The Memory Game

‘You should have thrown a bucket of water over her,’ said Paul. ‘She would have probably dissolved away into nothingness. Well done you, anyway.’

‘But why were you so resistant?’

There was a complete silence around the table. It was Gus, the hitherto silent teacher.

‘What?’ I said.

‘You didn’t give it a chance,’ he said. ‘Your young therapist had a point. If one of my pupils starts to ask me about why we need to learn about history I just tell him to shut up. The very fact of him being so young and not knowing history means he wouldn’t understand anything I told him. He can only answer the question by learning history.’

‘Well fuck you too,’ I said.

There was an awful silence but then Gus grinned and started to laugh which made it seem as if I had been witty rather than hysterically rude and a fairly good-natured argument about therapy ensued, with Erica and Gus guardedly in favour and Paul claiming that ‘they’ had proved that people who didn’t go into therapy recovered more quickly from their neurotic symptoms than people who did. Crispin and his girlfriend were across the table whispering between themselves about something. I began to reach for people’s bowls but Paul, who was sitting on my left, motioned to me to stay seated and spoke to me in an undertone.

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m all right,’ I said guardedly. ‘Have you seen Claud?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I played squash with him this morning.’

‘And?’

‘He beat me three-one.’

‘I don’t mean that.’

‘What do you want me to say? It’s hard for him.’ He thought for a moment and then visibly took the plunge. ‘Jane, my darling, I shall say this just once. Or rather two or three things and I don’t want you to say anything in reply. First, you’re my sister and I love you and I will always trust anything you do. Claud is my best friend. Always has been, always will be. So it’s a little complicated from my point of view but it’s a minor problem. Second, I’m not going to say that Claud is a broken man, but the fact is that he’s bemused, frankly, about what’s happened to his life. He is genuinely baffled about why you suddenly broke up this dream marriage after twenty-one years.’ Paul held up his hand to silence me. ‘Please don’t say anything. I’m not accusing you or criticising you in any way. I’m not saying it or thinking it. You never need to justify yourself to me. Third…’ Now he paused and took my hand. I thought he might be about to cry, but when he spoke his voice was quite calm. ‘The family – our two families, Natalie, and those summers – have meant so much to me that I can hardly put it into words. What was that poem, the one that Dennis Potter used for that film when the grown-ups all played children, Blue Remembered Hills? How does it go? Hang on.’

Paul got up from the table and clattered down the stairs so that the floor actually trembled beneath us. I sat at a bit of a loose end, isolated from the discussion going on around me. Gus was getting up to go. I felt a bit abject. We weren’t going to be leaving together. We weren’t even going to be exchanging phone numbers. He leant across the table and offered his hand:

‘It was very nice to meet you, Jane,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry I said “fuck off” to you. I don’t normally say things like that at dinner parties.’

‘That makes it even worse,’ he said, but rather cheerfully. He was probably quite nice. Paul returned up the stairs, nodded at Gus who was going down, and spent too long rummaging through a book.

‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘“That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again.” That’s what I feel.’

‘But you can come there again. You go there almost every summer. We’ve just been there.’

‘Yes, but I mean childhood and things like that. That’s what going back reminds you of. And finding Natalie, of course.’

He held my hand and I said nothing. It was Paul who broke the silence. ‘Oh, and there was something else I wanted to say.’ Suddenly he looked shifty. The nonchalance seemed studied. ‘That weekend, it made a huge impression on me. It seemed like one of those moments that changes your life. I thought I might make a film about the family.’

‘Paul, are you serious?’

‘Yes, I am. I started thinking about it when Alan made his speech. It’s the right thing to do now. I feel that I’ve got to confront this.’

‘You might have to – but do we have to confront it as well?’

‘No, it’ll be all right. It’ll be a good film as well. I want to get behind the camera again, get back to making documentaries. It feels right.’

‘Tired of making money, are you?’ I asked teasingly. Paul never found this subject amusing.

‘Look, Surplus Value runs itself now. Ask Crispin over there. It’s a foolproof formula. It just needs a prod every now and then. I need a challenge.’ He refilled his glass. He had drunk too much this evening. He began to speak in a low voice that was almost a whisper. ‘Finding Natalie is what did it. She meant so much to me. She still does. For me she represents a lost innocence, everything that slips through your fingers as you grow up, all the things you felt you ought to be and didn’t live up to.’

‘That’s a lot to represent,’ I said warily.

The last thing I wanted was an argument about who Natalie meant most to, but Paul just looked solemnly down into his glass. People started to move around the table and Crispin’s girlfriend, Claire, sat down on my right. She grinned at me. She had a bob of dark hair, half-way between Louise Brooks and a Beatle, and a round face like a teddy bear, made rounder by her granny glasses.

‘When’s it due?’ I asked.

‘God, is it that obvious?’

‘No, not really. I didn’t dare say anything at first. One of the worst experiences of my life involved congratulating a woman on being pregnant and it turned out that she was just fat. But if the woman who looks a bit pregnant is also wearing loose-fitting dungarees and she doesn’t drink or smoke anything for the entire evening, or touch the cheese, then I can take the risk of congratulating her.’

‘Bloody hell, I didn’t know I’d spent an evening sitting across the table from Sherlock Holmes. What else do you know about me?’

‘Nothing. Except that you look very well.’

‘I’m afraid you get a point deducted for that. I’ve been throwing up every day. I thought it was meant to stop after the first trimester.’

‘There’s no guarantee,’ I grinned. ‘A friend of mine was suffering from morning sickness while she was in labour.’

‘Thanks,’ said Claire. ‘That makes me feel really sick.’ She edged a little closer. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about this awful thing with your sister-in-law and everything else that’s been happening with you. It must be terrible.’

‘It’s all right, but thank you.’

‘And you were being very funny about that woman you saw but I thought she sounded horrid.’

‘I don’t know about that, but she isn’t what I need just at the moment. I think you would need to be in perfect psychological health to cope with Dr Prescott.’

‘You seem quite robust to me, Jane. You just need someone to talk to about it all. Look, you don’t really know me, and please just ignore this if it’s an irritation, but we do know this therapist who is the most lovely man. He might be just the sort of person you need.’

I must have looked doubtful because Claire became alarmed.

‘Alex isn’t a guru, or anything out on the fringe, Jane. He won’t be doing things with crystals. He’s a proper doctor, he’s got letters after his name and all that. The main thing is that he’s just great, a really nice guy. Let me give you his number. Which I haven’t got of course. Crisp, love, have you got Alex Dermot-Brown’s number?’

Crispin was deep in conversation with Paul about some technical matter and only heard the question when it was repeated.

‘What for?’