The House of Memories Read Online Free

on. “There’s no need to look so cross. Lucas wasn’t telling tales. He rang to ask permission to send you faxes occasionally. Walter and I have discussed it. As Walter said, he is your only uncle. So as long as you don’t get too carried away, you can fax Lucas now and again and he says he’ll get back to you as soon as he can. But don’t annoy him, will you? He’s a very busy man.”
    That surprised me. “Is he? Doing what?” All I could picture Lucas doing in that big London house of his was making a mess.
    “I don’t know exactly, Ella. Professor-y things.”
    “But what kind of things?”
    Mum waved her hands in an “I can’t even begin to explain” motion. “Ask him next time you fax him.”
    So I did. Lucas faxed back the very next day.
    Dear Ella,
    This week I am busy studying the following subjects:
    Political allegiances in postwar Britain
    Trends in liberal versus conservative educational policy
    The rise in pro-monarchist sentiment between WWI and WWII
    I also need to get the plumbing in the downstairs bathroom fixed.
    I faxed back.
Thank you
,
Lucas. You are very busy.
    As a bee,
he said in return.
Or a fox.
He signed it with that winking fox again.
    It was like having a hotline to heaven. I faxed Lucas at least twice weekly and he always faxed me back. Except of course we called it foxing, not faxing. They weren’t long letters. Questions or minor complaints from me, usually. Quick answers or snippets of information from Lucas, or one-liners that he called Astounding Facts of a Fox Nature.
Did you know that baby foxes are called kits, cubs or pups? Did you know that a female fox is called a vixen? Did you know that a fox’s tail makes up one-third of its total length?
    Occasionally a present would arrive in the post. Not at birthdays or Christmases, but out of the blue. Always something to do with a fox, of course. A T-shirt with a fox on the front. Fox notepaper. A fox brooch once. I either used, lost or grew out of everything, except the fox key ring.
    He sent books too.
I am a crime aficionado,
he said in one note,
and you seem like an inquisitive young lady, so I hope you will enjoy this genre too.
I did, reading every one that he sent—from Enid Blyton’s Secret Seven, Famous Five and Five Find-Outers series, to Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, to Agatha Christie’s novels. As I got older, Lucas sent books by Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Arthur Conan Doyle. An Astounding Fact accompanied every one:
Did you know Enid Blyton wrote eight hundred books in just forty years? That Agatha Christie also wrote romances under the name Mary Westmacott? That Raymond Chandler only started writing detective fiction in his mid-forties?
    Jess was too young to care then, but Charlie was always curious about my faraway uncle. Not jealous. Even back then, Charlie was the most even-tempered, laid-back person I knew.
    “Any new facts from the fox?” he’d ask.
    I’d go to my Lucas folder and read out the latest fax. Charlie was always very impressed.
    I didn’t send Lucas any astounding facts in return, but I did send him regular updates on school results or any academic prizes I happened to win.
    Your father would be proud of you. I’m proud of you,
he’d fax back.
    We didn’t meet in person again until I was twenty-two. After finishing an Arts degree, I’d decided to take a gap year. I’d studied English literature; my father was English, I had a British passport—I headed straight for London. When I e-mailed Lucas (we’d progressed from faxes) to tell him I was coming, he insisted I stay with him until I found my feet. He was still in the same house, which was still full of bright but financially impoverished student lodgers, but he was now more than their innkeeper. He’d become their employer, setting up a discreet, high-level pool of personal tutors. It worked in everyone’s favor, he told me. His lodgers always needed extra money. Struggling students always needed extra tuition.