The Possessions of Doctor Forrest

by Richard T. Kelly

  On returning from the store I got out tools, replaced the rain-rotted boards on the side of the shed, painted them sea-green to match the main bungalow. The elements must not be allowed to take a hold. And this place is going to have to be sold shortly. To Tessa it will seem more redundant than ever. For me it’s proving a valuable bolthole, but I can’t let the respite fool me. I am taking the holiday we were meant to have, or never meant to, but there must be an end to it, and soon.

  Dungeness has barely changed since my boyhood. The Magnox power stations rose up, of course – symbols of an ominous future, it seemed, but now history looks to be turning the page on them. There are one or two hyper-modern beach houses, but the overriding mood is still that of the reserve, the mini-railway, the St George pub. As today turned into a bright, chilly day I took a walk down the long shingle beach. It wasn’t long before I was reminded how tiring is the trudge on foot over stone. My mouth was dry, I’d brought no water. I saw a raven perched on one of the plant’s pylons, as if surveying his terrain, which no one would call picture-pretty. There was a sunlit eeriness to the shimmer from the miles of pebbles, amplified by the pulse of the nuclear reactor.

  But once I was over the ridge and onto the grass-way it felt good and reviving to be rambling through ragwort and thistle, rosebay and foxglove. I spotted a wading curlew, a flock of sooty shearwaters flew east above me. My head must have been with the birds because I was startled by the distant crack of gunfire: I’d strayed a good deal nearer to the MoD range than I’d planned. Still, I don’t hold with the incomer’s view that barbed wire and angry KEEP OUT signage spoil the views. Like everything else here, they suit my mood, keep secrets just like me, assert there are recesses and forbidden zones in this life, and these should be left undisturbed.

  It was past 3 when I came back round by the sea: some desultory fishing going on from the shore, a few boats out. The wind seemed light, until it bit at the skin. But all sea air is good air, and it dispelled from my nostrils the slight lingering odour of marsh rot. For some time I stood and stared at the slow-turbid, steely grey-green seething of the sea – its formidable chill. Then sunlight cut through the overcast canopy, making the clouds into an aureole, giving the water a silvery green-blue aspect, like the fleeting shade of a mermaid’s tail. Above us now was a fine English fire-in-the-heavens sky. I was lifted by it. This place is medicine to me as it mightn’t be to others.

  Nothing can erase or redeem the dreadfulness of recent weeks. But removing myself, taking this air, is proving some sort of cure. Out here I had thought I might review my case-notes and journal, seek some perspective. Today, though, I feel better to be free of them. Just to be sleeping at night, in a bed – I bless that peace. Not to feel that Grey’s newest gnawing theory is about to bite me.

  The sea says ‘Afresh, afresh’ … Wasn’t that what Larkin wrote? For me the notion of retraining, starting over, has begun to exert quite a hold. I will be gone from here before the week is out, yes – but I have learned something: I can get by, as a single man, a poor man if needs be. Though an ex-husband, I will be a father still. And from this staging post I’ll move forward. The failed life behind me was, arguably, not meant to be. The road ahead will be difficult, but I intend to find a new way of living.

  September 30th

  Extraordinary to say, I have a guest – I’ve made a friend. This morning I half-expected to find her gone, but I just snuck a look into the room and she is still bound up in sheets, sleeping soundlessly. Strange, how things work … Elsewhere, hugely to my relief, my other (unwanted) visitors of last night have vanished entirely from the boys’ room – scattered by the light, I suppose.

  It began at nightfall when I felt the pull of the pub but, unable to face the thought of my Moth-Man again, decided to try another hole, The Staff up in Lydd. I put on my greatcoat, stepped out. The moon was full, radiant, sliced by a swift-moving cloud, the night sky splendid with stars – there was something awesome about those black fathoms, the cold darkness felt somehow luxurious to me, full of promise. I tramped over unlit grassland for a stretch, had no torch, and of course one gets started by the merest sound: rabbits thumping their hind legs, the rending cries of a fox. Yet the speed with which my eyes adjusted made me feel pleasingly nocturnal, capable.

  Fifty paces from the pub door I saw the young woman was suffering unwanted attention from a drunken, boorish bloke. ‘All I want is a goodnight kiss,’ was his refrain, but there was no playfulness in how he was pawing at her, or her stung cries. I am not a physically courageous man. But there was something in me tonight, I felt a powerful irritation, and it carried me straight into the fray. All I did, in fact, was impersonate Grey – plant my feet as if to knit my height and girth into something implacable. ‘You’re mistaken,’ I actually said, this in reply to his assertion that he’d rip my fucking head off. But it worked. He kept swearing murder at me, but that was from ten yards away, then twenty. I felt a flush of success: the man with nothing to lose.

  The girl was shivering all over, as she might perish, even though she wore a long black riding coat buttoned to the neck and a scarf like a cowl. But she thanked me profusely – dark-eyed, Slavic accent, said her name was Senka. I offered her a brandy, she accepted but said she didn’t want to re-enter the bar. So we sat out at a trestle. She picked cigarettes gladly from my pack, drank her brandy like a guy, in short swigs. I admit I looked her over as we broke the ice. Late twenties, I’d say. Very black unkempt hair, her hands always in it. Lips like bruised fruit. Her nails need care.

  I asked her a few concerned questions, she confessed to being in dire straits. She came over from Kosovo, where her family were poor, their lives perilous. ‘I wanted— better life. But is not …’

  ‘You have regrets?’ I asked her.

  ‘You would not believe …’ Her laughter had a certain music, her smile wise for her years. Clearly she’s educated, her English only slightly broken. She emigrated in the company of a boyfriend, whose idea it had been, but who ‘let her down’ once they reached London. Her presence illegal, she struggled for meaningful paid work, the migrant’s plight. The cost of London living appalled her; people seemed mean and distrustful. (‘I see in your face, you know this,’ she said, noting my nods. ‘Because you are a good man …’) Alone she had struck out in the rough direction of Dover. A job in a meat-processing factory near here has been paying her £130 a week. Her real wish is to care for the elderly, but even there she can’t get a break. Meantime she is too poor, and I sense, too ashamed (by ‘failure’) to return home, though she misses it. ‘I have done nothing,’ is how she puts it. There’s a sadness about her: a wounded sort of a girl, for sure. I asked if she missed her boyfriend. She shrugged. ‘Everybody wants someone to care for them … To me you don’t look so happy. You are alone?’ I nodded.

  ‘A pity, to be alone. Is not a life.’

  ‘It may be my natural state,’ I replied, rising to get us refills.

  The crux we came to is that she can no longer afford to pay her rent, and is actively afraid of her vindictive-sounding landlord. Her loitering in the cold and dark had been over the question of whether she should even try to get readmission to her digs. I’m old enough to know when I’m being played, and this wasn’t such a moment. I told her I had a spare room at the cottage. She accepted in a pained way that spoke well of her. We must have been simpatico, at any rate, for when the barmaid came out to collect glasses she chivvied us, ‘Move along, lovebirds …’ I gave my weariest smile; Senka appeared mortified. So I was reminded to behave, confirmed in my Samaritan impulse.

  Back at the cottage I offered coffee but she was happy I open some wine. I put on Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, Boulez’s version, which, to my delight, she identified. When I apologised for the darker shades of the piece, she shrugged. ‘You have dark in you, I have dark. Is how we are. Like the turning of the earth …’

  She curled back into the sofa, her animal-like enjoyment of the fire’s warmth fully evident. And
we talked for some hours into the night – or at least, I did. After several drinks I felt the effect – I was sliding somewhat, I suppose my tongue got loosened on the topic of Tessa and the divorce. But it was so good to offload. I sensed an intuitive sympathy for my troubles, real fellow-feeling in her dark-eyed gaze. No doubt I pontificated, even self-exculpated a bit, but I’m sure I was honest about my own failings too.

  I never lost my manners – the coffee table between us, on which, in due course, I set down coffee. I suppose it would have been easy, uncontroversial, to sit beside her. But I wasn’t going there. I wanted to preserve our fragile connection. Finally she dropped off to sleep. I stared awhile, fascinated by this enigmatic thing on my couch. Then I got up, squared round the boys’ room, changed one narrow bed, drew the curtains, opened a window, folded one of Tessa’s plain cotton nightdresses. Gently I shook her awake, showed her through, left her to it, dead-locked front and back doors. I must say I fell asleep swiftly and soundly. But I was awakened by sharp cries before 2am, and I hurtled from the bed into next door.

  The kids’ old nightlight was on, bathing one corner of the room in ultraviolet blue, colouring the shadows. I could see Senka’s alarm but couldn’t understand it. Then her eyes darted upward and I followed. The ceiling was dense with dark blotches – then the blotches twitched, flitted – then the whole effect appeared to crumble, and the air was full of small darting shapes, the paperlike flit of wings. My cheek was brushed, I felt a furred touch on my neck, loathsome. Moths! I grabbed Senka’s hand and fairly wrenched her from the room,

  I offered to take the sofa but she shook her head. So we slept together, but chastely apart, in mine. For a while I lay uncomfortably awake, unsettled as much by the squat belching of frogs outside, increasingly loud and aggressive. Even after dropping off, I stirred at one point, saw her sat at the end of the bed, her shoulders twitching, but I thought it wisest to play dead. At last, before dawn, came that profound sleep I’ve rediscovered out here, just like an old friend.

  * * *

  Curious. Senka disappeared late this morning, resurfaced for a time, but has now gone off again without warning. This time, at least, I saw her picking a way into the distance across the shingle. But I believe she’ll be back. This morning she gobbled porridge, gulped hot coffee, Tessa’s ecru dressing gown pulled close. She seemed to appreciate a hot shower. But I only turned my back to find myself alone again.

  I washed up, read awhile, glanced for the first time in years at Lacan’s Ecrits (a scratch in my mind about our ‘ineffable stupid existence’), then flicked through some Princeton tome of Tessa’s on magic in medieval Europe. I successfully fought the urge to switch on the Blackberry. Then, around 2pm I looked out and saw her sitting on the deck outside the French doors to my bedroom, smoking one of my Gitanes. I asked where she’d been. ‘Wandering,’ said she (!). She seems sincerely not to want to ‘put me out’. And yet there she was. There remains no obvious solution to her housing problem, save for me.

  In the silence I suggested a drive, a foray, since she’s seen nothing of the regional sights. She was unenthused by Snargate Church or the Martello towers at Dymchurch but seemed persuaded by the ancient woods at Blean. She wanted to drive us, though, and I let her, thus had to watch a little uneasily as she took a remarkable glee in gunning the old Mazda up to 80–90mph. I tried, though, not to watch her too closely.

  At Blean we took a walk of several miles. It was sunny on the open acid grassland. I pointed out a nuthatch and a song thrush. Senka told me most keenly of how she thought my living conditions ideal. ‘What you have is so good, a place apart, to hide away, be free.’ I had to make her aware, as vaguely as I could, that I can’t hide from my problems, will be leaving by Friday and, sadly, cannot entrust her with the keys. Still, I did try to engage her in my various inchoate plans of ‘starting over’ in London, also to suggest that for her, too, this might prove easier second time round. But it just didn’t seem to pique her interest.

  After a while she drifted ahead of me, between the veteran oaks and silver birches, picked her way over a felled tree and wandered down a narrow path, out of the sunshine into the dark shadow of the woodland canopy. Here and there were lingering patches of anemone japonica, an occasional purple orchid. But the leaves were peeling away, horse chestnuts all round, livid fungi on dead wood. All of a sudden I’d lost sight of Senka. Whereupon the muffled, enclosed hush was unnerving to me. With only thin shafts of light piercing the gloom of the wood, those towering trees took on rather more ‘character’ than I cared for. I turned and Senka was right behind me. A jape, I guess, though her expression was scarcely cheery. Reflexively I touched her face. She lowered and closed her eyes. I knew I’d gone too far. We got back on the path and wandered back to the car in silence, her head still worryingly low, I felt.

  I know you think you have nobody, I wanted to say to her. But it won’t always be that way.

  October 1st

  Last night there was a fog across the moon, this morning I felt there’s been a fog in my head this past forty-eight hours. I woke in a state of sickened realisation, as if I’d dreamt it. She had gone. Last night when she’d climbed into her side I’d dared to curl up behind her, but felt her tense. She murmured that she was still thinking, was troubled, about what we’d discussed this evening, our past mistakes, how they’ve lived with us. I had mentioned, briefly and partially, an ex-patient for whose death I considered myself half-responsible. I edited my account, for obvious reasons – edited out even that patient’s name. And yet I heard her say, over her shoulder: ‘I am sorry for your Tom Dole.’ In the moment I was merely irritated, thwarted. This morning I am frightened.

  Other things have flooded in, unbidden. Her face – where I think, in fact, I’ve seen it before. It’s crazy. But I have – a sense, a suspicion – of whom I may be dealing with here.

  I tried to reach Grey, tried Livy too, no success – inexplicable. I even walked outside, actively searched for her, really wanting to pre-empt, and by daylight, what seems an inevitable confrontation – wanting it at least on my terms. But there was nothing and no one in sight along the shore, save for a catharacta skua feasting on some unfortunate gull, its black cap and long bill dipping voraciously into the mess between its claws. Hating the harshness of the bird’s gloating cry, I hastened back across the stones. Now I wait.

  * * *

  She’s in there now. Whoever she is. Whatever.

  I sat in The Ship tonight until kick-out, just for human company, one last time. On re-entering the cottage I found her at the living room table in front of my glowing laptop, my folders and files opened – my archive, will and testament. It seemed she had lifted the spare keys; seemed she’d done much I was unaware of. Her hair was washed and shining, her lips reddened, she’d made free use of Tessa’s closet, raided the long black jersey dress I bought for her fortieth. The Forrest mask lay in a coil at the corner of the table.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said.

  ‘I have been reading,’ she answered, brazen.

  ‘So I see.’

  Ignoring my computer screen she picked up the church pamphlet foisted on me in Greatstone the other day, and she read aloud:

  ‘For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me …’

  ‘Sad,’ she said, setting down the pamphlet. ‘But I am glad to see you.’

  ‘I’ve seen you before, Senka, you know that? Not in the flesh, I don’t think. But … a patient of mine, he made a bust, a clay bust, of a woman’s face. His name is David Tregaskis. Do you know him?’

  She tilted her head, nodded. ‘I knew him once. Another life.’

  ‘Tell me something else. Were you ever – did you ever go walking on Hampstead Heath, with my friend Robert Forrest?’

  ‘Oh … I don’t know that I did. But I may
have done. It’s not impossible …’ Her English, if still accented, was now flawless.

  ‘Where is he now? Robert, where is he? I think you know, don’t you?’

  She studied me. ‘How badly do you want to know? How great would be your need? As great as mine?’

  ‘Understand, I’ve not got anything here. I’m broke, there’s nothing you can … extort from me, it’s gone.’

  ‘All I want from you, Steven, is this shelter. Not forever. Just a while longer. I have nowhere else to go.’

  ‘Then tell me where Robert Forrest is.’

  ‘Haven’t you guessed?’

  ‘He’s alive?’

  A long low exhalation came out of her, she shrugged with closed eyes, as to say the question was somehow – ambiguous. I felt my anger, so long suppressed, rising. ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t play games. Just tell me, or get out. Tell me. You’ll get nothing more from me but I’ll have the truth. If I have to shake it out of you.’

  I did not feel in control of myself. And I was sure I saw real apprehension in her eyes. The silence lasted. The room seemed to have become unpleasantly clammy. She was toying with the top button of her dress. Feeling my nails in my palms I unclenched my fists.

  ‘It feels close,’ I muttered finally.

  ‘Closer than you think.’

  Rain had begun to fall audibly on the roof, visible on the streaked glass of the French doors. I went, closed the curtains, feeling a tumult inside that was making my legs weak. When I turned back she was unbuttoning the dress, not adeptly, trying to keep her eyes on mine, tight as the purse of her lips.