Free Purple Prose by Liz Byrski Page A

eighty-seven, my mother thinks it is time to pass on the contents of this box. She decides to loan it to me so that I can photocopy the material for my siblings. That day I leave her house cradling the precious cargo of her past in my arms.
    She knows I am the writer in the family, the memoirist. Did she think about this when she passed the box to me? Does that mean she trusts me to write about her past or not to do so?
    I am the memoirist in the family but the one with the worst memory. I often have to ask my siblings about events from our childhood because they seem to remember more than me, even the youngest. It’s an embarrassing irony, but I wonder if this isperhaps
why
I write memoir. To try to piece together a past that is hazy and unreliable, to make the self more real.
    But how do you write a life when you have only fragments?
2
    â€˜That piece of purple coronation robe – roughly when do you think your father gave it to you?’ I ask my mother on my next visit. She is unsure but she knows it was before the war. After some discussion, we decide that this piece of material must be from King George VI’s coronation in May 1937.
    â€˜I remember watching the Princesses in the Royal Jubilee celebrations,’ my mother says. ‘I was about eight. My father’s office was on St Paul’s Churchyard and his office was on the ground floor, but the firm above his gave us seats at their windows to watch the procession.’ My mother is one year younger than Queen Elizabeth.
    â€˜But that wasn’t a coronation,’ I say.
    â€˜No, I suppose not.’ She looks a bit vague. She’s had a long and full life. Some things have gone from her memory, others are anchored there firmly. I can understand her remembering the Jubilee: it was a major event in London and because of her closeness in age to Elizabeth she would have had a particular interest.
    The Silver Jubilee of King George V was in 1935, so my mother would indeed have been eight. She would have had a good view as the royal family approached St Paul’s Cathedral where a Thanksgiving service was held on 6 May 1935. There is an image on the St Paul’s website of a painting by Frank Owen Salisbury called
Reception of King George V and Queen Mary at the West Door of St Paul’s Cathedral, Jubilee Day
. 1 Queen Mary is so pale she looks like a waxwork. Behind the King, Prince Edward looks both supercilious and ill-at-ease (one reads the future into such works) while the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret are dressed alike in pale peach outfits and hats. Behind them stands a Sikh infull regalia. Judging from the existing film of the event, I would say this painting is a work of imagination rather than documentation. And memory, too, is part imagination, each memory a recreation rather than a reproduction.
3
    The image appeared to me when I was reading
A History of Silence
by Lloyd Jones. Something in the texture of the writing summoned a form into the back of my mind. I put the book aside for a moment and allowed the shape to grow, and there it was, a pattern of lilac and purple petals, a texture that was almost velvet – was it velveteen perhaps? The design was a version of paisley. I could stroke it down my side, so it was a dress. Like a mini jigsaw puzzle of memory, it slotted together and I could see and feel once again my first special dress of purple velveteen. A dress that made
me
special: in this dress I shone, for a moment I was centre of the picture, no longer just a spectator.
    Imagine this, plain shy Rachel clothed in such a dress!
    Immediately, I feel a need to verify this image. I wonder if my memory of the colours and design is correct. It was the 60s, so bright colours and patterns were in vogue, as was velveteen. Mainly, though, I got my older sisters’ hand-me-downs, so my clothes were at least ten years out of date. I often wore matching outfits with my younger sister, both outfits having been