‘You feel your creativity has dried up?’
‘I’ve tried to do some more designs of new buildings, but they’re terrible. I need whatever I had during that time to find my talent again. What do you mean, you noticed a “deep-seated change” in me?’
She looked, contemplatively, down at the table. Her freckly features were not noticeable in the soft restaurant light: ‘It’s hard to describe. Obviously, you had more drive, more concentration and a passion for the building, which was easy to see, but there was something I detected in you that I don’t think other people noticed.’
‘What was that?’ he said eagerly.
She shook her head: ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.’
John leaned forwards: ‘Go on. Maybe it’s woman’s intuition or something.’
‘Well, I suppose, it was as if that underlying thing in you, something I’ve always recognised that seems to drag you down, was no longer there. You seemed to be… free.’
‘Free?’
‘Yes, even towards the building, itself. You appeared passionate and focussed, as I said, but beneath this emotion there seemed to be a carefree detachment in your approach to the building, almost as if you didn’t mind whether you got the Zenith contract, and once you did get the contract, it seemed that you didn’t mind what Zenith or the world thought of you. None of it mattered, and yet, on the surface of things, you appeared like a typical artist, passionate and driven. You were focussed, and yet, beneath it all, you didn’t care. You were unlike anybody I’ve ever seen. The change was staggering but uplifting, too.’
Again, John remembered the moments before he crashed his car, of how he felt enthused about designing the next Zenith building, but he also remembered something else – something he’d dismissed since first waking in hospital. He remembered the absolute certainty of designing it, too: not just sureness in the normal way of being confident about achieving something in the future, but the unequivocal faith that he would be the next architect. It was a faith that was not propelled forwards by the motivation of fear but by the motivation of truth. It was a startling memory, and he had to pause a moment to remember he was in a restaurant, away from the fast-approaching bend in the night. Was this freedom the same freedom Janice was speaking of?
‘I did feel free, I remember,’ John said.
She smiled and appeared slightly sad: ‘But, then, you had lost it when I saw you in hospital. Whatever you had was gone.’
John was a different person during the amnesiac period according to Janice. He was somebody who was ‘free’. Was the amnesia and lack of freedom now linked in some way?
‘Why haven’t you told me this before?’ he asked.
She shrugged: ‘Because it’s very hard to explain.’
The boy waiter, the one who was annoying his boss, arrived at the table with their drinks: ‘Have you decided on your meals?’
They ordered, and the boy walked away without asking whether they wanted salad or vegetables, and chips or potatoes.
John didn’t know what else to ask about that period without exposing his amnesia. What Janice had described was the antithesis of the man he was now and, indeed, the man who lived before the amnesiac period up until the moments before he crashed his car: a man who lacked the talent or artistic inspiration to design the Zenith building.
Their meals arrived with vegetables and potatoes, and they ate in silence. The hangover headache he had had earlier today was beginning to return, so he decided not to have coffee after the meal and neither did Janice. He paid for them both, and they walked back to the car in the night.
On the road, they remained silent until John realised Janice might not want to see Philip again tonight: ‘I have a spare room.’
She turned and smiled: ‘Thanks.’
He headed home over the dark hills.
As they had sex, John watched his shadow moving back and forth on the wall in front of him, made possible by the soft lamplight. She had asked him, minutes ago, whether he ever wanted sex with her again, and the news had shocked him. Apparently, they had had sex during the amnesiac period. With a wish to re-enact the scene from that time to try to jog his memory, he had obliged, and now he watched the shadow on the wall, as if it were the person then – during the amnesiac period.
Afterwards, with no memory having been triggered, he turned to Janice and noticed she’d snuggled down into the bed with her eyes shut. He remained sitting in bed, staring at the curtains in the soft light with owl-like eyes. The light from the lamp created shadows in their creases and, after a minute, he turned towards the lamp and turned it off. The room became black and, in the darkness, he remained still, thinking about the things they were talking about in the restaurant and wishing he could remember the amnesiac time again.
He carefully lifted the duvet off his legs and walked quietly across the landing into the study where he switched on the light. Next to the desk was the drawing board. On it was his latest attempt to redesign the Zenith building – a front elevation drawn in pencil. He had tried to be innovative, placing windows in obscure places and using a mixture of metal and stone materials. He’d tried to make it complicated, because he knew the real building was complicated and, with that objective, he had succeeded, but it was ugly and monstrous. The real building was, apparently, wholesome and beautiful, defying its complicated make-up. That much, he was able to know. Where was the real Zenith building now, and where was the person who designed it?
He felt a sudden inclination to go back to the crash site to see if he could begin from where his memory was lost and find that freedom again. He dressed quietly in the bedroom, crept downstairs, passed through the kitchen to the side door and along the short path to the garage in the cool night air. The car moved tentatively over the gravel, up the curving driveway and through the iron gates. The plastic steering wheel, the rev-counter and the long green bonnet made him feel closer to that night already.
He drove through the bend and u-turned up the road, so he could approach it from the right direction. Like that night, the fields began to pass by quickly, the white lines in the centre of the road sped beneath the car and the dial on the rev-counter moved towards the red. The memory of the feelings he had experienced when he crashed became more mysterious with Janice’s description of him during the amnesiac period. ‘Free’, she had said.
The bend approached, and he slammed his breaks just in time, skidding all the way to the edge and almost crashing again, but allowing the car to fall into the dip off the side of the bend where he had, so violently, crashed before. The car stopped, and his head slumped onto the steering wheel.
Six months ago, a few days after the meeting with the reporter at the Zenith offices, he had gone to his GP and ascertained that he had broken his wrist and suffered mild concussion from the original car accident. Then, he had gone to the Jaguar garage to enquire whether he’d taken his car there after his crash and learnt that he had. Their records showed the front of the bonnet had been crumpled with one headlight broken.
Janice’s words tonight had made the fight for his existence now real. He believed in this freedom. This belief, however, was not enough to overcome the amnesia. He still felt the malevolent nature of the darkness in the slightly weird reality of the road, the fields and the room at home where Janice was sleeping. Indeed, he had often felt it, to a lesser degree, throughout his life, and it had returned to him on the night before construction began, taking the Zenith building from him.
This was a profound realisation: the darkness had always been with him, even before the amnesia. The amnesia and his blindness to the building seemed to be a direct embodiment of it: a vengeful theft of the potential John had achieved in the short time he had become free of it. Throughout his life, it had always stopped him from achieving his potential; and after he did finally overcome it for a short time, it had stripped his memories from him with that vengeance. But, in doing so, it had revealed itself. Its insidious nature had come out into the open in the
form of his amnesia. But what, exactly, was it, and where did it come from?
To ask this question directly, or to stare at the building, would only give it another chance to destroy him. He feared he might materialise here to four years ago – or die! – or that anything might happen that expressed its ultimate wish to suppress his truth. It was his truth against its truth. He had to find another way of understanding it: perhaps by seeking what it denied – his freedom.
Indeed, where did his freedom come from on the night he crashed his car, and why was it taken from him on the night he tripped and hit his head? He sat in his car for a few more minutes, hoping these new questions might be enough to jog his memory of waking after he had crashed his car, but no images or thoughts came to him, so he drove back home and crept silently upstairs, avoiding the creaking floorboards.
The next day, when the sun pressed its spring rays onto the back of the curtains and made them glow orange, John listened to the humming pitch of a woman in his en suite bathroom. Such a rare thing, these days, to have a woman in the house. He remembered the sex last night and the freedom she said that he had had during the design process.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, walking into the bedroom with a towel over her head.
He realised he was frowning and tried to smile.
‘Gosh, don’t overdo it,’ she said. She seemed to be feeling better.
He smiled, genuinely this time.
‘Last night doesn’t have to mean anything, you know,’ she said. ‘Things can go back to normal, like last time. And I didn’t sleep with you on the rebound – if that’s what you’re thinking.’
John shook his head and smiled whilst trying to think more about the significance of the moments before he had crashed his car.
9
In Toxon shopping centre, after having left the car park, Janice walked ahead to the office whilst John bought a newspaper and chocolate muffin in his usual café. In today’s paper was an article about the upcoming Memorial Service for the 179 people who lost their lives in the terrorist attack. It was to be held in a couple of weeks outside the Zenith construction site, marking the four-year anniversary. The world’s media would descend upon Blanworth, just as it had done in previous years, apparently. It was not without controversy:
‘The upcoming Memorial Service has reawakened calls by the Muslim Assembly of Britain to both Zenith and the government for the resignation of Mr Wilkinson Junior, the son and employee of the Zenith CEO. It was Junior’s disparaging remarks against Muslims wanting to retrieve land from the Israelis that incited the deplorable terrorist attack.
Shortly after the attack, the government took the unprecedented step of bailing out Zenith who were not insured for terrorism, lending funds to rebuild their head office. At the time, the Muslim Assembly of Britain, whilst condemning the terrorist attack, argued that our taxes should not be used to rescue the firm and that Mr Wilkinson Junior at the very least should resign.
Now that the terrorists have been brought to justice and with another anniversary looming, the Muslim Assembly believes it has more chance, with growing public support, to force Wilkinson Junior to resign.
However, yesterday in the House of Commons, the Home Secretary Patti Smith said:
“The government maintains its position that the decision for Wilkinson Junior’s continued employment lies with Zenith, itself, but I personally feel that if he were to resign, it would be sending the wrong message to terrorism.”
Nobody from Zenith was available for comment.’
John finished his muffin and walked to the office. He tried to go into the office regularly, keeping himself familiar with the progress of the Zenith building and remaining abreast of general finances, all of which he did without daring to concentrate on the design of the building, itself.
‘Pete asked if he could see you when you’ve got a minute,’ Janice said, sitting behind her desk and acting as if nothing had happened the previous night. ‘I told him I wasn’t sure when you were coming in.’
John dropped his satchel in his office and walked zigzag through the employees’ desks and drawing boards to the middle door on the side wall. The other two rooms were used for meetings and presentations.
‘Yes?’ a voice said, low-pitched and nasal in tone, seeping through the chipboard.
John entered.
Pete was sitting behind his desk on the other side of the room. He wore a pinstriped suit with thin lapels – only two centimetres wide – and a light blue tie that matched his handkerchief. His black eyebrows were freshly dyed and hovered above the upper, black rim of his glasses with auspicious anticipation.
Throughout the years, Pete had proved to be a first-rate marketeer: an essential part of being a modern architect. This was something which had seduced many customers, but something which John lacked. Pete was married to a lovely lady – his third marriage; although now, he was having an affair with a man. Mildly talented at designing buildings, he did have some creative flare.
However, now that he represented the Gowan firm in radio interviews and newspaper columns as joint architect of the Zenith building, Janice had told John that Pete expounded his contributions to the Zenith design with hardly mentioning ‘John Gowan’ at all: the prestige having certainly gone to his head. Pete would have been involved in later aspects of the building, once John had shown him the essential design, but only concerning minor details which any professional could do, and John felt Pete had now gone too far in interviews, exalting himself.
‘Good to see you, John. It’s been a while.’
John sat in the leather chair: ‘I’ve missed you the last couple of times I’ve come in.’
‘I’ve been at the site a lot. Have you been recently?’
Pete never asked questions about John’s curious lack of interest in the building or the outside world: it didn’t matter, because everyone now believed Pete had designed it, too. Zenith were happy for Pete to be the man in charge as long as somebody was doing the job properly.
‘A little.’
‘Do you like what you see?’
John was as blind to the building as to the plans – a fuzzy mess – so he stopped looking after a couple of seconds to avoid losing consciousness again. He told people he’d been inside the growing structure, but he never had, only ever walking around it or going in the Portakabin. A disturbing anxiety over the continuance of his problems threatened him most when he was on site, whereby his heart pumped far too much blood around his body, stifling him from concentration and the ability to converse well. He therefore never stayed for long and explained to Andrew, the Site Engineer, it was best to deal exclusively with Pete, so as to avoid lost messages and complications.
‘I do, and Andrew seems happy,’ John said.
‘He never seems happy! But I know what you mean. Things are on schedule, and he’s doing a good job. Our employees are doing a good job helping me, too.’ Pete stroked the table agreeably with his hand. Its sensuous design was reminiscent of the curves of a beautiful physique.
‘So, why did you want to see me?’ John asked.
‘Mann phoned me, a while ago, to talk about the 25th February and the television studio interview he wants from us this time around. Neither I nor you have ever done anything on live television before.’
Mann had mentioned a television interview for the anniversary of the destruction of the old Zenith building a few weeks ago. Gowan Partnerships were contractually obliged to help Zenith with the media on important occasions, such as the anniversary.
‘Mann, however, wants only one of us to do it,’ Pete continued, ‘because he wants the other at the Memorial event in City Square at the same time, so he was wondering which one of us wanted to do it.’
John could see Pete’s keenness for the television interview. Pete would take the limelight yet again in front of the media for being the architectural face of the Zenith building.
‘Is it local news?’
‘No, it’s national, but
it’s the news programme Newsbeat which uses the studio in Blanworth, anyway, so there’s no distance to travel. During the interview, they will ask one of us questions about the building’s design and its progress, thus far, in construction.’
There would be a small chance John could respond to one or two questions satisfactorily with abstract responses but not for the whole interview.
‘Wilkinson will be at the interview, too,’ Pete continued, ‘and somebody from the Muslim Assembly.’
‘Perhaps neither of us should do the interview,’ John said, not wanting Pete to be the face of the Zenith building on live television.
‘Why?’
John tried to think of an excuse: ‘There is a Muslim in the discussion which means there will be some political debate between Zenith and Islam. We may be forced to be on Wilkinson’s side and become embroiled in Zenith’s politics which is something we shouldn’t be expected to do.’ A good answer, possibly freeing them from the contractual obligation to Zenith.
Pete shook his head: ‘Mann said Gowan Partnerships won’t be involved at all in that side of the interview. All one of us does is describe the inspiration behind the building and how it’s matching up to our expectations, now that it’s in construction, et cetera, et cetera.’
‘But, in recent radio interviews, you have said that we designed the building for freedom, so it may be hard not to be involved.’
‘Freedom in terms of a free society and freedom from terrorism, but it was never meant to be a political comment in favour of Zenith and its business practices. We’ll talk to Mann, though, if you want.’
John nodded, slowly.
‘Mann will explain everything properly tomorrow at a meeting at 3 p.m. at the Zenith offices.’ Pete paused, his mouth open slightly, waiting to say something more: ‘So, would you think I can do it, since I’ve been dealing more with the building?’
John knew the futility of wanting to do it himself: ‘I’ll let you do it, because you’re used to radio interviews, but you have to make sure you emphasize that I designed the building, too. I’ve felt a little uneasy with you doing interviews recently and not even mentioning my name properly.’
The Freedom Building Page 9