The Shattered Ruins

Flicking through the world, browsing the beautiful countries and historic locations where shared experiences make lasting memories—Mount Fuji, The Colosseum, The Great Pyramids—I allow myself a few private moments to dream. Still I know that all these places would be seen yet unseen, and our money would be wasted.

So, I close the brochure with a sigh that is pulled deeper by my heavy heart. I realise now my lifelong aspirations will remain forever locked in the phantasmagoria of my imagination; where foreign adventures play out each night before the dark thief of sleep steals my consciousness. I will likely never leave these shores again.

I sigh once more and slouch towards the bookcase to ponder the past. I take my time, choosing carefully. I settle on ‘Holidays’ the black marker on the spine, declaring the contents in Alan’s best cursive script. Back in the days when he knew how to write and what his writing meant.

Sitting on the sofa, I lift my husband’s cold hand and stroke his tremors with my fingers.

“Alan, I thought we could look at this together.”

Alan smiles, his gummy, senile smile. No bottom teeth and just a few blackened, crooked gravestones at the top. He doesn’t wear his dentures very often now. Not since he almost choked. He stares at me, wondering who I am.  

“What is it?”

“It’s a photograph album,” I soothe. “Look it shows pictures of when we were both a lot younger.”

Alan smacks his lips, sounding like a lame donkey.

“Who are those people?”

“It’s us Alan, it’s us, look. Here we are on our Honeymoon, remember?”

That smile again. That simple, not-knowing smile, devoid of a lifetime, lost in the filthy fog of a diseased mind. His bony fingers trace the faded colours and bleached outlines.

“Who’s that?”

“That’s you, Alan. And that’s me.”

Now, it’s my hands that are shaking. Shaking and trembling with the sheer frustration of losing my loved one prematurely, to this living Purgatory.

I close the album and creak to stand. Alan is staring out the window, for him the Honeymoon already over.  

As I stoop with the album, a photograph tumbles loose, and comes to rest on Alan’s velvet slipper. It’s a picture of a huge, imposing arched window, amidst crumbling stones.

I reach for it but Alan’s knobbly hand get there first. His rheumy eyes, still with the sparkle of a mischievous boy, rove over the picture.

“Whitby,” he said. “It’s that ruined Abbey at the top of the hill.”

I fall back to the sofa and take a minute whilst he continues to stare. Then I pick up the album, crazily spinning the pages, trying to find more snapshots from those inconspicuous, inconsequential five nights, decades ago. A short break before Alan started a new job.

There are just four more precious Polaroids of that trip, adhered (though the glue is now failing) onto pages almost as thick as card, each page prefaced by a gossamer sheet of tissue. He takes his time. He smiles his gummy smile.

“I remember this,” he says and we sit in that moment, mostly in silence, for the next hour.

I bring him more albums, but there are no other triggers. Our wedding, first home, children all faded in the mists of lost recall. But the remains of Whitby Abbey remains.

For now at least.

I potter into the kitchen. Time for tea and biscuits. Perhaps because I have to be the memory for the two of us, I can’t stop thinking about what has happened. I’m jittery and on edge. He’s not had a lucid recollection like this since… well, the details are hazy, but it’s been a long, long time.

Alan pads in and I have to steer him away from the sharp knives and kettle full of boiling water.

“You go and sit back down love, and I’ll bring your tea in for you.”

“It was a lovely trip, wasn’t it?”

He has no idea who I am most of the time, and yet suddenly he’s back there and he’s back with me.

I follow him out of the kitchen, the mugs and Chocolate Digestives trembling on the tray.

“Here you go sweetheart,” I say, passing him a couple of biscuits on a plate.

The smile, the eyes, his whole face is radiant and he laughs so hard the Digestives slide onto the sofa.

“Remember that woman in our hotel? She wore the same red, high heels every day.”

I rescue the biscuits and put them back on the plate.

“And you said, ‘well she won’t get far in Whitby in heels like those’ and on our fourth day she came hobbling down to breakfast in a pair of slippers and spent the whole day in the hotel lounge!”

He shakes with laughter once more and once more the biscuits escape off the plate. But I can’t rescue them again because I too am laughing. And tears are streaming down my face.

I had completely forgotten about that woman and her stupid shoes. But now it was as though we were back there, coming out of the breakfast room and trying to stifle our giggles as she limped past us, smelling of antiseptic cream and sticking plasters.  

Alan sighs, sucking on his biscuits, as thoughtfully as a man without memories is able.

And so with hands still trembling, I make the booking that very afternoon. 

***

We sit on the bench on the hillside, directly opposite the vestiges of spectacular Whitby Abbey, eating fish and chips; Styrofoam containers balanced carefully on our knees and a flask of tea between us. Alan’s been wearing his teeth since we got here and has no problem remembering what they are for.

He still struggles to remember me but for some reason Whitby is something he has held on to. And I was with him in Whitby. And so I am with him now. But I have four old Polaroids tucked in my pocket just in case.

He points a sagging chip towards the ruins.

“Stoker probably sat here when writing Dracula.”

More recall. This time from the Dracula tour we took, squinting in the twilight of evening as we pursued a student dressed in a cape and plastic fangs. Again, a moment I had forgotten.

“Well I hope it was a bit warmer for him,” I say, pulling up my scarf around my salted lips.

Alan laughs. His old, hearty laugh which brightens his whole face is back with us.

“Come on, let’s see if we can make it up those stairs.”

The Abbey towers over the town. A holy ghost defiant against the torture of a Tudor king and indiscriminate World War bombs. A triumph of resilience and persistence through adversity.

Hundreds of tiny steps ladder the hillside carrying pilgrims of Stoker onwards and upwards towards the shattered ruins. I fear our old, broken bodies won’t make it. I’d forgotten just how steep the hills are here. Does this mean my memories are now unreliable too?

We climb the steps, slowly, carefully. Each trapped in our own shattered ruins. One arthritic foot in front of the other.

And finally, after many stops to catch our breath, we’re here—and I’m overwhelmed by the chaos that belies the image of this desecrated majesty. In some places just a single block, meaningless; in others, a complete wall. All holding the silent screams of past horrors and lost joys.

I look at Alan and search for a doorway, but there’s no way in for me. Yet the magnificent arched window still stands. Exactly as it was when we were last here. Back when we climbed the steps two at a time, no stops required, chuckling about how the woman in the red heels might have managed.

I take Alan’s hand and together we peer through.

I don’t know what he sees but I notice him smile and I start to cry. I cry that he still has this one place in the kaleidoscopic mess of his mind, as fragmented and shattered as the old Abbey. As dark and impenetrable as Whitby jet and as terrifying as a vampire’s kiss. I cry because that fleeting, shared experience so many, many years ago made a memory that has endured. Perhaps the only one he has, now. And because of that one memory he remembers me; for the time being at least.

I squeeze his fingers, and in the twilight of the autumn evening we make our way carefully and silently back to those hundreds of tiny steps that snake down the hillside, thinking of the view from that window where a shard of recall from forty-five years ago still remains.

For us, for the moment, a pane, unshattered.