m fine. Why?’

  ‘You were laughing to yourself again.’

  ‘Was I?’ I was?

  He nodded. ‘It was nice.’ He went back to his reading.

  Lucas was right. I had been laughing. I had been thinking about Felix and I had been laughing, not crying. For a moment, there was a glorious feeling inside me, that the pain might be fading, but even as I thought that, like a wave rushing at me, the good memory was replaced by sharp, fierce grief, like teeth, knives —

  I stood up. I needed to do something. Be busy. Quickly.

  ‘Ella?’

  I stopped at the door.

  ‘Your famous Thai curry. Do you still make it?’

  It took a second for me to shift my thinking from Felix.

  ‘Or your famous spaghetti bolognaise? Or your famous Mediterranean vegetable lasagne?’

  Lucas was mocking me, but nicely. When I’d first lived here and worked as his housekeeper, I’d had to teach myself to cook. Mum had never spent much time in the kitchen and I hadn’t learned more than basic kitchen skills from her. I’d tried to cover my lack of experience with flamboyant presentation, producing meals for the students with great aplomb, announcing each dish as my famous this or my famous that, as though I’d spent the past five years in a cordon bleu cookery school rather than university lecture halls.