In the Memorial Room

by Frame, Janet

  They showed me the bedroom downstairs, with a small bathroom and lavatory. There was a bathroom and lavatory upstairs as well and, outside, a completely private small terrace overlooking the sea and the mountains. Nothing obstructed the view. No tall apartment blocks such as were springing up everywhere in the city. A park of olive trees extended almost to the promenade at the water’s edge; and, although here and there the sea was visible only through the trees, one can never accuse trees of obstructing the view.

  When they had shown me through the house they sat side by side on the new sofa in the living-room, while I sat in the new comfortable armchair. Nobody spoke. I sensed that it was almost a religious moment and they were to be the ones to perform the ceremony while I, as always, stood in the accusative case, the passive voice.

  —Well?

  Still I did not speak. Then I said, feeling the inadequacy of my remark, —It looks very comfortable.

  This satisfied them.

  —You like it then?

  —Oh yes. I could work here. Get my novel written.

  —We’ll call for you tomorrow morning. Pack your bags.

  I must have looked bewildered for they asked again, together, —You do like it?

  —Yes, yes.

  —Tomorrow morning, then, at eleven.

  The next morning at eleven Dorset and Elizabeth Foster ‘collected’ me and took me to the small house to live and work. I bought a supply of typing paper and began my dreamed-of imaginative novel.

  7

  Menton is a city of innumerable retirement dreams quietly being wrecked by reality. The lizard ideal of sun and warmth, the human ideal of unlimited leisure, of unbroken views of ocean, sky, mountains, trees, make Menton a promised paradise for all when reaching their troisième âge they try to follow the tradition of stopping suddenly their pursuits of twenty, thirty, forty years. This arrest of habit often coincides with a permanent arrest of the heart or, less drastic, the retirement of some physical and mental faculties; also, a literal re-tire-ment: a fatigue on entering the promised paradise, on gazing at the view of ocean and mountain. The illusion of, the obeisance to, time, from birth to death in oneself and after the deaths of others (and before their birth), dispose human beings to live their lives in a prison of images. Attaining middle and old age, feeling that he has ‘arrived’ somewhere, as if he has taken a life-train from one place to another, a man feels entitled to enjoy the prospect of ‘looking back’, of ‘surveying’ his supposedly panoramic life, of resting on a ‘summit’ to enjoy breathing and eating and sleeping in peace and quiet now that he has ‘passed his working life’ and ‘reached’ a ‘third age’.

  The appalling deceit of a language trapped by images, which are the comfortable refuge from the stark fact of the limits of human conception, is that man should live and die within his sheltering images and clichés of time. So he journeys through time, and, retiring from his life-work and looking down from his supposed vantage point, he finds he has not moved or journeyed metaphorically; he has left nothing behind in former periods of his life; he arrives, by a real train or a real plane, certainly, with everything he has been and known and felt and thought and with all his past human associations; his luggage is so burdensome he can hardly bear to carry it; and no one can help him because no others can see it.

  Living a life of myth, within a myth created by language, in a contagion of myth, man and his ‘reality’ of being are infected (see how one employs the metaphor because one is not oneself outside the myth): the life of man on earth becomes a dream. How can one begin to know and to say what one knows, to say what one feels and sees and thinks, and, in the case of a novelist, what others feel, see and think? A musician has the notes of the major minor melodic harmonic chromatic scales to tell all; or the twelve tones of the invented scale using the recognised notes – within this limited vocabulary he is able to ‘tell all’ of man’s birth, life and death. A painter, within the spectrum, may also make a sum of man’s existence. A sculptor, too. A writer, however, born within a myth of language, surrounded by, ‘hemmed in’ by metaphor is able only to be, to be born, to have his birth. What follows is an onslaught of language, an occupation of the tongue and palate which slowly confuses what, one only imagines, might have been the ‘truth’. One cannot think of it in itself; images rise in the mind: arbitrary images prompted by how one slept the night before, what one had for breakfast, or read in the newspaper, or dreamed, or glimpsed in the street, or remembered from long ago; the image encircles the ‘truth’, clothes it (the night had been cold; it was good to be inside, and warm, covered with many bedclothes), makes personal what one had hoped existed, like a star, outside the human mind. But it is not so, it is within, the search is, as in music, a projection and return, a tension and resolution, and finally a coming home. Sexologists thus describe the sex act and the generative parts of the body. They draw graphs; they measure, record; they too are trapped.

  Oh but I had not meant to write in this way. The problem is too much for me. I had meant to write of those – most of whom do not spend their lives trying to explore the maze of languages – whose lives do not quite succeed in bringing them the happiness they had thought themselves entitled to hope for.

  Thus the retired people nearing the close of their journey are faced with unexpected treacheries, of language and the decay of a myth which they inhabited as if it were the reality of their bodies, and the intrusion of realities, abortive because they too necessarily change at birth to myths, to feed the process of knowing and thinking. There is a tale told here, in Menton, of the Englishman who retired here and who had spent a lifetime studying languages. On retirement he gave himself the task (making a solemn oath) of speaking only in nouns and verbs. One does not know what images occupied his mind, but in his speech and, one supposes, his writing, he kept his oath.

  A curious word, oath.

  Nor does one know whether he was happier for keeping his oath – nor does one know whether he supposed that happiness was a reward of the search for the ‘truth’ in words. His conversation, I was told, included only things visible. He spoke nouns, pronouns, and verbs. ‘I take tea.’ ‘I took tea.’ And prepositions:

  I take tea with you.

  They use the boat on the Mediterranean.

  There was a fall of snow on the mountains.

  All references to emotion were excluded because they could not be described accurately. There was no reference to things of the spirit: no abstract words – ‘truth’ was excluded in the search for the truth – no descriptions apart from those of agreed measurement, e.g. the temperature of the air, the size of a room, the shape of an object (round, square and so on), hardness and softness, where they were without dispute, could be discussed. Also colours, and so on. Everything, that is, acknowledged to be in common sight. No thoughts. Not, ‘I think I will have a cup of tea’ but ‘I will have a cup of tea.’ ‘I will write a letter.’

  And the letter when it is written, say, to relatives in England, would (I’m told) go something like this:

  Margaret,

  Your letter arrived yesterday. You wrote of your journey to Bognor Regis, and that the weather there was fine with the temperature eighteen degrees Celsius. Here I look at the sea, I go walking on fine days, I work in the garden, where I have planted geraniums, chrysanthemums, spinach, a small olive tree a metre high, beans and daffodils which will be in bloom in early March.

  For lunch I have pot-au-feu which contains vitamins, protein, and vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, leeks. I drink wine with my meal. Also I eat camembert cheese, blue vein cheese, goat’s milk cheese and a cheese which contains walnuts both as a nut itself and in the flavour where the nut is not embedded.

  I write all this because, suddenly confronted by the retirement of people and their hopes for their retirement, and then hearing – I forget where, or maybe I imagined it – the story of the retired professor whose chief study had been Shakespeare and whose preoccupation in retirement became the stri
pping of his mind of the corruptions of language, and thinking also of the trouble with my eyes and of Doctor Alberto Rumor, and finding myself suddenly with a beautiful room and desk and typewriter lent to me by the retired Fosters, I developed a combination of hauntings which resulted in the ideas for my novel. And I began to write it, spending long hours at the new desk, sometimes visiting the Memorial Room, to work there in the damp atmosphere of a tomb where the small birds, however, always came to sing to me, uttering their secrets which I could not understand, and from time to time meeting the Watercresses, all four, in their pursuit of Rose Hurndell. Michael tracked down a woman who had seen Rose admiring a magnolia tree, whereupon Max, in a morning of family ‘stint’ commanded the family to ‘draw Rose Hurndell by the magnolia tree’. These family sessions were a life-blood life-paint or -prose to Max in his openly desperate attempt to keep his son by his side to neutralise, by making a chemical composition of mother, father, son, the potent effect of the mixture of the wife, Grace, with the son, Michael. Max sensed his attempt would result in failure once the four left Menton – he and Connie for New Zealand, and Michael and Grace for London – and you could see a despair in his eyes, and tears sometimes, when he realised the hopelessness of his dream.

  Regularly, the Watercresses claimed me, for a journey, for a visit, for a meal, to enlist my cooperation in their annihilation of me and their replacement of me by their son. I realised this. I was no longer afraid. The Fosters were more to be feared, I sensed: their mutual assurance of their complete happiness was beginning to show signs of collapse and they were looking around for a strengthening or repairing instrument. Until the Rose Hurndell letters had been edited and published (an American publisher had made a contract with Elizabeth) they could not give the promised stability. Unfortunately I, in the little house, was in direct view, a captive. And so they descended upon me. Where could I, Harry Gill, hide?

  I retreated into my novel, I became the retired professor, and if you want to find me, you must look there, and beneath the spectacles, the rather shabby clothing, the skin, grown more thin and soft, of a man of sixty-five, you will find Harry Gill, living his pure life, unadjectived, unadverbed, fully nouned and verbed, and numbered; and you will read of the consequences of his decision: ‘Quick now, here, now, always –’. In the next chapter.

  8

  In my first week in the small house I invited Dorset and Elizabeth Foster to dinner, asking them to come at half past five. They came. Dorset brought a bottle of vin léger and a tarnished bottle-opener with which he opened the bottle. He set it on the table. I had cooked pork chops with tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, apples and spices, simmering them in an aluminium saucepan on the front left-hand side electric plate to which was attached a thermostat in the form of a bouton that switched off the current when the temperature chosen by the cook was reached. I had bought a Bâtard loaf, and made croûtons buttered with garlic butter. There were three kinds of cheese – camembert, herb cheese, and blue-vein cheese – set on a wooden board on the table.

  Before the meal, we sat down for a drink. We ate green olives. Dorset and Elizabeth talked of the day, of the news in the newspaper, Nice-Matin, and of the little house. They asked me was the heater working. I said yes the heater was working. The heater was a radiator with thirteen panels, filled with oil which heated when the heater was plugged in to the electricity. The switch could be adjusted on a scale from one to ten, with a wattage from seven hundred and fifty to one thousand, a medium warmth. It was grey, with small grey rubber wheels making it portable as far as its flex of two metres would stretch without pulling the plug from the power point set five centimetres from the passageway into the hall upon a narrow yellow-painted skirting board.

  —Keep the heat switched on, Elizabeth said, as, noting that the temperature had risen, I bent to adjust the thermostatic control.

  Elizabeth’s voice was loud.

  I straightened and stood up in a second.

  —I will leave it switched on, I said. —At night I will turn it off.

  —Leave it switched on at night too.

  Dorset’s voice was several decibels louder than Elizabeth’s, although I had no instrument to measure it.

  I hunched my shoulders quickly.

  —Yes, I will leave it switched on, I said. —All day and all night. The sun comes up in the day, and the sun goes down at night. Day and night are distinct.

  Their eyes widened in a stare at me.

  —You have a clock? they asked.

  —Yes, I have a clock. And now, would you have more wine?

  They drank more wine.

  —It’s dark in here, Elizabeth said suddenly, again in a loud voice.

  I drew in my breath quickly.

  —Is it?

  —Switch on the light. You must have more light.

  I switched on the light. The connection at the switch needed repair and so the light did not switch on for five to ten seconds while I kept switching five times and on the sixth time the light appeared in the two bulbs which were set in candle-shaped holders on a wooden frame painted dark brown, with cylindrical shades painted dark green – the same colour as the house shutters – outside and white inside which had the effect of increasing the light. There were three such sets of lights in the room, making a total of six globes: the first two upon the white wall between the windows which faced the palm trees and the cypress trees, the second two on the wall above the right end of the dark-brown sofa, the third two on the wall near the window which faced on the mountains of Italy and the frontier of France.

  —There is more light now.

  —Yes, there is more light now.

  —You must always switch on the light as soon as the darkness comes.

  Dorset’s voice was very loud. He had drunk three glasses of wine. His face was pink, turning red. He had a moustache, greying. He was small, dressed in a grey suit. I knew that he had been a teacher mostly of children from eight years to twelve years. He sometimes used words which only children from eight years to twelve years use. He was familiar with children’s games, too. That evening he described a game of marbles while Elizabeth and I listened. But that was later, after we had eaten.

  We sat at the table. I served the meal. We ate it. Dorset smacked his lips. Elizabeth sighed when it was over. Then we sat on the sofa once again and continued to drink the large bottle of wine until it was empty and I put it on the kitchen table and returned with another bottle which I had kept in the cupboard by the bathroom where I kept other items of food and drink as the cupboards in the kitchen did not hold everything.

  When three hours had passed Dorset’s voice was very loud, Elizabeth’s too, and Elizabeth began to talk of Rose and of how she and Rose had both written poems while they were young and hers, Elizabeth’s, were longer with more words and had more titles.

  —She had a love affair with a garage mechanic. His mother took care of her son Eric, adopted him, so she had no legal claim.

  Dorset began to talk about the French and the English and the French revolution.

  Suddenly I said goodnight to them. They finished drinking their glass of wine, said goodnight to me, and went home. They were laughing as they went up the path to their house.

  When they had gone I sat alone in the room and looked at the light bulbs and the heater and the desk with its six drawers and the red curtains over the windows and the orange marigolds, five, in a small earthenware vase, which Elizabeth had brought in from the garden and put on my table. As the curtains were not yet drawn I could see the objects in the room reflected in the darkness of the windows. I could hear the palm trees rustling as a wind sprang up among them.

  Then I went down the stairs to the bedroom and after washing and cleaning my teeth and going to the lavatory I went to bed. Once in bed I closed my eyes to stop seeing what was outside, but I could not stop seeing it. I slept.

  9

  Each day the patterns of light in the room were different. If the sun did not shine
there were no light-patterns. When the sun shone, window-shapes patterned themselves on the rust-red rug of which there were two, of equal size, square, on the polished wooden floor. The light fell also on the table by the window, on the orange cotton tablecloth printed with white petalled flowers with green and red centres, each whole flower measuring nineteen centimetres in diameter. I looked at these patterns from time to time during the day to observe their changing positions and to note, when the sun had moved out of range of the room where I worked, the moment when the yellow light was withdrawn and there was no longer window-shaped yellow light lying on the carpet. Night came then. The sky was grey with crescents of darker grey. The mountains of Italy always reflected from their white rocks a white light, although in the daytime large dark shadows, unmoving, lay upon the slopes.

  From time to time the trains passed, the brakes squealing as the train prepared to enter the region of the station; trains from Nice to Ventimiglia or Vintimille as it is known in France, from Strasbourg through Mulhouse, with the words WELTEN SCHAFFT written on some of the carriages, and at night the Rome Express. Through the night the trains pounded more heavily on the rails and by their pounding one knew that they were long trains filled with people asleep in the first class Wagons-Lit, which are comfortable, or in the second class couchettes which had six in a compartment, three on one side, three on the other, each narrow, though I do not know the exact measurement. As the trains passed sometimes when I was visiting the Memorial Room, and the train after a long night’s journey had moved into morning on the Côte d’Azur and many passengers had already disembarked and others were sitting upright waiting for the end of the journey, I could see into the couchette compartment where the rugs and the pillows were strewn on the narrow beds, and the length of leather strap used to steady the passenger when the train swayed on its fast journey was dangling unused, and the narrow aluminium ladders by which one climbed up to the couchette (if one had the top couchette one’s body was very close to the ceiling of the coach) hung, also unused, on the hooks by the door and window. I could see that the train which began its journey away in the north with the Wagons-Lits and the couchettes made up with clean rugs and pillows and the litterbins empty and the toilets clean, had overnight been used and had come to the end of its use. The sunlight shone through one side window of the carriages and out the other, revealing the dust-beams travelling with the train and lighting up the emptiness of the compartments. The sun was always a morning sun, approaching a midday sun, and its beams were hot against the windows. You could see where some of the passengers, waking into morning, had pulled down the blinds to shield them from the light. In summer the trains would be hot and the windows would warm up quickly and the compartment seats would be burning.