The Missing World

by Margot Livesey

  “How are you?” he whispered.

  “Not so good.”

  “That’s what the woman said. I’m sorry. Can I help?”

  “Not today.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I have to get my strength back. I’m all muddled and upset.”

  “Call me,” he said. “Anytime.”

  Jonathan had stayed with Hazel for several hours. Gradually, without ever fully recovering consciousness, she shifted from the comatose state that followed a seizure into a deep and speechless sleep. In the morning she woke only when the hammering started. He came into the study to find her gazing out of the window at the roofer. “He’s fixing Mrs. Craig’s roof,” he explained, and offered to run her a bath. Hazel trembled—was she having another seizure?—and edged towards the door.

  In his daydreams he had imagined their lovemaking would transform her back into the woman who had lured him away from half-eaten meals and half-watched films and once, on a June evening in the garden, had drawn him down onto the grass. But for the rest of the morning Hazel assiduously avoided him. When he came into a room, she left or stared at a book until he left. By the time Bernadette arrived, he’d been glad to go to work. He was tired of feeling as if a huge hand were squeezing his chest every time he entered a room. Where would she be without him?

  At the office he sat at his desk, emptying his in-tray and enjoying the round robin of his colleagues’ praise as they dropped off files and memos: how wonderful he was to Hazel, how devoted. No accident that he dallied, fielding a late phone call, sending one more e-mail, until the last possible moment. He arrived home to find Bernadette buttoning her coat. Before he could excuse his tardiness, she was gone. He was still hanging up his own coat, bracing himself for the evening ahead, when the bell rang.

  Hoping for a brief reprieve—a canvasser, perhaps—he opened the door and discovered Maud. In the last twelve hours she had vanished from his mind. Now he stared, doubly amazed by her presence and by his own forgetfulness, while she explained that she’d spoken to Bernadette on the phone. “I brought soup. After last night, I thought something simple would be fine.”

  “Last night,” he said, then realised she meant the imaginary supper with Steve and Diane.

  And somehow they were outside embracing over her ten-speed, her tongue searching his. Only when she pulled away, asking him to hold the groceries and flowers, did it occur to him how easily Hazel could have seen them entwined in the square of light.

  In the hall Maud propped her bike against the radiator and reclaimed the flowers. “White irises,” she said. “Can you put them in water?”

  As he started towards the kitchen, he heard her voice from the living-room and, lower, Hazel’s. Christ, he thought, I shouldn’t leave them alone, but when he carried in the flowers, one glance at Hazel sent him backing out of the room, muttering about work. Upstairs, he tried to imagine the worst-case scenario, each woman admitting their lovemaking, and drew a paralysing, shining blank.

  Surprisingly, he managed to begin a report and indeed became so engrossed that the knock at the door made him start. “Hazel feels crummy,” Maud said. “She’s gone to bed.” And he knew nothing had changed, or not in that way.

  “Did she take her medicine?”

  “Yes.” She stepped closer. “I need to talk to you.” Then, seeing his gesture of alarm, she added, “Not here.”

  “Shall I phone you?” In his desire to avert the present danger, he heard himself sounding almost eager.

  “Yes, call me at the shop.”

  “I will, tomorrow. But are you leaving? No soup?”

  “I think I’d better.” She gave him a meaningful look, though quite what her meaning was, he hadn’t an inkling.

  A blade of light across his face woke him. After Maud’s departure, he’d fallen asleep on the sofa, watching a film on TV, and when he stirred, long after midnight, had simply reached for the rug and remained. The spare-room bed offered no particular temptation, and joining Hazel did not bear consideration. Now, blinking away the wisps of a dream—he’d been bicycling along a river—he felt curiously well rested.

  Half an hour later, bathed, dressed, coffee beside him, he sat at the kitchen table, paging through his beekeeper’s diary. In a few weeks it would be St. Gregory’s Day, when, by tradition, the spring flowers opened and the bees emerged. A year ago he’d found most of the bees in his middle hive dead. Need to restock middle hive, he read. Try a Buckfast Queen? Unbidden, the terse entry recalled the rest of that day. He’d come into the house upset—he should’ve been more vigilant, given the bees more food—to be confronted by Hazel holding one of his old cheque books. “Who is S.B.?” she had asked. When he admitted the truth, something had happened between them as startling and irrevocable as Flopsy’s disappearance.

  But now, he thought, irrevocable no more. All that was needed was for him to join Hazel in amnesia. Last year, after hours of argument, he’d retreated to the middle hive and begun, furiously, to search the frames for the old queen. As if sensing his murderous intent, somehow she eluded him, hiding amidst the workers and drones. He’d been stung half a dozen times before giving up. A week later, he spotted her on the first attempt, killed her, and installed the new queen.

  No need, he thought, for replacements this year. Closing the diary, he turned to the files he had brought home. He was studying the estimates for a garden fence demolished, according to the owner, by last November’s gales when the phone rang.

  “Sorry to call so early,” said a brusque voice, Alastair, his boss. “I need to know your plans for returning to work.”

  Jonathan was about to explain how they’d just missed each other at the office yesterday, how even now, at quarter till nine, he was hard at it, but Alastair had already jumped in. “Two afternoons a week is not exactly full time.”

  On the television, which he’d forgotten to turn off, a woman raised a hand towards the sky. Jonathan felt a tingling of alarm. “Hazel still can’t be left alone,” he said.

  “That’s too bad, though, strictly speaking, not our problem. In the circumstances we’ve been remarkably generous, all this time off for an ex-girlfriend.”

  Jonathan stared at the phone, aghast. To hear such words when, only a few yards away, Hazel lay sleeping, put everything in jeopardy. “We’re getting married,” he managed, “on March nineteenth.”

  “Super. At the risk of sounding like a schoolmaster, I’d say if Hazel’s well enough to get married, then she’s well enough for you to come to work. What we’ve given you is discretionary leave, and our discretion is at the end of its tether. You heard about Tim?”

  Of course. Several people yesterday had mentioned Tim’s accident, a fall from a climbing wall, two months in a neck brace, and he’d made sympathetic noises, not stopping to consider how this might affect his own situation. “Frankly,” Alastair continued, and now Jonathan could hear the fatigue beneath the brusqueness, “I can’t cope. Being out of the office every day is wreaking havoc with my schedule. You know how time-consuming these site visits are. Tim was due at a house in Finsbury Park this afternoon, and I hate to cancel so late. The case has dragged on for nearly a year.”

  “What about the paperwork?”

  “We’ll messenger it over. Is this a yes?”

  “Give me half an hour to see if I can find anyone to sit with Hazel.”

  “That would be great,” Alastair said, and hung up.

  Jonathan gazed at the television, where a plane was taking off. Just when everything was settling down, this new wild card. If at all possible, he should go to Finsbury Park. He remembered Hazel bucking beneath him. Then he pictured a suitcase, a taxi. She was a woman who ran away, had before, might again. He eyed the white irises on the mantelpiece and for a befuddled moment considered taking her to Plantworks. Why was it, he wondered, that doing exactly the same thing with two different people could be so wrong. Was there a philosophical principle that covered that?

  Into his mind came the nurse’s sister. Bernade
tte was only free two days a week—besides, the agency fees were dear—but Charlotte might be available. He was reaching for the phone when he thought to consult Hazel; the illusion of choice often seemed to cheer her. He took the stairs two at a time and hurried into the bedroom. Hazel was sitting up in bed, holding her book like a missile. “Do you want breakfast?” he faltered.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  In a little over a fortnight, he reminded himself, we’ll be married. He clenched his fists and summarised the situation. “I was going to ring Charlotte, if that’s all right with you.”

  “Fine.” He was almost out of the room when she said his name. “Jonathan.” He turned back. “Did something happen the other night?”

  “Why would you think that?” Oh, bad answer, wretched answer. Blood hurtled into his face.

  “Something in bed,” she persisted.

  “Hazel, darling, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. Of course, I’m longing for us to make love again, but only when you’re better, when you want to.”

  He tried to shape his mouth, his eyes, into what might pass for a smile, gave up, and rushed from the room. This was terrible. She loved him, she had to love him, he’d saved her life. How could she look at him like that, without a flicker of affection? Anyway, she couldn’t know. Late in the night, while she was still unconscious, he had washed away the evidence.

  Charlotte stared resentfully at the driver’s dull brown hair flopping over his jacket collar. For god’s sake, she thought, get a ponytail. She herself wore the same clothes as the night before, like the old days, and here she was already on the streets, along with an astonishing number of other people. Surely they didn’t all work in hospitals or film production. “Am I your first trip?” she said.

  “I wish. I’ve been to Heathrow twice and done a maternity-ward grand prix. Things just quieted down.”

  He had a voice like a cheese grater. Imagine having this yob as your midwife. “Have you ever had a baby in your taxi?” she said, eyeing the grey seatcovers.

  “You mean delivered one? Not yet, touch wood. Unless you’re about to change my luck.” He gave a quick leer over his shoulder.

  “Absolutely not.” So much for her baggy black jumper. She sat back and, although it wasn’t clear he noticed, refused to say another word until they pulled up outside the obstreperous wooden door. The dishy Jonathan appeared, and she made an empty-handed gesture. In fact she had ten pounds at the bottom of her bag, but people often confused inclusive and exclusive sums; he might be less generous later if she paid for the taxi now.

  While he dealt with the driver, she examined the walls of the hall, bare save for tiny scraps of wallpaper. Like Bernie, she thought, Jonathan was not quite as orderly as he pretended.

  “Thanks for coming on such short notice,” he said. “How long can you stay?”

  She stole a glance from under her lashes. He had that glossy, newly shaved look and seemed taller than before, though perhaps that was just the suit. She started to say she had to be at the school by three, then remembered today was Rory’s day for the rug-rats. “As long as you need me,” she said, and, not wanting to sound too pathetic, added she had plans for the evening. He assured her he’d be back by six.

  The door closed and he was gone before she realised he hadn’t given her a phone number. Stupid bugger. Bernie always left a list as long as her arm and the rug-rats were healthy as kings. What if Hazel started ranting and rolling her eyes?

  The sound of television drew her into the living-room but she found the machine twittering to vacant chairs. Down the hall, the kitchen too was empty. What a nice, bright room, with none of the clutter that she herself seemed to generate simply by breathing. If she and Walter had got a house like this, might he have stayed? When they met he’d been sleeping on a friend’s sofa, and her bed-sit had struck him as sumptuous; a year later he’d claimed their one-bedroom flat in Kilburn was palatial. But people changed, got older, wanted more. Maybe Walter, for all his talk of bourgeois crap, had been looking over her shoulder, his eyes wide with greed.

  Through the glass door at the end of the kitchen the garden rippled seductively. Later. For now she put on the kettle and returned to the hall. “Hello,” she cried, pitching her voice up the stairs. “Anyone at home?”

  A figure appeared, ghostly in pyjamas. “Who is it?”

  “Me, your reader. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  For a few alarming seconds Hazel swayed, then she collapsed on the top stair and buried her face in her hands. Charlotte perched on the stair below. Nice carpet, she thought, patting Hazel’s knee. “There, there. You’ll be better soon. Nothing like a good cry.”

  After several minutes of platitudes, she persuaded Hazel back to bed and went to make tea. By the time she returned upstairs, Hazel was teary but composed. Charlotte balanced herself and the tray on the edge of the bed. “Who chose the colour for the kitchen?” she said. Then, seeing Hazel’s frown, “Sorry. Is that in the part you forget?”

  “No. We painted the kitchen the year I moved in. It’s later that things get foggy.”

  “Can’t Jonathan help?”

  “Not so you’d notice.”

  “Maybe he’s afraid you’ll remember something you don’t like about him.”

  “What makes you say that?” Hazel was pleating the sheet back and forth between her fingers.

  “I’m just guessing. It must be nice to have your side of the story be the only one. Don’t you have friends you can ask?”

  A blush crept into Hazel’s face. “I was abroad for so long,” she said, sounding calmer. “France and India. Most of my London friends, I don’t remember. And Jonathan keeps saying I’m too ill to have people round.”

  Charlotte had a flash of sympathy. Hadn’t she and Hazel suffered similar fates? Everything fine one minute, and the next in smithereens. But Hazel had someone waiting to pick up the pieces. That was the difference. “Well,” she said, and at the same moment Hazel said, “Jonathan knew about memory palaces. They started with a Greek poet.”

  She described how Simonides had gone to supper with his patron. Charlotte listened attentively. Family life was having a dismal effect on her conversation. Last week at the Trumpet, she’d even told Louis an anecdote about the rug-rats.

  Simonides recited his new poem. The other guests applauded, but the patron peevishly announced that he would pay only for the verses praising him. A little later, a servant brought the message that Simonides was wanted outside. In the courtyard he found a man waiting—in some versions two men, the twins Castor and Pollux. While they spoke, the roof of the banquet hall collapsed, killing everyone. Simonides identified the mangled corpses not by jewellery or clothing but by remembering where each guest was seated. “And that was how they got the idea,” said Hazel, “that space was a way to order memory.”

  Not so stupid, then, thought Charlotte, to have sealed off the bedroom after Walter left. Quickly she began to calculate her finances. If Jonathan was as good as his word and stayed away until six, that was forty pounds. Plus—she added, reaching for the biscuits—all she could eat. At Bernie’s there was often, at least with the things she liked, an unpleasant sense of rationing. She was about to go and investigate the fridge when Hazel spoke again.

  “Actually I was hoping you might help me with this memory stuff.”

  Charlotte felt her scalp tighten. Reading was okay. Drawing was okay. But who wanted to wade around in the sewers of the past? Shouldn’t everyone be afraid of what they might find amongst all that piss and shit? She began to stammer out excuses. What about the book on India or a game—Snap, or Snakes and Ladders? “I’ve been practising with my nephew and niece. Scrabble?”

  She stopped, conscious of Hazel’s imploring gaze, and went over to the window. For tuppence ha’penny she’d have burst into tears herself. She stared out at the sunlit garden, a bushy tree and the flower beds with their sprouts of colour. Beyond the lawn were three grey mounds, some sort of sculpture, perhaps
.

  “Charlotte,” Hazel said, “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate.”

  Charlotte swallowed. She remembered her sister saying the same word, and if Bernie had meant it, Hazel meant it twenty times over. I can always stop, she thought, I can walk away and leave everything that happens in this house right here. “Okay.” She turned her bedazzled gaze back to the darkened room. “Though I don’t see how I can be of much use. I hardly know you.”

  Shyly Hazel explained her idea. She wanted Charlotte to interview her and write down the answers. “What should I ask about? Your work? Jonathan?”

  Hazel’s clear blue eyes washed over her. “Both, everything. Imagine you’re writing an exposé, or the authorised biography.”

  • • •

  So they began. Quite soon Charlotte was enjoying herself, as if playing an intriguing role, halfway between psychiatrist and detective. She learned how Hazel and Jonathan had met, when a librarian brought Hazel the books Jonathan had requested. “He was reading about bees, and we started talking. I told him that in India honey is one of the few foods that can be freely exchanged between castes.” Presently they agreed to go for a drink. “I was twenty-eight and felt I had nothing to show for myself. So to have this man hang on my every syllable was lovely. He asked wonderful questions—about India, my travels. And he told me about his bees.

  “We’d been going out for a few months, three or four, when I started having trouble with my landlord, and Jonathan suggested I move in. We were in love, but we wouldn’t have lived together so soon otherwise.”

  “Did he live here with someone before you?” Charlotte asked.

  “Suzanne. She moved out the spring before we met. That was one of the ways Jonathan and I were compatible. I’d had my share of men. It would’ve made me nervous to be with someone inexperienced.”

  I wish I were like you, Charlotte was about to say, then she saw Hazel’s face. “But there is something, isn’t there?”