“I don’t know how your father could have done that.” I stared across the room and the world seemed a slightly different place than it had before, slightly more tainted somehow because I had once again been reminded of the horrible things people were capable of.
“He wasn’t a very nice man,” she said with a shrug and a slight shake of her head.
I looked back at her and saw acceptance of what her life had been, of the horrors she had been through. She smiled at me, a genuine smile this time that lifted her eyes.
“I take after my mother,” she said and then she leaned over and pulled me into a hug. She rubbed my back as if trying to give me comfort, as if I were the one who had been damaged, as though I were the one who needed to forgive the wrongs she had suffered. I hugged her back and then we sat for a while in silence. Her story filled the space between us until it seemed, in that moment at least, that there was nothing left to say.
Chapter 48 ~ Lacey
She stands in the bare room and looks out of the window at the lane that joins the last two houses. Sometimes she stands here and the walls feel light and welcoming around her. Sometimes, as now, there is an emptiness that chills her to the bone.
She looks around and sees the dust across the furniture. She sees fingermarks where someone rested their hands and carried that dust away with them. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The room is empty and she knows that if she turns to the bed she will see it unused, unmade. Her son will not be there because he never was and some of the time she knows that. And even though she can see him in her mind’s eye, even though she knows exactly what he looks like and what he sounds like when he laughs, in lucid moments like this she knows that he has never been more than her imagination. He is the little boy who never existed.
She thinks about Rachel and the conversation they had that morning. Whenever she looks at the younger woman she sees dark eyes full of kindness and compassion. If she’d had a daughter, Rachel is what she would have wished for. How sad for them both that they had to grow up without loving families. She thinks about it until the edges of her thoughts grow insignificant. She draws patterns in the dust with her finger until most of it is gone, until there is only a thin trail that looks like smoke and then she turns to leave the room.
“See you later, Charlie,” she says and to her ears her voice sounds tinny and loud; it falls through the air like the dust brushed from her fingertips. She doesn’t expect an answer as she pulls the door closed behind her.
As she walks down the corridor she thinks of the horror on the younger woman’s face as she shared the story of the operation. She thinks of eyes open wide and dirty fingernails and a year that ceased to exist. That lost year is gone forever, fallen into the dark space left behind when they broke through the fragile bone and stole her memory. She thinks about what she shared with Rachel, how she said she wasn’t sure what happened during that time and her conscience stabs at her because she knows there is an element of a lie in what she said. Had Rachel seen it in the way that Lacey’s eyes slid to the floor?
It is true she doesn’t remember. Not all of it, certainly not the immediate aftermath when her eyes were surely blackened and her mind woefully absent. The beginning of that year she does not see at all through her own eyes but through the words of another, someone she remembers vaguely, someone she knows she had seen before. When did she find those words, black and smooth against paper yellowed with time? Sometime after he was gone and the house was heavy and empty around her.
In the bedroom that she had rarely set foot in before, the bedroom she had stripped and painted and made her own, she had found it all those years ago: the ledger with the torn page, the ragged edge, the smudged ink; worn and used as though it had been read over and over again. She had pored over it, followed the leaning script with her fingers as if she could absorb the memories that way, as if they would become part of her if she touched them. And in those pages she had read the story of her lost year. Those pages with the front sheet that stated boldly: Miss Lacey Carmichael - Record of Convalescence.
How odd it was to read about herself in the third person, how strange to be told of things she had no recollection of. Her name a sharp reminder that the book was her story, her days, a fraction of her almost complete life and yet the words themselves seemed little more than discarded clothing, ill fitting and forgotten. She had been afraid at first to read further, to discover who she was, what she had become.
How many entries were there in the beginning that recorded ‘no change’, the words surrounded by a blank expanse of paper? They had appeared daily at first, after the initial entry that informed her that she had been vegetative, unresponsive, and incapable of independent movement. But after a while they had become a weekly entry as if the writer had become bored repeating the same words over and over again, ‘no change’. She had frowned at them as if her displeasure were enough to force those words to curve around on themselves and say something different, something better.
How many hours had she poured over those pages and looked for variations in the script, mistakes, a drop of ink that changed the landscape so that it looked different from the others that said exactly the same thing? How many similar pages did she turn before the story changed and became one of improvement?
‘Lacey responded to my presence today. I noticed that her eyes were open and they followed me across the room as I set about her bed bath. The changes are subtle but noticeable. She seems more aware somehow. And, rather obscurely, I am more aware of her being in the room with me.’
And not long after that:
‘Lacey sat up today. She still does not move independently but I held her hands and pulled her upwards and there was little resistance. Once sitting she remained so, she did not fall backwards and return to a laying position. She remained seated until I guided her to lie back down.’
She hurries to her bedside table and finds the ledger and with shaking hands she opens the pages part of the way through. The leaves fall open as though to a much-visited page. She does not look at those earlier entries, at those moments that are like a stuck gramophone going over and over the same worn furrow. She moves forwards to where the words stretch into sentences and onwards into paragraphs that paint a scene that she cannot remember. The words dance before her eyes, crowd around her and mix up in the confusion of her awareness, until she cannot recall if the images they paint are memories that truly belong to her, or not. She is a puppet dancing at the whim of a book that tells the tale of a life she has lost.
Her hands shake as she forces herself to carefully turn the pages. She is afraid that she will damage them, that the book will become worthless, broken, more like the real woman than the paper copy that taunts her with knowledge she does not possess. If she loses this, what then? She knows that after a while it will all be gone again. She will remember nothing of that time. Without the script in front of her she will lose completely the part of her that she never knew. The thought makes her so afraid that she gasps at the air as if drowning. She already forgets so much. She doesn’t want to lose this too, this part of her that is not her, this part of her that is someone else.
Turn the page, turn the page.
‘Lacey continues to improve in some ways. If I take her hand and guide her to her feet she can stand adequately, though she is inclined to tremble a little as though her muscles have atrophied. Because of this I make certain that she receives exercise of some kind every day. This usually involves being led by the hand around the house. She takes the stairs with relative ease and will continue to move if there is a gentle pull on her hand or wrist. However, Lacey stops moving altogether if her limb is released. Only time will tell if she will regain her ability to move independently.’
She lifts her hand in front of her eyes and wriggles her fingers slowly, close enough to her face that the digits blur, becoming doubled. Time told, she thinks to herself, time told and I am fine, look. She cannot resist using those fingers, the ones that move independently
, to press at the skin on her face, to feel the sinking in, the softness. And she wonders how much time passed before she could do this, before she could move on her own. She thinks that she could count through the pages and that she could work it out for herself but she is afraid to do so. She is afraid because then she will know for sure how long it was that she was at the mercy of someone else. She will see the bend and stretch of the helpless little puppet, the wires that held her up, the hands that controlled them. She will feel the insidious fear coil through her that she was ever that person. That she could become that person again. It is a fear that sometimes jolts her awake at night.
‘Lacey’s physical condition continues to improve week by week. She is stronger in herself and indeed now when I lead her around, I feel some measure of resistance in her movements. I take this as a good sign and it allows me some positivity about her continued recovery.’
She skips through page after page, turning them quickly as again she sees herself stall and stagnate on the paper, no change - no change. And then she comes to an entry that she stares at through the fleshy pads of her fingers, like a horror film that she doesn’t want to look at but she cannot turn away and she feels herself begin to rock back and forth, one hand across her eyes, the other pressed to her chest trying to slow her quickened heartbeat.
‘My prior concern for Lacey’s ability to regain her independence has now been replaced by something else altogether. Lacey is a perfectly capable helper around the house and does as she is asked with few reminders. Many of her movements appear automatic and stiff but despite this she is very helpful and in this way she is a positive asset. However, Lacey appears to have lost any autonomy that she previously possessed. She does as asked but no more and if the request is deficient of any important information, Lacey seems unable to complete the task requested.
I am also increasingly concerned about Lacey’s lack of emotional response. This was highlighted in depth to me today when we both witnessed a scene that should have caused some distress. One of our patients went into labour today and I took Lacey with me to the labour room to assist if need be. After a reasonably lengthy and arduous labour the tragic infant was stillborn. The young mother was clearly distressed and the situation was indeed upsetting for all of us, however, Lacey did not respond in any way. She continued to stare at the young woman on the bed until Lacey herself was led from the room.’
The words push at her memory, nudging her to remember, to see clearly. She feels them crowding her, making her claustrophobic. But the images are not lucid, the spaces between are blank, faded and she screws her eyes shut tight as she tries to force the images forward. Tension bands across her temples as she pleads with her damaged cells to divulge the awful pitiful images that the words describe. But all she can remember, all she can see, is a blanket and a tiny still blue hand.
She snaps the book closed and thrusts it back into its drawer. She knows the rest of the book almost by heart, she can see the words clearly against her closed eyes. The entries tell her of long-term memory loss, impaired judgement. They tell her that she suffers from time and place disorientation, confusion, and her mouth twists into a sad, ironic smile.
She doesn’t have to look at any more of the pages to know that shortly afterwards the books memories merged with her own. That the words marched from the pages to join with the images that belonged only to her, that she is no longer seeing that time in her life through someone else’s eyes. She knows when the written word catches up with her. She remembers returning home to a different world, a world where she does as she is told, where she sees the satisfaction on her father’s face. She speaks when she is spoken to, does as she is asked. She is the perfect little daughter who never puts a foot wrong. She wonders if her father went to his grave believing that he had done the right thing.
Feeling drained, she slowly makes her way down the stairs and into the kitchen. She sees the two teacups near the sink and as she washes them she thinks some more about the woman next door and the little card with the numbers on. She feels tears damp against her cheek and berates herself for them, feeling silly that she is crying when she isn’t sad. She dries her hands on the tea towel and takes a bowl of scraps out to the chickens; they greet her excitedly and their voices wash over her. She has done these chores so often that she no longer has to think about them, which is good because her thoughts are elsewhere as she puzzles over what move to make next.
When she is finished she stands and stares at the telephone. She wonders what she should do, what she can do. She takes in the shiny curve of the receiver, the roundness of the enlarged buttons. She lightly strokes her finger along the edge of it, thinking, thinking. Finally she opens her address book to the right page and lifts the receiver to her ear. Dialling the number carefully she hears the ringing on the other end followed by a greeting. She begins to speak.
Ashes to ashes.
Chapter 49 ~ Rachel
The days passed slowly, becoming average, routine. The rain came often to wash clean the fields and leaves. I learned to breathe more softly, with less urgency. The hectic pace of the city faded from my blood and was replaced with a calm that became evident in the somnambulant flow of my paintings. Somehow when I took more time to relax, more time to pause, I became more productive. Jane was thrilled.
In between time in the studio I shopped and cleaned, I went for walks across Dartmoor and never failed to be astonished by the landscape that stretched, dramatic and sharp, before me. Father Thomas called round for a visit under the pretence of checking that Lacey was okay. He was a jovial man who sounded pompous but wasn’t. He had thinning grey hair, a small stature and a smile in his eyes. Over tea he asked if I would be joining the congregation. I declined, somewhat embarrassed, and explained that I had little belief in God.
He smiled, “Oh I don’t care about that, Rachel, I just need to get a few more arses on the pews.”
I laughed, appreciating his honesty. I told him I would think about it and both of us knew that I wouldn’t, but he accepted the pretence with good humour and a smile and that was fine.
I saw Lacey fairly often during those days. I did little chores for her, taking my grass trimmer to her lawn and cutting her hedges back. She rewarded me with eggs and simple friendship. I found an easy contentment about my life that had been lacking for a long time and I relaxed into it, finding a measure of peace and ease of being.
One night I had finished painting long after the sun had gone down. I was scrubbing my hands at the kitchen sink, watching swirls of green and brown spiral around the plughole before disappearing, when there was a knock at the door. My heart stayed slow and steady as I reached for the tea towel, I had become used to Lacey’s lack of awareness regarding the time and I was often up late anyway.
I glanced up at the clock as I dried my hands hurriedly and saw it was almost midnight. I opened the front door and was greeted by a wide smile like a child’s.
“Have you seen it?” she asked breathlessly, her voice tinged with awe.
My mind raced through possibilities but came up empty. “Seen what?”
She leaned forwards and grabbed my hand, pulling me outside into a clear night. I followed her, smiling and curious, as she led me down my path into the lane and up into her own garden where the house stood in total darkness. She stopped and turned her face to the sky.
“Look!”
I followed her gaze upwards, towards a sky liberally scattered with stars and constellations. Here in the garden the sky looked beautiful, startling and I told her so. She gave my hand a squeeze and I could feel the shake in her arm as though she could hardly contain her response.
“It’s not that, just wait,” she told me, her eyes still fixed on the sky. She was holding her breath. She gestured again and I turned back to the stars, and as I did so a shooting star blazed across the darkness and fizzed out to nothing. I felt her jump up and down next to me.
“Did you see it?” she asked and I nodded. “Wait, wait, wait
, there’ll be more.”
We stood there for more than an hour, watching the sky as the stars moved around us. Our necks became stiff and the night’s chill seeped up through the ground, into our feet and higher. Subconsciously we moved to stand closer together as we watched the meteor shower light up the dark dome above us. Lacey’s enthusiasm was contagious and I felt myself start and thrill at every bright line that left a residual image on my retinas.
Soon enough though, the chill of the night became more obvious than the natural firework display above us and as one, it seemed, we began to move our feet more and fidget against it. Eventually we looked away from the sky and at each other.
“Thank you for coming to get me,” I said and she smiled at me across the darkness.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
I nodded and gave her a hug before saying that I had to go to bed, it was getting late.
“Goodnight, sweet dreams,” she said as I began to head up the path, as if I was a child and she was tucking me in. It made me smile more and I turned back to return the sentiment. After I had done so I saw her pass her hand across her forehead.
“I’ve just remembered,” she said, “I was wondering if you’d be able to give me a lift into Exeter the day after tomorrow? I have an appointment in the morning.”
“Of course. Maybe afterwards we could grab a bit of lunch?”
She looked pleased at the idea and nodded. “Okay then,” and with a final wave and smile she disappeared into the darkness of her house, and a light came on in the hallway.
I found myself smiling as I walked back home, at the simplicity of Lacey’s joy. I moved around the house and switched off the lights as I went, taking one final look at the painting on the easel that displayed my subject – who I knew to be a bank manager – as a muscleman in a forest surrounded by wolves. Satisfied with what I had achieved that day I made my way upstairs to bed.
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