The Memory Dress

Chapter Ten

TEN

Jayne

The second we exit the building Meredith comes to life. She lifts her face to the late afternoon sun, inhales deeply, and starts to stride alongside Teddy and me, easily keeping pace. I link my arm through Meredith’s, encouraging her to slow, and together we let gravity propel us down toward the river.

“Will we be stopping for egg sandwiches for tea?” asks Meredith as we pass a small café.

“If you like,” I say. “Are you hungry now?”

“Not yet, but we usually pack them.”

“All right. Well, there is a little place in the park at the back of the Holburne Museum, we can stop there for a bite to eat. Then I can let Teddy off for a run before we head back. How does that sound?”

“It sounds lovely, Fiona, thank you. I wish we did this more often.”

I decide not to risk confusing Meredith by correcting her. She seems to be genuinely enjoying our outing and I don’t want anything to ruin it. There is a lightness to her that I want to preserve.

We make our way up the wide stretch of Great Pulteney Street, flanked on either side by an unbroken terrace of Georgian town houses, their grand uniformity imposing an air of ordered calm on us both.

As we enter the grounds of the museum, she loosens her grip on my arm, then she lets go, relaxed. She pauses at the building entrance, admiring the stone archways and columns that dominate its facade while I’m accosted by two tourists brandishing a huge map.

I turn to redirect them back toward the Abbey, one of the city’s most famous landmarks, and when I turn back, Meredith is transfixed on a poster advertising a temporary exhibition of paintings by the Italian artist Canaletto. There’s been a lot of local excitement about this exhibition, as the private collection is on loan for the first time in decades. It’s on display here for only a few weeks before it returns to its owner and thus the flow of people trying to get inside is significant. But Meredith barely seems to notice. She doesn’t remove her eyes from the poster. She’s rereading it, her face pressed far closer than it needs to be. As I approach her, I can see her shoulders are shaking, and I can’t imagine what she might be finding amusing about it. But as I draw level with her, I am horrified to see she isn’t laughing at all but struggling to contain her sobs. I look from her distraught face to the words in front of her and read:

A LOST VENICE

“Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased,” [Marco] Polo said. “Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.”

—Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“Is that what I am?” she asks quietly. “Lost? Is William lost too?”

And it is so heartbreaking to watch a woman whose anchor to this world has disappeared. Who can no longer make sense of who she is and where she is, how everything fits around her. Just living her life through the fragments of information her mind indiscriminately throws at her.

“You can’t be lost, can you, Meredith?” I reply just as quietly. “Because I have found you. I am here with you.”

She places her hand on my shoulder, smiles gratefully. “But what about William? He’s still out there somewhere.” She looks back at the poster that prompted her tears.

“Did you go together once? To Venice?” I ask.

“It’s part of our story,” Meredith says hesitantly, like she is trying to piece a memory together as the words are forming on her lips. “I want to remember. I need to remember. Perhaps my pictures will help me to?” Meredith is more agitated than she has been all afternoon, her eyebrows painfully pinched together.

“In the memory room, Meredith. Is that what you mean?” I can’t think what other images she could be referring to.

She doesn’t answer me but turns and starts to retrace her footsteps back out of the gardens toward the main road again. I take my place beside her, studying her face, seeing in the fresh lines on her forehead the strain of trying to find the words and the images that will make sense of what she has glimpsed. I don’t want to deliver her back home in this confused state, so I take us the slightly scenic route back across the river, breaking right, past the Abbey and up toward the Assembly Rooms. Far from disorientating her, the crowds of shoppers and sightseers serve as a useful distraction. Gradually, Meredith’s face softens and relaxes. Whatever she found upsetting about the Canaletto exhibition has drifted away, beyond her reach now. As we begin to walk past the Assembly Rooms, she pauses briefly before turning into their courtyard.

“The Fashion Museum!” she announces. “We must go in!”

“I’m afraid you’ve only got ten minutes, ladies, until we close, fifteen at a push,” says the doorman, eyeing Teddy. “And I can’t let him in.”

Meredith has already walked in through the entrance doors without me. The doorman spots the slight panic on my face as I look from Teddy to where she has disappeared, and he relents. “Here, as you won’t be long, give him to me”—he holds out a hand for the leash—“but don’t be any longer or you’ll get me in trouble with the missus if I’m late home for my tea.” I see a treat immediately appear from his trouser pocket; clearly, he’s a dog lover too.

Meredith places her fingertips lightly on the glass cabinet directly in front of us and leans in as close as it will allow her to. Her features are pained. Like she can’t bear the necessary separation. She looks like she wants to press through the glass to touch the fabric on the other side, to feel it pass through her fingers.

“Such an incredibly difficult dress to construct,” she whispers into the glass. “All those different elements to get right. All cut separately and then mounted together. The draping and the concealed seams, so tricky but I think it’s just right.”

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

“See how the layers of the skirt fold in reverse? It has William’s hands all over it. There are triple layers of tulle and silk petticoats too. All needed, of course—it was heading for Buckingham Palace.”

I make a deliberate effort not to let my eyes flare wider at her unexpected knowledge. I want her to keep talking. Any interruption from me now might be all it takes to shut her down again.

“It’s a banquet dress, very grand and formal. The duchess silk satin is from Hurel, and the bodice is overlaid in cream silk lace, embroidered with pearls, crystals, and mother-of-pearl sequins.”

I read the information card mounted next to it. None of this information is here.

“I came to see it. When it arrived in Bath.” Meredith steps back from the glass now and faces me.

“You’ve seen it here before? You remember that?”

“Yes, 2016. There was quite a fuss made about its arrival, I remember that. I came alone. William had a terrible headache.”

It’s this mention of William that seems to dampen her interest in the dress. Her eyes have grown sad again. She’s trying to smile for my benefit but there is a shift in her mood that she can’t hide.

We start to trace our steps back out toward the door we came in through and Meredith’s demeanor slowly changes the closer we get to the exit. She’s agitated, wringing her hands together. There is something else about this place that is making her feel uncomfortable. She didn’t feel it inside when we were close to the dress, but now she does.

“You’ll have to call William,” she says when we step outside. “I can’t remember the way home. Please, do it quickly.”

“It’s okay, Meredith, I’m here. I will get you back, don’t worry.”

“No, that’s not what happens.” She’s shaking her head, getting annoyed with me for wanting to change her plans. “William is going to come and get me because I can’t remember. He’ll make everything okay again.”

Before I have a chance to comment, Meredith fixes me with a determined look.

“It’s the dresses. William says the dresses will help, when the time comes.” Her face fills with enthusiasm now. “That’s what he means,” she adds triumphantly. “The dresses will help me find him. That’s it!”

Olivia smiles, very broadly, when I return Teddy, well over an hour after I collected him. But Meredith isn’t happy at all. She looks confused and agitated when she was so pleased with herself earlier. Now her entire body seems tight from the sheer frustration of not fully understanding something.

“What is it, Meredith?” I place a hand on her shoulder as we pause at her front door.

“The pearls.”

I try to understand the significance this one word holds for her.

“On the dress we were looking at together at the museum. Is that what you mean?” I remember it was embroidered with them across the bodice and the sleeves.

“Those ones are pink. But the other ones are white. They come first. That’s important, isn’t it?” She searches my face expectantly for any hint of confirmation that she is right.

I simply have no way of understanding the meaning of what she’s saying, so I smile at her, trying my best to reassure her that we will get there together, somehow, before I watch her turn and walk through the door, her face lowered to the floor, still trying to connect the dots as they drift too quickly away from her.

I return to my own apartment. On the doorstep is a brown paper bag with Baked fresh this morning written on the side, along with a phone number and instructions to come have coffee with me Wednesday if you can. 11 a.m., Margaret’s Buildings . It’s from Jake. He will have to wait. I put the bread on the counter in the kitchen and slump onto the sofa, at a complete loss as to how I am going to help unpick Meredith’s story.

With no other ideas springing to mind I tap the words Catherine Walker into my laptop and feel my breath catch in the back of my throat. One or two images of an elegant dark-haired woman appear on-screen, but they are completely eclipsed by hundreds of another, far more famous woman: Princess Diana.

Image after image fills the screen, a never-ending scroll, but amidst the splendor, it is impossible to miss Meredith’s pink dress—number 19, as she called it—with its colorful smattering of jasmine, cherry blossoms, orchids, and lilies, worn by Diana on a tour of India.

I need to speak to Carina, my boss at Bouquets & Bunches. I remember her mentioning Diana’s wedding bouquet before. Carina said she was only thirteen the day of the wedding, but she can still recite every flower it contained. She may know better than I what all this means.