Cuckoo

by Richard Wright

  But how? He was facing the prospect of rescuing a man hidden right behind his own eyes, yet far beyond his reach. Richard was buried deep within the brain he had taken residence in, and he had absolutely no idea how he was going to dig him out.

  Absurdly, he wished that Jameson owned a pet. A dog, a cat, even a bloody fish. Just something alive which he could talk to without thinking himself mad. Maybe he should leave Richard a note suggesting it. The idea made him smile, and he went to make himself a mug of tea and some sandwiches.

  The preparation of food proved a relaxing diversion. His mind was allowed to switch on a subconscious autopilot, entering an almost meditative state. It was a shame when he had to move back into the living room and consume the meal. He did anyway, gripping both mug and plate in one hand as he pushed open the door. It was one of the large green beanbags on which he chose to rest himself, letting weariness seep into the softness that engulfed and supported him. Now it was the turn of his body to engage an automatic pilot, his hands and mouth working without prompting to eat and drink, his thoughts trying to settle on a course of action.

  Why was it so difficult to find Jameson? What keys had been used to lock away a whole life, a whole mind, within the grey matter of his brain? Perhaps he could start by finding out more about him. It was frustrating to contemplate rooting through souvenirs and keepsakes he should be familiar with, but perhaps it would weaken the barriers that separated mind and body.

  It was a problematic approach. He could not help but look on these items as automatically meaningless to him. Just as with the books, some of which Jameson must be more than familiar with, he found himself beholding the life of a different persona. Rather than trying to discover what he himself might be like, he wasted his efforts trying to envision a separate soul. It was a mental block, one he could not navigate around. At the back of his mind was the simple suspicion, even after his conscious acceptance of the facts, that he could not be Jameson, for no other reason than that it obviously was not the case.

  He needed to hear from somebody who knew him. Somebody who could share even the most cursory impression of the life he needed to find.

  Stewart was the most obvious person to ask, but this had been made impossible by his recent actions. He could not be sure, but he suspected that if he went to Stewart he would be whisked straight to a psychiatrist. From there, who knew? It would be certain that his life would be taken out of his hands for a while. Hospitals, tests, doctors; where would all that leave him? Helpless and hobbled, unable to act.

  If it was just his life that was in the balance, then he could have accepted those little sufferings as a possible solution to Richard’s recovery. Although he was certain that nobody in medicine would be familiar with symptoms quite like his own, he accepted that they were far better qualified to deal with it than he. But if he allowed his life to be dominated in those ways he would have no time in which to act. It was not just Richard who was relying on him to save his life. Alex needed him too.

  Family and close friends were out then (assuming Richard even had close friends), so who remained? People he worked with? Greg guessed that they would be privy to few details regarding the private person behind the employer they knew.

  It was while he was wracking his mind for another alternative that the answer handed itself to him on a platter. At first the footsteps outside the door startled him. Then came the rattling of keys being inserted into a door, and he darted to his feet in queasy panic. They had come for him so soon? Was he too late to help Alex? Was he too late to help himself?

  A door creaked open, and it was not his own. It came from the other side of the hallway.

  In the brief time he had been inhabiting the flat as Gregory Summers, he had never given a thought to who might live behind the door facing his own. It was time to introduce himself.

  Smiling at the simplicity of the idea, he strode to his walk-in closet. Five minutes later he emerged still smiling, wearing jeans and a red t-shirt. It felt good to be out of the filthy clothes that he had worn. He felt a rejuvenation of his energy. A moniker had changed in his mind, a significant term of reference. He knew how he would introduce himself to whoever lived across the passageway.

  Taking a deep, bewildered breath, Richard Jameson opened his front door and stepped out to find himself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  AWAKENINGS

  Did the name make the man? He could not answer that. What he did know, to his discomfort, was that shedding Gregory Summers was like removing an iron shackle. Perhaps this was less to do with finding Jameson, and more about removing himself from the pain associated with the name he had worn five minutes ago. Of course, his mind remained that of Summers, but the change in attitude that came with the alias of Jameson was tangible. As best he could define it, it felt like a becoming. Maybe the name itself was a doorway through which the real owner of his body could slip back from the prison where he huddled.

  He had been surprised at the exuberant welcome he received when his neighbour opened her door. She was a middle-aged woman, just about to embark on the voyage of her fifties, with mid-length black hair hanging loosely about her neck. Flecks of grey were unashamedly displayed among the straight locks, somehow making an elegance of her pale skin. A little shorter than his own five foot seven inches, she was dressed in a smart business jacket and knee-length grey skirt.

  “Richard!” Her cry was enthusiastic and shrill. “You, sir, are long overdue in accepting my offer. I haven’t seen you since…when? Your New Year party?” He was given no time to answer as she whisked him into her living room and sat him on her garish red settee, a piece of furniture which made a ferocious challenge to the rest of the room. Where everything else consisted of subtle hues of cream and brown, the settee sat defiant in the centre, and dared the critic to take offence.

  His hostess had taken time only to wheedle his tea-drinking details from him, before rushing through one of the doors to the kitchen. Now he sat there, awaiting her return. It was foolish, he knew, but he couldn’t help thinking that he had somehow invited himself into the lair of a jovial and enthusiastic spider.

  You’re just nervous, he told himself. You’re hardly here to pass the time of day, are you? You don’t even know how you’re going to bring the subject up with the old fag-hag.

  The thought startled him. Fag-hag? What the hell did he mean by that? She returned, delicate china cups in hand, and passed him one.

  “So what finally brings you my way Richard? Want to borrow a cup of sugar?” He blushed despite himself, all the time wondering how he was going to answer her question. After a hesitation that stretched too far, he decided to stay as close to the truth as possible.

  “This is going to sound a little strange to you, I think. Please bear with me. Recently I suffered…” the word that nearly popped out was insufficiently. Was that not what the creature had told him? “…a slight accident,” he said instead.

  Her face exploded with exaggerated concern, and he hoped she would allow him to continue before she tried to hug him. He raised his hand. “I really am fine, thanks. The thing is…” Damn, what was the thing? That he was being hounded by a reject from a Hammer horror movie, while believing himself to be a married man called Gregory Summers? No, that would not do at all. “…I’ve been diagnosed with clinical amnesia. They think it’s because of the shock.”

  “Your name?”

  “Alex Carlisle.”

  “This is wrong. Forget this. What is your name?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “This is wrong. Your name is Gregory Summers.”

  “My name is Gregory Summers.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Gregory Summers.”

  “Good. Very good. Now open your mind to me. Let me taste you.”

  “No, Stewart’s away. Business trip. My parents are on holiday. Look, I don’t want you to be concerned. The doctors say my memory will return in time. I thought I’d try and give it a jump
start, that’s all.”

  Clinical amnesia? How lame was that? However, after checking that she was not the butt of some practical joke, she had fallen for it with sublime enthusiasm. A lorry full of concern had driven right over him. Scraping himself from the metaphorical tarmac, he was trying to pull her round to the point of his visit.

  “Yes, of course,” she gushed, “you must forgive me. I can’t help but worry.” She took a sip of her tea, the strangeness of the situation both bemusing and amusing her. “So you want what I know of you? Well darling, I’m afraid you might not have picked a very good place to start. I don’t really know you well at all. I’ve bumped into you a few times in the passageway, and you did invite me to your New Year party. But you invited Norman, the doorman, to that, so it doesn’t really mean much. I’ve invited you in for a drink a few times, but you always seem to be so…”

  Again Richard was forced to raise his hand. Here, he realised, was a woman altogether too fond of her own voice. “Please, even if you’ve only picked up a vague impression of the person I am, it would probably help.”

  “Of course, poor thing.” It was all he could do not to cringe beneath the waves of patronising bonhomie. “Well, you live alone, apart from the occasional night-guest.” She paused, unsure of how to continue. “Do you know you’re…well…you like men?” Repressing the shudder that the Summers personality still needed to give, Richard forced a smile and a nod. She breathed a sigh of relief. “Good, I don’t know how I would have broken that to you.” She stopped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  Again, his hand came up. It was beginning to feel like it was on a spring. “Don’t worry about it, I know what you mean.”

  “Yes, well, it sort of came out wrong, you know how it is.” Satisfied that he did indeed know, she continued her description. “Up until a couple of months ago you were seeing one young man regularly, I think he was called Craig, but I really don’t know why you aren’t together anymore. Er, you own a company you created yourself. It’s something to do with computers, but I don’t know what. You always seemed a decent young man to me. I don’t know what else to say really.’”

  Richard had hoped for more, but even this small amount was a relief. He had always seemed a decent man to her, that alone was worth hearing. Of the rest, there was little information that he didn’t already know. It surprised him a bit to think of himself in an actual relationship with a man, but it also calmed him in some ways. If he had been involved with a regular partner then it was not so different from being heterosexual. Perhaps the life of a gay man was not quite as far beyond his understanding as he had thought.

  Rising, rising, climbing. Then he was awake.

  He shook his head a little to clear the cobwebs, then glanced around in surprise. It seemed he had fallen asleep at the wheel of his car. He was still in the parking lot outside his office. He must have finished work, climbed in, and pretty much passed out. Exhaustion, he thought. Jennifer was always telling him that he should relax more.

  A quick look at his watch startled him to full wakefulness. Good grief, he must have dozed for over an hour. In just fifteen minutes he was supposed to meet Georgina at a bar before going on to a restaurant, and unless he picked up his heels he was going to be late. It was no wonder he was constantly tired; keeping two women happy at one time would wear down the hardiest of souls. Again, he felt the chemical rush of guilt, and gunned the car to life with a curse. Trying desperately to banish the word infidelity from his thoughts, checking his ponytail was in place with one hand, Greg Summers reversed out of the parking space.

  Richard had gulped his tea, made his apologies, and left. The woman, and he realised he had forgotten to ask her name, would have smothered him in well-meant concern if he had stayed much longer. It had been obvious she had nothing new to tell him.

  Unsure of what he expected, he felt the encounter had been anticlimactic. Had he thought to unleash torrents of memory by simply wearing the label of Jameson? Sitting back on the beanbag, he pondered who he was.

  How would he know when a new memory surfaced? Would it announce itself to him? Would he be aware of it? Probably not. How did memory even work? In his head was stored the entire ersatz life of Gregory Summers, but he only recalled something if he was first reminded of it, or if he deliberately pulled it to the fore. That was the approach he must take, but how could he search for an image in his head when he didn’t have the slightest idea of what it looked like?

  Frustration made it even more difficult to concentrate, and he tried to relax. What would he be familiar with, as Jameson? As a gay male he might have visited gay clubs, but Summers never had. Were they different somehow? Possibly. He tried to imagine what it was like, to construct the picture in his head.

  To his surprise he found that it was already there.

  It had been nearly a month since Craig walked out on him, the break-up a result of the amount of time Richard had to invest in the company. After this long, he had told himself, I should be over him. I should definitely not be dwelling on him every second of every day. So in the hope that some mindless clubbing might grant him some peace, he had spent an evening at Fire.

  It was not a successful night. His heart just hadn’t been in it. Several times he had started chatting to guys, but couldn’t keep the conversation going. Around midnight, at the bar, a short brunette woman had approached him. The last thing he needed was uninspired small-talk with some fag-hag, so he tried to look as bored by her efforts as possible, wondering where the term fag-hag had come from. It was a cruel term for girls who felt more comfortable around gay men. That they felt at risk around straights might indicate some bad experience or other, so who would deny them the comparative safety of the gay scene. They appreciated the lack of sexual threat from the men, and most were secure enough not to be threatened by the women. Often they were quite good company, though they could be clingy.

  Richard was not in the mood to humour one that night.

  Yet to his surprise he found her compelling.

  As her voice, oddly clear against the thumping drumbeat, drifted along, he felt himself being drawn further and further from his own thoughts.

  Richard sat back in the beanbag, breathing hard. It was his own. He owned that memory. Just a small, insignificant piece of the jigsaw he needed to construct, but it was a start, a corner from which he might be able to work. And the memory was not so insignificant, for he recognised the woman he had met. Not the creature, not Georgina. It was Jennifer, the woman who served the thing, who had masqueraded as his own wife.

  He owned the final memory of Richard Jameson as a distinct persona, before the awakening of Greg Summers.

  Still a little groggy from his unplanned doze, Greg pulled his car into a space just a few doors down from the restaurant. If his watch was right he was only five minutes late. Sprinting from his car, knowing he would probably get a ticket for leaving it there, he arrived at the door breathless. A waiter met him as he was tucking loose strands of hair back into his ponytail.

  “Good evening sir, do you have a reservation?”

  “I do. Under Johnson.” A pseudonym for the evening. It added an exciting air of espionage to his daily grind. The Secretary will disavow all knowledge of my actions, he thought, chuckling to himself.

  “Ah yes, Mr…Johnson?” The waiter gave him a strange look. “Are you dining alone?’

  “I’m expecting someone, I thought they might have arrived by now?” Having realised he was running so late, he had called George, already at the bar, and asked her to meet him at the restaurant instead.

  “Not yet sir. Can I show you to your table?”

  As Greg sat down, he ordered a bottle of red wine. Georgina, he remembered, guzzled red like a fish. Accepting the menu, he glanced through the offerings displayed. Should he order for her? Probably best not to. She could be a vegetarian, for all he knew. Settling back into his chair, he fixed his eyes on the door and waited.

  So, thought Richard, I have a
memory. Just one, but that’s a start. If he was right, he would be able to use it to find Alex. Assuming that his next real memory after the meeting at Fire belonged to Greg, what had it been of? Where was the point when fantasy merged with reality? Going to work one morning? Waking up with Jennifer? Who would he have seen first? The creature had told him that Alex was to be the sixth Summers. How long did the conversion take? Where would he emerge?

  He could not have woken in the house on Fontside Avenue. The hallway, so different from his false memory, could not have been so extensively redecorated during a single day at work. Apart from the time factor, why would they bother? Easier to leave it alone and program him to remember it differently - his shock at discovering the supposed alterations would have been the same either way. There was also the matter of the study. They would never risk him wandering in and discovering the charts, the photographs.

  Not at home then.

  Probably not at work, either. As Gregory did not really work at the insurance company in question, none of his memories of being there could be truth.

  So then, not at work and not at home. In a social environment? All he ever remembered doing outside of marital life was pursuing his affair with Georgina, and he was certain that the only time they had really had sex was the night of the hotel mix-up.

  That was it.

  He had gone straight from work to meet her. He had become Greg sometime between the false memory of leaving work, and entering the restaurant. Had he not woken up in the car park outside the company he thought he had worked at? Yes! Yes, he was sure of it. He recalled his surprise at having nodded off, his panic as he rushed to the restaurant.