The Memory Game

academic who made her name with that book called Sitting Uncomfortably, that attack on C. S. Lewis and Roald Dahl and other children’s writers that got into the newspapers. She’s a carnivore.’

‘Are you going along?’

‘Of course. It’s like a bullfight, isn’t it? People say you should see at least one in your life. I don’t know whether Alan will be in his chivalrous gentleman mode or his shocking truth-teller mode, but both will be disastrous.’

‘Don’t worry, Jane, people will have a good time. It’ll be like a modern version of bear baiting, just the sort of thing Alan enjoys.’

‘It won’t be much fun for the daughter-in-law of the bear.’

Kim had met a man, I learnt over squid. His name was Andreas. He was six years younger than her and a musician. He was small and handsome and sentimental, and their first date had lasted for an entire weekend, broken off only when Kim had been called out of bed to make home visits. I’d always envied Kim’s sex life; the variety, the excitement, the sheer numbers. One of her more interesting qualities as a friend was her willingness to talk about what she actually did in bed with these men. I had always had so little with which to reciprocate. I ventured a feeble question about whether it might turn out to be serious and she waved me away as she always did.

‘Do you miss Claud?’ she asked over cheese.

What could I say? I knew that Kim wouldn’t hold my confusion against me.

‘I miss a bit of my life, but, then again, I wanted to be free of that old intimacy. Maybe I’m a bit scared by what I’ve done but I’m excited as well somehow.’ I paused to gather my thoughts. ‘I feel that something huge is going on in my life, but that I’m in the wrong place at the moment. I almost wish I could tag along with the police, be involved. I feel like I’ve got to do something to find out how Natalie died. I need to know what happened.’

‘But it must have been that old boyfriend, mustn’t it?’

‘You mean Luke?’

‘Yes, and the police have got him.’

‘They’re talking to him.’

‘There you are then. Luke got her pregnant, they had some row, he killed her, maybe by mistake. And buried her.’

‘In Alan’s and Martha’s garden. Right by the house.’

‘People don’t do logical things when they’ve killed somebody. Did I ever tell you about the patient of mine who killed his wife? He dismembered the body and sent the bits off to branches of Barclays Bank all over the world.’

‘That sounds quite clever.’

‘Except that he put his address on the customs declaration.’

‘Why?’

‘His psychiatrist said that he wanted to be caught.’

‘Is that story true?’

‘Of course it is. Anyway, I don’t see that the improbability lets Luke off the hook any more than anybody else. Somebody must have buried her there.’

‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘It makes everyone less likely.’

They always say that if you started public hangings again, they would attract hordes. The ICA was packed out. The audience was mostly young. Television cameras were being set up near the stage, and a large man wearing round wire-framed glasses like Bertolt Brecht’s was wandering around the stage with a clipboard. I squeezed along the row towards the two empty seats in the middle. Theo still hadn’t arrived. The man sitting in the seat next to mine was almost invisible in a large tweed overcoat. I stepped on his foot and tripped over a plastic bag on the floor.

‘Sorry,’ I said irritably, and he nodded briefly, before going back to his ceiling-gazing.

Theo arrived. In his black suit, carrying a briefcase, he looked formal and out of place. He kissed me on the cheek, and whispered:

‘I’ve just been with Alan. He’s drunk.’

‘Drunk?’ I squawked.

‘Arseholed.’

‘What do you mean, he’s drunk? He’s due on stage in about one minute.’

‘He can still talk,’ Theo said. ‘Ms Judd will have a hard time stopping him.’

I moaned. Why had I come?

A minute or two after eight, Lizzie Judd walked purposefully onto the stage, a severely beautiful woman in a slim grey suit. Her blonde hair was swept back from her face, she wore no jewellery or make-up, and she wasn’t carrying any notes. She sat down in one of the two chairs, and poured herself a glass of water. Then Alan bounded onto the stage, as if he were making an entrance on a chat show.

‘What is he wearing, Theo?’ I whispered.

I knew the answer. A velvet smoking jacket he sometimes wore in the evening at home. On his grizzled head was a black fedora. He reminded me of a Toulouse-Lautrec poster I had had on the wall of one of my student bedsits. I felt a rush of emotion for this undignified, truculent old man. Not many people clapped, though the man beside me was one of them. Alan sat heavily on the empty chair next to Lizzie Judd. He had a large tumbler in his hand three-quarters full of something whisky-coloured. He sipped from it and his eyes swept the hall.

Lizzie Judd expressed her (‘and I’m sure the audience’s’) sympathy over the discovery of Natalie’s body. She gave a brisk account of The Town Drain (‘anti-romantic… tradition of comic realism… lower-middle class… essentially male’). She referred to the, much less well-known, successors in a sentence, and concluded that the long publishing silence was doubtless something we would get on to later.

‘Mr Martello,’ Lizzie Judd began.

‘Call me Alan,’ Alan interrupted.

‘All right, Alan. John Updike has said that mere is no need to write funny novels. What would you say to that?’

‘Who’s John Updike?’ Alan said.

Lizzie Judd looked a little startled.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Is he American?’

‘Yes, he is.’

‘Well then.’

‘Is that your answer?’

Alan was lying back in his chair when she said this (I noticed that his socks were different colours). He sat up slowly, sipped some whisky, and leant towards his interrogator.

‘Look, Lizzie, I wrote a fucking good novel. A fucking good novel. Have you got a copy of it here? No?’ He turned to the audience. ‘Has anybody got one?’ There was no response. ‘All of you, open your copies of The Town Drain at the copyright page and you’ll see that it has been reprinted year after year after year. It seems to make people laugh. Why should I care what some pofaced American says?’

Lizzie Judd was icily calm.

‘Perhaps we should move on,’ she said. ‘Your novels have recently received some feminist criticisms.’

Alan snorted.

‘I’m sorry?’ she asked.

‘No, it’s all right, go on.’

‘It has been said that women feature in your work either as shrews or as big-breasted objects of the sexual attention of your heroes. Even some of your admirers have said that, forty-five years on, the sexism of your novels remains a problem.’

Alan took a large gulp of whisky, which prevented him from speaking for a surprisingly long time.

‘Why should that be a problem?’ he asked after his final swallow. ‘I’m glad that they still seem sexy. Is there anything wrong with finding large-breasted women sexy? Jolly good thing.’