The Memory Game

told me that he didn’t want me to move or to do anything. All he wanted to know was, could I see the path? Of course I could. There were thick bushes by the side, and it occasionally disappeared from view as it snaked its way up the slope, but I could see almost all of it. Very good, said Alex. All he wanted me to do now, he said, was to turn round once more and sit down in my original position. No problem. Very good, he said. Very good.

Sixteen

Days were up and down, but I surprised myself by coping. Take a typical example, a sunny Monday morning early in December. It was one of those days that occur every so often on which women are encouraged to bring a schoolgirl to work with them in order, supposedly, to make their jobs seem less alarming. I couldn’t help feeling that anybody who contemplated my working life would suddenly find herself attracted to the kitchen and nursery, but I decided I must make the gesture. So I rang up Peggy, whom I always felt I never rang up quite often enough. Evidently, Emily, the middle girl of Paul’s previous family (she’s almost sixteen), was slowest in thinking up a plausible excuse and she was offered up to me for the day.

Just after nine o’clock in the morning she slouched down her garden path, Peggy waving unnoticed behind her. She was dressed in black like a Greek widow, though with the rings through her nose she was unlikely to be mistaken for one. She sat in the passenger seat, switched Start the Week off and we headed east from Kentish Town. I asked after Peggy and Emily grunted something and asked about Robert. I muttered a non-committal pleasantry and said he seemed to be getting on well with his new girlfriend. I feel protective about my nieces where my predatory youngest son is concerned and I’ve talked to him, and to Jerome as well, about their duty to look after their younger cousins. I was edgy, mainly because I would normally have been smoking but Emily would have probably wanted to join me and so I had decided in advance to give up for a morning.

I love my sons but when they were growing up the house did sometimes feel like a sports changing room. Perhaps in reaction to this I have always felt a special pang of affection for the three bolshy Crane girls. I sometimes worried that I might try too hard with them and put them off me but as we stopped and started along York Way, Emily chatted with what – for her, at least – was remarkable fluency. I asked her if she had heard anything about Paul’s documentary. Emily rolled her eyes, as she did in response to almost anything to do with her father.

‘Silly man,’ she said.

I felt obliged to be soothing.

‘No, Emily, I’m sure it’ll be very interesting.’

‘You want to be on telly, do you, with everybody knowing about your family?’

‘No, not really.’

‘We’re all refusing to be in it. Dad got really cross. Cath called him a voyeur.’

‘Well, at least Paul must be pleased to hear her using a French word. If only she’d called him an auteur.’

We giggled together. We arrived, late as always, at the hostel where there were two council employees waiting, neither of whom I’d met before. Pandora Webb, an intermediate treatment officer. And Carolyn Salkin, a disability officer. In a wheelchair. At the foot of the steep concrete steps leading to the front door. Carolyn’s hair was cut very short, giving her the air of a fierce sprite. She was the sort of person I would have taken to immediately if I had met her anywhere but in front of my precious project. She came bluntly to the point.

‘There is evidently no wheelchair access in your plans, Ms Martello.’

‘Please call me Jane,’ I panted. ‘And this is my niece, Emily.’

‘There’s no wheelchair access, Jane.’

‘The issue was never really raised,’ I replied, incredibly feebly, but it was Monday morning and I was feeling self-conscious in front of my niece.

‘I’m raising it now.’

I needed to go away and think this through but it didn’t seem possible.

‘As far as the brief went, this is a hostel where highly independent recently discharged people can stay briefly with light supervision. I agree, Carolyn, that ideally every building should have full wheelchair access but with my alterations this is now a narrow four-storey house. Surely it would be better if wheelchair-bound patients, or, indeed, employees, were directed to premises that would be more suitable.’

The two women exchanged glances. They looked ironic, contemptuous. Pandora was clearly not on my side, but she was obviously happy to leave the talking to Carolyn.

‘Jane,’ Carolyn said, ‘I didn’t come here to debate disabled politics on the pavement. And I’m not bargaining. I’m simply here to make sure you understand the council’s policy on access in new buildings. You should have been told about this already.’

‘What needs doing?’ I asked wearily. ‘I mean specifically.’

‘I’d show you myself if I could get into the premises,’ said Carolyn icily. ‘You’ll have to arrange an appointment with another member of my department.’

‘Who funds the extra equipment?’

‘Who funds the fire escape, Jane?’ Carolyn asked sarcastically. ‘Who funds the double-glazing?’

I felt a small stab of rage at her unfairness.

‘If I were Mies van der Rohe, you wouldn’t be forcing me to put ramps across every angle.’

‘I would if he were designing a building in this borough,’ said Carolyn.

‘Who’s Mies van der thingy?’ asked Emily, when we were back in the car.

‘He’s probably the main reason I became an architect. His buildings were based on complete mathematical clarity, straight lines, metal and glass. His greatest building was for an exhibition in Barcelona in the twenties. The building was so pure in form that Mies wouldn’t even allow a wall where pictures could be hung because that would have violated its perfection.’

‘That’s not much good for an exhibition,’ Emily protested.

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t think he would have had any more success with this hostel than I have. When I went into architecture, we still thought it might be a way of transforming people’s lives. That doesn’t seem particularly fashionable at the moment.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I think I’m too old to retrain as a civil liberties lawyer.’

‘No, I mean with the hostel.’

‘Oh, the usual. Put some things in, take some things out. Lose a little bit more of my original inspiration. I haven’t lost hope entirely. Slashing my budget is partly their way of showing that they still intend this hostel to get built.’

We drove back to my office and I introduced Emily to Duncan and he showed her how to move his drawing board up and down. I dictated a couple of letters which it would have been quicker to type myself. We made coffee and I told Emily a bit about the profession and what I could remember of the training and we gossiped and then I drove her back to Kentish Town a little after lunch. I went in with her and had a cup of coffee with Peggy. She was always worried about things. She was worried about Paul’s documentary, with which she was refusing to have anything at all to do. She was worried about Martha, and I couldn’t think of anything to say about that. She was worried about Alan making a complete fool of himself, but I told her that that wasn’t worth bothering about. And she was even a little worried about me. Paul had told her about my therapy and she wanted to discuss it with me.

‘As you know, I had years of therapy after Paul walked out,’ she told me. ‘After about two years, I plucked up courage and looked around and my analyst was asleep.’