A Traitor to Memory

Richard's attention was fixed on the card. “Lied about what?”


“About my sister. She didn't die. Not as a baby and not as a child.” His hand crumpled the envelope. It dropped to the floor.

Jill looked down at the photograph she was holding. She said, “But, Gideon, you know that your sister—”

“You've been going through my belongings,” Richard cut in.

“I wanted to find her address, which I expect you have squirreled away somewhere, haven't you? But what I found instead—”

“Gideon!” Jill held out the picture Richard intended for his son. “You're not making sense. Your sister was—”

“What I found,” Gideon went doggedly on, shaking the card at his father, “was this, and now I know exactly who you are: a liar who couldn't stop if he had to, Dad, if his life depended on telling the truth, if everyone's life depended upon it.”

“Gideon!” Jill was aghast not at the words but at the glacial tone in which Gideon spoke them. Her horror momentarily drove from her thoughts her own affront at Richard's behaviour. She pushed from her mind that Gideon was speaking the truth at least as it applied to her own life if not to his: In never mentioning Sonia's condition, Richard had indeed lied to her, if only by omission. Instead, she dwelt on the intemperance of what the son was saying to the father. “Richard was nearly killed less than three hours ago.”

“Are you sure of that?” Gideon asked her. “If he lied to me about Virginia, who's to know what else he's willing to lie about?”

“Virginia?” Jill asked. “Who—”

Richard said to his son, “We'll talk about this later.”

“No,” Gideon said. “We're going to talk about Virginia now.”

Jill said, “Who is Virginia?”

“Then you don't know either.”

Jill said, “Richard?” and turned to her fiancé. “Richard, what's this all about?”

“Here's what it's all about,” Gideon said, and he read the inside of the card aloud. His voice carried the strength of indignation although it trembled twice: once when he read out the words our daughter and a second time when he came to lived thirty-two years.

For her part, Jill heard the echo of a different two phrases reverberating round the room: She defied medical probability was one, and the other comprised the first three words of the final sentence: Despite her problems. She felt a wave of sickness rise up in her, and a terrible cold worked its way into her bones. “Who is she?” she cried. “Richard, who is she?”

“A freak,” Gideon said. “Isn't that right, Dad? Virginia Davies was another freak.”

“What does he mean?” Jill asked, although she knew, already knew and couldn't bear the knowing. She willed Richard to answer her question, but he stood like granite, bent-shouldered, crooked-backed, with his eyes fixed steadily on his son. “Say something!” Jill implored.

“He's thinking how to shape an answer for you,” Gideon told her. “He's wondering what excuse he can make for letting me think my older sister died as a baby. There was something badly wrong with her, you see. And I expect it was easier to pretend she was dead than to have to accept that she wasn't perfect.”

Richard finally spoke. “You don't know what you're talking about,” he said as Jill's thoughts began to spin wildly out of control: another Down's Syndrome, the voices shouted inside her skull, a second Down's Syndrome, a second Down's Syndrome or something else something worse something he couldn't bring himself even to mention and all the while her precious Catherine was at risk for something God only knew what that the antenatal tests had not identified and he stood there just stood there and stood there and stood there and looked at his son and refused to discuss … She was aware that the picture she was holding was becoming slick in her hands, was becoming heavy, was becoming a burden she could hardly manage. It slipped from her fingers as she cried out, “Talk to me, Richard!”

Richard and his son moved simultaneously as the picture clattered on the bare wood floor and Jill stepped past it, stepped around it, feeling she couldn't bear her own impossible weight a moment longer. So she stumbled to the sofa, where she became a mute onlooker to what then followed.

Hastily, Richard bent for the picture, but his actions were hampered by the plaster on his leg. Gideon got there first. He snatched it up, crying, “Something else, Dad?” and then he stared down at it with his fingers whitening to the colour of bone upon the wooden frame. He said hoarsely, “Where did this come from?” He raised his eyes to his father.

Richard said, “You must calm down, Gideon,” and he sounded desperate and Jill watched both of them and saw their tension, Richard's held like a whip in his hand, Gideon's coiled and ready to spring.

Gideon said, “You told me she'd taken every picture of Sonia with her. Mother left us and she took all the pictures, you said. She took all of the pictures except that one you kept in your desk.”