A Trick of the Mind

by Penny Hancock

  I ran my eye up and down Patrick’s body.

  ‘Please don’t die,’ I whispered. ‘Please don’t let me have killed you.’

  His chest rose and fell, his breath just audible, his closed lids a delicate pale lilac.

  I wondered what colour his eyes might be when they were open. Brown, I guessed, dark, intriguing brown.

  His full lips were pale and dry. On his chin a neatly clipped, black beard. This part of him, at least, had been spared, I thought. His face was intact.

  I tried to visualise the moment of impact on my car. I recalled the journey for the millionth time. The light fading behind me, darkness up in front. My music up loud and Pepper distracting me for a second – or was it longer?

  A shock ran down my body into my legs. The jolt was quite hard. The car had wobbled, swerved, I’d righted it and driven on, fighting my need to check.

  I could have hit Patrick as I looked at Pepper, caught him, if, say, he’d stepped out from the verge, perhaps waving me down, perhaps hitching a lift. I remembered the jogger then, how I’d barely seen him until I’d almost passed. It was completely possible I had seen no one on the road, because I was looking down when it happened, and hadn’t heard the full impact because Beyoncé had been singing about not wanting to play the broken-hearted girl.

  I visualised it all as I stood there beside him, the impact as he stepped out, losing his foothold, knowing he could do nothing to help himself as he ricocheted into the air, the flipping over, the legs buckling, the head-first crunch onto the tarmac.

  I stood up. I needed to get out. I couldn’t stay here, knowing something no one else in the world knew. Or I could tell someone. Who? I could tell the tall nurse with his skinny legs. What would he care?

  I could go to the police.

  Then other thoughts tumbled in. My friends, all waiting for me to return and entertain them for the weekend. The show this evening at which I was to raise money for Mind. There were important buyers coming.

  And anyway it was insane, wasn’t it?

  There had been nothing but part of a tree on the road, and the bird. That was what had caused the blood on the bonnet.

  I stared at his well-toned body. He was well groomed; neatly clipped sideburns, as well as the beard, and, I noted, über-clean nails. He had tanned skin with a sheen of health on it.

  His lips turned up a little at the corners as if he was dreaming of things that amused him.

  Would he still have that look when he came round and found he’d been knocked over by a stranger?

  I looked about the room.

  I mustn’t be long. Anyone might turn up at any time, ask what the hell I was doing here, a stranger at his bedside. But maybe if I found out who he was, where he was going last night, I would perhaps be able to fit things together, prove it wasn’t me.

  There wasn’t much here. A locker. I opened it. A wallet, packed with credit cards.

  An iPhone. I flicked it on. He didn’t have a pass code, the icons came straight up on the screen. There was his Facebook, impossible to resist a quick peek. I clicked on it.

  This must be him, squinting into the sun. He was in a suit, his arm round a woman. She was Asian-looking, Chinese, Korean maybe.

  He was grinning, creases radiating from the corners of his eyes.

  The woman was smiling adoringly up at him. I examined her. Slim, beautiful, in flimsy black evening clothes and high heels. Behind them, just visible, was a line of deep blue sea.

  His ‘Friends’ list was there, his life in mates in front of my eyes.

  I scrolled down the list. There were a few men standing beside yachts, several were in wetsuits. A couple of tanned, smiling women.

  I had to leave. I put the phone away. I’d take a quick look in his locker then go.

  An expensive-looking watch.

  A receipt in his wallet printed out from the internet, a flight booking receipt. He’d flown back from Corfu in March.

  I closed the wallet.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, taking up his hand, feeling its weight, the black hairs that curled over his knuckles, a chunky ring, not on his wedding finger. The nurse had told me to speak to him, but what to say?

  ‘Please, whatever you do, don’t die,’ I said. ‘It was an accident. I was on my way to Southwold. To my aunt’s house. You might know it, the blue clapboard house on the beach. If you don’t die you could come one day. When you’re better. You and your girlfriend. Do please get better.’ A last plea, it came out with a sob.

  ‘I want you to know I never meant to hit you.’

  The door opened and I swung round.

  A nurse. Small, neat, Filipino.

  I steeled myself, opened my mouth to say I was leaving, but she smiled as she checked Patrick’s monitors and made notes on his charts and ticked things off.

  ‘It was bad luck,’ she said, pulling his sheets straight. Picking up his file from the end of his bed. ‘He’s handsome. But silly boy. Lucky his injuries aren’t worse.’

  ‘Is he . . . is he going to recover?’

  ‘We hope,’ she said. Then she winked. ‘Don’t you worry. You must tell him no more walking in the dark. Impossible for drivers to see you on those dark country roads.’

  ‘Do they know what happened?’ I asked, my voice weak, tremulous.

  I should have gone, but I liked this nurse, there was something comforting about her small neat briskness. She would never get into the kind of mess I’d got into. I imagined her home, a minimalist retreat, with tiny cups and a china teapot of green tea. Clothes hanging on a rack of uniform hangers, ironed, no clutter. I imagined her children, I had children like this in my class. Pretty, clever children – children who played violin and got top marks in maths and were fluent in both their mother tongue and English and often other languages too, who wrote beautifully and were sweet with it. It was a stereotype I was creating, I knew, but for now it soothed me.

  ‘Who found him? Who reported it?’

  ‘Another driver phoned the ambulance. The police are still making enquiries. They have two suspects.’

  She paused. Looked straight at me.

  ‘You must be verr-ry worried. You his girlfriend?’

  I nodded, stupefied.

  ‘He often get in fights?’

  I shrugged. ‘Not usually, no.’

  ‘Not what police think. It was hit-and-run, you know? The car hit and drove on. Shameful! They think it was after a fight. He had alcohol in his system. Witnesses saw him in pub earlier. They think the driver went after him deliberately. But you’re not to worry. Police will sort it all out, they will come back to talk to him when he comes round. They will be in touch.’

  I stared at her, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, wanting to ask more.

  But she nodded and went out as briskly as she’d come in.

  So. There had been a feud, in a pub. Someone had deliberately gone after Patrick, in a drunken rage! It had nothing to do with me.

  It was still awful to imagine this poor man being mown down by some drunken louts, but it meant I could disentangle myself.

  The sun came in, and the room was warm; it was quiet apart from the beeps from the monitors. I wanted to run after the nurse and hug her, thank her for reassuring me. My fear seemed to evaporate. All my limbs went floppy, relaxed, as the crazy thoughts that had been taunting me loosened their hold.

  I didn’t need to go to the police, there was no need to confess to anything.

  The man in the bed was OK anyway, he wasn’t going to die. I would walk out, put this whole crazy incident behind me. No one need know that for twelve hours I’d been obsessed with the insane idea that I might have killed someone.

  But I had to leave. Before someone turned up. Accused me. A stranger by the bedside.

  Probably almost as much a crime in itself as a hit-and-run.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I whispered. ‘I’ll make sure you’re OK. I’ll check the local news. I’m so glad you’re not going to die. It’s all
going to be alright.’

  I picked up my bag.

  I turned round at the door to have one last look at him. My heart jumped a beat.

  His eyes were open.

  I blinked. Took a step away. But no, it must have been a trick of the light, for they were as they had been when I’d come in, his eyelids shut, smooth, the black eyelashes curling gently against his cheek.

  I turned my back on him and pushed open the doors.

  ‘Hey,’ came a voice from behind me. ‘Let me see you.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I bolted. Down the corridor past the nurses’ station, ignoring the demands to disinfect my hands, not stopping to speak to the nurse, Tom, who was rifling through files, and whose eyes I imagined burning into me as the door to the ward banged behind me and I leapt down the three flights of stairs.

  I don’t know how I got to my car. But within minutes I was accelerating out of the hospital car park, and driving fast back out of the town. The sky was huge and yellow and relentless, I felt raw beneath it, exposed. I wanted to get among tall buildings, among cramped streets. I wanted to be in London, people of every nationality hurrying past the windows, each in their own world, not looking at anyone else. Where everyone was anonymous.

  When the man in the bed had spoken those words to me I’d panicked, left without turning to face him. If he shouted out that he’d never seen me before, what would I do? What if he asked the nurses who I was, what I’d been doing there? I mustn’t think any more about it.

  I clutched the steering wheel, leaning forward to make sure there was no chance I might hit anything else by accident. How was I going to get through the exhibition tonight, entertaining my friends, Louise and her boyfriend and the public? I’d have to be the sparkling hostess when I had this new knot of anxiety deep in my stomach, that I might be accused – if not of running the man over – then of being some sort of imposter. But I had no choice. I’d been gone for over an hour. I couldn’t stay away any longer.

  Southwold was busy. It was Saturday and day-trippers had driven in, their cars filling the parking spaces along the streets. Groups ambled along the pavements, stopping to look in shop windows, to gasp at the price of property in the estate agents or to buy overpriced cheese from the delis, or designer sailing wear from the clothes chains. I parked near the church and walked down to the promenade.

  I stood leaning on the white railings. I could see my friends and Pepper down on the beach. I could see myself at six years old, sitting on one of the posts along the groyne. Picking at stones that had got wedged into holes in the wooden pillars by the tides, in a hopeless quest to get them all out. Far away to my left, beyond the lower promenade with its pastel-coloured beach huts, was the pier.

  I looked at my friends caught eternally in the sunshine of a spring Saturday, not knowing that this moment was passing even as they threw the ball to and fro. They thought everything was perfect. They had no idea how quickly what we cherish and look forward to can switch to something dark and frightening and out of our control. But I was their host. I was responsible for making this weekend good for them. And the man was alive. He was unlikely to ask who I was. He’d only seen my back, so everything was alright.

  I went down the steps, between the steep banks of brambles and dog rose and nettles to the promenade with its pretty beach huts, then took my boots and socks off and ran down the rest of the concrete stairs to the beach.

  Feeling the cool sand beneath my feet, I walked over to my friends. Pepper ran towards me and jumped up and I picked him up and kissed his warm fur.

  I would try from now on to forget about the hospital. It was unlikely anything would come of my visit. You had to live in the present, as my yoga teacher was always reiterating. Be mindful of now. I would devote myself to being a good hostess for my friends. To the Private View tonight. Tomorrow I’d help Chiara make breakfast for everyone. Kippers, as Liam had suggested, with lemon, and poached eggs and slices of that lovely three-grain bread you could buy at the deli.

  Later we could take the walk over the footbridge to the other side of the estuary, to Walberswick, and have coffee in the café there. I would begin again. I would have the weekend I intended to have when I first invited everyone down here.

  I stood welcoming people in the doorway of the gallery. The glass of Prosecco that Valerie thrust into my hands as soon as I arrived gave me a warm glow. The incident with Patrick had gone distant, ethereal. The hospital visit, too, had faded, seemed unreal. I would leave it like that, a tiny aberration, and move on.

  ‘Your pictures are looking fantastic, come and see.’

  I followed Valerie through the whitewashed ex-chapel, arched windows at either end letting in bright, white, seaside light.

  The paintings were set off by the space. I could hardly believe they were mine.

  ‘I love your idea, using these magnets to hang them. Very cool,’ she said.

  ‘It’s what everyone’s doing in Oz,’ said Louise, standing beside me.

  Valerie said, ‘They look great, don’t they? I like things on board, unframed. And they’re certainly in good company.’

  One or two of the other artists sold through up-market galleries in London. I knew for a fact that one had a painting in the Tate. I’d been chosen to show my work among long-established artists. I felt a twinge of pride. If only the other people I loved and cared about were here. Aunty May, of course. But Dad too, trapped by his agoraphobia to the confines of his little studio flat in Greenwich. My brother Ben, off on some business trip. My mum, tied down by work.

  It was busy but quiet. People moved about with catalogues, murmuring. They looked wealthy and middle-aged, well dressed in that casual, we-have-natural-good-taste way. Understated, but very expensive fabrics. I smiled. Shook people’s hands. Answered their questions about my inspiration (rivers, mostly the Thames, though I’d started working on the Blyth recently), where I worked (no one could believe I didn’t have a studio but worked on the sitting-room floor in our Mile End flat), my themes (the boundaries between land and sea, water and sky, light and dark, life and death, layers beneath the surface) and who my influences were. I mentioned one or two people who had also, in different ways, taken inspiration from rivers – Alexander Pemberton, Frank Creber – and used layering and texture as part of their works – Andrew Taylor, Paul Klee, Rothko.

  My most revered artists? Turner, and Whistler. My all-time favourite painting of the moment I told them was Whistler’s Battersea Reach.

  As I stood and chatted, Larry came past on his bike. He stopped outside the window and pressed up against the glass. He spotted me, pointed, and said something. Watching the big unformed movements of his mouth I guessed he was talking about May being gone again, but it was impossible to hear through the window, his breath steaming up the glass. He moved to the entrance, stood in the doorway, and repeated, ‘Lady gone. Not coming back.’

  A middle-aged couple edged past him and he repeated whatever he was saying, pointing at me. They shrugged, smiled, and moved on through the door.

  I turned my back on the window and when I next looked, Larry had gone.

  Most people were examining the labels before they looked at the pictures. It’s often the name that captures the buyers first. They read it, then look at the painting, trying to work out in what way it warrants the title.

  Left to me I wouldn’t have bothered with them. The work, I believed, and Finn would certainly argue, should speak for itself. None of my works were exactly figurative, though they were based on scenes, and there were allusions to shapes, forms. I allowed these to develop until I reached a point of resolution. But the galleries liked titles because they sold. People wanted to feel they’d bought something that they understood or recognised. They also loved to buy a painting that suggested somewhere they had been or something they had experienced. Anything with local place names sold.

  Valerie came over to me about half an hour in.

  She leant her head towards mine and s
poke in an undertone, nodding towards a man in a suit with a petite silver-haired woman.

  ‘They asked me to introduce you. Come on.’

  They were looking at my picture that was based on the creek over near May’s house, where it was broad and flat, where the sky was massive and the horizon melded into the edge of the water. I’d begun it in the winter during one of my visits after May died, trying to express this blurring of boundaries, the water reflecting the sky, the sky reaching right down to the water’s surface, the sense of an underlying menace beneath the beauty. I had used the same blues and silvers Whistler employed, and it was a painting I was quietly proud of.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ Valerie asked.

  ‘Sure,’ the man said. ‘And perhaps you could help, we were wondering about the starting price of this.’

  ‘This is Ellie, the artist. I’ll leave you to chat while I fetch the list,’ Valerie said.

  ‘How are you?’ He was grey-haired, but his skin was smooth. He seemed to shimmer as if everything he wore was made of the best-quality silk in that indeterminate shade of grey that speaks of exquisite taste. ‘So you’re the artist. Wow! We were admiring this piece.’

  The woman, who had a pleasantly lined face, pink lipstick, and twinkling turquoise eyes, took my hand. ‘You’re a very talented young woman,’ she said. ‘We’ve picked you out. My husband runs a gallery in his restaurant in New York. We’d like to have a chat with you sometime, could we have your card?’

  ‘Ellie?’

  Valerie had come back with the price list, gave me an almost imperceptible nod, and moved away to greet another gaggle of well-dressed people who had just arrived.

  ‘We’ll put in a bid for this. But we wondered whether you took commissions.’

  The man flipped a card out of a calf leather wallet and put it into my hand. ‘Here are my contact details.’

  I groped in my bag for my diary, where I kept cards like his. It wasn’t there. I slipped it into my purse instead.