Gill Alderman - The Memory Palace

‘And your name?’ he asked, lightly holding the car on course. ‘Alice, Alice Tyler.’

He misheard her, wilfully or by that psychic trick which turns what is heard into what is desired. Distant memories called him with soft and echoing voices.

‘Alice,’ he said, ‘Alice Naylor?’

‘Not “Naylor”: “Tyler” – T for Tommy. And I’m usually Allie.’

The bright world of the autoroute , its unfolding, motionless ribbon and his speed held him in their turn.

‘Oh, no,’ he said, and grimaced; then smiled. ‘You are not an Allie, you are most definitely an Alice.’

‘Who’s Alice Naylor? Your girlfriend?’

‘Alice,’ he told her, ‘is someone I read about.’ (He could not say ‘know’) ‘She died a long time ago, in 1705. She is buried in my village.’

He drove on through the Vallée de I’Oise while the girl chattered. Sometimes he had the illusion that he was driving his eldest daughter; Phoebe had picked up the same vapid talk and culture from her friends. He watched the road, as he must, and noticed the traffic on it which, lighter than that of England though it was, had still a good variety of vehicles. There were obvious differences, more Mercedes and Renaults, no Vauxhalls, and, while he wondered what had become of the motorists from the ferry, they passed a little clutch of British cars. No salaried holidaymakers in these, a Rolls and a new Jag, two big Rovers. Then came three British lorries, giant kith and kin of the European trucks he had passed on the M25. The road signs looked international. How long, he wondered, before the cultures merge? This is Europe, not France. Individuality is disappearing.

Alice spoke,

‘The secret places have gone – the deep tree-filled coigns, the lazy rivers and grassy banks, the unexpected flower-studded meadows,’ she said. ‘This is all there is – motorway, bridge after bridge after bridge. Europe has shrunk.’

‘What?’ He was annoyed – no, just mildly disturbed – to hear her speaking in such an adult and authoritative voice.

‘You were thinking how much things have changed, weren’t you?’ she replied. ‘Don’t worry. The perilous places still exist – they’ve just moved over a bit. In a sense, they are even further from ordinary people than they were before, they are so hard to reach. But a storyteller can find them.’

He glanced at her and while he thought, so briefly, that her mix of semi-adult profundity and teenage chat would be odd if it were not so engaging, noticed only that her expression was demure and that her hands were folded, not in her lap as they would be if she wore a skirt, but because of the encasing leggings, against her groin.

Rain surprised them as they passed through a national park. He read its name aloud, from the sign: ‘Pare Jean-Jacques Rousseau.’

‘I wonder where the noble savages live now,’ he said, half to himself. ‘Perhaps Etta knows.’

‘There?’ he wondered, as Alice waved to a group of bikers.

‘They’re giving us the V-sign,’ she said.

‘We’re going faster than they can.’

‘No. Like Churchill not “up yours” – aren’t there noble savages in Malthassa?’

He frowned. The world he had created in his mind had grown so vast, he sometimes had trouble remembering all of it. It had got away from him, he felt, and was trying to live on its own. The frown helped him grasp and hold it.

‘No,’ he said. ‘There are only the Ima and they are neither noble nor savage.’

Then they were entering the choked sprawl that is outer Paris and were caught in a crowd of traffic as dense and wild as any London jam. It moved erratically but always at high speed and he had neither time nor attention for Rousseau’s philosophy.

‘Look out for the signs which say “Lyon”,’ he snapped. ‘No, don’t talk.’

‘OK, OK.’

His hands involuntarily tightened on the wheel and a painful spasm passed through them. He felt a waterfall of sweat run down his back, despite the air conditioning. No wonder: the heat. The signs above the road shimmered with it and he read the ambient temperature on one, 28C; checked it against the readout in the car. As he looked at it, the 8 became a 9. Alice had found the bottle of water he kept in the car and she undid and passed it him without comment.

Nemione Baldwin knelt to dip water from the river. She lowered the brass cup into the current and held it steady there, so that the water which filled it flowed with the stream.

‘Thank you, nivasha,’ she said, and spilled a few drops of water on the ground. I leaned forward anxiously to look into the water but could see nothing there except the stones of the river bed. Should I have seen the nivasha lying on her underwater bed of green weed or, worse, swimming towards me, I would have been mortally afraid – and eternally curious, filled with the same desire for change and danger that makes men climb mountains or trek into the forest’s infinity. Nemione handed me the brimming cup and I drank gratefully.

She had changed a great deal; but no more, I suppose, than I. Her loose, maiden tresses were gone. The fair, almost white hair was braided and looped about her ears and pinned in elaborate merlons high on her head – that was how it looked to a military man. She wore a long gown of green stuff, open from the waist down to show white petticoats. There were rings on her fingers and jewels at her throat and in her ears.

But in all this elaborate show there was no hint of seduction or carnality. The gold cross of our Order hung chastely amongst her trinkets.

As for myself, the reflection in the slower water at the riverbank showed a dark and travel-weary face above a dented cuirass from which the embossed wolf’s head had all but worn away.

‘So you became a licensed outlaw,’ said Nemione.

‘And you a lovely and fashionable lady!’

She laughed – the sound was richer than it had been when it echoed in the cloister – but it suggested wit and a keen mind, rather than woman’s art.

‘What gallantry! Who would have thought that silent Koschei Corbillion would grow into such a cavalier?’

She drew a fan from her pocket and flicked it open; put it to her face and looked at me over its rim. Her eyes were the colour of male sapphires, or the Septrential Ocean, and they matched the blue eyes painted on the fan. She flicked the fan which subtly and rapidly was changed, becoming a thing of grey estridge feathers, then a froth of rose and white blossom; again, and it was as green as her skirts, a simple chusan leaf.

‘Perhaps not “My Lady”, but Prestidigitator,’ I said.

Nemione shook her head.

‘That is for gypsies and mountebanks.’

‘Then … Sorceress?’

‘For the time being let us agree on Prentice.’

She touched the leaf and folded it away like a fan.

‘You, Sir Koschei, Wolf’s Brother,’ she continued, teasing me. ‘Are you in search of your fortune, or a pretty wife perhaps?’

‘I have left one war to journey to another,’ I told her. ‘That’s the truth of it. My apprenticeship will be as long and as hard as yours.’

‘But fighting only lays waste to the body!’

‘Not true. It saps the spirit just as well.’

‘But you are young, and strong enough for it. How long is it since you left our Order?’

‘Two years this day week.’

‘Then I left it only days after you.’

A breeze came rustling through the forest and stirred her fortress of hair and her finery. She sighed and tapped one foot on the stones by the river.

‘I would travel more simply,’ she said, ‘but I thought this frippery a good disguise – the peasants will do anything for a high-born lady. Did you see my dwarf as you came along the track?’