A Traitor to Memory

“How long not playing. Or playing like that. Just then. Like that. How long?” And then, in a switch that wasn't atypical of her, she said, “Never mind. I ought to have noticed before now. It's because of that bastard Rock.”





“We can hardly blame your husband—”





“Ex. Please.”





“Not yet.”





“Close enough.”





“Fine. But we can't blame him—”





“Loathsome as he is.”





“—if I'm having a rough time just now.”





“That's so not what I was talking about,” she said, irritation in her voice. “There's more people on earth than you, Gideon. I was talking about myself. I would've noticed what's been happening with you if I hadn't been so strung out about Rock.”





But I hardly heard what she said about her husband, because I was struck by her words: more people on earth than you, Gideon, and how they echoed almost exactly Sarah-Jane Beckett's sentiments all those years ago. You're not the centre of the universe any longer. And I couldn't see Libby in the car with me because all I could see was Sarah-Jane Beckett. I can see her still, I can see her eyes peering at me, her face bending over me. It's pinched, that face, with eyes that are narrowed to a band of stubby lashes.

What's she talking about when she says that? you ask me.

Yes. That's the question, all right.

I've been naughty while she was responsible for me. It's been left to her to determine my punishment, which has been a thorough wigging, Sarah-Jane style. There's a wooden box in Granddad's wardrobe and I've got into it. It's filled with old boot black, shoe polish, and rags, and I've used all this as paints. All along the first-floor corridor I've smeared brown polish and boot black on the walls. Bored, bored, bored, I've thought as I ruined the wallpaper and wiped my hands on the curtains. But I'm not bored, really, and Sarah-Jane knows. That's not why I've done it.

Do you know why you did it? you ask me.

I'm not sure now. But I think I'm angry, and I feel afraid. Quite distinctly and very much afraid.

I see the spark of interest in your face when I tell you this, Dr. Rose. Now we're getting somewhere. Angry and afraid. Emotion. Passion. Something, by God, that you can work with.

But I have little to add to that. Only this: When Libby said more people on earth than you, Gideon, what I felt distinctly was fear. It was a fear quite apart from the fear of never being able to play my instrument again, however. It was a fear that seemed entirely unrelated to the conversation that she and I were having. Yet I felt it in such a sudden paroxysm that I heard myself cry “Don't!” at Libby, and all the while it wasn't Libby I was talking to at all.

And what is it you were afraid of? you inquire.

That, I would have thought, is obvious.

3 October





We were directed up to the news library, a storage room where rack after rack of news cuttings are filed in manila folders and catalogued by subject along scores of rolling shelves. Do you know this place? News readers spend their days there, poring through every major paper, clipping and identifying stories which then become part of the library's collection. Nearby, a single table and a photocopier serve members of the public who want to do research.

I told a poorly dressed, long-haired boy what I was looking for. He said, “You should've rung first. It'll take twenty minutes or so. That stuff's not kept up here.”





I said that we'd wait, but I found that my nerves were tangled so excessively that I couldn't remain in the library once the young man had gone off on his search. I couldn't breathe, and in short order I found myself sweating as much as Raphael. I said to Libby that I needed some air. She followed me out onto Vauxhall Bridge Road. But I couldn't breathe there either.

“It's the traffic,” I told Libby, “the fumes,” and I found myself gasping like a winded runner. And then my viscera went into action: stomach clenching and bowels loosening, threatening a humiliating explosion right there on the pavement.

Libby said, “You look like hell, Gid.”





I said, “No. No. I'm all right.”





She said, “You're all right like I'm the Virgin Mary. C'mere. Get out of the middle of the sidewalk.”





She led me round the corner to a coffee bar and sat me at a table. She said, “Don't move unless you're, like, going to faint, okay? In which case, put your head … somewhere. Where is it you're supposed to put your head? Between your knees?” Then she went to the counter and came back with some orange juice. “When was the last time you ate?” she asked.

And I—sinner and softspined poltroon—let her believe what she was believing. I said, “Can't remember exactly,” and I downed the orange juice as if it were an elixir that could return to me everything that I have so far lost.