by James Ellis
‘I definitely do not remember Lawrence. No.’
‘You asked him to come here. Or rather, you asked me to ask him.’ She nodded as if agreeing with herself, affirming what she’d just said.
‘Did I? And who or what is Lawrence?’
‘He’s the one who goes rock climbing.’
Tom hadn’t expected that. ‘If you tell me that I said I wanted to go rock climbing, amnesia or no amnesia, I will absolutely not believe you.’
‘It wasn’t that,’ she said slowly. ‘It was about your fear of heights. You asked him to come and talk to you about your fear of heights.’
Tom stared at her. ‘Really?’ he said.
11
Lawrence was in the living room, sitting at the far end of the sofa. It was a big room: all carpets and curtains and cream-coloured walls. Tom sat carefully in the armchair opposite, mindful of his still-tender buttocks. He stretched out and sunk low, balancing his chin on his hands and assuming the same horizontal position that Wiley had used in the hospital.
‘So you’re Lawrence… ?’
Lawrence took his time in replying. ‘Lawrence Cob,’ he said finally.
‘Larry or Laurie?’
‘Oh, just Lawrence.’
‘I’ll make a cup of tea,’ Karen said, and she went back to the kitchen.
Lawrence looked at Tom as if he were waiting for him to say something specific. It was an amused, watchful look. Tom wasn’t aware of anything he was meant to say. Being sociable was not something he was usually good at and he was already bored with being there. His head felt heavy as he viewed Lawrence. He seldom noticed the details of a person until he’d met them several times. What he usually registered was their basic geometry: were they round or oblong, sharp or blunt, tall or short; and what animal they looked like. Lawrence was tubular in body with sharp joints and a pointed face like a willowy weasel.
Lawrence turned and looked at a framed picture on the wall. It was the same coloured drawing of the Scraps characters that Tom had on his T-shirt, except the one on the wall was the original, about four feet high, professionally framed and covered with glass.
‘Do you like cartoons?’ Tom said.
‘Not really,’ said Lawrence.
‘I’m a cartoonist.’
‘I know. You do that dog-thing.’
‘Fox-thing.’ Tom’s head was starting to throb and he wished he had brought the gin with him. ‘Karen says you climb rocks. Do you find a lot of rocks to climb in south London?’
Lawrence made a noise that might have been a laugh or a shout. It was a single exhalation: a thigh-slapping ‘Ha’. Later, Tom would render Lawrence as a willowy, weaselly gunslinger, dressed in black with sandy fur; a wide, thin moustache and whiskers; and a six-gun revolver hanging from each hip, slapping his thigh and dancing a jig.
‘I’m a weekender. I get away when I can. I’ve got my own kit, though: ropes, shoes, helmet. You should try it. Great fun.’
Tom hoped Karen would hurry up. He had already run out of small talk. ‘What do you do the rest of the time? Do you work with Karen?’
Lawrence waved away the question as if it were a fly. Tom marvelled at that gesture. He wanted to use it. It was so confident and dismissive; so wonderfully ill-mannered.
‘She’s in Finance; I’m in Marketing,’ he said. ‘You know how these companies like to create their little labels. We are but passing ships in the night.’
In his mind’s eye, Tom saw the misty straits of Gibraltar with silent ships passing each other hundreds of yards apart; Karen on the deck of one, Lawrence on the deck of the other, their shadows huge and elongated, cast by fog-lights, crossing each other like unearthly giants on the illuminated waves.
‘Or rather ships in the day. We work in different offices.’ Lawrence stretched out his legs until his feet were almost touching Tom’s and looked around. ‘I do like an open fire,’ he said.
Tom looked at the empty grate and said, ‘They’re a devil to clean.’ He wondered why he’d said that because it clearly didn’t take much to dust out the hearth each morning. He had a sense that he was separated from his own babble and he wondered with a curious detachment what he might say next. ‘But worth it.’
‘Really,’ said Lawrence.
A long silence followed. Lawrence seemed at ease but Tom found it unbearable. He began humming. Karen returned with a tray on which were two cups of tea and a coffee for Tom. She hadn’t asked Lawrence whether he preferred tea or coffee, milk or sugar. Perhaps they made tea for each other at work, as ships in the day do. She perched on the arm of Tom’s chair and said, ‘Why are you humming?’ Even though she was a tall woman, she seemed half his size, like a puppet or a ventriloquist’s doll. Tom looked up at her and thought she looked different to how he had always seen her. Was it that her nose was longer or her chin rounder or her eyes smaller? He couldn’t be sure but it was unsettling. She reminded him of a fruit, a plum perhaps, that has once been firm but now was soft.
She looked like she was ripening – but ripening in a bad way; bloating and opening up.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realise I was. How rude.’
Karen looked at Lawrence. ‘Things have moved on since we last talked about you coming here. Tom has had an accident.’
Lawrence nodded. ‘You said. Fell off a roof. How exciting for you.’
Tom sipped his coffee. It was nice to think he was being talked about. Karen turned to him and said, ‘We were talking at work and I happened to mention that you had a height phobia and how you can’t walk across a bridge or drink in a rooftop bar, and how we can’t stay in high-rise hotels or sit on balconies. Do you remember I told you that I had talked to Lawrence about that?’
‘No.’
Again Tom thought it was nice to have his private details discussed with strangers.
‘Lawrence told me about the different techniques he’s learned in dealing with panic attacks when he’s climbing.’
Lawrence looked at Tom as if Tom were an exhibit in a cage, a feathered cartoonist who couldn’t fly. ‘A fear of heights is a very common thing. It’s easy to worry about what might happen but who says it’s going to happen? Nobody. Nothing is written down. There are no rules. You have to keep your thoughts in the moment and don’t think about things – just do them. Let your body take over. It’s liberating.’
Tom nodded. ‘I know what you mean. My sixty-foot drop off a multi-storey car park was quite liberating. It liberated my front tooth.’
‘Yes, I thought you were lisping. Difficult to see beneath all that… hair.’
‘Tom can’t remember Sunday at all, can you Tom?’
‘No, I can’t. It’s called a moustache.’
‘Nothing?’ said Lawrence. ‘That’s inconvenient. So you don’t know why you were up there? Or anything? Nothing at all?’
‘Correct.’
‘So anything might have happened?’
‘I’m ruling out flying,’ said Tom.
He heard footsteps on the front path outside the window. A key rattled in the lock and then the front door slammed, leaving it shaking in its frame. Something large and aggressive had entered the house.
‘Holly’s home.’
Karen looked at her watch and then at Lawrence. ‘I have a meeting at four. Tell Tom what you told me today.’
‘Well,’ said Lawrence. ‘I was going to suggest I help you with your fear of heights, but after Karen told me about your amnesia…’
Is there any part of my private life you don ’ t discuss?
‘… I wondered if I could help you in a different way. I told Karen that there are techniques, you know, for improving your memory. There are exercises you can do. I could come round, if you like. Do a couple of sessions? I wouldn’t mind. What do you think?’
‘Well, you know. I wouldn’t want to put you out.’
‘Not a problem. It would be nice to try them out. What’s the point of learning something if you can’t use it?’
Karen nodded.
‘So… ?’ she said.
Tom was struggling to maintain focus on the conversation. He was tired. He closed his eyes for a moment and imagined that he was alone in the room; a peaceful, quiet, un-tormented moment. ‘So what?’ he said.
‘Lawrence’s idea.’
They were both looking at him. ‘The thing is, I already have a discharge plan,’ Tom said. ‘I should probably do all of that first. And then think about the other stuff.’
‘It wouldn’t hurt, though, would it?’ said Karen. ‘To do a bit of both. You said your appointment is three weeks away.’
Tom ran a hand through his hair. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window and thought that with his vertical hair, monstrous moustache, missing tooth and fluffy blue dressing gown, he looked insane. He wished that Lawrence didn’t look so composed, so knowing.
‘It could be like a supplement to your hospital plan,’ Lawrence said. ‘An augmentation.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He’s offering,’ said Karen.
Lawrence straightened up and leaned forwards. ‘It really is no problem, Tom. Don’t think you’re putting me out. How about Saturday morning?’
‘This weekend?’
‘Why not? Strike while the iron is hot.’
‘You’ve nothing to lose,’ said Karen. ‘And it might really help.’ Again, she spoke each word as if it occupied its own sentence.
‘Come on, Tom, it will be fun,’ said Lawrence, slapping his own knee. ‘We’ll all get on like a house on fire. Won’t we, Karen?’
‘Of course we will.’
‘All right,’ said Tom. At least Lawrence would go now. Or would he?
‘Good man,’ Lawrence said, and Karen patted Tom’s arm.
‘I think it’s a good idea,’ she said.
They stood up and for a moment Tom thought he was telescoping towards the ceiling, like Alice in Alice in Wonderland. They shook hands and walked out to the hallway, the business concluded. Tom held open the front door.
‘I’ll be late tonight,’ Karen said as she passed him. ‘It’s month-end and they want all the numbers in. Will you be all right to get yourself something to eat?’
Tom wanted to tell her about the fox he’d seen in the mirror but instead he said, ‘Of course. Shall I leave something out for you?’
‘No. I’ll eat on the way home. Holly and Dan can see to themselves.’
‘I don’t mind, I’ll feed the beasts. Dan should be home soon and Holly’s already in her cage.’ He nodded at Lawrence, who was waiting by the gate. ‘He’s very something, isn’t he?’
‘Intense?’
‘Old.’
‘Be nice. He’s doing you a favour. He doesn’t have to.’
Tom waved away her words as if they were flies. ‘I know.’
Tom remained in the hallway after Karen and Lawrence had left. He felt switched off, empty, vacant, as if he were a machine awaiting instructions. From Holly’s room he could hear the deep thump-thump of music and from Dan’s room no sound came at all. No sound ever came from Dan’s room. The feeling that something was missing came upon him again. He rubbed his chin and pushed his moustache upwards and outwards, finding its thickness and texture soothing. It felt very real.
‘Fresh air,’ he said, and went back to the kitchen and out into the garden. Like the house, the garden was large, and like the house, there were parts of it that were well-tended and parts of it that were left to spiders and insects and other creatures.
A path divided the garden into two halves. On one side was a lawn and on the other side was a small greenhouse filled with unused pots and sacks of dried-up fertiliser. The greenhouse was surrounded by an untended vegetable garden that Tom liked to call his wild patch. All plants and creatures were welcome in the wild patch and, although it was mostly weeds and cats that took up the offer, sometimes strange and enormous multi-coloured plants grew there, swaying in the wind and sending their seeds into the air until the relentless accumulation of cat urine shrivelled them up and they returned to the earth.
Tom liked to lie on the grass and gaze at these plants, imagining they were travellers from outer space come to his garden to conduct their mysterious tasks. Karen said they were merely big weeds, but Tom didn’t care. Weeds and flowers, plants and shrubs and trees were all the same to him. He sketched their shapes and contours, breathed in their scent and rolled their parchment-like leaves between his fingers. He wished he knew more about their alien world. He wished he were part of it.
He walked down to the far end of the garden where there was a wooden summer house that his father had built, calling it his Gin Palace. Tom sat on the bench, put his hands on his knees and rested his head on the back of the bench. Above, in the timber eaves, a spider completed the last stages of embalming a small, broken insect. Tom watched it work and admired the precision of the spider’s movements as one artist to another.
He glanced up at the house and saw Holly watching him from her bedroom window. He waved and she disappeared, reappearing moments later at the kitchen door, where she leaned against the frame, half in and half out of the house, her jaw set to its full extent of truculence.
‘No one told me you were coming home from hospital,’ she said.
‘Nobody told me you were coming home from school,’ Tom said.
‘You’re not funny. And it’s called a college, not school.’
She walked across the grass, huffing and puffing and avoiding looking in his direction. Tom made way for her, and she sat down with a great explosion of sighing.
‘When did you get home?’ she said.
‘Yesterday afternoon. Where were you?’
‘Mum made us stay at Auntie Sylvia’s.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. We’re staying there tonight, too. Who was Mum with just now? Where’s she gone?’
‘She’s gone back to work with Lawrence. Lawrence works in Marketing and he’s going to help me with my memory.’
‘I didn’t like him.’
‘You didn’t meet him.’
‘I saw him out the window. Why is Mum always working?’
‘I don’t know. She’s a ship in the night.’
‘Who is?’
‘Mum is. And Lawrence.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why are you wearing a dressing gown? Only weird people wear dressing gowns outdoors.’
‘I am a weird person.’
‘No you’re not.’
They sat in silence until Dan came home from school. He walked down the garden path and threw his school bag onto the lawn and squeezed in between Holly and Tom.
‘God, Dad, you look a wreck. What’s happening? Have you escaped from hospital?’
‘He’s come home,’ Holly said.
Tom thought he could hear a dog barking in the distance. It had a raw tone, like a dog locked in a kennel that had barked all day and all night, for weeks on end, for years. Had it been barking all the time, Tom wondered, and he hadn’t noticed? It had a relentless quality; a desperation; a madness in its endless, hoarse repetition.
‘Can you hear that?’ He stood up and walked to where Dan’s bag lay abandoned on the lawn. He wanted a cigarette very much. He wanted to hold one in his lips, strike a match and cup the flame in his hands. He turned round and stared at Holly and Dan, who sat together like clockwork toys left on a shelf. ‘The dog barking. Can you hear that?’
They cocked their heads to one side and listened, and the symmetry of their movement disturbed Tom. It was as if they truly were clockwork toys. He squinted at them through the diminishing afternoon light. His eyelids felt heavy. He was tired again.
‘Hear what?’ Holly said.
‘He means the dog,’ said Dan.
‘Are you all right, Dad?’ They said it in unison and laughed.
‘It’s just a dog,’ Holly said.
‘A poor dog all alone in the night.’
‘Coming to eat you.’
Tom wanted to go
in. He didn’t like the garden anymore. The sky was darkening and it was cold. He picked up Dan’s bag and tossed it to him. It felt empty. ‘I’m going to have a bath while you two do your homework, and then I’m going to order pizza for three, and after that I’m going to relax with a glass of wine.’
‘Or two,’ said Holly.
‘Or three,’ laughed Dan.
‘Or a thousand.’
‘Or ten thousand.’
‘Hey, Tommy,’ Holly said in a different voice. ‘I can smell something burning. Can you?’
Tom walked back to the house. His hands were shaking and he felt unwell. In the kitchen he poured himself another drink and took it upstairs. In the bathroom he let his dressing gown fall onto the floor and he stared at his reflection in the mirror. He looked haggard, hollow and drawn; baggy around the eyes and mouth. His shoulders slumped, his chest sagged and his stomach bulged.
‘Not coming out today?’ he said to the mirror. But only his reflection was there to answer. And it said nothing.
While he was in the bath he heard the front door slam. Rising from the soapy water, he stood up and peered through the open window onto the street below. He saw Holly and Dan walking away with backpacks on their backs. Back to Auntie Sylvia’s, then, with no goodbyes. No pizza for three, either. Tom sat down, careless of the waves he created and the surge of water that overflowed the bath and splashed onto the floor.
He felt as if everything he did required a conscious effort: breathing, blinking, talking, moving; as if he were a separate creature inside himself, driving himself along like a human vehicle. He got out of the bath. The bandage on his thumb was soaked.
‘That’s coming off,’ he said, and then added for his own comic effect, ‘The bandage, not the thumb.’ He laughed and listened to his laugh bounce off the walls. ‘Tomorrow you draw. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.’
He sat on the toilet seat and dripped water onto the carpet until he was dry. He wondered what he’d see if he looked in the mirror. He wondered what was happening to him and he wondered if he cared. He went downstairs and opened another bottle of wine.
Later, sprawled on the sofa, half-drunk, feet up, headphones on, Tom opened his eyes and saw that it was eleven o’clock at night. The headphones were hurting his ears and his neck ached. A pain stabbed the back of his head. The bottle of red wine, now empty, was on the floor. He switched on the lamp beside him and the sound of the clicking switch felt like something snapping inside his head.