The Memory Box by Margaret Forster Read Free Book Online Page B

seem always to have within me – rage about things not worth the rage. People said I would learn to control it, or at least direct it, but I never really have. It is me, and I’ve stopped being ashamed of it. I’ve stopped wondering where it came from, too, although it used to worry me terribly in case this was Susannah coming out in me. Nobody had ever told me she had a fiery temper, or that she was capable of the kind of rages which regularly overcame me, but, when I felt the need to blame somebody for the state I was in, it was convenient to blame her. I did that a lot, secretly. And once, when I screamed at my poor grandmother that I couldn’t help being bad , it wasn’t my fault, I was made that way, I saw the strangest look come over her face. It scared me, and I hurled myself into her arms, and sobbed and said I was sorry for yelling. She just stroked my hair and held me and was silent.
    Tony was the only person who succeeded in helping me to be calm when I was angry or upset. He was calm himself, this man I used to love not so very long ago, not so many weeks before the memory box came into my life to disturb me. Tony lived with me for over a year, the year that ended with Charlotte’s death. He helped me through my father’s death and then through Charlotte’s illness. He helped me stay sane, by loving me and tolerating my rage and understanding the misery that was fuelling it. It was Tony who taught me tricks other people had tried to teach me and which I had rejected. I had always been so insulted to be told to take deep breaths, or to close my eyes and count to ten when I was furious about something and letting rip. Tony didn’t come out with rubbish about deep breaths and counting, but he did introduce me to yoga and practised it himself with me. I jeered, I sneered, but grudgingly I let him teach me and, though it didn’t stop me exploding from time to time, it did make me calmer in general. So did his ideas for making my bedroom a soothing place into which I could retreat. Tony put new lighting in and together we chose a carpet to cover the plain boards: the room became a softer place, less stark, less bare. We painted the white walls a pale apricot and left them bare except for the wall opposite the bed. This was to hold what he solemnly referred to as my ‘calming picture’. I humoured him and after great deliberation chose a print I’d always loved.
    It’s a Cartier-Bresson photograph, ‘En Brie’, taken in 1968, a classic in black and white. It’s the one showing a road leading between fields of what might be lavender, a road broad in the foreground and narrowing to pass through a long avenue of trees, the sort of road so common in the French countryside. The line of trees curves to the left, fading into the horizon. Half the picture is sky. No clouds, just smooth, grey sky. No people or buildings. Many a night, in the half gloom of my bedroom I’ve stared at that photograph and followed the clear yet mysterious road. Usually, it helped me travel to sleep but that night it had the opposite effect. I felt suddenly alert. I began to turn over in my mind what I would leave in a memory box. Would I put this photograph in it? And if I did, what would I intend it to convey, and what might it signify to the person to whom I bequeathed it? I saw how it would help to think about this. The only way to make sense of Susannah’s legacy might be to put myself in the position of leaving a similar one myself. Instantly, I realised the dangers. Presented with a print of this Cartier-Bresson photograph, what might a recipient think? Surely, they would home in on the place . They would decide that wherever this road was, I had walked or driven along it and that it was somehow of great significance to me. They would feel bound to find it and then wait for enlightenment to dawn. But it wouldn’t. The place, the road itself, was of no importance and going there would have told them nothing about me. I had