The Freedom Building

by Martin Kendall

  She stopped and turned. She was thin, tall and middle aged: ‘Yes, Mr Gowan?’

  ‘How do you know me?

  She appeared concerned and walked to the bed: ‘You’re Mr Gowan, architect of the Zenith building. Are you feeling okay?’

  John froze for a moment, then mustered the words: ‘Yes, I’m fine.’

  She smiled and walked away.

  One of the people staring at him was an old man sitting opposite, so John turned to evade the stare, only to see other people glancing at him, too. He moved himself into a more defensive position, rising to an upright posture and putting the pillow behind his back. He closed his eyes and tried remembering the past few years. A formless darkness confronted him. The lack of memory was formidable, and the fear became a little too intense, so he opened his eyes. His forehead throbbed. He put his hand to his head, wondering how he could have crashed last night and hit his head on the steering wheel, if last night wasn’t last night.

  The nurse appeared again: ‘There is a Janice Stephens waiting outside for you, claiming to be your personal assistant. Would you like to see her? There was also the press, but I sent them away.’

  He suddenly felt warm and jubilant. Janice was somebody with whom he could feel comfortable telling the truth to get answers: ‘Janice! Yes, please, send her in.’

  ‘Would you also like to eat your meal now?’

  ‘Yes, please, after I’ve seen Janice.’

  Moments later, Janice appeared from a few beds down, walking towards him. She looked like the same old Janice: auburn hair down to her shoulders, blue jeans, smart woolly jumper and a knowing smile on her lips. She walked up to John and kissed him on the side of the head.

  ‘What have you gone and done, then?’ she said.

  John was surprised at the delicate kiss and felt a great warmth flood his heart: he needed the familiarity, the warmth, the end of loneliness. Janice retracted her face a little and looked at him.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she said, after a moment of staring at each other.

  John nodded hurriedly: ‘Please, take a seat.’

  She put the glasses case and newspaper onto the floor and manoeuvred the chair to face him: ‘I hope you don’t mind me sitting on your clothes.’

  ‘Tell me, Janice, have you heard exactly what happened to me last night?’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘What have you heard?’

  ‘That you were at the site, fell and hit your head.’

  Finally, he had an explanation for his head injury, if crashing his car hadn’t happened last night. But her explanation seemed very weird, his not being able to remember: ‘At the site?’

  ‘Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I remember being at the site,’ he said, wanting to hide his amnesia from her until he knew all the facts, ‘but I don’t remember falling and hitting my head. The doctor said slight amnesia is perfectly normal after concussion. Do you know anything more about what happened to me?’

  ‘Just that the tramp came to your rescue.’

  ‘The tramp?’

  ‘Didn’t they tell you?’

  John knew Janice would deduce he had extensive amnesia very soon, but his questions did not reveal it yet: ‘No, please tell me.’

  ‘Oh. Well apparently, you had left your phone on the bench in the Square, and the tramp walked onto the site to give it to you. You’d left the gate to the site open, so he walked through and found you there – this is what he told paramedics, at least.’

  John remembered sitting with the tramp on the bench last night, then walking onto the site – but last night wasn’t last night: ‘Okay, then what?’

  ‘He used your phone to call for the ambulance.’

  John remained still and tried to give a normal answer: ‘That was good of him.’

  ‘Yes, otherwise you would probably have awoken at the site on your own with terrible concussion.’

  He looked at Janice and was ready to tell her everything, but he noticed shallow cracks around her eyes which never used to be so pronounced. The roots of her hair, too, showed stark grey. Fear overcame him, and he realised she was not the Janice he knew three and a half years ago: she was a Janice allied to this future world. The throbbing in his forehead became a little more intense as he also realised he needed to be guarded and defensive, until he knew exactly how and why he had massive amnesia. He composed himself.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Janice said. She, like the newspaper, like the crazy doctor, like the strange people in the ward, who were systematically glancing at him, and like the formidable darkness he witnessed when closing his eyes, trying to remember the previous three and a half years, was alien to him. How could he possibly tell her the truth – a person allied to these alien experiences?

  ‘Just fine,’ he said.

  4

  The next day after breakfast, Janice arrived wearing jeans and an auburn jumper that matched her hair. The lines around her eyes weren’t so noticeable with more make-up. The doctor had warned John not to work this week but to get some rest and organise an appointment with his GP in a day or two, to make sure everything was okay.

  On John’s same old phone there were a few new contacts such as ‘Mann’ and ‘Andrew’ – names he didn’t recognise – and in his call register there was no record of any calls except the 999 call the tramp must have made two nights ago. John would have to thank him.

  Wearing his own clothes, he walked with Janice out of the hospital into the warm glare of sunlight and smiled. He felt sure that he would remember everything soon; but meanwhile, he could look upon the world with curiosity and observe the changes of three and a half years.

  ‘Mr Gowan?’ a male voice said.

  He turned with Janice. A man with thin black hair, slightly hunched shoulders and a navy-blue suit approached.

  ‘Hello, I’m Detective Murphy.’ He flashed them his identity card. ‘I just called the hospital to see whether you were still here. Apologies that I couldn’t see you sooner. I wanted to ask you whether you remembered anything from Sunday night – the night you fell?’

  John still recalled nothing, but he had to say something: ‘I can remember walking onto the site, but that’s as far as it goes.’

  ‘Do you remember anybody following you or acting suspicious?’

  Murphy glanced uneasily at Janice.

  ‘She’s my long-standing PA,’ John said. ‘We have no secrets. But no, I think I just fell as the doctor said.’

  The detective looked at John’s forehead: ‘So the mark on your head was caused by a fall, rather than somebody hitting you on the head?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘So why didn’t you put your hands out when you fell?’

  ‘I suppose they were in my pockets, and I didn’t have time.’

  The detective nodded: ‘Okay. If you’re not suspicious of your being hit, and the doctor isn’t either, then there won’t be any need for me to question the homeless man who, as I understand, called the ambulance for you. I just wanted to make sure that you were sure. If you even hinted to a reporter that you might have been hit, then things in this city could turn ugly – very fast.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘You are the architect of the building that replaces the old one destroyed by terrorists. If there was even speculation that a Muslim hit you, we might get a repeat of the race riots we had a couple of years ago – the white backlash after the destruction of the old Zenith building.’

  Learning this information quickly, John pretended he remembered and nodded the best he could: ‘I’ll tell anybody who asks me, I believe I fell.’

  ‘But if you do remember something that might indicate someone hit you,’ the detective said, holding a card, ‘then call me first.’

  They left the detective, and Janice drove out of the hospital car park and along the road until they approached a T junction where she flicked the right-hand indicator.

  ‘We need to go left,’ John said.

  ‘We�
��re going back to your house, John.’

  He’d been waiting until now to tell her they were going to the Zenith site. He didn’t dare tell her in hospital near the doctor, or the doctor would never have let him leave. He needed to see the site three and a half years later, having seemingly only just come from it when it was still full of debris on the night he crashed his car. He needed to see the change in all that time and whether it might jog his memory.

  ‘We need to go to the site. I need to have a word with Pete about something.’ Pete had rung the hospital that morning whilst John was asleep, with the reassuring message that he would take John’s place as the resident architect.

  ‘But the doctor told you not to work.’

  A car beeped behind them.

  ‘I won’t be working,’ he said. ‘Pete’s doing my job today, and I just want a word with him. Is that so much to ask?’

  She remained still a moment. The car behind beeped again. She sighed and turned left.

  It was autumn now, unlike the spring to which he was accustomed, with falling leaves from trees that overhung the road on the approach to the city centre. Cars appeared different, with Fords and Saabs having sleeker edges and niftier headlights. But there was the other change, too: not so obvious but pervading all of reality in a way he couldn’t quite describe. He knew he was living in the future and that the problem of his memory lay with him – not the world around him. Knowing all this, however, couldn’t overcome the visual impression that it was reality that seemed to have changed, distorting the look of the clouds, the cars and the people. Everything appeared otherworldly. Nevertheless, soon he would integrate with this future world when his memories returned and become the Zenith architect, his true self.

  They ascended the bridge that went over the railway, and Blanworth’s City Centre appeared. The cathedral towered above all other buildings despite it being further away, and the gap in the skyline, where the Zenith building used to be, appeared stark with only tall, thin cranes in its place. At the bottom of the bridge, they continued straight onto the road that led directly to City Square and the site.

  At the corner of City Square, they turned with the road and drove down the side road, with the site beside them to the left. It was surrounded by eight-foot-high, wooden hoarding which wasn’t there the last time that John remembered being here. They stopped at the entrance. The golden morning sun streamed across a muddy expanse as builders in yellow hats walked or stood, shouting to each other while drinking cups of tea. John watched in awe, feeling a strange sense of pride that everything here was following the designs which he couldn’t remember creating.

  ‘What now?’ Janice said.

  A horn sound blasted behind them. The tyres of a large truck pressed into the rear-view mirror, wanting to get onto the site.

  ‘Go!’ John said.

  ‘Onto the site?’

  ‘No! Just forwards.’

  She did so, a little way, and John got out. ‘Just park in the car park, keep your phone on you and I’ll see you very soon.’

  She looked at him with a reluctant expression that said: ‘You’ve just come out of hospital and the doctor told you not to do any work.’

  He entered the site. Trucks, diggers, cranes and workmen continually moved into different arrangements and positions. If he had witnessed an otherworldly environment since leaving the hospital, then it was nothing compared to this. Everything here had vastly changed from the rubble and debris that he saw in what seemed like only two nights ago, and he visualised how he must have walked here and planned on this site many times in the intervening three and a half years. He had a past here as his true self – the designer of the new building – and he was sure to have a future here, too. But so far, no memories.

  ‘Mr Gowan?’ someone shouted, over explosive sounds of hydraulics and grinding metal that resembled wounded elephants in the final stages of life.

  John smiled confidently, acting like his true self, and was given a yellow hard hat. He asked for the whereabouts of Pete Williams, and the workman pointed to a green Portakabin at the front of the site, with City Square behind it.

  This morning, when he had woken, John had looked for the newspaper with the picture designs of the building but someone had taken it. There would undoubtedly be blueprints of the building inside the Portakabin which would surely spark his memory. With a pounding heart, John walked along the edge of the hoarding, climbed the two small wooden steps and pushed through the door.

  Coats hung on the wall directly in front of him, and as he turned he saw a large A2 sheet with a timetable, presumably displaying the construction schedule, then a sink and a table against the wall. Sitting at the table facing John was a man with a colourful shirt, a side parting and thick black-rimmed glasses. It was Pete. He looked the same as he always did, at least from this distance. Sitting near him was a short but broad man with a beard and balding head. John didn’t recognise him.

  ‘You’re out,’ Pete said, in his distinctively low-pitched, nasal voice.

  John grinned confidently.

  ‘Hello, John,’ the other man said.

  John kept the smile and pretended to recognise him: ‘How are things going?’

  The man nodded: ‘Like clockwork. The first day and a half have gone well.’

  ‘Sorry I didn’t come and see you, John.’ Pete patted his hair gently: an odd mannerism of his which three and a half years hadn’t changed. ‘But I thought you’d want me here, instead.’

  John nodded, walked to the table and glanced down to see what they were looking at. The papers appeared to be building plans, but he couldn’t decipher their details, upside down. In a few moments, he would see them the correct way up and at last know the basic appearance of the building. What did the building that the newspaper had been praising as a work of genius actually look like? With a sudden rush of excitement, he walked around the table and sat between them in front of the plans.

  ‘Did you fall, or did somebody hit you?’ the man said.

  ‘I fell,’ John said, adjusting his seat, and ready now to look down at his building designs. Surely, he would recognise them, and his memories would come flooding back.

  Pete pressed his finger into them: ‘We’ve been going over this week’s schedule and looking at these blueprints.’

  John leaned forward and looked at the paper. Vertical lines stretched down the page where they joined horizontal lines that stretched to the side of the page. In the centre were clusters of squares and rectangles interlinked and branching off in different directions. John looked at the title at the top of the page to understand what he was looking at. It said, ‘FRONT ELEVATION.’

  He looked back at the drawing and tried to see the picture as a whole. He tried to unify the vertical and horizontal lines, but he began to experience a similar problem to yesterday when he tried looking at the building in the newspaper. The lines seemed to divide into twos, bending in outward curves, and the white on the page became more prominent as the dark lines became weaker. He blinked and looked away to try to gain proper focus again. Perhaps, like yesterday, he was still too ill to be working, just as the doctor had said. Nevertheless, John felt a strong desire to see the building, and it had been a couple of days since the concussion. He looked back at the sheet.

  The lines threatened to divide into twos again, and the shapes appeared ugly, not seeming to integrate properly with each other. The drawing seemed to be a confused mess of ugly lines and angles which were not coordinated in any way. What was he trying to look at?

  ‘Looks like he can’t believe he designed it, himself,’ the man with the beard said.

  John tried straining his eyes more to gain control over the image, but the drawing became even more contorted. The lines began to clump together and move clockwise. What was happening? Where was the building he was supposed to be looking at? The lines continued to move into a swirling mass. And at their heart, a pinprick of darkness began to grow – bigger and bigger. All of a sudden, he
felt a pull from it as if it had the power of a black hole, and its size threatened to engulf the paper, sucking him and his consciousness into it. It had the same toneless tone, the same distinct impenetrable bleakness, as when he closed his eyes and tried to remember the design process. With as much strength as he could muster in his legs, feet and neck muscles, he turned and looked away. The dizzying darkness immediately exited his view, and he no longer felt its pull.

  ‘John, are you okay?’ Pete said, staring concernedly at him.

  John realised he was panting, and he fought to regain his breath: ‘I’m…’ Was he okay? What had just happened? With trepidation, he turned back to the plans without looking at them directly. The swirling, black nothingness had disappeared.

  He needed reflection, time to think. He had to get away: ‘I’m feeling a bit dizzy. The doctor told me not to work. I shouldn’t really be here.’

  The journey home was odd and unsettling. Flat, fallow farmers’ fields stretched toward distant lines of trees and appeared different to the fields he was used to seeing. ‘A mild autumnal day’, they were calling it on the radio.

  They pulled into the petrol station: the same one John had used ten minutes before he crashed. As Janice left the car, he strained his eyes to see if the same apathetic, teenage girl was there, behind the counter. He couldn’t see her, and she would be older now, anyway, perhaps even unrecognisable as a woman. He bit his thumb hard into the crease between the nail and the skin until it started to bleed.

  A couple of miles onward, Janice turned off Blanworth Road and onto the road that led directly to John’s house. It snaked through the countryside for miles whilst memories of that night – of headlights on the road and the bend approaching fast – returned to him. As Janice slowed to the bend, he remembered the feelings of elation and confidence for the future, of being absolutely sure that he would become the architect of the new Zenith building. He remembered the car suddenly swirling and the dizziness he felt as it left the road, crashing into the ditch.