A Traitor to Memory

by Elizabeth George

  They are standing against the brick shed where the gardening tools are kept. His back is to me. Her hands cover his head. One of her legs crosses behind him above his arse, holding him to her and they grind together, they grind and grind. Her head is thrown back and he kisses her neck and I can't see who he is but I can see her. It's Katja, my little sister's nanny. It's one of the men from the house.

  Not someone else Katja knows? you ask. Not someone from the outside?

  Who? Katja knows no one, Dr. Rose. She sees no one but the nun from the convent and a girl who comes to call now and then, a girl called Katie. And this isn't Katie out here in the darkness because I remember Katie, Good God I remember Katie now because she's fat and she's funny and she dresses with flair and she talks in the kitchen when Katja feeds Sonia and she says that Katja's escape from East Berlin was a metaphor for an organism only it wasn't organism that she said at all, it was orgasm, wasn't it, which is all she ever talks about.

  Gideon, you say to me, who was the man? Look at the shape of him, look at his hair.

  Her hands cover his head. He's bent to her anyway. I can't see his hair.

  Can't or won't? Which is it, Gideon? Is it can't or won't?

  I can't. I can't.

  Have you seen the lodger? Your father? Your grandfather? Raphael Robson? Who is it, Gideon?

  I DON'T KNOW.

  And Libby reached for me then, reached her hands down, did what a normal woman does when she's aroused and wants to share her arousal. She laughed a breathless sort of laugh, said, “I can't even believe we're doing this in your car,” and eased my belt out of its buckle, unfastened it, unbuttoned my trousers, put her fingers on the zipper, brought her mouth back to mine.

  And there was nothing within me, Dr. Rose. No hunger, no thirst, no heat, no longing. No pulse of blood to awaken my lust, no throbbing in the veins to harden my cock.

  I grabbed Libby's hands. I didn't need to make an excuse or say anything else to her. She may be American—a little loud at times, a little vulgar, a little too casual, too friendly, and too forthright—but she isn't a fool.

  She pushed herself off me and got back in her seat. “It's me, isn't it?” she said. “I'm too fat for you.”

  “Don't be an idiot.”

  “Don't call me an idiot.”

  “Don't act like one.”

  She turned to the window. It was steaming up. Light from the square diffracted through the steam and cast a muted glow against her cheek. Round, the cheek looked, and I could see the colour in it, the flush of a peach as it grows and ripens. The despair I felt—for myself, for her, for the two of us together—was what made me continue. “You're fine, Libby. You're one hundred percent. You're perfect. It isn't you.”

  “Then what? Rock? It's Rock. It's that we're still married. It's that you know what he does to me, don't you? You've figured it out.”

  I didn't know what she was talking about, and I didn't want to know. I said, “Libby, if you haven't realised by now that there's something wrong with me—something seriously wrong—”

  And at that, she got out of the car. She shoved the door open and slammed it shut, and she did what she never does. She shouted. “Nothing is wrong with you, Gideon! Do you hear me? Nothing is fucking wrong with you!”

  I got out as well, and we faced each other over the bonnet of the car. I said, “You know that you're lying to yourself.”

  “I know what's before my eyes. And what's before my eyes is you.”

  “You've heard me try to play. You've sat in your flat and heard me. You know.”

  “The violin? Is that what this is all about, Gid? The God damn cock-sucking violin?” She smashed her fist against the car's bonnet so hard that I started. She cried, “You are not the violin. Playing music is what you do. It is not—and has never been—who you are.”

  “And if I can't play? What happens then?”

  “Then you live, all right? You God damn start living. How about that for a profound idea?”

  “You don't understand.”

  “I understand plenty. I understand that you've got yourself, like, all hooked into being Mr. Violin. You've spent so many years scratching at the strings that you don't have any other identity. Why are you doing it? What's it s'posed to prove? Will your dad, maybe, love you enough if you play till your fingers bleed or something?” She swung away from the car and away from me. “Like, why am I even bothering, Gideon?”

  She began striding towards the house and I followed her, which was when I saw that the front door was open and that someone was standing on the front steps and probably had been standing there since Libby had parked the car in the square. She saw him at that same moment that I did and for the first time I caught on her face an expression telling me she held an aversion to him that was as strong as—if not stronger than—the one my father held for her.

  “Then perhaps it's time you stopped bothering,” Dad said. His voice was quite pleasant, but his eyes were steel.

  GIDEON

  20 October, 10:00 P.M.

  Dad said, “Charming girl. Does she always shriek like a fishwife in the square, or was that something special this evening?”

  “She was upset.”

  “That was obvious. As were her feelings about your work, by the way, which is something you might want to consider should you wish to carry on with her.”

  I didn't want to discuss Libby with him. He's made his attitude plain from the start. There's no point wasting energy trying to change it.

  We were in the kitchen, where we'd repaired once Libby left us on the steps. She'd said to him, “Richard, stay out of my way,” and had pushed open the gate to her steps with a clang. She'd pounded down and into her flat, from where the volume of her pop music was now illustrating the state of her mind.

  “We went to see Bertram Cresswell-White,” I told Dad. “Do you remember him?”

  “I had a look at your garden earlier,” Dad replied, canting his head towards the back of the house. “The weeds are starting to go rampant, Gideon. If you aren't careful, they're going to choke out the rest of the plants, what few there are. You know, you can hire a Filipino if you don't like gardening. Have you considered doing that?”

  From below in Libby's flat, the pop music blared. She'd opened her windows. Distorted phrases pounded up from the lower ground floor: How can your man … loves you … slow down, bay-bee …

  I said, “Dad, I asked you—”

  “I've brought you two camellias, by the way.” He walked to the window overlooking the garden.

  … let him know … he's playing around!

  It was dark outside, so there was nothing to see except Dad's own reflection and mine on the glass. His was clear; mine wavered ghostlike as if affected by either the atmosphere or my inability to manifest strongly.

  “I've planted them on either side of the steps,” Dad said. “They're not quite what I want yet in the way of blooms, but I'm getting close.”

  “Dad, I'm asking you—”

  “I've weeded both planters, but you're going to have to see to the rest of the garden yourself.”

  “Dad!” … a chance to feel … free to … the feeling grab you, bay-bee.

  “Or you can always ask your American friend if she wants to make herself useful in ways other than verbally assaulting you in the street or entertaining you with her quaint choice of music.”

  “God damn it, Dad. I'm asking you a question.”

  He turned from the window. “I heard the question. And—”

  Love him. Love him, baby. Love him.

  “—if I didn't have to compete with your little American's auditory entertainment, I might actually consider answering it.”

  I said loudly, “Ignore it, then. Ignore Libby as well. You're good at ignoring things you can't be bothered with, aren't you, Dad?”

  The music suddenly stopped, as if I'd been heard. The silence following my question created nature's enemy, a vacuum, and I waited to see what would fill it. A momen
t later Libby's door banged shut. A moment after that the Suzuki fired up in the street. It roared as she angrily revved its motor. Then the sound faded as she spun out of Chalcot Square.

  Dad leveled a look at me, his arms crossed. We'd arrived at dangerous territory, the two of us, and I could feel that danger, like a live wire snapping in the air between us. But he said evenly, “Yes. Yes, I suppose I do that, don't I? I ignore unpleasantness in order to get on with living.”

  I side-stepped the implication behind his words. I said slowly, as if speaking to someone who did not understand English, “Do you remember Cresswell-White?”

  He sighed and moved away from the window. He walked into the music room. I followed him. He sat near my stereo and racks of CDs. I remained by the door.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked me.

  I accepted the question as acquiescence, saying, “I've remembered seeing Katja in the garden. It was night. She was with someone, a man. They were—” I shrugged, feeling heat in my face, aware of the juvenility of that heat, which only made it seem to grow stronger. “They were together. Intimately. I can't remember who he was. I don't think I saw him clearly.”

  “What's the point of this?”

  “You know the point. We've been through it all. You know what she—what Dr. Rose—wants me to do.”

  “So tell me, is this particular memory supposed to relate to your music in some way?”

  “I'm trying to remember whatever I can. In whatever order I can. When I can. One memory seems to trigger another, and if I hook enough of them together, there's a chance I can get to whatever it is that's causing the problem with my playing.”

  “There is no problem with your playing. There is no playing.”

  “Why won't you just answer? Why won't you help me? Just tell me who Katja—”

  “Are you assuming that I know?” he demanded. “Or are you really asking if I was the man with Katja Wolff in the garden? My relationship with Jill certainly indicates a predilection for younger women, doesn't it? And if I have that predilection now, why not then?”

  “Are you going to answer?”

  “Let me assure you that my current predilection is recent and directed solely at Jill.”

  “So you weren't the man in the garden. The man with Katja Wolff.”

  “I was not.”

  I studied him. I wondered if he was telling the truth. I thought of that picture of Katja and my sister, of the way she smiled at whoever was taking it, of what that smile might mean.

  He said with a tired gesture towards the racks near his chair, “I had the opportunity to look through your CDs while I was waiting for you, Gideon.”

  I waited, wary about this line of talk.

  “You've quite a collection. How many are there? Three hundred? Four?”

  I made no response.

  “A number of different interpretations of some pieces by different artists as well.”

  “I'm sure there's a point in this,” I said at last.

  “But not a single copy of The Archduke. Why is that? I wonder.”

  “I've never been attracted to that particular piece.”

  “Then why were you going to play it at Wigmore Hall?”

  “Beth suggested it. Sherrill went along. I had no real objection—”

  “To playing a piece of music that doesn't attract you?” he demanded. “What the hell were you thinking? You're the name, Gideon. Not Beth. Not Sherrill. You call the shots when it comes to a concert. They do not.”

  “The concert's not what I want to talk about.”

  “I understand that. Believe me, I entirely understand. You haven't wanted to talk about the concert from the beginning. You're seeing this damned psychiatrist, in fact, because you don't want to talk about the concert.”

  “That's not true.”

  “Joanne heard from Philadelphia today. They wanted to know if you'll be able to make your appearance there. The rumours have traveled to America, Gideon. How much longer do you expect to be able to hold the world at bay?”

  “I'm trying to get to the root of this in the only way I know.”

  “‘Trying to get to the root of this,’” he mocked. “You're doing nothing but opting for cowardice, and I wouldn't have thought that possible. I only thank God your grandfather didn't live to see this moment.”

  “Are you thankful for me or for yourself?”

  He drew in a slow breath. One of his hands balled into a fist. The other hand reached to cradle it. “What exactly are you saying?”

  I couldn't go further. We'd reached one of those moments when it seemed to me that irreparable harm could come from carrying on. And what good could have come from carrying on? What point would be served by forcing my father to turn the mirror from me onto his own childhood? onto his adulthood? onto everything he'd done and been and attempted in order to be acceptable to the man who'd adopted him?

  Freaks, freaks, freaks, Granddad had shouted at the son who'd created three of them. Because I, too, am a freak of nature, Dr. Rose. At heart I have always been one.

  I said, “Cresswell-White said everyone gave evidence against Katja. Everyone from the house, he said.”

  Dad watched me through narrowed eyes before he made a comment, and I couldn't tell if his hesitation had to do with my words or with my refusal to answer his question. “That should hardly have come as a surprise to you in a murder trial,” he finally responded.

  “He told me I wasn't called to give evidence.”

  “That's what happened. Yes.”

  “I've remembered speaking to the police, though. I've remembered you and my mother arguing about my speaking to the police as well. I've remembered that there were a number of questions about the relationship between Sarah-Jane Beckett and James the Lodger.”

  “Pitchford.” Dad's voice was heavier now, weary. “James Pitchford was his name.”

  “Pitchford. Right. Yes. James Pitchford.” I'd been standing all the while, and now I picked up a chair and moved it to where Dad himself was sitting. I set it in front of him. “At the trial, someone said that you and my mother rowed with Katja in the days preceding … preceding what happened to Sonia.”

  “She was pregnant, Gideon. She'd become lax in her responsibilities. Your sister would have been a difficult charge for anyone and—”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” He rubbed his eyebrows as if trying to stimulate his own memory. When he dropped his hand, he looked up at the ceiling instead of at me, but when he lifted his head, I had time enough to see that his eyes had become red-rimmed. I felt a pang, but I did not stop him when he went on. “Gideon, I've already recited a litany of your sister's ailments for you. Down's Syndrome was only the tip of the iceberg. She was in and out of hospital for the two years that she was alive, and when she was out of hospital, she had to have someone to attend to her constantly. That someone was Katja.”

  “Why didn't you hire a professional nurse?”

  He laughed without humour. “We hadn't the funds.”

  “The Government—”

  “State support? Unthinkable.”

  And something within me jarred loose at that, my grandfather's words, spoken in a roar over the dinner table: “We do not lower ourselves to ask for charity, God damn it. A real man supports his family, and if he can't do so, he shouldn't produce one in the first place. Keep it in your bloody trousers, Dick, if you can't face the consequences of waving it about. You hear me, boy?”

  And to this, Dad added, “And even if we'd tried for support, how far would we have got once the Government sorted out how much we were already spending to employ Raphael and Sarah-Jane? There was belt-tightening that we could have done. We chose not to do it initially.”

  “What about the row with Katja?”

  “What about it? We learned from Sarah-Jane that Katja had been lax. We talked to the girl, and during the conversation it came out that she was being sick in the morning. It was a short leap to the fact that she was pregnant. S
he didn't deny it.”

  “So you sacked her on the spot.”

  “What else were we supposed to do?”

  “Who made her pregnant?”

  “She wouldn't say. And we did not sack her because she wouldn't say, all right? That was hardly the issue. We sacked her because she couldn't look after your sister properly. And there were other problems, earlier problems that we'd overlooked because she'd seemed fond of Sonia, and we liked that.”

  “What sort of problems?”

  “Her clothing, which was never appropriate. We'd asked her to wear either a uniform or a simple, plain skirt and blouse. She wouldn't, no matter how often we instructed her to do so. She felt she had to express herself, she said. Then there were her visitors, who came and went at all hours of the day and night despite our asking her to limit their calls.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I don't recall them. Good God, this was more than twenty years ago.”

  “Katie?”

  “What?”

  “Someone called Katie. She was fat. She wore expensive clothes. I remember Katie.”

  “Perhaps there was a Katie. I don't know. They came from the convent. They sat in the kitchen and talked and drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. And several times when Katja went out with them on her evening off, she came back inebriated and overslept in the morning. What I'm trying to tell you is that there were problems before the pregnancy issue came up, Gideon. The pregnancy—as well as the illness that accompanied it—was just the final straw.”

  “But you and Mother argued with Katja when you gave her the sack.”

  He shoved himself to his feet, walked across the room, and stood looking down at my violin case, closed now as it had been for days, the Guarneri hidden away from my sight so that it might cease to taunt me. “She didn't want to be sacked, obviously. She was several months pregnant, and she wasn't likely to find anyone else to employ her. So she argued with us. She pleaded to be kept on.”

  “Then why not get rid of her baby? Even then, there were places … clinics …”