The Museum of Forgotten Memories

by Anstey Harris

  And then he worked it out, the way. The way to avoid a dog-walker finding his body on the beach, to save a child from seeing a corpse in the woods, a train driver, all the people he did not want to burden. His greatest fear was that it would be me, that I would find him and – alone – have to call the police, make statements, tell Leo.

  The minutiae of his death kept him alive. And his being alive stopped me from realising how angry I would be when he had gone.

  He had the logic left to examine the process – both the method and the aftermath – but, as he explained to me so many times in that level ordinary voice, with no hysteria or panic, he couldn’t find the heart to stay alive.

  One day, his fine engineering mind worked it out. The foolproof way that hurt no one. And then we knew it was a countdown.

  So I never tell. Simon knows parts of it – as do the coroner and the police officers who were involved, as they must be, with a suicide – but we never talk about it, never share it. We hope that the same conundrum is keeping someone else alive. There is one part that no one knows but me.

  We watched him, Simon and I, almost round the clock for the first months once we knew his death was inevitable. We would put Leo to bed, Simon or me alongside Richard – never him alone, just in case. Then we, in turns, would spend the rest of the evening with Richard. Sometimes we all sat together in our cosy kitchen, drinking wine, talking late into the night. Other times it was a chore, a real back-breaking task, to sit with him while he was delusional and frightened or cold and deliberate.

  There are so many good times, wrapped inside that sad dried cocoon, time that should be out and aired, open to the sunshine. Sometimes the happy memories are so muffled in my anger at being abandoned that they almost choke. I think of Araminta and her bulrushes, of the lady in the shop and her sense of belonging, of community. I think of Leo and the long line of family that stretches out before him here.

  For the first time in four years something has managed to creak open and start to fight its way back out.

  I pull my dressing gown on over my pyjamas and go downstairs. Araminta is in the wide hall at the bottom of the stairs, putting the finishing touches to an incredible flower arrangement. The bulrushes reach up from the centre, their white tufts clinging on to the stems, like fireworks midway through an explosion. Below them and twining through their stalks are red-hot pokers and the acid yellow stems of a plant I don’t know. The effect is extraordinary, and is the perfect elegant touch needed to bring this room to life.

  I cough gently so as not to startle her. ‘That’s truly beautiful,’ I say, and before she can say anything unpleasant I add, ‘I came down to ask you if I could help you tomorrow, with the coach party.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, looking at the flowers. And then, more gently, and in response to my offer, ‘Yes.’

  From: Simon Henderson

  To: Cate Morris

  Subject: Godfatherly Duties . . .

  Mail: Hello? More words than I’ve had in months, then a brief desperate note – that I responded to, I might add. Now – nothing.

  I feel I would be failing the responsibility heaped upon me by that very peculiar (yet rather moving) service (that none of us thought we believed in/cared for until it happened and then we were a collective lump of jelly) if I didn’t check you and Leo were still alive before I went to bed.

  Those lions are dramatically lifelike – it would be the easiest thing in the world for a real one to sneak into the display, stand stock-still until breakfast, and then leap out as you made your morning rounds. Nothing more scrumptious for a morning snack than Leo in pyjamas.

  Seriously, are you both okay?

  Sx

  From: Cate Morris

  To: Simon Henderson

  Subject: ‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.

  ‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’

  ‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.

  ‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’

  Mail: I didn’t write last night because I don’t know whether I’m coming or going. Which made me read Alice in Wonderland to Leo, or at least try to but Leo is now a local chav – long story involving hero worship of a boy in a hoodie – and didn’t want to hear it. I read it to myself anyway. And then I thought I’d made a massive breakthrough and perhaps Hatters originally had an apostrophe and is named after THE MAD HATTER but then calmed down when I realised it’s quite a lot older than the book. Maybe Lewis Carroll came here and thought, if he was going to write about mad people, he couldn’t do better than to start here.

  The level of hysteria in that paragraph (I have just reread it) has slightly abated since I went exploring in the grounds. I found the chapel and had five minutes’ peace. Have you seen it? The whole family is buried there. Except Richard, obviously.

  So I’ve finished googling and I can’t find any information about his father. To the point where it’s missing, rather than forgotten. Everyone else has elaborate death notices from The Times (except Richard, obviously, because we didn’t do that – didn’t know we were supposed to) but his father’s notice is a few quiet lines in the local paper. Maybe they were broken-hearted.

  The chapel was proper solace, every time I stand still in the house or garden that awful Araminta glides up behind me. It’s like a haunting. Only twice as scary. Maybe she can’t get over the chapel threshold without a smell of smouldering . . .

  Even if I don’t see her as I walk around, I can feel that she’s been there – there’ll be a curtain still flapping or a waft of old lady scent. And an eerie silence – that’s her favourite. Her superpower, Leo would say.

  Later, alive for now,

  Xxx

  Chapter Eight

  It’s a bright warm day. The trees that bend softly over the drive are vivid with summer and move slightly in the breeze. It is a good time to visit any English garden, to be welcomed by bold colours and long golden grasses. From behind the house, I can hear the squawk of the peacock, indignant that so many people have come to share his domain.

  Leo was thrilled when I told him he could help Curtis all morning. I did my best to talk about the drugs issue while we made a picnic lunch for the two of them.

  ‘Look, if Curtis starts smoking drugs . . .’

  ‘Smoking drugs is stupid. You heard Curtis say that.’ He does not pause in the rhythm of buttering bread, yellow against white, the colours of summer.

  ‘But if he changes his mind and . . .’

  ‘I will come home. It will get on my hair and my clothes and I don’t want to smell like that.’

  I should have had more faith in Leo’s vanity: looking – and smelling – good is everything to him.

  When we get out to the kitchen garden Curtis is already working. Leo is wearing board shorts and a sky-blue T-shirt: Curtis is still wearing jeans and his hoodie. He must be roasting.

  I look back at them as I leave the kitchen garden. Araminta was right: Curtis is a hard worker. In the time it’s taken me to cross the garden, he’s shown Leo how to dig and they’re both getting stuck in to the job.

  *

  A couple of women I don’t recognise wave to me from the open doorway as I walk towards the front of the house and the ticket booth. They obviously know who I am and I wonder if word has filtered through the village that the Lyons-Morris family are back.

  The doorway is edged in bunting, pastel-coloured triangles that transport the whole scene back to the 1950s, and a smaller one of Araminta’s flower arrangements sits on the desk of the ticket office.

  ‘You really have an artistic eye,’ I say and Araminta smiles at the compliment.

  ‘We’ve got a very full house.’ She takes two clipboards from the desk. She swallows slightly. ‘And I’m grateful for your help.’

  And that is it: the truce. So simple, so quietly delivered. A white flag flies between us and the relief is insta
nt. It took only a few words to undo all the difficulty, all the unpleasantness. It took one small gesture from me to open up the negotiations.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Araminta says and points to the open doorway. Framed by the bunting, two large white coaches drive slowly onto the gravel of the car park. ‘This is typical Malcolm,’ she says shrugging her shoulders. ‘He only booked one coachload in.’

  I am wearing an ironed linen skirt and a button-through blouse. I have a short string of fake pearls around my neck and simple, silver, earrings: I don’t look much like me but I do, I hope, look like a member of the Lyons-Morris dynasty. ‘Shall we take one each?’ I ask, feeling less confident than I sound.

  Araminta nods.

  *

  It takes about fifteen minutes to get them all in and paid for. They are a mix of French and English, all of retirement age, and very much looking forward to their visit.

  The entrance hall is awash with noise, the chatter is light and happy. There is lots of laughter and I can hear English, French, and a considerable amount of Franglais between the jostling visitors.

  ‘I’ve put all your names on your clipboard,’ Araminta calls to me over the hubbub. ‘Come over here and I’ll assign your party to you.’

  She beckons me over towards the postcard display and I understand why such a concentration of visitors has gathered in this small space. Two red-faced and very smiley old men are standing behind a wallpaper-pasting table. In minutes, they have arranged a sea of paper cups, and – in boxes underneath the table – I can see they have enough wine to fill them.

  ‘You must be Cate,’ one of them says and gestures towards me with a paper cup brimming with red wine.

  I’m obviously supposed to take it. ‘Driving, I’m afraid. And taking a tour group round the collection.’ And it’s half past ten in the morning, I add silently.

  ‘Everything goes better with a drop of this,’ he says, still waving the paper cup at me. ‘I’m Malcolm. I run the Twinning Association. And this is Thierry. He brings this wonderful stuff over with him.’

  ‘It’s the only reason they ask us back,’ says Thierry in accented-but-perfect English.

  ‘I’m very pleased to meet you both.’

  ‘I hope none of that wine is going into the galleries, Malcolm.’ Araminta is standing in front of him with her clipboard. ‘Please make sure no one leaves the foyer with their cup, except to go outside.’

  ‘Absolutely, Araminta. I wouldn’t dream of it.’ He winks at her and drinks from the cup he was offering me. ‘Waste not, want not.’

  Araminta sighs, passes me a printed piece of paper, and pushes through the crowd to the corridor that leads to the galleries.

  ‘You have to know how to handle her,’ Malcolm says and laughs at his own joke. Behind him Thierry is filling more cups.

  ‘I don’t know how you dare.’ I look away from him and check the names on the list. There seem to be a lot of them.

  ‘I’ve known her forever. We were at school together, Minnie Buchan and me. Not allowed to call her that any more though.’

  Two things make my jaw drop. The first is the image of the neat, quiet, Araminta as a ‘Minnie’. I can’t begin to process it. But the second is Malcolm’s age. He’s far older than Araminta, at least, far older than I’d assumed she was. I would put Malcolm in his seventies – Araminta can’t possibly be anything like that. Perhaps it’s his party lifestyle, maybe red wine’s not as good for you as I’d thought.

  ‘Did she live here then?’ I don’t miss my chance.

  ‘All her life. Her mother worked here too and they lived in the red house over at the back.’

  I move towards the museum entrance, to where Araminta is standing with her clipboard, running her finger along the lines of text and looking very organised.

  ‘Group two, over here please.’ Araminta looks at her notes. I wonder how many people each of those vast coaches holds. Half of them are going to be in my charge and half of that half speak a language I’ve barely used since my O levels.

  Araminta carries on calling across their heads. I’d say the majority of them have been sampling the wine the exchange group brought with them. They are in remarkably high spirits for a group of retired people being shown round a country house and collection.

  ‘Mrs Lyons-Morris, would you take group one?’

  ‘Cate Morris,’ I say to my group, at least those that are listening, and try to look as if I mean business.

  Araminta waves her clipboard, everything below her wrist has disappeared into the throng of noisy visitors. ‘I suggest you start . . .’ she shouts across the din.

  But I see it coming, and I say it as she does: ‘. . . in Gallery One.’ I know how things are done around here. It makes me smile.

  Gallery One is actually a great place to start. It’s been designed this way to get the maximum reaction from the guests as they slip round that first corner, funnelled in by the corridor, and all see the glass cases at the same time.

  ‘Gets me every time, this place.’ Malcolm is standing behind me, his hand flat across his chest, resting over his heart. ‘I’ve been coming here man and boy, but it never pales. I love showing it to new people.’

  ‘How do you know so much?’ I’m shaking my head and smiling: Malcolm is humanising this cold place as he speaks.

  ‘The Colonel used to show me round. When I was a nipper.’

  ‘You knew the Colonel?’ I’m trying to stay next to Malcolm as he gathers the other visitors round him, sharing his enthusiasm.

  ‘He was an old man by the time I met him, but we used to come up with school. From the village.’ He points to the back of the glass case, his other arm is round Thierry’s shoulders. ‘Look at the giraffe.’ He points, Thierry and I follow his gaze. ‘It’s half-mounted and half painted. See? It doesn’t have a body, that bit’s painted in 3D.’

  ‘Trompe l’oeil,’ Thierry says. ‘All the best things are French.’

  The giraffe isn’t real. I’ve stared at this case, trying to count the animals, work out exactly what’s there. Leo and I have gone through it together, pointing at all the creatures we weren’t sure of and looking them up on the board in front of the case. And we never noticed that most of the giraffe isn’t real. His head and majestic neck are real enough, his mournful eyes the same haunting glass marbles as the rest of the menagerie, but his body – now that I can make it out amongst the cloth leaves and the paper-wrapped trunks – is painted onto the wall. It’s an incredible job, the long brown patches that spot his legs, the bones and sinew that jut from his chest beneath the fur. I could have looked in here a hundred times and never have noticed.

  It’s only now Malcolm’s pointed it out that I really look at the artwork behind the animals. Dusty plains stretch into the distance, the sun catching on rocks and glinting from the speckled gold sand. In the next case along, there are hints of ice in the crags and crevices of the rocks, tufts of green-blue lichen clinging to the vertical surfaces, and water dripping slowly down boulders, leaving a slick of minerals in its wake.

  Malcolm has finished his lecture, the group are moving slowly through the galleries towards the vast domed library.

  ‘Well, I’m glad I finally got them here,’ he says to me as the last of the visitors file out of Gallery One. ‘I’ve been telling the Twinning Association that they need to visit this place ever since it started.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t they?’

  Malcolm shrugs. ‘It’s probably me. I’m not very good at telling people what I mean, getting my enthusiasm into actual ideas.’

  ‘I think you’re a natural tour leader.’

  ‘It’s all different now they’ve seen it. They love it now. But before it was all, “Oh, no, not stuffed animals,” or, “I don’t like taxidermy.”’

  I approach the rest of the tour with more enthusiasm. I hear myself take on a new energy when we reach the African collection. I explain how the invasion of the Europeans is reflected in the jewellery that Hugo’s party bar
tered and traded: brass bullet casings threaded onto necklaces, Bakelite beads used in ornate headdresses despite previously being mundane radio knobs or light switches.

  There are other visitors now, occasionally gliding past us and pausing to hear what I’m talking about. They are too young to be from Malcolm’s party and I assume, or at least hope, that the coaches and the buzz around them in the village have attracted other visitors to the museum. There is a group of young mums with pushchairs, their toddlers running up and down the gallery corridors. It gives me hope: if I’d lived near this place when Leo was little, I’d have been here all the time – picnicking in the gardens or showing him the animals. It’s so sad that we missed it.

  At the very front of the African gallery, Gallery Three to give it its proper name, there is an exhibit that enchanted me as soon as I saw it, that set me wondering about stories and histories and what we should tell our children even before I saw the ledger in the chapel.

  I don’t know any more than what’s on the card in the front of the case – should the group peer down and read it – but I deliver it with a surety that no one questions.

  The little tray of stones is one of the quieter exhibits. Its value is hidden. They are pretty enough: a shallow wooden tray containing a heap of coloured stones, almost gems from the way they’ve been softened and smoothed, and the size of small marbles. When you read the card, they reveal themselves: you need the key to understand.

  ‘These are Kudu mouth stones. Girls, who . . .’ I choose my words carefully for my audience, ‘when they come of age, choose a stone and put it under their tongue. And there it stays, for their whole life: while they’re asleep, when they’re ill, when they have children. Every day.’

  ‘How come they don’t swallow them?’ an elegant woman in a powder blue suit asks.