A Traitor to Memory

“I'll give you twice the time tomorrow, Alf,” he said to the dog, and he vowed to do it.

At the corner of Stamford Brook Road, traffic trundled by, lighter now than at another hour but still coughing with the occasional noise of buses and cars. Alf sat obediently, as he'd been trained to do. But when Webberly would have turned to the left instead of crossing over to the garden, Alfie didn't move. He looked from his master to the gloomy expanse of trees, shrubs, and lawn across the street, wagging his tail urgently against the pavement.

“Tomorrow, Alf,” Webberly told him. “Twice as much time. I promise. Tomorrow. Come, boy.” He gave a tug on the lead.

The dog rose. But he looked over his shoulder at the garden in such a way that Webberly felt he could not commit yet another act of betrayal by pretending to ignore what the animal so patently wanted to do. He sighed. “All right. But just a few minutes. We've left Mum alone and she won't like it if she wakes up and finds neither one of us there.”

They waited for the traffic lights to change, the dog's tail flapping and Webberly finding his own spirits lifting at the animal's pleasure. He thought what ease there was in doghood: So little in life equated with a dog's contentment.

They crossed over and entered the garden, its iron gate creaking with autumn rust. With the gate closed behind them, Webberly released Alfie from the lead and in the dim light provided from Stamford Brook Road on one side and South Side on the other, he watched the dog lope happily across the lawn.

He'd not thought to bring a ball, but the Alsatian didn't seem to mind. There were plenty of nighttime smells to entice him, and he partook of them in his romp.

They spent a quarter of an hour like this, Webberly slowly pacing the distance from the west to the east side of the garden. The wind had come up earlier in the day, and he drove his hands into his pockets, regretting the fact that he'd come out without either gloves or scarf.

He shivered and crunched along the cinder path that bordered the lawn. Beyond the iron fence and the shrubbery, traffic whizzed by on Stamford Brook Road. Aside from the wind creaking the bare limbs of the trees, that was the only sound in the night.

At the far end of the garden, Webberly took the lead from his pocket and called to the dog, who'd run once again to the opposite end of the green like a gamboling lamb. He whistled and waited as the Alsatian galloped the length of the lawn a final time, arriving in a happy heaving mass of damp fur hung with sodden leaves. Webberly chuckled at the sight of the animal. The night was far from over for them both. Alf would need brushing when they got home.

He clipped the lead back on. Outside the garden gate, they headed up the avenue towards Stamford Brook Road, where a zebra crossing marked a safe passage to Hartswood. They had the right of way here, although Alfie did again what he'd been trained to do: He sat and waited for the command that indicated it was safe to cross.

Webberly waited for a break in the traffic which, because of the hour, wasn't long in coming. After a bus trundled past, he and the dog stepped off the pavement. It was less than thirty yards across the street.

Webberly was a careful pedestrian, but for a moment his attention drifted to the pillar box that stood on the opposite side of the street. It had been there since the reign of Queen Victoria, and it was there that he'd dropped his letters to Eugenie over the years, including the final one that had ended things without ending things between them. His eyes fixed on it and he saw himself there as he'd been on a hundred different mornings, hurriedly stuffing a letter through the opening, casting a look over his shoulder in the unlikely event that Frances had come walking in his wake. Seeing himself as he'd been long ago, engaged by love and desire to act the apostate from vows that were asking the impossible of him, he was unprepared. He was unprepared just for a second, but a second was actually all it took.

To his right, Webberly heard the howl of an engine. At that same moment, Alfie began to bark. Then Webberly felt the impact. As the dog's lead flew up into the night, Webberly hurtled towards the pillar box that had been the receptacle of his countless outpourings of unending love.

A blow crushed his chest.

A flash of light pierced his eyes like a beacon.

And then it was dark.

GIDEON





23 October, 1:00 A.M.