The Memory Trap

by Andrea Goldsmith

  The months passed and the boys maintained their assault on George, although in retrospect Sean realised the sting had gone from Ramsay’s attacks. One Saturday afternoon Sean overheard George talking about Ramsay on the phone, describing him as extraordinary. Of course Ramsay was extraordinary. Rams had played on all the major concert platforms in the country and later that year he was going overseas to play for music’s most important people. Of course he was extraordinary. But that was beside the point. George had no right to talk about Ramsay. Ramsay wasn’t his son.

  It was the night following the phone call when Sean first realised that he and Ramsay were out of kilter. Sean had hopped into Ramsay’s bed and was scratching his back in the way Ramsay liked. He told him about George’s phone call.

  ‘He was talking about you to some stranger, Rams. Acting like he was your dad.’

  There was a long pause during which Sean assumed Ramsay was devising a new horror to inflict on George; it might even be time for the arsenic. So it came as a shock to hear Ramsay say that perhaps they should lighten up.

  ‘I don’t think George is as bad as we thought.’

  ‘Of course he is.’ Sean’s hands left their stroking and clenched into fists. ‘He’s taken over our mother and he wants to take us over too. Or at least he wants to take you over. I’ve seen him watching you, Rams.’

  Ramsay twisted around. ‘Forget him, Sean. We’ve got better things to do.’ And when Sean didn’t move he said again, ‘Forget him.’

  Sean went along with their usual fooling, but he was worried: Ramsay was losing his perspective and George was winning him over. In the end Ramsay kicked him out of bed. ‘You’re hopeless tonight,’ he said.

  ‘And you’ve lost your mind if you think that George is okay.’

  ‘Grow up, little brother.’

  That night Sean lay awake for hours. He might be younger than Ramsay, but it was only by fourteen months, and while Ramsay would always be best when it came to music, with his own violin going so well he was no musical slouch. And as good as Ramsay was at maths, Sean was better. Ramsay told him to grow up when it came to George, but Sean had no sense of lagging behind. It was Ramsay who had changed; Ramsay for some inexplicable reason was being sucked in by George in the same way their mother had been.

  From that night on Sean took every opportunity to help his brother see who George really was, not a single fault escaped comment. But increasingly Ramsay failed to respond. As the months passed Sean was forced to watch his brother and George become friends. It was George now who sat in the music room while Ramsay practised.

  ‘And Ramsay lets him,’ Sean said to Nina. ‘He’s letting the bastard stay in there. He’s actually performing for him, showing off.’

  How many times can you beg someone to notice you, to love you like they once did? Sean tried but Ramsay would hear no ill spoken of George. Sean soon came to realise it was either him or George, but if Ramsay refused to hear criticism of George, how then to put forward his own case? ‘I miss you,’ Sean would say. ‘Don’t you miss the fun we used to have? Our music? The Raleigh Posse?’

  ‘Grow up, little brother,’ was Ramsay’s response.

  Ramsay had far more important things on his mind. He was planning to be the most famous pianist in the world, more famous than Glenn Gould, more famous than Brendel or Horowitz, he wanted to be as famous as Liszt. And George, he explained to Sean, shared his dream. George believed in him, George was as driven as Ramsay himself. And so, it seems, he had remained, although with George, now over eighty, he must surely be slowing down.

  Sean had never found it in himself to be kind about George, yet now he wondered how George would judge his own life and achievements. For several decades he had lived for Ramsay; he clearly thought it was enough or else he would not have stayed. And, if given the chance, Sean would have done the same, so perhaps it was fortunate that Ramsay had denied him. But still he missed his brother, felt a fierce longing for him, wished he could have his work, his life with Tom and a portion set aside for Ramsay as well. He knew it was impossible: it was either full-time Ramsay or nothing at all, but it didn’t stop him from wanting it to be different.

  It was eight o’clock and hours before Tom would be home. Sean opened YouTube and clicked on to his favourites; he watched his brother at the piano. His heart quickened, his spirits soared. Ramsay at the piano was sublime. No one could help but love him.

  Chapter 4. The Old Prodigy

  Nina and Zoe were seated on a small couch in Ramsay Blake’s living room, the same couch that had occupied this spot when they were children. Directly in front, but with a low coffee table between them, was Ramsay himself, perched on a stool with an aged black-and-white spaniel at his feet. Surrounding him in a semi-circle were a dozen people, all associated with the music world. Since their arrival twenty minutes earlier Ramsay had not paused for breath; not even when George ushered in a new guest did he stop talking. Ramsay was holding court, so it seemed to Nina, and everyone appeared content in their subordinate roles.

  She, in contrast, felt detached, bemused and, impossible to ignore, resentful. It was not simply an afternoon given to Ramsay when there were so many other people she would prefer to see, there was all the effort she had wasted on him over the years, skirting around that toxic pool in her memory where she had dumped him. Ramsay Blake was still the spoiled child, still so self-centred as to be impervious to others, but now, watching him at the centre of this group yet oddly sealed off from it, all she registered was a mild distaste. And George too, while he continued to manage Ramsay’s life with masterful disregard for anything other than Ramsay’s gain, this ageing retainer and mindful host was infuriatingly benign.

  Ramsay was very neat – had he always been so neat? – a man who took care of his appearance, or someone did. He was still slender, with a pale angelic face, and despite its being the middle of the afternoon, he had that polished just-shaved look, easily achieved by twenty-year-olds but usually beyond the scope of more mature skin. His hair, satiny and straight, was parted casually to the side in floppy public-schoolboy style, and, like the skin, a nostalgic longing for most men in their late forties; the hair was darker than it used to be, more burnt butter than the blond of her memory. He was dressed in a flowing white collarless shirt open at the neck and tucked loosely into washed-out jeans.

  An attractive man who was the focus of this group but not part of it, he was, it seemed to Nina, a mixture of innocence and blind narcissism. Most curious of all was that Ramsay did not seem to be aware of his attractiveness. In fact, he was a man entirely without sexual allure. Even when he looked at Zoe, and of all the people in the room she was the only one he looked at, he was more watchful than connected, more observant than engaged. Although every now and then when their gaze met, something passed between them and she saw them both soften, her tensed sister trapped in her impossible marriage and Ramsay caught within the strain of being Ramsay Blake.

  Earlier in the week when she and Zoe were preparing dinner, Zoe had said that life was stressful for Ramsay. ‘Just to know what to do, what to say, what’s humorous, what’s insulting, is hard for some people. It’s always been hard for Ramsay.’

  Nina had long believed that Ramsay’s oddities veered towards craziness, and said as much.

  Zoe wore a sad little smile. ‘Not crazy, more under-cooked in the ways of human nature.’

  Half-baked in human sociality but an ancient when it came to music, and not the first time Nina had witnessed how genius stunts growth in all but its own specialty.

  ‘Genius doesn’t know how to wash the dishes, nor does it care,’ Zoe had continued, adding sliced tomatoes to a salad. ‘In fact, genius is uninterested in everything outside itself.’ She grabbed a carrot and started to chop. ‘None of which matters as long as genius is served by a reliable and competent handmaiden, someone willing to negotiate the ordinary demands of life.’ Now she was slaughtering the carrot. ‘And for Ramsay, George Tiller fills that role to p
erfection.’

  ‘Is George indispensable?’ Nina had asked.

  Zoe tossed the carrot into the salad bowl, and started to vent her discontents on a cucumber. ‘Ramsay thinks he is.’

  Surely Zoe wouldn’t want to be handmaiden to Ramsay, Nina had thought at the time. Yet now, observing her in Ramsay’s house, seeing how captured by him she was, she felt afraid for her sister.

  It was possible that any handmaiden would suffice, as Zoe had implied, but for George, hovering round Ramsay, ministering to him as he had for decades, it was only Ramsay he had ever wanted. Why, Nina wondered, as she had so many times in the past. Why would a grown man with two surviving children of his own, grandchildren, friends, interests, toss it all in to devote himself to a piano-playing social infant? If George was born to serve, he already had ample people in his life to meet that need. And if it was a simple matter of a son replacement, he could have had two for the one who died, he could have had Sean as well. Why then had he homed in on Ramsay? They lived together, they travelled together, they took their vacations together, never was there a more compatible couple, both of them united in their devotion to Ramsay and his career.

  Under George’s guidance the career had sky-rocketed, gathering new audiences in traditional and not-so-traditional places. Ramsay had a huge YouTube following: music lovers able to watch him perform in Rome, London, St Petersburg, Uluru at sunset, and at the rim of the great Ngorongoro Crater. Each year brought new projects in exotic locations. But at home familiarity appeared to be the theme. There was the same furniture that Nina remembered from her youth, the same curtains, the same swirling orange and green carpet, all a little worn but clearly well maintained. Everything in the house down to the bulbous, mustard-coloured light-fittings locked the place in the seventies, a decade sadly lacking in style Nina had always thought. Only the walls rescued the house from dowdiness; these were so white and clean, Nina guessed they were freshly painted.

  There was a large glass of water on the low table in front of Ramsay and a dish of crisps; he dipped into these while his guests tucked into coffee and cake. There were no side conversations as he talked about contemporary recording techniques, how a technician could substantially change a performance long after the musician had left the concert hall or recording studio without using any actual takes. ‘And a technologically inclined schoolboy could take recordings from Brendel, Arrau and Richter, cut, slice, interweave and truly come up with the recording of the century – the last century,’ he quickly added. ‘Although you’d plunge headlong into the twenty-first if you drew on recordings from Hamelin, Hewitt –’

  ‘And Blake,’ someone said.

  Ramsay shot a brief smile in the direction of the speaker before continuing. His human weight was a mighty thing in this group; everyone was riveted as so often happens when someone exceptional is in the spotlight. It’s as if the light shining on the esteemed figure reflects back on to admirers, showing them to great advantage. Ramsay’s guests felt good just by being there. Desultory exposition notwithstanding, Ramsay could talk about the secret life of ants, he could read from the telephone directory, he could relate the history of recording from the beginning to the end of time and his audience would be eagerly attentive. As she absorbed the reverence which surrounded him, Nina realised that Zoe was right: there were many people willing to cater to Ramsay’s needs, but George being so cleverly efficient made sure Ramsay wanted only him.

  While Ramsay guided his guests into every nook and cranny of contemporary music recording, Nina saw not a shred of the irascible, impatient, lively boy who had once been the undisputed leader of the Raleigh Posse. Here was a cool, passionless man, detached, still childlike, and with a fanatical disregard for opinions not his own. He kept his gaze pitched to the wall just above their heads; he might have been talking to an empty room.

  Just one significant remnant of the old Ramsay remained: his smutty jokes. As children they had thought them hilarious, now they were simply embarrassing. Ramsay would tell one of his jokes and laugh uproariously, and his guests would laugh too because the jokes were Ramsay’s. The jokes and his laughter were a weird accompaniment in a person so disconcertingly absent.

  Zoe took advantage of a rare pause to shift the monologue to Ramsay’s forthcoming trip to China, his seventh tour to that country.

  ‘They love our music,’ Ramsay said. ‘Western music.’

  As he talked about the technical virtuosity of young Chinese pianists, unmatched, he said, anywhere in the world, suddenly but just out of reach Nina knew Ramsay reminded her of someone, a person who had crossed her path recently. She travelled back over the time she had been in Melbourne. When she found no candidate she deliberately returned her attention to the gathering, knowing the lost connection would surface if she stopped searching for it.

  A conversation had at last ensued – this was a musically literate group, after all – with others providing their observations of the Chinese scene. Still Ramsay made no eye contact, there was no emotional colouring to his speech, he made hardly any gestures and barely changed his facial expression; though when he talked, the muscles of his forehead constantly tensed and flickered as if he was studying a puzzle and trying to determine how the pieces fitted.

  Now that everyone else was talking, Ramsay spoke only occasionally and always in a louder-than-necessary voice. His comments were relevant so he must have been listening despite appearing distracted. He had taken a paper serviette and torn it into strips. He lay the strips in front of him on the coffee table, and as the conversation surged around him, he took each strip and twisted it into a pellet. He piled the pellets in a heap on the table, smoothed it into a tidy cone, then once he was satisfied with the shape, he squashed the cone with the palm of his hand and started the whole process again. No one commented on what he was doing, no one even showed they noticed.

  ‘The man’s hardly human,’ Nina whispered to her sister.

  Zoe shook her head. ‘No, he’s an exaggerated human. Every quality is more pronounced.’

  And again Nina was made aware that this was no casual acquaintance between her sister and Ramsay. In fact, it was dawning on her with some horror that the same attraction binding them as children was still operating – at least it was for her sister; what went on in Ramsay’s heart was anyone’s guess.

  She leaned in closer. ‘Do you still play music together?’

  Zoe’s face was fiercely blank. ‘That stopped years ago. When Elliot and I were married.’

  No heated duets, just the old romance of them. And email. Email would allow for a Ramsay without the smutty jokes, the paper pellets, the prolix soliloquies, the blatant disregard of everyone else. Email would provide the best of this peculiar man, email, YouTube and recordings of his music. But as much as email can hot-house emotions and as wonderful was Zoe’s decade-long duet with Ramsay, surely these were insufficient to maintain a love through twenty years. And what would it say about Zoe if she had hung on to such a futile passion?

  There are many people, and perhaps her sister among them, attracted to those with obvious frailties. Zoe did, after all, marry an alcoholic. And perhaps Ramsay’s frailties enhanced his appeal. As Zoe had said, the usual aspects of daily life, the sorts of things most people manage without a moment’s thought, were not easy for Ramsay. It was his music that held him together. She said he’d die without music.

  There had been a period, Nina remembered it well, when Ramsay had lost his music. It was after George moved in with Marion Blake, around the time Sean was side-lined. Ramsay said he had lost his drive; he said his passion for the piano, his desire for music and his confidence to play had deserted him. Sean tried to help. Zoe tried. His teacher tried. Even Nina, responding to the havoc Ramsay’s plight was causing on both sides of the fence, tried to help. But the crisis continued. Then George stepped in and took control, and within days Ramsay’s talk of giving up the piano ceased. According to Zoe, George gave Ramsay back his future. It was easy for George
to become indispensable.

  With several conversations now surging around them, Nina leaned closer to Zoe. ‘Does Ramsay know we never liked George?’

  Ramsay suddenly looked their way and Nina paused, continuing only when one of his guests claimed him. ‘George wasn’t a proper parent, yet he behaved as if he was. And there was something else, something –’

  ‘Sleazy?’

  ‘Not sleazy, more that he seemed to be running the show. Running us.’

  Zoe said that she and Ramsay never mentioned George. ‘He’s just there, a fact in Ramsay’s life. And besides, you need to be careful what you say about a friend’s beloved.’ And catching the disbelief on Nina’s face, added, ‘No, no, nothing like that, but Ramsay’s greatest intimate.’

  It was hard to think of anyone being Ramsay’s intimate, but it was clear her sister knew better, that from the battlements of her own intimacy-starved marriage Zoe knew how Ramsay functioned. And perhaps she always had. How much, Nina found herself wondering, had she not seen in those long-ago days of their childhood? How much was she not seeing now? She observed Ramsay and her sister, she felt the bond that connected them, and it occurred to her – chillingly – that caught between a hostile marriage and a toxic devotion her sister was endangered, like a rare animal, the remnant of its species, eking out an existence in a zoo.

  ‘Will you play for us, Ramsay?’ Her sister’s voice was barely audible, but Ramsay immediately rose from his stool, smiled at Zoe, his gratitude obvious, and led the way to the music room.

  It was a largish room, although smaller than Nina remembered. In contrast with the rest of the house, the paintwork here was peeling and discoloured, and cobwebs dangled at the angles of the walls and windows; the carpet around the piano was threadbare, but beyond the instrument the psychedelic swirls were so bright the carpet might have been newly laid. There was the bay window with a seat built into the curve, and the maroon armchair with the varnish rubbed from its wooden arms, and the couch where her parents used to sit for the Sunday concerts; poised off-centre and catching the light from the bay window was the concert-sized Bechstein. The only decoration in the room was a frieze of photographs that documented Ramsay from child prodigy to premier league, a series of different pianos, different concert platforms, Ramsay in short pants, Ramsay in trousers, Ramsay posing with conductors, other musicians, his mother and father, with prominent people from the arts, and, in so many of the images, with George.