Nicci French - The Memory Game

‘But you’re a member of the Martello family.’

‘Yes, I know, and all Cretans are liars.’

‘What?’

‘Never mind. I don’t know what I’m saying. Don’t go up without a parachute, something like that.’

‘But you loved Theo, didn’t you?’

‘How do you know?’

She was silent.

‘Just be careful about smashing up your life and career,’ I said.

She turned to me with an expression that reminded me unbearably of a sad small child.

‘I thought you would just say congratulations or good luck.’

Then she broke down and cried as I held her.

‘It’s so stupid and embarrassing I can hardly admit it,’ she said. ‘I had this fantasy of us being friends and being brought closer by this.’

‘But look, look,’ I said, holding her damp face, ‘it has brought us closer.’

‘No, I meant more than that. Almost like sisters.’

I hugged her.

‘I need a friend more than I need a sister,’ I whispered to the back of her head.

I need not have worried about how to meet Alan; he didn’t want to meet me, or anyone else. By the time I arrived back at the house, he had scuttled, like a giant crab with its old shell cracked, up to his study. ‘To write,’ he had said.

The kitchen and the living room were crowded with mourners; some I recognised and others I had never seen before. I thought I glimpsed the beaky nose and high cheekbones of Luke, but what would he be doing here? Jim Weston shuffled up, looking ill at ease in his tight wide-lapelled brown suit. It could almost have been his demob suit. He clutched my sleeve and murmured something, but I didn’t catch it. Conversations hummed around me, meaningless sounds. I saw mouths open and close. People were wiping their eyes. Laughing. Pushing sandwiches down their throats. Lifting delicate cups of tea between forefinger and thumb. Bodies jostled against me.

I was hot; my legs itched in their tights; my hands were sweaty; there was a nervous tic pulsing invisibly under my left eye. Pain flowered in my head. Theo was standing in front of me, frowning. Paul was holding me by the shoulder, saying something in my ear about Dad, and needing to leave soon. The vicar – a young man with an Adam’s apple jiggling nervously above his dog collar – shook my sweaty hand with his sweaty hand and spoke vaguely about peace at last. Luke – it was Luke – asked if I was all right and someone passed me a glass of water. Peggy was in grey and Erica was in navy blue. Dad sat in a chair near the patio door and occasionally a hat would bob down to his level and then come back to its own. He looked old and miserable and aggrieved.

I put my coat back on and walked briskly around the garden. I smoked the rest of my packet of cigarettes and returned to the house only when I saw people starting their cars and driving away.

We were a strange, temporary household, lacking our usual sense of common purpose. Paul and Erica drove back to London almost straight away. The next morning Jonah and his family left, and Theo drove Frances to the station. Fred and a worried-looking Lynn stayed on. And Claud, of course. What were we all doing there? The material remnants of Martha’s life didn’t need ordering. On the morning of the funeral we looked through her drawers and wardrobes. Every item of clothing had been cleaned, folded and stowed. Some were in cardboard boxes with destinations marked in her clear, assertive handwriting. Her workroom seemed empty but that was because it had been given a terminal organisation. I knew that she had completed her last book a couple of months before she’d died and she had used her last months systematically. Notes and many of her old papers had been thrown away. A couple of drawers opened at random showed that every file, every stapler was in its place. This was Martha’s last great gesture. There was not a corner of the house where we could catch her ghost unawares, in dishabille. Before she had departed, she had left everything signed, sealed and as she wanted it. The realisation of it was the only thing that made me smile that day.

The brothers had nothing to do there. They didn’t talk much – Fred was scarcely more sober than his father – but I believed that the three of them could not imagine the idea of leaving Alan alone in that house. As it turned out, they never would.

Lunch was a dismal affair. Bread, cheese, wine and some weirdly bright conversation, with even Alan joining in occasionally. This wasn’t the real world. We were teetering along a ledge between existences. The acknowledged old life organised by Martha had not been relinquished, and what the new life might be, nobody spoke of or imagined. Did they think we could all just go and leave Alan to run this house alone?

When we were finished, Claud almost physically prevailed on Alan to stay downstairs.

‘You and me and Jane are going for a quick walk,’ he said.

Alan looked at the two of us with a start, and I was scarcely less surprised.

‘Are we?’ I asked.

‘Yes, it’s a bracing day,’ Claud said cheerily.

I looked out of the window and saw lowering clouds.

‘Let’s all get our coats on,’ he continued.

He helped Alan on with his waterproof, his hat, scarf and boots, and put his old stick in his fist. We pulled on old coats that we found hanging there (with a shiver I realised that I was wearing one of Martha’s) and Alan was firmly led out between us. As we made our way across the lawn, Claud talked about the walk he had taken the day before, how he thought he had seen an owl’s nest in an ash by the drive and he thought we might take a look at it. Suddenly, he slapped his forehead.

‘Bloody hell, I forgot the binoculars. Nip back and get them will you, Janey?’

We were married again, it seemed.

‘Where are they?’

‘In the boot room. Which I locked, of course.’

‘What on earth for?’ asked Alan.

‘Hang on, I’ll give you my keys,’ Claud said, pushing into his various pockets. ‘No, sorry, I must have put them somewhere. Dad, could you give Janey your keys?’

Alan took a large bunch of keys from his pocket and gave them to Claud, who passed them over to me without any traceable expression except for a possible flicker of irritation at his own forgetfulness. They say doctors have to be actors as well.

‘See you in a minute,’ I said and turned and ran back up the lawn.

∗

Hall, first floor, up the steep stairs that led to the large attic. My legs were trembling so much I thought I might fall and I gripped the handrail tightly. I tried several keys until one fitted and I pushed the door open and stepped into Alan’s space. It was sacrosanct and indeed it oddly resembled a church nave, lodged as it was under the roof. There were skylights on each incline and they diffused a grey light through the space that gently illuminated it, even before I switched the light on. I had been in here only a few times in my life. This was where Alan wrote and pretended to write. If it had been empty it would have seemed large. As it was, it was cramped and almost impassable. The daily bills, receipts, letters from publishers and universities, junk mail, pamphlets, requests from students who were studying him, old newspapers, postcards from his sons, invitations, many letters that had not even been opened. I checked a postmark at random: 1993. I stared around at the piles of books higgledy-piggledy on the floor, the scrunched-up tissues in the corner, the line of coffee cups growing mould, the nearly empty whisky bottle on the window ledge.

Alan’s desk was the one clear space in the room. His ancient heavy German typewriter squatted like a tank at its centre. Next to it was a beaker full of pens and pencils and a blank memo pad. On the shelf above were dozens of copies of The Town Drain in a Babel of languages. It had always been a difficult title to translate. I pulled open some drawers. Notebooks with fragmented jottings, unused postcards, typewriter ribbons, drawing pins, a stapler, old batteries and a few entirely incomprehensible objects. I looked around the room. There was a grey metal filing cabinet against one wall, and right along another wall was a row of low cupboards. You don’t keep diaries in a filing cabinet. I opened cupboard doors. The first contained large cardboard boxes piled on top of each other. I could return to them later, if necessary. The next contained piles of old files arranged on shelves. The next had only a large box file on which was written: Arthur’s Bosom (provisional title). I peeped inside and found just a few pieces of paper, covered in Alan’s thick scrawl. Snatches of dialogue, unconnected sentences, descriptions trailing away. This was the great novel, Alan’s long-awaited comeback, the master-work he climbed the stairs so regularly to attend to. In spite of myself, I felt a spasm of pity for him. What a life.