Shell House (2 page)

       
I often indulge in sitting in my chair overlooking the garden which slopes down towards the ocean as if my house was positioned on the edge of the world.

       
I sometimes read a paper or a book but mostly I just sit. When you reach my age, you have much to think about and reflect on. There are many memories to rerun and alter to what I wished had happened or could have occurred.

Today I chose to stand outside at the bottom of the garden and watch the sea turn and heave, calming itself from its turbulent storm.

        I can still feel the tingle in my hands where I scraped the snow from the crumbling garden wall and gripped my hot cup of coffee to reheat them. I like the shock of the cold then the heat; it reminds me I’m still alive; that everything around me is real.

       
Now, here I sit by the warmth of the fire writing this bloody diary which so far is making me feel irritable. Laying forth the words onto paper as if I were expelling a swarm of bees with their bitter sweet personalities can only be a good thing. Perhaps I’m just tired. I have held onto them for far too long.

       
So here I am contemplating the end of my life and completing the last chapter by writing it all down before I die.

       
My life is almost over and I felt today, standing in the stillness of the snow, that the filming of a movie is about to end. And now I am older and less arrogant, or so I think, and able to reflect on my regrets and mistakes and take full responsibility.

       
I can hear you all saying as you read this that lots of people live past eighty these days, that I’m being ridiculous, but I know my time is close. I just know. My dreams are filled with finality and life brings me inopportune moments that lead me to organising my imminent departure.

       
I am often pondering on the feeling of life ceasing and the heavy, empty emotions it conjures up for me at this time. My life came to a halt when my wife, Emma died. My memory recall is always of times before then; everything else has a hazy, surreal occurrence.

       
As I sit now in my faithful armchair overlooking the garden that Emma and I planned and cultivated, the room lights up as if I am transported back in time.

       
It was autumn and there was a post-summer storm brewing. Emma was heavily pregnant with Jonathan, our first born, and we’d both clambered into the house chased by the heavy pitter patter of rain. She was soaked through; her thin dress clung to her, accentuating the shape of a life within a life. I never tired of watching her change, knowing she was protecting and growing the most precious thing we had ever and would ever create between us. It fascinated me.

       
We’d lit an oil lamp to take the edge off the gloom and hurried the kettle onto the stove to boil.

       
With the wind and rain still clinging to our red, cold skin, we busied ourselves with the small chores that would lead us to having an hour’s rest in front of the fire.

       
I chuckle to myself now as I remember Emma laying out her home made Eccles cakes on our best china. She couldn’t bake but insisted on doing it regardless and produced foods that begged the question of their title. I never humoured her; she wouldn’t have it.

       
She would almost tiptoe into the room, her face full of pride at the dark brown, hard offerings laid on the pretty china plates. She looked like she was serving royalty.

       
I’d light the small fire whilst she poured the tea and we’d talk easily and idly about our plans for our new home. The sitting room was the only fairly decent area in the house. We’d just bought it and even though it was structurally sound it needed quite a bit of cosmetic work and hard elbow grease. We made the sitting room nice and were working on our bedroom so that we had some sort of comfort in the draughty old place, especially with our first child on the way.

      
They were hard times for everyone, even though the war was long ended, but my Aunt had passed away and left me a substantial sum of money in her will. This had given us the lucky start we needed and enabled us to buy the home we’d spent so long staring at every time we went for a walk down by the sea.

       
With the money that was left we’d got a few pieces of second hand furniture and with the help of kind relatives donating old curtains and crockery we were able to keep some of the inheritance by for a rainy day.

       
In our little routine that we had created and slipped into there was time for Emma to sit on the rag rug, feet outstretched, ready to absorb the heat of the freshly lit fire as we sipped steaming strong tea out of the saucers of our tea cups. The Eccles cakes were politely avoided and I remember browning slices of stale bread in front of the fire with a toasting fork.

       
My stomach still insists on lurching at the memory. The light has gone out along with the fire and I’m back in the present day in the same room with its lifeless silence. I can still hold onto how much in love we’d been and how perfect it all was. It wouldn’t have been so painful had we not been so in love; even if I had the ability to change the horror of the birth, which was one of the memories that replayed in my mind exactly as it was in reality.

       
The film in my mind flips to the second time she was pregnant, two years later, having almost given up hope that we’d ever have anymore children. How different it had all seemed. We had still been happy but the pregnancy had been a strain for Emma. I’d watched her often during that time, how pained her face was, her expression changing to a smile when she caught anyone looking.

       
I’d seen and felt the cold draught from the black cloud then. Our little family and our perfect little life had been too good to be true. I’d tried desperately to will it not to be so but I knew the catastrophic events that were about to descend on us were set in stone.

      
It could have been prevented in a way, in my mind, had Emma made a different decision. But I’d been over this a million times. If I’d taken it from her hands, I doubt we’d have ever recovered from it. I know that now, but at the time my arrogance and youth told me it was so. That it didn’t matter as long as I had her.

CHAPTER TWO

  4/11/2010   Rebecca Banford

        The photographs came about by accident at first and then I began to collect them. It all started when I was out on one of my ‘exclusions’. They were basically accompanied excursions but we called them exclusions because we were ostracised from society. No one dared step out of line because privileges would be removed as punishment and none of us wanted to risk that, they were too precious in our stark, stiff routines in the home or secure unit as it was known.

       
I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned it but I’m Rebecca Banford. I started writing this diary when I was eighteen. It didn’t really work out as you probably gathered; I slipped off my perch so to speak. I’ll tell you about that in just a minute...

       
I am fifty four now. Yes, fifty four. That’s how long it’s taken for me to return to this diary.

       
Anyway, as I think I said before I’m not Rebecca Banford. I am Gabrielle Rochester. Yes, my mother married a Mr. Rochester, only there was no happy ending. I ruined it.

       
Back to the photographs. We were out on one of our exclusions from the nut house...I don’t know why I just said that because I actually loved my time at Hellesdown, the secure unit I was sent to when I was ten. Anyway, I digress. I was allowed to go into an antique store. I had a thing about them; loved the smell and the history. No one else in my camp liked them but it was the only shop I requested to visit.

       
I was fifteen at the time, I remember now. On this particular day I stumbled across an old photograph album. I was mesmerized by it. It was filled with black and white photographs of families on outings at weddings and births. What I couldn’t get my head around was how it had come to be in this shop. I felt sad about it. Then I wondered if it was there because their family had been ruined by someone. Someone like me.

       
Mr. Jim, who owned the shop, piped up and told me I could have it. I was elated. I felt like I’d been given something precious to nurture.

       
Let me tell you a little about Mr. Jim. When I first started going into his shop he was very suspicious. He kept glancing out of the window at the others in my group and our house officer, who were all waiting outside for me. I think he thought we were ‘special’ kids, you know? I don’t know what the correct term is in this day and age. Anyway, he was extremely aloof and watched me constantly as though I might steal something. I desperately didn’t want him to know who I was and where I’d come from but at the same time I didn’t want him to think I was retarded. That sounds like an awful thing to say but that’s the way you think at that age. I wanted him to like me. So, I began to talk to him, ask him questions. It was the most I’d talked to anyone in years. I felt I could though. He wasn’t someone who was forcing me to talk like everyone I’d ever known. He didn’t know who I was, what I’d done or where I’d come from and it felt good.

       
Eventually he warmed and his tone changed. Once he knew I wasn’t a ‘special’ kid he didn’t mind me coming in. Weird really when I look back. If only he’d known... He asked me once where we all came from and I lied and told him it was the boarding school ten miles away. I felt bad about that. Still do. He became a very dear friend.

       
Anyway, I called him Mr. Jim and he got used to it eventually. He’d introduced himself as Jim but I was conditioned to use Mr or Sir and knew I’d be in trouble if I was overheard referring to someone by their Christian name. We weren’t beaten or anything at Hellesdown but it was strict.

       
Mr. Jim reminded me of my father, only not so quiet. He was tall, very lean with a head full of white hair; almost angelic.

       
The day he gave me the photograph album was the best day of my life. I remember him laughing at how pleased I was. “It’s only a silly old album. Not worth anything to anyone except the family it came from.”

       
But it meant the world to me. I couldn’t wait to get back to my room to look at it properly. I would sit and stare at the pictures for hours. They weren’t still snapshots to me, they were moving pictures. I could see the wind blowing in people’s hair, shading their eyes from the sun or stamping their feet to keep warm in the snow. I imagined what they were thinking, what they were saying. I invented entire stories for their lives and visited them in my head as clear as if it was real. I had created another world full of families and life.

       
I can look back now and see the affinity I had with them. They no longer belonged anywhere. They were like me and it stopped me feeling so desperately alone. I called them the ‘lost people’.

       
After that, Mr. Jim let me have any photographs that came his way. He knew I didn’t have very much pocket money, if any, and he assured me that he wouldn’t be able to sell them anyway. I built up quite a collection in an old shoe box he gave me.

       
Then Mr. Jim suddenly died, shortly after I started writing this diary, when I was eighteen, and that was when I fell off my perch.

Harry Rochester 
November 7
th
2010

        I’m not sure how cathartic this experience is. It only seems to be revealing a rage that appears to have been hidden for many years. I don’t think I was even aware of it. Memories I don’t want to recall...

       
Maybe I ought to get down to the nitty gritty; throw myself into it and feel it all for what it is. Perhaps this IS the healing process. I feel as though I’m opening the door to a room and closing it quickly because I do not want to see what’s inside or enter it.

       
I am now getting my breath to carry on. I must do this before my time runs out. Not just for me but for my family. I want them to know how it was, why our lives changed, to offer some sort of explanation for the way we all are. I know there is nothing wrong with the way we are but I wonder that we might be different had certain events not occurred. And writing this down is like setting it in stone; I find this easier than talking. I was never good at explaining things audibly.

       
My daughter, Gabrielle killed two children. There. I’ve said it. I don’t know what to think about it and yet I’ve thought of it constantly. It still shocks me and never fails to cause me physical pain.

       
I don’t know her or where she is anymore. She was sent away when she was ten. I lost touch with her... I could make excuses but I’m not going to. It is what it is. I didn’t make the effort to keep in contact. I thought she was the devil’s child. I was ashamed. I was still grieving for Emma, her mother and it seemed disrespectful to her memory. These aren’t excuses they’re facts, my facts in any case.