I'd seen Tamsin before. More than that. I knew her.
Sometimes when you catch a half-glimpse of someone across the street you mistake them for someone else, most likely a person you're missing, or you've just loved and lost. This was not like that. This was not a chance similarity. This was the actual person herself. The problem was that I didn't know who the hell that person was.
When we'd stood in that little foursome in the foyer, Steve making the introductions in an endearingly embarrassed way, I'd felt my mind running at screaming pitch, trying to resolve the question of who she was. But I knew there was no solution, that however fast my mind ran the wheels were being held off the ground. I had no recollection of this person, except for knowing that I knew her.
My memory's fine, in case you're wondering. I may not always pay my Visa bill on the nail, but I don't forget names and faces. As far as I could remember – no, fuck that: it's for sure, and definite. I'd never met this person. But I knew her. I'd never known her name, but I knew it wasn't Tamsin.
Monica had noticed the sweater immediately, and preoccupied as I was, I'd felt the ambient temperature drop by about ten degrees. She knew about the photos, and about the second ‘borrowing.’
‘That's a nice sweater,’ she'd said, with a smile that was bright enough to blind. The girl had nodded self-deprecatingly, and took a step closer to Steve, who was sending me signals I couldn't interpret.
‘It looks just like one of Steve's,’ I said, woodenly, staring at him. ‘You know, the one Amanda gave you.’
Amanda was Steve's fictitious girlfriend, an imaginary medical student allegedly out of the country doing an elective in Canada. I know it sounds vile to have ploughed straight in like that, but I was all over the place. It was a wonder I could say anything at all, and not surprising that I fell immediately into my programmed role. I had a job to do, and I was going to do it, not least because now I'd seen Tamsin, or whatever her name was, she was sending shivers up my scalp. Something was very wrong, and the worst thing was that I didn't know what it was.
‘It's the same sweater,’ Tamsin said, smiling winningly. ‘Steve lent it to me.’ The look in Steve's eyes as she said this confirmed what I already knew. No, he hadn't. But she'd turned up this evening wearing it, and he could hardly have demanded she take it off. Why? Because she doubtless had nothing else with her, and nothing on underneath. But that wasn't the real reason. The real reason was that you simply can't do that kind of thing.
After all, she'd only borrowed a sweater. It wasn't a crime, was it? And she'd only done it so she could have something of his with her, so she could smell him while they were apart. That was sweet, loving, a sign of how much she was beginning to care: surely not a reason to be shouted at?
With each moment I spent in this woman's company I was feeling worse and worse. And the next thing that we did, after Steve had stocked up on soft drinks, was to go and sit together for nearly two hours. Tamsin ended up between me and Steve, and I had Monica on my other side. We sat, in the darkness, and the film spooled on, and I have not a clue what it was about. Sitting next to Tamsin felt about as comfortable as sitting next to a corpse, and all I had in my head was one thought.
Why did I think I knew her?
Eventually I left the pub toilet, and bought the drinks. When I returned to the table I was expecting to see Monica sitting with her arms folded, looking stern and ill at ease. Instead I was perturbed to see her chatting affably with Tamsin. Steve looked up, took his drink – and Tamsin's – and then carried on listening to what the girls were saying. He didn't try to catch my eye, and neither did Monica when I sat down. In fact, as far as I could tell, normality had broken out all around me. The undercurrents and strangeness had disappeared, except for in one place. My head.
We stayed in the pub until it shut. I probably said about thirty words while everybody else chatted away, having what appeared to be a good time. I tried to start a subsidiary conversation with Steve, but it petered out almost immediately, partly out of my frustration at his apparent refusal to receive the messages I was sending. He was sitting close to Tamsin, his arm behind her on the bench, and every now and then she'd let her hand fall on his knee. I felt like a jealous lover watching them together, but I simply couldn't understand what was going on. At one point her eyes fell on mine and I looked away quickly, almost as if they'd burnt me.
When we were standing outside, the foursome dividing into two pairs again, I threw one last rope in Steve's direction and asked if he wanted to share a cab. He said no, he was fine. Tamsin put her hand in his, looked at me, and they walked off up the road.
As soon as Monica and I were in a taxi I started talking fast, and didn't stop for several minutes.
What, I enquired, the fuck did Steve think he was doing? Why was he sitting in a pub next to a woman he didn't know – and who kept riffling through his possessions – and looking like he was enjoying himself? If he wanted this thing to stop before it got any further, why was he playing up to it?
‘What was he supposed to do?’ Monica demanded, when she could get a word in. ‘Sit there looking miserable?’
‘Yes,’ I shouted, ‘Yes, that's exactly what he should have done. Otherwise it'll be taken as a sign. Otherwise, what was this evening about?’ Monica tried to interrupt, but I overrode her. ‘As far as she's concerned, this evening will now have been about Steve introducing her to two of his best friends. It's just going to make things worse. Now, for the first time, she's going to have something solid to clobber him with when the time comes.’ Without knowing I was going to do it, I savagely mimicked Tamsin's rather hard-edged voice. ‘There must be something between us, Steve, because you went to all the trouble to introduce me to your friends.’ I paused, and furiously lit a cigarette. ‘He's digging his own fucking grave.’
‘Put that out, would you, mate,’ the taxi driver said firmly.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ I muttered, and ground the cigarette out in the ashtray.
Taking her time, speaking calmly and rationally, Monica told me I was overreacting. She pointed out that they'd seemed to enjoy each other's company, and suggested that maybe Steve was changing his mind. She inquired as to what it was exactly that I had against Tamsin, and went so far as to offer the opinion that imputing such cold-hearted deviousness to a woman qualified as misogynous.
At this I turned and stared at Monica, feeling the blood drain from my face. We teetered for a moment on the brink of a vicious argument, and then I calmly but firmly stood down. Like everyone else, I only know one side of the sex war story, but that doesn't stop me being right every now and then. I wasn't saying Tamsin was a mad woman. I was simply saying she was mad. Mad men would doubtless behave in ways that I would find equally abhorrent. I'd just never had the misfortune of getting emotionally entangled with one.
The whole discussion was nonsense anyway, because it was the furthest thing from my mind. I was focusing on it purely as a diversionary tactic, as a way of shouting down the other thoughts that were fighting for my attention. After an hour sitting in the pub looking at her, I still knew both that I'd never seen Tamsin before, and that I knew her very, very well.
‘What about the whole sweater issue, then?’ I said finally. ‘What about that?’
Monica smiled and rolled her eyes. I remembered briefly that the last time I'd seen her do that was when Steve had asked me if we'd come out tonight, to dilute the presence of a woman he didn't want to be with. I didn't bother to mention it.
‘Steve lent it to her. What more do you want?’
I sighed and stared out of the window, willing myself to calm down. Ultimately, it wasn't my problem.
‘What's so strange, anyway?’ Monica said suddenly. ‘She's well-spoken, obviously intelligent, and she's certainly pretty.’ She paused, and the cab seemed to go very quiet, with just the sound of wheels on wet pavements outside. ‘You looked at her often enough.’
I resisted the urge to whimper as the last sentence curled lazi
ly in front of me, like a live electricity cable on wet grass. Then I clamped my mouth over Monica's and kissed the danger away. After a few moments the cab driver coughed aggressively enough to stop us and so we sat in companionable silence instead: Monica humming quietly to herself, me wishing fervently that I belonged to a species that reproduced by binary fission.
Next morning, I was at my desk at nine o'clock sharp. There was no one there to see it, but it made me feel diligent and worthy, and there was, moreover, a reason for it. The portable handset of the phone was sitting in front of me, and for once I'd remembered to replace it on the charger unit before going to bed, so the batteries were good and full.
Steve got into work at nine-fifteen, and boy was he going to have a phone call waiting for him.
While I waited for the time to roll round I booted the computer into life and, sipping a cup of coffee, gazed upon the outside world with reasonable goodwill. In the cold light of morning the state I'd got myself into the night before seemed unnecessary, even ludicrous. I'd mistaken Tamsin for someone else, that was all, and if Steve was now intent on seeing her, then that was no one's business but his. I was feeling good, looking good, and juggling three oranges in one hand.
None of that is true, unfortunately.
I was staring out of the window, rather than gazing, and my jaw was rigid. I hadn't slept well. The morning light was not cold, merely bright, and it was failing to do what it was supposed to. It was failing to make me feel any better.
I wanted to call Steve, but I felt nervous about doing so. I wanted to believe that last night had just been some weird mental belch on my part, but I didn't. I'm not a complete idiot. If I feel something, really feel it, it's not suddenly going to go away. It's not a whim. It's real.
When we'd got home Monica had gone straight through to get ready for bed. As she wears not only make-up but contact lenses she generally starts about half an hour before me, so as only to have about another half hour's worth to do by the time I come through. I padded around in the kitchen making tea, and then wandered into the living room.
It didn't matter where I was. I was in the same place wherever I was standing, and I finally knew what was wrong.
Three years ago, before the mad women period, I had a girlfriend called Katy. She was the last real person I went out with before Monica. Katy was fun, warm and a very good friend, but she had some problems. We talked them back and forth over the years, tried different ways to work round them, and in the end she went to a psychiatrist. He started her off on hypnotherapy, and during the second session the bombshell landed.
There were things in her life, events, which she had completely blanked. I'm not saying what they were, because it's her life, but they're the kind of things you really don't want happening to you. These events had taken place, mainly when she was very young but a few when she was older, and then had simply disappeared from her mind as if they'd never happened.
Except they hadn't, of course. They were still there: she just didn't know about them.
It's not like forgetting. When you forget you can remember, given the right cues. When you blank something, it's like someone throwing a coin into a pool of opaque water when you aren't looking. However hard you stare at the surface, you're not going to know that the coin is there. You may experience ripples every now and then, and you may realize that something is buried inside you, but unless you're taken back in time to see the coin sink, the event simply never happened for you.
I was at home when Katy came back from the breakthrough session, and I can still remember the look of horrified astonishment in her eyes. The rug had been pulled out from beneath her in a way that normally only happens in dreams, and she didn't know what to trust any more. What else might she have forgotten? What else had happened that she hadn't been a party to? It was a bit like living a completely normal human life for thirty years and then overhearing someone say it was about time they whipped your motherboard out and upgraded the CPU.
‘What?’ you think, feeling very cold inside, ‘what?’
As I stood in the living room waiting for the kettle to boil, that was how I felt, and as I sat at my desk the next morning, I felt exactly the same.
At that moment the phone rang, scaring me half to death. It was Steve, bizarrely. He thanked me and Monica for coming along the night before, and said he hoped we'd had a reasonable time. As he talked about the film I listened to him carefully, wondering if he was an impostor.
Finally, I said something. ‘So. You had a good time last night, did you?’
‘Yeah, great.’
‘And afterwards?’
Steve laughed, and I nodded to myself and grabbed the mouse, nervously making the cursor move around. Careful not to prejudge the issue, I asked if he'd found out what Tamsin had taken.
‘Oh yeah. It was just that sweater.’
‘But you lent that to her, apparently.’
There was a brief pause, and then Steve laughed again. I couldn't tell whether he thought I was being weird, or if he was covering up some confusion of his own. ‘Yeah, well I probably did. I was quite drunk that night. No big deal, anyway.’
‘No. So. Has she taken something this time?’
‘Yes, I expect so.’
‘And you don't know what.’
‘No.’
‘She's a one, isn't she,’ I said, and we laughed again.
I dropped the subject. I wanted very much to tell Steve how the sight of Tamsin had affected me, but I couldn't. Believe me, no one hates tension more than I do, the feeling that ‘nobody knows but me’. If there had been any point in mentioning it to Steve, I would have done. I couldn't. It would have felt like I was prying, which was a big change from the last time we'd spoken about it.
I'd been on the brink of telling Monica the night before as we lay in bed, but again I hadn't. I could still picture that live electric cable in my head, and I wasn't going anywhere near it. No earthing would be enough for that conversation.
So Steve and I chewed the rag a little longer, arranging in our roundabout way to play pool at some unspecified venue on an undetermined date in the future. I was only listening with half an ear, watching the cursor whirl round the screen.
Then suddenly the cursor was over my letters folder, and I wasn't listening at all. I opened the folder, grunting distractedly in response to Steve's ongoing banter, and saw again the folder without a name. Yesterday it had merely made me curious. Today my reaction was far more extreme. I stared at it, mouse still.
The folder looked no different to the ones called ‘Ginny’ or ‘Mel’, except that it didn't have a name. Or it did, as I discovered through a little technical messing around, but it was a special one. It was simply a space.
When the call was over, I hesitated for a long moment, cursor hovering over the folder. Then I double-clicked. Inside was a list of files, eight in total. They didn't have names either.
It was just possible that the folder could have been renamed accidentally, that I'd carelessly deleted everything but a space character. It was inconceivable, however, that I would have done that to the eight files inside. I must have done it deliberately. Needless to say, I had no recollection of having done so.
I opened one of the files at random. The computer whirred into life, loading up my word-processing software. A few seconds later I knew what the file was. It was a letter of a type I've written several times, other examples of which currently resided in the ‘Jackie’ and ‘Yvonne’ folders, as well as in ‘Ginny’ and ‘Mel’. A letter which said that while we'd had some fun, I didn't really feel that things could continue in the way they had. That I didn't feel that I was up to the rigours of a full-blown relationship, and didn't want to let them down. A letter that struggled valiantly not to say, ‘Christ, I didn't ask for any of this. All I wanted was a friend. You were the one who pushed things into sex and commitment’, a letter which tried to pull the blame onto me instead, in the hope of an easy getaway.
Reading the let
ter made me cringe way deep down in my soul. It was one of mine all right. I recognized the studious reasonableness, the calm hatred, the cultivated air of distant melancholy. Between the lines it said that I was to blame, in fact, that I should have had the sense not to get involved when I knew I couldn't deal with it. That I was just another bloke, as shallow as the rest, who'd taken what was on offer against his better judgement, because he didn't have the character to turn it down. It was the letter of a confused child, denying responsibility for his actions by using all the tricks of an articulate adult.
The only problem was, I didn't know who it was to.
There were references in the letter to events, to times and places. None of them rang a bell. A few sentences didn't make any sense at all, unless they were in-jokes I'd shared with the person I'd been writing to. One read: ‘I'm ready for the airlift to Bourbon Street’. It was meaningless, as far as I was concerned. It didn't make me smile sadly, as similar parts of the letters to Ginny or Jackie would have done. It was simply baffling.
I read the letter three times before sitting back with a cigarette, distractedly rubbing my temples. The letter made perfect sense. But then it would. I'd obviously written it.
But to whom, for fuck's sake? To whom, and when?
Without closing it, I opened another letter from the folder. This one was lighter in tone, but just as impenetrable. The fact that I sounded more relaxed probably meant it had been written earlier in the relationship than the other one. Probably, but not necessarily. With Yvonne, for example, there had been two waves, a second period of light-heartedness after we'd explicitly agreed that it was all just in fun, that we weren't playing for keepsies. Then, of course, the agreement had fallen apart, soon after she had put her apartment on the market.
‘Why did you do that?’ I'd asked, stupid old me. ‘So I can come and live with you,’ she'd said, smiling as if she'd finally given in to what I'd always wanted. Yvonne had been bright, funny and a successful businesswoman. She had also tried reasonably hard to slash my face with a breadknife.
What You Make It: A Book of Short Stories Page 26