A Traitor to Memory

On one occasion when I say this, she responds with “So if I look so perfectly fine, take me on a date, why don't you?”





And this is how we begin to see each other. What an odd expression that is, “to see each other,” as if we're incapable of seeing another person until we're socially involved. I don't much like it—“seeing each other”—because it smacks of a euphemism where one isn't needed. Dating, on the other hand, sounds so adolescent. And even if that weren't the case, I wouldn't call what we're doing dating.

So what are you doing with Liberty Neale? you want to know.

And you mean, Are you sleeping with her, Gideon? Is she the woman who's managed to melt the ice that's been in your veins these last years?

I suppose that depends on what you mean by sleeping with her, Dr. Rose. And there's another euphemism for you. Why do we use a term like sleeping when sleeping is the last thing we intend to do when we climb into bed with the opposite sex?

But yes, we are sleeping together. Now and again. But by sleeping, I mean sleeping, not shagging. We're neither of us ready for anything else.

How did this come about? you want to know.

It was a natural progression. One night she made a meal for me at the end of a particularly exhausting day of rehearsals for a concert at the Barbican. I fell asleep on her bed where we'd been sitting, listening to a recording. She covered me with a blanket and joined me under it, and there we remained till morning. Now and again we sleep together still. I suppose we both find it comforting in some way.

Nurturing, you say.

In that it feels good to have her there, yes. Then it's nurturing as well.

Something that was missing during your childhood, Gideon, you point out. If everyone's concentration was on your growth and performance as an artist, it wouldn't be unusual for other more essential needs to have gone both unrecognised and unfulfilled.

Dr. Rose, I insist upon your accepting what I say: I had good parents. As I've said, my father worked endlessly just to make ends meet. Once it became clear that I had the potential, the talent, and the desire to be … let's call it who I am today, my mother went out and found a job as well to help cover all the expenses incurred. And if I didn't see my parents as often as I might have done because of this, I had Raphael with me for hours each day and when he wasn't there, I had Sarah-Jane.

Who was she? you ask.

She was Sarah-Jane Beckett. I don't quite know what to call her, actually. Governess is too anachronistic a term and Sarah-Jane would have sorted you out in fairly short order had you ever called her a governess. So I suppose we'd have to call her my teacher. As I noted earlier, I never attended school once it became apparent that the violin would be my life because regular school hours conflicted with my schedule of lessons. So Sarah-Jane was employed as my teacher. When I wasn't working with Raphael, I was working with her. And because we fitted in lessons where and as we could, she lived with us. In fact, she lived with us for years. She must have arrived when I was five or six—once my parents saw how impossible it was going to be for me to be educated in a traditional fashion—and she stayed until I was sixteen, at which time my education was complete and my schedule of concerts, recordings, rehearsals, and practise periods precluded any further courses of study. But until that point, I had daily lessons with Sarah-Jane.

Was she a surrogate mother? you want to know.

Always, always it comes back to my mother. Are you looking for Oedipal connections, Doctor? How about an unresolved Oedipal complex? Mother trots off to work when son is five, leaving him incapable of laying to rest his unconscious desire to jump her? Then Mother disappears when son is eight or nine or ten or however old he was because I do not remember nor do I care to, and she is never heard from again.

I remember, though, her silence. Odd. It's just come to me now. My mother's silence. And I remember waking up one night while she was still with us and finding her lying in bed with me. She's holding me and it's very difficult to breathe because of the way she's holding me. It's difficult because her arms are round me and she's got my head somehow…. Never mind. I don't remember.

How is she holding you, Gideon?

I don't remember. Just that I can't breathe very well but I can feel her breathing and it's very hot.

Her breath is hot?

No. Just the feeling. Where I am. I want to escape.

From her?

No. Just escape. Run, actually. Of course, this could all be a dream. It was so long ago.