The Memory Game (32 page)

Finally, there was a knock at the door. Alex was wearing a most improbable suit. He had shaved. His hair was neatly brushed.

'You look smart,' I said. 'This isn't a date, is it?'

'At eleven thirty in the morning? You look smart too. Come on.'

Alex drove a Volvo. There was a baby seat in the back and every surface was strewn with crisp packets and cassettes and empty cassette cases. He swept some of them off the passenger seat and onto the floor to make space for me. A flashing light instructed me to put my seat belt on and we were off, south, down Kentish Town Road.

'So where are we going?'

Alex switched on the cassette player. The car was filled with some Vivaldiesque music. For months I'd been curious about any stray details of Alex's private life that I could garner, and now, here I was in his car, with his tapes, Miles Davis and Albinoni, Blur and the Beach Boys, written in his own handwriting. For me it was as improbable as if I were to find myself in a car being driven by, I don't know, someone like Neil Young, with the added feeling that there was something forbidden, incestuous about it.

'I'm giving the keynote speech at a conference,' Alex said. 'I thought you might be interested.'

'Why
me
?'

'Because it's about recovered memory.'

'What?
'

I was stunned.

'Are you serious?'

'Of course.'

'But I don't understand, is it something to do with
me
?'

Alex laughed.

'No, Jane, this is a subject I have an interest in.'

For the rest of the journey I stared out of the window. Alex drove into the basement car-park of the Clongowes Hotel on Kingsway. We went up in the lift and walked across the lobby to a conference room with a sign outside saying 'Recovered Memory: Survivors and Accusers'. Alex signed us both in at the reception and I received a badge bearing my name, written in ballpoint pen. I was apparently not expected. In the hall were rows of desks, as if an exam were about to be taken. Most of them were occupied and Alex steered me to a seat at the back.

'Stay here,' he said. 'I'll be with you again in twenty minutes or so. There are one or two people I would like you to meet.'

He winked at me, then walked down the aisle towards the front. His progress was slow because he greeted almost everybody he passed, shaking hands, hugging, patting backs. A beautiful woman, dark, with olive skin, clattered towards him and gave him a hug, one high heel cocked up behind her thigh. I felt a twinge of jealousy and caught myself. I had had months of Alex to myself and it was something of a shock to see him in public. It was like seeing Dad at the office, and realising with a pang that he had a life outside his relationship with me. I made myself think of something else. On the desk in front of me was a white ballpoint pen and a small lined pad of paper, both bearing the inscription 'Mindset'. There was a folder bearing the title of the conference and inside was an assembly of documents. One contained a list of delegates, about a hundred of them. Against each name was the person's qualification. There were doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, representatives of voluntary organisations and a number of people, all women, labelled simply as 'survivors'. I supposed that I too was a survivor, and an accuser as well, for that matter.

At the front of the hall was a table with a jug of water and four glasses. Beside it was a lectern. Displaying the charming diffidence with which I was already familiar, Alex shook hands with a final delegate and made his way to the lectern. He gave the microphone a little tap which echoed round the hall.

'It's twelve fifteen, so I suppose we'd better get underway. I'd like to welcome you all to the 1995 Recovered Memory conference, organised by Mindset, and I'm glad to see so many familiar faces here. This is
your
conference, and, like last year, it's been designed to maximise the delegates' participation, so I'll try to stem my natural eloquence, or at least that's what I call it. I'm aware of being in an audience with many distinguished fellow analysts.' There was a dutiful ripple of laughter. Alex coughed nervously, sipped from a glass of water (I was shocked to see his hand trembling) and continued.

'I'm just going to give a brief introductory talk, setting out some of our agenda. Then Dr Kit Hennessey will be giving an outline of some recent research. Then we break for lunch, which I'm told you'll find outside and to the right. Just hand in the token that you'll find in your folder. After lunch we split up for a series of workshops. Those are in different conference rooms all on this floor. You'll find the details also in your folder. I think that's about all.

'Now for my brief contribution.'

Alex opened the slim document folder he was carrying and removed some papers. This was a different Alex from the easygoing, enabling, ironic listener with whom I had spent so much of the last few months. He was passionate, unambiguous, polemical, from his opening statement: 'Recovered memory is one of the greatest hidden scandals of our time.' He spoke of how generations of people, especially women, had been compelled to hide traumas they had suffered in their early lives. When they had spoken of them they had been disbelieved, vilified, marginalised, diagnosed, lobotomised. He admitted with regret that the very medical authorities best qualified to expose the horror, the psychiatrists and analysts, and the criminal authorities, the police and lawyers, had become collaborators in its suppression.

'Law and science,' he said, 'have been misused against these victims just as in the past they have been misused against other groups wherever it has suited the interests of authority to deny the rights of victimised minorities. So-called scientific objectivity, so-called burdens of proof have themselves been used as instruments of oppression. We owe it to these victims of abuse, who have shown the courage to remember, to say, "We believe you, we support you".'

I knew now why Alex had brought me here. I had felt mad and strange and an outcast, trapped in my own private sufferings. This was part of what Alex meant by going public: the discovery that I was not alone, that other people had experienced what I had experienced. With a pang that almost made me cry as I sat there at the back of the hall doodling on the shiny dossier cover, I was reminded that this was what I had loved about Natalie: she had validated me by feeling the things I had felt. Had I, too, been buried when she had been buried?

Alex had finished. He asked if there were any questions and several hands went up. One man, a deputy director of social services, thanked Alex for his speech but said that the one omission from his survey was the political dimension. Legislation was needed. Why was there no MP among the delegates, or even a local councillor? Alex shrugged and smiled. He agreed with the delegate, he said. From personal connections, he knew a number of politicians who were sympathetic to their cause, but the implications of findings about repressed memory were so great, and the entrenched medical and legal authorities so powerful, that they were extremely unwilling to go public with any form of commitment.

'We have to push the issue another way,' he said. 'We need some high-profile legal cases to demonstrate that this phenomenon cannot be ignored. When that happens, and public awareness has increased, it will seem less dangerous. Perhaps when the bandwagon is rolling the politicians will jump on it.'

There was a round of applause. As it faded, a woman stood up. She was strikingly short, dowdily dressed, in her late forties. I expected a personal testimony of remembering abuse but she identified herself as Thelma Scott, a consultant psychiatrist at St Andrew's in central London. Alex gave her a wry nod of recognition.

'I think we all know who you are, Dr Scott.'

'I've been looking at your list of events, Dr Dermot-Brown,' she said, holding the conference folder. '"Believing and Enabling", "Listen to Us", "Legal Obstacles", "The Doctor's Dilemma", "Protecting the Patient".'

She paused.

'Yes?' said Alex, with just a hint of exasperation.

'Is this a forum for discussion and inquiry? I don't see any discussions planned here about the problems of diagnosis, the possible unreliability of recovered memory, the protection for families against false accusations.'

'That's not necessary, Dr Scott,' Alex said. 'The whole history of this subject is about protection for families against
true
accusations. We don't yet face the problem of having to
discourage
people from making accusations of abuse. The pressures against authentic sufferers are so great that it is almost impossible for them even to face up to their recovered memories, let alone make public assertions as to their legal rights.'

'And I notice another absence from the delegates,' Dr Scott said.

'Yes?'

'There is not a single neurologist here. Wouldn't it be interesting to have a contribution about the mechanics of memory?'

Alex gave an exasperated sigh. 'We don't know about the mechanics of tumour development. That doesn't prevent us from knowing that cigarette-smoking increases the risk of cancer. I'm fascinated by current neurological research, Thelma, and I share your concern. I wish we had a scientific model for the workings of memory and its suppression in the brain but the limitations of our knowledge are not going to prevent me doing my job as a doctor and helping patients in need. Now, are there any more questions?'

The proceedings petered out and, after introducing Dr Hennessey, a tall, slim man with an epically large file of papers under his arm, Alex slipped off the platform. Nodding at one or two people, he tiptoed along the side of the hall and sat down beside me. I smiled at him.

'So you haven't persuaded everybody?'

He grimaced. 'Don't mind her,' he murmured. 'I suppose that Galileo had people like Dr Scott pursuing him, except that they had instruments of torture at their disposal. There's a great myth that you can persuade people by reason alone. It's been said that the only way that a radical new scientific idea gets accepted is when all the old scientists who were committed to the old idea die off. Now, let's sneak out. There's somebody I want you to meet.'

As we tiptoed towards the door, Alex beckoned to a woman leaning against the wall and she followed us out. The ante-room outside was deserted.

'I wanted two of my stars to meet each other,' said Alex. 'Jane, this is Melanie Foster; Mel, this is Jane Martello. Why don't you two pop into the next room and grab some lunch before the mob arrives?'

Melanie was wearing a crisp, grey business suit that made me feel shabby. I guessed that she was five years older than me, but her face had many fine wrinkles, like a crushed newspaper that had been straightened out. Her hair was cut short, grey and coarse in texture, almost like the strands in a horse's tail. She wore granny glasses and had a slightly insecure smile. I took to her at once. We looked at each other, nodded and headed for the food.

A buffet was laid out and servants in white jackets were chatting in groups, waiting for the rush. I was going to take nothing but a piece of cheese and bread but Melanie loaded a large spoonful of spicy pasta onto my plate and I gave in with a giggle.

'You look thin,' she said. 'Here.' She heaped tomato salad beside the pasta, then a stack of beanshoots, until I cried 'When!' in mock horror. 'You've got to keep me company.'

We took our trays over to a small table in a corner where there was no chance of anybody joining us.

'I suppose I ought to ask how you know Alex,' I began.

'Yes,' said Melanie in a firm, schoolmarmish tone. 'But I must begin by saying that I know why
you
know Alex.'

'Really?' I said, shocked. 'Isn't it meant to be private?'

'Well, yes, of course,' she said quickly. 'But your case is a matter of public record now, isn't it?'

'I suppose so, but still...'

'My dear Jane, I'm here to help you and I can tell you that you will need support.'

'Why
you
, Melanie?'

Melanie had just taken a bite of bread and when she tried to reply she began to choke. I thumped her on the back. There was a long pause.

'Thank you, I can speak again now,' she said. 'I started to see Alex ten years ago. I was depressed, my marriage was in trouble, I wasn't coping with the stress of my job. You know, Jane, the normal state of the working woman.'

I smiled and nodded.

'I spent a couple of years talking about my early life and all that, but nothing seemed to change. One day, Alex said to me that he believed I had been abused by a close member of my family and that I was suppressing the memory. I was furious, I rejected the idea totally and considered stopping the analysis, but something made me continue. So we carried on, teasing away at certain episodes in my childhood, some blank spots, but nothing happened. It all seemed pointless, until Alex suggested that I should picture myself being abused and go from there.'

Melanie paused and took a gulp of water.

'It was like a floodgate opening. There were certain images tormenting me, sexual images. As I focused on them, developed them, I realised they were memories of sexual assault by my father. I won't tell you the things he did to me, they were terrible things, perverse things that I could scarcely imagine. And as Alex and I went on we uncovered more and more. I realised that my mother had conspired with my father, not just by allowing it to happen but actively helping. And my brother and my sister had been raped and abused as well.'

She spoke with uncanny calmness, as if she had schooled herself to tell this terrible story. I wondered what I could possibly say.

'That's awful,' I said, conscious of its inadequacy. 'Were you absolutely sure it was true, that you didn't imagine it?'

'I was tormented with worry and I needed a lot of help and reassurance, most of which was provided by Alex.'

'What did you do? Did you tell the police?'

'Yes, after a while. They questioned my father but he denied everything and there were never any charges.'