by S. J. Watson
But even that much seems unattainable. I thought of what I had seen in Fisher Ward. Madness, and pain. Minds that had been shattered. I am closer to that, I thought, than I am to recovery. Perhaps it would be best if I learned to live with my condition, after all. I could tell Dr Nash I don’t want to see him again and I could burn my journal, burying the truths I have already learned, hiding them as thoroughly as those I don’t yet know. I would be running away from my past, but I would have no regrets – in just a few hours I wouldn’t even know that either my journal or my doctor had ever existed – and then I could live simply. One day would follow another, unconnected. Yes, occasionally the memory of Adam would surface. I would have a day of grief and pain, would remember what I miss, but it would not last. Before long I would sleep and, quietly, forget. How easy that would be, I thought. So much easier than this.
I thought of the picture I’d seen. The image was burned into me. Who did that to me? Why? I remembered the memory I’d had of the hotel room. It was still there, just under the surface, just out of reach. I had read this morning that I had reason to believe I had been having an affair but now realized that – even if that were true – I didn’t know who it had been with. All I had was a single name, remembered as I woke just a few days ago, with no promise of ever remembering more, even if I wanted to.
Dr Nash was still talking. I had no idea what about, and interrupted him. ‘Am I getting better?’ I said.
A heartbeat, during which I thought he had no answer, then he said, ‘Do you think you are?’
Did I? I couldn’t say. ‘I don’t know. Yes. I suppose so. I can remember things from my past, sometimes. Flashes of memory. They come to me when I read my journal. They feel real. I remember Claire. Adam. My mother. But they’re like threads I can’t keep hold of. Balloons that float into the sky before I can catch them. I can’t remember my wedding. I can’t remember Adam’s first steps, his first word. I can’t remember him starting at school, his graduation. Anything. I don’t even know if I was there. Maybe Ben decided there was no point in taking me.’ I took a breath. ‘I can’t even remember learning he was dead. Or burying him.’ I began to cry. ‘I feel like I’m going crazy. Sometimes I don’t even think that he’s dead. Can you believe that? Sometimes I think that Ben’s lying to me about that, as well as everything else.’
‘Everything else?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My novel. The attack. The reason I have no memory. Everything.’
‘But why do you think he would do that?’
A thought came to me. ‘Because I was having an affair?’ I said. ‘Because I was unfaithful to him?’
‘Christine,’ he said. ‘That’s unlikely, don’t you think?’
I said nothing. He was right, of course. Deep down I didn’t believe his lies could really be a protracted revenge for something that had happened years and years ago. The explanation was likely to be much more mundane.
‘You know,’ said Dr Nash, ‘I think you are getting better. You’re remembering things. Much more often than when we first met. These snatches of memory? They’re definitely a sign of progress. They mean—’
I turned to him. ‘Progress? You call this progress?’ I was almost shouting now, anger spilling out of me as if I could no longer contain it. ‘If that’s what it is, then I don’t know if I want it.’ The tears were flooding now, uncontrollable. ‘I don’t want it!’
I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless. I didn’t feel ashamed. Dr Nash was talking to me, telling me first not to be upset, that things would be all right, and then to calm down. I ignored him. I could not calm down, and did not want to.
He stopped the car. Switched off the engine. I opened my eyes. We had left the main road and in front of me was a park. Through the blur of my tears I could see a group of boys – teenagers, I suppose – playing football, with two piles of coats for goal posts. It had begun to rain, but they didn’t stop. Dr Nash turned to face me.
‘Christine,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps today was a mistake. I don’t know. I thought we might trigger other memories. I was wrong. In any case, you shouldn’t’ve seen that picture …’
‘I don’t even know if it was the picture,’ I said. I had stopped sobbing now, but my face was wet and I could feel a great looping mass of mucus escaping from my nose. ‘Do you have a tissue?’ I asked. He reached across me and looked in the glove compartment. ‘It was everything,’ I went on. ‘Seeing those people, imagining that I’d been like that, once. And the diary. I can’t believe that was me, writing that. I can’t believe I was that ill.’
He handed me a tissue. ‘But you’re not any more,’ he said. I took it from him and blew my nose.
‘Maybe it’s worse,’ I said, quietly. ‘I’d written that it was like being dead. But this? This is worse. This is like dying every day. Over and over. I need to get better,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine going on like this for much longer. I know I’ll go to sleep tonight and then tomorrow I will wake up and not know anything again, and the next day, and the day after that, for ever. I can’t imagine it. I can’t face it. It’s not life, it’s just an existence, jumping from one moment to the next with no idea of the past, and no plan for the future. It’s how I imagine animals must be. The worst thing is that I don’t even know what I don’t know. There might be lots of things, waiting to hurt me. Things I haven’t even dreamed about yet.’
He put his hand on mine. I fell into him, knowing what he would do, what he must do, and he did. He opened his arms and held me, and I let him embrace me. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’s OK.’ I could feel his chest under my cheek and I breathed, inhaling his scent, fresh laundry and, faintly, something else. Sweat, and sex. His hand was on my back and I felt it move, felt it touch my hair, my head, lightly at first, but then more firmly as I sobbed again. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said, whispering, and I closed my eyes.
‘I just want to remember what happened,’ I said, ‘on the night I was attacked. Somehow I feel that if I could only remember that, then I would remember everything.’
He spoke softly. ‘There’s no evidence that’s the case. No reason—’
‘But it’s what I think,’ I said. ‘I know it, somehow.’
He squeezed me. Gently, almost so gently that I couldn’t feel it. I felt his body, hard against mine, and breathed in deeply, and as I did so I thought of another time when I was being held. Another memory. My eyes are closed, just the same, and my body is being pressed up against that of another, though this is different. I do not want to be held by this man. He is hurting me. I am struggling, trying to get away, but he is strong and pulls me to him. He speaks. Bitch, he says. Slut. And though I want to argue with him I do not. My face is pressed against his shirt, and, just like with Dr Nash, I am crying, screaming. I open my eyes and see the blue fabric of his shirt, a door, a dressing table with three mirrors and a picture – a painting of a bird – above it. I can see his arm, strong, muscled, a vein running down its length. Let me go! I say, and then I am spinning, and falling, or the floor is rising to meet me, I cannot tell. He grabs a handful of my hair and drags me towards the door. I twist my head to see his face.
It is there that memory fails me again. Though I remember looking at his face, I cannot remember what I saw. It is featureless, a blank. As if unable to cope with this vacuum, my mind cycles through faces I know, through absurd impossibilities. I see Dr Nash. Dr Wilson. The receptionist at Fisher Ward. My father. Ben. I even see my own face, laughing as I raise a fist to strike.
Please, I cry, please don’t. But my many-faced attacker hits anyway, and I taste blood. He drags me along the floor, and then I am in the bathroom, on the cold tiles, black and white. The floor is damp with condensation, the room smells of orange blossom, and I remember how I had been looking forward to bathing, to making myself beautiful, thinking that maybe I would still be in the bath when he arrived, and then he could join me, and we would make love, making waves in
the soapy water, soaking the floor, our clothes, everything. Because finally, after all these months of doubt, it has become clear to me. I love this man. Finally, I know it. I love him.
My head slams into the floor. Once, twice, a third time. My vision blurs and doubles, then returns. A buzzing in my ears, and he shouts something, but I can’t hear what. It echoes, as if there are two of him, both holding me, both twisting my arm, both grabbing handfuls of my hair as they kneel on my back. I beg him to leave me alone, and there are two of me, too. I swallow. Blood.
My head jerks back. Panic. I am on my knees. I see water, bubbles, already thinning. I try to speak but cannot. His hand is round my throat, and I cannot breathe. I am pitched forward, down, down, so quickly that I think I will never stop, and then my head is in the water. Orange blossom in my throat.
I heard a voice. ‘Christine!’ it said. ‘Christine! Stop!’ I opened my eyes. Somehow, I was out of the car. I was running. Across the park, as fast as I could, and running after me was Dr Nash.
We sat on a bench. It was concrete, crossed with wooden slats. One was missing, and the remainder sagged beneath us. I felt the sun against the back of my neck, saw its long shadows on the ground. The boys were still playing football, though the game must be finishing now; some were drifting off, others talked, one of the piles of jackets had been removed, leaving the goal unmarked. Dr Nash had asked me what had happened.
‘I remembered something,’ I said.
‘About the night you were attacked?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’
‘You were screaming,’ he said. ‘You kept saying, “Get off me,” over and over.’
‘It was like I was there,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Please, don’t apologize. Do you want to tell me what you saw?’
The truth was I did not. I felt as if some ancient instinct was telling me that this was a memory best kept to myself. But I needed his help, knew I could trust him. I told him everything.
When I had finished he was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Anything else?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t remember what he looked like? The man who attacked you?’
‘No. I can’t see that at all.’
‘Or his name?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Nothing.’ I hesitated. ‘Do you think it might help to know who did this to me? To see him? Remember him?’
‘Christine, there’s no real evidence to suggest that remembering the attack would help.’
‘But it might?’
‘It seems to be one of your most deeply repressed memories—’
‘So it might?’
He was silent, then said, ‘I’ve suggested it before, but it might help to go back there …’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No. Don’t even say it.’
‘We can go together. You’d be fine, I promise. If you were there again … Back in Brighton—’
‘No.’
‘You might remember then—’
‘No! Please!’
‘It might help?’
I looked down at my hands, folded in my lap.
‘I can’t go back there,’ I said. ‘I just can’t.’
He sighed. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’ll talk about it again?’
‘No,’ I whispered. ‘I can’t.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK.’
He smiled, but seemed disappointed. I felt eager to give him something, to have him not give up on me. ‘Dr Nash?’ I said.
‘Yes?’
‘The other day I wrote that something had come to me. Perhaps it’s relevant. I don’t know.’
He turned to face me.
‘Go on.’ Our knees touched. Neither of us drew away.
‘When I woke,’ I said, ‘I kind of knew that I was in bed with a man. I remembered a name. But it wasn’t Ben’s name. I wondered if it was the name of the person I’d been having the affair with. The one who attacked me.’
‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘It might have been the beginning of the repressed memory emerging. What was the name?’
Suddenly I didn’t want to tell him, to say it out loud. I felt that by doing so I would be making it real, conjuring my attacker back into existence. I closed my eyes.
‘Ed,’ I whispered. ‘I imagined waking up with someone called Ed.’
Silence. A heartbeat that seemed to last for ever.
‘Christine,’ he said. ‘That’s my name. I’m Ed. Ed Nash.’
My mind raced for a moment. My first thought was that he had attacked me. ‘What?’ I said, panicking.
‘That’s my name. I’ve told you that before. Maybe you’ve never written it down. My name is Edmund. Ed.’
I realized it could not have been him. He would barely have been born.
‘But—’
‘You may be confabulating,’ he said. ‘Like Dr Wilson explained?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I—’
‘Or maybe you were attacked by someone with the same name?’
He smiled awkwardly as he said it, making light of the situation, but in doing so revealed he had already worked out what only later – after he had driven me home, in fact – occurred to me. I had woken that morning happy. Happy to be in bed with someone called Ed. But it was not a memory. It was a fantasy. Waking with this man called Ed was not something I had done in the past but – even though my conscious, waking mind didn’t know who he was – something I wanted to do in the future. I want to sleep with Dr Nash.
And now, accidentally, inadvertently, I have told him. I have revealed the way I must feel about him. He was professional, of course. We both pretended to attach no significance to what had happened, and in doing so revealed just how much significance there was. We walked back to the car and he drove me home. We chatted about trivialities. The weather. Ben. There are few things we can talk about; there are whole arenas of experience from which I am utterly excluded. At one point he said, ‘We’re going to the theatre tonight,’ and I noted his careful use of the plural. Don’t worry, I wanted to say. I know my place. But I said nothing. I didn’t want him to think of me as bitter.
He told me he would call me tomorrow. ‘If you’re sure you want to continue?’
I know that I cannot stop now. Not until I have learned the truth. I owe myself that, otherwise I am living only half a life. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do.’ In any case, I need him to remind me to write in my journal.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Good. Next time I think we should visit somewhere else from your past.’ He looked to where I sat. ‘Don’t worry. Not there. I think we should go to the care home you were moved to when you left Fisher Ward. It’s called Waring House.’ I said nothing. ‘It’s not too far from where you live. Shall I ring them?’
I thought for a moment, wondering what good it might do, but then realized there were no other options, and anything is better than nothing.
I said, ‘Yes. Yes. Ring them.’
Tuesday, 20 November
It is morning. Ben has suggested that I clean the windows. ‘I’ve written it on the board,’ he said, as he got into his car. ‘In the kitchen.’
I looked. Wash windows he had written, adding a tentative question mark. I wondered if he thought I might not have time, wondered what he thought I did all day. He doesn’t know I now spend hours reading my journal, and sometimes hours more writing in it. He does not know there are days when I see Dr Nash.
I wonder what I did before my days were taken up like this. Did I really spend all my time watching television, or going for walks, or doing chores? Did I spend hour after hour sitting in an armchair, listening to the ticking of the clock, wondering how to live?
Wash windows. Possibly some days I read things like that and feel resentful, seeing it as an effort to control my life, but today I viewed it with affection, as nothing more sinister than the desire to keep me occupied. I smiled to myself but, even as I did so, I thought how difficult it must be to live
with me. He must go to extraordinary lengths to make sure I am safe, and even so must worry constantly that I will get confused, will wander off, or worse. I remembered reading about the fire that had destroyed most of our past, the one Ben has never told me that I started, even though I must have done so. I saw an image – a burning door, almost invisible in the thick smoke, a sofa, melting, turning to wax – that hovered, just out of reach, but refused to resolve itself into a memory, and remained a half-imagined dream. But Ben has forgiven me for that, I thought, just as he must have forgiven me for so much more. I looked out of the kitchen window, and through the reflection of my own face I saw the mowed lawn, the tidy borders, the shed, the fences. I realized that Ben must have known that I was having an affair – certainly once I’d been discovered in Brighton, even if not before. How much strength it must have taken to look after me – once I had lost my memory – even with the knowledge that I had been away from home, intending to fuck someone else, when it had happened. I thought of what I had seen, of the diary I had written. My mind had been fractured. Destroyed. Yet still he had stood by me, where another man might have told me that I deserved everything, left me to rot.
I turned away from the window and looked under the sink. Cleaning materials. Soap. Cartons of powder, plastic spray bottles. There was a red plastic bucket and I filled this with hot water, adding a squirt of soap and a tiny drop of vinegar. How have I repaid him? I thought. I took a sponge and began to soap the window, beginning at the top, working down. I have been sneaking around London, seeing doctors, having scans, visiting our old homes and the places I was treated after my accident, all without telling him. And why? Because I don’t trust him? Because he has made the decision to protect me from the truth, to keep my life as simple and easy as possible? I watched the soapy water run in tiny rivulets, pooling at the bottom, and then took another cloth and polished the window to a shine.
