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
‘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
‘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.
