She can’t remember when first she acknowledged she didn’t like Ramsay, although it was definitely after the arrival of George Tiller. No great gash felled the friendship, no cataclysmic wrongdoing. Ramsay was rude to her, but then he was rude to everyone. He was selfish, but again he was selfish with everyone. There was only one identifiable incident: Ramsay stole four of her best feathers and used them to start his own collection. But while the theft was terrible at the time, it was insufficient to explain her dislike of him.
As a child, Nina read English novels about spoiled children, and Ramsay, in her opinion, was typical of a spoiled child. But unlike the spoiled children in novels, Ramsay never got his comeuppance – he might have emerged as more likeable if he had. He occupied his world fully, and treated other people –
Zoe, Sean and herself included – as revolving satellites whose primary purpose was to maintain his central position. He was, Nina eventually decided, a genius at the piano but a half-baked human being in every other respect. Ramsay wasn’t a brute although he could be brutal, he wasn’t deliberately cruel though he was often hurtful, but anyone who is uninterested, even unaware of other people except when they are personally useful to them, anyone who is so narcissistic that they could walk over you and their only complaint is about the uneven ground, anyone like this demands a fair degree of suspicion.
By the time Nina reached adolescence she wanted nothing more to do with him – not so difficult because by then everything had changed. Partly it was due to what was happening to Sean – shunted to the outer in his own home and family, but there was an event as well, the pivotal event as it turned out, that banished any thought that a return to the foursome was possible. On that day, the last day of the old order, they had all gathered as usual at the Blake house for a concert. Over a period of an hour, a brief sixty minutes, it was as if she was watching a movie in which the main players shifted across the screen until they finally took up the positions they would occupy forever.
It was a Sunday, and like so many other Sundays Nina and Zoe together with their parents had been invited to the Blake house for music and afternoon tea. These gatherings always took the same form: Ramsay would play, then there would be a duet with Sean, and very occasionally they would finish with a trio that included Zoe. Nina always attended, often under sufferance, but she didn’t want to miss out on what the others were doing, and depending on the music played she was happy enough to daydream. And the afternoon tea was a party: fairy cakes decorated with Smarties, chocolate brownies, Twisties, green lemonade, the sort of food that would never be found at the Jameson house.
She can’t remember the weather on that particular day, nor the time of year, but it must have been warm because Zoe was wearing shorts and the boys wore singlets with their jeans, and the sun was streaming in through the bay window of the music room. Everyone took up their usual positions, her own parents on the couch, she and Zoe on the floor, Sean by the piano ready to turn pages for Ramsay, Marion in the single armchair, and George fussing when fuss was not required given that the Sunday-afternoon concerts had been happening long before he arrived on the scene. Marion looked tired, not that Nina noticed it then, slumped and shrunken in her chair and pale against the maroon upholstery; it was only later that Nina guessed she was already sick – certainly that would explain why she didn’t intervene.
Ramsay stood by the piano and announced his piece as he had been taught to do. ‘The Moments Musicaux,’ he said. ‘Schubert.’
‘For next month’s Young Performers series,’ George added. ‘Ramsay’s to open the programme.’
‘George acts like he owns Rams,’ Sean had complained to Nina on numerous occasions, and now, with George standing alongside Ramsay, his hand on Ramsay’s shoulder, Nina saw that Sean had every reason to be peeved.
Ramsay sat at the keyboard, Marion smiled wanly, the others clapped, and Sean pulled his chair closer to the piano. There was no music on the stand.
‘You don’t need to be there,’ George said. ‘Ramsay has the work in memory.’
Sean didn’t move. ‘Ramsay likes me here. Don’t you, Rams?’
Ramsay might have nodded, he might have shrugged. George, however, was unequivocal. ‘Get away from there, Sean. You’ll disturb his concentration.’
‘Never have before.’
In the silence that followed, George stared at him with a horrible expression on his face. Scary, Nina thought, George was scary. And then George threatened with a single word.
‘Move,’ he said.
Sean looked to Ramsay for support, but wherever Ramsay’s attention was it was not on his brother. Sean stood up, he stepped away from the piano, he moved to the back of the room, and there he remained, separate from everyone else, his face a study in hatred. Ramsay had already started to play.
Schubert’s Moments Musicaux – there are six of them – are like short stories. That’s how they seemed to Nina then and she still hears them in the same way. They are played over thirty minutes, six distinct pieces that vary in tempo, colour, mood and tone. And here is Ramsay, who away from the piano sounds only the single note of himself, playing with such expressiveness, such sublime understanding that he wraps you in each piece and transports you to places far away; in spite of everything, Nina cannot help but admire him. Next to her Zoe is transfixed; her expression is glazed like she’s on drugs or in heaven. Not even when the music is finished does Zoe move, it’s only when Nina gives her a shove that she joins in the applause. Nina notices she’s blushing.
Ramsay takes a bow and then beckons to Sean to join him for their duet. Sean looks happy enough as he makes his way across the room. He’s either forgiven George, which Nina thinks is unlikely, or decided to ignore him.
But George won’t be ignored.
‘No, Ramsay,’ George says. ‘Not Sean. Give Zoe a turn.’
‘Zoe can join us for a trio,’ Ramsay says. ‘Sean and I’ve been practising the Brahms.’
Zoe is already on her feet. She looks from George to Ramsay, then back to George. Sean does not exist for her.
‘Fetch your cello,’ George tells her.
Zoe races next door. Sean is standing in the middle of the room looking helpless. Marion in a quiet voice reassures him that it’s just this once and it’s kind to share. Nina is torn: she feels sorry for Sean but she’s happy for her sister having the opportunity to play a duet with Ramsay. And as Marion said, it’s only this once, otherwise everything else will continue as usual.
It didn’t. Nina couldn’t recall what Zoe and Ramsay played on that first day, but a couple of Sundays later the two of them played Beethoven’s Fourth Cello Sonata in C. It was a memorable performance and the last occasion she remembered Sean in the music room for a Sunday-afternoon concert.
Sean was an unnecessary extra in his own home and, increasingly, a presence in Nina’s. As for Zoe, George seemed to push her and Ramsay together. She was now Ramsay’s duet partner, she went to concerts and the cinema with him, she played cards and electronic games with him, she joined him on visits to taxonomists and cemeteries. Fearful that if Zoe was forced to choose between her sister and Ramsay she would choose Ramsay, Nina tried to disguise her antipathy with indifference.
It wasn’t simple dislike, Ramsay actually made her nervous, and George and Ramsay together were frightening. There was something about George Tiller that was needy – never a quality children want to see in an adult – yet at the same time powerful. Great need and great power, such a dangerous combination, and what will stop such a man from seizing what he believes he has a right to possess?
She did not understand her reaction; after all, George had done nothing specifically aimed at her, no threatening or scary episodes. In the end, because fathers, and, she assumed, stepfathers too, were mostly trustworthy and kind, and Ramsay Blake for all his foibles was a genius, she concluded there must be something wrong with her; it was best, she decided, to keep her feelings private. Long after she had grown up she wondered at this common response o
f children that have them keeping their pains to themselves. So many bitter secrets, and all the while you are thinking that if you can just hang on, manage a little longer, things will improve.
They never did – not that it mattered to Nina. At the age of eighteen she left Raleigh Court for university in Sydney, she left Ramsay and her childhood, and now as she stands on the street where she used to live, as she trains her gaze on the Blake house, even as she recalls the fear of those long-ago days, she’s aware of feeling nothing uncomfortable or disturbing; in fact, not a flicker of the old jittering remains. In London, should she cast her mind back, Ramsay always dominated her childhood’s folklore, Ramsay and George. But now, being here, she realises she doesn’t give a toss about Ramsay Blake any more.
With Ramsay out of the way she is filled with warmth and nostalgia for those long-ago days, for her parents now both retired and seeing Australia via campervan, for her sister, and Sean too, her only lifelong friend. It’s the pains and barbs of childhood that tend to occupy the largest space in memory, almost as if good times come equipped with weak knees and faded complexion. Ramsay was only a small part of her life in Raleigh Court, yet she gave him a leading role. She’s shocked that someone like her, whose work constantly struggles with the perfidy of memory, could have offered so little resistance to that age-old snare.
I had it wrong, she wants to tell Daniel, I made far too much of Ramsay Blake and the invading stepfather, they mean nothing to me now. She wants to share these understandings with him. And she wants to ask if there was a child in his past who scared him, and if there was, how does he feel about that child now? It makes her sad: these questions unasked and unanswered, the parts of the other they will never know.
She brushes the thoughts aside – her past was with Daniel, she doesn’t want to predicate the future on him as well – and is about to leave when a movement at the top of the court stops her. The door to number six is opening, the door to the Blake house. A figure steps into the sunlight.
It is Ramsay: tall, angular and unmistakably Ramsay. She does not move, does not want to be seen. She wills him to turn, to go back inside, but he is not moving either. Another figure appears, another man just behind him, a man in his shadow: George Tiller, the stepfather, whose arrival here changed everything. George moves forward, he’s now standing alongside Ramsay. They used to be the same height but George has shrunk, his head seems to rest on his shoulders, his legs are bowed.
The two men are looking straight at her, not that they can see her, not with the sun glaring at them. Still she does not move. She sees them turn to each other. Ramsay speaks, they both laugh. George walks to the gate, he’s slow, he shuffles. Nina is frozen. George collects the mail, he hobbles back to Ramsay. They re-enter the house together.
Nina has been holding her breath, the air now plunges in. She stifles a cough, but they can’t hear. And who is she anyway? Just a woman in the street with a catch in her throat. She sucks in another breath, the juddering eases, a few more breaths and it subsides. Soon she feels the familiar contours of herself. She’s made a life, a good life far from this place, she could have approached them, she could have made herself known. They can do nothing to her, but more crucially, she now realises, they could have done nothing to her when she was a child.
She turns around and opens the car door; it’s stifling inside. She starts up and drives away. But long-held memories refuse to be dismissed so easily; the past, the remembered past, like all habits has such entrenched roots. You might come to realise that long-held fears have no foundation, that long-held dislikes simply don’t matter any more; you might well conclude you should have off-loaded these old scores long ago. But as she drives the familiar roads, a scornful explosion escapes: she of all people knows that deliberate forgetting is a loaded act. Deliberate forgetting rides the waves of a past still waiting to be lanced.
Chapter 3. The Failure of Dreams
1.
Nina didn’t cross the world to attend tea parties with strangers, and certainly not one hosted by Ramsay Blake.
‘I’d no idea you were on party terms with Ramsay,’ she said to Zoe.
Zoe muttered something about Facebook and email contact before returning to the topic of Ramsay’s afternoon tea. It would be just a small gathering, she said, mainly people from the music world – Ramsay’s friends, she added.
Even as children, Nina had doubted Ramsay’s capacity for friendship: he was drawn to people for what they could do for him, not for affection or enjoyment. That Zoe counted herself a friend of his suggested she supplied him with a good deal more than the occasional email or Facebook post. Nina, in contrast, had no intention of wasting her time on Ramsay, but mindful of not hurting Zoe and practised in old habits she chose to side-step the truth.
‘Since Daniel cleared out I’ve rather lost my party mood.’ And not wanting to manipulate too vigorously added, ‘I’m sure it’ll return.’
‘Not if you continue to avoid the party situation.’ Zoe, it seemed, was less mindful of her sensibilities.
She and Zoe had taken up their usual positions in the kitchen, filling in an hour before meeting Sean for lunch. Now Zoe leaned across the bench, her face was close, her expression stern.
‘Please Nina – do it for me.’
Zoe pressed a little harder and of course Nina capitulated: Ramsay didn’t matter but her sister did. And a couple of hours one afternoon for a sister whose life was so short on pleasure was, she decided, a small concession.
With the decision now made and with a firmness that not even Zoe could oppose, she shifted the conversation away from Ramsay on to the more congenial ground of the children. Callum was still at music camp and Hayley was staying with a friend down at Torquay; both had telephoned that morning.
‘It’s Hayley’s summer of being a surfer chick,’ Zoe said, returning to her side of the bench. ‘She’s having the time of her life. Just like we did.’
‘You’re not worried?’ Hayley was only sixteen.
‘We weren’t any older and we managed.’
And of course Zoe was right, but today’s sixteen-year-olds seemed far less equipped to deal with the world than they had been.
‘It’s true about most of them,’ Zoe said. ‘But Hayley’s sensible, and Elliot and I have put in a concerted effort to provide her with experiences beyond the digital world.’ Zoe was rubbing a smudge on the brilliant marble. Now she looked up. ‘Whatever Elliot’s shortcomings, he can’t be faulted as a father.’ And returned to her cleaning. ‘Hayley’s formed a band with some of her friends – she plays lead guitar, and she’s got quite a pretty voice.’ She laughed. ‘We’ve used the same approach with Callum and utterly failed. He’s fine as long as there’s a piano or a computer in reach, but deprive him of a keyboard and all he can do is sleep.’ In the silence that followed she reached for her cigarettes. She was fiddling with an unlit one when she said, ‘Ramsay considers Callum very talented; he thinks he’ll go far.’
There was so much implied in Zoe’s comment – Ramsay was constantly on her mind, Ramsay was involved with Callum’s music, Ramsay’s opinion mattered to her – and Nina assiduously ignored the lot.
‘I suppose there’s no chance of Sean coming to Ramsay’s tea party.’ She and Sean could be outsiders together. Then she shook her head. ‘No, I suppose not.’
She had seen Sean several times since her return to Melbourne and he’d made it clear that nothing had changed between him and Ramsay. They continued to avoid each other, any communication being mediated by lawyers and accountants. At the rare family gatherings they both attended, they kept their distance. No contact to speak of for more than half a lifetime, yet Nina was in no doubt that Sean still suffered the loss of his brother.
‘I don’t know how I want things to be with Ramsay now,’ he had said the other day. ‘I just wish I cared less.’
As for Sean and Zoe, they met only when Nina was in Melbourne and always at her instigation; they wouldn’t bother with eac
h other if not for her. What, she now asked herself, was she hanging on to? What absurd hopes? What useless nostalgia? Surely it was time to accept the situation and let them both off the hook. She was about to suggest to Zoe that she needn’t come to today’s lunch when Zoe’s mobile rang. Zoe glanced at the screen, grabbed her cigarettes and went out to the patio.
Nina sat alone in the perfect kitchen. She could hear the low burr of Zoe’s voice but couldn’t decipher the words. She worried about Zoe and she worried about Sean, but that was no reason to force them together. Sean, like Zoe, would be relieved if the threesome lunches were to cease; after all, what was Zoe to him now other than an unnecessary reminder of his losses?
Of the four of them, it was Sean who had been most affected by the events of their youth. If not for George, he would have remained in Melbourne, studied music and lived out his days as Ramsay’s devoted factotum. But George did arrive and he did take over Ramsay, and Sean couldn’t get away fast enough.
Nina had witnessed it all, and as George’s crimes mounted up – Sean described his takeover of Ramsay as a con and a theft – the more strenuously did he contemplate his own escape. She and Sean would hang out in her bedroom with the Reader’s Digest Atlas of Australia, while he weighed up various options. He might head up north to Queensland or the Northern Territory, find work on a property, or perhaps he’d try fruit-picking on the Murray; as his final exams drew closer he decided to hitch a ride on a boat – anywhere would do. In the end it was Sydney and a journalism cadetship that removed him from Raleigh Court. Nina still had a year of high school and Sydney might have been Timbuktu for all the freedom she had. What about me? she had said, begging him to reconsider. What about me? But he remained uncharacteristically firm.
‘You don’t have to stay here either.’
Twelve months later and equipped with a scholarship to the University of Sydney she had joined him. She needed to get away too, not from George and Ramsay, but Zoe and Ramsay. For the next four years she and Sean lived together. They were each other’s best friend, confidant, bullshit detector and family. Sean still played the violin and would pull it out after a boozy dinner with friends, or play just for the two of them when the night was advanced and the rest of the world was quiet. He played, but not seriously. He said he was finished with music, he said he was finished with the past. ‘All except you,’ he said to Nina. He never mentioned his brother. Indeed, Ramsay might have ceased to exist for all he entered their daily lives, yet being so assiduously avoided he was ever present. And he never mentioned Zoe either. Not then, nor now.
The Memory Trap Page 5