A Traitor to Memory (39 page)

“Were your children baptised Catholics, then?” Lynley asked.

“Only if she and Cecilia did it in secret. My own dad would have had a stroke otherwise.” Davies smiled with fondness. “He was quite a tyrannical paterfamilias in his own way.”

And have you taken a page from that book, Lynley wondered, despite your air of helpfulness now? But that was something he'd have to learn from Gideon.

GIDEON

1 October

Where is
this taking us, Dr. Rose? You ask me to consider my dreams now as well as my memories, and I wonder if you know what you're doing. You ask me to write my random thoughts, to free myself from worrying about how they connect or where they might lead or how they might produce the key that will fit into the lock of my mind, and my patience with this process is wearing thin.

Dad informs me that your previous work in New York was primarily with eating disorders. He's been doing his prep where you're concerned—a few phone calls to the States was all it took—because as he sees no progress, he's begun to question how much more time I want to devote to dredging up the past instead of dealing with the present. “For God's sake, she doesn't work with musicians,” he said when I spoke to him today. “She doesn't even work with other artists. So you can continue to fill her purse with money and get nothing in return—which is all that's been happening so far, Gideon—or you can try something else.”

“What?” I asked him.

“If you're so insistent upon psychiatry as the answer, then at least try someone who'll address the problem. And the problem is the violin, Gideon. The problem is not what you do or do not remember about the past.”

I said, “Raphael told me.”

“What?”

“That Katja Wolff drowned Sonia.”

There was silence at this, and as we were on the phone and not having the conversation in person, I could only guess at Dad's expression. His face would have hardened as the muscles tightened, and his eyes would have gone opaque. In telling me even as little as he told, Raphael had broken an agreement of twenty years' standing. Dad would not like that.

“What happened?” I asked.

“I won't discuss this.”

“It's why Mother left us, isn't it?”

“I've told you—”

“Nothing. You've told me
nothing
. If you're so intent on helping me, why won't you help me with this?”

“Because
this
has sod all to do with your problem. But digging it all up, dissecting every nuance, and dwelling on them
ad infinitum
are brilliant ways to side-step the real issues, Gideon.”

“I'm going at this the only way I can.”

“Bollocks. You're following her dance steps like a nancy boy.”

“That's bloody unfair.”

“Unfair is being asked to stand to one side and watch your son throw his life away. Unfair is having lived solely for that son's benefit for a quarter of a century so that he can become the musician he wishes to be, only to have him fall to pieces the first time he has a setback. Unfair is crafting a relationship with that son unlike any I could ever have had with my own father and then being asked to step back while the love and trust that I've had with him for years gets transferred to some female psychiatrist with nothing more to recommend her than having managed to hike to Machu Picchu without having to be carried to the top.”

“Jesus. How much nosing round have you done?”

“Enough to know how much time you're wasting. God damn it, Gideon”—but his voice wasn't hard when he said those words—“have you even tried?”

To play, naturally. That was what he needed to know. It was as if, to him, I'd ceased to be anything other than a music-making machine.

When I didn't reply, he said not unreasonably, “Don't you see, then, that this could be nothing more than a momentary blackout? A loose connection in your brain. But because you've never had the smallest blip in your career, you've panicked. Pick up the violin, for God's sake. Do it for yourself before it's too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“To overcome the fear. Don't let it drag you down. Don't dwell on it.”

At the end, his words didn't seem illogical. Instead, they seemed to indicate an action that was reasonable and sound. Perhaps I
was
making a mountain out of a dust speck, using a manufactured “illness of spirit” as a cover for a wound to my professional pride.

So I picked up the Guarneri, Dr. Rose. In the cause of optimism, I put the shoulder rest in place. I gave myself the break of sheet music—alleviating the pressure of having to produce a measure from memory by choosing the Mendelssohn that I'd played a thousand times before—and I found my body, as Miss Orr would have told me. I could even hear her: “Body up, shoulders down. Upbow with the
whole
arm. Only the tops of the fingers move.”

I heard it all, but I could do none of it. The bow skittered across the strings, and my fingers flailed the gut with as much delicacy as a butcher dressing a pig.

Nerves, I thought. This is all about nerves.

So I tried a second time, and the sound was worse. And that's all it was that I produced: sound, Dr. Rose. I didn't come close to approaching music. As for actually playing the Mendelssohn … I might have been attempting a moon landing from the music room, so impossible was the task I'd undertaken.

How did it feel to make the attempt? you want to know.

How did it feel to close the coffin on Tim Freeman? I reply. Husband, companion, victim of cancer, and everything else that he was to you, Dr. Rose. How did it feel when your husband died? Because this is a death to me, and if there's going to be a resurrection, what I need to know is how it's going to be effected by sifting through the past and writing down my damn dreams. Tell me that, please. For God's sake, tell me.

2 October

I didn't tell Dad.

Why? you ask.

I couldn't face it.

Face what?

His disappointment, I suppose. What it would do to him to know that I can't do what he wants me to do. He's fashioned his entire life round mine, and my entire life has been fashioned round my playing. Both of us are hurtling towards oblivion right now, and it seems an act of kindness if only one of us knows it.

When I set the Guarneri back into its case, I made my decision. I left the house.

On the front steps I met Libby, however. She was leaning next to the railing with a bag of marshmallows open on her lap. She didn't appear to be eating them, although she did look as if she were contemplating doing so.

I wondered how long she'd been sitting there, and when she spoke, I had my answer.

“I heard.” She got to her feet, looked down at the bag, then stuffed it into the capacious front of her dungarees. “That's what's been wrong, isn't it, Gid? That's why you haven't been playing. Why didn't you
tell
me? I mean, I thought we were friends.”

“We are.”

“No way.”

“Way,” I said.

She didn't smile. “Friends help each other out.”

“You can't help with this. I don't even know what's gone wrong with me, Libby.”

She looked off bleakly into the square. She said, “Shit. What are we doing, Gid? Why're we flying your kites? Gliding your glider? Why the hell are we sleeping together? I mean, if you can't even talk to me—”

The conversation was a reenactment of a hundred discussions with Beth, with a slight change in subject. With her, it had been, “Gideon, if we can't even make love any longer …”

With Libby things hadn't gone far enough to make that a subject, for which I was grateful. I heard her out but had nothing to say. When she had finished talking and realised there would be no reply, she followed me to my car, saying, “Hey! Wait a minute. I'm talking to you. Wait a minute.
Wait
.” She grabbed my arm.

“I've got to go,” I told her.

“Where?”

“Victoria.”

“Why?”

“Libby …”

“Fine.” And when I'd unlocked the car, she climbed inside. “Then I'm coming with you,” she said.

To rid myself of her, I would have had to remove her bodily from the car. And there was a set to her jaw and a steeliness in her eyes that told me she wouldn't be removed without putting up a monumental fight. I didn't have the energy or the heart for that, so I started the car and we drove to Victoria.

The Press Association has its offices just round the corner from Victoria Station on Vauxhall Bridge Road, and that's where I took us. On the way, Libby brought out the marshmallows, which she started to consume.

I said, “Aren't you on the No-White Diet?”

“These are coloured pink and green, in case you didn't notice.”

“You once said white that's coloured artificially counts as white,” I reminded her.