by Jean Levy
He half frowned, half smiled. ‘That sounded so much like the Sarah you used to be.’
‘But I still can’t remember from before.’
‘Who cares about before? Now is enough.’
I pushed my plate to one side. ‘Last night, I remember we were upset. About something you told me. But I’ve forgotten what it was. I must have been falling asleep. It was about my car.’
As I spoke the words I could hear the laughter approaching.
‘Damn it!’ I grabbed my fork and poked it hard into my palm and winced at the self-inflicted pain.
Matthew leapt up. ‘Sarah, what in God’s name!’
I looked up at him, amazed. ‘My car was parked in the street next to my mother’s. You lied to the police. You moved my car.’ I looked at the four small puncture wounds in my palm, two barely through the superficial layer of skin, one filling slowly with watery ooze, and one actually bleeding. ‘Oh God, I must have been there when it all happened. And my mind is forcing me to forget. I have to remember! I have to know what I did.’
‘You didn’t do anything.’ He grabbed a napkin and held it against my palm. ‘Hold that there. I’ve got a first aid kit in the car.’
‘Matthew, this is a medical institution. They’ll have a plaster. Sit down for a minute.’ I watched him return to his seat. ‘Don’t you see, I’ve remembered!’
‘Sarah, that is not an ideal way of retrieving your memories! What are you going to do, carry a fork around with you and stab yourself in the supermarket if you can’t remember what you came in for?’
‘No. But don’t you see? I’ve remembered what you told me. And that means that however tired I was, and however much my mind is working to make me forget, those memories are still there. And that probably means all my memories are there, not burned away like Sam’s. I have to find a way of getting them back.’
‘Not with a fork!’
‘No, but somehow I have to remember what happened at my mother’s house, because I really need to know I did nothing wrong. And you need to know that too.’ I pulled the napkin away from my palm and frowned. ‘This hurts like hell!’ I scrutinised my hand.
‘Matthew, where’s my wedding ring?’
‘Hyde Park.’
‘What?’
Hyde Park
‘Are you cross because I brought sandwiches away with me?’
‘No, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to go to a classy reception and leave with a pile of food wrapped in a napkin.’
‘The waitress said they’d go to waste if I didn’t take them. And I knew we were going to be walking back through the park.’
‘We’re only walking back through the park because you wanted to feed those sandwiches to the ducks. This is out of our way.’
‘But we’ve not got to be at Hillier’s for ages. And Poppy said the rose garden’s spectacular at the moment. And you know how much I like roses.’ She linked her arm through his. ‘I’ll go on my own if you’re going to be grumpy.’
‘I’m not grumpy!’
‘Is it because you’re moving out of your house so Lucy can live there?’
‘No, I’m quite looking forward to moving from my desirable mansion in Hampstead to a tenement in Crouch End.’
‘It won’t be for long.’ She hugged his arm. ‘And we’ll be able to spend clandestine afternoons there, won’t we?’
‘Yes, we will.’ His face broke into a smile. ‘Look, madwoman, ducks ahead.’
Still hugging his arm, Sarah pulled Matthew towards the edge of the lake and started to unwrap her stash of sandwiches, an activity which caused an immediate migration of ducks out of the water and towards them.
‘Sweetheart, I think they’re about to stampede!’
She threw a handful of sandwiches way past the birds and they immediately turned and splashed and quacked back into the muddy water. ‘It’s not possible to stampede if you’ve only got two flat feet.’
He smirked. ‘Do ducks eat prawns?’
‘Looks like it.’ Sarah threw another handful as far into the water as she could. And then another. ‘Oh!’
‘What?’
‘My ring.’ She watched the thick gold band arc through the sunlight and land with a plop several yards from the bank.
‘What, your wedding ring?’
‘Yes, it just flew off my finger. What shall I do?’
Matthew observed the dispersing ducks and the still water beyond: ‘We could Google FROGMEN …’
‘Matthew, this is not a laughing matter!’
‘No, it’s the fates seriously telling you to leave Jeff and move in with me.’
‘Don’t say that! We’re all right as we are.’
‘No, we’re not. I hate that you’re still with him.’
‘He’ll go insane if he finds out I’ve lost my ring.’
‘Sarah, love, he won’t even notice.’
He lifted her hand and kissed her ringless fingers. ‘Marry me and I’ll buy you a new ring. And we’ll superglue it to your finger.’ He pulled her towards the path. ‘Come on, let’s nip over to the Dorchester for a glass of cold fizz.’
‘Roses first. Does the Dorchester do milkshakes?’
‘Sweetheart, your sophistication never fails to astound me!’
Episode Forty-two
Bob Gray was still in his shirtsleeves when we stepped into the waiting area. The door to his consulting room was open and we could see him perched on the corner of his desk, chatting on the phone, laughing at some private joke or other. He caught sight of us and held up his hand in recognition. Sam appeared in the doorway.
‘Hi, Bob’s just on the phone to his daughter.’
‘Hi, Sam, we’re a bit early …’
I pre-empted Matthew’s explanation. ‘I thought someone might fetch me a plaster.’
Sam grimaced at the napkin wrapped around my palm. ‘Oh, is it bad? I’ll fetch a nurse.’ He disappeared through a door on the opposite side of the waiting area.
Dr Gray put the phone down, buttoned his waistcoat and put on his jacket. He frowned at the napkin. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘I cut my hand. Sam’s fetching help.’
Today Dr Gray’s seats were arranged in two arcs of four, placed opposite each other at some distance, the coffee table between them. I could see that he intended for things to proceed differently after lunch. He indicated two seats towards the middle. We were joined immediately by Sam and a young nurse carrying a small first aid kit. I unwound the napkin and offered her my wound.
‘Good gracious,’ exclaimed Bob Gray, ‘how on earth did that happen?’
‘Fork!’ explained Matthew.
I rolled my eyes and, while the nurse sanitised my hand, explained to Dr Gray that this was not so much self-harming but rather a counterattack on my subconscious. Without revealing what I had forced myself to remember, I explained that at breakfast I had been unable to recall things I had been told the night before, and I could hear the laughter drawing closer as I tried to recapture them. So I had launched my surprise attack, and the memories just tumbled into my thoughts. ‘The best form of defence is attack, Dr Gray!’
Bob Gray nodded sagely. ‘Well, my dear, well done for contriving this strategy but this stabbing process would seem to be a rather violent affront upon your psyche. I do congratulate you. However, I would rather we find a more acceptable means of controlling this anarchic mind of yours.’
‘Dr Gray, I’m tired of being a victim!’
Bob Gray’s eyebrows arched above the rims of his spectacles. ‘Yes, I can …’ He noticed that I was pulling my hand away from the nurse’s attempt at applying a bandage. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘No, but I don’t want miles of bandage wrapped round my hand. It will look worse than it is. If Dr Williams suspects I’ve been damaging myself, he’ll have me sectioned.’
Sam snorted. Bob Gray frowned. ‘Now, Sarah, that is not a realistic concern.’ He looked at the nurse who was clearly not certain how to proceed. ‘D
o we have a plaster, nurse? Perhaps if you could …’
Bob Gray waited for the nurse to apply the plaster and leave then took the seat beside me and asked Sam if he had anything new to contribute. Sam sat down beside Matthew. ‘No, I’d just like to ask Matthew if he secretly cloned Sarah in the night and left the original up on the third floor.’
‘This is the original,’ said Matthew.
Sam smiled at me. ‘You’re different. What happened?’
‘She had an epiphany in the shower,’ said Matthew.
Again Sam snorted. It was left to Bob Gray to pull the session back to serious. But his blue eyes betrayed amusement. He asked me to summarise, so I explained that I had discovered I could retain new memories by re-remembering them and being ready to pounce when the forgetting tried to happen. ‘Dr Gray, I think too much time elapsed while I was unconscious and my memories were hidden before I could re-remember them.’
‘And how do you feel about that?’ he asked.
‘It’s like there are two separate minds living in my brain and battling for custody of my memories. Do you think I have a split personality?’
‘My goodness, where on earth did you get an idea like that?’
‘Mrs Parkin said Dr Williams was interested in schizophrenia, so I looked it up.’
‘No, no, Sarah. We are not treating you for anything that could possibly be referred to as schizophrenia. Our focus is your memory loss. And we are all anticipating the complete recovery of your memories and of your normal life.’
‘Assuming that those two things are compatible,’ I said.
Dr Gray paused to glance over at Sam. ‘Sarah, all things can be dealt with and dealing with things is ultimately preferable to denying them.’ He placed his hands on his knees. ‘Matthew, I think we are all aware of Sarah’s new determination. Would you like to mention any recent changes you have noticed in her general mode of expression?’
‘What does that mean?’ I demanded.
Matthew placed a reassuring hand on my arm. ‘Since yesterday, but particularly this morning, I told you that you were sounding more like you. Dr Gray’s clearly noticed it.’
‘Can you notice it yourself, Sarah?’ asked Bob Gray. ‘Do you feel more able to think things, or more able to find the words to express what you’re thinking?’
I considered the question. ‘I don’t think I feel either of those things. I suppose I just feel more confident. But, I presume that’s what words do, they give you confidence.’
‘Absolutely! Where would we be without our words! Sam, any comments?’
Sam looked up from note-taking. ‘I did notice a change last night but I wasn’t sure whether it was the informal circumstances. But this is great, Sarah.’
I folded my arms. ‘Are you all implying that I’ve spent the last several weeks sounding like a complete cretin?’
Sam laughed. ‘Not exactly, it’s just there’s such a marked change of authority. You said you were fed up with being a victim. I think that realization is influencing the way you express yourself, how you interact with others. You’re more in control, Sarah.’
‘But I still can’t remember from before.’
‘But you are coping with your life as it is now,’ explained Bob Gray. ‘Remembering how to make decisions, how to interact with people, that’s all built up over long years of experience. You lost much of that experience along with your memories. You became a stranger in your own world and over these last few weeks you’ve been striving to get back to where you were before. It probably involved reaching some kind of psychological critical mass.’
‘But, without my past, how can I be a whole person?’
‘All in good time, Sarah. Now that we have you back as a fully-functional person … and I realise how much we need to thank you for that, Matthew … Now we can start to worry about retrieving your past. But, let’s not be too desperate. We can do without most of the past. Most of it we are all free to forget.’
The phrase unnerved me. I looked into Dr Gray’s quiet, blue eyes and tried to decipher any hidden implication behind that statement.
‘Dr Gray, terrible things happened and I need to know I did nothing wrong before I can reclaim my life.’
‘I fully understand that. The improvement in your ability to retain new information is a significant step in that direction. But right now we need to understand the way in which this strategy of your unconscious mind has affected you. So, if it’s OK with you, I’m going to ask Matthew to tell me about the Sarah he has known over the last three weeks compared to the Sarah he knew before. It will give us a clearer picture of the disorder your unconscious mind has levelled upon you. Is that OK with you?’
I nodded my approval, so Bob Gray turned to Matthew. ‘Matthew, enough of the festering silence. Tell us about Sarah. Then and now. You can edit out the more embarrassing details.’
Matthew sat back and folded his arms. ‘It’s all pretty embarrassing. But here goes. From day one: I was in my office …’
Episode Forty-three
I listened to Matthew’s abridged account of our relationship both professional and personal, everything from our first chaotic meeting up to but not including the events of the previous December. A past I was now able to know only through his recollections. I listened to him describe our slow reunion since that supermarket morning. Dr Gray thanked him then asked me if I could single out a moment of pure, unbridled happiness in those last three weeks. I closed my eyes and relived the days one at a time.
‘On Primrose Hill. Our first kiss.’ I opened my eyes and smiled. ‘Our second first kiss.’
‘And there would have been a first first kiss that would have also made you happy?’
‘Yes. Possibly terrified, but undoubtedly happy.’
‘So your mind has …’
‘Stolen that moment as some wretched by-product of expunging my memories.’
‘I suppose if we were military men we might call that collateral damage,’ said Bob Gray. He opened the folder on his lap. ‘Now, Sam has recently interviewed your friend Annabelle …’
‘And you survived?’ mumbled Matthew.
‘It was a telephone interview,’ said Sam. He pulled his chair round. ‘Sarah, from what Annabelle told me and a few other sources, I’ve been able to construct a reasonably thorough timeline for you. But before we look at that I’d like you to show me how you see the period from when you woke in the hospital compared with your time living with your grandmother. But, in particular, I’d like you to show us how you see the period from the time you left your grandmother to the time you woke up in the hospital.’
I looked at Sam’s earnest brown eyes then slowly I shook my head. ‘I don’t see the years between, Sam. If I try to think further back than the clinic, my memories take me straight back to my grandma. But they’re fuzzy memories because they’re so long ago. And I know I ought to remember things. But I don’t.’
‘You’re aware that things are missing?’
‘Yes. Is that important?’
‘It’s another indication of the competence of your mental processing. In some cases of memory loss, the patient attempts to reconcile missing events by inventing something to bridge the gap. It’s a kind of strategy for making the best of available information. And the patient believes these alternative narratives are true. They’re tantamount to false memories. It’s called confabulation. But your brain is not resorting to it. Your mind is erasing your time, but you’re not being fazed by it into patching things together to deny what it’s up to.’
‘Should that make me feel good about myself?’
‘Yes, I think it should,’ said Sam. ‘I think that you have a very competent mind, despite your memory dysfunction. And, right now, I’d like to investigate a particular component of your declarative memory, which we refer to as your autobiographical memory. It determines how you’ve stored details of time and place, along your personal timeline. Is that OK?’ He frowned at my compromised hand. ‘You’re right hand
ed, yes?’
‘Yes!’
‘Just as well. Your counteroffensive might have ruined this entire experiment.’ He handed me a felt tip and a long strip of card, perhaps a metre wide and six inches high, with a bold black line running along its centre. He waited as I balanced it across my lap. ‘OK, this is your timeline. At the moment it’s empty. So would you start by writing your date of birth on the far left of the line and NOW on the far right?’
I did as I was asked.
