A Traitor to Memory

by Elizabeth George

  As if, Libby thought scornfully.

  Richard continued, if only in her head, “I accepted it as a hobby before, Gideon, but I can't accept it now. We've got to get you well. We've got to get you playing. You've concerts scheduled, recordings to make, and a public waiting.”

  Fuck off, Libby told Richard Davies. He's got a life. He's got a good life. Why don't you think about getting one, too?

  The thought of actually going mano a mano with Richard for once—of actually telling him off without Gideon there to stop her—renewed Libby's energetic surge along the path. She reached the shed and knocked the door the rest of the way open.

  Gideon was there, no Richard with him. He was sitting at his makeshift design table. A piece of butcher paper was taped on the work surface before him, and he sat staring at it like it had something to say to him if he only listened to it long and hard enough.

  Libby said, “Gid? Hi. I saw the light.”

  He didn't act like he'd heard her. He kept his gaze on the paper in front of him.

  Libby said, “I knocked on the door upstairs. I rang the doorbell, too. I saw your car in the square, so I figured you were home. Then, when I saw the light out here …” She heard her own words die off, like a plant that's wilting without its necessary water.

  He said, his eyes still fixed on the paper, “You're back from work early.”

  “I got my deliveries better organised today so I wouldn't be backtracking all over the place for once.” Her aptitude for hasty lying surprised her. Something of Rock was rubbing off on her.

  “I'm surprised your husband didn't want you to stay on anyway.”

  “He doesn't know, and I'm sure as hell not telling him.” She shivered. A small electric heater stood on the floor near him, but Gideon didn't have it on. She said, “Aren't you cold without a sweater or something?”

  “I hadn't actually noticed.”

  “Been out here long?”

  “A few hours, I think.”

  “So what're you doing? Another kite?”

  “Something to fly,” he said. “Higher than the others.”

  “Sounds cool.” She went to stand behind him, eager to see his latest design. She said, “You could do this professionally. No one makes kites like you do, Gid. They're incredible. They're—”

  The sight of the design paper stopped her. What he'd produced was an elaborate mass of smudges where he'd drawn and then erased what he'd drawn. They covered the paper, with some of the erasures tearing through it.

  Gideon turned to look at her when she didn't complete her remarks. He turned so quickly that she didn't have time to arrange her face.

  He said, “I've lost this as well, it seems.”

  She said, “No, you haven't. Don't be dumb. You're just … blocked or stopped up or something. This is a creative thing, right? Making kites is creative. Anything creative gets stopped up now and then.”

  He read her face and apparently saw on it what she hadn't said. He shook his head. He looked the worst she'd seen him look in all the time since he'd been unable to play his music. He looked worse even than he'd looked just the previous night when he'd come to tell her that his mother was dead. His light hair lay flat and unwashed against his skull, his eyes seemed sunken, and his lips were so chapped that they looked like scales were growing on them. It all seemed so extreme, she thought. Hell, he hadn't even seen his mother in years, and he hadn't exactly been tied to her when she was alive, had he? Not like he was tied to his dad.

  As if he knew her thoughts and wanted to respond to correct them, he said, “I saw her, Libby.”

  “Who?”

  He said, “I saw her, and I forgot that I saw her.”

  “Your mom?” Libby asked. “You saw your mom?”

  “I don't know how I'd forgotten that I saw her. I don't know how it works when you forget, but that's what happened.”

  He was looking at Libby, but she could tell he wasn't seeing her, and he seemed to be talking to himself. He sounded so filled with self-loathing that she hastened to reassure him. She said, “Maybe you didn't know who she was. It'd been … what … years and years … since you were a kid that you last saw her. And you don't have any pictures of her, do you? So how would you even remember what she looked like?”

  “She was there,” he said dully. “She said my name. ‘Do you remember me, Gideon?’ And she wanted money.”

  “Money?”

  “I turned away from her. I am too important, you see, and I have important concerts to give. So I turned away. Because I didn't know who she was. But I'm at fault for that, no matter what I knew or when I knew it.”

  “Shit,” Libby murmured as she began to realise what he was implying. “Gid, heck. You're not thinking you're, like, responsible for what's happened to your mom, are you?”

  “I don't think,” he said. “I know.” And he moved his gaze away from her, fixing it on the open doorway, where the daylight had faded and what remained of it were shadows that created great wells of darkness.

  She said, “That's bullshit. If you'd known who she was when she came to you, you would've helped her out. I know you, Gideon. You're good. You're decent. If your mother was on the ropes or something, if she needed cash, you wouldn't've ever let her go under. Yeah, she ran out on you. Yeah, she kept away from you for years. But she was your mom and you aren't the kind of guy who holds grudges against anyone, least of all your mom. You're not like Rock Peters.” Libby gave a humourless laugh at the thought of what her estranged husband might have done had his mother shown up in his life asking for money after a twenty-year absence. He'd've given her a piece of his mind, Libby thought. He'd've given her more than a piece of his mind. Mother or not, he'd've probably given her the sort of smacking around that he reserved for women who righteously pissed him off. And he would've been righteously pissed off at that: having a deserting mom show up on his doorstep asking for money without so much as a how've-you-been-son first. In fact, he might've been so pissed off that—

  Libby put the brakes on her runaway thoughts. She told herself that the whole idea that Gideon Davies of all people would lift a hand to harm even a spider was plain idiotic. He was an artist, after all, and an artist wasn't the type of man who would run down someone in the street and expect to keep his creative flow flowing afterwards. Except that here he was with the kites, unable to do what he'd earlier been able to do with ease.

  She said, although her mouth was dry, “Did you hear from her, Gid? I mean after she asked you for money. Did you hear from her again?”

  “I didn't know who she was,” Gideon repeated. “I didn't know what she wanted, Libby, so I didn't understand what she was talking about.”

  Libby took that for negation because she didn't want to take it as anything else. She said, “Listen, why don't we go inside? I'll make you some tea. It's freezing in this place. You gotta be an ice cube if you've been out here awhile.”

  She took his arm and he allowed himself to be helped to his feet. She switched out the light and together they felt their way through the gloom to the door. He seemed like a heavy burden to Libby, leaning against her as if all his strength had been depleted in the hours he'd spent trying to design a simple kite.

  “I don't know what I'm going to do,” he said. “Mother would have helped me, and now she's gone.”

  “What you're going to do is have a cup of tea,” Libby told him. “I'll throw in a tea cake on the side.”

  “I can't eat,” he said. “I can't sleep.”

  “Then sleep with me tonight. You're always able to sleep with me.” They didn't do anything else, she thought, that was for sure. For the first time, she wondered if he was a virgin, if he'd lost the ability to be close to a woman once his mother deserted him. She knew next to nothing about psychology, but it seemed like a reasonable explanation for Gideon's apparent aversion to sex. How could he take the chance that a woman he grew to love might actually abandon him again?

  Libby led him down the steps to her kitche
n, where she discovered in short order that she didn't have any of the tea cakes she'd promised him. She didn't have anything to toast at all, but she bet that he did, so she hustled him up to his own part of the house and sat him at the kitchen table while she filled the kettle and rustled through his cupboards for tea and something edible that would go with it.

  He sat looking like the living dead … although Libby winced when she came up with the analogy. She chatted about her day in an attempt to distract him and she found herself putting so much energy into the effort that she built up a sweat beneath her leathers. Without a thought, she unzipped the top and started to work her way out of it as she talked.

  The tabloid she'd stuffed inside fell out. Just like a piece of buttered bread, it fell with the part she wouldn't wish to find face up exactly that: face up. The screaming headline managed what screaming headlines always seek to do: It got Gideon's attention and he bent from his chair and pulled the paper to him as Libby made a grab for it herself.

  She said, “Don't. It'll just make things worse.”

  He looked up at her. “What things?”

  “Why put yourself through more shit?” she asked him, her fingers closing over one side of the tabloid as his fingers closed over the other. “All it does is dig everything up all over again. You don't need that.”

  But Gideon's fingers were as insistent as hers and she knew that she could either let him have the paper or they would rip it in half between them like two women battling over a dress at a Nordstrom's sale. She released her half and mentally kicked her butt for having brought the tabloid with her in the first place and for having forgotten she had it in the second place.

  Gideon read the article much as she had done. And just the same, he made the jump to the double spread of pages four and five. There, he saw the pictures that the paper had disinterred from its morgue: his sister, his mom and his dad, his own eight-year-old self, and the other parties involved. It must have been one hell of a slow news day, Libby thought bitterly.

  She said, “Hey. Gideon. I forgot to say. Someone phoned when I was banging on your door. I heard a voice on the answer machine. You want to listen? You want me to play it back for you?”

  “That can wait,” he said.

  “Could've been your dad. Might've been about Jill. How d' you feel about that anyway? You never said. It must be so weird to be going to have a little brother or sister when you're old enough to have a kid yourself. Do they know what it's going to be?”

  “A girl,” he said, although she could tell his mind was elsewhere. “Jill had the tests. It's going to be a girl.”

  “Cool. A little sister. What a trip for you. You'll be, like, so totally excellent a big brother.”

  He got to his feet abruptly. “I can't cope with any more nightmares. I don't sleep for hours when I go to bed. I lie there and I listen and I watch the ceiling. When I finally fall asleep, there're the dreams. The dreams and the dreams. I can't cope with the dreams.”

  The kettle clicked off behind her. Libby wanted to see to the tea, but there was something in his face, something so wild and despairing in his face…. She hadn't seen such an expression before, and she told herself that she was mesmerised by it, drawn into it in such a powerful way that any action other than looking at him was completely impossible. Better that, she thought, than go in any other direction … like wondering if his mother's death had pushed Gideon over the edge.

  That couldn't be the case because what reason was there? Why would a man like him wig out if his mom died? If his mom whom he hadn't seen or heard from in years just died? Okay, so he saw her once, so she asked him for money, so he didn't know who she was and refused…. Was that something to totally lose it over? Libby didn't think so. But she knew that she was distinctly glad that Gideon was seeing a psychiatrist.

  She said, “D' you tell your shrink about the dreams? They're supposed to know what they mean, aren't they? I mean, what else are you paying them for if not to tell you what your dreams mean so that you can stop having them. Right?”

  “I've stopped seeing her.”

  Libby frowned. “The shrink? When?”

  “I cancelled my appointment today. She can't help me get back to the violin. I've been wasting my time.”

  “But I thought you liked her.”

  “What does it mean that I liked her? If she can't help me, what the hell's the point? She wanted me to remember and I've remembered and what's been the result of that? Look at me. Look at this. Look. Look. Do you actually think I can play like this?”

  He held out his hands, and she saw something she'd not noticed before, something she knew hadn't been there twenty-four hours ago when he'd first come to her and told her of his mother's death. His hands were shaking. They were shaking bad, like her grandpa's hands shook before his Parkinson's medication kicked in.

  One part of her wanted to celebrate what it meant that Gideon had stopped seeing the psychiatrist: He was beginning to define himself as more than a violinist, which was definitely good. But another part of her felt a prickling of unease at what he was saying. Without the violin, he could discover who he was but he had to want to make the discovery, and he didn't much sound or look like a man willing to embark on a journey of self-actualisation.

  Still, she said gently, “Not playing's not the end of the world, Gideon.”

  “It's the end of my world,” he told her.

  He went into the music room. She heard him stumble, hit against something, and curse. A light switched on, and as Libby saw to the tea—a recommendation on her part that she now recognised as the straw-grasping it most certainly was—Gideon listened to the message that had come in while he'd been trying to work in the shed.

  “This is Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley,” a plush costume-drama baritone informed them. “I'm on the way up to London from Brighton. Will you phone me on my mobile when you get this message? I need to speak to you regarding your uncle.”

  An uncle now? Libby wondered as the detective recited his cell phone number. What next? How much more was going to be heaped on Gideon and when would he finally shout, “Enough!”

  She was about to say, “Wait till tomorrow, Gid. Sleep with me tonight. I'll make you not have nightmares. I promise,” when she heard Gideon punching in numbers on his telephone. A moment later he began to speak. She tried to sound busy with the tea, but she listened all the same, in Gideon's best interests.

  “Gideon Davies here,” he said. “I got your message…. Thanks…. Yes, it was a shock.” He listened long to something that the detective was telling him. He finally said, “I'd prefer it on the phone, if it's all the same to you.”

  Score one for our side, Libby thought. We'll have a quiet night and then we'll sleep. But as she took their tea cups to the table, Gideon went on, after another pause to listen to the cop.

  “Very well, then. If there's no other way.” He recited his address. “I'll be here, Inspector.” And he hung up.

  He came back to the kitchen. Libby tried to look as if she hadn't been eavesdropping. She went to a cupboard and opened it, searching for something to go with their tea. She settled on a bag of Japanese crackers. She ripped it open and dumped its contents into a bowl, searching out two peas and popping them into her mouth as she carried it back to the table.

  “One of the detectives,” Gideon said unnecessarily. “He wants to talk to me about my uncle.”

  “Something happen to your uncle, too?” Libby scooped a spoonful of sugar into her cup. She didn't really want the tea, but as she'd been the one to suggest it, she didn't see a way to get out of drinking it.

  “I don't know,” Gideon told her.

  “Think you should call him before the cops get here, then? Check out what's going on?”

  “I've no idea where he is.”

  “Brighton?” Libby felt her face get hot. “I overheard that guy say he was coming in from Brighton. On his message. When you played it.”

  “It could be Brighton. But I didn't thi
nk to ask his name.”

  “Whose?”

  “My uncle's.”

  “You don't know …? Oh. Well. Never mind, I guess.” It was just another twist in his family history, Libby thought. Lots of people didn't know their relatives. As her father would have said, it was a sign of the times. “You couldn't put him off till tomorrow?”

  “I didn't want to put him off. I want to know what's happening.”

  “Oh. Sure.” She was disappointed, seeing herself ministering to him throughout the long evening, figuring inanely that ministering to him now that he was at his lowest might lead to something more between them, making a final breakthrough somehow. She said, “If you can trust him, I guess.”

  “Trust him how?”

  “Trust him to tell you the truth. He's a cop, after all.” She shrugged and scooped up a handful of the Japanese mix.

  Gideon sat. He pulled his tea cup towards him, but he didn't drink. He said, “It doesn't matter one way or another.”

  “What doesn't?”

  “Whether he tells me the truth or not.”

  “No? Why not?” Libby asked.

  Gideon looked her square in the face when he delivered the blow. “Because I can't trust anyone with the truth. I didn't know that before. But I know that now.”

  Things were moving from bad to worse.

  J. W Pitchley AKA TongueMan, AKA James Pitchford, logged off the internet, stared at the blank screen, and cursed it to hell. He'd finally managed to get CreamPants on the net for some cybertalk, but despite a good half hour of reasoning with her, she wasn't going to cooperate. All she had to do was walk into the Hampstead police station and have a five-minute conversation with DCI Leach and she wouldn't do it. She merely needed to confirm that she and a man she knew only as TongueMan had spent the evening together, first in a South Kensington restaurant and then in a claustrophobic little room above Cromwell Road where the ceaseless traffic noise disguised the frantic creaking of bedsprings and the cries of pleasure that he coaxed from her when he performed the services implied by his moniker. But no, she couldn't do that for him. No matter that he'd brought her off six times in under two hours, no matter that he'd held off taking his own satisfaction till she was weak, sodden, and limp with having taken hers, no matter that he'd fulfilled her every seamy fantasy about the rewards of anonymous sex. She wasn't going to step forward and “face the humiliation of having a complete stranger know the sort of woman I can be under certain unusual circumstances.”