The Memory Box (28 page)

‘Heavens, no. I was older. I read law at Durham, a few years before. No, I met her on a boat, up beyond Ullapool. Do you know it, north-west coast of Scotland? A friend’s boat, twelve of us invited. I knew him from school, he was
at
St Bees too, and Susannah met him through another friend. It was a class II ocean yacht, the boat –’

I tried to interrupt, ‘Which friend – ?’ but he was off for the next five minutes describing every detail of the boat his friend had had. There was no stopping him, and I had to wait as patiently as I could, longing now for his sister to shut him up, but she seemed to enjoy all the irrelevant (to me) detail. I thought how very relaxed he looked, sitting as my father used to like to sit, sideways on to the table, his right leg crossed over his left and his hands clasped behind his head. He was wearing beautifully polished brown brogue shoes and a tweed jacket and fawn-coloured cords – every inch the small-town solicitor I’d by now deduced he’d been. It was somehow disconcerting to see him so very undisturbed by my surely fairly dramatic visit – he was almost too benign, too untroubled. I wasn’t, after all, uncovering the tale of smouldering passion I half wanted, but something more banal, and he was part of the banality.

‘There were eight of us men and four girls and your mother was one of them. I’d been at school with George Senhouse and so had two of the others, but the rest were all students he’d met at Edinburgh. His father owned the boat … now what was her name –’

‘John, the name doesn’t matter,’ snapped Mary; ‘she doesn’t care about it.’

‘ –
Carita
! Yes, she was called
Carita
. Lovely old boat. A bit heavy, but dependable. We sailed her right round the Scottish islands and up to the top of the mainland coast. And afterwards I asked Susannah if she’d like to come and stay and she accepted. I was jolly flattered, I can tell you.’

‘I can’t think why,’ Mary muttered. ‘Nothing to be flattered about.’

‘I don’t think her family knew,’ I said. ‘Her sister, my Aunt Isabella, says she didn’t know about a trip –’

‘Oh, her mother knew,’ Mary said. ‘It was all very proper. Mother wrote to her mother and had a nice note back. People had manners in those days, believe me.’

‘How long did you say she stayed?’

‘A week,’ John said at the same time as Mary said, ‘Ten days. Came on the Friday, left a week on the Monday.’

‘What did you do together?’ I asked John, wanting Mary to stop interrupting now, but he turned to her and said, ‘What did we do, Mary?’

‘Played tennis a lot,’ said Mary. ‘We had a grass court in those days. But she got tired easily, it was odd.’

‘We went for walks,’ John said, ‘in the park, along the river. And I borrowed Father’s car and took her out to Wetheral, and that sort of thing.’

‘I think she was bored,’ Mary said. ‘I used to think she looked bored when she came in.’

‘She was not bored in the least,’ John said, indignant, his perpetual smile fading for once. ‘We got on so well, we never stopped talking – we had lots in common. I missed her like anything when she left.’

‘You moped,’ Mary said.

‘I wrote to her and she wrote back, sweet letters. She said staying here was the nicest holiday she’d ever had.’

‘Nicest!’ said Mary.

‘Yes, nicest. I wonder if I kept those letters …’

‘If you did, you’ll have lost them. You lose everything.’

‘I invited her to come again, in the next long vac, but the next thing I knew I had a postcard from somewhere abroad, I forget where. She’d gone off with young Senhouse again, in another party. I wasn’t asked to join it, I’m afraid.’

I wanted to pick up on this Senhouse character, but now Mary was in full spate. And perhaps he meant nothing.

‘He was jealous.’ Mary said, ‘George Senhouse was always jealous of you, right through school.’

‘I never heard from her after that.’

‘Yes, you did,’ Mary said. ‘You got a Christmas card and you were so upset you tore it up.’

‘Did I?’ said John, and I wasn’t sure whether or not he was pretending he couldn’t remember. If he was, he was quickly reminded, because his sharp sister could remember every detail.

‘You flung the torn card down and stamped out of the room in a paddy, and Mother and I put it together, so we would know what had upset you so much, and it said she wished you a happy Christmas and that she was going to have a very happy Christmas herself, because she had just got engaged to be married to a man who was from your part of the world, from Whitehaven, an architect like her, or hoping to qualify as one, and they’d marry when they had both finished their degrees. And she said she hoped to see you again one day. Mother and I reckoned that was what had made you specially furious. Well, you got over it. Silly boy, getting so upset.’

Mary said ‘silly boy’ not at all contemptuously, which was how she seemed to say most things to her brother, but affectionately. It was obvious that she cared deeply for him and probably hadn’t disliked Susannah at all, but only what her defection had done to John.

‘My heart was broken,’ John said.

‘Rubbish. You hardly knew the girl. Three weeks on a boat, ten days here, a couple of letters and a postcard – how could your heart be broken? You don’t know how silly you sound.’

‘I know what I felt,’ John said. ‘You can’t know how I felt.’

‘Maybe. But I know you got over it and had another crush soon after – that red-haired girl, Beatrice –’

‘Oh,
Beatrice
. That was nothing. She –’

‘So “nothing” you got engaged to her. Correct me if I’m wrong, do.’

I couldn’t hold back any longer. When John looked as if he would indeed correct her I blurted out, ‘George Senhouse, was he Susannah’s boyfriend too?’

‘He was a
friend
,’ John said. ‘Must have been, to ask her to sail with him, don’t you think?’

‘But was he …?’ and I suddenly stopped, feeling awkward in front of this pair, too embarrassed to ask if a man I’d never heard of until now was my dead mother’s lover. ‘Was he more than that?’ I said, lamely.

‘Haven’t the foggiest,’ said John, rather stiffly.

That was it. I could see I wasn’t going to get anything more about Susannah or Senhouse out of either of them. This would be one of the addresses Susannah would have thought I would never arrive at. I’d been there nearly forty-five minutes and there was no point in lingering, but when I thanked them for talking to me, and for the tea, and got up to leave, John said he’d walk to the road with me and post that letter. I thought how strange it was that neither he nor Mary had asked me about myself – they were obviously of the same breed as Isabella, believing the asking of direct questions to be impertinent – but as I walked along with John I couldn’t resist asking some myself. I wanted to know if he had ever been married – no, never. And neither had Mary. The other two brothers had married and had families, but they had stayed together in their family home and been ‘quite happy’. I couldn’t help speculating in my head as to what ‘quite happy’ meant. Happy, but missing something? Happy, and not feeling the lack of anything? John wasn’t the man to discuss such things with. He must have bored Susannah to death: Mary had been right.

The rain had stopped and a weak, watery sun was struggling to force its way through the greyness as we strolled slowly down Ashburner Grove to the road. John said he was turning left, to the postbox, and I was turning right, to
go
back into town. We stood for a minute on the corner. John shook my hand and said it had been interesting meeting me and I thanked him again for listening to me. Still he stood there, clearly wanting to say something but apparently unable to find the words he wanted. ‘She went back to Edinburgh by train,’ he said, at last. ‘We walked the way you’re going to walk. She didn’t want me to call for a taxi and Father was out in the car.’ I nodded, saying nothing, though badly wanting to say ‘So?’ His smile had gone and he was frowning hard and suddenly looked much older than he had done before. ‘She died giving birth to you, you said?’

‘No,’ I corrected him, ‘she died when I was six months old, of heart disease. She’d had something wrong with her for a long time.’

‘That’s sad’, he said, ‘for you never to have known your mother, very, very sad.’ I almost wished Mary was there to tell him again not to be so silly. But he still hadn’t finished. At last, a small hint of curiosity was betrayed. ‘Your father,’ he said, ‘did she meet him on that long trip abroad, the one she went on with Senhouse? Was he one of the party then?’

‘No, I don’t think so. She didn’t meet him until afterwards. My father said they met in a lecture. They’d been going to the same lectures all year but he’d never seen her before. That was his story, anyway.’

‘Ah.’ He coughed, and fidgeted a bit. ‘I think Senhouse was smitten with her, I think he had designs on her. He might have been her – er – boyfriend. There’s no knowing now, is there? He was always boasting about that trip, you know. Every time I met him afterwards he’d go on about it. It took them three months. Sailed off somewhere right across the Atlantic, then sold the boat and flew back. I wish I had that postcard, I wish I could remember where they went.’

‘What was Senhouse like?’

‘Oh, sporty. He wasn’t clever. He was rich, though, very. Good-looking, I suppose.’

I kept my voice casual: ‘Do you know where he lives?’

‘Good heavens, no. Lost touch centuries ago …’

Eventually, he shook hands with me yet again and we parted. I walked away, thinking of this George Senhouse character, rich and sporty, good-looking, smitten with Susannah, enticing her away on an exciting trip to the other side of the world, and then losing her all the same to my father. But why hadn’t she told her mother and sister about this thrilling voyage? How could she have just vanished for three whole months? Some kind of deception must have gone on to account for her absence, but why deceive her mother, to whom she was devoted? I decided, as I walked on, that the answer to that was that she wanted to shield her mother from worrying. As I’d shielded Charlotte from knowing about my abortion, she’d shielded her mother from worrying not just about the dangers of the sailing but about her fragile health. And maybe she did have a fling with George Senhouse. She’d have wanted to shield my morally rigid grandmother from that.

I was halfway along Tarraby Lane when I realised I’d left behind my car keys. I remembered that I’d taken them out of the pocket of my trousers when I sat down at the Grahams’ kitchen table – they were tight-fitting trousers and the keys made an uncomfortable bump. Stupidly, I’d put them not on the table in front of me but on top of my camera case on the floor and they must have slipped off, or the dog knocked them off. It was embarrassing to have to go back, but obviously I did have to. I ran. I wanted to collect the keys before John got back from posting his letter. I was panting as I turned in at the gate of Glebe House, hoping Mary herself hadn’t gone out, but as I ran up the path she was standing at the front door, dangling
the
keys. ‘Silly girl,’ she said. I gasped my thanks and reached for the keys, but she held on to them. I thought maybe I hadn’t apologised enough and began to say sorry for disturbing her again, but she stared at me and said, ‘George Senhouse?’

I didn’t understand. ‘Yes?’ I said.

‘He came here looking for your mother once. Didn’t like to remind John. Actually had the cheek to come asking if John knew her address. Said he had something he wanted to give her. Of course, John had had the heave-ho and didn’t know her whereabouts.
He
had always thought Senhouse had stolen her from
him
. Daft, both of them. Well, take your keys. Just thought I’d tell you, don’t know why.’ And she handed over the keys and turned to go back into the house.

‘Miss Graham!’ I called, and she stopped.

‘Miss Graham, is George Senhouse dead?’

‘Dead? Good heavens, no. But he is in a nursing home, I believe, somewhere outside London. Not a well man, but not dead. His sister still lives in Whitehaven, no, in Maryport. I shouldn’t go bothering her, though, she’s a bit of a tartar. It’s going to rain again. You should get back to your car.’

I felt that strange excitement again, that weird sense of elation, as though I was going to discover something crucial to my understanding of Susannah, and I tried hard to caution myself to be sensible and to remember the many disappointments already. But I knew, as I walked rapidly back towards the city centre, that of course I had to try to track down George Senhouse. Maryport was not far away, nearer than Whitehaven, but I didn’t necessarily need to go there at all. I could get the number from directory enquiries, and telephone.

Almost back in the city, I stopped and leaned on the stone bridge and watched the water. The traffic on the road behind
me
was so heavy and noisy it wasn’t exactly the place to stand and stare, but I wanted to pause and calm myself down, and I liked the river. Luckily, I saw a man taking his dog down some hidden steps and I followed him and walked a little way along the bank in the opposite direction to him. It was too wet to sit on the grass, but I came to a big log and perched there for a moment, just leaning against it. Susannah had been a mere visitor in Glebe House. There had been nothing of her there permeating the atmosphere. She’d been in and out of it all those years ago and left nothing of herself in it, only a lingering wisp of memory in the minds of two elderly people.

I took the address book out of my bag and fingered it. Such a little item, full of half-promises. I ran my finger down the torn alphabet and stopped at M. An hotel in Manchester, another in Malvern. And an address, of course, in Maryport. How simple puzzles are if you know the solution first. I tore the page out and put it carefully in my wallet. I wouldn’t try fitting the name Senhouse to this address and getting a phone number until I was home. Meanwhile, I had something to do. I looked around and found some small stones, and tearing a piece off the street map I made a parcel out of it all, tying it securely with an elastic band I’d used to pull back my hair. Then I threw the package into the river, where it sank immediately and was pulled away underneath by the force of the current. I felt relieved – more than relieved, pleased. Except for this last discovery, the address book had been perhaps the most frustrating of the things in the memory box. If I had been completely mad, instead of only half crazy, I might have set myself to trail round checking every wretched address in it and that would have got me nowhere: it wouldn’t even, on its own, have led me to George Senhouse. The suggestion of mystery about it – that lack of names – had been a cruel trick. I felt, by throwing it away, I was calling
Susannah
’s bluff, saying: Here’s your poxy book, keep it. It was childish, petulant, but saying this to myself helped me to feel better.