Andrew O'Hagan - The Illuminations

‘The bus run? I am that,’ Dorothy said. ‘I certainly am. The bus is taking us all to Gretna Green first thing in the morning. Just for the day. You should come, Anne.’

‘No.’

‘You’ll miss yourself. A walk about and a nice fish supper. If we get the sun it’ll be lovely.’

‘Unless you get burnt to a crisp,’ the warden said. She liked to tease the residents as much as possible and stop them from getting down in the mouth. There are never enough jokes to go round.

‘Aye, well, don’t you worry. I’ll be shelling out for the good stuff,’ Dorothy said. ‘Ambre Solaire: that’s me.’

‘Oh, you’re that hard done-to,’ the warden said.

‘My family think I’m trapped in here,’ Dorothy said, offering a sudden new bend to the conversation. ‘They feel sorry for me. They do. But I love it in here. I’m going to Gretna. I have days out and I have breakfast every day with the ladies. I don’t mind telling you — it’s a great place, this. It would never occur to my family that it was the years living with them that made me feel trapped. And now I’m free, so I am.’

Anne opened her eyes. ‘More power to your elbow.’

‘More suncream to your elbow,’ the warden said.

The warden and Mrs Auld left Anne alone again and she closed her eyes to think about the speech. She wished she could write things down or look at the old contact sheets, just to help her remember. But that was against the rules of the Memory

Club. You weren’t allowed notes. The point was not to run past the window but to stop and admit things.

THE MEMORY CLUB

They met every Friday and sometimes more, if a doctor was coming in to see them. Anne said it was the nicest day of the week because she liked stories and the way the residents got into conversations about what they all did when they were young. She tried to speak up and some of the old agony about appearing in public had gone. That Friday, it was her turn to lead them off and the district nurse said it might be good to go back to when she was small. There were always biscuits in the lounge for the Memory Club and Anne lifted one and dunked it into her tea without ceremony. ‘A lot of the times when you do this the biscuit drops into the tea,’ she said.

‘I know,’ the nurse said. ‘It happens to the best of us, so it does.’

‘Well I’m just saying I don’t mind,’ Anne said. ‘You can fish it out with a spoon.’

‘Oh, Anne!’ said Mrs Auld. ‘That’s not memories!’

‘I never said it was.’

‘You did.’

‘I never. I’ve not started talking yet.’ The ladies sat in a circle of chairs with one old man, Alex, asleep in his. Alex used to be in charge of the Saltcoats Darts Club. The district nurse said he was a great singer in his day and had won trophies at national level.

‘For singing?’ Mrs Auld asked.

‘No. For darts. But the club is mainly known for the social side and they have some good singers.’

‘I’ve never heard him sing,’ Mrs Auld said. ‘I’ve heard him snore plenty, right enough.’

‘Okay,’ said the nurse, folding her hands in her lap. ‘Today it’s Mrs Quirk’s turn to talk about her early days. And it’s exciting actually because it involves foreign parts, I believe.’

‘Africa!’ Mrs Auld said.

‘It’s not,’ Anne said.

‘Yes!’

‘I never went to Africa,’ said Anne. She knew Mrs Auld wanted it to be her turn to lead off every week. She was a torn-faced woman, always moaning and then marrying another one.

‘Just let Anne speak, Dorothy.’

Anne’s problem was the Friday meeting always made her think of memory rather than remember. She thought sketchily or vividly of the artists she had loved and supposed that was kind of remembering, but it was what they said, actually, the material and the ideas, the fact that they took an interest in making things permanent, this was the kind of thing that flooded Anne’s mind on a Friday. The connections were personal and she couldn’t always express them. ‘There was a woman called Louise,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask me what else she was called. She made spiders.’

‘Is this one of your artists?’ the nurse asked.

‘That’s right,’ Anne said. ‘From France. Wonderful woman. And she made rooms and she built spiders.’

‘Art’s boring,’ said Dorothy.

‘Quiet now. Let Anne speak. Now, what do you remember about this person? Did you read about her maybe?’

‘I remember lines. She said the old …’

‘All right. That’s a start.’

‘The old thing …’

‘Take your time.’

‘Louise was her name. She said the oldest secrecy is being alone.’

‘They talk in riddles,’ Dorothy said.

‘We’re going to ignore that,’ the nurse said. ‘This is Anne’s week and she can say what she wants.’

Dorothy picked up a custard cream off the saucer and leaned back in her chair. ‘It’s up to her,’ she said. ‘I don’t know about artists. She’s educated, I suppose. That’s where all the trouble starts.’

‘Quiet, please.’

Maureen came into the lounge holding the hand of the lady from number 19. She sat the old lady down. ‘Shush,’ she said. ‘We’re being very quiet. We’re not here.’

‘But you are here,’ Anne said. She noticed Maureen was wearing her old wedding ring. She did that sometimes: Anne understood fine well and said to herself it was just Maureen’s way of cheering herself up. She claimed not to care about the father of her children — it was so long ago — but people who like drama also like props. Dorothy kept running her hands over the Yamaha organ beside her. Her fingerwork showed you she could play a tune if the machine was turned on.

‘Anne’s talking about an artist she likes.’

‘Lovely,’ said Maureen, picking some lint off her skirt. ‘Because she’s a dark horse, that Anne. Believe you me. She knows all about that kind of thing because she lived in New York.’

‘Don’t help her,’ the nurse said.

‘I know where I used to live,’ Anne said. ‘And you’re going to give us advice about how to stay warm and how we should never open the door unless the chain is on, aren’t you?’

‘No, I’m not, love. We’re doing memory today.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘You were talking about artistic people.’

Anne took a deep breath and then a sip of her tea. ‘My Luke is in the army,’ she said. ‘In the war. He used to be a private but now he’s more than that. He’s always been good at noticing. When he was six years old and his goldfish died I told him we could bury it and he said … he said he didn’t want it in the ground or down the toilet. He decided to put the goldfish in a bag and place it in the freezer.’

‘Aw. That’s nice,’ said Heather, a quiet Christian lady who always attended.

‘To keep it,’ Anne said.

‘Not much use,’ said Dorothy. ‘You can’t eat a goldfish. You know what you have to do with a goldfish? You have to flush it away and get another one before they even see it’s gone.’

Anne just looked at her. What a silly woman. And then she remembered what she was talking about.

‘Do you get letters from Luke?’ the nurse asked.

‘I’ve got one in the room,’ Anne said. ‘It came this week from a camping place. He’s not dead.’

‘Not at all,’ said Maureen. ‘Luke is doing very well and he’s liking it over there. Blue paper, he writes on. We read it together and then we wrote a reply, didn’t we, Anne?’

‘The woman was called Louise,’ Anne said. ‘She was French and her other name was like the Communists.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

‘Calm down, Dorothy.’

‘She knows her stuff,’ Maureen said.