A Traitor to Memory

I suppose I should have considered dropping in to see Jill now and again, especially as she is to be my step-mother, odd though the proposition seems. But I could tell by the way she asked her question that she was merely sorting out information and not implying anything the way so many women do.

I said, “There are one or two things …”





She said, “I expect there are. I'll be in the study,” and she went in that direction.

When Dad and I were alone, we repaired to the kitchen. Dad moved Jill's impressive coffee maker into the centre of the work top and fetched some espresso beans, which he poured inside. The coffee maker—like the flat itself—is quintessentially Jill. It's an amazing machine with a capability of producing one fresh cup of anything in less than a minute: coffee, cappuccino, espresso, latte. It steams milk and boils water and I expect it would do the washing up, the laundry, and the hoovering if you programmed it thus. Dad used to scoff at the appliance, but I noticed that he was using it like a pro.

He took out two demitasse cups and their saucers. From a bowl near the sink, he found a lemon. He was searching for the proper knife with which to carve us each a curl of the peel when I spoke.

“Dad, I've seen a picture of Sonia. I mean a better picture than the one you showed me. A newspaper picture from the time of the trial.”





He turned a dial on the coffee machine, replaced its single spout with a double one that he took from a drawer, and put the two small cups in position. He pushed a button. A gentle whirring ensued. He gave his attention to the lemon again, making a curving sliver that would have done credit to a chef at the Savoy. “I see,” was all he said. He began a second slice.

“Why did no one tell me about it?” I asked.

“About what?”





“You know. The trial. How Sonia died. Everything. Why didn't we talk about it?”





He shook his head. He had finished the second lemon-peel curl—as perfectly carved as was the first—and when the espresso was done, he plopped a curl in each cup and handed me mine. He said, “Out here?” and cocked his head in the direction of the sitting room off which a terrace overlooked other similar period buildings nearby.

On a grey day such as this, the terrace didn't promise much comfort. But it did offer the benefit of privacy, which I wanted with Dad, so I followed him out.

As I suspected, we were completely alone there. The other terraces from the building were deserted. Jill's outdoor furniture was already covered, but Dad removed the plastic sheeting from two of the chairs and we sat. He set his espresso on his knee and zipped his parka. He said, “I didn't keep the newspapers. I didn't look at them. What I wanted more than anything was to forget. I realise that's probably anathema to the current thinking among mental health experts. Aren't we all supposed to wallow in recollection till we reek of the stench? But I don't come from an age when that was fashionable, Gideon. I lived through it—the days and weeks and months of it—and when it was over, I wanted nothing more than to forget it had ever happened.”





“Is that how Mother felt as well?”





He lifted his cup. He drank, but he observed me as he did so. “I don't know how your mother felt. We couldn't talk about it. None of us could talk about it. To talk about it meant to relive it, and living through it once was horror enough.”





“I need to talk about it now.”





“More of your Dr. Rose's sterling recommendations? Sonia loved the violin, if that's of interest to you. She loved you and the violin, more precisely. She spoke very little—language comes late to a Down's child—but she could say your name.”





That was like the precise administering of a wound, a delicate but perfectly accurate incision into my heart. I said, “Dad—”





He cut in. “Never mind. That was low of me.”





“Why did no one speak of her afterwards? After she … after the trial?” I asked the question but the answer was obvious: We never spoke of anything frightful. Granddad raged like a maniac periodically; he was carted, dragged, led, or carried out into the night or the morning or the heat of the afternoon and he did not return for weeks, and we did not mention the fact at any time. Mother vanished one day, taking with her not only every possession she owned but also every reminder that she had ever been part of the family, and we did not concern ourselves with a discussion of where she might have gone or why. And there I sat on my father's lover's terrace, wondering why we never spoke of Sonia's life or her death when we were and had always been a group of people who spoke of nothing: nothing painful, nothing heartbreaking, nothing horrifying, nothing grievous.

“We wanted to forget it had happened.”





“Forget Mother had happened? Forget Sonia herself had happened?”