by S. J. Watson
Now I know the truth is even worse. This morning I had woken with an almost overwhelming sense of guilt, the words You should be ashamed of yourself spinning in my head. You’ll be sorry. At first I’d thought I had woken with a man who was not my husband and it was only later I discovered the truth. That I have betrayed him. Twice. The first time years ago, with a man who would eventually take everything from me, and now I have done it again, with my heart if nothing else. I have developed a ridiculous, childish crush on a doctor who is trying to help me, trying to comfort me. A doctor who I can’t even begin to picture now, can’t remember having met before, but who I know is much younger than me, has a girlfriend. And now I have told him how I feel! Accidentally, yes, but still I have told him. I feel more than guilty. I feel stupid. I can’t even begin to imagine what must have brought me to this point. I am pathetic.
There, as I cleaned the glass, I make a decision. Even if Ben doesn’t share my belief that my treatment will work I can’t believe he would deny me the opportunity to see for myself. Not if it was what I wanted. I am an adult, he is not a monster; surely I can trust him with the truth? I sluiced the water down the sink and refilled the bucket. I will tell my husband. Tonight. When he gets home. This can’t go on. I continued to clean the windows.
I wrote that an hour ago, but now I am not so sure. I think about Adam. I have read about the photographs in the metal box, yet still there are no pictures of him on display. None. I can’t believe Ben – anyone – could lose a son and then remove all traces of him from his home. It doesn’t seem right, doesn’t seem possible. Can I trust a man who can do that? I remembered reading about the day we sat on Parliament Hill when I had asked him straight. He had lied. I flick back through my journal now and read it again. We never had children? I said, and he had replied, No. No, we didn’t. Can he really have done that just to protect me? Can he really feel that is the best thing to do? To tell me nothing, other than what he must, what is convenient?
Whatever’s quickest, too. He must be so bored with telling me the same thing, over and over again, every day. It occurs to me that the reason he shortens explanations and changes stories is not to do with me at all. Perhaps it’s so that he doesn’t drive himself crazy with the constant repetition.
I feel like I am going mad. Everything is fluid, everything shifts. I think one thing and then, a moment later, the opposite. I believe everything my husband says, and then I believe nothing. I trust him, and then I don’t. Nothing feels real, everything invented. Even myself.
I wish I knew one thing for certain. One single thing that I have not had to be told, about which I don’t need to be reminded.
I wish I knew who I was with, that day in Brighton. I wish I knew who did this to me.
Later. I have just finished speaking to Dr Nash. I was dozing in the living room when the phone rang. The television was on, the sound turned down. For a moment I couldn’t tell where I was, whether I was asleep or awake. I thought I heard voices, getting louder. I realized one was mine, and the other sounded like Ben. But he was saying, You fucking bitch, and worse. I screamed at him, in anger, and then in fear. A door slammed, the thud of a fist, breaking glass. It was then I realized I was dreaming.
I opened my eyes. A chipped mug of cold coffee sat on the table in front of me, a phone buzzed nervously next to it. The one that flips open. I picked it up.
It was Dr Nash. He introduced himself, though his voice had sounded familiar anyway. He asked me if I was OK. I told him I was, and that I’d read my journal.
‘You know what we talked about yesterday?’ he said.
I felt a flash of shock. Horror. He had decided to tackle things, then. I felt a bubble of hope – perhaps he really had felt the same way I had, the same confused mix of desire and fear – but it didn’t last. ‘About going to the place where you lived after you left the ward?’ he said. ‘Waring House?’
I said, ‘Yes.’
‘Well, I called them this morning. It’s all fine. We can go and visit. They said pretty much any time we liked.’ The future. Again it seemed almost irrelevant to me. ‘I’m busy over the next couple of days,’ he said. ‘We could go on Thursday?’
‘That seems fine,’ I said. It didn’t seem to matter to me when we went. I was not optimistic it would help in any case.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ll call you.’
I was about to say goodbye when I remembered what I had been writing before I dozed. I realized that my sleep couldn’t have been deep, or else I would have forgotten everything.
‘Dr Nash?’ I said. ‘Can I talk to you about something?’
‘Yes?’
‘About Ben?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, it’s just that I’m confused. He doesn’t tell me about things. Important things. Adam. My novel. And he lies about other things. He tells me it was an accident that caused me to be like this.’
‘OK,’ he said. A pause. ‘Why do you think he does this?’ He emphasized the you rather than the why.
I thought for a second. ‘He doesn’t know I’m writing things down. He doesn’t know I know any different. I suppose it’s easier for him.’
‘Just him?’
‘No. I suppose it’s easier for me, too. Or he thinks it is. But it isn’t. It just means I don’t even know if I can trust him.’
‘Christine, we’re constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it. Isn’t that what Ben’s doing?’
‘I suppose,’ I said. ‘But I feel like he’s taking advantage of me. Advantage of my illness. He thinks he can rewrite history in any way that he likes and I will never know, never be any the wiser. But I do know. I know exactly what he’s doing. And so I don’t trust him. In the end he’s pushing me away, Dr Nash. Ruining everything.’
‘So,’ he said. ‘What do you think you can do about it?’
I knew the answer already. I have read what I wrote this morning, over and over. About how I should trust him. About how I don’t. In the end all I could think of was: This cannot go on.
‘I have to tell him I am writing my journal,’ I said. ‘I have to tell him I have been seeing you.’
He said nothing for a moment. I don’t know what I expected. Disapproval? But when he spoke he said, ‘I think you might be right.’
Relief flooded me. ‘You agree?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking for a couple of days it might be wise. I had no idea that Ben’s version of the past would be so different from what you’re starting to remember. No idea how upsetting that might be. But it also occurs to me that we’re only really getting half the picture now. From what you’ve said, more and more of your repressed memories are beginning to emerge. It might be helpful for you to talk with Ben. About the past. It might help that process.’
‘You think so?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think perhaps keeping our work from Ben was a mistake. Plus I spoke to the staff at Waring House today. I wanted to get an idea of what things were like there. I spoke to a woman you became close to. One of the staff. Her name is Nicole. She told me that she’s only recently returned to work there, but she was so happy when she found out that you’d gone back to live at home. She said no one could have loved you more than Ben. He came to see you pretty much every day. She said he would sit with you, in your room, or the gardens. And he tried so hard to be cheerful, despite everything. They all got to know him very well. They looked forward to him coming.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Why don’t you suggest Ben comes with us when we go and visit?’ Another pause. ‘I probably ought to meet him anyway.’
‘You’ve never met?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘We only spoke briefly on the phone when I first approached him about meeting you. It didn’t go too well …’
It struck me then. That was the reason he was suggesting I invite Ben. He wanted to meet him, finally. He wants to bring everything into the open, to make sure that the awkwardness of yesterday can never be repeated.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘If you think so.’
He said that he did. He waited for a long time, and then he said, ‘Christine? You said you’d read your journal?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
He waited again. ‘I didn’t ring this morning. I didn’t tell you where it was.’
I realized it was true. I had gone to the wardrobe myself and, though I didn’t know what I would find inside it, I found the shoebox and opened it almost without thinking. I had found it myself. As if I had remembered it would be there.
‘That’s excellent,’ he said.
I am writing this in bed. It is late, but Ben is in his office, across the landing. I can hear him work, the clatter of the keyboard, the click of the mouse. I can hear an occasional sigh, the creak of his chair. I imagine him squinting at the screen, deep in concentration. I trust that I will hear him switch off his machine in readiness for bed, that I will have time to hide my journal when he does. Now, despite what I thought this morning and agreed with Dr Nash, I am certain that I don’t want my husband to find out what I have been writing.
I talked to him this evening, as we sat in the dining room. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ I said, and then, when he looked up, ‘Why did we never have children?’ I suppose I was testing him. I willed him to tell me the truth, to contradict my assertion.
‘It never seemed to be the right time,’ he said. ‘And then it was too late.’
I pushed my plate of food to the side. I was disappointed. He had got home late, called out my name as he came in, asked me how I was. ‘Where are you?’ he’d said. It had sounded like an accusation.
I shouted that I was in the kitchen. I was preparing dinner, chopping onions to fry in the olive oil I was heating on the hob. He stood in the doorway, as if hesitant to enter the room. He looked tired. Unhappy. ‘Are you OK?’ I said.
He saw the knife in my hand. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Just cooking dinner,’ I said. I smiled, but he did not reciprocate. ‘I thought we could have an omelette. I found some eggs in the fridge, and some mushrooms. Do we have any potatoes? I couldn’t find any anywhere, I—’
‘I had planned for us to have pork chops,’ he said. ‘I bought some. Yesterday. I thought we could have those.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I—’
‘But no. An omelette is fine. If that’s what you want.’
I could feel the conversation slipping, down into a place I didn’t want it to go. He was staring at the chopping board, above which my hand hovered, clutching the knife.
‘No,’ I said. I laughed, but he didn’t laugh with me. ‘It doesn’t matter. I didn’t realize. I can always—’
‘You’ve chopped the onions now,’ he said. His words were flat. A statement of fact, unadorned.
‘I know, but … we could still have the chops?’
‘Whatever you think,’ he said. He turned round, to go into the dining room. ‘I’ll set the table.’
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what it was that I had done, if anything. I went back to the onions.
Now we sat opposite each other. We had eaten in near silence. I had asked him if everything was OK, but he had shrugged and said that it was. ‘It’s been a long day’ was all he would tell me, adding nothing but ‘At work,’ when I looked for more. Discussion was choked off before it had really begun, and I thought better of telling him about my journal, and Dr Nash. I picked at my food, tried not to worry – after all, I told myself, he is entitled to have bad days too – but anxiety gnawed at me. I could feel the opportunity to speak slipping away, and didn’t know whether I would wake tomorrow with the same conviction that it was the right thing to do. Eventually I could bear it no longer. ‘But did we want children?’ I said.
He sighed. ‘Christine, do we have to?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I still didn’t know what I was going to say, if anything. It might have been better to let it go. But I realized I couldn’t do that. ‘It’s just that the oddest thing happened today,’ I said. I was trying to inject levity into my voice, a breeziness I didn’t feel. ‘I just thought I’d remembered something.’
‘Something?’
‘Yes. Oh, I don’t know …’
‘Go on,’ he said. He leaned forward, suddenly eager. ‘What did you remember?’
My eyes fixed on the wall behind him. A picture hung there, a photograph. Petals of a flower, close up, but black and white, with beads of water still clinging to them. It looked cheap, I thought. As if it belonged in a department store, not someone’s home.
‘I remembered having a baby.’
He sat back in his chair. His eyes widened, and then closed completely. He took a breath, letting it out in a long sigh.
‘Is it true?’ I said. ‘Did we have a baby?’ If he lies now, I thought, then I don’t know what I will do. Argue with him, I suppose. Tell him everything in one uncontrolled, catastrophic outpouring. He opened his eyes and looked into mine.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s true.’
He told me about Adam, and relief flooded me. Relief, but tinged with pain. All those years, lost for ever. All those moments that I have no memory of, that I can never get back. I felt longing stir within me, felt it grow, so big that it might engulf me. Ben told me about Adam’s birth, his childhood, his life. Where he’d gone to school, the nativity play he’d been in; his skills on the football pitch and the running track, his disappointment in his exam results. Girlfriends. The time an indiscreet roll-up had been mistaken for a joint. I asked questions and he answered them; he seemed happy to be talking about his son, as if his mood was chased away by memory.
I found myself closing my eyes as he spoke. Images floated through me – images of Adam, and me, and Ben – but I couldn’t say whether they were memories or imaginings. When he finished I opened my eyes and for a moment was shocked at who I saw sitting in front of me, at how old he had become, how unlike the young father I had been imagining. ‘But there are no photographs of him,’ I said. ‘Anywhere.’
He looked uncomfortable. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You get upset.’
‘Upset?’
He said nothing. Perhaps he didn’t have the strength to tell me about Adam’s death. He looked defeated, somehow. Drained. I felt guilty, for what I was doing to him, what I did to him, every day.
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I know he’s dead.’
He looked surprised. Hesitant. ‘You … know?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I was about to tell him about my journal, that he had told me everything before, but I did not. His mood still seemed fragile, the air tense. It could wait. ‘I just feel it,’ I said.
‘That makes sense. I’ve told you about it before.’
It was true, of course. He had. Just as he had told me about Adam’s life before. And yet, I realized, one story felt real, and the other did not. I realized I didn’t believe that my son was dead.
‘Tell me again,’ I said.
He told me about the war, the roadside bomb. I listened, as calmly as I could. He talked about Adam’s funeral, told me about the salvo of shots that had been fired over the coffin, the Union Jack that was draped over it. I tried to push my mind towards memories, even ones as difficult – as horrific – as that. Nothing would come.
‘I want to go there,’ I said. ‘I want to see his grave.’
‘Chris,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure …’
I realized that, without memory, I would have to see evidence that he was dead, or else forever carry around the hope that he was not. ‘I want to,’ I said. ‘I have to.’
I still thought he might say no. Might tell me he didn’t think it was a good idea, that it might upset me far too much. What would I do then? How could I force him?
But he did not. ‘We�
��ll go at the weekend,’ he said. ‘I promise.’
Relief mixed with terror, leaving me numb.
We tidied away the dinner plates. I stood at the sink, dipping the dishes he passed to me into hot, soapy water, scrubbing them, passing them back to him to be dried, all the time avoiding my reflection in the window. I forced myself to think of Adam’s funeral, imagined myself standing on the grass on an overcast day, next to a mound of earth, looking at a coffin suspended over the hole in the ground. I tried to imagine the volley of shots, the lone bugler, playing, as we – his family, his friends – sobbed in silence.
But I could not. It was not long ago and yet I saw nothing. I tried to imagine how I must have felt. I would have woken up that morning without any knowledge that I was even a mother; Ben must have first had to convince me that I had a son, and then that we were to spend that very afternoon burying him. I imagine not horror but numbness, disbelief. Unreality. There is only so much that a mind can take and surely none can cope with that, certainly not mine. I pictured myself being told what to wear, led from the house to a waiting car, settled in the back seat. Perhaps I wondered whose funeral we were going to as we drove. Possibly it felt like mine.
I looked at Ben’s reflection in the window. He would have had to cope with all that, at a time when his own grief was at its most acute. It might have been kinder, for all of us, if he hadn’t taken me to the funeral at all. With a chill I wondered if that was what he had really done.
I still didn’t know whether to tell him about Dr Nash. He looked tired again now, almost depressed. He smiled only when I caught his gaze and smiled at him. Perhaps later, I thought, though whether there might be a better time I didn’t know. I couldn’t help but feel I was to blame for his mood, either through something I had done or something I had not done. I realized how much I cared for this man. I couldn’t say whether I loved him – and still can’t – but that is because I don’t really know what love is. Despite the nebulous, shimmering memory I have of him, I feel love for Adam, an instinct to protect him, the desire to give him everything, the feeling that he is part of me and without him I am incomplete. For my mother, too, when my mind sees her, I feel a different love. A more complex bond, with caveats and reservations. Not one I fully understand. But Ben? I find him attractive. I trust him – despite thelies he has told me I know that he has only my best interests at heart – but can I say I love him, when I am only distantly aware of having known him for more than a few hours?