A Traitor to Memory

Deborah led Lynley into the room, saying, “Do put that thing down somewhere, Tommy. It looks heavy.”


Lynley chose a coffee table that stood in front of a sofa facing the fireplace. Peach came to investigate the computer before returning to a basket that exposed her to the best warmth of the fire. There, she curled herself into a ball, sighed happily, and watched the proceedings in a dignified head-on-paws position from which she blinked drowsily from time to time.

“You must be wanting Simon,” Deborah said. “He's just upstairs. Let me fetch him for you.”

“In a moment.” Lynley said the words without thinking, and so quickly on the heels of her own that Deborah brought herself up short, smiled at him quizzically, and shoved a portion of her heavy hair behind one ear.

She said, “All right,” and walked to an old drinks trolley by the window. She was a tallish woman, lightly freckled across the bridge of her nose, not thin like a model, not stout, but well-shaped and completely female. She wore black jeans and a sweater that was the colour of green olives and made an attractive contrast with her coppery hair.

He saw that the room was stacked along the walls and the bookshelves at floor level with dozens of mounted and framed photographs. Some of them were dressed in bubble wrap, which reminded him of Deborah's upcoming show in a gallery on Great Newport Street.

She said, “Sherry? Whisky? We've got a new bottle of Lagavulin that Simon's telling me is nothing short of potable heaven.”

“Simon's not given to hyperbole.”

“Like the fine man of science that he is.”

“It must be good, then. I'll have the whisky. You're working on the show?”

“It's nearly ready. I'm at the catalogue stage.” Handing over the whisky, she nodded to her husband's desk and said, “I've been going over the proofs. The pictures they've selected are fine, but they've edited out some of my timeless prose”—she grinned; her nose wrinkled as it always did, making her look much younger than her twenty-six years—“and I'm finding that I don't like that much. Look at me. My fifteen minutes arrive and straightaway I become the great artiste.”

He smiled. “That's unlikely.”

“Which part?”

“The part about fifteen minutes.”

“You're very quick this evening.”

“I speak only the truth.”

She smiled at him fondly, then turned and poured herself a glass of sherry. She took it up, held it out, and said, “Here's to … Hmm … I don't know. What shall we drink to?”

Which was how Lynley knew that Helen had been as good as her word, not telling Deborah about the coming baby. He was relieved at this. At the same time, he was ill at ease. Deborah would have to know sometime, and he knew that he had to be the person to tell her. He wanted to do so now, but he couldn't think of a place to begin, apart from saying outright, Let's drink to Helen. Let's drink to the baby my wife and I have made. Which was, of course, completely impossible.

He said instead, “Let's drink to the sale of every one of your pictures next month. On opening night, to members of the royal family who will summarily demonstrate they've a taste for something beyond horses and blood sport.”

“You never did get over your first fox hunt, did you?”

“‘The unspeakable in pursuit.’”

“Such a traitor to your class.”

“I like to think it's what makes me interesting.”

Deborah laughed, said, “Cheers, then,” and took a sip of sherry.

For his part, Lynley took a deep gulp of the Lagavulin and considered everything that was going unsaid between them. What a thing it was to come face-to-face with one's cowardice and indecision, he thought.

He said, “What will you do after the show is mounted? Have you another project in mind?”

Deborah looked round at the photographs piled in their serried ranks and considered the question, head cocked and eyes thoughtful. “Bit frightening, that is,” she admitted frankly. “I've been working on this since January. Eleven months now. And I suppose what I'd like to do if the gods allow it …” Her head tilted upwards to indicate not only the heavens but her husband, who'd probably be given his say in the matter. “I'd like to do something foreign, I think. Portraits still, I do love portraits. But foreign faces this time. Not foreign-in-London faces, because obviously I could find hundreds of thousands of those but they've been Britished, haven't they, even if they don't think so themselves. So what I'd like is something quite different. Africa? India? Turkey? Russia? I don't quite know.”

“But portraits all the same?”

“People don't hide from the camera when the picture's not for their own use. That's what I like about it: the openness, the candour with which they gaze at the lens. It's rather addictive, looking at all those faces being real for once.” She took another swallow of sherry and said, “But you can't have come to talk about my pictures.”

He took the opportunity for escape even as he loathed himself for doing so. He said, “Is Simon in the lab?”