I Remember... by Jan Edwards
Recently (20th Dec) the author and editor Diana Athill was interviewed on the Today
programme for her 100th birthday. Happy birthday!
One of the things Ms Athill mentioned in her interview was her first memory, which was of falling into a puddle and being hauled out again. It set
me musing on my own earliest memories. I can think of several, and because we
moved house two weeks after my 4th birthday I can accurately date
them as being three or even two years old at the time.
Most of those images involved getting into trouble with Mother. And
most often came out of trying to keep up with two elder brothers (then aged
seven and nine) who did not want their tiny little sister to tag along in the
first place.
Memory 1/ Throwing a monumental hissy fit because I could see my
brothers building a snowman in the garden. I clearly recall standing in my cot
and shaking the bars, whilst my mother stood at the sink washing up. (I was sick
often and the kitchen was heated overnight by the Aga stove.)
Memory 2/ Crouching in the mud, with the younger of those brothers, at
the edge of the duck pond; situated just opposite the farm cottage where we
then lived. We were sailing little plastic boats that had been free gifts in cereal
packets, and we were having a great time. But... going outside the gate was forbidden
of course- going near the pond doubly so. When Mother caught up with us we were
not popular. (Conversely Mother wasn’t too popular with us because we’d been
having a lot of fun.)
Memory 3/ Standing alone in the grain store (another forbidden
destination) in a thunder storm all alone. My darling brothers had left me
there after first telling me that thunder was made by lions on the roof looking
for somebody to eat. (Yup... that’s brothers for you.)
The thing that I have to ask myself next is how accurate are those
memories? They are very clear in my mind. Not merely as images but also as vehicles
for the emotions invoked at the time; anger, frustration and fear respectively.
Yet, as a discussion with another writer recently showed, our recall
can be defective. She used a memory of her own the draft for a story in which
her main character was listening to a particular record in a specific year. When
she checked the dates for her final draft she realised it was impossible
because that particular track did not appear for another two years. Not a false
memory as such, more a case of the record being so evocative of an important period
in her life that is felt like a perfect recall. The way in which music can and
does evoke powerful emotions is another issue altogether.
Memory is a strange thing and often proves to be inaccurate. There have
been many scientific papers in Scientific American and other publications on the
accuracy of eyewitness accounts in trials and how people’s own background and
biases can and do affect the way in which they process recall of events and
perpetrators of crimes, which is something any crime writer needs to be aware
of.
We all ‘think’ that we recall X or Y so vividly, but if it’s possible
to check it’s often a memory influenced by so many other factors. Writers draw
on memories a great deal, whether consciously or not, and those experiences are
what make their fiction a far richer mix.
My own examples of recall are probably based on actual events but I
have no idea how truly accurate they are from this distance. I have to assume
they happened because I have no way of checking them.
And is there a point of all this waffle? Two in fact. ‘Beware of the
false recall’ and ‘research is our friend’.
Comments
Memory 1: Sitting on my potty in the lobby of a council type house. It was a small lobby with stairs leading up and the door to the living room open in front of me (told you it was embarrassing).
Memory 2: Being pushed in my pushchair past the local swimming pool. It was an open air one surrounded by a high wall but you could hear the splashing and laughter as you passed by. I remember tormenting my mother so much because I wanted to go inside.
Memory 3: Inside the swimming pool. It was in two parts and you had to pass the larger part where all the swimmers were to get to the smaller pool for the kids. I remember sitting on the edge terrified to go in. I never did take the plunge.
Memory 4: Different house, in Trowbridge. A small cottage, one of several, with attic windows in the roof and a massive garden that stretched behind it, probably not massive but that's the way it looked to me, and at the end of the garden was a shed where I used to sit with my grandfather. I loved that.Unfortunately, my mother and grandmother had a massive row and my grandmother threw all our clothes out of the window. I don't know what it was about but we never saw them again. It's strange, but I have a picture of my grandfather in my mind, but none of my grandmother.
That was the last time I was in England as a child which is why I can date it. Without that, I would probably have believed I was older when these events ocurred.
I would lay bets that a lot of us have memories from that age.
To support Chris and Valerie, I also have a memory of when I must have been somewhere between two and three.
It's dark, cold and snowing. I am with my Dad - being held by him, in fact - while he stands on the lamplit steps of a grand house with wide stone steps and grecian columns.
All very Dickensian. I had this memory for years and could not place it. I could not think of any reason why my Dad would be outside such a house.
Finally, when I was an adult, a conversation with my aunt pinned it down. My grandparents lived, for a time, in a 'coal-master's' grand house. It had been split up into apartments, but the grand entrance hall and the frontage had been left untouched.
My parents lived nearby and used to visit every Sunday. They'd stay late to watch my grandparent's television (they didn't have one of their own.) I usually fell asleep before they left, so my Dad would carry me home. My guess would be that the cold and snow woke me up and this memory was fixed. -- Yet I have no memory at all of going to the coal-master's house on the many other occasions I must have been taken there. No memory of what it was like inside. Just this single image of the steps and pillars on a snowy night.
And that has woken such bitter-sweet memories of my loving parents, both dead now, who were then less than half my age now.
Diana Athill is a treasure, and local to me, too, as she lives in Highgate. I went to a lecture she gave, in a local church, and will never forget her walking down the aisle wearing an amazing kaftan, all purple and gold, and then talking without any reference to notes. Fragile then, she came with a carer, but intellectually she didn't need one. I wanted to speak to her afterwards, but was too shy, so didn't. An amazing woman.
Umberto - I and my siblings always knew the depth of trouble we were in by the way we were summoned. First name only = not too bad. First and last names = trouble in the offing. First middle and last name = time to start running!