第 9 页

I fell into him then, pressing my body against his, and his hands began to tear at my dress, groping for the zipper. “Stop it!” I said. “Don’t—” But even though I was saying no, asking him to stop, I felt as though I wanted him more than I had ever wanted anyone before. “Upstairs,” I said, “quick,” and then we were leaving the kitchen, tearing at our clothes as we went, and heading up to the bedroom with the gray carpet and blue patterned wallpaper, and all the time I was thinking, Yes, this is what I ought to be writing about in my next novel, this is the feeling I want to capture.

I stumbled. The sound of breaking glass, and the image in front of me vanished. It was as if the reel of film had run through, the images on the screen replaced with a flickering light and the shadows of dust motes. I opened my eyes.

I was still there, in that kitchen, but now it was Dr. Nash standing in front of me, and Amanda a little way past him, and they were both looking at me, concerned and anxious. I realized I had dropped the glass.

“Christine,” said Dr. Nash. “Christine. Are you okay?”

I did not answer. I did not know what to feel. It was the first time—as far as I knew—I had ever remembered my husband.

I closed my eyes and tried to will the vision back. I tried to see the fish, the wine, my husband, with a mustache, naked, his penis bobbing, but nothing would come. The memory had gone, evaporated as if it had never existed, or had been burned away by the present.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine. I—”

“What’s wrong?” said Amanda. “Are you all right?”

“I remembered something,” I said. I saw Amanda’s hands fly to her mouth, her expression change to one of delight.

“Really?” she said. “That’s wonderful! What? What did you remember?”

“Please—” said Dr. Nash. He stepped forward, taking my arm. Broken glass crunched at his feet.

“My husband,” I said. “Here. I remembered my husband—”

Amanda’s expression fell. Is that all? she seemed to be saying.

“Dr. Nash?” I said. “I remembered Ben!” I began to shake.

“Good,” said Dr. Nash. “Good! That’s excellent!”

Together, they led me to the living room. I sat on the sofa. Amanda handed me a mug of hot tea, a cookie on a plate. She does not understand, I thought. She cannot. I have remembered Ben. Me, when I was young. The two of us, together. I know we were in love. I no longer have to take his word for it. It is important. Far more important than she can ever know.

I felt excited, all the way home. Lit with nervous energy. I looked at the world outside—the strange, mysterious, unfamiliar world—and in it, I did not see threat, but possibility. Dr. Nash told me he thought we were really getting somewhere. He seemed excited. This is good, he kept saying. This is good. I wasn’t sure whether he meant it was good for me or for him, for his career. He said he’d like to arrange a scan and, almost without thinking, I agreed. He gave me a cell phone, too, telling me it used to belong to his girlfriend. It looked different from the one Ben had given me. It was smaller, and the casing flipped open to reveal a keypad and screen inside. A spare, he said. You can ring me anytime. Any time it’s important. And keep it with you. I’ll call you on it to remind you about your journal. That was hours ago. Now I realize he gave it to me so that he can phone me without Ben knowing. He’d even said as much. I rang the other day and Ben answered. It might get awkward. This will make things easier. I took it without question.

I have remembered Ben. Remembered that I loved him. He will be home, soon. Perhaps later, when we go to bed, I will make amends for last night’s neglect. I feel alive. Buzzing with potential.

Tuesday, November 13

It is the afternoon. Soon Ben will be home from another day at work. I sit with this journal in front of me. A man—Dr. Nash—called me at lunchtime and told me where to find it. I was sitting in the living room when he rang, and at first did not believe that he knew who I was. Look in the shoebox in the closet, he’d said eventually. You’ll find a book. I had not believed him, but he had stayed on the line while I looked, and he was right. My journal was there, wrapped in tissue. I lifted it out as if it were fragile, and then, once I had said good-bye to Dr. Nash, I knelt by the closet and read it. Every word.

I was nervous, though I did not know why. The journal felt forbidden, dangerous, though this was perhaps only because of the care with which I’d hidden it. I glanced up repeatedly from its pages to check the time, even closed it quickly and put it back in its tissue when there was the sound of a car outside the house. But now I am calm. I am writing this in the window of the bedroom, in the bay. It feels familiar here, somehow, as if this is a place where I sit often. I can see down the street: in one direction, to a row of tall trees behind which a park can be glimpsed; in the other, to a row of houses and another, busier, road. I realize that, though I may choose to keep my journal secret from Ben, nothing terrible would happen if he were to find it. He is my husband. I can trust him.

I read again of the excitement I felt on the way home yesterday. It has disappeared. Now I feel content. Still. Cars pass. Occasionally someone walks by—a man, whistling, or a young mother taking her child to the park and then, later, away from it. In the distance, a plane, coming in to land, seems almost to be stationary.

The houses opposite are empty, the street quiet apart from the whistling man and the bark of an unhappy dog. The commotion of the morning, with its symphony of closing doors and singsong good-byes and revved engines, has disappeared. I feel alone in the world.

It begins to rain. Large droplets spatter the window in front of my face, hang for a moment, and then, joined by others, begin their slow slide down the pane. I put my hand up to the cold glass.

So much separates me from the rest of the world.

I read of visiting the home I had shared with my husband. Was it really only yesterday those words were written? They do not feel as if they belong to me. I read of the day I had remembered, too. Of kissing my husband—in the house we bought together, so long ago—and when I close my eyes, I can see it again. It is dim at first, unfocused, but then the image shimmers and resolves, snapping to sharpness with an almost overwhelming intensity. My husband, tearing at my clothes. Ben, holding me, his kisses becoming more urgent, deeper. I remember we neither ate the fish nor drank the wine; instead, when we had finished making love, we stayed in bed for as long as we could, our legs entwined, my head on his chest, his hand stroking my hair, semen drying on my stomach. We were silent. Happiness surrounded us like a cloud.

“I love you,” he said. He was whispering, as if he had never said those words before, and, though he must have done so many times, they sounded new. Forbidden and dangerous.

I looked up at him, at the stubble on his chin, the flesh of his lips, and the outline of his nose above them. “I love you too,” I said, whispering into his chest as if the words were fragile. He squeezed my body to his, then, and kissed me softly. The top of my head, my brow. I closed my eyes and he kissed my eyelids, barely brushing them with his lips. I felt safe, at home. I felt as if here, against his body, was the only place in which I belonged. The only place I had ever wanted to be. We lay in silence for a while, holding each other, our skin merging, our breathing synchronized. I felt as if silence might allow the moment to last forever, which would still not be enough.

Ben broke the spell. “I have to leave,” he said, and I opened my eyes and took his hand in mine. It felt warm. Soft. I brought it to my mouth and kissed it. The taste of glass, and earth.

“Already?” I said.

He kissed me again. “Yes. It’s later than you think. I’ll miss my train.”

I felt my body plunge. Separation seemed unthinkable. Unbearable. “Stay a bit longer?” I said. “Get the next one?”

He laughed. “I can’t, Chris,” he said. “You know that.”

I kissed him again. “I know,” I said. “I know.”

I showered after he left. I took my time, soaping myself slowly, feeling the water on my skin as if it were a new sensation. In the bedroom, I sprayed myself with perfume and put on my nightdress and a robe, and then I went downstairs, into the dining room.

It was dark. I turned on the light. On the table in front of me was a typewriter, threaded with blank paper, and next to it a shallow stack of pages, turned facedown. I sat down, in front of the machine. I began to type. Chapter Two.

I paused then. I could not think what to write next, how to begin. I sighed, resting my fingers on the keyboard. It felt natural beneath me, cool and smooth, contoured to my fingertips. I closed my eyes and typed again.

My fingers danced across the keys, automatically, almost without thought. When I opened my eyes, I had typed a single sentence.

Lizzy did not know what she had done, or how it could be undone.

I looked at the sentence. Solid. Sitting there, on the page.

Nonsense, I thought. I felt angry. I knew I could do better. I had done so before, two summers previously, when the words had flown out of me, scattering my story onto the page like confetti. But now? Now something was wrong. Language had become solid, stiff. Hard.

I took a pencil and drew a line through the sentence. I felt a little better with it scored out, but now I had nothing again; nowhere to start.

I stood up and lit a cigarette from the pack that Ben had left on the table. I drew the smoke deep into my lungs, held it, exhaled. For a moment, I wished it was weed, wondered where I could get some from, for next time. I poured myself a drink—neat vodka into a whiskey tumbler—and took a mouthful. It would have to do. Writer’s block, I thought. How did I become such a fucking cliché?

Last time. How did I do it last time? I went over to the bookcases that lined the wall of the dining room and, with the cigarette dangling between my lips, took down a book from the top shelf. There must be clues here. Surely?

I put the vodka down and turned the book over in my hands. I rested my fingertips on the cover, as if the book were delicate, and brushed them gently over the title. For the Morning Birds, it said. Christine Lucas. I opened the cover and flicked through the pages.

The image vanished. My eyes opened. The room I was in looked drab and gray, but my breathing was ragged. I dimly registered the surprise that I had once smoked, but it was replaced by something else. Was it true? Had I written a novel? Had it been published? I stood up; my journal slid from my lap. If so, I had been someone, someone with a life, with goals and ambitions and achievements. I ran down the stairs.

Was it true? Ben had said nothing to me this morning. Nothing about being a writer. This morning, I had read of our trip to Parliament Hill. There, he had told me I had been working as a secretary when I had my accident.

I scanned the bookshelves in the living room. Dictionaries. An atlas. A guide to do-it-yourself. A few novels, hardcover and, from their condition, I guessed unread. But nothing by me. Nothing to suggest I had had a novel published. I spun around, half-crazy. It must be here, I thought. It must. But then another thought struck me. Perhaps my vision was not memory but invention. Perhaps, without a true history to hold and ponder, my mind had created one of its own. Perhaps my subconscious decided that I was a writer because that is what I always wanted to be.

I ran back upstairs. The shelves in the office were filled with box files and computer manuals, and I had seen no books in either bedroom as I explored the house that morning. I stood, for a moment, then saw the computer in front of me, silent and dark. I knew what to do, though I did not know how I knew. I switched it on and it whirred into life beneath the desk, the screen lighting up a moment later. A swell of music from the rattling speaker by the side of the screen, and then an image appeared. A photograph of Ben and me, both smiling. Across the middle of our faces, there was a box. USERNAME, it said, and beneath it there was another. PASSWORD.

In my vision, I was touch-typing, my fingers dancing over the keys as if powered by instinct. I positioned the flashing cursor in the box marked USERNAME and held my hands above the keyboard. Was it true? Had I learned to type? I let my fingers rest on the raised letters. They moved, effortlessly, my little fingers seeking the keys over which they belonged, the rest falling into place beside them. I closed my eyes and, without thinking, began to type, listening only to the sound of my breathing and the plastic clatter of the keys. When I had finished, I looked at what I had done, at what was written in the box. I expected nonsense, but what I saw shocked me.

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

I stared at the screen. It was true. I could touch-type. Maybe my vision was not invention but memory.

Maybe I had written a novel.

I ran into the bedroom. It did not make sense. For a moment, I had the almost overwhelming feeling that I was going mad. The novel seemed to exist and not exist at the same time, to be real and also totally imaginary. I could remember nothing of it, nothing about its plot or characters, not even the reason I had given it its title, yet still it felt real, as if it beat within me like a heart.

And why had Ben not told me? Not kept a copy on display? I pictured it, hidden in the house, wrapped in tissue, stored in a box in the loft or the cellar. Why?

An explanation came to me. Ben had told me I had been working as a secretary. Perhaps that was why I could type: the only reason.

I dug one of the phones out of my bag, not caring which one, hardly even caring who I called. My husband or my doctor? Both seemed equally alien to me. I flipped it open and scrolled through the menu until I saw a name I recognized, then pressed the CALL button.

“Dr. Nash?” I said, when the call was answered. “It’s Christine.” He began to say something, but I interrupted him. “Listen. Did I ever write anything?”

“Sorry?” he said. He sounded confused, and for a moment I had the sense I had done something terribly wrong. I wondered whether he even knew who I was, but then he said, “Christine?”

I repeated what I had said. “I just remembered something. That I was writing something, years ago, when I first knew Ben, I think. A novel. Did I ever write a novel?”

He did not seem to understand what I meant. “A novel?”

“Yes,” I said. “I seem to remember wanting to be a writer, when I was little. I just wondered whether I ever wrote anything. Ben told me I worked as a secretary, but I was just thinking—”

“He hasn’t told you?” he said then. “You were working on your second novel when you lost your memory. Your first was published. It was a success. I wouldn’t say it was a bestseller, but it was certainly a success.”