A Traitor to Memory

So now at last I see her where before she was a blur. I see her blonde hair, I see the angles of her face, I see the way her chin is sharp and her lower jaw points to form it like the bottom of a heart. She is wearing black trousers and a soft grey sweater, and she comes to fetch me in the corner of my bedroom where Sarah-Jane and I are having a geography lesson. The Amazon River is what we're studying. How it coils like a snake for four thousand miles, from the Andes, through Peru and Brazil, and into the vast Atlantic Ocean.

Mother tells Sarah-Jane that she must cut short the lesson, and I know that Sarah-Jane doesn't like this plan because her lips change from lips into an incision in her face although she says, “Of course, Mrs. Davies,” and shuts our books.

I follow Mother. We go down the stairs. She takes me into the sitting room, where a man is waiting. He's a big man with lots of ginger hair.

Mother says that he's a policeman, and he wants to ask me some questions, but I'm not to be afraid because she won't leave the room while he talks to me. She sits on the sofa and pats the cushion, right next to her thigh. And when I sit, she puts her arm round my shoulders, and I can feel her trembling as she says, “Go ahead, Detective Inspector.”





She's probably told me his name, but I can't remember it. What I do remember is that he pulls a chair over close to us and he leans forward with his elbows on his knees and his arms drawn up so that he can rest his chin on his thumbs. When he's close like this, I can smell cigars. The smoke must be in his clothes and his hair. It's not a bad smell, but I'm not used to it, and I shrink back against my mother.

He says, “Your mum's right, lad. You've no reason to be frightened. No one is going to hurt you.” When he speaks, I twist to gaze up at my mother, and I see that she's looking only at her lap. In her lap lie our hands, hers and mine, because she's taken my hand so that we're connected there as well: by her arm round my shoulders, by our fingers linking. And she squeezes my fingers but makes no reply to what the ginger-haired policeman has said.

He asks me if I know what happened to my sister. I say I know something bad happened to Sosy. There were lots of people in the house, I tell him, and they took her to hospital.

“Your mum's told you that she's with God now, hasn't she?” he asks.

And I say yes. Sosy's with God.

He asks me if I know what that means, to be with God.

I tell him that it means Sosy died.

“Do you know how she died?” he asks me.

I lower my head. I feel my feet bounce against the front of the sofa. I say that I'm meant to practise my instrument for three hours, that Raphael has told me I must master something—an Allegro, is it?—if I want to meet Mr. Stern next month. Mother reaches down and stops my feet bouncing. She says that I'm to try to answer the policeman.

I know the answer. I've heard the tramp of footsteps running up the stairs and into the bathroom. I've been a witness to the cries in the night. I've listened to the whispered conversations. I've walked in on questions being asked and accusations being made. So I know what happened to my little sister.

In the bath, I tell him. Sosy died in the bath.

“Where were you when Sosy died?” he asks me.

Listening to the violin, I say.

Mother speaks then. She says that Raphael has given me some music to listen to twice each day because I'm not playing it as well as I should.

“So you're learning to play the fiddle, are you?” the policeman asks me kindly.

“I'm a violinist, not a fiddler,” I reply.

“Ah,” the policeman says, and he smiles. “A violinist. I stand corrected.” He settles more comfortably into his chair, rests his hands on the tops of his thighs, and says, “Lad, your mum tells me that she and your dad haven't yet told you exactly how your little sister died.”





In the bath, I repeat. She died in the bath.

“True. But, lad, it wasn't an accident. Someone hurt the little girl. Someone meant to hurt her. Do you know what that means?”





I picture sticks and stones, and that's what I say. Hurt means throwing rocks, I tell him. Hurt means putting out a foot in front of someone, hurt means hitting or pinching or biting. I think of all those things happening to Sosy.

The policeman says, “That's one kind of hurting. But there's another sort, a sort done by an adult to a child. Do you know what I mean by that?”





Getting spanked, I say.

“More than that.”





And this is when Dad comes into the room. Has he just got home from work? Has he been at work at all? How long after Sonia's death is this? I'm trying to place the recollection in a context, but the only context I have is that if the police are asking the family questions, it must be before Katja was charged with anything.

Dad sees what's going on and he puts a stop to it. I remember that. And he's angry: both at Mother and at the policeman. He says, “What's going on here, Eugenie?” as the policeman gets to his feet.

She says, “The inspector wanted to ask Gideon some questions.”





He says, “Why?”





The policeman says, “Everyone must be questioned, Mr. Davies.”





Dad says, “You aren't assuming that Gideon—”