The Amnesiac

by Sam Taylor

  Even in that dim and flickering light I knew it was she, and my heart rose to my throat as I beheld her. She was dressed in black lace and her skin was pale and smooth as alabaster. Her body was . . . oh God, it breaks my heart to describe her in such mean, inadequate words. The word made flesh, that was a miracle; but her flesh made word . . . She was perfection. Her figure exquisitely slim, yet womanly. Her beauty of a kind that can be nothing but pure, yet which, to my lasting shock, breathed a carnality so overpowering as to seem almost obscene, attached as it was to that angelic face. She had let her hair down and brushed it out - or someone had - and it flowed down over her shoulders and some strands of it veiled part of her face, but I could see her lips, as I had seen them before, only painted now in the most provocative scarlet gloss, and, though half closed, her eyes, which were grey and fathomless and looking at me.

  Or should I say, through me? I honestly don’t know. I had the impression she was looking at me, that she knew I was there, a solid object, a corporeal being, in the same room as her, and yet there was no expression on her face, no recognition . . . though, of course, there wouldn’t have been; to her, I was not I, but merely a stranger. But, though her gaze was anonymous, it was also unmistakably sensual. Her lips were slightly parted with what looked, to my admittedly untrained eyes, like desire, or its facsimile. With aching slowness she moved towards me, her feet bare on the cold wooden floor.

  I did not move. I could not move. I recognised in myself the symptoms of sexual love, which had, until that moment, been for me only uncomprehended words on a page, those of Sappho in Catullus’ translation. ‘Whenever I see you, sound fails, my tongue falters, thin fire steals through my limbs, an inner roar, and darkness shrouds my ears and eyes.’ Oh, it was all true, it was all true! I was halfblind, half deaf and utterly immobile, yet with a rawness of feeling that was both agonising and ecstatic, like a statue composed only of nerve-endings.

  Closer she came and still I did not move, did not speak. I could smell her now - not some expensive bottled scent, but her flesh; her - and I could feel the lowest part of me, the beast I could not control, straining to reach her through three layers of cotton. She moved closer, closer, so close I could feel her breath on my neck and her hair brush my lips. And then she moved her hand to the swollen beast and I said her name.

  ‘Miss Vierge.’

  Why did I do that? The truth is, I don’t really know. I could claim it was moral righteousness that moved me to break that wondrous spell, repulsion at the thought of taking advantage of an innocent gentlewoman. And part of it was this, I suppose. But a greater part, I suspect, was fear. Fear of the consequences of my actions in the world beyond the door of this room, and also a more primal fear, a fear of my own desire, and hers, and that bed, and the other, unknown world into which she might - must - have led me.

  Up to this point, my memory is vivid, but with the breaking of the spell something seems to have ruptured in my remembrance. All is hazy, fragmented, cold. Yes . . . what I remember more than anything is feeling suddenly cold. Of being aware of the sweat drying between my shirt and my skin, and seeing her shiver, disgust and incomprehension in her eyes, and run back behind the screen. And shame. As though it were I who had brought her here; as though it were I who had hypnotised and seduced her.

  I remember struggling to put my jacket on: an action complicated by the desire for haste and the shaking of my limbs. I remember hearing the door bang, feeling the chill draught of air from the corridor. I remember running through corridors and down stairs, following her once more. I remember seeing the blank face of the mute woman as I passed her in the parlour, and of being suddenly breathless as I stood in the street, the steam rising from my open mouth, and staring wildly about me, trying to discern her vanishing form in the mist. I remember a maze of sidestreets and the panic in my chest as I ran. I remember discovering her body on the ground and thinking oh God what if she is dead. I remember my relief at the feel of her warm breath on my fingertips, at the rapid pulse I detected in her wrist. I remember lifting her - how heavy she seemed for one so petite - and my shame and lust and tenderness at the sight of those red lips parted again, so close to mine. I remember the single soft kiss I stole as she lay unconscious in my arms, and I remember waving down a cab somewhere near Waterloo station. I remember holding her around the shoulders to keep her warm and to prevent her slipping down the seat and banging her head. I remember using the last of my money to pay the cab driver, and his suspicious look as I lifted her body up the steps to her door. I remember discovering, with relief, the key to the front door in the pocket of her cloak. After that I remember nothing until she was asleep, in her nightdress, in her bed, the covers tucked chastely to her throat, breathing comfortably, and I was sitting in a straight-backed wooden chair near the curtained window, a single candle burning on a table beside me, and writing in my notebook. What I wrote, unfortunately, was not an account of the night’s strange adventure, but a description of my feelings at that present moment; a three-page eulogy that I will spare you, o reader, as you can probably well imagine its contents, and as time is short.

  I began writing, as I have said, at ten to five in the morning, and I would guess that I wrote for at least half an hour. I cannot have slept, then, for more than a few minutes, as it was not yet light when I left her house, but however short a time I was asleep it was enough for my world to change utterly. From being her saviour, proud and enraptured, when I fell asleep, I woke to discover myself a strange and frightening intruder, sitting for no reason whatsoever in a chair at the end of her bed. She was too scared to make much noise; her scream came out as a whisper, as when one is asleep and dreaming, and cannot swim free of the lower world (which is as of water) to breathe and speak and move in the higher (which is as of air). For that reason only was I not discovered by one of the servants and delivered into the hands of the police.

  The time between my waking and my escaping was infinitesimally brief. As soon as I saw the look in her eyes, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she had no memory at all of the night before; that what she remembered was falling asleep in her bed, alone in her room, and waking in her bed, with a man in her room; a man she had never seen before: a stranger.

  And so . . . I ran from her room, from her slowly gathering screams, down the broad curved stairway, out of the door, and into the dark, lamplit street, where in the split second before I turned and fled in the direction of Kings Cross, I saw, secreted in that familiar doorway across the road, the silhouette of a man, barely detectable were it not for the single red circle of a lit cigarette, and knew that the game was up; that Ivan Dawes had seen me, had recognised me, had recorded in his notebook the strange fact of my appearance and disappearance, and that everything for which I had wished and dreamed had, in a single night, been stolen from me, and that the rest of my days would be lived in the shadow of this regret.

  MT, Summer ’93

  James looked out through the window of The Green Man. It was evening, and the streetlamps were lit: modern streetlamps, their glow orange and bland. The Green Man was a cosy pub, with wood panelling and a real fire. He liked it a lot, though he rarely came here. Why had he come tonight? Because it had a fireplace and no trivia machines, James thought. Because, if you were to remove the crisps packets and the stereo system and the electrically pumped Australian lagers, it might almost pass for something from the nineteenth century. Oh, he knew it was ridiculous, but James couldn’t help it: how he envied Martin Thwaite and his drifting banks of fog! How he envied him his revolver and his pipe-smoking detective boss! How he wished that were him following the mysterious gentlewoman through gaslit London streets! The past as a foreign country. It was all so romantic, so unreachable . . .

  And it was not only the milieu, but the characters and the story. Why can’t I be like Martin Thwaite, James wondered, my life connected to those of the people around me? All the other people I know seem so remote. Are they actual human beings, or merely figures to
fill a background? Why can’t I have moral choices, and consequences stemming from my actions, and the feeling that I am heading towards some sort of climax? Even a horror story or a tragedy must be better than this aimless drifting. I seem always to be forgetting why I’m here, what it is I’m searching for. The days erode my purpose. I mean, what is the point of me living in that house if nothing changes, nothing happens, nothing comes back to me at all?

  And yet, the more James considered this, the more holes he began to see in his own logic. After all, it was not so long ago that things had been happening to him. He had been spied upon. He had discovered some clues. Someone had beaten him up. It was he himself who had shied away from these openings, preferring to concentrate on simple actions such as stripping wallpaper. And even then, he hadn’t been able to escape the clues: it had been beneath the wallpaper that he had discovered the manuscript.

  Confessions of a Killer, Chapter 1. James looked at it again, the title and the opening lines. It was a clue! Of course it was. He had allowed himself to be swept away by its veneer of romance when what he needed to do was remain calm, detached, analytical. James ordered another pint and read the manuscript again, taking notes as he went along. This is what he wrote:

  It all seemed to fit - the address, the signature, the four double-initials he had found in the letter of letters - but somehow the characterisation struck James as being wrong: Martin Thwaite, whose initials suggested he was the fictional representation of Malcolm Trewvey, was likeable and innocent, while Ian Dayton, described by those who knew him as being sensitive and delicate, was here portrayed as the cynical, knowing Ivan Dawes. Yet if the initials did not correspond, then the whole basis of his investigation fell to pieces. If Martin Thwaite was not Malcolm Trewvey, then there was no real reason to presume that Angelina Vierge was Anna Valere, or that Gerard Ogilvy was Graham Oliver.

  James stared into space. Perhaps, he thought darkly, I am no closer to solving this mystery than I was two months ago? For a moment he could see the high black walls again, rearing up all around him, leading him into new dead ends, wrong turnings, folding back in on themselves endlessly. The labyrinth. The murmur of gentle laughter and conversation reached his ears as if from a great distance. He closed his eyes, picked up his pint glass and savoured the earthy, complicated, almost sweet flavour of the beer. When he opened his eyes, the black walls had faded and the pub’s interior swirled pleasantly once again in a mix of browns and reds and yellows. James sighed with relief.

  After all, he reasoned, this is only chapter one. There is still time for the emphasis of the narrative to change: for Ivan Dawes to come into focus, for Martin Thwaite to be revealed as a psychopath. He wondered how many other chapters there might be, and where in the house he might find them. He thought about the coincidence of the word ‘story’ and the word ‘storey’: would he discover the second story somewhere on the second storey? And what about the third story? Would he find that up in the attic, or down in the cellar? James felt his head spin as he imagined these secret places, and the shadow of a memory moved over him. Again he felt that hybrid emotion: equal parts hope and fear. Soon after that, he stopped thinking about the mystery. He bought a third pint and began to plan his activities for the following day. He would sand the floorboards in the second bedroom, he decided, and after lunch he would go to the launderette. Oh, and at three o’clock he had a doctor’s appointment.

  At closing time, half-drunk, he walked home. That night he dreamed that Malcolm Trewvey was hanging batlike from the ceiling over his bed, staring at him. When he woke up the next morning he could see nothing on the ceiling but a damp stain.

  From outside, he heard the sound of footsteps and whistling. He put on his dressing-gown and opened the front door to find the postman searching through his bag.

  ‘Morning,’ said the postman. ‘Morning,’ James replied. ‘I’m sure I had one for you somewhere,’ said the postman. He and James stared at the envelopes as his fingers flicked through them. ‘Ah, here we are. Number 21.’ James looked, but his attention was caught by the name on the letter behind his. He stared at it in shock.

  ‘Thank you,’ said James, as the postman gave him his letter. They said goodbye. James closed the door, and read the letter in the hallway. It was from his parents. They sounded happier this time, he noted, and then he discovered why: they had not made any plans for Christmas and would be thrilled to have James stay with them. James’s heart raced as he read the letter; not at the thought of seeing his parents, but because of the addressee on the envelope he had spied in the postman’s bag: Dr Lanark, 19 Lough St.

  James sat in the cab of his van and stared at the façade of the house next door. It was a semi-detached house, the two doorways either side of a fence that divided the small front garden. It was twilight now, and the windows in number 17 were brightly lit, but at number 19 all was lifeless. James might almost have imagined the house to be uninhabited were it not for the letter he had seen in the postman’s bag and the man he had observed leaving that door on several occasions when he had been spying on number 21. James closed his eyes and remembered the man’s appearance: he had been small, almost hunchbacked, with oddly squinting eyes that suggested both a suspicion of the world outside and an intolerance of daylight. He had not been at all like James had imagined the detective in the story. Could this really be the same Dr Lanark?

  James thought of the doctor he had just been to see. What had his name been? Dr Norton, that was it. The first time he met him, James had found him abrupt, but this time his manner had changed. There had been something concerned, almost tender, in his voice, even as he refused to give James his allergy pills back.

  ‘Why?’ James had asked.

  ‘Because they are not allergy pills,’ Dr Norton had replied.

  ‘No? What are they, then?’

  ‘That is precisely what I would like to ask you, James. Who gave you those pills?’

  James had tried to think, but it all seemed so foggy, so long ago. ‘I can’t remember.’

  The doctor had nodded when James said this. ‘I see.’ For a while there had been silence as the doctor scribbled something on a piece of paper, and then he had said: ‘James, there’s someone I’d like you to go and see. Dr Lewis. She’s a specialist, a very good doctor, and I think she’ll be able to help you.’ He had put the piece of paper in an envelope and sealed it. Then he had phoned Dr Lewis’s secretary and booked James an appointment for the following day.

  James looked at the envelope the doctor had given him. On the front was written: Dr Lewis, T.R.A., 3rd floor, The Health Centre, Lethe Park. James wondered what kind of specialist she was; he had wanted to ask Dr Norton, but had been worried that this might seem a stupid question.

  He yawned. It was dark outside now. He lay back against the window of the van and began to imagine what Dr Lewis would look like. In his imagination, she was dark-haired, in her late thirties. She took off her glasses to examine him more closely. Beneath her white coat he caught a glimpse of black lace . . .

  James was thinking of going back to his house to continue this fantasy when he noticed the small figure scurrying up Lough Street. Under one, two, three streetlamps he passed, a bent-sinister silhouette. James got out of the van as the man turned into the driveway of number 19. ‘Excuse me!’ James shouted. The man looked up for a moment, then hurried up the driveway. There was something ratlike about him, James thought, something shifty. The man was opening his front door when James reached his driveway. ‘Dr Lanark? I’d like a word with you if I . . .’

  Without a word, the man opened the door, entered the house and banged the door shut in James’s face. James rang the doorbell, but there was no response. Before this moment, James had been following the clue more out of duty than expectation. It had seemed unlikely that the man next door might really be involved in the mystery; James had merely wanted to eliminate him from the investigation so he could get back to painting his walls white with a peaceful conscience. But the
man’s reaction to James’s polite inquiry had ruined everything.

  He stood in the doorway and tried the bell again. Please answer, he thought; please tell me you don’t know me, that this is all a harmless coincidence. In the silence that followed, James felt the world grow once more murky and menacing. It was time for him to become a detective again.

  The first thing he did was to open the box marked ‘CLUES’. James had been bothered every since he read the story by the feeling that he had seen Dr Lanark’s name before, in some other context, and now he was determined to find out where. One by one he sorted through the clues he had collected. The printouts of the newspaper reports on the death of Ian Dayton. The nine little squares with letters on them in the envelope addressed to Malcolm Trewvey. The second envelope addressed to Malcolm Trewvey, marked URGENT and still unopened. The manuscript of the story, Confessions of a Killer, Chapter 1. He placed these pieces of paper on the floor of his bedroom and stared at them. He imagined that they should, somehow, spell out the solution to the mystery, or that they should fit together to reveal some hidden pattern. But no matter how long he stared at them, he saw nothing but bits of paper.