A Traitor to Memory

I was at the door, but this parting shot of hers was going so far wide of the mark that I had to correct her. I said, “Some people don't need to change, Libby. They might need to understand what's happening to them, but they don't need to change.”





Before she could answer, I left her. It seemed crucial that I have the last word. Still, as I closed the door behind me—and I did it carefully so as not to betray anything that she might take as an adverse reaction to our conversation—I heard her say, “Yeah. Right, Gideon,” and something scraped viciously across the wooden floor, as if she'd kicked the coffee table.

4 November





I am the music. I am the instrument. She sees fault in this. I do not. What I see is the difference between us, that difference which Dad has been attempting to point out from the moment he and Libby met. Libby has never been a professional, and she's not an artist. It's easy for her to say that I am not the violin because she has never known what it is to have a life that is inextricably entwined with an artistic performance. Throughout her life, she's had a series of jobs, work that she's gone to and then left at the end of the day. Artists do not live that sort of life. Assuming that they do or can displays an ignorance which must give one pause to consider.

To consider what? you want to know.

To consider the possibilities for us. For Libby and me. Because there for a time, I had thought … Yes. There seemed to be a right-ness in our knowing each other. There seemed to be a distinct advantage in the fact that Libby didn't know who I was, didn't recognise my name when she saw it that day on her courier parcel, didn't appreciate the facts of my career, didn't care whether I played the violin or made kites and sold them in Camden Market. I liked that about her. But now I see that being with someone who understands my life is crucial if I am going to live my life.

And that need for understanding was what prompted me to seek out Katie Waddington, the girl from the convent that I remembered sitting in the kitchen in Kensington Square, the most frequent visitor to Katja Wolff.

Katja Wolff was one half of the two KWs, Katie informed me when I tracked her down. Sometimes, she said, when one has a close friendship, one makes the mistake of assuming it will be there forever, unchanging and nurturing. But it rarely is.

It was no big problem to locate Katie Waddington. Nor was it any big surprise to discover that she'd followed a life course similar to what she'd suggested would be her mission two decades earlier. I located her through the telephone directory, and I found her in her clinic in Maida Vale. It's called Harmony of Bodies and Minds, this clinic, and it's a name which I suppose is useful to disguise its main function: sex therapy. They don't come right out and call it sex therapy, because who would have the nerve to engage in it if that were the case? Instead, they call it “relationship therapy,” and an inability to take part in the sexual act itself is called “relationship dysfunction.”





“You'd be astonished to know how many people have problems with sex,” Katie informed me in a fashion that sounded personally friendly and professionally reassuring. “We get at least three referrals every day. Some are due to medical problems—diabetes, heart conditions, post-operative trauma. That sort of thing. But for every client with a medical problem, there are nine or ten with psychological troubles. I suppose that's not surprising, really, given our national obsession with sex and the pretence we maintain that sex isn't our national obsession. One only has to look at the tabloids and the glossies to know the level of interest everyone has in sex. I'm surprised not to find more people in therapy struggling with all this. God knows I've never encountered anyone without some sort of issue with sex. The healthy ones are those who deal with it.”





She took me down a corridor painted in warm, earthy colours and we went to her office, which opened onto a terrace where a profusion of pot plants provided a verdant backdrop for a comfortable room of overstuffed furniture, cushions, and a collection of pottery (“South American,” she informed me) and baskets (“North American … lovely, aren't they? They're my guilty pleasure. I can't afford them, but I buy them anyway. I suppose there are worse vices in life”). We sat and took stock of each other. Katie said in that same warm, personally friendly and professionally reassuring voice, “Now. How can I help you, Gideon?”