Nicci French - The Memory Game

Without thinking, I took his hand, and he didn’t take it away, but looked down at our fingers interlocking. We sat in thick silence for a few seconds, and then I drew back, embarrassed.

‘What are you doing for Christmas?’ My voice was too bright.

It was his turn to look embarrassed. ‘Didn’t you know? I was going to Martha’s and Alan’s, but Paul invited me to spend it with him and Peggy.’

‘But they’re coming to me.’ A nasty thought struck me.

‘Paul didn’t think you’d mind.’

‘It’s impossible, Claud. It’s impossible. Dad will be there, and Kim and her new lover, and the boys and Hana. Oh, shit, there’ll be a TV crew there as well, filming us all. What do you want us all to do? Play happy families for the cameras?’

‘It was you who said we could still be friends.’

I had said that. It was a stupid cliché, a fake consolation, and a lie, but I had said it.

‘And I want to be with my sons at Christmas.’

I knew it was a terrible mistake. What was Kim going to say to me?

‘All right.’

I was sitting down, the dry moss of the stone scraping the curved ridge of my spine. I knew that Cree’s Top was behind me. The River Col was on my left, its surface slate grey, reflecting the cloud cover which had obscured the sun. It was suddenly cold in my sleeveless dress and I hugged myself with my prickly, goosepimpled arms. The screwed-up pieces of paper were almost lost in the murky surface and, flowing away from me, they disappeared into the shades and reflections long before they were carried round the bend. The branches in the elms on my right rustled and swayed with a sudden breath of wind that threatened rain.

I stood and turned round until I was facing Cree’s Top and looking along the path that wound up its slope. Sometimes bushes hid its progress until it disappeared into twilight. I walked determinedly up it. Each time I returned to this river and this hill which separated me from Natalie, the objects seemed more vividly present. The grass was a richer green, the river more detailed in all its ripples and flurries. On this occasion, the detail was not just more precise but somehow harder as well. The water looked heavier and more solid, the path was more rigid under my feet, even the leaves looked like blades that would cut the fingers that brushed against them.

This was a hostile, unyielding landscape that seemed reluctant to give up its secrets. I was nearing the brow of Cree’s Top and I had a palpable sense that there was something bad on the other side. That was why the landscape had darkened. My body, my whole spirit, sagged in despair. Did I really want this? One moment of weakness was enough. I turned and ran down the hill, away from whatever was awaiting me. Were there not other places to go in this beloved landscape of my memory? I reached the foot of Cree’s Top and ran along the Col. I knew instinctively that the path would wind away from the river and take me back towards the Stead and there I would find my family as they once were: Theo, tall and saturnine; Martha, dark-haired and beautiful, laughing and strong; my father, handsome and still hopeful for a life that could be fulfilling. There would be the remnants of that golden summer party.

But the path quickly became unrecognisable, as if I had wandered beyond the bounds of permitted territory. The woods thickened, the sky was closed away and I came to myself there on Alex’s couch with tears running hot down my face, across my cheeks. I had to sit up and, with a sense of absurdity, wipe my neck and ears. Alex was standing over me with a look of concern. I explained to him what I had tried to do and he nodded his head reprovingly.

‘Jane, you’re not in Narnia or Oz or some theme park where you can wander off in whatever direction you like. This is your own memory you’re exploring. You have to give yourself up to where it’s leading you. Don’t you feel that you’re almost there?’

Alex Dermot-Brown was not the sort of person whom I would normally have considered to be my type. He was a scruffy man who lived in a scruffy house. His jeans were worn in the knees, his navy blue sweater was stained and dotted with fluff, it was obvious that the only styling his long curly hair received was when he frequently ran his fingers through it while in animated conversational flight. Yet I had become attracted to him, of course, because he was the person to whom I had opened up, the man whose approval I was seeking. I recognised all that. But now I realised with some excitement that he was as avid about my quest as I was, and as hopeful about its prospects. I felt a lurch deep in my belly at the same time. It reminded me of the early contractions I had had with Jerome, those little pre-shocks warning me that I was really going to have to give birth. Soon I was going to have to face up to something.

A balding man in a grey suit stood up. He looked as if he had come to the hall straight from work.

‘Well I’ve got something to say.’

Do you know those public meetings or discussions when the chair calls for questions and there is a long silence and nobody dares to say anything and it’s all rather embarrassing? This wasn’t like that at all. Everybody had something to say and most of them were trying to say it at the same time.

We had realised from the start that the local residents would have to be involved, at least on an informal basis, in the setting up of the hostel. There’d been a meeting of the Grandison Road residents’ association to discuss the issue and they had demanded a public meeting with the authorities responsible for the hostel. It wasn’t clear quite what this demand meant, or whether it even needed to be acknowledged, but it was decided as a matter of tact to respond. Chris Miller of the council planning department was notionally in charge of the project and was going to chair it and Dr Chohan, a psychiatrist from the out-patients department of St Christopher’s hospital, was going to be there, and Pauline Tindall from social services and then at a very late stage Chris had rung me and asked if I could come along as well.

I reluctantly agreed, if only to keep an eye on any rash spending commitments that Chris might make which would then duly come off my budget. This was an evening on which I had arranged to meet Caspar for a drink. I rang to cancel and apologise but when I mentioned to him what I was doing, he became interested and asked if he could pop along and sit in the audience. He said he wanted to see me at work. I told him not to bother and that it would be only a formality.

‘It won’t be a formality,’ he said. ‘These are people’s homes you’re dealing with. You’re going to be bringing mad people into their area. The only worse thing you could be proposing would be a veal factory or a vivisection laboratory. I don’t want to miss this, Jane. Public meetings like this are what the British do now instead of watching a bear being baited or a public hanging.’

‘Come off it, Caspar, this is a totally uncontroversial project.’

‘We’ll see. Meanwhile, you must remind me to show you an interesting study that was done a few years ago at Yale. It suggested that when people have made a public commitment to a position, then contrary evidence, however strong, only reinforces their commitment.’

‘So what are you saying?’

‘Don’t expect to convince anybody by rational argument.’

‘I don’t need a study from Yale University to tell me that. Maybe I’ll see you there.’

‘I might be lost in the mob but I’ll see you.’

I locked my bicycle to a parking meter outside the community hall just five minutes before the meeting was due to start. When I entered I thought at first I must have come to the wrong occasion. I had expected a few old ladies who had come to get out of the rain. This looked more like a warehouse party or a poll tax demonstration. But there on the distant platform were Chris and the gang. Not only was every seat taken but the aisles were crammed and I had to squeeze my way through in a flurry of apologies in order to reach the platform where Chris was looking red-faced and nervous. He kept coughing and filling his glass with water from a jug. As I sat down on the municipal plastic chair reserved for me, he leant across and whispered hoarsely: