The Memory Box (17 page)

It was only as I took it that I realised how, with his hair grown longer in the month we’d been there, and curly with all the sea water, he would look just like her from the distance I’d chosen, only his head and shoulders in shot.

THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF
the turtles were as good as I knew they would be and I had no trouble placing them. They immediately earned me other commissions and suddenly I was busy and enjoyed being busy. There was no more drooping round my flat, or lying on the sofa staring hopelessly at the shell (which now had another alongside it, almost identical, which I’d brought back from Bequia), and I had no time to think about moving. Nor did I have any time for Rory, who disappeared again from any life as he so often did. That was the pattern of our relationship – periods of closeness then spells when we didn’t even ring each other, and when sometimes Rory changed address and I didn’t have his telephone number.

But his mother rang me, just before Christmas. Ostensibly, she was ringing to ask if I had enjoyed my trip, but there was such suppressed excitement in her usually doleful voice that I suspected there must be some other reason for the call. There was. Hector had had a letter from the Prime Minister, saying he was ‘minded’ to confer a knighthood on him for his services to industry and in recognition of his work for disabled servicemen, if he was minded to accept. Hector was very minded indeed to accept and Isabella was ecstatic. She told me twice this news was absolutely confidential and I must tell nobody whatsoever, and was rather
hurt
when I carelessly wondered aloud who I knew who would be interested. She said she’d rung Rory at the last telephone number she’d been given but only got an answering machine and the voice on it hadn’t sounded like his. She wanted him to know about the honour his father was to receive and to say she hoped he would rise to the occasion and accompany them to the Palace when the time came.

I doubted if he would, though I didn’t say so, but what seemed remarkable to me was that Isabella was extending this invitation at all. I would have thought she and Hector would have wanted to keep their errant son a hundred miles from this investiture in case he disgraced them. But in any case I didn’t know where Rory was and I too only had the telephone number she had, so I couldn’t help. Isabella hadn’t finished with me, though. She and Hector were coming to London and they wanted me to dine with them at the Savoy, where they always stayed. It was to be a private celebration and they wanted me and Rory to join them and ‘show some family solidarity for once’. That was rich. There hadn’t been much solidarity from them. But when she then asked me too, in due course, to accompany them to the Palace, and I instantly refused, I felt so mean I accepted the invitation to dinner and promised to try to track down Rory. ‘You will dress nicely, Catherine, won’t you?’ Isabella said. ‘I know what you and Rory think about dressing smartly, but for Hector’s sake do him the honour, will you? No jeans and jumpers?’

It was a bloody cheek, giving someone of thirty-one instructions on how to dress, but I let her get away with it. In fact, I thought I would shock her by really dressing up, by arriving for our date in knock-out splendour, all glamour and glitter. The only problem was that I hadn’t the clothes. There was nothing whatsoever elegant or glamorous in my wardrobe. I needed Rory for my own ends now – he would
know
what I should buy and how I should look – but, like his mother, when I called his number I got only a voice that was not his. I would have to manage on my own. I can’t remember how I came to think of the necklace I’d found in the memory box but suddenly I did. I’d imagined I would never wear it, since it cried out for some sort of beautiful dress and all that went with it, but now I saw it could be my starting point. I got it out and looked at it closely. The stone was an emerald, so green was the obvious colour to go for. Susannah had once worn it with a green dress. There were two pictures of her wearing it in the albums, one on her wedding day, one at some function later on. On the wedding-day photograph, the green glittered above the neckline of the ivory satin gown and matched the trailing ivy in her bouquet; in the other, the green of the dress was a darker shade of emerald and the stone did not stand out so noticeably. Maybe I should go for white, or cream, or even pale grey …

I supposed at first it would have to be a dress and one with a generous neckline to show off the necklace. The whole point of such a piece of exquisite jewellery was to allow it to dominate, and to do that it had to sit on a bare throat with enough space for the pendant in which the emerald was set to lie just above the cleavage. Both Susannah’s dresses had had quite low and wide necklines which had perfectly offset the necklace. I had no such dress. I had never wanted such a dress. Every garment I possessed had either a high neck or a modest V-neck. The idea of going out to find and buy a dress which would flatter the necklace but in which I would feel acutely uncomfortable did not appeal. But I would have to shop for something, and so I went out full of gloom to do the looking. I hate shopping for clothes. I like to shop for things for my flat, for furnishings and furniture and household things, but not for clothes. Charlotte loved to shop. She could spend whole days trailing round
shops
looking for nothing in particular, even though no one would have guessed she had any interest in how she dressed (she had no taste at all and always looked ordinary). But I couldn’t and didn’t, I bought things in chain stores, in a hurry, and when I liked something I bought it in threes so that I wouldn’t need to bother again for a long time. This meant I was an innocent when it came to designer clothes. Rory, on the other hand, was an expert, bandying around the right names with nauseating familiarity. When he raved over some garment he’d purchased, at great expense, for the name, because he or she ‘cuts so beautifully’, I infuriated him by saying it looked straight out of Marks & Spencer’s to me.

I had no idea where to go. For two days I wandered round Harrods fingering dresses, thousands of them, millions of hideous
frocks
, and in the end had to leave empty-handed. The very department ‘evening gowns’ were in made me feel out of place – the thick carpet, the slightly perfumed air, the racks of bewilderingly similar clothes, the glassy-smiled assistants, the mirrors (in which I could see my slouching, scruffy self).

It brought back memories of shopping as a young teenager in Oxford with my mother – picture us, Charlotte in her pleated skirts and boxy jackets, so way out of fashion they were a fashion statement in themselves, and me in jeans and big, baggy sweatshirt, protesting that I had no need for a dress or, as she put it, ‘a pretty skirt and a little top’ for some wedding we had to go to. Charlotte would drag me towards a garment covered with sprigs of flowers – most of her own things were covered with sprigs or spots or whirls of some terrible pattern – and I would just glare, or turn on her my most practised look of incredulity. Forced to try something on, I would go into the changing-room and deliberately sabotage whatever I’d been given – I’d ruck it up round my middle and yell, ‘Too short,’ or jam the zip
and
say, ‘Too tight.’ And I did find myself smiling as I wandered round the shops, just at the memory of my mother’s face, all puzzled and concerned, and my own silly performance.

It’s a wonder the Harrods assistants didn’t think I was some sort of terrorist as I lurked there looking, I should imagine, impossibly sinister and scowling at the clothes I was fingering with ludicrous distaste. I knew I was making faces to register my disgust, a one-woman pantomime with no audience except for them. Leaving the department, I found myself laughing idiotically as I entered the lift, recalling my eleven-year-old self hissing at Charlotte that I wanted to be a bag lady when I grew up and wear the same old clothes all the time and not have to fuss about weddings.

I gave up on Knightsbridge and moved to Bond Street and tried to take an interest in boutiques, intimidating though they were. It was no good. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind, I didn’t have the right attitude. And then, passing one small shop near the top end of New Bond Street, I saw in the window a white trouser suit. It was very simple, almost severe, but the material looked soft. The pants were wide-legged and the jacket long, fastened with two buttons just on the bust, giving it a generous neckline. In my obsession with dresses like Susannah’s I’d overlooked this alternative and yet the town was full of such casual chic.

Oh, the joy of finding the right clothes! The moment I put those pants and jacket on I felt terrific and bought them in five minutes flat, not caring in the least that they cost what amounted to my entire clothes budget for the last two years. Thank God, I was sorted. But once home, and standing in front of my long mirror with the suit on and the necklace, I realised I wasn’t. Clothes, fine. Necklace with said clothes, excellent. But hair? Disaster. I hadn’t been to a hairdresser for ages. It was a mess. I’d simply chopped bits off when the fringe grew too long and tied the rest back with an
elastic
band. Not good enough. I have thick, strong hair – there’s nothing wrong with my hair and it’s always in good condition, glossy, and the colour is fine, a deep dark brown – but with the white suit and the necklace it looked all wrong. My hairstyle, or lack of style, insulted the outfit. I picked up the silver hand mirror and turning away from the sight of all of me in the long mirror I looked at myself close up. Make-up, that was another lack. I wore none. Fine, in jeans and T-shirt, but dressed up in the new clothes my features seemed to vanish. I felt so bad-tempered, resenting what I knew to be the truth, that having faced the ordeal of shopping for clothes I’d now have to find a hairdresser and seek advice about bloody make-up. All this to please my aunt and uncle, whom I didn’t even like – what had I started?

More than I’d been prepared for. I knew, when I set off to the Savoy, that the necklace had somehow taken me over and changed me, the necklace and all that had had to go with it. I didn’t feel myself. I was a stranger, hailing a taxi, and I saw in the cab driver’s eyes the kind of recognition I normally never received. I was suddenly a sophisticated woman who would be treated as such. I moved differently. My new garments didn’t feel awkward or uncomfortable but instead like a marvellous disguise hiding my imperfections, giving me supreme confidence in my own attractiveness. It was quite thrilling and I was almost in awe of this creature I’d made myself into. The necklace felt heavy and cold round my neck. I was acutely conscious of its weight, though it hadn’t felt heavy in my hands. The pendant, with its emerald glowing, seemed to cling to my flesh and I couldn’t help fingering it constantly, lifting it up and being surprised when I let it fall back and felt it on my skin. I wondered how long fingerprints last. Would Susannah’s still be on the pendant if she, too, had fiddled with it as I was doing?

My hair was in an elaborate French pleat, pulled right back from my face, the fringe gone, my forehead visible for the first time in my life. I’d always had a long, thick fringe to hide behind and now I felt exposed. Make-up (only eye make-up) had made my face look strange to me. My eyes beneath my newly revealed forehead, odd in itself, were bigger and my nose appeared smaller. I felt my old face had melted and had hardly been able to look in the mirror before I left without wanting to go back to the self I could recognise. It occurred to me I did not have to go back to that self at all if I did not want to. I could look like this every day. Many women did, and do. They take time and trouble and of course spend money and they look beautiful and the world treats them differently. Susannah had looked like this. When I was first making a business of sticking to jeans, etc., just before my grandmother died she had said with sadness – and it was that sadness which hurt, not her words – ‘Your mother always dressed nicely, always. From a wee thing she loved clothes, she had the knack – and you won’t even try. Just look at yourself!’ I knew it had been commented on, when my father married Charlotte, that he had certainly gone for a different style of woman from his first wife. Charlotte never looked elegant in spite of her efforts. She looked cosy. She looked how I, as a child, liked her to look.

But as my taxi battled its way down the Strand I reflected that the raw material was never there for Charlotte, whereas it was for me. She could never have looked like Susannah, however well dressed. She was short and dumpy and her cheerful face round and bland. But I, although not like Susannah, had a better chance of appearing elegant if I wished, as I had wished for that evening, than Charlotte ever had. I had height, I was slim, I had strong features (good cheekbones and a straight nose). I was worth dressing, as I had just proved. But what kind of woman had Susannah been that she had been famous for looking groomed even
in
a dressing-gown? We would have had such fights over how I chose to look, I was sure, whereas Charlotte and I never did, or only rarely, on those occasions she felt bound to register some mild protest at my more slovenly gear. Susannah might have wanted to turn me, her daughter, out in her own image, as a woman who could wear, with ease, the necklace she’d left. And yet she’d proved something by forcing this jewellery on to me. I was capable, after all, of relishing my own appearance.

My aunt and uncle were astounded. They were sitting at a table by the window overlooking the river when I arrived and I had a long walk over to them. I saw them look towards me with that blank stare given to arresting strangers and then had the gratification of seeing them literally start and confer with each other – was
this
Catherine? Hector stumbled to his feet and embraced me rather more convincingly than usual, and Isabella kissed me on the cheek instead of pecking at the air to the right of it. Hector boomed that I looked splendid and called for champagne (though to toast his own success rather than any beauty of mine). The moment I was seated, I saw Isabella’s eyes were fixed on the necklace. I touched it, provocatively, while I studied the menu.