Observatory Mansions (12 page)

Twenty remembered – 1
.

The woman we called Twenty had been washed, her face, body, hair were clean. They had put her in one of Claire Higg’s dresses; she looked quite different, I was told. She had remembered and laughed some more too.

Twenty remembered the number twenty. It was the number that had pulled her up to live on the top floor of Observatory Mansions. Twenty, the two and the zero, placed together in that order, held an irresistible attraction for her. She remembered that during the days when she lived in a foreign land, in fact her homeland, she lived in a block of flats and the number on her door had been the same. Twenty.

Claire Higg remembered – 1
.

The original object of the Time of Memories was to allow Twenty to find herself, to remember as much of herself as she could. But it is only human nature that once one person has started to reminisce, another will immediately feel an irresistible urge to do the same. And so it was that Claire Higg remembered her wooing days, years of them there were, when she set her heart on a man named Alec Magnitt. Not a beautiful man. He grew no moustache, he had no magic smile. But he was loved by Claire Higg. He lived in flat nineteen and she would follow him on his way back from work. Magnitt was an accountant, she remembered, he was never
without a calculator. She remembered all this while sitting with Anna Tap, Twenty and Peter Bugg.

Higg was wearing black. She had walked around her room looking at all the photographs of the deceased moustache man while Twenty was busy remembering, and as she looked around her room she noticed a square of magnolia wall less dirty than the rest. There, on that spot, once lived the photograph of Alec Magnitt, she remembered, aloud. Where had it gone to? I loved Alec, she remembered, aloud, to her three visitors. And Alec loved me too, she entreated. Though she did not actually remember him saying it. Indeed, he never did. He wrote it once though, on the back of a passport photograph, he wrote –
Claire, Claire, I love you so
. He had, she insisted, he had written those words so close to Claire-Claire’s fat covered heart. He had even signed it, she recalled. Proof, she said. Proof of her memories. But where had that proof gone? Yes, where is that passport photograph? It was there, she told her three visitors, pointing at the wall. And she made them all, each in turn, inspect that sacred piece of wall where once there was proof that Claire Higg had indeed been loved. They believed her, they wanted no proof. But
she
did, oh yes, Claire did. Proof, where are you? Where are you, dear photograph of darling Alec? It was the only photograph she had of him. Then she started panicking, she screamed. Anna Tap gave her a cigarette but it didn’t seem to help. What was wrong? they asked.

I can’t remember his face any more!

She closed her eyes and all she could see on the magnolia walls of her memory was the face of a man with bronzed flesh and a moustache who smiled a perfect smile at her.

Alec? she had called, though never to his face, that sickly face she was trying so hard to remember. There was a kind of proof of that face’s existence on her magnolia-coloured wall. There was even a kind of proof in her head, though she
couldn’t entirely trust in it. Each time she thought of her past it turned sensational, the off-white dingy rooms of her youth turned into vast golden beaches. She could not trust her brain, so much that it recalled, and she was realizing, remembering, thinking this now, had never actually belonged to her.

She
needed proof, not to show those three visitors but to show herself. Where had that passport photograph gone?

Twenty remembered – 2
.

After Claire Higg had calmed a little, Anna Tap again tried to encourage Twenty to speak. And Twenty, with time and patience, laughed her sweet laugh again and remembered aloud a little something more. She remembered walking the Great Dane across a great expanse of rocky ground. There were trees, too, and there was blood on her head. She presumed, not remembered, that she had cut her head. And then Anna Tap looked at Twenty’s head and said that there was a scar there. So that then they all celebrated Twenty’s presumption about cutting her head because now it was certainly a remembrance too.

And wasn’t that progress?

Claire Higg remembered – 2
.

And after Twenty had remembered that little bit more there was a slight pause. And into that pause jumped Claire Higg, taking full advantage of that most little of silences to fill it with herself. She remembered a time when she lived and worked in the capital city of our country. She worked in a large department store, the largest, she remembered, that there was. She was proud of the place, she had worked there for twenty-three years, and in those twenty-three years she had seen the ever-increasing rise in the popularity and shares of the department store. She worked in the hosiery department.
She sold stockings, garters, tights. She remembered that when she began working in hosiery there had been little range in the products she had to sell. She sold mostly stockings, nylon, wool, silk. Her customers then, she recalled, were mainly women of her own age, buying, as she saw it, sensible garments. Then tastes changed and she had to begin selling other items. She thought these were ugly looking objects, particularly the ones in red satin. Her customers changed too, she recalled. They suddenly seemed less sensible, more frivolous; not necessarily younger, but with fuller bosoms and thicker make-up. It occurred to her in time that she was aiding the sexual adventures of the people of our capital city. This made her sad. It particularly upset her when men came to buy these, as she saw them, ludicrous objects with their buckles, straps and clips. Claire Higg felt more and more degraded as the objects she was forced to sell became more and more erotic, for there was little of the erotic about Claire Higg. In time the shop owners felt that, in fact, Claire Higg was putting off potential customers in hosiery; her shy, rather desperate, looks, her skinny, unconfident body did not increase sales. They let her go, giving her a cheque. And with that money, combined with a portion of her savings, Claire Higg bought herself a home away from the capital city, a place she had found increasingly bewildering, and moved to a smaller, hopefully kinder, city where she prayed, she remembered, she might be more at ease. She bought flat number sixteen in an old building recently converted into flats, called Observatory Mansions.

Twenty remembered – 3
.

Claire Higg was very sad after revealing this memory, and the atmosphere up in flat sixteen became tired and melancholy until Twenty, who had not had Miss Higg’s story translated for her, suddenly laughed (at which Miss Higg looked deeply
offended) and remembered aloud that after she had cut her head she was unable to remember anything. She remembered she had nothing in her pockets to tell her who she was and only a Great Dane, who wore a dog collar with the name tag that said MAX, to reveal even the barest hint of how her life had been before her head was cut.

The Porter remembered
.

And elsewhere in Observatory Mansions, the Porter remembered – while considering the new Twenty, whom he had seen earlier that day, now clean and washed – that he had once attempted to remove Twenty, in her unwashed state, from flat number twenty. And he remembered that she bit him. The wound, he remembered, he cleaned and now, due to his hygienic efforts, there was no souvenir of where Twenty’s teeth had been on his speckled skin. Seeing, in his remembrances, the old, dirty Twenty enter Observatory Mansions, set off other remembrances of other residents. These other residents, the ones he liked to remember, had all gone now. They had, he remembered, a certain tidiness about them, a certain class. And this made him remember, with sadness, the time when Observatory Mansions had been full, when all twenty-four flats had been occupied. It was a time when Observatory Mansions was seen as a desirable residence, and that time was only shortly after he had changed his name to Porter. He remembered this with nostalgia, for then the carpets were a perfect dust-free blue, the papered walls were a perfect stain-free blue and white. The Porter remembered, feeling his large bunch of keys, a time when those keys could open doors to so many different people’s lives. He was a happy porter then. But he had only vague recollections of how a state of happiness felt.

Mother remembered
.

Mother, positioned horizontally on her bed, remembered a time when she was perpendicular. She remembered the same time that the Porter had remembered, the time when Observatory Mansions had been seen as a desirable residence. But her memories of that time did not include dust-free blue carpets or stain-free blue and white striped wallpaper. Those she had neglected to remember. She remembered a time when flat eight was occupied by a slim bachelor. She remembered the slim bachelor’s double bed that was large enough to hold a bachelor and a woman, be she spinster or widow. She remembered she used to call herself a widow, though even then she remembered that her husband was still alive. Here my mother’s remembrances were stopped, momentarily, by the entrance of Father into her memory cinema. And when his face came on to her screen it was as if THE END were written up there, for Father’s face stopped her memories, dried them up. When she saw Father’s face, she counted to ten, or twenty, or fifty, sometimes a thousand – but usually, she remembered, the numbers blocked him out. She always stopped her memory showings each time Father arrived as a character in them. She did not want to remember Father as part of those times when she had been perpendicular. And horizontal. And then she remembered that bachelor’s bed in flat eight again. She had remembered lying naked there and the bachelor lying naked beside her. She had got so excited by her remembrances that she stretched her hand out to touch the bachelor between his legs but he was not there. Ah, yes, she remembered, miserably, he’s gone, hasn’t he? Left flat eight, left Observatory Mansions, left Alice Orme. But she remembered to call him
bastard
before he left.

Mother remembered through objects, as I have already indicated, and this particular memory was brought to her by a pair of men’s Y-fronts that sat, unoccupied, on one of the
chairs in Mother’s bedroom. In days long since spent, she slipped them off. He slipped them on and his suit trousers over them and, shortly afterwards, he was completely dressed, and then he was going, with all his Y-fronts (save one pair), away. But she remembered to call him
bastard
, for the second time, before she started crying, though she had only really said it once. Repetition. Mother had probably said
bastard
to the bachelor and started crying twelve or thirteen times already that day. The memories in her head went around like a Ferris wheel, she often stopped the wheel when it got to Y-fronts. Mother kept catching herself in a memory circle that began with Y-fronts and ended in
bastard
.

Father remembered
.

But Father remembered nothing, Father sat in his red leather armchair, still as the numbers on a clock face, watching but never moving, with the hour and minute and second hands running around him (in an anticlockwise direction). If he remembered anything, which I do not think he did, he remembered not to remember.

Anna Tap remembered – 1
.

Claire Higg up in her flat sixteen with her guests, who were now silent and feeling more than a little awkward, was still vaguely thinking of her old job in the hosiery department, and asked Anna Tap how she had been employed. So it was that Anna Tap remembered her work, which had been in the city museum textile conservation department, third floor. She remembered the door to her office. The other side of that door were workbenches, microscopes, magnifying glasses on stands, dyes, waxes, cotton, organic solvents, resins, entomological pins, curved surgical needles, filaments of silk and polyester, and many other objects besides, all connected to
her work. And what was that work? Anna Tap was employed in the city museum, until her dismissal, as a textile conservator. She cleaned and consolidated dresses, tapestries, chair covers, kimonos, bedspreads, sheets, embroideries, suits, ties, handkerchiefs, lace veils, flags, puppets’ outfits, shirts, blouses, socks, gabardines, doublets, tights, pantaloons, bishops’ mitres, trousers, skirts, hats, gloves and many other objects besides. She worked on horsehair, on human hair, on furs, on feathers, on lace, on wool, on cotton, on nylon, on velvet, on felt, on silk, on hessian and many other fabrics besides. She remembered what it was like to touch those different materials, she cleaned them, she conserved them so that they would be remembered for years to come. Though she remembered that as she stooped over her objects that the objects’ wearers or owners had died years ago, sometimes centuries ago. The objects had outlived the owners. The objects had won every time. And she painstakingly ensured that they would go on winning for generations to come. She even, she remembered thinking, helped the objects’ victories to be complete. Part of her work as textile conservator was cleaning the objects. And as she cleaned them she removed all the various pieces of autobiography that were left on them. She took out all the marks and stains, all that remained of the objects’ owners. She removed sweat, lipstick, food, mud, wine, blood, semen and many other memories besides. She removed all the secrets from these objects until all that was left was the object itself, clean, uncreased – the creases too, those folds that showed where humans had been, were lost. She was a virtual washing machine of history.

But these objects, rather than being grateful to the woman that had so generously preserved them and aided them in their victory over man, took revenge on her. Her eyes, they believed, had seen too much, had read all their little secrets before removing them.