What about us?

by Jacqui Henderson

  On her day off she took me to the home to meet some of the residents, in the hope that one of them would recognise me. There was no one there that I felt close to in any way and they all soon lost interest in me.

  “We’ve had three deaths in the last six months.” she told me sadly. “Perhaps when you were last here you were visiting one of them.”

  “Yes, perhaps.” I said, more to please her than out of any conviction, because neither the place nor the people who lived there gave me any sense of anything at all.

  After we left the home, she took me to some shops where I could buy cheap clothes. It was fun choosing things with her and I got the distinct impression that this was in some way a first for me. She also led me round the market and the supermarket, pointing out things that were good value for money and healthy eating. When she realised I had no idea about cooking, she tried to teach me and with some success. She also took me to the local library, which was an Aladdin’s Cave for me, but she had to take the books out in her name, because of course I couldn’t join.

  She met me there one day after work and slid into the seat beside me, looking over my shoulder at what I was reading.

  “Is that interesting?” she asked, but I noticed a strange catch in her voice.

  “Yes. Why, don’t you think so?” I replied, looking at her.

  It was a book of Hitler’s speeches. Some were said to have been written by him, others were composed especially for him.

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said, looking at me intently. “It’s in German.”

  “Is it?” I said, looking down at the pages again.

  She looked thoughtful for a moment, then slowly stood up and wandered over to one of the shelves. She selected a book and brought it back, opening it at random.

  “What’s this one about?”

  “It’s a poem.” I said, scanning the page. “It’s about an Albatross being made to look stupid by the bored crew of a ship, who, purely for their amusement, strip it of its dignity and natural beauty.”

  “It might well be Jack. But the point is, it’s written in French.”

  We left, deep in thought, without checking out any books. She had taken eight books off the shelves, in eight different languages and I’d understood all of them. I hadn’t even been aware of translating the words; I just read them and understood every nuance and subtlety conveyed therein. But when she asked me to say something, anything, in any of the languages, I found I could only respond in English.

  We made our way to a cafe. We often went to that particular one because it was half way between my home and hers. Apparently it was the same one I’d been in on the day of the accident, just over a month ago. One of the waitresses, Vicki I think her name is, was always pleased to see us, but that afternoon it wasn’t her shift.

  We shared a plate of sausage, egg and chips over a couple of mugs of tea and thought about this new piece of information.

  “Maybe the Doctor was right; maybe you did work for the military or the government.” she said slowly.

  “Or maybe I grew up in lots of different countries, or I was a translator, or I studied languages and I love to travel.” I countered.

  Anything to do with ‘the establishment’ always made her uneasy. As I stopped speaking, I realised that the last thing on my list had hinted at something, but it was too vague and I let it pass, concentrating once more on what Grace was saying.

  “Maybe it means all or none of those things.” she said. “And anyway, it isn’t a bad thing; it means you’re really clever.”

  She was smiling, but something was clearly still troubling her. I guessed she would tell me in her own time if she wanted me to know, but to take her mind off whatever it was that was making her sad, I found myself making a suggestion.

  “Apparently it’s going to be a lovely day tomorrow. Why don’t we get out of a town for a while? You know, a day trip to see if anything else jogs the memory.”

  “Ooh, what a lovely idea.” she said, beginning to cheer up. “But I’m supposed to work in the afternoon. There again, I never take time off, so I’m sure it’ll be alright. Where shall we go?”

  “I don’t know, you choose. Coast or country?”

  “Seaside!” she said excitedly and pulled out her mobile phone to make the necessary arrangements with her boss at the home.

  A love of the sea was something else we seemed to share and after some discussion we chose Margate. The fact that it wasn’t very far away from London and cheap to get to helped us decide. For obvious reasons I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to the coast and neither could Grace, probably because it had been a long time ago when she was still a child.

  We always felt comfortable at that cafe. Somehow it had a kind of familiarity about it and we stayed there for most of the evening; chatting, drinking tea and planning our day out.

  Chapter thirteen

  Grace was waiting at London Bridge at eight am, just as we’d arranged. She was looking particularly lovely that morning and I realised that the time was fast approaching when I would have to tell her that I was hoping for something more than just friendship. The right moment hadn’t presented itself, nor had the courage and I still wasn’t sure what her feelings were towards me other than a sense of responsibility for what had happened. She seemed to enjoy spending time with me, so perhaps she’d be willing to give it a go. But if I was wrong and she walked away, I would miss her a lot. I wasn’t ready to risk losing what we had, only to replace it with nothing.

  Not knowing my own life story made it all the more difficult and complex of course. We didn’t know if I was married, in a relationship, or if I had a young family. Whenever I tried to think about being with someone, sharing my life with them or making love with them, it was only ever her face I saw. It was as if I couldn’t imagine anyone else in my life, much less believe that there had ever been anyone else as important; but we didn’t know that, we couldn’t be sure.

  There had been some mixed news the week before and it was difficult to describe how it made me feel, even to myself. The police report had come back, confirming that they had no knowledge of me. On the plus side I had no police record, so I wasn’t a known criminal and wasn’t wanted by them for any reason. On the negative side, no one had reported me as missing, but I tried not to dwell on it or burden Grace with my own feelings of insecurity.

  We only just caught the train as it was pulling out of the station and fell into some empty seats in fits of laughter, which kept us buoyed up for the whole of the journey. I was determined to keep the day light; nothing heavy, nothing sad. In the six weeks or so we’d known each other, I’d figured out that Grace’s life didn’t have a lot of laughter in it, but I still didn’t know why.

  We had a lot of fun and it stands out in my mind as a good day. It was fantastic to be out of the city and in the fresh air; listening to the sea, watching the gulls, walking along the front as well as along the beach. Being by the sea gave me a great sense of peace and I instinctively knew that whatever my life had been like before, this aspect hadn’t changed. I knew that I was the kind of person who headed for the coast when I needed to regenerate or think. It was only a little piece of the puzzle, but it gave me a sense of being a real person.

  We had a go at tenpin bowling. Grace knew she’d never played it before, but turned out to be quite good at it. If I’d played it before, then the knowledge of how to do it had vanished along with everything else. She beat me in both the games that we played and danced about ecstatically. That day we just relaxed. We were good at being together and we didn’t let anything spoil our mood. That is, not until we left the tea house, late in the afternoon.

  As we were standing outside on the pavement, trying to get our bearings and work out where the station was, I heard a voice shouting at me. It was frantic; filled with panic and urgency.

  “Recall! I repeat: Recall! There is an immediate recall of all travellers. The base is under attack. Integrity of the system cannot be guarantee
d. All travellers must return now. I repeat; all travellers must return now!”

  I jumped, staring wildly around me. There was no one else about, yet the voice was so clear and so close. There wasn’t even an echo, it had arrived from nowhere and then there was silence.

  I was holding my wrist and Grace looked frightened.

  “Jack what is it? What’s wrong?”

  “Didn’t you hear that?” I asked.

  I was astounded when she shook her head. How could she not have heard it? It hadn’t been a whisper; it had been loud and clear. I realised from the look on her face that it had in fact been inside my head. Only I had heard it.

  “Hear what? And what’s wrong with your wrist? Are you hurt? Jack, talk to me!” she said, grabbing my forearms, forcing me to look at her. “Jack!”

  I felt so miserable. “I think I’m hearing voices.” I told her.

  All the way back to London we talked about this strange experience, looking at it from all angles. But no matter how hard she tried to come up with semi-convincing theories, we couldn’t ignore the fact that I’d heard a voice that was not mine. It had been a woman’s for god’s sake, inside my head.

  “But why did you grab your wrist like that?” she asked.

  “I... I had a sudden urge to check my watch.” I replied, but it sounded so stupid as I said the words; it had just been an instinctive movement.

  “But you don’t wear it anymore. Why not? It’s the only thing apart from your wallet and clothes that was yours.”

  She watched me carefully as she spoke.

  I shrugged. “Time doesn’t seem to matter anymore. I mean, I don’t do anything with my day, not really.”

  I walked her back to the entrance of the tower block where she lived. I’d never been upstairs to her home and I could see that she was unsure about leaving me alone, but for whatever reason, she still couldn’t invite me up.

  For her sake, I tried to lighten up a bit. “Don’t worry, I’ve got an appointment with Dr Green tomorrow afternoon. I’ll talk it over with her, she might have some ideas.”

  She nodded and kissed my cheek, then spoke softly, her eyes searching my face, trying to determine what state I was really in.

  “It’ll be alright Jack. Somehow, I just know.”

  I smiled at her. “I hope so too, I really do.”

  That night for the first time, sleep eluded me. I wrote a list of the things I knew about myself, I tried abstract doodling, but could make neither head nor tail of my efforts. I went for a long walk through the almost deserted streets and sat for an hour or so in an all night cafe, lit by lurid fluorescent lights, keeping company with other misfits; who like me seemed to have nowhere better to be. Then for hours I wandered aimlessly again, before settling in a different cafe; this time with people who were having breakfast, before going to places that they had to be, unlike me.

  By the time I saw Dr Green I was at my wits end.

  “You look terrible.”

  Were her words of greeting as I entered her office. I just nodded and threw myself into the empty chair.

  I told her everything: how I was feeling and how scared I was now that I knew I clearly had mental health issues. The only problem was that I didn’t know how serious they were.

  She listened to everything I said, interrupting only to ask a question or to clarify a point. When I eventually lapsed into silence, I could see she was thinking. Here it comes, I thought, bracing myself for the bad news.

  “Well Jack, in a way this is good news.” she said slowly.

  “How so?” I asked, surprised.

  “Up to now you’ve been too upbeat about your predicament. So much so that I was starting to think it was a form of extended denial. The mild depression and the anger with yourself that you are currently experiencing are quite natural; healthy even and part of the mourning process. You’re in a form of mourning, you do realise that don’t you?”

  I thought about it. “But I don’t know who I’ve lost...” I said slowly.

  “You’ve lost yourself.” she replied levelly. “You’re twenty-seven years old and clearly well educated. You probably had a good profession, with friends, colleagues, a partner perhaps; a past. Maybe brothers and sisters, parents, possibly even children of your own. All you have now is a handful of weeks of real memory. Of course you should mourn and feel angry with yourself for forgetting; only then can you really start to move on.”

  I let an awful lot of air out of my lungs. It felt as though it had been there for a long time.

  “But why are they not looking for me then? If all these people were in my life, why hasn’t someone noticed that I’m not there anymore?”

  For a moment I wanted to cry, but I swallowed the urge and rushed on.

  “Don’t you see? If I’m psychotic they may be glad that I’m gone. It may be better for all of them that I’m not around anymore, but what about Grace? What if I hurt her?”

  I did sob then; at the thought of lovely, gentle Grace being hurt by me.

  “I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt her.” I whispered.

  There was a long silence.

  “Do you think about hurting her?” she asked softly.

  “No, never, not once.” I replied, meeting her eyes.

  “Jack, you have not exhibited any of the symptoms of psychosis, or of any of the other conditions that I have seen a great deal of in my profession. Prolonged amnesia is rare, but there are well documented cases. The brain is very, very complex and we do not understand all the many and varied ways it can react in different situations. But we learn. I am learning from your case.

  “I cannot explain to you why you heard a voice that was not your own in your head and I can’t promise that you won’t hear it again. My own view is that it’s a memory forcing itself through, but it’s out of context, for the time being anyway. All of which leads me to think that as of this moment you are not a danger to yourself or to anyone else. However, the really important question is, do you?”

  I thought long and hard about that question; it was too important to be hurried. If there was any chance, no matter how small or remote, that I felt I would be a danger to someone else, I wanted to do whatever was needed to remove that risk.

  Eventually and only when I was sure that the answer I was about to give was as honest as I could be, did I say, “No. I don’t think I am.”

  She nodded and I could see that she was pleased that we’d reached the same conclusion.

  “You do have too much time on your hands,” she said as I was leaving. “Perhaps you should find a job. Your arm is completely healed now and if you talk to the Inland Revenue and give them the certificates that you have, I am sure you can be issued with a code or something that will allow you to take part in everyday life, until you remember. It’s not impossible you know. One day it might all come flooding back.”

  I made my next appointment for two weeks time and walked away deep in thought. We’d all stopped using words such as ‘soon’ or ‘when’ and now spoke of ‘maybes’ and ‘mights’ whenever we talked of my memory returning. I began to feel a deep sense of loss as I made my way down to the ground floor in the lift. I had moved through life for twenty-seven years and yet it meant nothing to me. Finally I understood what the doctor had meant about mourning; I no longer knew what or who had been on all the floors of my personal lift journey. I was stuck and couldn’t open the doors.

  As I left the building I turned right, automatically making my way to the home where Grace worked. She’d finish in an hour or so and I needed to talk to her; I knew she’d be worried. She didn’t like the fact that I didn’t have a mobile phone, but I’d never seen the sense in going to the expense of acquiring one. I only needed the one number and anyway I always knew where to find her.

  I began to walk a bit quicker, not because of any sense of urgency, but from the lighter feeling that I felt whenever I thought about her. She was in my life after all and whilst I didn’t have any really good news to tell he
r, she deserved to know what the kind doctor had told me.

  We went to get a bite to eat and I told her everything that Dr Green and I had discussed. She listened carefully and only once I’d finished did she share her thoughts.

  “I’ve wondered if perhaps you were just passing through. I mean, no one has recognised you and you walk miles every day in all weather, yet nothing seems familiar to you. Even if you can’t pinpoint it, you ought to get some sense of familiarity, but you don’t. You had an awful lot of money on you, more than most people carry. Maybe your friends and family, your wife even, live in another country and you’d taken a year out to travel or something. If they don’t know where you were heading, they won’t know you’re missing yet.”

  “I didn’t have a passport or any travel documents on me.” I said. “Otherwise, it’s a good theory.”

  “You might have left them all at the hotel or hostel that you were staying in. But you wouldn’t leave money there, would you?”

  “Hmm... maybe not.” I said slowly, as another thought began to materialise.

  “I don’t think I can have a wife, or if I do, we must be heading for a divorce.”

  “What makes you think that?” she asked, as a smile began to play on her lips.

  “I don’t think I’m the sort of person who could leave someone I loved for a year, while I travelled the world.”

  She tilted her head and looked at me for a long moment.

  “No... I don’t think you’re that kind of person either.” she said.

  As we left the cafe, I felt freer than I had for a long time. I still didn’t know who I’d been, but I was beginning to think that I wouldn’t mind being who I could become.

  July and August were wet and not that warm and the weather went well with the frustration I encountered at the Inland Revenue and Social Security offices. In the end, my landlady came to my rescue, as my funds were beginning to dwindle to alarmingly low levels. Her father owned a small hardware shop, but he was getting on a bit and needed some help. So I worked there six mornings a week; sorting out stock, stacking shelves, moving the heavier things, making the tea and basically doing anything else he needed done. It paid my rent and bought the food, but only just. The truth is though, I didn’t need any more at that point in my life.