A Traitor to Memory

  “Are you telling me you think I entrapped you?” They'd reached the traffic lights at the end of Park Lane, and Jill pivoted awkwardly in her seat to face him. “Is that what you're saying? Are you telling me that I was so desperate to have you as a husband that I got myself pregnant to ensure you'd be willing to trot up to the altar? Well, it hasn't exactly worked out that way, has it? I've compromised right, left, and centre for you.” A taxi blared its horn behind her. Jill glanced in the rearview mirror first, then took note that the lights were now green. They edged their way round the Wellington Arch, and Jill was grateful for the size of the Humber that made her more than visible to the buses and more intimidating to the smaller cars.

  “What I'm telling you,” Richard said steadily, “is that I don't want to argue about this. It happened. I didn't tell you something I thought you knew. I may not have mentioned it, but I never tried to hide it.”

  “How can you say that when you've not a single picture of her anywhere?”

  “That's been for Gideon's sake. Do you think I wanted my son to spend his life looking at his murdered sister? How do you expect that would affect his music? When Sonia was killed, we all went through hell. All of us, Jill, including Gideon. We needed to forget, and removing all the pictures of her seemed one way to do it. Now, if you can't understand that or forgive it, if you wish to end our relationship because of it—” His voice quavered. He put his hand to his face, pulling on the skin along his jaw, savagely pulling it, saying nothing.

  And neither did Jill for the remainder of the journey to Cornwall Gardens. She took the route along Kensington Gore. Seven minutes more and they were parking at a spot midway along the leaf-blown square.

  In silence, Jill helped her lover from the car and reached into the back seat to collect the parcels. On the one hand, since they were for Catherine, it made more sense to leave them where they were. On the other hand, since everything was suddenly so unsettled about the future of Catherine's parents, it seemed to send a subtle but unmistakable message to take them inside to Richard's flat. Jill scooped them up. She also scooped up the picture that had been the cause of their argument.

  Richard said, “Here. Let me take something,” and offered his good hand.

  She said, “I can manage.”

  “Jill …”

  “I can manage.” She walked to Braemar Mansions, the decrepit building yet another reminder of how she was compromising with her fiancé. Who would want to live in such a place? she wondered. Who would be willing to purchase a flat in a building that was falling apart at the seams? If she and Richard waited to sell his flat before they tried to sell her own, they'd be forever denied their house, their garden, and their place to be a family with Catherine. Which was, perhaps, what he had wanted all along.

  He never remarried, she told herself. Twenty years since his divorce—sixteen? eighteen? oh, it didn't even matter—and he'd never taken another woman into his life. And now, on this day, on this night during which he himself could have died, he thought of her. Of what had happened to her and why and what he must now do to safeguard … whom? Not Jill Foster, not his pregnant companion, not their unborn child, but his son. Gideon. His son. His bloody son.

  Richard came up behind her as she mounted the steps to the building. He reached round her and unlocked the door, pushing it open so that she could enter the unlit hall with its cracking tiles on the floor and its wallpaper sagging from its mildewed walls. It seemed a further affront that there was no lift and only a partial curve in the staircase to serve as a landing should someone wish to rest while ascending. But Jill didn't want to rest. She climbed to the first floor and let her lover struggle up behind her.

  He was breathing heavily when he reached the top. She would have felt repentant to have left him fumbling upwards with only the rickety railing to assist in a climb made awkward by the plaster on his leg—but she thought the lesson was a good one for him.

  “My building has a lift,” she said. “People want lifts, you know, when they're looking for flats. And how much do you actually expect to get for this place, compared with what we could get for mine? We could move house, then. We could have a house. And then you'd have the time to paint, redecorate, whatever it might take to make this place sellable.”

  “I'm exhausted,” he said. “I can't continue like this.” He shouldered past her and limped to the door of his flat.

  She said, “That's convenient, isn't it?” as they went inside and Richard closed the door behind them. The lights were on. Richard frowned at this. He walked to the window and peered out. “You never continue what you want to avoid.”

  “That's not true. You're becoming unreasonable. You've had a fright, we've both had a fright, and you're reacting to that. When you've had a chance to rest—”

  “Don't tell me what to do!” Her voice rose shrilly. She knew at heart that Richard was right, that she was being unreasonable, but she couldn't stop. Somehow all the unspoken doubts she'd been harbouring for months were mingling with her unacknowledged fears. Everything was bubbling up inside her, like noxious gases looking for a fissure through which they could seep. “You've had your way. I've given it and given it. And now you're going to give me mine.”

  He didn't move from the window. “Has all of this come from seeing that ancient picture?” he asked, and extended his hand to her. “Give it to me, then. I want to destroy it.”

  “I thought you meant it for Gideon,” she cried.

  “I did, but if it's going to cause this kind of trouble between us … Give it to me, Jill.”

  “No. I'll give it to Gideon. Gideon's what's important, after all. How Gideon feels, what Gideon does, when Gideon plays his music. He's stood between us from the very first—my God, we even met because of Gideon—and I don't intend to displace him now. You want Gideon to have this picture, and he shall have it. Let's phone him at once and tell him we've got it.”

  “Jill. Don't be a fool. I haven't told him you know he's afraid to play, and if you phone him about the picture, he's going to feel betrayed.”

  “You can't have it all ways, my darling. He wants the picture and he shall have it tonight. I'll take it over to him myself.” She picked up the phone and began to punch the number.

  “Jill!” Richard said, and started to approach her.

  “What're you going to take over to me, Jill?” Gideon asked.

  Both whirled round at the sound of his voice. He was standing in the doorway to the sitting room, in the dim passage that led to the bedroom and to Richard's study. He held a square envelope in one hand and a floral card in the other. His face was the colour of sand, and his eyes were ringed by the circles of insomnia.

  “What were you going to take over to me?” he repeated.

  GIDEON

  12 November

  You sit in your father's leather armchair, Dr. Rose, watching me as I stumble through the recitation of the dreadful facts. Your face remains as it always is—interested in what I'm saying but without judgement—and your eyes shine with a compassion that makes me feel like a child in desperate need of comfort.

  And that is what I have become: phoning you and weeping, begging that you see me at once, claiming that there is no one else whom I can trust.

  You say, Meet me at the office in ninety minutes.

  Precise, like that. Ninety minutes. I want to know what you are doing that you cannot meet me there in this instant.

  You say, Calm yourself, Gideon. Go within. Breathe deeply.

  I need to see you now, I cry.

  You tell me that you're with your father, but you will be there as soon as you can. You say, Wait on the steps if you get there ahead of me. Ninety minutes, Gideon. Can you remember that?

  So now we are here and now I tell you everything that I have remembered on this terrible day. I end it all by saying, How is it possible that I forgot all this? What sort of monster am I that I wasn't able to remember anything of what happened all those years ago?

  It's clear
to you that I have finished my recitation, and that is when you explain things to me. You say in your calm and dispassionate voice that the memory of harming my sister and believing myself to have killed her was something that was not only horrific but associatively connected to the music playing when I committed the act. The act was the memory I repressed, but because music was connected to it, I ultimately repressed the music as well. Remember, you say, that a repressed memory is like a magnet, Gideon. It attracts to it other things that are associated with the memory and pulls them in, repressing them also. The Archduke was intimately related to your actions that night. You repressed those actions—and it appears that everyone either overtly or subtly encouraged you to repress them—and the music got drawn into the repression.

  But I've always been able to play everything else. Only The Archduke defeated me.

  Indeed, you say. But when Katja Wolff appeared unexpectedly at Wigmore Hall and introduced herself to you, the complete repression was finally triggered.

  Why? Why?

  Because Katja Wolff, your violin, The Archduke, and your sister's death were all associatively connected in your mind. That's how it works, Gideon. The main repressed memory was your belief that you had drowned your sister. That repression drew to it the memory of Katja, the person most associated with your sister. What followed Katja into the black hole was The Archduke, the piece that was playing that night. Finally, the rest of the music—symbolised by the violin it-self—followed that single piece you'd always had trouble playing. That's how it works.

  I am silent at this. I am afraid to ask the next question—Will I be able to play again?—because I despise what it reveals about me. We are all the centres of our individual worlds, but most of us are capable of seeing others who exist within our singular boundaries. But I have never been capable of that. I have seen only myself from the very first time I became conscious that I had a self to see. To ask about my music now seems monstrous to me. That question would act as a repudiation of my innocent sister's entire existence. And I've done enough repudiating of Sonia to last me the rest of my life.

  Do you believe your father? you ask me. What he said about Sonia's death and the part he himself played in her death … Do you believe him, Gideon?

  I'll believe nothing till I talk to my mother.

  13 November

  I begin to see my life in a perspective that makes much clear to me, Dr. Rose. I begin to see how the relationships I've attempted to form or have formed successfully were actually ruled by that which I didn't want to face: my sister's death. The people who didn't know how I was involved in the circumstances of her death were the people I was able to be with, and those were the people most concerned with my own prime concern, which was my professional life: Sherrill and my other fellow musicians, recording artists, conductors, producers, concert organisers round the globe. But the people who might have wanted more from me than a performance on my instrument … those were the people with whom I failed.

  Beth is the best example of this. Of course I couldn't be the partner in life that she wanted me to be. Partnership of that sort suggested to me a level of intimacy, trust, and revelation in which I could not afford to participate. My only hope for survival was to effect an escape from her.

  And so it is with Libby now. That prime symbol of intimacy between us—the Act—is beyond my power. We lie in each other's arms, and feeling desire is so far removed from what I'm experiencing that Libby may as well be a sack of potatoes.

  At least I know why. And until I speak to my mother and learn the full truth of what happened that night, I can have nothing with any woman, no matter who she is, no matter how little she expects of me.

  16 November

  I was returning from Primrose Hill when I saw Libby again. I'd taken one of the kites out, a new one that I'd worked on for several weeks and was eager to try. I'd employed what I thought was an intriguingly aerodynamic design, crafted to ensure that the height reached would be a record-breaking one.

  On the top of Primrose Hill, there is nothing to impede the flight of a kite. The trees are distant, and the only structures that could get in the way of anything airborne are the buildings that stand far beyond the hill's crest, on the other side of the roads that border the park. As it was a day of good wind, I assumed that I'd have the kite aloft within moments of releasing it.

  That wasn't the case. Every time I released it, began to jog forward, and played out the twine, the kite shuddered, tossed and turned on the wind, and plummeted to the ground like a missile. Time and again, I made the attempt, after adjusting the leading edge, the standoffs, even the bridle. Nothing helped. Eventually, one of the bottom spreaders fractured, and I had to give up the whole enterprise.

  I was trudging along Chalcot Crescent when I encountered Libby. She was heading in the direction I had just come from, a Boots bag dangling from one hand and a can of diet Coke in the other. Picnic lunch, I assumed. I could see the top of a baguette rising out of the bag like a crusty appendage.

  “The wind'll give you aggravation if you're planning to eat your lunch out there,” I said with a nod in the direction I'd just walked.

  “Hi to you, too,” was her reply.

  She said it politely, but her smile was brief. We hadn't seen each other since our unhappy encounter in her flat, and although I'd heard her come in and go out and had admittedly anticipated her ringing my bell, she hadn't done so. I'd missed her, but once I'd remembered what I needed to remember about Sonia, about Katja, and about my part in the death of one and the imprisonment of the other, I realised it was just as well. I wasn't fit to be any woman's companion, be that her friend, her lover, or her husband. So whether she realised it or not, Libby was wise to steer clear.

  “I've been trying to get this one up,” I said, lifting the broken kite by way of explaining my statement about the wind. “If you stay off the hill and eat down below, you might be all right.”

  “Ducks,” she said.

  For a moment I thought the word was another strange California term I'd never heard before. She went on.

  “I'm going to feed them. In Regent's Park.”

  “Ah. I see. I thought … Well, seeing the bread—”

  “And associating me with food. Yeah. It makes good sense.”

  “I don't associate you with food, Libby.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You don't.”

  I shifted the kite from my left hand to my right. I didn't like the feeling of being at odds with her, but I had no clear idea how to bridge the chasm between us. We are, at heart, such different people, I thought. Perhaps, just as Dad had seen it from the first, it was always a ridiculous affiliation: Libby Neale and Gideon Davies. What had they in common, after all?

  “I haven't seen Rafe in a couple of days,” Libby said, indicating the direction of Chalcot Square with a toss of her head. “I was wondering if something happened to him.”

  The fact that she'd given me an opening prompted me to realise that she always had been the person to provide the openings in our conversations. And that realisation was what prompted me to say, “Something has happened. But not to him.”

  She looked at me earnestly. “Your dad's okay, right?”

  “He's fine.”

  “His girlfriend?”

  “Jill's fine. Everyone's fine.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  I took a deep breath. “Libby, I'm going to see my mother. After all this time, I'm actually going to see her. Dad told me she's been phoning him about me, so we're going to meet. Just the two of us. And when we do, there's a chance that I'll get to the bottom of the violin problem.”

  She put her can of diet Coke into the Boots bag and rubbed her hand down her hip. “I guess that's cool, Gid. If you want it to be. It's, like, what you want in life, right?”

  “It is my life.”

  “Sure. It's your life. That's what you've made it.”

  I could tell by her tone that we were back to the uneven ground we'd walked ov
er before, and I felt a surge of frustration run through me. “Libby, I'm a musician. If nothing else, it's how I support myself. It's where the money to live comes from. You can understand that.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “Then—”

  “Look, Gid. Like I said, I'm heading out to feed the ducks.”

  “Why don't you come up afterwards? We could have a meal.”

  “I've got plans for tapping.”

  “Tapping?”

  She looked away. For a moment, her face expressed a reaction I couldn't quite grasp. When she turned her head back to me, her eyes appeared sorrowful. But when she spoke, her voice was resigned. “Tap dancing,” she said. “It's what I like to do.”

  “Sorry. I'd forgotten.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

  “What about later, then? I should be home. I'm just hanging about, waiting to hear from Dad. Come up after your dancing. If you've a mind to, that is.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I'll see you around.”

  At that, I knew she wouldn't come up. The fact that I'd forgotten her dancing was, apparently, the final blow to her. I said, “Libby, I've had a lot on my mind. You know that. You must see—”

  “Jesus,” she interrupted me. “You don't get anything.”

  “I ‘get’ that you're angry.”

  “I'm not angry. I'm not anything. I'm going to the park to feed the ducks. Because I've got the time and I like ducks. I've always liked ducks. And after that, I'm going to a tap-dancing lesson. Because I like tap dancing.”

  “You're avoiding me, aren't you?”

  “This isn't about you. I'm not about you. The rest of the world isn't about you. If you, like, stop playing the violin tomorrow, the rest of the world will just go on being the rest of the world. But how can you go on being you if there's no you in the first place, Gid?”

  “That's what I'm trying to recapture.”