A Traitor to Memory (91 page)

My mother says, “Gideon, would you take your cereal to the dining room, please?” and because of the undercurrents in the kitchen, I obey. But I pause to listen just out of sight and I hear my mother say, “We've already had one talk about your morning duties, Katja,” and Katja says, “Please to let me feed the baby, Frau Davies,” in a clear, firm voice.

It is the voice of someone unafraid of her employer, I realise now, Dr. Rose. And that voice suggests there are very good reasons for Katja not to be afraid.

So I went to my father's flat. I said my hellos to Jill. I dodged certificates, display cases, and trunks containing my grandfather's belongings, and I homed in on my grandmother's desk, which Dad has used as his for years.

I was looking for something that could confirm the connection between Katja and the man who'd made her pregnant. Because I'd finally come to see that if Katja Wolff maintained silence, she could have done so for only one possible reason: to protect someone. And that someone had to be my father, who had kept her photo for more than twenty years.

1 November, 4:00 P.M.

I did not progress far in my search.

In the drawer that I'd opened, I discovered an accordion file of correspondence. Among the letters therein—most of which comprised subjects having to do with my career—there was one from a solicitor with a North London address. Her client Katja Veronika Wolff had authorised Harriet Lewis, Esq., to contact Richard Davies with regard to monies owed her. Since the terms of her parole forbade her to contact any member of the Davies family personally, Miss Wolff was using this legal channel as a conduit through which the matter could be satisfactorily settled. If Mr. Davies would be so kind as to phone Ms. Lewis at the above-listed number at his earliest convenience, this matter of money could be handled expeditiously and to everyone's satisfaction. Ms. Lewis remained yours truly, et cetera.

I studied this letter. It was less than two months old. The language in it did not appear to contain the sort of veiled threat one would expect from a solicitor with future litigation on her mind. It was all straightforward, pleasant, and professional. As such, it fairly screamed the question
Why?

I was pondering the possible answers to this question when Dad arrived at the flat. I heard him come in. I heard his voice and Jill's coming from the kitchen. Shortly afterwards, his footsteps marked his progress from the kitchen to the Granddad Room.

When he opened the door, I was still sitting there with the accordion file open on the floor at my feet and the letter from Harriet Lewis in my hand. I made no attempt to hide the fact that I was going through my father's belongings, and when he crossed the room, saying sharply, “What are you doing, Gideon?” my reply was to hand him the letter and say, “What's behind this, Dad?”

He flicked his gaze over it. He returned it to the accordion file and returned the file to the drawer before he replied.

“She wanted to be paid for the time she spent in remand prior to the trial,” he said. “The first month of the remand period constituted the notice we'd given her, and she wanted her money for that month as well as interest on it.”

“All these years later?”

“Perhaps a more pertinent remark would be: ‘After she murdered Sonia?’” He pushed the desk drawer shut.

“She was very sure of her place with our family, wasn't she? She never expected to be sacked.”

“You've no idea what you're talking about.”

“Have you answered that letter, then? Have you phoned that solicitor as requested?”

“I've no intention of doing anything to revisit that period, Gideon.”

I nodded at the drawer where he'd returned the letter. “Someone apparently doesn't think so. Not only that, but despite what someone's supposed to have done to devastate your life, someone apparently has no compunction about re-entering it even via a solicitor. I don't understand why, unless there was something more between you than employer and employee. Because don't you think a letter like that indicates a sense of confidence that someone in Katja Wolff 's position ought not to have with regard to you?”

“What the hell are you getting at?”

“I've remembered my mother talking to you about Katja. I've remembered her suspicions.”

“You've remembered rubbish.”

“Sarah-Jane Beckett says James Pitchford wasn't interested in Katja. She says he wasn't actually interested in women at all. That leaves him out of the equation, Dad, which brings it down to you or Granddad, the only other men in the house. Or Raphael, I suppose, although I think both you and I know where Raphael's true affections lay.”

“What are you implying?”

“Sarah-Jane says Granddad was fond of Katja. She says he hung about when she was nearby. But somehow I can't see Granddad managing more than calf-love. And that leaves you.”

“Sarah-Jane Beckett was a jealous cow,” Dad replied. “She set her sights on Pitchford the day she walked into the house. One pear-shaped syllable out of his heavily tutored mouth and she thought she'd encountered the Second Coming. She was a social climber of the first order, Gideon, and before Katja entered our lives, nothing stood between her and the top of the mountain, which was that fool Pitchford. The last thing she'd have wanted was to see a relationship developing where she herself wanted one. And I assume you have enough basic human psychology under your belt to be able to think that one through.”

I was forced to do just that, sifting back through my time in Cheltenham to weigh what Sarah-Jane had said, placing it in the balance against what Dad was claiming now. Had there been a vindictive satisfaction in Sarah-Jane's comments about Katja Wolff? Or had she simply tried to accommodate a request that I myself had made? Surely, had I called upon her with no desire other than to re-establish a connection with her, she wouldn't have brought up Katja or that period of time on her own. And didn't the very cause of jealousy dictate that the object of the passion be derided at every opportunity? So if it
was
base jealousy that she felt, wouldn't she have sought to bring up the subject of Katja Wolff herself? And no matter what Sarah-Jane had felt for Katja Wolff twenty years ago, why would she still be wallowing in that feeling now? Tucked away in Cheltenham in her smartly decorated house, wife, mother, collector of dolls, painter of competent if not inspired water colours, she had little need to dwell on the past, hadn't she?

Into my thoughts, Dad said roughly, “This has gone on long enough, Gideon,” in a tone that brought an abrupt end to my reflections.

“What?” I said.

“This mucking about. This contemplation of your navel. I'm at my limit with it all. Come with me. We're going to deal with this head-on.”

I thought he meant to tell me something I'd not yet heard, so I followed him. I expected him to take me into the garden, the better to have a confidential talk far out of earshot of Jill, who remained in the kitchen contentedly setting up paint samples along the window sill. But instead he went to the door of the flat, and from there to the street. He strode to his car that was parked midway between Braemar Mansions and Gloucester Road. He said, “Get in,” as he unlocked it. And when I hesitated, “God damn it, Gideon. You heard me. Get the hell
in
.”

I said, “Where are we going?” as he started the engine.

He jerked the car into reverse, negotiated his way out of the space, and gunned the motor. We shot up Gloucester Road in the direction of those wrought iron gates that mark the entrance to Kensington Gardens. “We're going where we should have gone in the first place,” he replied.

He headed east along Kensington Road, driving in a way that I'd never seen him do. He veered round taxis and buses and once leaned on the horn when two women dashed across the street near the Albert Hall. A sharp left at Exhibition Road took us into Hyde Park. He gained even more speed along South Carriage Drive. It wasn't until we'd got beyond Marble Arch that I realised where he was taking me. But I said nothing till he'd finally parked the car in the Portman Square underground car park, where he always went when I performed nearby.

“What's the point in this, Dad?” I asked him, trying for patience where I had fear.

“You're going to get past this nonsense,” he told me. “Are you man enough to come with me, or have you lost your bollocks along with your nerve?”

He shoved open his door and stood waiting for me. I felt my in-sides go liquid at the thought of what the next few minutes might hold. But I got out of the car anyway. And we walked side by side along Wigmore Street, heading in the direction of Wigmore Hall.

How did that feel? you ask me. What were you experiencing, Gideon?

I was experiencing heading there that night. Only that night I'd been alone because I'd come directly from Chalcot Square.

I'm walking along the street, and I haven't a
clue
what's in store for me. I'm nervous, but not more than usual before a performance. I've mentioned that, haven't I? My nerves? Funny, I can't remember having nerves when I
ought
to have had them: performing in public the very first time as a six-year-old, performing several times thereafter as a seven-year-old, playing for Perlman, meeting Menuhin … What was it about me, then? How was I so capable of taking things in my stride? I lost that naïve confidence somewhere along the line. So this night on the way to Wigmore Hall is no different to all those other nights I've lived through, and my expectation is that the nervous anticipation that precedes this concert will pass as it usually does, the moment I lift the Guarneri and the bow.

I walk along, and I think about the music, revisiting it in my head as I usually do. I haven't had a flawless rehearsal of this piece—never have had one—but I'm telling myself that muscle memory will guide my playing past the sections that have given me difficulty.

Particular sections? you ask. The same sections each time?

No. That's what's always been so peculiar about
The Archduke
. I never know which part of the piece is going to trip me up. It's been a field not cleared of landmines, and no matter how slowly I've progressed over the rough terrain, I've always managed to encounter an explosive.

So I move along the street, dimly hear the after-work crowd at one of the pubs I pass, and think about my music. My fingers actually find the notes, although I carry the Guarneri in its case, and in doing this, they somewhat calm my anxiety, which I mistakenly take as a sign that all will be well.

I arrive ninety minutes early. Just before I round the corner to access the artists' entrance behind the concert hall, I can see up ahead extending over the pavement the covered-glass entry of the hall itself, peopled at this moment only by pedestrians hurrying home from work. I run through the first ten measures of the Allegro. I tell myself what a simple good thing it is, really, to play music with two friends like Beth and Sherrill. I have no idea of what will happen to me in those ninety minutes that are left of my career. I am, if you will, an innocent lamb on his way to be slaughtered, without a sense of peril and somehow lacking the ability to scent blood in the air.

On the way to the hall with Dad, I recalled all this. But there was no real immediacy to my trepidation because I knew already how the next few minutes would play out.

As I did that night, we rounded the corner into Welbeck Street. We hadn't spoken since emerging from the underground car park. I took Dad's silence to mean grim determination. He probably took mine as acquiescence to the plan instead of resignation to what I knew would be the outcome.