Free The Memory Box by Margaret Forster Page A

trees quaintly lined up on the cobbles, or copying the mural of the George Washington sailing ship, dated 1732, which adorned the brick wall of a house backing on to it. It was so strange to come from the shabbiness of the shopping area, with its dispirited air, and from the forlorn harbour, into this charming enclave and I felt pleased. I stood and stared up at the house where my father had lived, its three windows stacked neatly one above the other, as he had described, with the top window that of his room. It didn’t seem to be a private house any more, none of these houses did. There were plaques on the outside of most of them stating hours of business and none had curtains at the windows. But there was still an air of faded gentility around, which was unexpected and soothing.
    It was distracting to be conjuring up images of my father when I was here to think of Susannah. I saw how Whitehaven would have confused her, coming as she did from a fairly affluent Edinburgh family who lived in a solid, stone-built house among others the same, in an area where there was no mistaking general prosperity. She’d never lived cheek by jowl with obvious poverty as my father had done here, hidden from it but part of it. This house, his house, in Washington Square was an elegant, Georgian residence but I knew that inside it had been sparsely furnished and always cold, unlike her own overstuffed, overheated home. My paternal grandmother had had very little money after her husband died when my father was sixteen, and she herself had never worked, so she had sold most of the furniture, anything that fetched a decent price, and lived a spartan existence. I thought about knocking on the door and asking to see round it, but didn’t. It wouldn’t look the same; there was no point.
    Instead, I walked along Queen Street a bit and turned down the next corner into Cross Street. There were several houses in its short length with bed-and-breakfast signs in their windows and I chose one for the cheerful geraniums hanging in a basket outside. The woman who answered the door was not at all cheerful. She stared blankly at me and had to think for a long time before agreeing she had a room vacant and that she could provide me with an evening meal. She told me where I could park my car for the night and once I’d done this I returned immediately because ‘evening’ apparently meant five-thirty and it was nearly that. Having the meal was a bit embarrassing. There was only the woman, a Mrs Robinson, and me. She didn’t eat. I sat at a table laid with an embroidered cloth and she pottered between kitchen and table waiting on me. I was given bacon and egg, which I don’t much care for, toast and cake and a large pot of tea. She stood and watched me eat as though I were a creature from outer space and I began to feel like one. All attempts to engage her in conversation failed, or rather petered out quickly. She said, ‘You’re not local,’ a statement so obviously true I couldn’t think of a reply. I said my father had lived here, round the corner, and at the name Musgrave she took a brief interest. Yes, she knew the name. Plenty of Musgraves around still. She didn’t ask me why I was here, betraying no curiosity whatsoever, so I didn’t tell her (though I realised I’d quite wanted to). The moment I’d finished the bacon and egg and nibbled at the toast, she whipped my plate away, saying she was going to choir practice and must get the dishes washed first.
    By then it was dark, though only seven o’clock. I was tired, so went to my room, thinking I would have a bath and read until I fell asleep. The bathroom was next to my room, at the front of the house. After my bath, I stood wrapped in a towel, drying my hair with another while I looked out of the clear panes above the frosted glass. The seagulls were everywhere, silvery white in the dark, gleaming in the dull light of the few street lamps. There was one on the window sill, its beak hawked