Gill Alderman - The Memory Palace

He stood up, unfolding his body with care.

‘You feel your age,’ said Helen. ‘Never mind: those aches and pains will pass. She helps.’ Though he looked at her when she spoke, she kept her eyes downcast. Perhaps she was able to see him, all the same? And who did she mean by ‘she’? – herself, Nemione, or the bright moon?

‘Dominic will show you your room,’ she said.

She did not speak again nor seem inclined to speak, though he waited. He sighed and left her, descending the three wooden steps of the vardo into an orchard bewitched by night and by the scents of honeysuckle and tobacco flowers. The other perfume, ‘Sortilège’, the distillation of their vanished hours together was in his pocket. He took it out and left it on the top step. The house, too, was quiet and shadow-haunted. He found his way along the hall and opened the door on the left, the one which had first disgorged and brought him Dominic.

The bright light startled him. A nocturnal creature, an old badger caught in headlights, he stood still and blinked rapidly. Alice and Dominic were sitting side by side on a big sofa, cans of beer and Coke on a coffee table in front of them. The television was on. Dominic turned lazily and smiled at him; Alice was also smiling.

‘She kept you ages!’ Alice said. ‘There must have been a lot to talk about.’

‘Seventeen years’ worth,’ he said. He could not begin to tell what had really taken place.

‘And now you are tired?’ his son said. The innocent remark pressed a trigger in him, resentment at their sparkling, hopeful youth.

‘Where did you find her?’ he testily asked Dominic.

‘In the square. She was guarding your mean machine. You should have brought them both with you, up to the house, Dad –’ (Guy winced at the familiarity) ‘–You’d left the keys in her. It was too much: I drove her round for you – she’s on the drive.’ He rolled sideways in his seat and extracted Guy’s keys from his pocket. ‘There you go – Dad.’

‘Thank you.’ Guy took the keys and stowed them deep and safe, in his own pocket. ‘I suppose you can drive – surely you’re not old enough?’

‘Oh, I’m old enough. I’m not old enough to be on the road by myself, that’s all.’

Guy perceived that he was frowning. Alice looked up at him, such a melting look of pure azure tenderness. If she went on with it, he would be embarrassed in front of his own son.

‘I’ll go and see what damage you’ve done,’ he said. ‘I’ll take a walk before I crawl into my bed – you won’t mind amusing Alice for a little longer.’

‘Oui, Papa!’ The boy was still grinning. No one should have such perfect teeth, Guy thought. He could not help grinning back and so retreated, disturbed, abashed. He let himself out by the front door. How stupid to let his exuberance irritate me, he thought, and felt a new surge of annoyance when he saw the Audi, perfectly parked with all its windows closed and its doors locked. He peered through the windscreen. Nothing was damaged. He walked round the car gently kicking its tyres.

At least the absurd confrontation, if that was what it had been, had put his refreshed desire for Alice back to sleep.

– But he had forgotten to ask where he was to sleep. And she?

He walked past the church and on, beyond the confines of the village. The road led to St Just and the Burgundy Canal. Maybe he would go as far as the water, see what a French cut looked like by night. He was walking roughly north-east, away from the route nationale , away from the autoroute . He passed beneath some evergreens. Their clean scent was unavoidable and he inhaled it pleasurably. The trees hung low over the road and, looking at them against the dark backdrop of the sky, he puzzled at their shape and wondered were they cedars? cypresses? The moon must have set, already. Then what time was it? He consulted his watch, pulling back his sleeve and holding the small dial on his wrist close to his face. Without his glasses he was blind, in this respect. Yet this quiet was what he needed, an interval to stroll in, a period of time alone between Helen and Alice, before bed, before the question of Alice’s bed came up. He was still staring into the additional night of the trees when a soft noise behind him made him turn his head. The noise was scarcely audible, like someone trying to move silently and avoid breathing.

‘Hello!’ he said.

He could make out nothing certain, no animal or passer-by against the darkest shade; but he was sure he was no longer alone. Another man waited – there, where the branches dipped down; more, this man, whom he could barely see, wore a ragged beard. Guy walked toward him, one fist raised; walked through him: indeed, there was no other there beside the dark, the shadows and his imagination. He smiled to himself and shrugged, turning his pensive gaze once more upon the trees, for surely they did not deceive him. They were a pair of arbor vitae, one much taller than the other.

I thought: if I climb the biggest tree I shall be safe from the beasts of the night and can rest, if not sleep, till morning. I had a second thought: in Ayan I had heard one market woman tell another that every ring of earth round every tree has its guardian puvush, and I visualized a legion of them ranged out all over the world. I stood still in my fear and someone spoke,

‘Helloo! Master Corbillion.’

Erchon, the slippery truant, come into the forest on my trail to save me!

It was not Erchon. A creature greater and blacker than any nightmare or sea monster stood beside me. I tried to make it out in the darkness, but all my diminished senses could tell me was that it loomed, huge, and smelled rank as a sewer after a feast day.

‘What are you?’ I cried. ‘Why have you come to pester me in my trouble?’

‘You might strike a light; then, you could see me,’ the creature said.

At once, I began to fumble in my pockets for my tinder-box.

‘Not like that. Try Nemione’s way. I believe in you.’

I think it strange, to this day – a portentous action – that I obeyed this unknown of the forest and the night. I knew then neither incantation nor pass, but I tried (despite my fear of the unseen creature) to empty my mind of all distractions and concentrate on the idea of fire, of heat, of flame, of matter consumed by searing brands. I bent my consciousness inside myself and searched in all the far reaches of my being for the strength to make the first spark. I journeyed in the deep recesses of my mind and, when I had gathered hope, need and momentum and they threatened to burst from me and destroy everything before them, myself also, I enclosed these inchoate forces in the iron channel of my reason and sent them forth with a softly breathed ‘Go!’

A spark sprang out of the darkness at my feet and from it a tall yellow flame arose.

‘Excellent!’ said my companion, laid his hand upon my shoulder and gave it a clumsy pat which felt like the shaking a terrier gives a rat. My new-born light showed me that his hand was a mighty paw and that the rest of him matched the hairy appendage for strength and hideousness. The mouth from which his scholarly voice issued was a red maw, lipped with thick folds of leather, toothed like a tiger.

I cried his name fearfully, ‘Om Ren!’ and, losing all my new-found power, began to mutter a woman’s charm to placate and appease him.

‘Peace, master,’ the wild man said. ‘If you were a mere soldier, albeit a Green Wolf and one of the best – if, as I say, you were a common man, I would have let you continue your hopeless wandering. You would have died.

‘But I have stepped into your path because I wish to speak to you. Look upon my intervention as happy – but also as the beginning.’