A Traitor to Memory

I dreamed again. I woke, remembering it. I sit up in bed now, notebook on my knees, in order to scribble a summary.

I'm in the house in Kensington Square. I'm in the drawing room. I'm watching children playing outside in the central garden, and they see me watching them. They wave and gesture for me to join them and I can see they're being entertained by a magician in a black cape and a top hat. He keeps drawing live doves from the ears of the children, tossing the birds high into the air. I want to be there, I want the magician to draw a bird from my ear, but when I go to the drawing room door, I find there is no handle, just a keyhole through which I can peer in order to see the reception hall and the staircase.

But when I peer through that keyhole, which turns out to be much more like a porthole than a keyhole, I see not what I expect to see but my sister's nursery on the other side. And although the light is bright in the drawing room, it's quite dim in the nursery, as if the curtains have been closed for naptime.

I hear crying on the other side of the door. I know the crying is Sonia's, but I can't see her. And then the door is suddenly not a door any longer but a heavy curtain through which I push, finding myself not in the house any longer but in the garden behind it.

The garden is much larger than it actually was in reality. There are enormous trees, huge ferns, and a waterfall that drops into a distant pool. In the middle of the pool is the garden shed, the same shed against which I saw Katja and the man on that night I've recalled.

Outside in the garden, I still hear Sonia crying, but she's wailing now, nearly screaming, and I know that I'm meant to find her. I'm surrounded by undergrowth that seems to grow by the moment, and I fight my way through it, beating down fronds and lilies to locate the crying. Just when I think I'm close to it, it seems to come from a different area entirely, and I'm forced to begin again.

I call for help: my mother, Dad, Gran, or Granddad. But no one comes. And then I reach the edge of the pool and I see that there are two people leaning against the shed, a man and woman. He's bent to her, he's sucking from her neck, and still Sonia is crying and crying.

I can tell by her hair that the woman is Libby, and I'm frozen there, watching, as the man I can't yet identify sucks upon her. I call to them; I ask them to help me find my little sister. The man raises his head when I call out, and I see he's my father.

I feel rage, betrayal. I am immobilised. Sonia still cries.

Then Mother is with me, or someone like Mother, someone of her height and her shape with hair the same colour. She takes my hand and I'm aware I must help her because Sonia needs us to calm her crying, which is angry now, high-pitched with rage like a tantrum being thrown.

“It's all right,” the MotherPerson tells me. “She's just hungry, darling.”





And we find her lying beneath a fern, covered completely by fronds. MotherPerson picks her up and holds her to her breast. She says, “Let her suck me. She'll calm, then.”





But Sonia doesn't calm because she can't feed. MotherPerson doesn't free her breasts for Sonia, and even if she did, nothing would be accomplished. For when I look at my sister, I see she's wearing a mask that covers her face. I try to remove it, but I can't; my fingers keep slipping off. MotherPerson doesn't notice that there's anything wrong, and I can't make her look down at my sister. And I can't and I can't remove the mask that she's wearing. But I feel frantic to do so.

I ask the MotherPerson to help me, but that's no good because she doesn't even look down at Sonia. I hurry and fight my way back to the pool to find help there, and when I reach the edge, I slip and fall in, and I'm turning and turning beneath the water, unable to breathe.

That's when I awaken.

My heart was slamming. I could actually feel the way the adrenaline had shot into my blood stream. Writing all of it down has calmed my heartbeat, but I don't expect sleep to return to me tonight.

Libby isn't with you? you want to know.

No. She didn't return from wherever she jetted off to when we got back from Cresswell-White's office and found my father waiting at the house.

Are you worried about her?

Should I be worried?

There is no should to anything, Gideon.

But there is to me, Dr. Rose. I should be able to remember more. I should be able to play my instrument. I should be able to take a woman into my life and to share something with her without fearing that somehow I'll lose it all.

Lose what?

What's holding me together in the first place.

Do you need to be held together, Gideon?

That's how it feels.

23 October