A Trick of the Mind

by Penny Hancock

  After a while I said, ‘Isn’t your mum waiting for you?’

  ‘It’s me chil’ minder today.’

  ‘We’d better see if she’s outside.’

  ‘Don’t wanna go much.’

  ‘What d’you mean? It’s going to be a lovely evening, you can play outside, with your mates, can’t you?’

  My stomach had begun to churn. I wanted to get on the road. Get this visit over and done with.

  It was almost impossible to understand the next sentence Tim uttered. Other people – staff as well as children – were impatient with him because it was so hard to decipher what he said. His language disorder meant words must feel to him like moths flitting around a darkened room, refusing to be caught even though he knew they were there. I had to give him time.

  ‘What did you say, Timothy?’

  ‘Me dad’ll be there. Me stepdad. Hate ’im.’

  ‘Why though? Why do you hate him?’

  Another shrug.

  I didn’t want to ask him closed questions, put words into his mouth. I waited to see if he could explain something he might well not understand himself. At last he said, ‘’Im shouts at me. When I ain’t done nuffin’.’

  I would have liked to have put an arm around him, give him some kind of affection. We weren’t supposed to touch the children in our care of course, but sometimes it was what they needed. He looked so starved of it, his body held rigid in a rejecting – or rejected – hunch.

  His objection to his stepfather stirred something within me. Something that had been reignited last weekend, when I heard the radio report for the first time and the thought that I might have caused the accident crashed into my head. Getting the blame, trying to right it. The road to May’s house. A choice . . . making a decision that got me into trouble.

  I thought again of that lock of hair in the box in May’s kitchen drawer that had made me gag. It had had a physical effect on me, as if my body remembered something my mind refused to. Shame, embarrassment, the need to turn away. Something I’d turned away from ever since. Needing to tell, not being able to. How Timothy must be feeling.

  ‘Timothy, you know you can always tell me or Miss Hatfield if you’re upset about something that happened to you. D’you want to tell me more now?’

  We’d wondered whether shouting was the least of his problems. Whether Timothy only reported the things he dared to report. The Child Protection team had been alerted. I wished I could take him home with me, or even better, to Aunty May’s cottage, to spend the weekend on the beach, take him to buy ice-cream from the hut on the promenade or those shiny coloured windmills that flipped about in the wind. Give him a proper, carefree childhood.

  I remembered a chat I’d had with Chiara quite soon after I’d started teaching.

  ‘Babes,’ she’d said, ‘you make such assumptions. Not all kids had your upbringing. It doesn’t mean they’re unhappy. In fact in some cases quite the opposite.’

  ‘No,’ I’d said. ‘It’s not to do with the money, the background. They’re really needy, some of those kids, emotionally I mean. I want to make things better for them.’ I might have added that my upbringing hadn’t come without its undermining legacies.

  But then she said, ‘It’s not your job. You have to keep a distance. Don’t get so involved.’

  It was pointless being told not to get involved.

  You had to have a heart of stone not to.

  Now I glanced at the clock. It was almost four. I was desperate to leave. But I didn’t want to leave Timothy alone in the office to wait for his child minder, who was often late. I let him potter about, helping me tidy things, suggesting he sharpen the pencils, another job he loved.

  ‘You are a help, Timothy. I usually don’t get time to sharpen all those colours. What a superstar you are!’ He gave me a rare and therefore all the more engaging smile and we high-fived one another. As he opened his mouth to say something a shadow fell through the open door.

  ‘There you are!’ His child minder had come to the classroom, a sticky-looking pink baby sucking a dummy in her arms and a toddler wrapped round her ample thigh.

  I had to stop off to buy Pepper some dog treats from the minimarket on my way home, and take him for a quick run around Victoria Park.

  Then at last I could set off. I was on my way to unravel the web I’d got entangled in when I’d felt the car jolt and swerve to the side.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was already six o’clock by the time Pepper and I were heading away from the sprawl of the London outskirts, the industrial estates and random billboards set up in barren-looking fields advertising bathroom refits and office space. I’d let myself into Frank’s flat and found he had a carrier cage for Pepper, and I’d put him on the back seat – a precaution against further mishaps.

  At last, we got into more rural scenery.

  At this time of year the verges frothed with towering cow parsley, and the fresh green hedgerows were laden with the white gauze of hawthorn, the vast dome of the sky a smooth blameless blue, like a hospital gown, I thought, startled by my own simile. Once I would have seen this landscape as something exquisite, now it seemed to throb with hidden meaning, menace perhaps, thrill. I might weave this scene, these colours, into a painting one day.

  Where could the man in the hospital have been going that night? There was only the village of Reydon, a small smattering of houses before you got to Southwold at the end of that road. If he was heading for Southwold he was probably a local – I couldn’t imagine a London weekender would be walking down that road at night. I wondered about his family, his friends, the woman on his Facebook page. What had Patrick imagined when he found my diary? He must believe I was someone else. The woman he thought he’d begged to come down wasn’t me.

  So who was she?

  I left Pepper in the car in the hospital car park.

  Patrick McIntyre, I was told at reception, had been moved into a general ward. I took the lift, buzzed at the door again and when it opened went to the nurses’ station where they sat filling forms behind their desks. Patrick was at the end of the ward by the window. The beds were mostly occupied by older men, white-haired and half asleep. So when I spotted Patrick, he seemed to glow, a golden vision, his alert face in sharp contrast to the age and pallor of the rest. He was sitting up, no more tubes, a successful recovery by the looks of it.

  He looked up expectantly as I crossed the room to his bedside and I remembered he’d said no one else had visited. I couldn’t believe he didn’t have loads of friends who would want to see him. It was what his phone suggested. He frowned at me, as if the effort of trying to remember almost hurt.

  Pale blue eyes. Not brown after all. Framed by long, childlike lashes. A physical jolt passed through me. They were dangerous eyes, I thought. Eyes that could get away with anything and probably always had. His expression changed as I approached, from one of perplexity to one of recognition.

  ‘Hi!’ he said, his face breaking into a puzzled smile. He had very white teeth.

  His mouth formed two little creases like brackets. The neat black beard across his jawline that had been shaped expertly was beginning to grow.

  ‘I’m Ellie,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry if I looked confused, Ellie,’ he said. ‘The nurses had to help me recall stuff.’ A nice voice. Deep, smooth. ‘I lost my memory. But I don’t know how I could have forgotten you. Ell-ie,’ he said, as if he was trying out my name on his tongue, ‘Ell-ie’, as if it was something he could taste.

  I didn’t know what to say, what would make things worse for him, what better.

  ‘Is it OK?’ I gestured to the end of his bed, as there was no chair, and sat.

  I wondered what he knew about me, what he didn’t know, what he thought he knew, but didn’t. And what I was prepared to tell him.

  ‘Someone ran me over,’ he said, blinking at me with his little boy’s long lashes. He had an impish smile, a twinkle. Like Robbie Williams – who I’d had a bit of a thin
g for in my teens when he was young. I liked it.

  ‘Someone ran me over and drove off. A hit-and-run. They thought they’d found who did it – they assumed it was the lads from Blackshore, but of course it wasn’t.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Just some guys I got into a silly brawl with. They wouldn’t go that far. So now the police have drawn a blank, and I’ve told them not to pursue it. What’s the point? I’m sorry I ruined our weekend.’

  I could say something now or . . .

  ‘Ellie,’ he said, and he reached for my hand. ‘Thank goodness you’ve come. I was worried you’d given up on me after you saw my wrecked body that first day after it happened.’

  ‘No. Really, it’s not like that, I . . .’

  ‘You didn’t get in touch. I don’t blame you. I’m not much of a catch like this—’ he waved his hand over his body. ‘And I suppose you’re busy with work – do you know, I’ve forgotten what work you do. It’s so weird. It’s like there’s a great dark room in my brain that I know is full of stuff. I grope about trying to find things that I know are there, but can’t put my hands on them. But now you’re here, I forgive you for not coming sooner. It’s good to see your beautiful face.’

  He frowned, looking intently at me, as if he was trying to convince himself he should know who I was.

  I don’t know why, but an impression of his mother came into my mind. What a doting woman she must be, how he would have enchanted her all his life, how he would have enchanted every female young or old who crossed his path. I should be careful!

  He squinted up at me.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about that bastard. How could he have done a thing like that, and not stop? They must have known. Don’t you think? You couldn’t bash into someone even on a dark road and not realise you’d caused a life-bloody-changing injury to someone?’

  He spread his arms, to frame the legs that were stretched out stiff beneath the covers.

  Then, with a flourish, keeping his eyes fixed on mine, he threw the sheet off.

  ‘Look at this.’

  I don’t know what I’d been expecting.

  A cast, perhaps. Some kind of dressing certainly.

  Not this.

  I tried to take a breath. No air went in.

  My hands went up to my face. I couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to look. Didn’t want him to show me this. The room spun. I’d gone hot. Everything fizzed. I was going to faint.

  ‘No,’ I heard myself say. ‘No!’

  Both of his legs were bandaged. But one of them was dressed only as far as the knee.

  The rest of the leg, from the knee down, was missing.

  ‘Come on. It’s OK. I’m alright.’ His words seemed to come to me from far away.

  I squinted through my fingers. He was gazing at me, questioningly. ‘It won’t make you fancy me any less, will it, Ellie?’

  I needed to get away. I rushed back across the ward and asked for the hospital toilets. I reached them just in time to throw up. In the mirror my face was the same colour as the pale walls. I threw cold water at it. Then I stood, clutching the cool porcelain of the basin for I don’t know how long. I was trembling uncontrollably. I wanted to run away as far as I could. Turn back the clock, never drive alone to Suffolk, never listen to the radio, start to think that I might have hit someone, visit them in the hospital. I didn’t do it, I couldn’t have done. It was a bird. But they hadn’t caught the person who had done it and I was on the road at the right time, and . . . now this!

  It was as bad as if I’d killed him.

  Worse?

  I had to go to the police, as I should have done straight away, and say I was afraid I was responsible for this man’s atrocious injuries.

  My whole life, the one I’d been anticipating as I set off for Southwold that April night, free of Finn, painting for galleries, going for weekends in the country with Pepper, that whole vision wobbled like a mirage before it vanishes.

  I stood for a little longer.

  Then I began to breathe a little more steadily, to force myself to take some action. I had to confront this. It put me in a position of responsibility, being given this information. I had to be brave, I had to be adult. Patrick had to deal with it, after all.

  And now I was here to help him.

  Back by his bed he took my hand again and drew me to him.

  ‘You didn’t answer. Does it stop you being attracted to me?’ he asked. ‘Look at it, take it in, tell me.’

  I made myself look at his poor poor stump again.

  The thigh had been heavily dressed.

  ‘My thigh was only superficially damaged,’ Patrick said. ‘But they had to dress it to stem the bleeding. Amazing, isn’t it? That part of it could be so completely wrecked while the rest remained intact. They even found the bag I was carrying – I had bottles of beer in it. Completely unscathed. Yet my lower leg was well and truly fucked.’

  I forced myself not to flinch as I looked at it.

  ‘They say I’ll need quite a lot of practice to get back on my feet . . . foot, I mean.’

  He smiled ruefully and I wondered if he was on some sort of sedative or painkiller that prevented him from feeling the full force of this trauma – its implications for the rest of his life. The little curves that held his mouth in parenthesis twitched.

  ‘I can’t manage on my own like this. They keep asking me, “But don’t you have anyone who can come and help? Isn’t there anyone?” And I keep telling them, well, it’s really hard to remember. I know I had mates, because I was with some of them in the pub that night. But I’ve been away on business a lot over the last few years and lost touch with most of my contacts in England. “But there must be someone else, a family member?” they asked and I wracked my brains. And then I said no, as matter of fact, there isn’t! “But your girlfriend,” they said. “The one who came to visit, surely she wants to help. Surely she would give up a little time to sort you out, just until you adjust.” I asked them who they meant, and they said, “The small, dark, wavy-haired girl,” and I asked when you had come, and they said the day after the accident.’

  He was looking at me intently through his blue eyes, as if seeking reassurance. It must be terrifying to be so lost, without memories to help you navigate.

  ‘So that’s when I rang you, when I realised you were the one – if anyone – who would be there for me.’

  The sun sinking outside shone directly through the window, colouring everything amber.

  ‘Retrograde amnesia, they called it,’ he went on. ‘I can remember, you see, bits and pieces before and after my accident. And I can form new memories. But there are bits around the accident that have gone. Just gone. So when you came, I didn’t remember you! But it’s OK because they reminded me. And I thought, I have a beautiful girlfriend to get better for. Nothing’s going to stop me performing the way I used to for her!’ He twinkled.

  It was warm and quiet beside his bed, and it occurred to me how very isolated from the outside world we were, how cocooned in this ward from my real life. There seemed no point in worrying any longer about what part I had in his accident. I was here now. I had to follow it through.

  I thought of Fay, my yoga teacher, telling us to stay in the moment.

  ‘I do remember now that we had planned a weekend sailing in Southwold when all that stuff happened in the pub. That it was going to be our first full weekend together. I think. Is that right?’

  All that mattered was here, now. I wouldn’t think either about what I had done, or about where this was taking me. I would just do whatever I could to help him.

  ‘You’re the biggest incentive I have to get up and get going,’ he said. ‘But I can see it’s a pretty big ask for you to be patient with me. For you to wait while I learn to walk again, when you’re so busy with – you see, I’ve forgotten. What’s your work again?’

  ‘I’m a painter,’ I told him, ‘an artist. And a primary school teacher.’ The New York commission seemed a sup
erficial and paltry thing next to what Patrick was having to confront, so I didn’t mention it.

  ‘I have to teach on Mondays and Fridays. But I wouldn’t put anything before your walking,’ I said. ‘I will be here for you.’

  ‘Pull the curtains round my bed,’ he said. I did as he asked.

  ‘Come closer.’

  It was as though I had been hypnotised.

  ‘I need you,’ he said. ‘I’ve been starved of touch in here all this time.’

  How long, I wondered, did he think he’d been here? It was only four days. Poor man, to be so confused.

  ‘Here, closer again. Next to me.’

  ‘Won’t it hurt you? Is it allowed?’

  ‘It’ll be fine.’

  And I was doing as he asked.

  I lay down on the hospital bed, leaving a gap of just centimetres between his body and mine. This man I barely knew looked at me, as if he was reminding himself of who I was, examining me from the top of my head and every millimetre of my face, my eyes, my nose, and then his eyes came to a stop at my lips.

  He didn’t move.

  This was the right thing to do. I’d heard somewhere that if a person was deluded, say, with dementia, it’s much better to play along than to shatter their fantasy.

  I was applying this notion to this man, since I no longer had the faintest idea what else I could do.

  I ignored other thoughts that were pushing against my consciousness. Vague jumbled anxieties about who the woman he believed I was might be, my commission, the plans I had for May’s house, how they had all seemed to be coming together.

  I told myself I’d set everything straight as soon as I got all the facts sorted.

  So for now I didn’t say anything.

  And I convinced myself I was doing the right thing.