The Memory Game

Twenty

‘He what?’

‘He wants to come for Christmas dinner with a television crew.’

‘But that’s ridiculous. For a start, what television crew would agree to work on Christmas Day?’

‘I think his would. It’ll be like the Queen’s message to the Commonwealth.’

‘Jane, you haven’t agreed?’ Kim never squeaked; now she was squeaking.

‘Well, it was so difficult. I mean, this clearly means so much to Paul, and he’s already done so much work on it, and I suppose I feel that if I’ve gone this far down the road with it, I might as well go all the way.’

‘Are you seriously suggesting that Paul and Erica should arrive on Christmas Day, plus Rosie, of course, with cameras rolling, and film you cooking turkey? Christ, Jane, your father’s going to be there. And Robert and Jerome. And I’m going to be there with Andreas.’

‘They’re not going to be there all day. They’ll just get an impression of a bit of the family at Christmas. They’ll go away long before we eat.’

There was a gurgle from the other end of the phone, and I realised with relief and something approaching delight that Kim was giggling.

‘Will you help me, Kim? Get through it, I mean?’

‘Never mind that, what shall I wear? I’ve never been on telly before. Is it stripes or hoops that are verboten?’

‘Here you are. One dry sherry, one mince pie.’

The sherry was pale yellow, the mince pie hot and spicy. I sat carefully on the sofa that looked as if it had just arrived, cushions plumped up, from the department store. I felt like a stranger, a polite guest.

‘It’s very nice here.’

The room was immaculate, like a space that was about to be photographed for a colour supplement. On the ivory walls hung six small prints. A square rug lay exactly in the middle of the wooden floor. On either side of the new sofa sat two new armchairs. A book about Norman churches and the Guardian, folded, lay on the small table. A cactus flowered prettily on top of the old piano, newly polished. In the corner, on a clever elevated stand, was a small Christmas tree with white lights. From where I sat, delicately holding my sherry and mince pie, I could see a kitchen that was so immaculate that I wondered if Claud had ever cooked himself a meal in it.

‘Yes, I’m pleased with it. I did it just as I wanted.’

We smiled nervously at each other across the ordered space. I thought of the clutter in my kitchen: great bowls of squashy winter tangerines, piles of bills and unanswered letters, lists I’d made out to myself and then never looked at again, broken plates I’d been meaning to mend for days, Christmas cards I was going to hang on string along the eaves but hadn’t yet got round to, a regretted but not discarded bunch of mistletoe tucked among the cups on the dresser, daffodils thrust into vases and dotted around the room in untidy bursts of yellow, bits of architectural drawings I’d started then abandoned, photographs I had not got round to putting in the album, dozens of books, several recipes cut out from magazines and not filed, a half-finished bottle of wine. And, of course, a moulting spruce whose decorations, courtesy of the boys, looked as if they’d been thrown on in drunken handfuls. Indeed, they had been thrown on in drunken handfuls: Jerome and Robert had been horrified by the coordinated aestheticism I’d achieved this year. Christmas trees, they said, should be gaudy and brash. They’d dug out the great pink and turquoise globes and glittery stars, all the baubles we’d accumulated over the years, and hurled them at the tree.

I brightly suggested we have some music.

‘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.’

‘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?’

‘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 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 analyst 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 glass, 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 rushing 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 nobody, 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 passed 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, embarrassed.

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

It was his turn to look embarrassed. ‘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, shit, 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 cliché, 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.’