The House of Memories

by Monica McInerney

  Epilogue

  Dear Felix,

  I know I said I wasn’t going to write to you any more but tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of you leaving us and I need to mark it somehow. Actually, I just felt like writing to you again.

  I am in Spain at the moment. With your mum. With Ella. I wondered for a long time if I would ever feel happy again after you left us, but I am the closest thing to feeling it again. I missed your mum so much, Felix. I never stopped loving her. But we were both so sad and hurting so much that we needed to be away from each other for a while. I always hoped we could be together again one day, once we had both done all the thinking and crying we needed to do.

  We are on holiday in Barcelona, a beautiful city full of great buildings and a long tree-lined street called Las Ramblas. I’ve taught your mum how to order tapas and to ask for directions. As she said herself, it goes well until someone says something in Spanish in return. She says I need to stay close. I’m very happy to do that. I also got to teach her some French on this holiday. We spent a weekend in France (before we came to Spain) with your granny and Walter and your Ess. They are all in the south of France filming Granny’s TV series. Your mum and I got to watch a day of it. Between you and me, Felix, your granny is a terrible cook. She was trying to make a traditional French fish soup and I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought the final product looked more like dirty dishwashing water than a French delicacy. But she laughed a lot while she was making it, and tried to speak a bit of French, and before long all the crew were laughing too, not to mention the poor bewildered French people watching. Jess, sorry, Ess, joined in, trying out a bit of French as well as a bit of cooking. I’m sorry to say she takes after her mother on the cooking front. They make a very good comedy double-act. You just wouldn’t want to eat their food. They are going to Germany to do some filming next (Walter is looking forward to that) and then on to England. Your granny said she can’t wait to cook (or should I say try to cook) that great English dish toad-in-the-hole. Unfortunately, I can already imagine some of the jokes she’ll make about that.

  Your mum and I are here in Spain for a week and then it’s back home to Washington. We both like living there very much. It’s a beautiful, interesting city and my job there is very interesting too. (Last week I had to translate a document about the impact of pollution on the lizard colonies of the Nevada Desert from American English into Spanish, German and French. I am now a lizard expert.) Your mum is working as an editor again, for a publisher she used to do some work with in Australia. It’s an amazing world, Felix – she is editing on-screen these days, rather than sitting surrounded by piles of paper as she used to be in Canberra. If you were still with us, going to school soon, probably already comfortable on a computer, you would take this for granted, but old fogies like us think it’s incredible.

  It’s June here in Spain, and the weather is perfect, warm not hot. All the old stone buildings seem to glow in the sunshine. The Spanish people love their kids as much as the Irish and Australians do – we often see families out together in restaurants. And we think about you all the time, of course, and wish you were here with us. But you know that. That will never change.

  I like to imagine that you are keeping an eye on us wherever you are, Felix. We think of you with as many smiles as tears now. I never thought that day would come. Some days are still harder than others. But your mum and I talk about you so much and that helps.

  We are planning another trip soon, not as far as Spain this time, just a few hours away to Boston, to see your Uncle Charlie and Aunty Lucy and your cousins. They miss you too. Your mum often talks to them on Skype and says she’ll be surprised when she meets them again to find they’re full size, she’s so used to seeing tiny versions on a computer screen.

  Felix, we miss you every day. We are different now. All of us. In the same way your coming into our lives changed us in so many ways, your leaving us did too. But we are learning to live without you. Your mum is laughing again. I always loved her laugh and loved making her laugh. It was amazing that you laughed the same way, as though you were both saying ‘Hahahaha.’ When she laughs now, it’s another great excuse to think about you.

  Your Aunty Ess is much better. She is still very sad too, and fragile, we know that, but she is back singing and dancing again, and seems to be entertaining all the crew filming with her in Europe. Your mum didn’t spend a lot of time alone with her when we met up in France, but they did talk about general things, like the weather and the filming. I also know Jess showed her the tattoo of your name. Your mum found that hard, I think. But she said afterwards that she was glad to see it and glad that we would always know what height you were. All those little reminders of you help us: the photos, the stories about you that we like to share.

  We’re hoping your great-uncle Lucas will come and visit us in Washington soon, for a week or two. He’s about to get a lot of work done on his big and very messy fox-filled house in London (where your mum and I met) so he’ll come over while that’s happening. On his own, your mum hopes, not with his girlfriend. Her name is Henrietta and your mum doesn’t approve of her at all. I’ve met her, and between you and me, she’s not that bad. Your mum is just very protective of her uncle Lucas.

  Felix, your mum and I are talking about having another baby. We would love it if it happened and we hope it will happen soon. No one will ever replace you. But one of our secret hopes is that because a new baby will be half your mum and half me, as you were, it will be similar to you in some way. Maybe he or she will get that same look of mischief that you used to get. Maybe he or she will also have an obsession with brooms. Maybe he or she will shout his or her name out loud too. I know we will love that new baby and I know he or she will also help us to remember you. Not that we could ever forget you. Not our little Felix O’Hanlon.

  I love you and miss you so much, Felix.

  Dad xx

  Acknowledgements

  My big thanks to all the people who shared family stories with me, especially Lisa Houatchanthara, Andre Sawenko, Xavier McInerney, Marie McInerney, Mikaella, Ulli, Ruby and Raf Clements, Jane Melross and Lizzie and Joe Arnold. For their help in many different ways, my thanks also to Lee O’Neill, Austin O’Neill, Max Fatchen, Brona Looby, Ethan Miller, Sabine Brasseler, Michael Boyny, Clare Forster, Sarah Duffy, Rosie Duffy, Kristin Gill, Bonnie Gill, Catherine Foley, Carol George, Mary Connolly, Rob McInerney, T. Bella Dinh-Zarr, Robert Zarr, Karen O’Connor, Bart Meldau, John, Bonnie and Stephanie Dickenson, Maria Dickenson, Ciaran McNally, Noëlle Harrison, Sinéad Moriarty, Noelene Turner, Helen Trinca and Robin Trinca.

  This book is dedicated to my nieces and nephews in Australia, Ireland and Germany: Bernard, Nicholas, Patrick, Sam, Mikaella, Ulli, Ruby, Raf, Hannah, Dominic, Xavier, Callan, Mia, Catherine, Domhnall, Hannah and Thea. My love and thanks too to my two families, the McInerneys in Australia and the Drislanes in Ireland.

  Many thanks to my publishers and agents around the world: Ali Watts, Arwen Summers, Saskia Adams, Gabrielle Coyne, Louise Ryan, Sally Bateman, Chantelle Sturt and everyone at Penguin Australia; Trisha Jackson, Natasha Harding, Jodie Mullish, David Adamson, Sophie Ransom of Midas PR, Gráinne Killeen and all at Pan Macmillan UK; Fiona Inglis and all at Curtis Brown Australia; Jonathan Lloyd, Kate Cooper and all at Curtis Brown London; Gráinne Fox at Fletcher and Company in New York and Anoukh Foerg in Germany. Thanks very much also to James Williams, Justin Tabari, Sarah Conroy and Ashley Miller for their website and photographic help.

  Finally and as always, my love and thanks to my sister Maura and my husband John, for all they do to help me write each novel.

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was December the first. Angela Gillespie did as she’d done on that date for the past thirty-three years. She sat down at her desk before dinner and prepared to write her annual Christmas letter.

  After doing so many, she had the process down to a fine art. It was a matter of leafing through her diary to recall the year’s main events,
writing an update about each member of the family – herself, her husband and their four children – attaching a photo or two, then sending it off.

  She’d written her first Christmas letter the same year she was married. Transformed from single traveller Angela Richardson of Forest Hill, London to newlywed Mrs Nick Gillespie of Errigal, a sheep station in outback South Australia, she couldn’t have been further from her old life, in distance or lifestyle. She’d decided an annual letter was the best way of keeping in contact with her friends and relatives back home. As the years passed, she’d added Nick’s relatives, their neighbours and her new Australian friends to the mailing list. It now went to more than a hundred people worldwide.

  Her early letters had been in traditional form, typed on an old typewriter on their big kitchen table, then taken into Hawker, the nearest town (almost an hour’s drive away), photocopied and posted. It was much easier these days, the letters sent instantly via the wonder of email. Even so, she still printed out paper copies and kept them stored in the filing cabinet beside the desk.

  She knew the children found the whole idea mortifying – they, and Nick, had stopped reading the letters long ago – but perhaps in years to come they might like to see them. Angela hoped so. She secretly thought of them as historical documents. All the facts of their lives were there, after all, recorded in brief dispatches. She’d read back through them all only recently.

  She’d written about her first years of marriage: Nick and I couldn’t be happier! I am loving my new life on the land too. I can now name five species of native birds by their calls alone, four varieties of gum trees by their bark, and last week I drove a tractor for the first time. There’s hope for this London-born city girl yet! She wrote about the arrival of the twins less than a year after their wedding day: We already knew it would be twins, but it was still an incredible surprise to see two of them. One is so dark, the other so fair, and both so beautiful. We’re naming them after my grandmothers, Victoria and Genevieve. Three years later, she wrote about Lindy’s arrival: A third girl! Another beautiful brunette. The twins can’t wait to get their hands on their new little playmate. I get to name her too. (Nick and I struck a deal on our wedding night – I name any girls, he names any boys.) I’ve chosen my favourite name from Shakespeare – Rosalind. The twins are already calling her Lindy! The next two decades of updates were about outback station life, family holidays, academic results, hobbies, pets and funny incidents involving the girls, each report chatty and cheery.

  Eleven years ago, she’d included a piece of news that she suspected had shocked her readers as much as it had her. At the age of forty-four, she was pregnant again. She’d thought she was menopausal. Instead she’d discovered she was almost five months pregnant when a routine visit to the doctor led to an unexpected pregnancy test and an even more unexpected result. Two days after the birth, breaking with tradition, she’d sent out a special mid-year email to everyone on her mailing list. It’s a boy!!! Our first son!!! Nick gets to name one at last!!!!

  She’d used far too many exclamation marks, she noticed afterwards. Post-birth endorphins at work, she presumed. Either that or delayed shock at the names Nick had chosen for their son. At her hospital bedside, he’d confessed he promised his long-deceased and sentimental grandfather that he would name any future son after the first Gillespies – two male cousins – to come from Ireland to Australia in the 1880s. Which was why their fourth (and definitely final) child was baptised Ignatius Sean Aloysius Joseph Gillespie. One of Nick’s friends had been very amused. ‘He’ll either be the first Australian pope or end up running a New York speakeasy.’

  At first Angela tried to insist everyone call him Ignatius, but it was a losing battle. She’d long realised that the shortening of names was a national pastime in Australia. He was Iggy within a day of his baptism. A week later, even that was shortened. He’d been called Ig ever since.

  She could hear his voice now, floating down the hall from the kitchen. The homestead was big, with six bedrooms, two living rooms and a high-ceilinged dining room, all linked by the long hall, but sound still carried well. Ig and Lindy were playing – attempting to play – a game of Scrabble before dinner. Angela could also hear the faint strains of Irish music coming from the dining room. She knew Nick was in there working on his family research. Over the past six months, the large polished dining table had slowly become covered in stacks of hardback books on aspects of Australian and Irish history. Not just books, but also shipping records, hand-drawn family trees and photographs. They weren’t just in the dining room, either. The office too. In fact, every surface in the house had started to accumulate history journals or family-tree paraphernalia of one form or another. The previous week Angela had searched for her car keys for nearly an hour before finding them beneath a pile of ancestry magazines.

  Beside her, the six o’clock news jingle sounded from the radio. Angela blinked. She’d better get a move on if she was to send her letter tonight. She clicked on her template document, with its border of Christmas trees already in place, along with her traditional opening line in Christmassy red and green letters (‘Hello from the Gillespies!’) and equally festive farewell (‘A Very Merry Christmas from Angela and all the gang!’). All she had to do now was fill in the blank middle section with her family news.

  One minute passed, then another. The words just wouldn’t come. Perhaps she should break with tradition and choose the photos first. She opened the folder of digital shots she’d collected over the past twelve months. She usually sent a group one, but the family hadn’t been together in front of a camera for more than two years. Could she just send separate and recent photos of each of them instead?

  She clicked through the possibilities, starting with the twins. No, Victoria wouldn’t be happy for any of those to go into wide circulation. Wide being the operative word, unfortunately. Not that Angela would ever say it to her, but Victoria had put on a lot of weight since she’d moved to Sydney nearly two years earlier. Comfort eating, Angela suspected, after the stressful time she’d had in her job as a radio producer. She still looked lovely though, Angela thought. Like a pretty, rosy-cheeked milkmaid, with her blonde hair curling to her shoulders and her blue eyes. But she might not appreciate Angela sending out photos just at the moment.

  As for Genevieve, the most recent photo she’d emailed from New York wasn’t really suitable for public viewing either. For a hairdresser, and especially a hairdresser working in the glamorous American film and TV world, Genevieve took a very devil-may-care approach to her own hair. In this latest shot she looked like she was on the way to a fancy-dress party, her newly acquired bright-blue dreadlocks tied in a loose knot on top of her head, her dark eyes heavy with eyeliner, as usual, and alight with mischief, also as usual. She’d explained it all in her email. A hairdresser friend had needed to practise dreadlock extensions for a film she was working on and Genevieve had volunteered. It’s only temporary, promise! she’d written. Thank God for that! Angela had emailed straight back. Ig said to tell you that you look like a feral Smurf. Genevieve had been very amused by that. Genevieve was very amused by most things.

  There were several recent photos of Lindy, but unfortunately she looked like a prisoner on the run in most of them, wild-eyed and panicky. The camera really didn’t lie, Angela thought. Poor Lindy had been a bag of nerves since she’d returned home to live. Her general air of disarray wasn’t helped by the fact she’d taken to wearing her long brown hair in two messy bunches, like a little girl. It had been the in-thing in Melbourne circles, she’d told Angela. Which circles? Angela had wondered. Kindergarten? She hadn’t said it aloud. She’d learned the hard way that there was no teasing Lindy about her appearance. Or about anything, really.

  At least there were dozens of photos of Ig to choose from. He loved being in front of a camera. But none of them was suitable either. His dark-red curls badly needed a cut and Angela hadn’t got around to it yet, deciding to wait until Genevieve and her scissors were ho
me again. In the meantime, he looked more like her fourth daughter than her only son. If she attached one of those photos to her Christmas letter, she’d definitely receive a disapproving email from Nick’s Aunt Celia. Celia had very strict ideas about suitable haircuts for boys. Celia had very strict ideas about everything.

  As for recent photos of herself and Nick together . . . It felt like they’d hardly been in the same room together for months, let alone in front of the same camera. She turned and gazed at the back wall of the office. Thirty-two photos of her and Nick looked back at her. They were another tradition she had started the year they were married. An annual photo of the two of them in the same position, standing in front of the homestead gate, the big stone house behind, that huge sky above, all space and light. Each year she’d sent one print back home to her parents in London and framed another for this wall. As the years had gone by, the children had appeared in the photos too. Angela stood now and looked at each picture in turn. Not at her own image, but at Nick standing to her left in every photo, six foot one to her five foot five.

  He hadn’t changed much over the years, as tall, lean and tanned in the most recent photo as he was in the earlier ones. She reached for the first picture, studying it closely, clearly remembering this early moment of their married lives. It had taken them eight tries to get the self-timing camera to work properly. They’d been about to give up when it clicked. She was looking straight at the camera, wearing a cornflower-blue cotton dress the same colour as her eyes, her hair a mass of black curls, her smile wide if somewhat frozen after so many attempts to get the shot. Beside her, Nick was dressed in dark jeans and a white shirt, his sleeves rolled up. He wasn’t only smiling but laughing, completely relaxed, indulging her, gazing down at her with such amusement. Such pride. Such love.