The Memory Trap
Page 31
She saw Daniel immediately. He was about fifty metres away, perched on the edge of a park bench facing the main path. She watched him stand and check his wristwatch, saw him step on to the path and look first one way then the other, watched as he ran a hand through his hair. Then he shoved both hands into his pockets and turned around. This was an anxious man.
They had met on three occasions since that first time, each carefully crafted to be relaxed and casual. The first had been at the National Gallery, the second a quick meal with Sean and Tom at a noisy Vietnamese restaurant, the third had been at the cinema, a new Australian film described as ‘quirky’, as so many Australian films were, that prompted no discussion whatsoever. They’d had a quick drink afterwards and then, finding herself on the edge of tears, she had dashed away. Today was the first time since their drink at the rooftop bar that there’d be opportunity to talk. Of course he would be anxious; so was she.
He walked towards her, took her hand briefly and they returned to the park bench together. The air was puffed up with heat, there was a scent of wood and dried grass. The sound of the Pied Piper and his young followers drifted in and out. Daniel again took her hand but this time he held it, and while she might wish she had the strength to pull away, she did not try to find it. But she must be careful, she reminded herself, as she felt a prickling of tears. How easy it would be to slip back into old patterns, just take up your customary positions as if the past fifteen months had not happened. But they did happen. They did happen. Daniel might think everything was on the road back to normal, but as much as she might want it to be, it was not. She withdrew her hand and shifted along the bench.
‘I try to remember the details of that last evening together,’ Daniel began. ‘The evening I left,’ as if she required any elaboration. ‘But I can’t. And the same goes for the whole time I was apart from you. I simply can’t remember.’
How fortunate for you, she was thinking. Perhaps she should provide her own experiential museum and guide Daniel through the emotional deserts and swamps of the hundreds of days of her life after he took up with Sally. A small derisory snort escaped her, but loud enough for him to twist around and look her in the face. ‘I’ve tried to remember, I really have,’ he said, ‘but it’s all a blur.’
‘That’s fortunate for you.’ She kept her tone matter-of-fact, her gaze directed ahead.
‘I wonder whether it’s a form of post-traumatic stress,’ he said.
This was too much. Nina rose from the bench and stood in front of him.
‘Let me get this straight, Daniel. You dump me with a ten-minute explanation. In the year you spend with your new girlfriend you don’t contact me, not a single inquiry to see how I’m managing. And now you tell me you are suffering post-traumatic stress.’ She cocked her head to the side, and with her face and voice dripping with sarcasm, added, ‘Next you’ll be asking me to feel sorry for you.’
His gaze was pitched to the dusty grass, he shuffled around on the seat – probably trying to work out how to obliterate his stupid, thoughtless poor-me statement. And it occurred to her that perhaps too much had happened, too much hurt, too much damage, for their tattered marriage to recover.
‘I didn’t put that very well, did I?’ he said finally.
‘It’s not just the way you put it, it was the sentiment you expressed.’
‘Do you want me to feel sorry for you?’
He sounded hopeful, and why not, she thought. A few apologies and a little regret would provide such an easy solution for him.
‘No Daniel, keep your apologies to yourself. I don’t want them. But I’d like to think you understood what you did. And I’d like to know you wouldn’t do it again. But that’s unlikely given you say you have no memory.’
‘But you do.’ He spoke slowly, each word uttered with care. ‘You have memory. I’ll take anything you want to dish out. Anything.’
She turned and walked away from him. With memory in her court, and only her court, she could do whatever she liked. And for a moment she felt the power of it – not that she believed him for a moment, not this man with the best memory of anyone she had ever known. She walked a little further before twisting around and observing him from a distance. She would like to see him as shrunken, but she didn’t, and sinister, but she didn’t, as a fool with a limping brain, but she didn’t. As for his being a man without memory, Daniel had always valued his capacity to remember. That he should so disarm himself weighed in more significantly than a kilogram of sorrys. Do with me what you will, he seemed to be saying, but please, do it with me.
There had been a particular oak planted in this area of the gardens in the 1880s by an important man’s wife, a huge tree with long, low, almost horizontal branches each as thick as the trunk of a medium-sized tree. She couldn’t remember the name of the famous man, nor the type of oak, but the tree was now gone and the grass had grown over where it used to be. So many things – ancient trees, books, memories, monuments – give the impression they’ll endure. But they don’t. And a marriage? You want it to be solid, you want it to be secure. But it lumbers into the future on the back of its past; a past of castles, a past of straw.
Daniel was sitting on the bench watching her. She walked slowly towards him; he stood as she approached. What he had done was, and would forever remain, unforgivable. But that didn’t change who he was. She stretched out her hand, felt his still-familiar closeness. The trees shuffled in the heat, the Pied Piper led the children in a merry dance, the voices of strangers rose and fell, and she and Daniel made their way home.
About the Author
Andrea Goldsmith originally trained as a speech pathologist and was a pioneer in the development of communication aids for people unable to speak.
Her first novel, Gracious Living, was published in 1989. This was followed by Modern Interiors, Facing the Music, Under the Knife, The Prosperous Thief, shortlisted for the 2003 Miles Franklin Award, and, in 2009, Reunion.
Her literary essays have appeared in Meanjin, Australian Book Review, Best Australian Essays, Heat and numerous anthologies.
For further information visit andreagoldsmith.com.au.
Praise for Andrea Goldsmith’s Reunion
‘looks deep into the human heart and delivers an experience
that is moving and profound’
Sydney Morning Herald
‘What may seem simple or trite feels revolutionary in
Goldsmith’s hands … With its richness of character,
challenging themes, exciting ideas and unsentimental sense
of place, Reunion deserves a prominent place in bookshops
and in conversation’
Weekend Australian
‘A book, quite simply, to lose yourself in’
Canberra Times
‘gloriously written … Whole characters are born out of a
simple paragraph, deepening on the page to become fully
fledged figures sitting beside the reader, whispering their
story. It’s a little bit spooky, little bit literary magic’
Courier-Mail
Copyright
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2013
This edition published in 2013
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Andrea Goldsmith 2013
The right of Andrea Goldsmith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Goldsmith, Andrea, 1950–
The memory trap / Andrea Goldsmith.
ISBN 978 0 7322 9672 8 (pbk.)
ISBN 978 1 7430 9898 1 (epub)
A823.3
Cover design by Christa Moffitt, Christabella Designs
Cover images: Woman © Ayal Ardon/Trevillion Images; Background image © Andy & Michelle Kerry/Trevillion Images; Rainbow Lorikeet by Vanessa Mylett, Dreamzone Photography
Author photograph by Celia Dann