A Traitor to Memory

GIDEON WALKED. AT first he'd run: up the leafy confines of Cornwall Gardens and across the wet, narrow strip of traffic that was Gloucester Road. He hurtled into Queen's Gate Gardens, then up past the old hotels in the direction of the park. And then mindlessly he ducked to the right and dashed past the Royal College of Music. He hadn't actually known where he was till he'd veered up a little incline and burst out into the well-lit surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall, where an audience was just pouring out of the auditorium's circumference of doors.

There, the irony of the location had hit him, and he'd stopped running. Indeed, he'd stumbled to a complete halt, chest heaving, with the rain pelting him, and not even noticing that his jacket was hanging heavy with the damp upon his shoulders and his trousers were slapping wetly against his shins. Here was the greatest venue for public performance in the land: the most sought-after showplace for anyone's talent. Here, Gideon Davies had first performed as a nine-year-old prodigy with his father and Raphael Robson in attendance, all three of them eager for the opportunity to establish the name Davies in the classical firmament. How appropriate was it, then, that his final flight from Braemar Mansions—from his father, from his father's words and what they did and did not mean—should bring him to the very raison d’être of everything that had happened: to Sonia, to Katja Wolff, to his mother, to all of them. And how even more appropriate was it that the very raison d’être behind the other raison d’être—the audience—did not even know that he was there.

Across the street from the Albert Hall, Gideon watched the crowd raise their umbrellas to the weeping sky. Although he could see their lips moving, he did not hear their excited chatter, that all-too-familiar sound of ravenous culture vultures who were sated for the moment, the happy noise of just the sort of people whose approbation he'd sought. Instead, what he heard were his father's words, like an incantation within his brain: For God's sake I did it I did it I did it Believe what I say I say I say She was alive when you left her you left her I held her down in the bath the bath I was the one who drowned her who drowned her. It wasn't you Gideon my son my son.

Over and over the words repeated, but they called forth a vision that made a different claim. What he saw was his hands on his sister's small shoulders. What he felt was the water closing over his arms. And above the repetition of his father's declaration, what he heard was the cries of the woman and the man, then the sound of running, the blam of doors closing, and the other hoarse cries, then the wail of sirens and the guttural orders of rescue workers going about their business where rescue was futile. And everyone knew that save the workers themselves because they were trained to one job only: maintaining and resuscitating life in the face of anything that stood in life's way.

But For God's sake I did it I did it I did it Believe what I say I say I say.

Gideon struggled for the memory that would allow this belief, but what he came up with was the same image as before: his hands on her shoulders and added to that now the sight of her face, her mouth opening and closing and opening and closing and her head turning slowly back and forth.

His father argued that this was a dream because She was alive when you left her when you left her. And even more importantly because I held her down in the bath in the bath.

Yet the only person who might have confirmed that story—was dead herself, Gideon thought. And what did that mean? What did that tell him?

That she didn't know the truth herself, his father told him insistently, as if he walked at Gideon's side in the wind and the rain. She didn't know because I never admitted it, not then when it counted, not then when I saw another far easier way to resolve the situation. And when I finally told her—

She didn't believe you. She knew that I'd done it. And you killed her to keep her from telling me that. She's dead, Dad. She's dead, she's dead.

Yes. All right. Your mother is dead. But she's dead because of me, not because of you. She's dead because of what I'd led her to believe and what I'd forced her into accepting.

Which was what, Dad? What? Gideon demanded.

You know the answer, his father replied. I let her believe you'd killed your sister. I said Gideon was in here in here in the bathroom he was holding her down I pulled him off her but my God my God Eugenie she was gone. And she believed me. And that's why she agreed to the arrangement with Katja: because she thought she was saving you. From an investigation. From a juvenile trial. From a hideous burden that would weigh upon you for the rest of your life. You were Gideon Davies, for the love of God. She wanted to keep you safe from scandal, and I used that, Gideon, to keep everyone safe.

Except Katja Wolff.

She agreed. For the money.