Autobiographical Memories

I met my brother at Gloucester Road. Stone dinosaurs peered out as I ascended into a world he knew the map of, and which, years later, is still unknown to me. He knew the way; in awe I followed.

Ever since we played and fought together in our shared room, he has always been further into the world than me, reaching back to show me his way. And now that I have caught up and there is nothing left to teach, it is I who, jealously static, peers out of the dark at those bright beings moving through the world.

We got there early, and had “a perfect day”. I recall sprawling in a garden, reading a linguistics book, evading a cat that shared the space. We went out on the sea, and a photograph jogs my memory of sitting by the beach.

Our happiness is something we’ve narrated and charged into pictures, so I cannot capture it; and these moments always seem lost, as though happiness is past. But it’s an illusion – today’s mundanity will one day be stored in nostalgic memory, a bestseller that stuck and got a new edition, with illustrations and introductions, changing what it is.

Already that moment has been cast in narrative, packed with meanings I spouted spontaneously. I walked a straight road from Crystal Palace to Beckenham, tasting the rain and wondering why I drink anything else. Each car seemed to hesitate as it passed, considering offering rescue. But I refused even the rescue offered by telephone, denying my discomfort, needing to create a meaning that wasn’t negative.

These long walks are my adventures, rare pockets of pride in my memory. I will tell this story again, packing in new meanings, inventing new thoughts; but I will never forget the taste of rain.

That first time, I was not drunk, but did not want to ruin the story we were telling ourselves. We had visited a death camp, where I performed my trauma, as was expected. That evening, I sipped my beer and tasted adulthood (I did not like it), then acted strangely on the way home, as I thought I should. I was on the brink of my future, and felt I had already lived so much; yet my photographs show a child, which is what I was to the adult who bought me my half-pint, knowing it would not harm me.

The hens are in the courtyard, the air cool but not harsh, exactly like the first time we came here and stuffed the place with hopes for the future. But these are not the same hens, and the air has been transformed by countless organisms, I realise as I notice that the magazine mark where I killed a fly has been painted over. She is still with me, thank God; the nouns are the same but the adverbs have changed. The place has been preserved, but we do not re-live moments; we have changed and abandoned so much since then.

The story is so familiar that I now remember the event from my mother’s perspective: my mind’s eye sees, framed in the doorway, an old wardrobe worthy of Narnia, leaning against the bed, which has interrupted its fall. I understand that the boy – me, or my son – is inside. But Professor Kirke built his wardrobe to last – it was sturdy, like its creator’s faith – and a mere child’s hiding inside could never have caused such a fall. As a child, I found everything exciting. My eyes then saw every cupboard as an opportunity, but I was no assessor of stability.

Unexpectedly today, the tabby I pass every day conjured the memory of a white cat my neighbours owned when we were children. My brain, when racked, produces the name “Claude”, but that was my grandparents’ cat. He was black, not white, but both were prickly, like dogs never are, and like my sister could be; like she was when I knocked on her door when she wanted privacy, and like she must have been when we came home from the Vet’s without her rabbit, and I did not see in her face the concealed blame my memory now reveals to me.

She pushed past, and suddenly my mother was strange to me. The front door slammed, then the car door, I feel sure, and my memory narrates the getaway with cinematic melodrama: screeching tyres, a furious engine. Dad explained that this was what women sometimes did, and this was explanation enough at the time – learning then consisted mainly of discovering new realms of ignorance. Later on, she rang: I picture myself answering, but it was probably him. He went to get her, and our mother returned. This vague memory is still a mystery: my mature mind cannot make sense of it.

“The world is wide,” I thought; then, feebly, “The world is whole.” These thoughts did not begin as words, of course – what we feel as we walk down or up the hill to meet our lovers after work, smelling the end of winter, cannot be contained within inverted commas. But my fidgeting mind cannot feel without making those feelings signify; cannot sense without translating that sense into words. Does being a writer mean not living in the actual world, or are my real experiences uncaptured, forgotten, free, original, raw, loose, wild, so intangible the word “intangible” makes them too tangible?

I read the new translation, and try to recreate an earlier experience, when the text’s artful magic resonated with the real magic of Christmas, as I saw it. Alone with a pencil and those pristine pages, I sat by the bay windows, seeing people pass while Gawain accepted the challenge. But we cannot re-live moments: my mind fidgets, hears the chat around me, cannot choose what to focus on, as it asks, constantly, what is meaningful? Whenever I read I want to write, but everything might be a waste. I acquire books which lack the magic of that pristine moment.