Authors: Jonathan Gash
With flashlight and walking stick, Bray walked Buster to the fields. On summer evenings, Davey liked to people the trees with imaginary cloaked figures. Now alone in the autumn gloaming, Bray trudged the course, mentally speaking the names of Davey’s imaginary footpads. He caught himself saying them aloud and thought, watch it, people will think you’re barmy. He returned, washed up, and went to his shed.
The evenings were drawing in, the day’s air moist after drizzle. People here in the coastal villages believed bad weather circled round Wormingwood, but Bray had his doubts about that, as had Emma.
Emma had left when Geoff was eighteen, lecturing Bray on his shortcomings, his ineffable dullness, all one morning. He “bought her out”, the solicitor’s phrase. Thank God she quickly married again, some building contractor. She had attended Geoffrey’s wedding, making the gathering surreal in an orange dress that drained all colour from the church flowers. Emma wasn’t bad. Bray’s sad conviction was that many wives secretly despised husbands, thinking, What loon contracts to provide for a
woman lifelong, for possibly nil return? That farewell morning made him believe that scorn was inevitably part of Emma’s marital contract.
He sat in the shed, not switching the light on, not even lighting the candle Davey loved. Buster sprawled on the doormat, Geoffrey following to perch on the workbench.
“Dad?”
“’Lo, son.”
Bray took Geoffrey in with a glance. Even that felt fraudulent. Every Friday, Bray had made a thing of having his weekly egg, with chips, doing a daft over-the-top performance for Davey’s entertainment, rolling his eyes at every mouthful.
Tonight, Bray could tell that Geoffrey’s meeting at his Fair Isle Investment Banking Trust Accounts Division had been grim. One thing on top of another.
“Still nothing, Dad.”
His son was showing signs of utter defeat. Bray knew only that he himself had to be on constant guard. Unceasing vigilance. Signs of returning normality had to be watched. A single spark of normality might make the image of little Davey fade, very like sunlight faded inky scrawls on a windowsill. This was how time, that thief, stole grief. It was how time healed, as the proverb said. Well, Bray wouldn’t let time get away with it, the bastard.
Tomorrow, he would go for it, risks and all.
“I saw the policewoman, the coordinator in Sidhall.” Geoffrey gave Bray a second or two. “She’s talked with the people in Orlando. They’ve got three special units…”
And so on.
Bray’s stool stood among piles of shavings. He hadn’t swept them up, from when he’d worked of an evening before Geoffrey and Shirley took Davey on their first
American holiday. Sweeping up, challenging Grampa to do better when Bray made jokey grumbles, was Davey’s job. Would the shavings ever be swept?
At one point in his sombre monologue Geoffrey switched the shed light on in sudden exasperation. Bray knew he was being a pest, a problem his heartbroken son could do without, but pain was faith. A grampa had to keep it.
He would never let it be diluted. Pain was a stimulus, as fleas on a hedgehog stirred it from its winter hibernation.
Bray felt close to madness, sitting under the shed’s one bulb quite as if he were a suspect being interrogated while his sorrowing son pedantically went over the useless prattle of some baffled policewoman.
“What, Dad?” Geoffrey asked.
He must have spoken aloud. Bray saw his son’s expression change to alarm, thinking his father might be losing his mind.
Bray tried to find something quickly, and failed.
“Look. Shirley says you should come in tonight. There’s no heater here.”
“Right, son.”
“You spend too long in your shed.” Geoffrey hesitated, trying to gather frayed ends of normal life. “Want a cup of tea?”
“No, ta, son. I’ll step in presently.”
It must be doubly hard for Geoffrey, with the horror, with Shirley to worry about, his own job. And now his father muttering in a dark shed. Bray guessed Shirley was laying down some return-to-sanity rules.
Instinct did it, made women the more practical, far less likely to go doolally. They were emotionally stronger, able to face loss with resolution. Bray sat listening to his brave
son, nodding, ignoring every syllable.
“We mustn’t let each other become withdrawn, Dad. We have to keep our hopes up. The liaison officer has a number of additional leads…”
Tomorrow, though.
“Tomorrow what, Dad?” Geoff said.
“You see the liaison lady tomorrow?” Bray invented quickly. He must have spoken his thoughts.
“I went today.”
Geoffrey nodded, sagacity the watchword. Just hold on, the sum would work itself out with X equalling the correct integer and all. Fond expectancy was Geoffrey all over. Even as a little boy playing football at school, three-nil down and minutes to go, Geoff’s features would light up at the chance of a goal when everybody else was despondent and exchanging oh-well-next-time glances.
Emma had transmitted that particular gene of hopeful expectation to Geoff. It had done him proud, got him a grand career in the Fair Isle Banking tower block at Moorgate.
“Is work all right, Dad?”
“Work?” Bray’s attention was caught, fear plucking. “Gilson Mather?”
They usually weren’t so frank, him and Geoff. Talking like a soap opera, since it happened. “You went in today. Was it okay?”
“Course. I just work, son.”
Had Mr Winsarls phoned Geoffrey secretly? Bray could imagine Mr Winsarls saying
Your father’s increasing withdrawal
… The owner would be full of correctives:
No, hasn’t said a thing about, sorry, y’know… Mr Charleston’s never really been an outgoing sort of chap…talks to the drivers now and again but that’s it.
Soap operas used so many banal expressions:
We’ve got to talk
. And
What’s going on?
quite as if speech held some remedy. Babble inanities, and everything would be solved. Life wasn’t like that. Life was more like wood, in a way, the wood he and little Davey loved. And carved, preserving its life in some new and vital form.
“Shirley’s counsellor will give you an appointment if you like, Dad.”
Poor Geoffrey, trying to do the right thing. Bray almost felt tears. He scuffed his shoes in the shavings, stop that right now. He had things to do.
“No, ta, son. Maybe I’ll go up town tomorrow.” And heard himself say, “I wish I was some help. Tell me if there’s anything.”
Geoffrey paused. “Dad. You’re not working on your wall, are you?”
“My wall?” Bray was startled. He’d reflexively sat himself down facing the shed’s end wall, the closed off wall, the shuttered wall where Davey’s game was hidden, words and all.
“I might, in time.”
A moment’s awkwardness, then Geoffrey went back across the grass to his house. Buster did not follow. Yellow glim cut a wedge into the dusk, then dowsed as the kitchen door closed. Bray looked at the workbench. Much smaller of course than his own splendidly worn bench at Gilson Mather.
Nearby was Davey’s low stool, more elaborately wrought than his own three-legger. On the wall, low down to be within Davey’s reach, hung a hinged double shutter that concealed his and Davey’s secret world beyond.
Tomorrow needed planning. He’d never done anything like this before. Who, dear God, ever had?
Only after tomorrow would he turn the screw peg – its sides precisely filed, sanded and finished to avoid cutting the skin of Davey’s hand – and open the three-ply wood panel.
Madness to simply look now, though he knew everything concealed there. Self-indulgence was the most destructive element in grief. Ever since the news came, Bray had sat here of an evening looking at the closed panel on the narrow shed wall.
He didn’t know how long he’d stayed there immobile under the shed’s single naked light. When he came to, his clock – wind-up, radii on an Art Deco face – showed going on for nine. Only eleven hours and thirty minutes to his interview. After that, he’d know. Maybe.
“Come on, Buzz lad.”
Buster yawned extravagantly. Bray switched the shed light off and locked up.
The Containment and Rehabilitation Facility was like any other prison. They all stank of that thick male odour and boiled broccoli.
“I really want to waste my time in this heat?” Sam groused morosely when Jim Stazio said he wanted to go down to Allovan Pen and see the kid broker. “You wouldn’t be going less’n you’re retired.”
“Not
retired
yet, you bastard. Retir
ing
.”
“The city’s finest might be doing you big favours.”
“Meaning what?”
“Leave soon, multo pension rights. Coupla years, it’ll pay less.”
“I might see Menzoy.”
“Menzoy knew nothing last time.”
“Kid broker who worked the whole state? It’s worth a try.”
Menzoy was a child abductor. His trial had been a
four-year
saga in which appeals, technical duck-outs and evidence battles all but sprung the kid broker. He’d eventually been pinned on a technicality beyond Stazio’s comprehension. Menzoy had completed almost two years.
Jim left, behind again with his paperwork. Clear desks meant promotion, which was why he’d stayed at grunt level, always thirty phone calls late from yesterday and files stacked on a chair.
Clothes sticking in the heat – AC fails when you need it – he drove north-east to the prison at Allovan. One hour, he flopped down opposite Menzoy the kid broker.
“The grille’s reinforced, Aldo. What you been doing?”
“New glass and mesh, Officer Stazio.”
Menzoy was thin, edgy, and kept one fingernail for flicking like he was trying to shake off something stuck to his thumb. His other nails were bitten down to the quick. He had a black eye, a high neck bandage and looked a mess.
The prisoner shrugged. “Bad day is all. They knife us in the showers. I take my washbag, a book in there.”
Jim nodded. Kid pervs were on borrowed time, anybody could take them with a sharpened spoon, nobody sees anything. They rarely lasted their sentence. Menzoy was on a sixteen-twenty, give or take. Jim Stazio had been in on the arrest.
“Cut to it.” He harrumphed, edged forward. He hated talking into the mike beside the grille, for Correction Authority records. “A lost kid.”
Menzoy showed his palms in astonishment. “You asking me?”
“Pattern, Aldo, I want pattern. Kid in a theme park, recent. Names, addresses, what you can.”
“Look, Officer Stazio. Is there a deal?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Aldo. I’m hungry. I’m tired. I’m sticking to this chair. I’m out of time, want to clear one thing up, you foller?”
“Anything in it for me?”
A warder tramped to the concession grille where an old woman was waiting to put a package through. Menzoy quivered, nervously smoothed his lank hair. His fingers pressed the grille ledge as if testing putty.
“Yeh.” Jim Stazio had readied lies on the drive down. “Somebody I know.”
Menzoy said eagerly, “There’s tell of a new lawyer in the Appeals Office, related to some cop.”
State pens were stiff with hopeful rumours, all worth a fart in a storm.
“Is there, now,” Jim said flatly, giving him the blank stare. Sam Tietze had advised against this tactic, saying go for the straight threat, but who had months and months?
“Is it you?” Menzoy breathed, nodding desperate encouragement, praying he might gain a yard.
“I wouldn’t drive ten fucking hours to this shit-store less’n I had something.”
“It’s you, yeah?” Menzoy’s eyes lit with hope. “You got pull in the Squawk Office?”
“All I’m saying is give me, you might get. No promises.”
“Off the record, right?”
Jim Stazio sighed. Who the fuck said
Off the record
in street talk? Journalists in movies, that’s who.
“Off the record, Aldo,” he intoned, grave as a hanging judge.
He listened Menzoy out, asking one or two short questions when the kid broker finished.
“Not promising anything,” he said finally, heaving
himself to his feet, sweat thickening his clothes. “You might hear something in a month, maybe not.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. I might be back.”
Stazio left, walking with his arms away from his body to get air under his armpits showing cameras he carried nothing away. Once he’d retired, he’d have to learn normal.
The few times Bray travelled at weekends, he was surprised. Plenty of room, the tea trolleys able to move, families on holiday. He chose a seat beyond earshot of children.
He was surprised the manuscript woman was on the train. He thought, She goes in on Saturdays? He avoided her. No time to talk.
Lottie Vinson read the page a second time, realising she wasn’t concentrating. He was the man in the
County Gazette
, caught in grainy light like an anguished animal what, getting on for three weeks ago, was it now? His little grandson had been kidnapped in America, and never been found. A joiner for a Long Acre firm. That was her word for him, anguished. She could feel his pain across the compartment’s centre aisle.
She sighed and returned to the typescript. It was dross of course. The publishing firm’s young whirl-girls, all Cambridge MAs and brimful of detestation for a part-time middle-aged divorcee, had airily passed it to her with, “Make something of that, Lottie, okay?” She wondered why the anguished man was going to work on a Saturday.
Now that today had finally come he felt shaky. He needed to preserve the pose, make sure his questions came out right.
Shirley and Geoffrey had approved of the journey, but that was only Bray’s deception. Dr Feering had arranged the psychiatric consultation. Shirley had begun to worry about Bray’s withdrawal. She was a good caring woman. It was exactly as Bray planned, though what if the psychiatrist decided you were off your head and certifiable? Bray’s grandmother had been a great one for Grasping The Nettle. This was simply Bray’s first nettle.
He blanked thought out, as the train bucketed through Maryland, then he was between Platform Nine’s
cream-coloured
pillars. Others might chatter and lug their holiday bags looking for friends. Bray went alone among strangers, to have his head tested.
“You are for Dr Newton’s clinic?”
“Charleston. Bray John Charleston.”
Bray wondered about the lady’s nasal syllables. Was it thought “professional”? Tracy and Karen spoke that way when buyers asked about Gilson Mather’s cabinets or priceless antiques to be restored.
And was the pretty receptionist eyeing him with dread, here’s another lunatic for Dr Newton? Perhaps cameras were secretly concealed in the
Cyclamen repandum
depicted on the pots along the window sills, wrong shade of red.
Bray took the end seat. How come that they already had a folder named for me, when I’ve never been to a psychiatrist in my life? Nor many doctors. Inguinal hernia fourteen years ago, nothing since except first-time specs for eyes tired of a night.
There was one other patient. She sat brooding, making handwashing movements, wore leather gloves and was smartly dressed. What, thirty? Nervously he read a motorbike magazine.
He was called after fifteen minutes. By then he’d almost decided to leave, say this wasn’t for him. His heart was banging as he entered the consultation room.
“Mr Charleston? Do sit down. I’m Dr Newton.”
Bray might have been surprised by her affability but matters were too serious.
“Dr Feering explained the circumstances. I gather you want advice concerning…?”
He had it ready. “Memory.”
She gazed back. Say forty, and calm. Well, knowing everything about the human mind would make you pretty tranquil.
“I think you’ve read my book, Mr Charleston.”
“I tried.” Frankness was his tactic. He wasn’t here to bugger about. “All those brain cells. I skipped the arrow diagrams.”
Odd, women and earrings. He’d read somewhere that females of every culture wore earrings. Dr Newton’s were blue lapis lazuli studs.
Diffidence was part of his planned gambit: I’m nothing like as brainy as you, Dr Newton.
“Do you mind if I record this, Mr Charleston?”
She was reaching across her desk to a button bank when he replied, “I would rather you didn’t, please.”
She sat back. He wondered why she didn’t have a white coat on. To suggest everything was okay, be at ease with your psychiatrist, your pal, something like that?
“Suppose a six-year-old child was abducted,” he said evenly. He’d rehearsed it in his shed, Buster listening, head
between paws, ears cocked. “Would he remember his home?”
“Yes. Features would persist for a considerable duration.”
Duration? He grabbed at the word; it was finite, would end sooner or later.
“What things?”
The doctor paused. Bray noticed prints on the wall, some river estuary. He thought them quite good. Her inspiration?
“Childhood memory can be a form of deception, Mr Charleston. You might think you recall events from your infancy, when in fact they might never have happened. Memory can sometimes be a catalogue of imaginings. Some memories endure with remarkable tenacity.”
“What decides it?”
“As many factors as events. A child’s existence is in a sense an accumulation. Data comes in. The child’s mind learns to classify things as worthwhile, or rubbish for discarding. If you read —”
“Yes, thank you.” Bray caught himself. “All those tables in your book. Can you really count memories up?”
“Which tables in particular?”
She became guarded. His manner was too abrasive, perhaps showing he’d prepared for this malarky.
“The ones proving when students could really remember, and when they only said they could.”
“Phoney tales from the cot?” she said, unexpectedly giving him a smile. “Yes, you can be certain – if there’s a way of checking veracity.”
“The memory itself?” It seemed weird, said outright like that.
Which turned her attention from concepts. He
suddenly saw the intensity of her concentration. He’d come to the right person.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and he meant it. “I got myself ready for this. I suppose I’m scared.”
She regarded him with candour. “Mr Charleston, I shall help any way I can. You don’t need a psychiatrist. Unless I’m wrong, you’re going to do whatever you’ve already decided.”
“Probably.” He waited for her to be angry at having nearly been tricked.
Dr Newton seemed to scan some inscape and came to a decision. She leant forward.
“Very well. Where we left off: Memory itself, as opposed to memories themselves. They are classified often quite stupidly. You’re concerned with what actually can be retained?”
“Yes.”
“Memory loves the extraordinary.” Dr Newton kept her gaze on him. “It’s psychiatrists’ catchphrase. Memory eschews the dull.”
“Please. I want it to have some bearing.”
“Let’s omit all those memory-is-a-computer analogies. Memory comes down to two sorts of events. Routine things go into what I call a mind pouch, for quick use-
and-discard
function. Examples? Well, you look up some bus route. A woman sees a particular blouse she likes, remembers the price and which shop it was in. That quick I’ll-use-it-once memory is for ordinary events. The mind retains it just long enough then discards it.”
“Disposable?” He
hated
disposable. He wanted permanent memory.
“That’s it. After all, you don’t need to keep mentally recycling casual phone numbers. Railway timetables. So
it’s use-and-ditch.”
“Unimportant routine events get erased.”
“Simple, isn’t it?” She was trying to encourage but it came out as failed humour, making her grimace with embarrassment. “Sorry, Mr Charleston. The other’s enduring memory. I call it the docked or housed memory.”
“The cortex section in your book?”
She was sombre now, and donned spectacles. Bray thought, so they too rely on gestures, like us mortals.
“Well done. Persistent memory is what might help you. There are ten milliard cells in the cerebral cortex. A notable stimulus sets this kind of memory into action. It need not be sudden – a plane crash, or an explosion. It may be a joke, a mere childhood event.”
Good, good. Getting somewhere. “Notable?”
“Notable to the adult or child receiving that stimulus. It has a special effect, indeed an
affect
. The stimulus enters our cortical cells, and nerve cells there are sort of set alight. A blob of cells changes its function as the memory is retained. If the blob establishes links with other activated blobs, the memory is reinforced and retained.”
“The more valencies, the more chance a child will remember?”
She smiled at his use of the term.
“Literature does it. Art does it. Love does it. Sights and sounds of home do it. So we humans have a particular vocabulary. We say a particular occurrence
evokes
, or
suggests
some memory. The greater the stimulus intensity to a child, the more likely a memory persists. We adults may not even notice, but to a child some seemingly insignificant event might be dazzlingly memorable for life.”
“What does it?”
“Do tell me if I go on too long. The hippocampus, a double-shaped part in the middle of the brain, gets the activation signal from the cortical cells. It ‘decides’. If the stimulus isn’t important, into the emptyable pouch it goes, and stays just long enough for you to find your comedy TV channel, or whatever, then is ditched for good. But the
important
events get handled differently. The hippocampus docks them, and these candidates for permanence get retained. A search instantly begins for linkages with other retainable memory-candidates. It’s as if our memories nudge each other, saying ‘Good heavens! I encountered that attractive person last year in this very town!’ A memory becomes more permanent when it is re-nudged into activity. You want the mechanism?”
He was lost, but said, “Yes, please.”
“We think a chemical called N-methyl D-aspartate’s got a lot to do with it.” She interwove her fingers. “Dendrites ramify from neurones, and have NMDA there. If this all coincides with some electrical prompt from its cell, then the message gets across. Calcium dithers about, encouraging the memory to endure – and reinforcement occurs. Calcium in fact might be the necessary nudge. Exercise stimulates some vital molecules. We know of one – it may actually be many types – we call brain derived nerve growth factor; BDNGF in our deplorable medical acronym. It is vital for neurone protection, and in memory’s longevity.”
He tried to speak. She waited. Five goes later, it came out.
“Can a permanent memory get lost?”
“I’m afraid so, Mr Charleston. The absence of reminder nudges results in loss. The memory fades. Re-nudges, if they happen to occur, keep the memory alive.” She
shrugged. “These are linked to related memories. Similar events, similar subjects. Kin-based memories link up and keep themselves going.”
Bray said quietly, “What eliminates housed memory?”
She sighed. “Sorry to say, a person over fifty, give or take, regularly loses one per cent of the brain cells. You can slow the memory loss, though. After all, we humans are trainable. What we call ‘experience’ is merely the art of being really cunning in cortical cell management. Illnesses, especially circulation or malnutrition, deplete memory. So older folk must exercise. Our journals are full of
nerve-growth
factors and brain-derived molecular structures. All they mean is eat the right foods and stay active.”
“Can doctors take memories away?”
This made her uncomfortable. “You’re thinking of a child? Yes. Some drug regimes abort memories. With behavioural psychotherapy it can be done fairly quickly.”
“How fast?”
“Within months. A child grows. And loss of some memories is important for our sanity. I mean sometimes.” She spoke with quiet sorrow. “Just think, Mr Charleston, of all those news items, phone codes, car registration numbers you and I have seen over the years. How intolerable life would be, to keep them all rushing around in our brains! The sane mind keeps itself stable by simply deleting mental junk mail. It does this automatically, to help us cope with each new day.”
Bray thought in silence, and came to with the clock having moved on. He gestured apology.
“Do some events help?”
She knew what he was asking. “A child’s memories can be reinforced later, but only sometimes. They can be ablated by drugs, by psychotherapies.”
“Memory can be tricked?”
“Of course.” She seemed surprised he had to even ask. “Deceptions are as common as stage tricks on music halls. We all suppress memory. For instance, we hate to recall that terrible time when we got told off at school, or missed some prize on which we’d set our heart. Forgetting helps us to carry on.
“It’s a benevolence. Maybe we chose the wrong person to sleep with, went for the wrong job. We can rebel, or pretend we made the right choice. We can suppress truth.
“It need not be a cataclysmic event, either. Like, a woman may simply select a terrible dress for a party and all her life remember how embarrassed she was. Or she can say to hell with it and laugh it off.”
“Could she accept that it’s been a good thing, when it was bad?”
“Certainly.”
Dr Newton subjected him to a steady scrutiny. It unnerved him. He’d drilled himself, and now he was forced to speak first.
“I’m frightened that my grandson will be made to forget. I’m assuming,” he said, uttering the lie quite well, “that he’ll remember home when he’s found. You see?”
“Yes.” She didn’t fiddle with objects on her desk like a movie psychiatrist. “Do you mean how long do you have, Mr Charleston?”
He reddened, caught out. “Yes.”
“That age, a child’s memories can be changed in six months. One-fifth might linger a little longer.”
So twenty per cent of Davey’s memories might still be there after half a year? So many
ifs
, squared, cubed.
“There’s some intermediate stage?”
She smiled, a bit wintry. “You’re giving me my own
book’s terminology! Yes, but it has different segments. So memories —”
“Are patchy?”
“Well spotted.” She let him think a moment. “Some memories have remarkable persistence. Others in a child could well fade under a new regime.”
“Deliberately taught, you mean,” Bray said dully.
“Of course. Transference is a feature in all of us. We change lovers. We switch adherence from one employer to another. An allegiance alters as quickly as a woman changes her name on marriage, and sometimes for the same reasons. Transference can be a survival factor to a child. Belonging to a new team, say.”