The Memory Game (13 page)

'Isn't it enough that Natalie was pregnant and then murdered? Do you need any more unpleasantness?'

'But Jane, you're giving me an account of this wonderfully idyllic summer spent with the family that everybody adored. Where's the context for murder?'

'Why should there be a context? She may have been killed by somebody who had nothing to do with the family, someone we've never even heard of.'

'What are your thoughts on that, Jane?'

'You mean
emotions
?'

'No, thoughts. Ideas.'

I paused for quite a long time. 'I've only got one, really. Maybe I'm just being stupid - that's probably what the policewoman I talked to thought - but I keep bumping up against the obvious, the problem of where Natalie was found. Since her body stayed hidden for twenty-five years, and then was only stumbled on by accident, it was clearly an almost perfect hiding place but it's so peculiar. I don't know anything about murderers or what they do with their victims but I imagine that they bury them in remote forests or leave them on moorlands or in ditches. Natalie was last seen by the river. She could have just been thrown in there. But she was buried under our noses on the day after a huge party when the whole area was full of people. It doesn't make any sense to me, but the one thing I am sure of is that it wasn't some passing vagrant who attacked her and then buried her virtually on our front doorstep.'

'So? What else have you got to say to me? There must be something,' Alex insisted.

'Oh, I don't know. It was all such a long time ago. I feel that even by talking about some of these things you give them more importance than they really deserve.'

'Test me.'

I gripped the couch, my fingers like claws.

'There were problems, like all families have. In some ways ours may have been more accentuated because we were so close and saw so much of each other.'

'Spare me all the excuses, just tell me.'

'There were silly things. You've got to realise the ages we were because we were still young enough for these little differences to matter a lot. Natalie was just sixteen and Paul was eighteen and about to go to Cambridge and he was absolutely obsessed with her.'

'Did they have any sort of relationship?'

'Natalie completely rebuffed him. It's hard to imagine now, but Paul was a very shy teenager, aggressively shy really, and he'd never had any sort of girlfriend before. I could almost see him plucking up his courage to make a move towards Natalie and once or twice, late at night, he tried to do things like put his arm round her and she was quite brutal about it.'

'Unnecessarily brutal?'

'I don't know. How can one judge these things? If I am allowed to do a bit of interpretation, I remember that it sometimes seemed as if part of the attraction of Luke for Natalie was as a way of causing pain to Paul. And when she drifted apart from Luke, she played with Paul as a way of tormenting Luke.'

'How did
you
feel about it?'

'You mean, watching my older brother being humiliated by my best friend. I was upset, perhaps less than I should have been. Embarrassed mainly. And maybe I was a bit jealous; everyone, well boys at least, always noticed Natalie. She'd seem so indifferent to them, though of course she wasn't, and she didn't wear make-up like the rest of us did, and she didn't laugh at their jokes, and she didn't flirt except in an ironic kind of way. She often seemed contemptuous in fact, but it never mattered. Paul was out of his depth with her. But look, adolescence is all red in tooth and claw, isn't it? I'm already making it sound a bigger deal than it really was.'

'What did Paul feel?'

'He has never talked about it, except as part of his golden youth which he is now going to turn into a television documentary.'

'Do you think that is what he really feels?'

'It may be what he feels now. I don't believe he can have enjoyed it much at the time, at least not during that summer.'

'Is that it?'

'Yes.'

I could hear an impatient sigh behind me.

'Jane, you've tossed me a bone. But that isn't the real thing you were going to tell me.'

I was reminded of standing on a very high diving board as a child and the only way I dared to dive was to throw myself from it without preparation or forethought.

'The difficult thing that summer - it was often difficult but it was especially difficult then - was Alan's infidelity.'

'Yes?'

Well, what did it matter?

'It's not exactly the world's best-kept secret that Alan has been unfaithful to Martha as a matter of habit. It's the old dreary cliche. Alan loves Martha and is utterly dependent on her. But he's had lots of affairs for virtually the whole of their marriage, as far as I can make out. I suppose he would have been like that anyway but when
The Town Drain
happened and Alan became famous, then the young and available literary women needed beating off with a stick.'

'Did Martha know about these affairs?'

'I think she did in theory. It wasn't flagrant. It just went on and on. The affairs weren't talked about. They weren't important, I think that was the basic cover story.'

'Did she mind about them?'

'I think people always do, don't you? Martha is a wise woman and I suppose she saw from the beginning what Alan was like and realised that nothing could be done to change it. But maybe she was too wise and not bloody-minded enough. I'm sure she always suffered a great deal.'

'Did you all know about it?'

'Not really. In retrospect, there were things that only became clear once we cottoned on. It may be hard for you to understand, but there are ways in which you can know and not know things at the same time. Do you see what I mean?'

'Absolutely.'

'Anyway, the truth about Alan's behaviour became unavoidable. To cut the whole sordid story short, we discovered that the summer before Alan had been sleeping with a girl who was a friend of Natalie's and mine. She was the same age as we were. She was called Chrissie Pilkington and she was a daughter of a local family, good friends of the Martellos, and she was at school with Natalie. It was awful.'

'How did you discover?'

'She told Natalie. Natalie told
me.
It was an odd thing, really, because we had this intense afternoon talking about it. I think I was more shocked than Natalie - she didn't seem surprised, but she did seem, well,
disgusted
, I suppose. She was very cruel about him, about his beery breath and his paunch. I remember the way she imitated him being drunk. But then, after that, she never mentioned the subject again, and I didn't either. I think that I knew it was forbidden.'

'Did you say anything to Alan? Or to Martha?'

'No, it never seemed the right time, really. But I told Theo. I guess that most of us younger lot must have known.'

'What happened? What did you feel about all this?'

'What happened? I don't know, really, it sort of got lost in the chaos of Natalie's disappearance. These things never lasted a long time for Alan and he probably used the awfulness over the disappearance as a way of making a break.'

'And what did you feel about it?'

'Different things. I always have where Alan is concerned. Sometimes I think he's just an awful exploitative shit who would do anything, so long as it was what he wanted to do at a particular moment. And sometimes I think he's just pathetic and weak and should be looked after or put up with. And sometimes I even think about him the way that people who don't actually know him personally think about him : good old incorrigible Alan, a bit outrageous and flamboyant, but there's nobody else quite like him and we're lucky to have him. When I'm feeling close to Martha I feel most hostile, but then she's probably quite stoical about it all.'

I was silent. My mind was a blank. I felt exhausted by it all. Alex was thinking too.

'Sorry for being rude, Jane,' he said.

'You were a bit.'

He stood up and hauled his chair round so that I could see it. It was on castors. I could see the indentations in the carpet where it had stood. Was this the first time it had ever been moved?

'Jane, we're almost finished and I know you must be exhausted but I'd like us to try something. I had it in mind for later sessions, but it might just be worth a crack now.'

'What?'

'Bear with me for a moment, Jane. I want this process to be steered by you. I want to follow the clues that you leave for me. Now, we'll be talking about lots of things, I hope, but I have this feeling that the black hole at the centre of it all is the day that Natalie disappeared, this conjunction, or near-conjunction, when you almost met.'

'Yes. Well?'

'It's something I want to return to.'

'I'm not sure there is anything more to go back to. It was a very long time ago.'

'Yes, I realise that. But let's try something. It'll be good for you anyway. Let's try a sort of exercise. I'd like you to lie back, really lie back, close your eyes and I'd like you to relax every bit of your body, starting with your feet and your legs, your body, down your arms and finally through your face and head. Does that feel good?'

'Mmm.'

Alex's voice was now almost like a hum in the background, like the buzzing of bees outside a window.

'Now, Jane, without opening your eyes, I would like you to imagine that scene by the river on the day when Natalie disappeared. I don't want you to describe it, I don't want you to look at it. I'd like you to imagine yourself back there, sitting by the river. Put yourself back there. Can you do that?'

'Yes.'

'You're sitting down, aren't you, with the hill behind your back?'

'Yes.'

'Describe it to me.'

'I can feel the stone of Cree's Top behind my back. On my right is the wood. The wood that's between the river and the Stead. The River Col is on my left. I can see it flowing away from me. I can tell because of the pieces of paper I scrunch up and throw in. They drift away from me and then just as they drift round the bend they start to bobble across the little rapids, well, just shallow water across stones really, then they're out of sight.'

'What is the weather like?'

'Hot, really hot. Mid-afternoon. I'm in the shade under a line of elms which are on my right forming the edge of the wood. The stone behind me feels cool.'

'Do you do anything?'

My mind went blank, I stuttered something.

'That's all right, Jane, open your eyes. We'll leave it there.'

I started to raise myself up.

'By the way,' he said, 'am I supposed to know why Alan Martello's novel is called
The Town Drain?
Is it a quotation or something?'

'Haven't you read it?'

'It's on my list.'

'I thought everybody had read it. The title comes from something that the Reverend Spooner is supposed to have said to one of his undergraduates. It goes something like, "You have hissed all my mystery lectures and tasted a whole worm. You must leave by the town drain." You know, the down train is the train from Oxford to London.'

'I suppose the joke works if you've read the book.'

'It's not really a joke, it's meant to stand for an anti-Brideshead sort of disenchantment.'

'Well, thank you for the lecturette, Jane. Perhaps I should be paying
you
something.'

I raised an eyebrow.

'Now that really
is
a joke,' Alex added hastily.

Twelve

When we were little - eight or nine years old - Natalie and I used to lie in bed at night and discuss what we were going to be when we grew up. I can see her now, hugging her knees through her nightie. We were both going to be beautiful and adored and have lots of children. We would always be friends, and visit each other's large houses in the country. Everything was possible. It never occurred to me, when I said I was going to be a singer, that my singing voice sounded like a bullfrog's croak. An off-key croak. My mother used to play me notes on the scuffed upright piano that Dad sold after she died, and I would try to sing them back to her. When the look of encouragement on her thin face didn't waver, but remained there like a bright flag signalling patience, I knew that I hadn't succeeded. I relinquished the idea of being a singer, and started selecting things I was good at: drawing, writing, numbers. What could you do with numbers? Before I was ten, I knew I wanted to be an architect, like my dad. I made models from old cardboard boxes, and drew impossible plans on graph paper stolen from my father's desk. I made futuristic apartment blocks from empty match boxes. It became my territory, the place no one else invaded.

Natalie said she wanted to be a ballet dancer at first; then an actor; then a television announcer. She wanted to be seen, looked at. As she grew older, she spent hours watching herself in mirrors, staring at her pale face, being her own audience. It didn't seem like vanity so much as a cool self-assessment that was unnerving to someone like me. For me, mirrors were sources of rebuke or occasional consolation.

I thought of Natalie as I chose my clothes for the day. Detective Sergeant Auster was coming to see me at my office. Then I was having lunch with Paul. Would I mind, he asked me casually, if there was a research assistant there as well? His proposal had been accepted, the TV documentary was going ahead, the commissioning editor was right behind him and had already pencilled a slot into the spring schedule. I pulled a black waistcoat over a burgundy silk shirt, zipped up slim-fitting black trousers, and rummaged around for my black boots. Yes, I did mind. A panic had assailed me since finding out about Natalie's pregnancy. Sometimes I could hardly breathe. I rode my bike along the London roads and thought, 'No one seeing me would know that I'm living inside a fug of dread.' I was in disguise.

When, standing in her hallway, I had told Kim about the pregnancy, her eyes had filled with tears. 'Poor kid,' she'd said, and her reflexive compassion had startled and shamed me. I had been trying to solve a technical problem. Had I really considered my childhood friend? Had I tried to imagine what she must have gone through? Kim interrupted my reverie.