A Traitor to Memory

Even at twenty-five, James Pitchford could see this. Sonia Davies needed a professional nurse. Why she didn't have one was one of the mysteries of Kensington Square. He wasn't in a position to delve into this mystery, however. He needed to keep his head down and his profile obscure.

Still, when Katja hurried off to the child in the midst of an English lesson, when he heard her leap out of her bed in the middle of the night and rush down the stairs to come to the aid of the little girl, when he returned from work and found Katja feeding her, bathing her, occupying her with one stimulation or another, he thought protectively, The poor creature has a family, hasn't she? What are they doing to care for her?

And it seemed to him that the answer was nothing. Sonia Davies was left in Katja's charge while the rest of the crew hovered round Gideon.

Could he blame them? Pitchford wondered. And even if he could, had they any choice? The Davieses had embarked upon Gideon's fashioning long before Sonia's birth, hadn't they? They were already committed to a course of action, as evidenced by the presence of Raphael Robson and Sarah-Jane Beckett in their world.

Thinking of Robson and Beckett, Pitchley-Pitchford entered the railway station and dropped the required coins into a ticket machine. As he wandered out onto the platform, he reflected upon the astounding fact that he hadn't thought of either Robson or Beckett for years. Robson, of course, he might well have forgotten since the violin instructor had not lived among them. But it was strange that he hadn't given a passing consideration to Sarah-Jane Beckett in all this time. She had been, after all, so very much a presence.

“I find my position here more than suitable,” she told him early in her employ, in that peculiar pre-Victorian manner of speaking she used when she was in full Governess Mode. “Whilst difficult at times, Gideon is a remarkable pupil, and I feel most privileged to have been chosen from nineteen candidates to be his instructor.” She'd just joined the household, and her room would be up with his among the eaves on the house's top floor. They would have to share a bathroom the size of a pin head. No bath, just a shower in which an average-size man could barely turn around. She'd seen this on the day she moved in, looked at it disapprovingly, but finally sighed with martyred acceptance.

“I don't wash garments in the bathroom,” she informed him, “and I prefer that you refrain from doing so as well. If we have consideration for each other in this small way, I dare say we shall manage quite well together. Where are you from, James? I can't quite place you. Normally, I'm very good at accents. Mrs. Davies, for instance, grew up in Hampshire. Can you tell? I quite like her. Mr. Davies as well. But the grandfather? He does seem a bit … Well. One doesn't like to speak ill, but …” She tapped a finger to her temple and lifted her eyes in the direction of the ceiling.

Barmy was the word James would have chosen at another time in his life. But instead he said, “Yes. He's a queer fish, isn't he? But if you give him a wide berth, you'll find he's harmless enough.”

So for just over a year, they'd lived in harmony and with the spirit of cooperation. Daily, James left for his job in the City as Richard and Eugenie Davies took themselves to their own places of employment. The elder Davieses remained at home, where Granddad occupied himself in the garden and Gran kept house. Raphael Robson took Gideon through his sessions on the violin. Sarah-Jane Beckett gave the boy lessons in everything from literature to geology.

“It's astonishing working with a genius,” she informed him. “The child is like a sponge, James. One would think he'd be hopeless at anything but music, but that isn't the case. When I compare him to what I had my first year in North London …” Again and as always, she used her eyes to express the rest: North London, that dwelling place of society's detritus. Fully half of her students there were black, she'd informed him. And the rest of them—with a pause for effect—were Irish. “One doesn't wish to cast aspersions on minorities, but there are limits to what one should expect oneself to endure in one's chosen career, don't you think?”

She spent time with him when she wasn't with Gideon. She asked him out to the cinema or for a drink at the Greyhound, “just as friends.” But often on those just-as-friends evenings, her leg pressed against his in the darkness as the celluloid flickered its images on the screen, or she took his arm as they entered the pub and she slid her hand from his biceps to his elbow to his wrist so that when their fingers touched it was only natural that they clasp and remain clasped once they were seated.

“Tell me about your family, James,” she urged him. “Do tell me. I want every detail.”