A Traitor to Memory

by Elizabeth George

  “You think I don't know it?”

  “Didn't say that,” he said. “But whether you like me or hate me, I c'n be his friend. I'd like to do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Be somebody to your boy. He likes me. You c'n see that yourself. I take him out and about now and then, he gets a chance to mix it up with someone who's playing it straight. With a man who's playing it straight, Missus Edwards,” he hastened to add. “A boy his age? He needs that pretty bad.”

  “Why? You had it yourself, you saying?”

  “I had it, yeah. Like to pass it along.”

  She snorted. “Save it for your own kids, man.”

  “When I have them, sure. I'll pass it to them. In the meanwhile …” He sighed. “It's this: I like him, Missus Edwards. When I got the free time, I'd like to spend it with him.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Don't know.”

  “He doesn't need you.”

  “Not saying he needs me,” Nkata told her. “But he needs someone. A man. You c'n see it. And the way I'm thinking—”

  “I don't care what you're thinking.” She pressed the button and the sound came on. She raised it a notch lest he miss the message.

  He looked in the direction of the bedrooms, wondering if the boy would wake up, would walk into the sitting room, would show by his smile of welcome that everything Winston Nkata was saying was true. But the increase in volume didn't penetrate the closed door, or if it did, to Daniel Edwards it was just another sound in the night.

  Nkata said, “You got my card still?”

  Yasmin didn't reply, her eyes fastened on the television screen.

  Nkata took out another and set it on the coffee table in front of her. “You ring me if you change your mind,” he said. “Or you c'n page me. Anytime. It's okay.”

  She made no reply, so he left the flat. He closed the door quietly, gently, behind him.

  He was below in the car park, crossing its puddle-strewn expanse to reach the street, before he realised that he'd forgotten his promise to himself to stop at Mr. Houghton's flat, show his warrant card, and apologise for the ruse that had gained him admittance. He turned back to do so and looked up at the building.

  Yasmin Edwards, he saw, was standing at her window. She was watching him. And she was holding in her hands something he very much wanted to believe was the card he'd given her.

  30

  GIDEON WALKED. AT first he'd run: up the leafy confines of Cornwall Gardens and across the wet, narrow strip of traffic that was Gloucester Road. He hurtled into Queen's Gate Gardens, then up past the old hotels in the direction of the park. And then mindlessly he ducked to the right and dashed past the Royal College of Music. He hadn't actually known where he was till he'd veered up a little incline and burst out into the well-lit surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall, where an audience was just pouring out of the auditorium's circumference of doors.

  There, the irony of the location had hit him, and he'd stopped running. Indeed, he'd stumbled to a complete halt, chest heaving, with the rain pelting him, and not even noticing that his jacket was hanging heavy with the damp upon his shoulders and his trousers were slapping wetly against his shins. Here was the greatest venue for public performance in the land: the most sought-after showplace for anyone's talent. Here, Gideon Davies had first performed as a nine-year-old prodigy with his father and Raphael Robson in attendance, all three of them eager for the opportunity to establish the name Davies in the classical firmament. How appropriate was it, then, that his final flight from Braemar Mansions—from his father, from his father's words and what they did and did not mean—should bring him to the very raison d’être of everything that had happened: to Sonia, to Katja Wolff, to his mother, to all of them. And how even more appropriate was it that the very raison d’être behind the other raison d’être—the audience—did not even know that he was there.

  Across the street from the Albert Hall, Gideon watched the crowd raise their umbrellas to the weeping sky. Although he could see their lips moving, he did not hear their excited chatter, that all-too-familiar sound of ravenous culture vultures who were sated for the moment, the happy noise of just the sort of people whose approbation he'd sought. Instead, what he heard were his father's words, like an incantation within his brain: For God's sake I did it I did it I did it Believe what I say I say I say She was alive when you left her you left her I held her down in the bath the bath I was the one who drowned her who drowned her. It wasn't you Gideon my son my son.

  Over and over the words repeated, but they called forth a vision that made a different claim. What he saw was his hands on his sister's small shoulders. What he felt was the water closing over his arms. And above the repetition of his father's declaration, what he heard was the cries of the woman and the man, then the sound of running, the blam of doors closing, and the other hoarse cries, then the wail of sirens and the guttural orders of rescue workers going about their business where rescue was futile. And everyone knew that save the workers themselves because they were trained to one job only: maintaining and resuscitating life in the face of anything that stood in life's way.

  But For God's sake I did it I did it I did it Believe what I say I say I say.

  Gideon struggled for the memory that would allow this belief, but what he came up with was the same image as before: his hands on her shoulders and added to that now the sight of her face, her mouth opening and closing and opening and closing and her head turning slowly back and forth.

  His father argued that this was a dream because She was alive when you left her when you left her. And even more importantly because I held her down in the bath in the bath.

  Yet the only person who might have confirmed that story—was dead herself, Gideon thought. And what did that mean? What did that tell him?

  That she didn't know the truth herself, his father told him insistently, as if he walked at Gideon's side in the wind and the rain. She didn't know because I never admitted it, not then when it counted, not then when I saw another far easier way to resolve the situation. And when I finally told her—

  She didn't believe you. She knew that I'd done it. And you killed her to keep her from telling me that. She's dead, Dad. She's dead, she's dead.

  Yes. All right. Your mother is dead. But she's dead because of me, not because of you. She's dead because of what I'd led her to believe and what I'd forced her into accepting.

  Which was what, Dad? What? Gideon demanded.

  You know the answer, his father replied. I let her believe you'd killed your sister. I said Gideon was in here in here in the bathroom he was holding her down I pulled him off her but my God my God Eugenie she was gone. And she believed me. And that's why she agreed to the arrangement with Katja: because she thought she was saving you. From an investigation. From a juvenile trial. From a hideous burden that would weigh upon you for the rest of your life. You were Gideon Davies, for the love of God. She wanted to keep you safe from scandal, and I used that, Gideon, to keep everyone safe.

  Except Katja Wolff.

  She agreed. For the money.

  So she thought that I—

  Yes, she thought. She thought, she thought. But she did not know. Any more than you know right now. You were not in the room. You were dragged away, and she was taken downstairs. Your mother went to phone for help. And that left me alone with your sister. Don't you see what that means?

  But I remember—

  You remember what you remember because that's what happened: You held her down. But holding her down and keeping her down are not the same. And you know that, Gideon. By God, you know it.

  But I remember—

  You remember what you did as far as you did it. I did the rest. I stand guilty of all the crimes that were committed. I am the man, after all, who could not bear to have my own daughter Virginia in my life.

  No. It was Granddad.

  Granddad was simply the excuse I used. I dismissed her, Gideon. I pretended she was dead because I w
anted her dead. Don't forget that. Never forget that. You know what it means. You know it, Gideon.

  But Mother … Mother was going to tell me—

  Eugenie was going to perpetuate the lie. She was going to tell you what I'd let her believe was the truth for years. She was going to explain why she'd left us without a word of goodbye, why she'd taken every picture of your sister with her, why she'd stayed away for nearly twenty years…. Yes. She was going to tell you what she thought was the truth—that you drowned your sister—and I refused to let that happen. So I killed her, Gideon. I murdered your mother. I did it for you.

  So now there's no one left who can tell me—

  I am telling you. You can believe me and you must believe me. Am I not a man who killed the mother of his own children? Am I not a man who hit her on the street, who drove a car over her, who removed the picture she'd brought to town with her to sustain your guilt? Am I not a man who drove off quietly and felt nothing afterwards? Am I not a man who went happily home to his young lover and got on with his life? So am I not thus also a man who is fully capable of killing a sickly worthless cretin of a child, a burden to us all, a living illustration of my own failure? Am I not that man, Gideon? Am I not that man? The question echoed through the years. It forced upon Gideon a hundred memories, He saw them flicker, unspooling before him, each asking the same question: Am I not that man?

  And he was. He was. Of course. He was. Richard Davies had always been that man. Gideon saw it and read it in every word, nuance, and gesture of his father over the last two decades. Richard Davies was indeed that man.

  But an admission of the fact—a final embracing of it—did not produce one gram of absolution.

  So Gideon walked. His face was streaked with rain, and his hair was painted onto his skull. Rivulets ran like veins down his neck, but he felt nothing of the cold or the damp. The path he followed felt aimless to him, but it was not so despite the fact that he barely recognised when Park Lane gave way to Oxford Street and when Orchard Street turned into Baker.

  From the morass of what he remembered, what he had been told, and what he had learned emerged a single point that he clung to at the last: Acceptance was the only option available because only acceptance allowed reparation finally to be made. And he was the one who had to make that reparation because he was the only one left who could do so.

  He could not bring his sister back to life, he could not save his mother from destruction, he could not give Katja Wolff back the twenty years she'd sacrificed in the service of his father's plans. But he could pay the debt of those twenty years and at least in that one way he could make amends for the unholy deal his father had struck with her.

  And there was indeed a way to pay her back that would also close the circle of everything else that had happened: from his mother's death to the loss of his music, from Sonia's death to the public exposure of everyone associated with Kensington Square. It was embodied in the long and elegant inner bouts, the perfect scrolls, and the lovely perpendicular F holes crafted two hundred and fifty years ago by Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri.

  He would sell the violin. Whatever price it fetched at auction, no matter how high, and it would be astronomical, he would give that money to Katja Wolff. And in taking those two specific actions, he would in effect be making a statement of apology and sorrow that no other effort on his part would permit him to make.

  He would allow those two actions to serve to close the circle of crime, lies, guilt, and punishment. His life would not be the same thereafter, but it would be his own life at last. He wanted that.

  Gideon had no idea what the time was when he finally arrived in Chalcot Square. He was soaked to the skin and drained of energy from the long walk. But at last, secure in the knowledge of the plan he would follow, he felt possessed by a modicum of peace. Still, the last yards to his house seemed endless. When he finally arrived, he had to pull himself up the front steps by the handrail, and he sagged against the door and fumbled in his trouser pockets for his keys.

  He didn't have them. He frowned at this. He relived the day. He'd started out with the keys. He'd started out with the car. He'd driven to see Bertram Cresswell-White and after that he'd gone to his father's flat, where—

  Libby, he recalled. She'd done the driving. She'd been with him. He'd asked her to leave him all those hours ago and she had obliged. She'd taken his car on his own instructions. She would have the keys.

  He was turning to go down the stairs to her flat, when the front door swung open, however.

  Libby cried out, “Gideon! What the hell? Jeez, you're totally drenched! Couldn't you get a taxi? Why didn't you call me? I would've come … Hey, that cop rang, the one who was here the other day to talk to you, remember? I didn't pick up, but he left a message for you to call him. Is everything …? Jeez, why didn't you call me?”

  She held the door wide as she was speaking, and she drew him inside and slammed it behind him. Gideon said nothing. She continued as if he'd made a reply.

  “Here, Gid. Put your arm around me. There. Where've you been? Did you talk to your dad? Is everything okay?”

  They climbed to the first floor. Gideon headed towards the music room. Libby guided him towards the kitchen instead.

  “You need tea,” she insisted. “Or soup. Or something. Sit. Let me get it …”

  He obliged.

  She chatted on. Her voice was quick. Her colour was high. She said, “I figured I should wait up here since I had the keys. I could've waited in my own place, I guess. I did go down a while ago. But Rock called, and I made the mistake of answering because I thought it was you. God, he is so not who I thought he was when I hooked up with him. He actually wanted to come over. Let's talk things out, was how he put it. Unbelievable.”

  Gideon heard her and did not hear her. At the kitchen table, he was restless and wet.

  Libby said, even more rapidly now as he stirred on his seat, “Rock wants us to get back together. 'Course, it's all totally dog-in-the-haystack stuff, or whatever you call it, but he actually said ‘I'm good for you, Lib,’ if you can believe that. Like he never spent our whole frigging marriage screwing everything with the right body parts that he ran into. He said, ‘You know we're good for each other,’ and I said back, ‘Gid's good for me, Rocco. You are, like, so totally bad.’ And that's what I believe, you know. You're good for me, Gideon. And I'm good for you.”

  She was moving about the kitchen. She'd settled on soup, evidently, because she rooted through the fridge, found a carton of tomato and basil, and produced it triumphantly, saying, “Not even past its sell-by date. I'll heat it in a flash.” She rustled out a pan and dumped the soup inside it. She set it on the cooker and took a bowl from the cupboard. She continued to talk. “How I figured it is this. We could blow London off for a while. You need a rest. And I need a vacation. So we could travel. We could go over to Spain for some decent weather. Or we could go to Italy. We could go to California, even, and you could meet my family. I told them about you. They know I know you. I mean, I told them we live together and everything. I mean, well, sort of. Not I sort of told them but we sort of live … you know.”

  She put the bowl on the table along with a spoon. She folded a paper napkin into a triangle. She said, “There,” and reached for one of the straps of her dungarees, which was held together by a safety pin. She clutched at this as he looked at her. She used her thumb against it, opening and closing the pin spasmodically.

  This display of nerves wasn't like her. It gave Gideon pause. He studied her, puzzled.

  She said, “What?”

  He rose. “I need to change my clothes.”

  She said, “I'll get them,” and headed towards the music room and his bedroom which lay beyond it. “What d'you want? Levi's? A sweater? You're right. You need to get out of those clothes.” And as he moved, “I'll get them. I mean, wait. Gideon. We need to talk first. I mean, I need to explain …” She stopped. She swallowed, and he heard the sound of it from five feet away. It w
as the noise a fish makes when it flops on the deck of a boat, breathing its last.

  Gideon looked beyond her then and saw that the lights in the music room were off, which served to warn him although he could not have said what the warning was. He took in the fact that Libby was blocking his way to the room, though. He took a step towards it.

  Libby said quickly, “Here's what you've got to understand, Gideon. You are number one with me. And here's what I thought: I thought, How can I help him—how can I help us to really be a real us? Because it's not normal that we'd be together but not really be together, is it. And it would be totally good for both of us if we … you know … look, it's what you need. It's what I need. Each other, being who we really are. And who we are is who we are. It's not what we do. And the only way I knew to make you, like, see that and understand it—because talking myself blue in the face sure as hell wasn't doing it and you know that—was to—”

  “Oh God. No.” Gideon pushed past her, shoving her to one side with an inarticulate cry.

  He fumbled to the nearest lamp in the music room. He grabbed it. He switched it on.

  He saw.

  The Guarneri—what was left of it—lay next to the radiator. Its neck was fractured, its top was shattered, its sides were broken into pieces. Its bridge was snapped in half and its strings were wrapped round what remained of its tailpiece. The only part of the violin that wasn't destroyed was its perfect scroll, elegantly curving as if it still could bend forward to reach towards the player's fingers.

  Libby was speaking behind him. High and rapid. Gideon heard the words but not their meaning. “You'll thank me,” she said. “Maybe not now. But you will. I swear it. I did it for you And now that it's finally gone from your life, you can—”

  “Never,” he said to himself. “Never.”

  “Never what?” she said, and as he approached the violin, as he knelt before it, as he touched the chin rest and felt the cool of it mix with the heat that was coming into his hands, “Gideon?” Her voice was insistent, ringing. “Listen to me. It's going to be okay. I know you're upset, but you've got to see it was the only way. You're free of it now. Free to be who you are, which is more than just a guy who plays the fiddle. You were always more than that guy, Gideon. And now you can know it, just like I do.”