A Traitor to Memory

She hadn't yet met my father, you see, although he had seen her from the music room late one afternoon when she returned home from work on her Suzuki and parked it in her accustomed place on the pavement, right next to the steps that lead down to the lower ground floor flat. She roared up and gunned the engine two or three times, as is her habit, creating a ruckus that caught Dad's attention. He went to the window, saw her, and said, “I'll be damned. There's an infernal cyclist actually chaining his motorbike to your front rails, Gideon. See here …” and he began to open the window.

I said, “That's Libby Neale. It's fine, Dad. She lives here.”





He turned slowly from the glass. “What? That's a woman out there? She lives here?”





“Below. In the flat. I decided to let it out. Did I forget to tell you?”





I hadn't done. But my failure to mention Libby and the flat hadn't been so much a deliberate omission as a subject that hadn't come up. Dad and I talk every day, but our conversations are always about our professional concerns, like an upcoming concert, a tour he might be organising, a recording session that hadn't gone well, a request for an interview, or a personal appearance. Witness the fact that I didn't know a thing about his relationship with Jill until not mentioning it became more awkward than mentioning it: The sudden appearance of an obviously pregnant woman in one's life will demand some sort of explanation, after all. But otherwise, we've never had a chummy father-and-son relationship. We've both been absorbed with my music since my childhood, and this concentration on both our parts has precluded the possibility—or perhaps obviated the necessity—of the sort of soul baring that appears to be the hallmark of closeness between people these days.

Mind you, I don't regret for an instant that Dad and I have the sort of connection with each other that we have. It's firm and true, and if it's not the sort of bond that makes us want to hike the Himalayas together or paddle up the Nile, it's still a relationship that strengthens and supports me. Truth be told, if it were not for my father, Dr. Rose, I would not be where I am today.

4 September





No. You will not catch me with that.

Where are you today, Gideon? you ask me blandly.

But I refuse to participate. My father plays no part in this, in whatever this is. If I cannot bring myself to even pick up the Guarneri, it is not my father's fault. I refuse to become one of those gormless pulers who lay the blame for their every difficulty at the feet of their parents. Dad's life was rough. He did his best.

Rough in what way? you want to know.

Well, can you imagine having Granddad for a father? Being sent off to school when you were six? Growing up with a steady diet of someone's psychotic episodes to feed you when you were at home? And always knowing that there was never a hope in hell that you could fully measure up no matter what you did because you were adopted in the first place and your father never let you forget it? No. Dad's done the best he could as a father. And he's done better than most as a son.

Better than yourself as a son? you ask me.

You'll have to get that information from Dad.

But what do you think about yourself as a son, Gideon? What comes first to your mind?

Disappointment, I say.

That you've disappointed your father?

No. That I mustn't. But that I might.

Has he let you know how important it is not to disappoint him?

Never once. Not at all. But …





But?

He doesn't like Libby. I somehow knew that he wouldn't like her or at least wouldn't like her being there. He would consider her a potential distraction or, worse, an impediment to my work.

You ask, Is that why he said, “It's that girl, isn't it?” when you had your blackout in Wigmore Hall? He leapt right to her, didn't he?

Yes.

Why?

It's not that he doesn't want me to be with someone. Why wouldn't he? Family is everything to my father. But family is going to be stopped short if I don't marry someday and have children of my own.

Except there's another child on the way now, isn't there? The family will continue anyway, no matter what you do.

Yes, it will.

So now he can disapprove of every woman in your life without fearing the consequences of your taking that disapproval to heart and never marrying, can't he, Gideon?

No! I will not play this game. This is not about my father. If he doesn't like Libby, it's because he's concerned about the impact she could have on my music. And he's well within his rights to be concerned. Libby doesn't know a bow from a kitchen knife.

Does she interrupt your work?

No, she doesn't.

Does she display an indifference to your music?

No.

Does she intrude? Ignore requests for solitude? Make demands upon you that violate the time you've set aside for your music?

Never.

You said she was a philistine. Have you discovered that she clings to her ignorance like a badge of accomplishment?