The Memory Game

by Nicci French

  ‘No, Jane, it isn’t. Don’t you remember our first meeting? I didn’t think I could do anything for you. You talked about having a black hole somewhere in the middle of your golden childhood. That interested me. I looked for a hidden memory because I was already sure that it was there.’

  ‘You couldn’t have been wrong?’

  ‘You found it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I did. I wish I felt happier about it.’

  ‘Remember what Melanie said to you. It’s natural to feel guilt about a recovered memory. Life seemed simpler before, didn’t it? But it wasn’t you who killed Natalie.’

  ‘Alex, you didn’t tell a journalist about me, did you?’

  With startling suddenness, Alex turned the car and brought it to a sudden halt by the kerb. Somebody hooted and shouted something.

  ‘Jane, I’m your doctor. That’s a terrible thing to say.’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly a secret at the conference.’

  ‘They’re a community of sufferers, Jane. They can help you, you can help them. You’re a strong and intelligent woman, a survivor. You have an opportunity to do a great deal of good.’

  ‘This is all happening too quickly, Alex. I can’t start making commitments to other people. I’m having difficulty looking after myself.’

  ‘You’re stronger than you know. If you wanted you could be a witness on behalf of a great cause. You might think of writing about your experience, if only as a form of therapy. Don’t say anything, just bear it in mind. If you needed any help, we could do it together.’

  I shook my head. I felt the utmost weariness.

  ‘Home, James.’

  Thirty-Three

  Of all the characters caught up in the ghastly drama, Claud was undoubtedly the hero. For months – years, if I’m honest – he’d hovered in the wings of my life before I’d tried to push him off the stage altogether. Now it was hard for me to imagine my life without him, although I was very careful not to see him too much, nor to lean on him when I did. Kim continually warned me.

  ‘Be kind,’ she said, ‘but think about what kindness means in this situation.’

  There were days when I wanted him back, and couldn’t understand why I’d left him in the first place. On those days, I cooked and gardened and drank gin, and I tried to ignore the jittery, fluttery panics high in my stomach.

  Claud, of course, had been warned about Alan in advance, but I am not sure ∗∗∗that that made the horror any less, or the pain easier. Over the next four months he reacted by taking on the part of the eldest son, the man of the family. I watched with bemused admiration as he dealt with the press, wrote letters, sorted Martha’s possessions. He seemed to have stopped sleeping, and was ceaselessly concerned to make everyone’s life run more smoothly. He looked younger; the deep lines running down from his mouth, which had given his face a look of middle-aged sorrow, faded; his eyes were brighter. While everyone around him, in one way or another, went to pieces, he seemed to cohere, be a more collected person than he’d been for a long time. He was charged with a sense of purpose; I thought maybe he was heading for a nervous breakdown.

  He never blamed me. He seemed to me to be watching my every word and every gesture, always careful not to say anything that would hurt me. His niceness was unnerving, and reminded me of when we first started dating: how he would always hold open doors, arrive carrying flowers, never interrupt my sentences, make sure to compliment me on my clothes. He tried not to disagree with me, and when he did it was in a respectful, cautious kind of way that used to drive me mad. It had taken him a long time – well into our marriage, when we had two sons and a mortgage and a whole network of friends in common – to relax his guard, or take me for granted. I’m not sure that he ever did entirely. He was always too scared of casting me off and losing me. Perhaps he had lost me because he had never quite given himself up to me. He’d offered me his adoration and strength, but not his fears and failures. He had tried too hard. Now, in this reacquired solicitude, he diligently kept me informed about everything: how Theo and Jonah and Alfred were, how their wives and offspring had behaved over the whole business, even what they all said about me, although he was evasively informative about this: I could sense him editing out all the bitterness.

  ‘And Alan?’ I asked him on one of his early visits.

  ‘He won’t speak,’ replied Claud. ‘Not to anyone. Not a single word.’

  The thought of Alan – who for as long as I’d known him, had never been able to stop himself speaking – retreating into silence, was somehow terrifying. I imagined his mind, like a great fish, thrashing just under the quiet surface.

  As the prospect of the trial became more concrete I felt increasingly vulnerable and exposed. One day I was photographed unawares walking to the shops and the photograph was widely published: ‘The Memory Woman.’ There were legal constraints about what specifically could be said of me but that didn’t stop medical correspondents writing about recovered memory in the newspapers, columnists talking about the supposed issues involved and about families and the pressures on a famous writer as he grows old. I had wandered into a zoo and couldn’t get out.

  Frantic efforts were made to persuade Alan to accept a lawyer but he refused legal representation of any kind. He insisted that he would plead guilty and would make no defence and allow no defence to be made on his behalf. There was some nervousness that this might be a perverse trick and that he might suddenly plead not guilty at the last minute. So I had two interviews in small chambers off Fleet Street in which a formally dressed young man and woman questioned me closely with particular attention to the means by which I had found the diaries and details of my sessions with Alex Dermot-Brown. Almost everything I said provoked whispers and serious expressions.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ I asked.

  ‘Admissibility,’ the young man said, ‘but that’s our problem, not yours.’

  Claud behaved as if he could, by sheer willpower, make things ‘all right’ (‘It will be all right’ was a repeated phrase, mechanically hopeful). He was the only person still seeing all the brothers, and talking to Jerome and Robert, playing squash with Paul, maintaining the fiction that there was still this glorious entity made up of the Cranes and the Martellos. He went to see Dad several times, and I think that they managed to talk together in a way they’d never done while we were still together. Claud even visited Peggy, whom he had never really got on with, and answered her questions. ‘Just because she and Paul are divorced, it doesn’t mean that she should be excluded. After all, she knows Alan far better than Erica does.’

  I wondered what he did when he got home to his small tidy flat, how he managed the times he didn’t have tasks to perform. I wondered if there was anyone he talked to about himself. I could picture him grilling a chop, pouring out a single glass of red wine, eating his modest meal in front of the nine o’clock news. Then he’d go round the small flat straightening cushions, drawing curtains, making sure that the door was properly locked and that his clothes were ready for the morning, and that the alarm on his clock was set for radio. He would lie in the centre of his bed waiting for sleep, and I was sure that then the images of recent horror would play, over and over, and he would accommodate them. For all Claud’s fastidiousness, his prudence, his love of habit and his attention to detail, he’s a brave man: stoical, I suppose.

  One evening, I invited him for a meal at my house. It was the first time since we’d parted that I’d cooked for him – except that mushroom dinner. I planned the meal nervously: it mustn’t be too special, as if this were a date, but it mustn’t be completely casual, as if we were still man and wife. In the end I decided on a simple chicken, with garlic bread and salad, followed by a couple of good cheeses, and fruit. Forty-five minutes before he was due to arrive, I sliced two large red peppers into strips, and fried them with garlic. When they cooled down, I would add balsamic vinegar and a drained tin of tomatoes. I spiked the chicken with rosemary and put it in the oven; men I wash
ed the lettuce and tore it into a salad bowl, with cucumber, fennel, avocado. I wondered briefly whether to change out of my office clothes, but in the end stayed as I was – though I put mascara on my lashes and dabbed rose water behind my ears.

  It’s satisfying watching Claud eat. He is methodical, putting a little bit of everything onto his fork, then chewing it well and washing it down with a sip of rich chardonnay. I get the same feeling from seeing him eat that I used to have when as a child I watched Dad shaving in the morning. Would Claud and I ever get back together? I wondered, as I watched his thin wrists and his clever long fingers and his air of calm concentration. This evening, it didn’t seem so unlikely, although even as that thought flickered through my mind I felt defeated. When he was finished, he put his knife and fork neatly together, wiped his clean mouth with the corner of his napkin, and smiled at me.

  ‘Who is Caspar?’

  The question took me by surprise.

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘Just a friend?’

  ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’

  ‘At least tell me if it is serious.’

  ‘There’s no “it”. I haven’t seen Caspar for weeks. All right?’

  ‘Don’t get ratty with me, Janey.’

  ‘Don’t call me Janey.’

  He cut himself two wedges of cheese, and took a couple of cheese biscuits from the tin.

  ‘Don’t you think I have a right to know?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  This was better – my feeling about the inevitability of our marriage was dissipating; I wished that the evening was over now. I wanted to be drinking tea in bed, with a thriller.

  Claud balanced some goat’s cheese on a water biscuit and popped it into his mouth. He chewed several times.

  ‘The thing is, I still feel married to you,’ he said quite calmly. ‘I still feel you’re my wife, that I’m your husband.’

  ‘Well, you…’

  ‘Let me finish.’ He didn’t seem to notice that now was not the time; that any possibilities had already dribbled away from the evening. ‘I’ve felt that more strongly since Dad confessed. We’ve been through terrible times, the worst times it’s possible to go through, and we’ve helped each other. I have helped you, haven’t I?’ I nodded, mute. ‘I won’t lie to you: one of the reasons I have pulled through this – this horror – is the hope that it might bring us back together. Oh look, we’re middle-aged now, Jane; we should be kind to each other, not pull away. We belong together; us and the boys.’ I stiffened when he mentioned the boys – that was playing dirty, using them. He didn’t notice my withdrawal. ‘We should be a family. Don’t you feel that too?’

  But I had no chance to reply. He stood up, walked round the table and took my face in his hands; he didn’t seem excited or upset, just very determined, as if he felt that he’d managed to work everything else out and now he was going to get this settled as well. He was too near me, out of focus, and I could smell his wine-and-garlic breath. I pushed him away.

  ‘No, please Claud. It won’t work.’ I was shaking. ‘It’s my fault; it’s true that we’ve been closer recently, and been kind to each other. And then I invited you over here, and of course you thought…’

  ‘Stop. Don’t say a word more.’ Two hectic spots had appeared on his pale face. He grabbed his overcoat. ‘Not a word. Not now. Just think about it, will you? I didn’t mean to rush things like that. I didn’t want to alarm you.’ As if I was a shy animal, who needed coaxing. He stood for a moment in the doorway. ‘Goodbye.’ He hesitated. ‘Darling.’

  I had felt no desire, I thought, as I cleared away the plates, wrapped the cheeses in their waxy papers. None at all. Instead, I’d felt a kind of dreary panic: I couldn’t just go back to my old life, as if I’d suffered a mid-life crisis and then recovered equilibrium. Claud had called us middle-aged and of course it was true. But I didn’t feel it.

  ‘I’m sorry I’m late.’

  Caspar slid into the seat opposite me; he didn’t touch me.

  ‘I’ve only just arrived myself.’

  We were both being warily polite. I held out the wine list, and he took it carefully, so our fingers didn’t touch.

  ‘I’ve ordered a pinot noir,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Shall we get something to drink as well?’ He looked up and caught my eye. ‘Haven’t you missed my irresistible humour?’

  I shook my head disapprovingly. ‘Is that an example of it?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t been using it much.’

  The wine arrived and we sipped it gravely. I lit a cigarette and found that my hands were gently trembling. Caspar’s expression darkened slightly.

  ‘Would you rather that I asked you resentfully why you suddenly dropped me without any explanation and then suddenly rang up again?’

  ‘You can ask. I don’t want you to be resentful.’

  ‘How are you, Jane?’

  I had forgotten, in the weeks in which I had kept away from Caspar, the quality of his attention. When he looked at me, I felt as if he were really looking; his gaze was a kind of scrutiny. When he asked me how I was, I knew the question wasn’t rhetorical, he really wanted to know. I took a deep breath.

  ‘Not at my best, I guess. You know…’

  He nodded. ‘Has the press attention died down?’

  ‘Yes, a bit. But the trial’s still to come, so it’ll get worse again, I suppose.’

  ‘And will you have to give evidence?’

  ‘Probably not. Unless Alan suddenly changes his mind again and pleads not guilty. Then it all hangs on me.’

  ‘Will you tell me about it?’ His question was phrased just right. If he’d said ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’ I’d have felt he was offering to help me and probably would have closed down on him. As it was, I found that I did, very much, want to explain what I had gone through. After all, I hadn’t quite explained it to myself, yet. I needed this conversation.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call,’ I said impulsively.

  Caspar smiled. ‘I’m glad that you’re sorry, but it’s all right,’ he replied. He studied the menu. ‘Let’s have some dips and some olives. I’ve hardly eaten anything since breakfast.’

  I told Caspar everything. I described my childhood, our friendship with the Martellos (I skated over Theo) and the disappearance of Natalie. I told him how I’d married Claud young, and how my long marriage had over the years invisibly eroded, like a sandcastle flattening back into the rippled surface of a beach. I told him how I had finally left Claud, and then I described finding Natalie’s body. Caspar was a good listener. When I paused to light a cigarette, he ordered another bottle of wine.

  I said I had realised that I was profoundly unhappy, and that after a few false starts (I offered up my first aborted attempt at analysis but didn’t mention the one-night stand with William), I had started therapy with Alex Dermot-Brown.

  ‘What did you want from therapy?’ Caspar enquired.

  ‘Some kind of control over my life, I guess. I felt I was in a mess and didn’t really know how to get out of it. Later, it became more of a search for the truth about my past.’

  ‘That’s a big thing to search for,’ said Caspar mildly.

  I tried to tell him about the therapy, but that was more difficult; the illuminations I’d received on the couch slipped away from me, like beads of mercury under the press of a finger.

  ‘He helped me find a narrative to my life,’ I said ineptly, echoing what Alex had once said to me.

  ‘I’ve always thought,’ responded Caspar, ‘that the great appeal of psychoanalysis is that it enables us to tell the story of our own life.’

  I couldn’t tell whether he was criticising or complimenting me – probably neither.

  ‘It’s hard to talk about it now; it’s weirdly hard to remember it as a chronology,’ I admitted. ‘It’s more like a kind of space, where I explored myself. I don’t know if I’ll continue with it, though – I don’t know what it would be for. Also�
� – the wine bar was filling up now; I had to raise my voice against the hum and chink of a day ending – ‘also, it’s quite scary. I mean, I never really thought before how much pain people can carry around with them and still cope. And I’m still not sure whether dredging up memories and re-opening wounds is always right. Sometimes, horror should be left buried.’ I shuddered. ‘Not in my case, of course. But I think some things don’t need to be explained. And sometimes damage should be left in sealed containers, like nuclear waste. That’s heresy to therapists, of course. Except sceptical ones like Alex.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re sceptical too,’ said Caspar. ‘And I’m glad that you haven’t used the word empower.’

  I laughed. Then I told him about the group I’d been to, and he didn’t say anything at all.

  ‘There, that takes us up to now. And now you know about a hundred times more about my life than I know about yours.’ I felt suddenly and dazedly self-conscious, as if the lights had gone on in the cinema.

  ‘My time will come,’ he said, and beckoned the waiter. ‘Can I have the bill, please?’ He pulled on his gloves. ‘I’ve got to get home to Fanny now,’ he said. ‘She talks about you, by the way.’

  We left together. ‘Will you be all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, for I thought I probably would be.

  ‘And will you call me?’

  ‘Yes, I will. This time I really will.’

  ‘Goodbye, then.’

  ‘Goodbye, Caspar. Thank you.’

  For a moment I thought he would touch me, but he didn’t and I was glad.

  Thirty-Four

  One evening, Claud dropped off my box from the Stead on the way home from work. He hovered a bit on the doorstep. He didn’t ask, but I could tell that he wanted to be invited in for a drink or dinner or to live with me again. I held firm on every count. This wasn’t an evening for dealing with things like that. I wanted to go through this box on my own. Claud talked about what things were like up at the Stead now that Jonah was getting rid of everything and preparing for the house to be sold. I listened but didn’t ask questions and scarcely responded. After a few minutes the conversation slowed and I was still standing resolutely in the quarter-opened door. He looked crestfallen and said he supposed he had better be going and I said thanks for bringing the box round and he looked even more crestfallen and mumbled something. I didn’t ask what it was he had said and he looked downright self-pitying and walked off.