A Traitor to Memory

“I DON'T REALLY see how the caterer managed to cope in here, do you?” Frances Webberly asked. “Of course, it's quite good enough for us, this kitchen. I can't see that we'd actually use a dishwasher or a microwave even if we had one. But caterers … They're used to all the mod cons, aren't they? What a surprise it must have been for the poor woman to arrive and find us living practically in the Middle Ages.”


At the table, Malcolm Webberly made no reply. He'd heard his wife's deliberately cheerful words, but his mind was elsewhere. To deflect a potential conversation that he didn't want to have with anyone, he'd set about polishing his shoes in the kitchen. He assumed that Frances, having known him for more than thirty years and thus being well aware of his aversion to doing two things at once, would see him at this modest industry and leave him to himself.

He very much wanted to be left to himself. He'd wanted that from the instant he'd heard Eric Leach say, “Malc, sorry it's so late, but I've got some news,” and go on to tell him of Eugenie Davies' death. He needed the time alone to sort through his feelings, and while a sleepless night with his wife snoring lightly beside him had given him a number of hours to consider how the words hit-and-run actually affected him, he'd found that all he'd been able to do was to picture Eugenie Davies as he'd last seen her: with the river wind tossing her bright blonde hair. She'd covered that hair with a scarf the moment she'd stepped from her cottage, but during their walk the scarf had loosened and it was while she removed it, refolded it, and replaced it on her head that the wind flicked locks of hair round her shoulders.

Quickly, he'd said to her, “Why not leave it off? The light in your hair makes you look …” What? Beautiful? he'd wondered. But she'd never been a great beauty in all the years that he'd known her. Young? They were both a decade past their prime. He'd supposed the word he wanted was actually peaceful. The sunlight in her hair made an aureole round her head, which reminded him of seraphim, which spoke of peace. But as those thoughts came to him, he'd become conscious of the fact that he'd never seen Eugenie Davies truly at peace and that at the moment—despite that trick of the halo created by light and wind—she was not at peace still.

These thoughts in his mind once again, Webberly smeared polish industriously on his shoe. As he did so, he became aware that his wife was still talking to him. “… a lovely job, though. But thank heavens it was dark when the poor woman arrived because Lord knows how she would have functioned had she got a good look at our garden.” Frances laughed ruefully. “‘I'm still holding out for my pond and my lilies,' I told our Lady Hillier last night. She and Sir David are actually thinking of putting a hot tub in their conservatory. Did you know? I told her a conservatory hot tub is perfectly well and good if you like that sort of thing, but as for me, a little pond is all I've ever wanted. ‘And we'll have it someday,' I told her. ‘Malcolm says we'll have it, so we will.’ Naturally, we'll have to find someone to scythe through the weeds and cart off that old lawn mower out there, but I didn't mention that to our Lady Hillier—”

Your sister Laura, Webberly thought.

“—as she'd hardly understand what I was talking about. She's had that gardener of hers since … I don't know how long. But when the time's right and the money's there, you and I will have our little pond, won't we?”

“I expect so,” Webberly said.

Frances eased behind the table in the cramped little kitchen and gazed from the window into the garden. She'd stood there so often in the past ten years that she'd worn a shoe-sized place in the lino, and there were finger grooves in the window sill where she'd spent hours clutching onto the wood. What did she think as she stood there hour after hour every day? her husband wondered. What did she try—and fail—to do? A moment later he had his answer:

“The day looks quite fine,” she told him. “Radio One claimed there's going to be more rain by this afternoon, but I think they've got it wrong. You know, I believe I'll go out and do some work in the garden this morning.”

Webberly looked up. Frances, apparently feeling his eyes on her, swung round from the window, one hand still on the sill and the other tight on the lapel of her dressing gown. “I think I can do it today,” she said. “Malcolm, I think I can do it.”

How many times had she said that before? Webberly wondered. One hundred? One thousand? And always with that same mixture of hope and delusion. She was going to work in the garden, Malcolm, she was going to walk to the shops this afternoon, she would definitely sit on a bench in Prebend Gardens or take Alfie for a romp or try the new beautician that was so well-spoken-of … so many good and honest intentions coming to naught at the final moment when the front door stood implacably in front of Frances and, try as she might and God knows she tried, she couldn't force her right hand up far enough to grasp onto the knob.

Webberly said, “Frannie—”