The House of Memories

by Monica McInerney

‘If you’d like it, of course I do.’

  ‘Not for me. Henrietta is coming over tomorrow night to go through some student appraisals with me. If her visit happened to coincide with your dinner plans, I thought she could join us.’

  I sat down opposite him again. ‘You’re still carrying on with a married woman?’

  ‘I’m not “carrying on”.’ He paused. ‘Actually, yes, I am.’

  I smiled. ‘Hasn’t your moral compass steered you from this rocky shore by now, Uncle Lucas?’

  ‘My soul and conscience are blameless, Ella. There’s no moral ambiguity whatsoever on my side. I’m not married. I can carry on with half of London if I want to. It’s Henrietta who had to make a decision. Fortunately she erred on the side of sinning.’ He gave a surprisingly sweet grin.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Wonderful, as ever.’

  ‘Which of my famous dishes was her favourite?’

  ‘She did particularly like your vegetarian lasagne.’

  ‘Your wish is my command,’ I said.

  As I shopped for the ingredients at the local supermarket the next morning, I remembered Mark the tutor asking me about Lucas’s private life. I’d been as curious about Lucas when I first met him. I’d asked Mum and Dad if he was married.

  ‘Good heavens, no,’ Dad had said. ‘Many times chased, never caught.’

  Mum just laughed. ‘What woman in her right mind would put up with that mess?’

  As I grew older and no wife appeared in Lucas’s life, I’d gone through a stage of wondering whether he was gay. I summoned up the courage to ask Mum about that too.

  ‘I wondered as well, but your father said Lucas was quite the ladies’ man when they were at university, apparently. Can’t see the attraction myself.’

  But Lucas was the image of my dad, I reminded her. And she’d married him.

  ‘Yes, well, at least your father used to brush his hair occasionally.’

  I’d stayed curious but it hadn’t felt right to ask Lucas that sort of question by fax or email. Once I met him again as an adult, I couldn’t resist. I’d been staying with him for a fortnight. He’d taken a week off from his studies and devoted his time to me. He was wonderful, there was no other word for it. He took me all over the city, turning London from a big, strange city into one filled with hidden treasures and hideaway spots. He made me feel at home but he also left me alone. He talked about my dad in a way that helped me remember him. I’d always thought Lucas was one of the kindest, funniest, nicest men in the world. I knew it for sure now. It didn’t seem right that he was single, rattling around this big house on his own – the tutors aside, of course. Since I was a child, he’d always told me I could ask him anything. So I did, one night after dinner, emboldened by one too many glasses of his very good after-dinner port.

  ‘Lucas, are you gay?’

  I remember him fighting a smile. Unsurprisingly, I suppose. It probably was funny to be interrogated by your slightly drunk twenty-two-year-old niece. ‘No, Ella, I’m not,’ he said.

  ‘Then why aren’t you married? Because you’re an absolute catch, in my opinion.’

  He thanked me, hiding another half-smile. ‘I did want to get married. To a wonderful woman I met at university. I asked her many times. Sadly, she said no each time. And then, even more sadly, she said yes to a fellow student. I never got over her, I’m afraid, or met anyone as wonderful as her. Hence, my ongoing single status.’

  I remember getting quite teary on his behalf. The port, again. ‘Oh, Lucas! I’m so sorry!’

  ‘Don’t be upset, Ella. The story has a happy ending.’

  ‘It does? Her husband died?’

  ‘No, he’s in excellent health. As he should be. He’s a doctor. But fortunately their marriage turned out to be a rocky one. I became her bit on the side.’

  I blinked. ‘You had an affair with her?’

  ‘Still having. For more than twenty years now.’

  Another blink. ‘Here? Now?’

  ‘Not at this minute, Ella, no. But yes, here. In this house.’

  ‘Here? She lives here?’

  He laughed. ‘No. But she visits often. You’ve met her.’

  The only woman I could think of was one of his university colleagues, an English lecturer called Henrietta who helped with the tutors’ appraisals. She was Lucas’s age, much shorter than me, a little over five foot tall, with what I would describe as a sturdy build. Her clothes were well tailored and clearly expensive. She always wore her long hair – an attractive dark red – pulled up into a bun. The first time we’d met I’d been instantly reminded of a character from childhood books, Mrs Pepperpot. We’d only spoken briefly. She’d been blunt to the point of rudeness, asking me where Lucas was and getting impatient when I said I didn’t know. The second time, I offered her a drink. She barked an order as if I was a servant, not Lucas’s niece.

  ‘You’re having an affair with Henrietta?’

  He nodded.

  The port was now swirling in my head. I had a hundred questions but only managed one, sounding like a prim vicar’s wife. ‘Does her husband know?’

  ‘It’s an affair, Ella. Affairs are secret by nature.’ He laughed. ‘Your face really is quite a picture.’

  I hoped he couldn’t read my mind. Lucas was so kind, so good-looking, so good to be with. Henrietta – well, Henrietta wasn’t.

  He went across to the wall of bookshelves and returned with a small framed photograph. It was him and Henrietta together, sitting on a rug on a lawn, in what must have been their student days. I couldn’t lie and say to him that she looked lovely. She looked just like she did now – plain, serious and cross – only younger.

  Lucas took the photo back and gazed fondly at it. ‘I’ve never known anyone who thinks the way she does. Even back then, she could turn an argument upside down in an instant. She’s so original, so clever. She’s an extraordinary woman.’

  The next time she visited, I paid closer attention. How could I have missed it? Lucas revelled in her company. Not in her looks, but her mind. Appearances simply didn’t matter to him, I realised. His own clothes and the mess in his house were proof of that. What he cared passionately about were ideas, arguments, discussions, original thinking. He and Henrietta connected completely on an intellectual level. I listened to them talking that night, and again on her subsequent visits. Their conversations were passionate, animated, informed. They argued, they laughed, they discussed, they argued some more. After she left each time – sometimes after an hour or so spent upstairs with him in his room, during which time I definitely didn’t eavesdrop – Lucas would be so happy. Not only happy that he’d seen her, but also happy that she’d gone. She was his perfect woman. She was not just his intellectual equal and occasional sexual partner. She also gave him all the space and freedom he needed. After that, I tried my best to be friendly whenever she visited, but her manner towards me didn’t change. She was only ever dismissive or brusque with me. Rude, in fact.

  I told Charlie all about her. How ill-mannered she was. How she reminded me of Mrs Pepperpot. I emailed him a photo of her and Lucas. I’d taken it under the pretence I was testing my new camera.

  See what I mean??? I emailed.

  Charlie emailed back. So she’s no oil painting. So what? Nor am I. Lucas loves her. She must love him. That’s all that counts. Anyway, no one will ever be good enough for your precious Lucas. Stop being his gatekeeper. You should be happy he’s so happy.

  But she’s horrible, I’d emailed back, resorting to childish terms to amuse him, and myself.

  Maybe she’s sensational in bed, he’d emailed back.

  YUK! I’d emailed in return.

  I was home alone when Henrietta arrived for dinner. The tutors were all out with their students. Lucas had dropped by the kitchen in the late afternoon to say he was going out for a quick meeting, but he’d be back before Henrietta arrived.

  Just before seven I heard the front door open.

  ‘In here, Lucas
,’ I called. ‘Henrietta’s not here yet.’

  ‘Yes, she is,’ a voice answered.

  It was Henrietta. I hadn’t realised she had her own key.

  She appeared in the doorway. ‘I’m early,’ she said. ‘Welcome back, Ella.’ We briefly touched cheeks in greeting.

  She hadn’t changed in the years since I’d seen her. Her hair was still in the same style of bun, her eyes as blue and sharp. She was wearing an expensive-looking overcoat. She shook her head when I offered to hang it up. ‘I’ll leave it on. This house is always freezing.’

  ‘I’m just making dinner,’ I said. ‘Lucas won’t be long. Would you like to wait in the drawing room or come into the kitchen?’

  ‘I’ll watch you cook.’

  I asked about the weather. Yes, it was cold outside, she said. We briefly talked about the forecast, the sleet that afternoon, the prospect of snow. I offered to make her tea. She declined. A glass of wine? Later, she said. I didn’t know if she’d been told why I was back in London, if Lucas told her everything about his life and his family’s life, or if their conversations were based on intellectual arguments.

  She watched me silently as I prepared the salad. The vegetable lasagne was already in the oven. Once, I would have tried to keep up a conversation with her, needing to fill the silence. I could go hours without speaking now. It was why the work in the vineyard had suited me so well. I’d been on my own, row after row, no chat necessary or possible with the other workers.

  I was startled when Henrietta did ask a question.

  ‘How long are you planning to stay this time?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  She just nodded.

  Another minute went by as I chopped and sliced, the sounds loud in the room.

  ‘I’m sorry about your son.’

  I dropped the knife.

  ‘Lucas told me about it. It must have been a difficult time for you.’

  Her words were sympathetic but her expression was clinical, watchful, as if I was an exhibit.

  ‘Yes, it was,’ I said. ‘It still is.’

  ‘So hard for your sister. She must feel such terrible guilt.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘You and your husband separated, I believe.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, glad the chopping gave me an excuse not to look at her.

  ‘I had two miscarriages myself. I know how you feel.’

  A shaft of feeling shot through me. It was anger. I tried to stay calm, but I had to say something. ‘I’m sorry, Henrietta. A miscarriage is sad, but it’s not the same. Felix was nearly two years old.’

  She shrugged. She shrugged.

  ‘Of course I recognise the distinction, Ella, but the grief that follows is the same. Hope lost. Plans dashed. I had hopes and dreams for my two miscarried children, as you had hopes and dreams for your child. What was his name?’

  I wanted to throw the knife at her. I wanted to shout, ‘It’s none of your business what his name was, you horrible, cheating —’ I controlled myself. ‘His name was Felix. Felix Lucas Fox O’Hanlon.’

  ‘And how soon after Felix died did you and your husband separate?’

  This time I put the knife down, carefully. ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Henrietta.’

  ‘I’m sure post-trauma separation is quite common. Understandable too. People go through the stages of grief in different ways and at different times. That must cause enormous strain in a case like yours, particularly. The Swiss-American scholar Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who is credited with identifying five distinct stages of grief, once said —’

  Henrietta was lecturing me, I realised. She was talking at me as though I didn’t already know everything I ever wanted to know about grief. I already knew about Ms Kübler-Ross. I had read her book. I could have given my own lecture on her theories. But Henrietta was oblivious to my reaction. She just kept talking.

  ‘Did you try counselling? Cognitive behavioural therapy is quite popular in Australia, isn’t it? But perhaps the old wives’ tales are true in situations like this. As my grandmother liked to say, the only thing that cures grief is time. How long has it been now? Three years?’

  She might have been Lucas’s great love, his intellectual equal, but in that moment I hated her. I wanted her far away from me. She was still watching me as though I was a specimen under a microscope. She was waiting for an answer.

  I answered, for Lucas’s sake only. ‘Almost twenty months.’

  His twenty-month anniversary was just days away. It had become an important date in my mind. Soon he would be gone from us for as long as he had lived.

  Henrietta nodded. ‘So, nearly two years. You still seem very angry. Which stage is that, the first or the second?’

  I looked down at my hands. They were clenched. When I spoke again, my voice was cold, my words distinct.

  ‘My baby son died, Henrietta. The son I carried for nine months. The son I gave birth to.’ I was trying to hurt her now too. The flame was inside me again, the fury, the wild feeling I thought I’d learned to control. ‘I nursed him for more than a year. I stayed up night after night with him when he couldn’t sleep. I bathed him, dressed him, spent almost every hour of every day with him, for five hundred and fifty days. Until my husband, my half-sister —’ I stopped there. I needed to breathe again. ‘So yes, Henrietta, I’m still in the anger stage.’

  I returned to my cooking, chopping the celery with fast strokes. I could feel her watching me. Studying me.

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Grief is the most selfish of emotions.’

  I ignored her. She was oblivious. She just kept talking. At me, not to me.

  ‘Selfish in the purest meaning of the word, of course. It’s all about the self. Because that’s all it can be, a one-sided feeling. Only you can grieve the person who has died. They can feel nothing for you in return. You said it yourself just now, it’s all about you. “I did this with my son, I did that.” You have to believe your pain is worse than anyone else’s pain. Worse than your husband’s. Worse than Lucas’s. Worse than your sister’s. You have to believe no one has ever hurt as much as you do to make it bearable somehow.’

  I no longer cared that she was Lucas’s friend. I threw down the knife. It skidded across the table. ‘My son is dead, Henrietta. My baby son. I was his mother and now he is dead. What do you expect me to do? Shrug it off? Say, “Never mind. That was good while it lasted?”’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything so simplistic. You’re overreacting. What I’m saying is —’

  The door opened. It was Lucas.

  ‘Henrietta!’ He kissed her cheek. ‘I hope Ella has been looking after you? She’s made your favourite lasagne tonight, did she tell you?’

  I couldn’t stay. Not a second longer. I left, apologising to Lucas. I said nothing to Henrietta.

  It was past eleven o’clock when I returned to the house. I’d walked up to Marble Arch to the cinema and watched two films, one after the other. I barely noticed them. Henrietta’s words kept coming back to me, the sentences in my head louder than the dialogue on the screen. Selfish. Selfish.

  The house was quiet when I came in, the living room and kitchen in darkness. I switched on the light. The table was clean. The dishes had been done. There was a dish on the stovetop. I lifted the lid. Half the lasagne. I put it into the fridge. The remaining salad was there too, covered in clingfilm. Henrietta must have done it. It wouldn’t have been Lucas. Or the tutors. I had to fight an urge to throw it all in the bin.

  I was in the hallway about to go up to bed when a voice made me jump.

  ‘We left some for you if you’re hungry.’ It was Lucas.

  ‘I’m fine, Lucas, thanks.’

  ‘Come in and have a drink with me.’

  I hesitated. ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Henrietta’s gone home. Please, Ella.’

  I followed him into the withdrawing room. It was in near darkness, lit by just one standard lamp. The fire was going. There was musi
c playing in the background, a classical piece. Lucas poured himself a whisky and gave me a glass of water.

  ‘Why don’t you drink any more, Ella?’

  ‘It’s not good for me.’

  ‘Were you heading towards alcoholism?’

  Henrietta’s bluntness had obviously been rubbing off on him.

  He noticed my reaction. ‘You don’t have to answer that. It’s your business. I just miss having someone to share an after-dinner whisky with.’

  I had a memory flash – Lucas and Aidan here sipping whisky and trying to outdo each other quoting poetry, or was it Bob Dylan lyrics?

  ‘Henrietta said to tell you the lasagne was delicious. Actually, she told me it was delicious, but I’m sure she won’t mind me passing on the compliment.’

  ‘Lucas, I’m sorry. I hope Henrietta didn’t leave early because of me. We had a —’ A fight? ‘An exchange.’

  ‘She mentioned it. Don’t worry about hurting her feelings. Henrietta has the hide of a rhino,’ he said cheerfully.

  I stared at him. Hurt her feelings?

  ‘Sit down, Ella, please. You’re making me nervous standing there like that. Now, I need to give you an update. I discussed the entire situation with Henrietta.’ He noticed my blank expression. ‘About the tutors. She’s due to go with them to the clients’ houses next week. She does regular interviews with the students for me, formal appraisals. I’d like you to go with her.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘I think it could be helpful if you’re familiar with each house. You can see for yourself how easy or difficult it would be for something to be stolen.’

  ‘Couldn’t I go with the tutors?’

  ‘You could. But I thought it might be a good opportunity for you and Henrietta to get to know each other. And I’d like that to happen.’

  ‘Why?’ It sounded rude. It was rude. But I couldn’t soften it now.

  ‘Because you are the two most important people in my life.’

  That silenced me.

  ‘Ella, I know how Henrietta can appear. But it would make me happy if you became friends. Perhaps you could have a meal together one night first, before you visit the students.’

  There was nothing I wanted to do less.