Part 16 (1/2)

'There is no music,' Claud said.

'Where are all your CDs?'

'They belonged to a previous existence.'

'If you didn't want them, why did you take them?'

'They weren't yours.'

'Are you seriously telling me' I was appalled 'that all the music you've collected over your whole life, you've just, just, binned. binned.'

'Yes.'

I looked around the room. I realised that, with surgical ruthlessness, Claud had sliced away any evidence of our life together, of our family. This wasn't order. This was emptiness.

'Claud,' I blurted out, 'how do you remember Natalie?' Even as I asked, I knew my question was odd, oblique.

'How do I remember her?' do I remember her?'

'I mean, I've been talking to people about her and it struck me as odd that we've never really talked to each other about our versions of her.'

Claud sat down in a chair and scrutinised me with the professional air that had always infuriated me.

'Don't you think that your preoccupation is going a bit far now, Jane. I mean, all of us her real real family, to put it frankly we're trying to pick up our lives. I'm not sure it's entirely helpful to have you poking about in our past for your own private psychological reasons. Is this what your a.n.a.lyst has been encouraging you to do?' family, to put it frankly we're trying to pick up our lives. I'm not sure it's entirely helpful to have you poking about in our past for your own private psychological reasons. Is this what your a.n.a.lyst has been encouraging you to do?'

His manner was mild and correct, and I felt like a schoolchild, unkempt and fidgety on his neat sofa.

'Okay, Claud, lecture over so how do you remember her?'

'She was sweet and bright and loving.'

I stared at him.

'Don't look at me like that, Jane. Just because you're in therapy, you suspect anything that's straightforward. She was my little sister, and she was a dear child, on the brink of womanhood when she tragically died. That's that. That's how I remember her and that's how I want to remember her. I don't want you sullying her, even if she has been dead for twenty-five years. Okay?'

I poured another slug of sherry into my miniature gla.s.s, and took a sip.

'All right, what are your last memories of her, then?'

This time Claud did seem to think a bit before answering or perhaps he was just thinking about whether to answer at all. Then he nodded with an expression almost of pity.

'I don't know what you're doing, but if you insist. We were all at the Stead arranging the anniversary party for when they arrived back from their cruise. I was to fly off to Bombay the following morning. Like most of us, Natalie was helping. On the day of the party and in the morning, you and Natalie and I were rus.h.i.+ng about doing errands. Remember?'

'It's a long time ago,' I said.

'I remember taking her in the car to collect Alan and Martha's present, and we talked about what she was going to wear, I think. All I remember after that is that I took charge of the barbecue, and I didn't move from it until the early hours of the morning.' He looked at me. 'But you wouldn't know about that, would you? You were too tied up with Theo. Then I left before dawn the next morning with Alec. The first I heard of Natalie's disappearance was two months later when I came back home.'

I carefully picked up the crumbs on my plate with my forefinger.

'Did you see Natalie in the morning?'

'Of course not. I saw n.o.body, except mother, who drove Alec and me to the station at about three thirty in the morning. As you know. Come on, Jane, you're just going over and over old ground. And I can't help you much: I wasn't there the day she disappeared.'

He pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead, and I realised how tired he was. Then he smiled at me, a goofy little intimate half-smile; the hostility went from the atmosphere and was replaced by something else, just as disturbing.

'Don't you know,' he said almost dreamily, 'how much I regret not being there? For a long time, I thought that if I hadn't gone off, then it wouldn't have happened. That I could have prevented it or something ridiculous. And I feel still as if I were separated from the rest of the family because they were all together in it, and I was apart.' He grinned mirthlessly at me. 'You always called me the bureaucrat of the family, didn't you, Jane? Perhaps it's because that's how I can feel properly a part of it.'

'Claud, I'm sorry if I've been blundering around.'

Without thinking, I took his hand, and he didn't take it away, but looked down at our fingers interlocking. We sat in thick silence for a few seconds, and then I drew back, embarra.s.sed.

'What are you doing for Christmas?' My voice was too bright.

It was his turn to look embarra.s.sed. 'Didn't you know? I was going to Martha's and Alan's, but Paul invited me to spend it with him and Peggy.'

'But they're coming to me.' A nasty thought struck me.

'Paul didn't think you'd mind.'

'It's impossible, Claud. It's impossible. Dad will be there, and Kim and her new lover, and the boys and Hana. Oh, s.h.i.+t, there'll be a TV crew there as well, filming us all. What do you want us all to do? Play happy families for the cameras?'

'It was you who said we could still be friends.'

I had said that. It was a stupid cliche, a fake consolation, and a lie, but I had said it.

'And I want to be with my sons at Christmas.'

I knew it was a terrible mistake. What was Kim going to say to me?

'All right.'

Twenty-One.

I was sitting down, the dry moss of the stone sc.r.a.ping the curved ridge of my spine. I knew that Cree's Top was behind me. The River Col was on my left, its surface slate grey, reflecting the cloud cover which had obscured the sun. It was suddenly cold in my sleeveless dress and I hugged myself with my p.r.i.c.kly, goosepimpled arms. The screwed-up pieces of paper were almost lost in the murky surface and, flowing away from me, they disappeared into the shades and reflections long before they were carried round the bend. The branches in the elms on my right rustled and swayed with a sudden breath of wind that threatened rain.

I stood and turned round until I was facing Cree's Top and looking along the path that wound up its slope. Sometimes bushes hid its progress until it disappeared into twilight. I walked determinedly up it. Each time I returned to this river and this hill which separated me from Natalie, the objects seemed more vividly present. The gra.s.s was a richer green, the river more detailed in all its ripples and flurries. On this occasion, the detail was not just more precise but somehow harder as well. The water looked heavier and more solid, the path was more rigid under my feet, even the leaves looked like blades that would cut the fingers that brushed against them.

This was a hostile, unyielding landscape that seemed reluctant to give up its secrets. I was nearing the brow of Cree's Top and I had a palpable sense that there was something bad on the other side. That was why the landscape had darkened. My body, my whole spirit, sagged in despair. Did I really want this? One moment of weakness was enough. I turned and ran down the hill, away from whatever was awaiting me. Were there not other places to go in this beloved landscape of my memory? I reached the foot of Cree's Top and ran along the Col. I knew instinctively that the path would wind away from the river and take me back towards the Stead and there I would find my family as they once were: Theo, tall and saturnine; Martha, dark-haired and beautiful, laughing and strong; my father, handsome and still hopeful for a life that could be fulfilling. There would be the remnants of that golden summer party.

But the path quickly became unrecognisable, as if I had wandered beyond the bounds of permitted territory. The woods thickened, the sky was closed away and I came to myself there on Alex's couch with tears running hot down my face, across my cheeks. I had to sit up and, with a sense of absurdity, wipe my neck and ears. Alex was standing over me with a look of concern. I explained to him what I had tried to do and he nodded his head reprovingly.

'Jane, you're not in Narnia or Oz or some theme park where you can wander off in whatever direction you like. This is your own memory you're exploring. You have to give yourself up to where it's leading you. Don't you feel that you're almost there?'

Alex Dermot-Brown was not the sort of person whom I would normally have considered to be my type. He was a scruffy man who lived in a scruffy house. His jeans were worn in the knees, his navy blue sweater was stained and dotted with fluff, it was obvious that the only styling his long curly hair received was when he frequently ran his fingers through it while in animated conversational flight. Yet I had become attracted to him, of course, because he was the person to whom I had opened up, the man whose approval I was seeking. I recognised all that. But now I realised with some excitement that he was as avid about my quest as I was, and as hopeful about its prospects. I felt a lurch deep in my belly at the same time. It reminded me of the early contractions I had had with Jerome, those little pre-shocks warning me that I was really going to have to give birth. Soon I was going to have to face up to something.