A Traitor to Memory (127 page)

“Long enough to find this.” Gideon gestured with the card he held.

Jill looked at Richard. She saw his eyes narrow.

“You lied to me about this as well,” Gideon said.

Richard's attention was fixed on the card. “Lied about what?”

“About my sister. She didn't die. Not as a baby and not as a child.” His hand crumpled the envelope. It dropped to the floor.

Jill looked down at the photograph she was holding. She said, “But, Gideon, you know that your sister—”

“You've been going through my belongings,” Richard cut in.

“I wanted to find her address, which I expect you have squirreled away somewhere, haven't you? But what I found instead—”

“Gideon!” Jill held out the picture Richard intended for his son. “You're not making sense. Your sister was—”

“What I found,” Gideon went doggedly on, shaking the card at his father, “was this, and now I know exactly who you are: a liar who couldn't stop if he had to, Dad, if his life depended on telling the truth, if everyone's life depended upon it.”

“Gideon!” Jill was aghast not at the words but at the glacial tone in which Gideon spoke them. Her horror momentarily drove from her thoughts her own affront at Richard's behaviour. She pushed from her mind that Gideon was speaking the truth at least as it applied to her own life if not to his: In never mentioning Sonia's condition, Richard had indeed lied to her, if only by omission. Instead, she dwelt on the intemperance of what the son was saying to the father. “Richard was nearly killed less than three hours ago.”

“Are you sure of that?” Gideon asked her. “If he lied to me about Virginia, who's to know what else he's willing to lie about?”

“Virginia?” Jill asked. “Who—”

Richard said to his son, “We'll talk about this later.”

“No,” Gideon said. “We're going to talk about Virginia now.”

Jill said, “Who is Virginia?”

“Then you don't know either.”

Jill said, “Richard?” and turned to her fiancé. “Richard, what's this all about?”

“Here's what it's all about,” Gideon said, and he read the inside of the card aloud. His voice carried the strength of indignation although it trembled twice: once when he read out the words
our daughter
and a second time when he came to
lived thirty-two years.

For her part, Jill heard the echo of a different two phrases reverberating round the room:
She defied medical probability
was one, and the other comprised the first three words of the final sentence:
Despite her problems
. She felt a wave of sickness rise up in her, and a terrible
cold worked its way into her bones. “Who is she?” she cried. “Richard, who is she?”

“A freak,” Gideon said. “Isn't that right, Dad? Virginia Davies was another freak.”

“What does he mean?” Jill asked, although she knew, already knew and couldn't bear the knowing. She willed Richard to answer her question, but he stood like granite, bent-shouldered, crooked-backed, with his eyes fixed steadily on his son. “Say something!” Jill implored.

“He's thinking how to shape an answer for you,” Gideon told her. “He's wondering what excuse he can make for letting me think my older sister died as a baby. There was something badly wrong with her, you see. And I expect it was easier to pretend she was dead than to have to accept that she wasn't perfect.”

Richard finally spoke. “You don't know what you're talking about,” he said as Jill's thoughts began to spin wildly out of control: another Down's Syndrome, the voices shouted inside her skull, a second Down's Syndrome, a second Down's Syndrome or something else something worse something he couldn't bring himself even to mention and all the while her precious Catherine was at risk for something God only knew what that the antenatal tests had not identified and he stood there just stood there and stood there and stood there and looked at his son and refused to discuss … She was aware that the picture she was holding was becoming slick in her hands, was becoming heavy, was becoming a burden she could hardly manage. It slipped from her fingers as she cried out, “Talk to me, Richard!”

Richard and his son moved simultaneously as the picture clattered on the bare wood floor and Jill stepped past it, stepped around it, feeling she couldn't bear her own impossible weight a moment longer. So she stumbled to the sofa, where she became a mute onlooker to what then followed.

Hastily, Richard bent for the picture, but his actions were hampered by the plaster on his leg. Gideon got there first. He snatched it up, crying, “Something else, Dad?” and then he stared down at it with his fingers whitening to the colour of bone upon the wooden frame. He said hoarsely, “Where did this come from?” He raised his eyes to his father.

Richard said, “You must calm down, Gideon,” and he sounded desperate and Jill watched both of them and saw their tension, Richard's held like a whip in his hand, Gideon's coiled and ready to spring.

Gideon said, “You told me she'd taken every picture of Sonia with her. Mother left us and she took all the pictures, you said. She took all of the pictures except that one you kept in your desk.”

“I had a very good reason—”

“Have you had this all along?”

“I have.” Richard's eyes bored into his son's.

“I don't believe you,” Gideon said. “You said she took them and she took them. You wanted her to take them. Or you sent them to her. But you didn't have this, because if you'd had it, on that day when I wanted it, when I needed to see her, when I asked you, begged you—”

“Rubbish. This is bollocks. I didn't give it to you then because I thought you might—”

“What? Throw myself onto the railway tracks? I didn't know then. I didn't even suspect. I was panicked about my music and so were you. So if you'd had this then, on that day, Dad, you'd have handed it over straightaway. If you thought for a moment it would get me back to the violin, you would have done anything.”

“Listen to me.” Richard spoke rapidly. “I had that picture. I'd forgotten about it. I'd merely misplaced it among your grandfather's papers. When I saw it yesterday, I intended at once to give it to you. I remembered you wanted a picture of Sonia … that you'd asked about one….”

“It wouldn't be in a frame,” Gideon said. “Not if it was yours. Not if you'd misplaced it among his papers.”

“You're twisting my words.”

“It would have been like the other. It would have been in an envelope or stuffed into a book or placed in a bag or lying somewhere loose, but it wouldn't—it wouldn't—have been in a frame.”

“You're getting hysterical. This is what comes of psychoanalysis. I hope you see that.”

“What I see,” Gideon cried, “is a self-involved hypocrite who'd say anything at all, who'd do anything at all if that's what it took—” Gideon stopped himself.

On the sofa, Jill felt the atmosphere between the two men suddenly become electric and hot. Her own thoughts were charging round madly in her head, so at first when Gideon spoke again, she didn't comprehend his meaning.

“It was you,” he said. “Oh my God. You killed her. You had spoken to her. You had asked her to support your lies about Sonia, but she wouldn't do that, would she? So she had to die.”

“For the love of God, Gideon. You don't know what you're saying.”

“I do. For the first time in my life, I do. She was going to tell me the truth, wasn't she? You didn't think she would, you were so certain she'd go along with anything you planned, because she did at first, all those years ago. But that's not who she was and why the hell did you think it might be? She'd left us, Dad. She couldn't live a lie and live with us, so she walked out. It was too much for her, knowing that we'd sent Katja to prison.”

“She agreed to go. She was party to it all.”

“But not to twenty years,” Gideon said. “Katja Wolff wouldn't have been party to that. To five years, perhaps. Five years and one hundred thousand pounds, all right. But twenty years? No one expected it. And Mother couldn't live with it, could she? So she left us and she would have stayed away forever had I not lost my music at Wigmore Hall.”

“You've got to stop thinking that Wigmore Hall is connected to anything but Wigmore Hall. I've told you that from the first.”

“Because you wanted to believe it,” Gideon said. “But the truth is that Mother was going to tell me that my memory wasn't lying to me, wasn't she, Dad? She knew I killed Sonia. She knew I did it alone.”

“You didn't. I've told you. I explained what happened.”

“Tell me again, then. In front of Jill.”

Richard said nothing, although he cast a look at Jill. She wanted to see it as a look that begged for her help and her understanding. But she saw instead the calculation behind it. Richard said, “Gideon. Let's put this aside. Let's talk about it later.”

“We'll talk about it now. One of us will. Shall I be the one? I killed my sister, Jill. I drowned her in her bath. She was a millstone round everyone's neck—”

“Gideon. Stop it.”

“—but especially round mine. She stood in the way of my music. I saw the world revolving round her, and I couldn't cope with that, so I killed her.”

“No!” Richard said.

“Dad wants me to think—”

“No!” Richard shouted.

“—that he was the one, that when he came into the bathroom that evening and saw her underwater in the tub, he held her there and finished the job. But he's lying about that because he knows that if I continue to believe I killed her, there's a very good chance I'll never pick up the violin again.”

“That's not what happened,” Richard said.

“Which part of it?”

Richard said nothing for a moment, then, “Please,” and Jill saw that he was caught between the two choices that Gideon's accusations had brought him to facing. And no matter which way he chose to go, both choices amounted to a single one in the end. Either he killed his child. Or he killed his child.

Gideon apparently saw the answer he wanted within his father's silence. He said, “Yes. Right, then,” and dropped the picture of his sister onto the floor.

He strode to the door. He drew it open.

“For God's sake, I did it,” Richard cried out. “Gideon! Stop! Listen to me. Believe what I say. She was still alive when you left her. I held her down in the bath. I was the one who drowned Sonia.”

Jill caught herself in a wail of horror. It was all too logical. She knew. She saw. He was talking to his son but he was doing more: He was finally explaining to Jill what was keeping him from marriage.

Gideon said, “Those are lies,” and he began to leave.

Richard started to go after him, hampered by his injuries. Jill struggled to her feet. She said, “They're all daughters. That's it, isn't it? Virginia. Sonia. And now Catherine.”

Richard stumbled to the door, leaned against the jamb. He roared, “Gideon! God damn it! Listen!” He shoved himself out into the corridor.

Jill staggered after him. She cried, “You didn't want to marry because it's a daughter.” She grabbed on to his arm. He was hobbling towards the staircase, and heavy as she was, he dragged her with him. She could hear Gideon clattering downwards. His footsteps pounded across the tiled entry.

“Gideon!” Richard shouted. “Wait!”

“You're afraid she'll be like the other two, aren't you?” Jill cried, clinging to Richard's arm. “You created Virginia. You created Sonia and you think our baby's going to be damaged as well. That's why you haven't wanted to marry me, isn't it?”

The front door opened. Richard and Jill reached the top of the stairs. Richard shouted, “Gideon! Listen to me.”

“I've listened long enough,” came the reply. Then the front door banged closed. Richard bellowed as if struck in the chest. He started to descend.

Jill dragged down on his arm. “That's why. Isn't it? You've been waiting to see if the baby's normal before you're willing to—”

He shook her off. She grabbed at him again. “Get away!” he cried. “Get off me. Go! Don't you see I've got to stop him?”

“Answer me. Tell me. You've thought there was something wrong because she's a daughter and if we married, then you'd be stuck. With me. With her. Just like before.”

“You don't know what you're saying.”

“Then tell me I'm wrong.”

“Gideon!” he shouted. “God damn it, Jill. I'm his father. He needs me. You don't know … Let me go.”

“I won't! Not until you—”

“I. Said. Let. Me …” His teeth were clenched. His face was rigid. Jill felt his hand—his good hand—climb up her chest and push at her savagely.

She clung to him harder, crying, “No! What are you doing? Talk to me!”

She pulled him towards her, but he swung away. He jerked free and as he did so, their positions shifted precariously. He was now above her. She was below. And so she blocked him, blocked his passage to Gideon and his re-entry into a life she could not afford to understand.

Both of them were panting. The smell of their sweat was rank in the air. “That's why, isn't it?” Jill demanded. “I want to hear it from you, Richard.”

But instead of replying, he gave an inarticulate cry. Before she could move to safety, he was trying to get past her. He used his good arm against her breasts. She backed away in reflex. She lost her footing. In an instant she was tumbling down the stairs.