The Garden of Remembrance

by Allan Watson

  Our firm had organised one of those stupid office discos, a reward for meeting targets. Usually I gave that sort of event a body swerve, but I went along that night because Rita was going. By ten o'clock we were three sheets to the wind and up on the dance floor doing the Huckle Buck and the Pelvic Thrust. It was Rita who started the game of pinching my bum every time I turned round. By eleven o'clock I was squeezing hers in return. I remember drinking much more than I usually did. I forgot I was thirty eight years old. For those few dizzy hours I was a drunken teenager again.

  It was a stupid mistake to walk Rita to a taxi rank at the end of the night. My drunken brain was telling me it was a chivalrous act. I was only seeing a friend safely to a cab, but in truth I wanted to stay in her company just a little longer. Teri and my daughters lived a million miles away in a different universe. I never once thought of them as I walked arm in arm with Rita down the street. She wanted to go to a taxi rank on Woodside Road and the obvious short cut was down the alley that ran parallel to Lyndeoch St. The lane was full of shadowy doorways, the back entrances to the buildings on either side of the alley. I'm still not sure how we ended up in one of them, kissing each other like fury. Her breath tasted of gin and always in the background there was the scent of violets from her perfume.

  My memories of that night are fragmented, crudely glued together things. I remember squeezing at Rita’s breasts as if they were the first I had ever touched and struggling to get my hand down her tights, ripping the thin nylon in the process. All the while Rita's hot tongue was doing incredible things in my mouth while her hands were fighting their own battle with the stubbornly unyielding zipper at my crotch. There are blanks here and I can't recall how we ended up behind the wooden gate in a narrow private back yard of some small firm. Rita's tights and underwear were gone, and when I slipped my hand beneath her skirt there was only the furnace-like heat between her bare thighs to greet my fingers. We fucked standing up, a first for me. Under normal circumstances the intensity of our out-of-control passion would have pushed me over the edge within seconds, but the alcohol fogging my brain sustained me, kept me thrusting until Rita moaned like a soul damned and then shivered in the Grand Mal seizure of orgasm. To this day I don't even know if I came.

  The next morning I was half elated, half mortified by what had happened. The acid of guilt burned deep in my guts, but at the same time there was something buzzing excitedly in my blood. I felt like a different person. If Teri noticed anything different about me she didn't say. I worried what Rita's reaction would be on Monday morning when we returned to work. I was afraid she might be cold and aloof with regret and embarrassment. If she had, it been might have saved me from what lay ahead. But my attentions seemed to fill a void in her own life and our little affair rolled forward with the oiled precision of a weighted pendulum. For a fortnight we used my car as a mobile love nest, parking off lonely roads in the Campsie hills. The sex was never as intense and soul searing as the first time, and when it was clear we could never re-live that moment, we called things to a halt by mutual consent, promising we would remain good friends. Two days later Rita requested a transfer to a different office.

  As Teri sat at the picnic bench waiting for an answer to her question, all of this flashed into my head. I tried to gather it together, shape it, fashion it into a statement that would appease Teri without hurting her. It was impossible however. I spread my hands like a preacher who has lost his Bible and said, 'Why did I sleep with Rita? I don't honestly know. Maybe it was the drink, the male menopause, the seventeen year itch, temporary insanity. Take your pick. I didn't mean for it to happen. It wasn't planned, I just got swept along with it. I love you, Teri - and you'll never know how sorry I am for the hurt I've caused you and the girls.'

  Teri wore her best poker face, keeping me in the dark as to how effective my speech had been. 'How many times did you sleep with her Matt?'

  I hesitated. It had been five times in all, but I decided to gamble on the chance that Teri's source of information hadn't been too specific about the fine details. Staring straight into Teri's eyes I lied, 'Twice.'

  There was virtually no reaction and I guessed my untruth had gone undetected. Teri merely stared over to where Denise and Alice were running about like mad things. I knew that she was considering what effect my long term absence would have on our daughters. If it hadn't been for them this holiday wouldn't have taken place. I believed Teri still loved me, but I was equally convinced she would have divorced me without a second thought if it hadn't been for our daughters.

  Once more she turned to me, the poker mask still in place. 'Did you enjoy it? Was the sex good?'

  It was a horrible question, a spare barb she had held onto, one that would tear and bite with cold precision. It wasn't really in Teri’s nature to ask such a question, and it told me my return to the fold was signed and sealed. The question was merely one final twist of the knife, Teri's way of gaining some small retribution for herself. Her pride probably demanded as much.

  Wearily, I nodded my head. To have said otherwise would have been patronising and most likely angered her more. We sat in compete silence until the girls returned and we moved on to pastures new. To give Teri her due she put a brave face on things when it was obvious our conversation at the picnic table must have upset her. At the Crazy Golf I deliberately played badly and let her win as if hoping this gesture of appeasement would in some way compensate for my infidelity.

  By four o'clock Denise and Alice had tried everything Craigtoun Park had to offer except the boating lake. I have to admit I was nervous as I grasped the oars under the smirking gaze of the tattooed skinhead in charge of letting out the boats. As I struggled to find my co-ordination, the youth called out mock encouragement and flirted outrageously with Teri. I gritted my teeth and resisted the temptation to tell him to fuck off. Finally, I found my rhythm and we were away, rowing in clockwise circles around the Dutch village in the centre of the lake. I almost lost the oars at one point trying to steer the boat beneath the low arched bridge that linked the Dutch Village in the middle of the pond to the mainland of the park. Apart from that mishap, I was pretty pleased with myself and felt annoyed when the skinhead attendant hollered that our time was up. I left the lake with my head held high.

  We spent another hour in the park, just strolling around and enjoying the late afternoon sunshine. Teri’s smiles seemed genuine as if her heart had finally accepted what her mind was telling her was for the best. Some sort of reconciliation had taken place between the two. At best it most likely an uneasy truce, but it meant I could finally look ahead to the future without constantly wondering whether one wrong word or act would see me back in my brother’s spare room at the end of the week. I thought I might even text James to say it looked as though I was home and dry. I could imagine the happiness he would feel for me and also the look of relief on Norma’s face at losing her manic depressive lodger.

  Eventually Denise and Alice complained of being hungry and we drifted slowly towards the park gates. The car park was now mostly empty and the Citroen stood alone on the red ash, a gleaming hulk of sun baked metal. I was glad I had left the sun roof open a few inches or entering the car would have been unbearable. Teri and the girls got into the car and rolled down the windows as I packed the remains of our picnic into the boot. I was closing the lid when a familiar voice shouted, ‘Hang on a minute, mate!’

  Turning, I was baffled to see the tattooed skinhead from the boating pond running across the car park towards me. In his hand was a long, black stick which he waved menacingly above his head. For a moment I was certain he meant to attack me with it and I found myself instinctively rummaging in the boot for the wheel brace. But as he got closer, I saw the youth was grinning in a friendly fashion. Feeling more than foolish, my hand let go of the wheel brace. I was glad I hadn’t actually lifted it out of the boot.

  The skinhead reached me and said, ‘Forgot something, mate?’ He held the stick out towards me and I saw it was an ebo
ny cane with a silver tip. Although I knew the youth meant me no harm, I still flinched at the sight of the cane. Something about it gave me the same feeling of deeply buried dread I had experienced when looking at Denise’s drawing of the garden on the wall back home. I had seen this cane before but couldn’t remember where. The youth looked puzzled by the fearful expression on my face and took a step back, unsure of himself now. The cane, he still held towards me like an unwanted gift he desired to be rid of.

  ‘Look, do you want this thing back or not? That old man must have left it behind when you were on the boats.’

  ‘Old man?’ I said softly, not even looking at the youth as I spoke. My eyes were locked on the length of gleaming, black wood. I knew this cane very well, but its history perversely remained hidden from me. Memories of it squirmed beneath my brain tissue like lively maggots, but nothing broke through to the surface. I distantly heard the skinhead say, ‘The old man who was with you. The funny old guy with the black suit sitting on the bench. I remember seeing him waving it about when you were spinning in circles in the water. He seemed to think it was pretty funny. I thought he was with you.’

  I looked into the youth’s face and saw he was becoming impatient. The friendly grin was gone and in its place was a mean scowl. He thrust the stick into my hands so forcefully that I had no other choice but to accept it. It felt warm and strangely alive. The skinhead waited for a moment as if waiting for me to say something and then rasped sarcastically, ‘Don’t bother saying thanks or nothing.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, my attention still riveted on the cane.

  ‘You’re weird, do you know that? It must run in the fucking family. You and that loony old man.’

  I still didn’t bother looking up as the skinhead stalked off - his Doc Martens kicking up clouds of red dust in his wake. I wasn’t deliberately being rude. The cane was transfixing me, casting a spell I couldn’t break. One particular memory, buried in a shallower grave than the others was about to break free. I could sense it. This time it wouldn’t escape from my net. The sun caught on the silver tip causing a minor holocaust of blazing light, forcing me to close my eyes. And in that instant I saw a close up image of the cane crashing down onto something pink and soft and yielding. Bright red blood and jagged shards of bone flew upwards in slow motion, like an explosion in an abattoir.

  The spell was instantly broken and I dropped the cane to the ground. There was a sharp pain in my mouth and when I wiped at it with my hand, it came away streaked crimson. I must have bitten my lower lip. I stared at the cane on the ground, its sleek black finish dulled by the red dust of the gravel. The sound of Teri’s voice almost made me yell out loud in fright.

  ‘Are you all right, Matt? What was all that about?’

  I said nothing. I was thinking of the seagull on the window ledge. Tap, tap, tap. In solving one mystery I had found an even darker one. The old man who was with you. The funny old guy with the black suit sitting on the bench. Who the hell was he? What did the cane have to do with him? The memory maggots writhed inside my head, striving to burst through their beds of brain tissue. I thought Teri must see them bulge beneath my skin like carnivorous tumours. I felt her lay her hand across my forehead as if trying to press them back down into the dark soil where they belonged.

  ‘Goodness, Matt, you’re burning hot. Maybe you’ve got a touch of sunstroke. Let’s get back and you can have a lie down.’

  Still feeling confused, I got into the car and looked into a stranger’s eyes in the rear view mirror. It was like staring through a mortuary window. Aware Teri was watching me, I started the engine and deliberately shifted the car into reverse gear, hearing the cane snap beneath the wheels, like the leg of a dead man. The sound made me smile.

  CHAPTER 6

  Any faint hopes I had of enjoying a repeat performance with Teri on the couch that night were dashed when she announced she was off to bed as soon as the girls were asleep. The exaggerated yawns and rubbing of her eyes warned me it was not an invitation to follow her upstairs. To be honest I wasn’t too disappointed. I was feeling jaded and tired myself, and the knowledge I was almost certainly home and dry with regards to Teri taking me back made sex a less urgent issue.

  I turned off the television and stretched out on the couch with my Phil Rickman paperback. It was a long time since I had lost myself in a book and I was looking forward to immersing myself in December. The book’s spine was broken and the pages smelled of mildew but it was like meeting up again with an old friend. The first half hour went by pleasantly enough as I renewed my acquaintance with the characters. I had always enjoyed the author’s fluid and gripping style of writing and the pages turned with ease. Perhaps it was the subtext of old evil and mental illness in the book that got me thinking about my own state of mind. Echoes of the last two days impinged upon the story line, forcing me to re-read passages as my concentration levels dropped. I stumbled on for another twenty or so pages before putting the book down. Re-reading books was something I normally enjoyed, but this time I was getting a doppler effect from reading text that already existed in my memory.

  For the first time, I began worrying that maybe the marital separation had damaged some weak circuit buried in my psyche. I thought again of the blurred memory of doctors and soft voiced nurses who led me from bed to toilet, and wiped my arse before guiding me back to bed. I remembered being prompted to swallow food, and having thin beams of light shone into my eyes. I had been broken then. A damaged piece of hardware. Off-line. What if my recent depression had switched on a sequence of genes in my DNA to create another miniature breakdown.

  I shook my head to slough off these morose thoughts before I willed them into reality. In truth, I was nowhere near the breakdown level I had experienced all those years ago. I could accept the separation having caused some kind of disturbance in my memory pool, and it was only natural that something from those dark bleak years should come swimming up. But they were only memories. Nothing more than that. Harmless electro-chemical data storage securely contained inside my head. The odd events that had accompanied these memories could not possibly be connected.

  I thought again of the image I had glimpsed in the car park, the blood and shards of bone erupting under the impact of the flailing cane. I had no idea where that had come from or if it were even a memory. But the boat attendant had seen an old man waving to us while we were on the water. I was certain there had been no-one else watching at the time. True, I was busy struggling with the oars, but I’m sure I would have noticed a old man waving his stick. Nevertheless, the skinhead had seen someone, so he had to be real. Therefore not a memory. So how did he connect to the cane? The cane had been real. I’d held it in my hand and broken it beneath the wheels of my car. But it was also part of a memory. I was becoming confused and my head was beginning to hurt. I realised that memory was a slippery bastard. Not the reliable friend I had once taken it for.

  Schizophrenics have always had the dubious talent of linking un-associated incidents, arranging them on the warped canvas of their imagination before standing back to scream at the pretty new picture. Was this what I was doing? How would you ever know if you were afflicted with schizophrenia? It could steal over you like a silk glove, absorbing you into its fractured way of thinking. It could disassemble the composite layers of your personality, unwrap them strand by strand, until separate individual personalities emerged. It was possible that a subset of my own consciousness might have been responsible for unscrewing the safety rail on Alice’s bed. I could have done it while on one of my frequent visits to the kitchen topping up Teri’s wine glass. I could have slipped upstairs and taken the safety rail away and then simply blanked the episode from my mind. In theory anyway.

  There was one other explanation. What if memories could step out of your head and lead a life of their own?

  Despite my headache, I smiled at my foolishness of dwelling on all of this morbid stuff. Replaying it over and over again wasn’t going to help matters. To spite my
imagination, I picked up December and doggedly read another few pages before conceding I was no longer in the mood for reading. I had an urge to smoke a cigarette, but I had crushed up my packet and given it to Teri to throw in the rubbish bin. My spirits sank even lower. The clock on the fireplace told me it was only half past ten. If I went to bed at this hour I would only lie awake. Even the somnolent magic of masturbation didn’t work that early in the evening.

  It depressed me to think that I would be spending the night in one of the bunk-beds. The girls were sleeping in the room with the twin beds where I had slept the night before. Teri had thought a change of sleeping arrangements might guarantee a nightmare-free sleep for them. It wasn’t so surprising both girls had bad dreams in a room so narrow it reminded me of a wallpapered coffin. I wondered if I would awake in the darkness with the walls crushing the life out me, or Edgar Allan Poe’s pendulum descending inch by inch to split me wide open like a prime side of beef.

  Wearily I lay back on the couch and rubbed at my throbbing temples. The heat of the day was still present and my skin felt slick with sweat. Light from the lamp was catching my eye and my headache began to feel like the beginnings of a migraine. I closed my eyes and considered sleeping right there in the living room. It was a more appealing option than the Laura Ashley sarcophagus upstairs. Surprisingly, the act of closing my eyes made me realise I was very tired and the temptation to let my mind drift was strong. I fought against it however, I had lights to turn off and electrical plugs to pull, and although it was warm in the living room I knew the temperature would fall quickly in a few hours. I was going to need a blanket from upstairs.

  With an effort of will I forced open my eyes and found myself staring into darkness. My first instinct was to sit bolt upright, but it was as if my muscles had frozen stiff and I could barely move. The darkness in front of my eyes swam with bright motes of red and yellow, blurred fireflies that merged into a vague pattern of pale, indistinct horizontal stripes against the charcoal background. The only sound I could hear was the thudding of my heart and my harsh frightened breathing. The couch which had been so comfortable minutes earlier now felt hard and unyielding against my back. Suddenly the world tilted sickeningly and I was standing upright. I tried to shout out, to wail, scream, anything. But my vocal chords were as useless as my arms and legs. Unable to break free, the terror inside me festered and burned with its own acidic juices.