A Traitor to Memory

Why is she weeping? you want to know, of course.

She is always weeping, it seems. And this one nun—the one dressed in the old way—comes up to Mother after Communion but before the end of Mass and she takes us both to a sitting room of some kind in the convent next door and there she and Mother talk. They sit in one corner of the room. I am in the other corner, the far corner, where I've been given a book to read and told to sit. I'm impatient to be back home, though, because Raphael's assigned me a set of exercises to master and if I master them to his liking, we're to go to the Festival Hall as a reward. A concert. Ilya Kaler will be performing. He is not yet twenty years old but already he has won the Grand Prize at the Genoa Paganini Competition and I want to hear him because I intend to be far greater than Ilya Kaler.

How old are you? you want to know.

I must be six. Seven at the oldest. And I am impatient to go home. So I leave my corner and I approach my mother and I pull on her sleeve and say, “Mum. I'm bored,” because that's what I always say, that's how I communicate. Not: I've got to practise for my lesson with Raphael, Mum. But: I'm bored and it's your duty as my mother to deal with my boredom. But Sister Cecilia—and yes, that's her name, I've remembered her name—disengages my hand from my mother's sleeve and leads me back to the corner and says, “You'll be stopping right here till you're called for, Gideon, and no nonsense about it,” and I'm surprised because no one ever talks to me that way. I'm the prodigy, after all. I am—if there can be degrees of it—more unique than anyone within my universe.

The surprise of being disciplined in such a way and by such a woman in such a costume is perhaps what keeps me in my corner for another few minutes as Sister Cecilia and my mother huddle together at their end of the room. But then I begin kicking at a bookshelf to entertain myself and I kick too hard and books topple to the floor and a statue of the Virgin falls and breaks on the lino. We leave soon afterwards, my mother and I.

I excel at my lesson that morning. Raphael takes me to the concert as he's promised. He's arranged for me to meet Ilya Kaler and I've brought my violin and we play together. Kaler is brilliant, but I know I'll exceed what he has accomplished. Even then, I know this.

What happens to your mother? you ask.

She spends much of her time upstairs.

In her bedroom?

No. No. In the nursery.

In the nursery? Why?

And I know the answer. I know the answer. Where has it been for all these years? Why have I suddenly remembered now?

My mother's with Sonia.

8 September





There are gaps, Dr. Rose. They exist in my brain like a series of canvases painted by an artist but incomplete and coloured only black.

Sonia is part of one of those canvases. I remember the fact of her now: that there was a Sonia, and that she was my younger sister. She died at a very early age. I remember this as well.

So that would be why my mother was weeping all those mornings at early Mass. And Sonia's death must have been one of the subjects we did not speak about. To speak about her death would be to bring on a new torrent of Mother's terrible grieving and we wished to spare her that.

I've been trying to conjure up a picture of Sonia, but nothing is there. Just the black canvas. And when I try to summon her up to take part in a specific memory—Christmas, for instance, or Guy Fawkes Night, or the annual taxi ride with Gran to Fortnum and Mason for a birthday lunch in the Fountain … anything … anything at all … nothing is there. I don't even remember the day that she died. Nor do I recall her funeral. I know just the fact that she died because suddenly she wasn't there any longer.

Just like your mother, Gideon? you ask me.

No. This is different. This must be different because this feels different . And all I know for certain is that she was my sister, that she died young. Then Mother was gone. Whether she left us soon after Sonia died or whether it was months or years later, I couldn't say. But why? Why can't I remember my sister? What happened to her? What do children die of: cancer, leukaemia, cystic fibrosis, scarlet fever, influenza, pneumonia … what else?

This is the second child to die, you point out to me.

What? What do you mean? The second child?

The second child of your father's to die, Gideon. You've told me about Virginia …?

Children die, Dr. Rose. That's what happens sometimes. Every day of the week. Children fall ill. Children die.

3