All I could think about was Anne: the difference between my dead Anne, and that other (presumably) still living one. And — God forgive me for even entertaining such a nightmare — the possible similarities.
I could not get the thought out of my head. If the genes which made up that identical twin were as near-perfect a copy as they had to be of the genes which had made up my Anne, then how many things could there have been about her — my Anne — that I never knew? By a slow, agonising process over which I had no control, my wife was becoming in retrospect a stranger to me. I began to imagine secrets, passions, lies and betrayals which in all likelihood had never happened, but which stained my memory of her like a slowly spreading poison. People around me imagined that my air of distraction was the result of my appalling loss. In truth it was suspicion.
She and Harold had always been close. I had been gratified by their friendship, taken its innocence for granted. Could I have been wrong? Could Harold's infinite concern for me in my sorrow be masking a secret, guilty sorrow of his own? It was the sort of question I could never put to him; an unthinkable accusation to make of a friend.
Anne's papers yielded no clue. No hidden cache of letters, no mysterious markings in her diaries, no tell-tale numbers on the records of her private phone line. I discovered that Balthazar's Motel existed in this universe exactly as it did in the other. I even went so far — I am ashamed to admit this — as to present Cy with separate photographs of Anne and Harold, tip him a hundred bucks, and ask him if he recognised either of them. He didn't.
Of course it could be that Harold had tipped him more to keep quiet. How could I know? How could I ever know?
How could I live without knowing?
Sometimes I think that when we describe something as 'unthinkable', what we mean is that we can't think about anything else. And when we dismiss a possible course of action as being 'out of the question', we mean that we've already decided to take it.
Harold's suggestion of a fishing weekend, just the two of us, had been tentatively put. He avoided phrases like 'do you good' and 'take your mind off things' — as, with his tactful, lawyerish nature, I would have expected. After satisfying myself that Charlie could safely be left with Peggy for a couple of days — indeed, I decided, it might be good for him to start becoming independent of me — we drove up early one Saturday morning to Harold's isolated lakeside cabin, as we had done so often before.
We took out his boat and caught fresh trout. Nothing much was said, but then it never had been on these weekends. We spoke if we had things to say, but our friendship was not the sort that made conversation a social obligation. Later, Harold cleaned and cooked the fish while I drove to the market and stocked up on bourbon, wine and beer.
By around ten that evening I was, in the metaphorical sense, feeling no pain. In a more literal sense, however, my anguish was unbearable.
'Harold,' I began, after a long silence broken only by the trickle of bourbon refilling our two heavy glass beakers, 'there's something I have to say to you.' I paused for emphasis, regarding him solemnly from beneath knitted eyebrows. 'I know.'
He looked at me, uncomprehending. 'Know what?' he asked, his eyes round and unfocused with alcoholic, bleary innocence.
'You and Anne. I know.'
'Me and . . . ? I don't know what you're . . . I haven't the vaguest idea what you . . . '
I was aware of my head swaying slightly above my hunched shoulders, elbows thrust forward on the table as I continued to fix him with a gimlet stare. I could see from the changing expressions on his face that he knew exactly what I was talking about.
His mouth worked for a few moments as though moulding the words into speakable shape.
'You can't be . . . you can't be serious!'
'I'm not making a big deal. I'm not going to kill you. I'm not even blaming you. For all I know it was half her fault — if "fault" is the word. I just want you to tell me. Yourself. I need to hear it, Harold. You owe me that.'
'Rick, I . . . I . . . ' He sat back, his face white and his posture crumpling as though a fist had slammed him in the stomach. 'I can't believe what I'm hearing.'
'Let's do this without dramatics, evasions, or prevarications. Just get it over. Between the two of us.'
'Rick . . . that is the most terrible thing I've heard in my life!'
'I didn't think it was so fucking great myself, if you want to know.'
'How can you possibly even . . . even think of such a thing?'
I continued to stare at him, wondering how long he would squirm before confessing. 'Did you love her?' I asked, my head feeling heavy so that I had to make an effort to prevent it falling forward on the table. 'Or was it just sex?'
'Christ, Rick . . . Oh, Christ . . . I can't . . . ' He pushed his chair back with a scraping noise. 'I can't . . . I can't handle this . . . I have to . . . ' He struggled to his feet and started unsteadily for the door, like a drunk in urgent need of a bathroom.
I didn't move. I looked at my hand, still clenched around the bottle. I pulled it away, flexing the fingers slowly. If I was going to kill him, which I didn't mean to, I was going to do it with my bare hands and not with a weapon.
My own chair made the same scraping noise as his had, and then fell over with a clatter. The room swayed, but I steadied it by gripping the edge of the table. Then I started out into the night after him, pausing only to reach back for the bottle, which I wasn't going to hit him with but drink from.
The darkness and night air hit me like a wall and I almost fell over again, but the thought of the half-full bottle somehow galvanised my sense of balance and, after a moment's tricky footwork, I regained my equilibrium and pushed on after him.
I didn't find him at once. When I did, he was sitting on a rock, slumped forward with his head in his hands. I didn't think he'd heard me, but he must have, because he spoke my name.
'Rick . . . Rick . . . I don't know why you said that, but it's all right . . . it's all right . . . '
'What d'you fucking mean it's all right?' I roared. I hadn't meant to roar, but I could hear my voice filling the night. 'You fuck my wife — you, my so-called best friend! — and then you tell me it's all right!'
He didn't answer. He was making a funny kind of sound. Then I realised he was sobbing.
'Listen,' I said, quieter now, 'I told you I wasn't going to do anything about it. I just wanted . . . I just wanted to know, that's all.'
We were silent for a while, him sitting there rocking, me swaying over him.
'Harold,' I began, my voice hoarse now, 'she's dead. It can't hurt her, but it's killing me. Tell me how it happened, how it started. Where? When?'
He looked up at me. My eyes had grown accustomed enough to the dark to see that his face was streaked with tears. He didn't speak, just shook his head slowly back and forth, back and forth. The motion made me dizzy. I lurched backwards, forwards, and then the ground came up hard and hit my knees. I continued to sway, but didn't fall any further. I just looked at him, kneeling, as though in prayer.
'I loved Anne,' he began, 'like I love you. Of course she was a beautiful woman. Of course I was aware of that. But I couldn't have. I couldn't!'
The words swirled around me, echoing in my head.
'Listen,' he went on, 'I'll tell you something. You want a confession? I'll give you a confession. I've had affairs. Not just the ones you know about. I've had affairs with married women. One of them almost wrecked my career — the wife of a client. I'm capable of being a bloody awful shit, and I can give you the names to prove it. D'you want the names?'
I started to shake my head, but the dizziness came back and I stopped.
'You can have them if you want them,' he said. 'All the names. I'll write them out. I'll sign them. But never Anne. I could never have done that. Nor could she. Believe me.'
I tried to speak. It wasn't easy. 'You're either a brilliant fucking actor,' I muttered through dry lips, 'or . . . ' I became aware of the alternative, arcing slowly thro
ugh the air and exploding like a distant, muffled bombshell, 'or you're telling me the truth.'
'Of course I'm telling you the truth! You dumb great piece of shit! That's what I'm telling you!'
Suddenly I felt deflated and foolish, kneeling there, not knowing what to say or do. To fill the moment I held out the bottle for him to drink. I think it was a peace offering. He took it and flung it as far into the night as he could. I didn't hear it land.
'We've had enough. Both of us. I'm putting you to bed.'
'Yeah . . . okay . . . '
He helped me to my feet. By the time I got there I think I was helping him to stay upright as much as he was helping me. He looked at me, his face close to mine.
'What the hell made you say that?' he asked, his gaze moving back and forth between my eyes, trying to focus, trying to see into them.
'If I told you, you wouldn't believe me,' I said.
'Then let's forget it. It never happened. Come on.'
We stumbled towards the light inside the cabin.
***
I woke late to the smell of coffee and frying bacon. I don't know how I got to it, but I threw up from the window. A few minutes later, after pouring cold water on my head and rinsing my mouth, I faced Harold across the table we had been sitting at last night.
'How're you feeling?' he asked, looking none too well himself.
'Like a raw egg in a thin shell.'
'You'll feel better when you've eaten something.'
He put a plate in front of me, but my eyes stayed on him, looking for something. What? Resentment? Anger? I don't know.
'Harold,' I began, 'I remember what I said. And I want you to know that I'm sorry.'
'We agreed that we'd forget it,' he said, 'so let's do that. Now eat your breakfast, and let's go catch some fish.'
10
Looking back, I am convinced now that Harold must have sensed there was something more on my mind than just the pain, dreadful though it was, of my loss. He must have sensed a barrier growing between himself and me, and decided to provoke a confrontation that weekend by the lake to clear the air.
It had worked and I was grateful to him. I believed his denial. It had restored to me the memory of the Anne I loved and trusted, and wanted more than anything to go on loving.
Also, I found myself at last becoming free of the obsession to talk about and share the mystery of that split second between my arrival at the scene of Anne's death and my acceptance of it. I believed in what had happened to me. I believed that it was real.
But what is 'real'?
The question for now was of secondary importance. What mattered was life. My life, my son's life. Metaphysical speculation gave way to the problems of the day, like finding another nurse for Charlie before Peggy left, and doing something about the injection of money that my business sorely needed.
Before Anne's death, I had been so confident of the bank's backing that I simply hadn't thought in terms of alternatives. Harold had known they were going to offer me the money, and my own doubts and worries had not been serious. If I had been asked what would happen if the bank changed its mind, I would simply have said that we'd carry on the way we were. But things are never that simple.
Businesses, I was about to learn, either reach a plateau and die there, or they move on up to the next level. I had been on the point of making that move, and assumed that we would now pick up where we had left off. I had reckoned, however, without the innate conservatism of men in suits.
I was unaware of the whispering at first. It was Harold who told me what they were saying. They spoke to him as to the sensible member of the family, the one who could be relied on to avoid trouble, smooth things over, find ways out of situations which had become untenable.
'Look, Rick,' he began, clearly embarrassed by what he had to tell me, 'if you'd got a phone call at the bank saying that Anne had just been killed in an accident five miles away, you'd have been showered (a) with sympathy, and (b) with all the money you need.
'But the fact is that, well, the timetable of events that has emerged in retrospect has, I can only say, an "unusual" look to it.'
'What d'you mean?' I asked, not catching on at first.
'Rick you ran out of that meeting at the bank a full thirteen minutes before the accident happened.'
'Oh.' I was beginning to see.
'Exactly. And they've all picked up on that by now, and it bothers them.'
'Yes. I can see it might.'
Something was going on which did not sit easily on the ledgers and balance sheets of the financial world. I was no longer somebody with whom that world felt comfortable. I had become, although the term was never used openly, a 'freak'.
Harold did his best to argue with them that such things were not unknown to serious science. People who were very close sometimes shared levels of communication which defied all rational explanation. He cited cases from a stack of books on extra-sensory perception, but to no avail. The bank's mind, and vaults, were closed.
To be honest I didn't care that much. I was a natural optimist. If the business failed I would start over. The future to me had always been filled more with promise than with menace. Success, I believed, was generated by ideas, not by shuffling figures around on paper.
Harold, however, was worried. It was a good sign. I knew he would come up with something. Meanwhile I started interviewing nurses for Charlie.
The agency found by Harold and which had sent Peggy was highly efficient. I liked the first three girls they sent, but felt they weren't quite right for the position. Then one morning I got a call to say they were sending over a slightly more mature applicant whom they thought would be ideal. My heart stopped when I heard her name.
It was Emma Todd.
***
I opened the door and looked into clear blue, smiling eyes. Her car was parked in the drive behind her.
It was Emma. The same Emma. She looked younger. Her hair was a rich chestnut, falling nearly to her shoulders and framing her face in gentle contours. She wore little make-up, just enough to highlight those classic features which lit up with a smile of such warmth that I felt myself drawn down into it like a drowning man.
'Mr Hamilton?'
'Yes.' I cleared my throat. 'Miss Todd? Please come in.'
She moved with an easy, natural grace. Her clothes were simple and inexpensive, but chosen with an inherent sense of style. There was a freshness about her, a lightness in her every movement.
My voice seemed to come from somewhere else. It was high, not my voice. 'Won't you sit down?'
'Thank you.'
She looked up at me. I must have seemed strange, tongue-tied and awkward. 'Can I get you . . . I was just . . . I have some coffee . . . '
I put the tray in front of her, clumsily pushing aside books and newspapers. She took it black with no sugar. The ritual of pouring gave me precious moments to collect my wits. I could not believe that this was actually happening. But it was.
'I assume the agency sent you my references,' she said, taking the cup from my unsteady hand.
'Oh . . . yes . . . they seem fine.' In fact they were more than fine. She had been two years with the family of a high-ranking British Embassy official in Washington. I was a little surprised to find her prepared to take on such a relatively modest job as the one I was offering, and told her so.
'My parents live close by,' she told me. 'I'd like to be nearer to them than I have been.'
It answered one question, but left many more. Why was this beautiful woman unmarried, without children, without a more ambitious career? Why was she not blind? Why was the blind Emma Todd a psychiatrist and this one a children's nurse?
My head was full of questions that would have to wait. My only fear was that she wouldn't take the job and that I would never get around to finding out the answers.
'It seems to me the most important thing,' I said, sitting opposite her, 'is that you meet Charlie. He's just over the road. I'll call him.' I got to my feet
again, using the restless movement to cover my nervousness, and picked up the phone.
Charlie adored her from the moment they met, and Emma clearly felt the same way about him. Within a week she was installed in the house. I couldn't believe my luck.
I knew I was in love with her. That much I didn't even have to ask myself. I was an irretrievably lost cause. I was also consumed with guilt at the thought of this happening so soon after Anne's death. It was ironic that my recent fears about her loyalty should be so quickly followed by my own betrayal of her memory.
And yet I didn't feel that it was a betrayal. I still loved Anne as I always had. If she were alive, Emma would be no threat to that love.
But Anne wasn't alive, and Emma was. Also Emma and I had a history, a unique relationship — even if I was the only one of us aware of it.
It was clear to me that I must say or do nothing to betray my feelings for the time being. In a way that was an advantage. Emma and I could get to know each other, becoming friends before we became lovers, as we surely must.
The thought that there might be any obstacle in that idyllic path did not at first occur to me. When it did, only hours after that first meeting at which she had agreed to take the job, I was pitched into a turmoil of anxiety.
Suppose there was another man? There had to be — a woman like that.
And yet she obviously lived alone, or else she would not have been free to take the job of full-time live-in nurse.
The Man Who Turned Into Himself Page 14