The Amnesia Clinic

by James Scudamore

  ‘Happy now?’ shouted Ray. ‘That was dangerous, man. Last time I do you a favour. What did you think you were going to find, anyway?’

  ‘Treasure,’ said Fabián through heavy breaths, his back to the inside of the boat.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I said.

  He ignored me and held out the still-clenched fist in front of Sol’s face, which blossomed from concern, through disbelief, to amazement as he slowly opened it. Fabián wore an expression of joy unlike any I’d seen. The object in his hand was tarnished and bent out of shape, but was definitely and undeniably a silver coin.

  * * *

  We scudded from peak to peak towards the mainland, too roughly for conversation to be possible. I sat, holding on, next to Fabián, who stared back at the island with a glimmer of triumph in his eyes. Sol stood at her father’s side, clutching his leg with one arm and turning the coin over and over in the other. After twenty minutes, we seemed to have left the storm behind us and Ray slowed the boat down, finally bringing it to a halt in calmer open waters. He glanced down at Sol’s hand before picking his way back towards us.

  ‘You’ve made her day,’ he said to Fabián. ‘So I guess I owe you an apology. Only thing I don’t get is when you found the time to chuck it in. We were all watching you when you broke the cast.’

  ‘I can make anything disappear,’ said Fabián. ‘Ask Anti – he’ll tell you. I finally got the coin out of the plaster when you were all swimming. Then all I had to do was get it in the water somewhere by the boat. And I wasn’t going to leave it. It was one of the only things my father ever gave me.’

  ‘Are you sure you want her to have it? If it’s anything to do with the World Cup it could be valuable.’

  ‘Nah – came free in a box of cereal. “World Cup Heroes”. You should pass these things on. She should have it. I don’t believe in it any more.’

  ‘There she blows!’ shouted Sol from further up in the boat, still holding her treasure tightly up above her head.

  Ray smiled at Fabián and said, ‘Well, thanks.’ Then he jumped back towards the wheel. ‘Which way, honey?’

  Sol pointed and Ray snapped the throttle forwards, sending us forward at full pelt. Fabián and I stood up and scanned ahead to try and get first sight. After ten minutes, Ray killed the engine again and we were stationary, bobbing slightly. Apart from the slopping of water against the hull, I could hear nothing. A fine drizzle began to fall and a circle of mist encroached around us. Nobody spoke. Then I heard the noise: a deep-sea exhalation, followed by the spatter of water hitting the surface. Fabián and I looked at each other, then around. Still, the water within our white circle was calm. Everyone else was looking ahead, but I’d turned my head to the left, so I saw it first. A sea serpent. The Loch Ness Monster. A procession of great, ridged vertebrae shuttling out of the water, ten feet away, oblivious to us, making for some unfeasibly distant final destination. Then the noise again: the inflation of vast lungs beneath the sea, and the watery whoosh as the whale exhaled.

  ‘Humpback,’ said Ray, quietly. ‘The best. We might get some spy-hopping.’

  We waited half a minute longer in silence, then the horizon burst. The whale threw itself almost entirely out of the water, not just spy-hopping but sky-larking, and came down with an explosion that sprayed the entire boat. It happened so quickly, yet was so exceptional, that the two moments, jump and landing, seemed to happen together. Spontaneously, we cheered.

  I’d just come to terms with what had happened when Fabián spoke into my ear: ‘Don’t look down.’ I looked down. Another whale moved underneath us, its grey, barnacled hide like the concrete of a submerged, post-apocalyptic tower block.

  ‘If this one decides to have a jump …’

  ‘… then we’ll be tossed into the air like a seal pup,’ said Fabián. ‘Awesome.’

  The whale continued under our hull, turning on to its back with slow indolence, and then slapped the surface of the water with a flipper once it had passed.

  ‘He’s waving at us,’ said Sol.

  ‘Nah, they do that to stun the fish,’ said Ray. ‘It’s called a fluke-slap. They can knock out whole shoals of herring doing it.’

  Fabián shot a mock-yawn in my direction.

  The insistent rain no longer mattered. We waited, willing another jump, and then it came: a larger whale this time, putting on a full show, almost completely escaping the water, hanging suspended in the air for an instant then shattering the calm as it landed.

  We watched as the whales headed north, swimming in formation, their tails rising and descending in unison. Presently, they were out of sight.

  ‘You could follow them all the way to Colombia if you wanted,’ said Ray, ‘but I think that storm is still after us.’

  The silence in the boat was contented. Every time I closed my eyes the whale took wing again on my retina. I thought back to what Fabián had said about memory and wanted a physical mark to burn the occasion into place, so that I could be sure the experience would never leave me.

  Ray was right about the storm. Though we had initially left it behind, it had now tracked us down with reinforcements. When I looked back in the direction we had come, the sea was rimmed with black edges, like mourning paper. A premature dusk had settled, and I began to shiver as the temperature changed down.

  As we neared the mainland, we saw for the first time another craft in the water. Unperturbed by the rough weather, an enormous white pleasure-cruiser had rounded the arm of coastline at the north end of Pedrascada and was heading straight for us. Amber light blazed from its decks and coloured lanterns strung between its twin masts swayed in the murk. The sharp lines and dark, tinted windows of the vessel felt like an affront to the romance of Ray’s fishing boat, especially after our whale sighting.

  ‘These guys better not get too close,’ said Ray, ‘or we’ll be in trouble. That’s a big boat.’

  His words worked like an incantation. Before they had even been uttered, it seemed, the ship was closing us down. I saw twin scimitars of violent froth panning out from its wake, easily big enough, even to my untutored eye, to capsize us. Ray threw the boat into full throttle in an effort to escape, but the contours of the rising waters swallowed every gasp of our straining motor in steady, regular bites. Trying to outrun the ship seemed only to be making things worse. We shouted and waved. Still the ship came. I heard the tinkle of cocktail jazz and saw a collection of men in blazers and women in smart dresses standing near the glass doors that led out on to one of the ship’s many decks. I could discern their faces, hear every phrase of the music. I imagined I could hear the sound of crystal glasses chiming together as they made oblivious toasts. Ray gave three blasts on the claxon, which came out as pitiful toots but did attract attention from those on deck. A man in a bright blue blazer raised his glass in our direction, another doffed his hat, and their ship kept its course. It passed in front of us and Ray screamed at us to hold on as the wake approached. Ray tried to turn us into the waves so that we would cross them rather than be broadsided, but there was little he could do. For a split second we were suspended in the air, weightless, as if at the peak of a rollercoaster. I heard Sol cry out and saw Fabián clutching a rope with a confused look. Then we came crashing down. I hit my head hard on a boathook cloaked in seaweed and braced myself as a wall of water inundated us.

  ‘We might have fucking drowned,’ fumed Ray later on. ‘Unbelievable. I’m going to make a formal complaint to the Port Authority.’

  The storm had arrived and was kicking in hard. Curtains of rain gushed from the palm thatch outside as Ray stood at the bar, chopping a red chilli.

  ‘I’ll get this anger out of the way right now, then I’ll make something that will make us all feel a whole lot better,’ he promised.

  Making his way behind the bar, he picked up a whole pineapple and set it down on a table. He then took the handle of a sledgehammer that leant against the back wall, hefted it over his head and brought the hammer down on the pineappl
e with a roar. Wood splinters and fruit chunks sprayed out around him as pineapple and table flew apart in unison. Sol giggled with delight.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Ray, returning to the bar to resume chopping the chilli.

  The parrot lumbered in to see what was going on and began picking about in the fragments of wood and pineapple.

  Arkk.

  ‘I didn’t see the name of the boat,’ I said.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Ray. ‘I know where it came from. Fifty bucks says it’s someone staying up at the dome. I’m going to get them taken out of the water for good. Now, everybody relax – this will make everything all right.’ He had taken the finely diced slices of red chilli and tipped them into a saucepan on the gas ring. Now he began to break large pieces of dark chocolate into the pan, stirring the mixture with a wooden spoon. ‘Hot chocolate, Maya-style,’ he said. ‘The perfect reward for successful treasure hunters – and an antidote to a near-shipwrecking.’

  We drank the chilli-spiked chocolate as the rain throbbed overhead.

  ‘Well,’ said Ray, when he’d drained his cup. ‘I’m going into town to telephone the Port Authority. I have no idea where my wife is. Can you guys man the bar for half an hour? If anyone comes, just give them a drink and tell them I’ll be back. I can’t imagine anyone will arrive in this weather, but you never know on a Friday night …’

  ‘No problem,’ I said.

  ‘Solita,’ said Fabián. ‘Wanna show me your treasure again?’ The girl approached him, still clutching the coin. I doubt she would have let Fabián touch it at all if he hadn’t been its discoverer, but she held it up dutifully, the light of admiration undimmed, as Fabián talked.

  ‘You see, King Maradona was an Aztec warrior who fought bravely against the wicked conquistadores in the battle for South America. This coin must have been part of his treasure. You see where it says Mexico ’86? That means it came from his kingdom in Mexico, and it must have been in, well, 1586.’

  ‘The battles with the conquistadores were later than that,’ said Sol. ‘We did it in our history class.’

  ‘You’ll know better than me then,’ backtracked Fabián. ‘Go on, follow your dad.’

  She looked at him quizzically, then gave him the benefit of the doubt. Pocketing the coin, she ran out of the bar to follow her father to town. The parrot was now gnawing idly at Fabián’s chair leg. He eyed it with caution.

  ‘Pretty controversial reappraisal of the England–Argentina World Cup clash, that,’ I remarked.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Fabián, good-naturedly. ‘You know, I’m beginning to see why people have children. They forget how to see things properly as they grow up – too much reality getting in the way – then they have kids so they can have a second chance. It’s a personal failure.’

  ‘Does this mean you’ve given up on yourself?’

  ‘Not me. No way.’

  ‘You must admit: what Ray said about the dome this morning does kind of rule out the possibility of it being the Amnesia Clinic.’

  ‘Who says? Ray doesn’t seem to know what’s up there any more than we do. All we know is that whoever is up there wants to keep himself to himself.’

  ‘But the boat … They looked a lot more like rich holidaymakers than hospital patients to me.’

  Fabián lit a cigarette and rocked backwards on his chair as he talked. His voice rose and fell like an instrument. He was riffing out loud, revealing the shortcomings of my imagination, showily dodging the obstacles put in his way by reality.

  ‘Which brings me to my new theory,’ he said. ‘We know the clinic was going to be built here …’

  ‘In theory.’

  ‘We don’t yet know that the dome isn’t it …’

  ‘But it probably isn’t.’

  ‘So the ship that almost ran us down could easily have been the good doctor taking some of his patients out on a trip.’

  ‘Fabián. We saw them. They weren’t patients. They were having the time of their lives.’

  ‘Exactly. They were having the time of their lives, living for the present.’

  ‘So what’s your point?’

  ‘My point is, what if … what if, when you lost your memory, it was such a liberating experience that you didn’t want it back? What if the people on that boat were having such a good time because, in the most incurable cases, making them enjoy the present is Doctor Menosmal’s only form of treatment?!’ He was delighted with his own improvisation. ‘That’s brilliant.’

  ‘Okay, well done. But listen—’

  ‘Think I’m giving up? No way. I’m not giving up yet.’ He lit a cigarette and exhaled a huge lungful of smoke. ‘Not for anyone.’

  He collapsed backwards on to the floor as his chair leg gave way under his weight, and under the parrot’s insistent chewing.

  ‘Including birds,’ he shouted, laughing in spite of himself. ‘You hear? Not for anyone.’

  Arkk.

  ‘Hear that?’ I said. ‘Someone’s arriving outside.’

  THIRTEEN

  Sally Lightfoot’s arrival changed everything. Alone, we might have got through our adventure without coming to any harm, but with her on the scene it was inevitable that things would go too far. She was like a horrid catalyst, energising things, making every personality clash more heated and intense. Although we didn’t know this at the time, we should have been suspicious from the beginning.

  I mean, I should have been.

  She must have been heavy-footed with her Chevrolet pick-up, because we heard its roar over the rain, and stopped laughing, forgetting the fact that Fabián’s chair had been eaten from beneath him by a parrot with a grudge. Fabián got to his feet clumsily and, when she came in, I stood up as well. In the self-important manner of boys to whom responsibility has been lent, we welcomed our visitor and imparted android-like the preset message: Ray’s not here, he’ll be back in a minute, can we get you a drink?

  She threw us from the start.

  ‘Is it here?’

  At first, I put her in her early thirties. I found out later she was late twenties. She wore a familiar backpacker-style uniform: a blue bandanna that swept back cropped blonde hair, bulging combat trousers and no-nonsense brown boots. These, like the rest of her, were coated in a fine layer of dust in spite of the rain. Her skin was another contradiction: pale, though she looked like an outdoors person. An animal tooth dangled from a leather string around her neck, breaking up a bright red T-shirt roughly cut off at the arms.

  ‘Is it here?’ she repeated. Her accent was plausible in both Spanish and English, but tinged with something that I thought sounded Scandinavian. ‘Está aquí? Is it here? Can you two boys speak?’

  ‘Um, Ray’s not here. He’s the owner. He’ll be—’

  ‘You’d know what I was talking about if it were here. It’s not here. That’s good.’

  Holding the bandanna in place, she pushed her hands on to her forehead as if to locate a thought. One fine lick of hair spilled forward. All of it would have been held back were it not for the fact that her wedding finger was neatly, charmingly severed at the middle joint. She screwed up her eyes into tight triangles that looked as if they’d been block-cut into her face and remained in this position for half a minute, her body quivering and coiled like a watch-spring. Then, the thought apparently located, the triangles flew apart again and her pale hands dropped to her sides.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘That’s good. It’ll be here soon. That means I can stay, if I’ve got my tides right, which I can’t guarantee. I bet you two don’t know your tides. You don’t look like proper beach bums to me. I’ll have a beer and something to eat, please. And a bed.’

  ‘We don’t work here,’ I said.

  ‘But we can help,’ said Fabián. ‘A beer, you say. No problem. Allow me. Please: take a seat, if you can find one that hasn’t been eaten by our parrot.’

  He went to the fridge behind the bar, pulled up a wet, glistening bottle of Pilsener and gave it to her, wiping the n
eck with a handful of his shirt.

  ‘As for the food, I’m afraid that Raymond, our maître d’, is busy at present negotiating with the Port Authority, but he’ll be back shortly.’

  Sally Lightfoot took the bottle without looking at him, drank a long draught of beer, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  ‘There’s nothing to eat?’ she said.

  ‘My name is Fabián. This is Anti. We’re guests here too. Much as we’d love to help you, we don’t know where the food is. But perhaps you’d like a piece of me to chew on while we wait for Ray to get back?’

  ‘I don’t eat meat as a rule,’ she said. ‘But then I suppose you’re only poultry, aren’t you? No. I’ll wait.’

  Fabián turned away awkwardly. He hadn’t expected this feisty response.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I said, hoping to steer things back on course.

  ‘Sally Lightfoot.’

  Fabián snorted and plunged back in. ‘Are you a Red Indian?’

  ‘Do I look like a Red Indian?’ she said to me. ‘Your friend isn’t very bright, is he? You must be the brains of the outfit.’

  Fabián, two-nil down, began tidying up the remains of his chair in a businesslike fashion. The rain scraped across the thatch above us like fingers.

  ‘Interesting name,’ I ventured.

  ‘It isn’t real,’ she said. ‘But if you get on the right side of me I might tell you where I got it from.’

  The routine that followed seemed to be part grooming ritual, part safety check. She ran her hands up the length of her ankles, one leg after another, as far up as the trousers would allow. Then up her arms, the left hand starting at the right wrist, smoothing the freckled arm until her thumb rested in the armpit, and back. Finally, the right hand started at the left wrist, sliding to the left pit and back again, arriving and lingering where the third finger of her left hand came to its end. She caught me watching and closed her fingers over the stub, both concealing and caressing it.