A Traitor to Memory

So the fact that she was Down's figures in all this, doesn't it? It must, because it's the one detail that had to be revealed to me. I couldn't dredge it up. Nothing led me to it.

You weren't able to dredge up Katja Wolff either, you point out to me.

So Down's and Katja Wolff are connected, aren't they, Dr. Rose? They must be.

5 October





I couldn't remain in the news library once I saw that picture of my sister and heard Libby voice what I myself could not say. I wanted to remain there. I had five envelopes of information in front of me, all detailing what had happened to my family twenty years ago. No doubt I would also have discovered within those envelopes every significant name of every person who had been involved in the investigation and the legal proceedings that followed it. But I found that I couldn't read any further once I saw that picture of Sonia. Because seeing that picture allowed me to visualise my sister under the water: with her so-round head turning side to side and her eyes—those eyes which even in a newspaper photograph show that she was born anomalous—looking looking always looking because they cannot keep themselves from looking upon her killer. This is someone she trusts, loves, depends upon, and needs, who is holding her down beneath the water, and she doesn't understand. She is only two years old, and even if she had been a normal child, she would not have understood what was happening. But she isn't normal. She wasn't born normal. And nothing in the two years that comprise her short life has ever been normal.

Abnormality. Abnormality leading to crisis. That's it, Dr. Rose. We have lurched from crisis to crisis with my sister. Mother weeps at Mass in the morning, and Sister Cecilia knows that she needs help. Not only does she need help to cope with the fact that she has given birth to a child who is different, imperfect, unusual, outstanding, or whatever else you want to call her, but she also needs practical help in the caring for her. Because despite the presence of one child a prodigy and the other child handicapped by a defect of birth, life must continue, which means Gran must still be in attendance on Granddad, Dad must have two jobs as before, and if I'm to continue with the violin, Mother must work as well.

The logical expense to cut is the violin and everything associated with it: release Raphael Robson from his duties, sack Sarah-Jane Beckett as my constant teacher, and send me to day school. With the enormous amount of money saved from these simple and expedient economies, Mother can stay at home with Sonia, see to her growing needs, and nurse her through the health traumas that come up continually.

But making this change is unthinkable to everyone, because at six and a half years old, I have already made my public debut, and to deny the world the gift of my music seems an act of egregious pettiness. Doing this, however, has certainly been mooted among my parents and grandparents. Yes. I remember now. Mother and Dad are having a discussion in the drawing room and Granddad enters into it vociferously. “Boy's a genius, a God damn genius,” he bellows at them. And Gran is there, because I hear her anxious “Jack, Jack,” and I picture her scurrying to the stereo and throwing on a Paganini for the savage breast residing directly beneath Granddad's flannel shirt. “He's already giving concerts, God damn it,” Granddad rages. “You'll cut him off from that over my dead body. So for once in your life—just for flaming once, Dick—will you please make the right decision?”





Neither Raphael nor Sarah-Jane is involved in this debate. Their futures hang in the balance along with my own, but they have as much say in what will happen as I do, which is none at all. The dispute goes on for hours and days during my mother's convalescence from her pregnancy, and both the dispute and the difficulties of my mother's recovery are exacerbated by the health crises that Sonia experiences.

The baby's been taken to the doctor … to hospital … to Casualty. There is all round us a pervasive sense of tension, urgency, and fear that has never been in the house before. People are stretched to the breaking point with anxiety. Always the question hangs in the air, What will happen next?

Crises. People are gone a great deal of the time. There are gaps in which no one seems at home at all. Just Raphael and I. Or Sarah-Jane and I. While everyone else is with Sonia.

Why? you ask. What sort of crises did Sonia have?