A Traitor to Memory

There in the church yard, he'd wanked off surreptitiously. Beneath his waxed jacket as the rain began to fall, he worked his cock like a man pumping spray onto garden insects. He got about as much satisfaction from the resulting orgasm as one would get from using a garden sprayer, and in the aftermath of his release what he felt wasn't exultation and release. It was bitter shame.

He felt it again now in his sitting room, wave after wave of black humiliation, building and cresting as he sat at Connie's old davenport. He looked at the glossy photo of the Sydney Opera House, moved from it to a picture of the outdoor theatre in Santa Fe where The Marriage of Figaro was sung under the stars, set that to one side, and picked up a picture of a narrow antique street in Vienna. He stared at this last with a darkness of spirit enveloping him and hearing within him a voice that he recognised as the voice of his mother hovering over him so many years in the past, so eager to judge, even more eager to condemn, if not him then someone else: “What a waste of time, Teddy. Don't be such a little fool.”

But he was, wasn't he? He'd spent so many good hours imagining himself and Eugenie in one location or another, like actors moving on a strip of celluloid that did not allow for a single blemish in either the moment or the individuals. In his mind's eye, there had been no harsh glare of sunlight upon skin that was ageing, no hair out of place on either of their heads, no breath wanting freshening, no sphincter tightening to prevent an embarrassing explosion of intestinal wind at an inopportune time, no thickened toenails, no sagging flesh, and most of all no failure on his part when the time was finally right. He'd pictured the two of them eternally young in each other's vision if not in the world's. And that was all that had mattered to Ted: the way they saw each other.

But for Eugenie, things had been different. He understood that now. Because it wasn't natural for a woman to hold a man at a distance for so many months that bled inexorably into so many years. It wasn't natural. It also wasn't fair.

She'd used him as a front, he concluded. There was no other explanation for the phone calls she'd received, the nocturnal visits to her house, and her inexplicable trip to London. She was using him as a front, because if their mutual friends and acquaintances in Henley—not to mention the board of directors at the Sixty Plus Club who employed her—believed that she was keeping chaste company with Major Ted Wiley, they'd be far less likely to speculate that she was keeping unchaste company with someone else.

Fool. Fool. Don't be such a little fool. Once burnt, twice shy. I'd've thought you'd know better.

But how did one ever know better? To hope for foresight meant never to venture forward at all into the company of another, and Ted didn't want that. His marriage to Connie—happy and fulfilling for so many years—had made him over-sanguine. His marriage to Connie had taught him to believe that such a union was possible again, not a rare thing at all but something to be worked for and if not easily achieved, then achieved through an effort that was based on love.

Lies, he thought. Every one of them lies. Lies he'd told to himself and lies that he'd willingly believed as Eugenie had said them. I'm not ready yet, Te d. But the reality was that Eugenie hadn't been ready for him.

The sense of betrayal he felt was like an illness coming upon him. It started in his head and began to work oozingly downward. It seemed to him that the only way to defeat it was to beat it from his body, and if he'd had a scourge, he would have used it upon himself and taken satisfaction from the pain. As it was, he had only the brochures on the davenport, those pathetic symbols of his puerile idiocy.

He felt them slick beneath his hand, and his fingers crumpled them first, then tore them. His chest bore a weight that might have been his arteries slowly closing but was, he knew, merely the dying of something other and far more necessary to his being than simply his old man's heart.

12





ENTERING THE SHOP on the heels of the black constable was Ashaki Newland, whose timely arrival gave Yasmin Edwards an opportunity that she would not otherwise have had of ignoring the man altogether. The girl politely hung back, apparently assuming that the man had come on business and was therefore to be given priority. All the Newland kids were like that, well brought up and thoughtful.

Yasmin said, “How's your mum today?” to the girl, avoiding eye contact with the constable.

Ashaki said, “Doin' fair so far. She had a round of chemo two days back, but she's not taking it 's bad as she did the last time. Don't know what that means, but we're hoping for the best. You know.”

The best would be five more years of life, which was all the doctors had promised Mrs. Newland when they'd first found the tumour in her brain. She could go without treatment and she'd live eighteen months, they'd told her. With treatment she might have five years. But that would be the maximum, barring some miracle, and miracles were in short supply when it came to cancer. Yasmin wondered what it would be like to have seven children to raise with a death sentence hanging over one's head.