Michael Ridpath - Amnesia

‘And she said yes?’ said Stephen.

‘She did,’ said Nathan with pride and pleasure.

Stephen shook his head. ‘She can’t be that bright, you know.’

Nathan laughed. ‘I know. But I’m very lucky.’

I suspected that Madeleine was as smart as Nathan said. Nathan was clever himself, and determined. He was already rich, and he would become a lot richer. He was also a decent man. Quite a catch, even for a wealthy widow.

But there was an obvious question, and I knew Nathan well enough to ask it. ‘What about Deauville?’

‘You mean what about the fact that I killed her husband?’ The smile had left Nathan’s face.

‘Since you put it like that, yes.’

‘She blames Alden, not me,’ Nathan said. ‘Thank God. She said that Alden was old enough not to play with swords when he was drunk. And Sophie told her about the pass he made at her. I don’t think she could forgive him for that. Her sister, for God’s sake!’

I knew that Madeleine had decided not to go to the police once Sophie had explained what had happened that night, but I had never known whether she had gone along with the rest of us with reluctance or with willingness.

‘I owe her my life,’ said Nathan. He rubbed his throat in involuntary acknowledgement of the guillotine. ‘What makes it difficult for me, though, is I owe Alden so much. Firstly his stock in Wakefield Oil, and now his wife.’

‘Alden was a good man,’ said Tony. ‘In almost all ways. We all owe him a lot.’

We heard female voices speaking in French around the side of the house, where the gate led in from the street.

My heart leaped. Sophie.

I stumbled clumsily to my feet as the voices came nearer, and then there she was, just as lovely as I remembered her, wearing a yellow dress and a radiant smile.

‘Angus!’ she exclaimed when she saw me. She rushed up the steps of the terrace and kissed me on both cheeks. ‘It’s so nice to see you again!’

For a moment, and it was only for a few seconds, I found myself embraced by that special heaven that exists for people who feel their first love returned.

Then she turned to Stephen and looked into his eyes. He had arranged his lips into their most seductive leer. She gave him a small shy smile, stretched up and pecked him on the cheek. ‘Hello.’

Heaven shattered. How the hell did that happen?

‘Angus?’

I turned to my hostess. Madeleine’s smile was friendly and her eyes were shining: the happy bride.

‘Congratulations, Madeleine,’ I stammered. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sophie’s fingers brush Stephen’s.

Capri was hell, and I built thick stone walls in a vain attempt to keep the hell out. I was polite to everyone. I smiled. I took refuge in my pipe and my Suetonius, sitting alone for hours staring at the same page, ignoring the view. At first people tried to jolly me up, or engage me in medical conversation, but then they let me be, assuming that I was enjoying the island in my own way. I did a good job of looking thoughtful, rather than miserable. I was aware that Nathan was disappointed in the cooling of our friendship, but I hoped that I gave the impression that I had changed in the couple of years since Oxford. Grown up. Become more introspective.

There was some solace in lengthy discussions with Tony about art. Tony showed me his studio — rotting vegetables on the back alleys of Paris had become rotting vegetables in the narrow streets of Capri town. Tony had become much more serious about his art, but it seemed to me that his paintings were getting worse rather than better. Poor Tony seemed on the verge of panic. I stumbled across a stack of canvases of Parisian refuse, which had been scored out heavily in black paint. Tony saw me examine them and just shrugged. He still professed confidence in the exhibition he was planning in Paris for the following spring.

Madeleine was friendly and hospitable, and I was polite in return. She was clearly very much in love with Nathan, and there was a pleasing equality in the way they treated each other. Nathan seemed to grow in her presence, the nervous ambition he had displayed at Oxford was developing into confidence. More than confidence, power. With his intelligence, his determination, his money and his beautiful wife, Nathan had the conviction and the ability to get what he wanted.

Sophie tried to speak to me a couple of times, but then gave up. I found it impossible to say anything to her.

The hardest, of course, was Stephen. The villa wasn’t very big, and so we were sharing a room. When night came, we didn’t speak; we lay on our backs in the dark, staring at the ceiling, awake. An intermittent glow flared up from Stephen’s bed as he smoked a cigarette.

I was furious. Stephen had always known what an impression Sophie had made on me, how important that day in Honfleur was to me. I knew I had no absolute claim on Sophie; in fact, I remembered with some pain her question about Stephen when we were sitting on the bench by the chapel above Honfleur. But he knew how I felt about her. If there was something going on between him and Sophie, he had had plenty of opportunity to tell me on the drive down through Italy. And he hadn’t. Just some arrogant advice about not raising my expectations.

Silence. The bastard still wasn’t saying anything, lying over there, smoking. But Stephen knew what I was thinking. Stephen knew exactly what I was thinking, how much pain he had caused me.

And how long had it been going on, this whatever-it-was between him and Sophie. Days? Years? Perhaps Stephen had been stopping off in Paris to see her every time he visited his mother in Antibes, and not telling me anything about it.

The anger was like a worm, creeping through every part of my system. I wanted to leap out of bed, jump onto Stephen and ram my fists into his face. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but I had scarcely ever seen him in any physical contact with anyone. He didn’t play sport; he avoided trouble, whereas I let my aggression rip every Saturday on the rugger field. I was well known for my hard tackling — if I crashed into you at full speed, you didn’t get up. I could beat the shit out of Stephen. I should beat the shit out of Stephen.

All right, perhaps I shouldn’t do that. But I should tell him how I felt. How my best friend had betrayed me.

I watched the cigarette glow above his pillow. I knew Stephen knew what I was thinking, yet somehow I couldn’t bring myself to speak it. It was humiliating, too humiliating to admit to aloud. I had fallen for a girl stupid enough to fall for a cad like him; yet fallen so quietly, so feebly, she probably hadn’t even noticed. I was a lot stupider than she.

The anger burned. Even when sleep came eventually, the embers glowed.

Alden was there on Capri too. He joined us for breakfast in the morning; he was with us when we visited the Blue Grotto on a boat hired from the Marina Grande. But he was there as our friend, an uncle who was still benevolent.

We wanted him there as a friend, not as an enemy. He was mentioned in conversation frequently: ‘Alden would adore the grotto — he’d rush out and buy a painting of it right away’; ‘I bet Alden would have bought a villa on Capri if he had ever visited it’; ‘Alden would have loved this limoncello — he was always a sucker for sweet liqueurs.’ This was especially true of Madeleine and Nathan. It was as if by invoking his spirit as part of the group of friends, they were affirming his approval for their marriage. Tony saw him as his supportive patron still and Stephen and Sophie went along with the others, Sophie possibly to support her sister, and Stephen because he was a heartless bastard.