It would be greatly appreciated if you could take a moment to look at this Wikipedia page that I have begun, and then add in any extra details you remember, or edit anything that you feel may be incorrect. For example, I have already put in the basic fact that I attended the University of Bangor. But if you were there with me, you might add in the names of tutors I had, or clubs I joined or particular anecdotes that you feel are worth recalling. My hope is that this online document will grow to become a complete account of my life before my amnesia; and this in turn might help me regain the actual memories of these events.
Many thanks,
Vaughan
WITH HIS ZEALOUS belief in the power of user-generated content, Gary had come up with an initiative to establish a detailed account of my life to date. My appeal went out via email, Facebook and, for what it was worth, the features pages of YouNews. I had been desperate for a way to restore ownership of my personal story; I wanted to learn the history of my own Dark Ages, to swot up on the dates and key events and understand how it all fitted together.
‘Half-knowledge is a dangerous thing,’ Gary had sagely quoted at me.
‘Who said that?’
‘I dunno. Alexander somebody … Aha ha ha!’
So here was the Facebook/LinkedIn/Friends Reunited profile taken to a new level. I was going to have my own memoir collaboratively written online. Uniquely, I would not be the editor of my own life story; I didn’t even get a couple of sessions with the ghost-writer. The old manuscript had been lost, so now it would be completely rewritten, this time from the witnesses’ point of view. I barely existed in the first person yet: my life story was all ‘you’ or ‘he’. I wondered how this perspective might affect the reader’s sympathies. It would be like the United States having its history rewritten from scratch by Britain, Mexico, Japan, the Native Americans and Iraq.
‘It’s an interesting idea,’ said Dr Lewington, as I proudly told her how my personal memories were going to be compiled by others. It was now three weeks since I had had the fugue and this was my first appointment back at the hospital. ‘Though you should continue to keep a separate record of your own memories. Are you writing them down?’
‘Yes, I have a little notepad by my bed. With lots of blank pages.’
‘And how are you feeling in yourself? Because I can still refer you to a psychiatrist or a counsellor if you feel that would be at all helpful.’
‘No, I’m fed up talking about it, to be honest. People think I’m mad enough as it is, without me seeing a psychiatrist.’
‘There’s no stigma attached. What you have experienced is very traumatic – it is a form of mental illness.’
‘I’m fine, really. Things are looking up. I think I’ve fallen in love …’
‘Well, that’s wonderful news. Because I seem to remember you were getting divorced.’
‘Yup, that’s her. She still wants to get divorced, but I was hoping she might marry me again after that.’
‘Right. As I say, the offer of a psychiatrist is always there if you need it …’
At the end of our session Dr Lewington asked to see my online biography, and I found myself feeling a little nervous as she clicked on the link. It had not been live for even twenty-four hours, and I worried that one or two people might take advantage of this situation to settle old scores or exercise some ancient grudge. But I had not anticipated the viciousness of the treatment I had received in those first twenty-four hours. No one had written a single word about me.
Over the next day or so I kept returning to the document and clicking on ‘Refresh’, but my life story just read ‘This neurology-related article is a stub. Please help Wikipedia by expanding it.’ I could tell from checking the article history that quite a few people had opened the page, but no one had taken the trouble to write anything. Gary had been on Facebook and mentioned that everyone I knew had found time to update their own status and upload new photos of themselves.
Not even Maddy had responded to my round-robin email and I worried about how she was dealing with the bombshell that her own husband had forgotten their entire marriage. But then Linda took a phone call from Maddy; apparently she wanted to meet up with me for a coffee ‘and have a serious talk’.
‘Ha, that’s almost like a date, isn’t it?’ I suggested optimistically.
‘Um, I don’t think so, Vaughan. I think she wants to talk about where the two of you go from here.’
‘No, I hear what you’re saying. It’s just two adults meeting up to discuss a very difficult situation.’
A few minutes later I came out of my room to ask Linda’s advice.
‘What do you think – is this shirt too bright? Would this one be better?’
‘It doesn’t matter, Vaughan – they’re both fine.’
‘What about these shoes? Too formal?’
I had been through all my old clothes, but I reckoned that Maddy must have seen me in those. And Gary’s shirts somehow combined looking as if the washing instructions had been consistently ignored with looking like they had never been washed at all.
‘Have I got time to go out and buy a new outfit?’
‘It doesn’t matter what you wear, Vaughan. Just be yourself.’
‘Fine. Just be myself. So, er, what is “myself”, exactly?’
I was ridiculously early to the café and chose a seat outside so I’d be able to see her coming. I sat down with a book, and re-read the same line about twenty times. She had chosen a café in Covent Garden and the piazza was so busy I kept momentarily mistaking other people for Madeleine. Finally she approached and I stood up, but there was no big smile or exaggerated wave from her when she spotted me. I went to give her a peck on the cheek, but she didn’t move towards me at all and so I was forced to pretend I was leaning over to pull out her chair.
‘Hi! Great to see you! You look nice …’
‘Shall we get on with it?’ she said, playing it rather cool, I thought.
Today she was wearing her hair down, and I decided that she wasn’t so much a redhead as a strawberry blonde. I asked her what sort of coffee she wanted; she requested a double espresso and insisted on handing over the exact amount in loose change.
‘Hey, double espresso! Same as me!’ I said, with enthusiasm, wondering what that might taste like.
‘No, you always have a cappuccino.’
With her already knowing me so well, there was less of the exploratory trivia that I would have liked to warm up with.
‘Anyway, listen, I talked to my lawyer and I think it’s actually good that the final hearing got postponed.’
‘Oh, great!’ I said, trying not to wince at the strength of my black coffee.
‘Yes – he said that if the hearing had gone ahead and it was then discovered that you were not in a fit state to be in court, then the whole divorce might have been invalidated. Far better to get divorced when we know it would be a cast-iron decree nisi.’
‘Oh.’ I sighed. ‘I see.’
In the distance a street performer was juggling or balancing on a unicycle, or possibly both, and his bombastic self-commentary was punctuated with occasional ripples of applause.
‘See, I told him about your amnesia and he says you have to get medical attestation that you have the mental capacity to give instruction. Do you need to write that down?’
‘No, I can remember that.’
‘So you need to see a psychiatrist or neurologist or whatever as soon as possible so that we can finalize the divorce.’
She had already crushed the tiny part of me that had hoped she might be just a little bit flirty. We were only able to sit outside because of the large metallic mushrooms that appeared to have sprouted between the tables, but even these huge heaters struggled to revive the summer in the face of the plummeting temperature.
‘So have you seen a psychiatrist yet?’
‘I’m not mad. Why does everyone think I need a psychiatrist?’
‘What, you and me give the marriage anot
her go? That was pretty mad, you must admit.’
A round of applause echoed across the piazza. If she could only get to know me, she would surely see how sincere and attentive I was. She’d forget all that negative stuff she’d heard about me from her divorce lawyer and would be convinced that here, finally, was the man for her.
‘How are the kids?’ I was keen to hear about them, and I wanted to remind her of the things we had in common.
‘They’re fine. I’ve tried to give them an inkling of what’s happened to you, but Dillie was quite upset by it all. So we’re going to have to handle it very carefully …’
Privately I was frightened of being introduced to my own children. I was desperate to make the right first impression on two people who had known me all their lives. Surely they would see it in my eyes – my distance, my coldness.
‘Okay, I’ll follow your lead. But tell them I can’t wait to meet them.’
‘No, I won’t say that.’
‘I mean see them. Again.’
I ripped open the top of a sugar sachet and shared the contents between my coffee cup and the surface of the table.
‘Still taking sugar then?’
‘For as long as I can remember …’
‘But you’re not smoking? I can’t believe all those years I begged you to give up and you said it was impossible. And then you give up just like that!’
‘Yup, that’s all it takes, a bit of willpower. And a psychogenic fugue. Are you sure I can’t get you a blueberry muffin or anything?’
‘When have I ever eaten blueberry muffins?’
‘I don’t know, do I? I do not have the mental capacity to choose you a muffin.’
‘Sorry, I forgot.’
‘Hey, that’s my catchphrase.’
‘So just how much can you remember now? If you can remember the camping holiday when you ignored that gale warning and the time you got us kicked off the train … is it all starting to come back?’
I thought about her shouting at me about the smoke alarm. ‘No, there’s not much else yet.’
‘Well, maybe that’s a blessing.’
‘I don’t remember why we split up – it feels like it doesn’t make sense. I was serious about what I said in the courtroom. About us giving it another go …’
‘Come off it, Vaughan – we had long enough to make our marriage work. It was over a long time ago.’ And then she put down her coffee cup and her demeanour changed as if she had made a decision to stop being so restrained and adult about this. ‘God, when I think of the shit I had to put up with!’
‘Hey, it wasn’t all me, you know!’ I had no evidence to back this up, but I felt no responsibility for things of which I had no memory. ‘It takes two people to make a marriage fail.’
‘Yeah, that’s what Dr Crippen said …’
‘Anyway, there is something else I remember,’ I said triumphantly. ‘I remember you being too cross about trivial things. Going ballistic because I forgot to replace the battery in the smoke alarm—’
‘Trivial?’
‘In the broad scheme of things, yes. I mean I don’t see why it was such a big deal.’
She looked at me as if I was completely stupid. ‘Because there was a fire.’
At first I thought this must be a joke. I had spent too much time with Gary.
‘What?’
‘Because there was a fire. That’s why I was cross. There was a fire in our kitchen while we were all asleep, and the smoke alarm failed to go off because you had taken the battery out.’
This is why it is best to be in full command of the facts when you get into an argument.
‘Shit! That sounds scary. I – I don’t remember that bit …’ I mumbled.
‘But you remember me being cross about it?’
‘Vaguely … Were we outside?’
‘Er, yes, because our house was on fire. The whole family was standing in the back garden in pyjamas while the fire brigade chucked all the charred, smouldering kitchen units out on to the patio.’
I tried to picture the scene but it was still lost to me. ‘Blimey. So who raised the alarm?’
‘Er, well, I got the kids up when you nudged me and asked if I could smell smoke.’
‘Oh, well, so at least I raised the alarm.’
‘You woke me up and said “Can you smell smoke?” And then I leapt up and ran to the children.’
‘But I was the one who smelt the smoke? So that sort of cancels out removing the battery?’
‘No, it does not – we could all have been killed! We had to completely refit the kitchen! That could all have been avoided—’
‘I might have smelt smoke quicker than the alarm would have detected it …’
‘Okay – you were the hero of the hour! Wow, that’s quite a re writing of history there. Silly me – I must have remembered it all wrong.’
I couldn’t help thinking that this was our first tiff, but thought it best not to mention it.
‘A rose for the lady?’ said a flower-seller, in a powerful Eastern European accent. The scent of roses was slightly lost in the fug of tobacco smoke from the wet cigarette hanging from his lip.
‘Er, no. No, thank you.’
‘Hey, lady – doesn’t he love you? You want him buy you romantic flower?’
‘No, thank you very much.’
The vendor wandered off, but his appearance had punctured the increasingly dangerous atmosphere.
‘You can’t just wipe the slate clean and start again, Vaughan.’
‘But that’s exactly what’s happened! Okay, I’ve forgotten everything, but then so have you. You’ve forgotten how you used to feel. I meant what I said in the courtroom.’
‘Look, you’re attracted to this romantic idea of Vaughan and his happy wife, because you are understandably desperate to get your past back. But your past isn’t what you imagine it is. You can’t just go back to the happy bits. It wasn’t all drunken giggling in a tent, I can tell you.’
‘I’m not thinking about the past, I’m thinking about the future. When I first saw you and the home we made together … If you could have seen all that through fresh eyes like I did, you wouldn’t want to just let it all go.’
‘Yes, but your eyes can’t see you spoiling the view. It’s like seeing a pretty house from the motorway and thinking, “I’d like to live there.”’ A ripple of applause came from the crowd, as if to compliment Maddy on a point well made.
‘Look, people change,’ I pleaded. ‘Clearly I have changed. And I’m really sorry about all the things that hurt you when our marriage went wrong. I can’t imagine why I would have done them, but if it’s any consolation I clearly found it all so traumatic that my brain completely wiped any memory of it along with everything else. And now the only thing I can remember about you is how passionately I felt when we first met.’
‘Yeah, well, you wait till you get the rest of your memory back. You don’t love me, Vaughan. Your mind is still playing tricks on you.’
The chain-smoking flower seller had had no success and by now had started on the next café along from us.
‘Excuse me!’ I called across to him.
‘Vaughan, no!’
‘How much are the roses?’
‘Four pounds a stem,’ he said, rushing over. ‘Beautiful rose for beautiful lady.’
‘Vaughan – do not buy me a rose.’
But the nicotine-stained fingers were already pulling out one cellophane-wrapped instant love token.
‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you fifty pounds for the whole lot.’
‘All of them?’
‘Vaughan – you’re wasting your money.’
‘Sixty pounds!’
‘Fifty quid and you can finish work now.’ The man gave an impassive nod and quickly exchanged the notes in my hand for a huge bunch of skinny red roses.
‘He love you very much.’
‘Actually, we were just finalizing our divorce,’ she explained.
‘Your wi
fe – funny lady!’ laughed the flower seller. But neither of us joined in. My dramatic gesture had only irritated Maddy further and now she just brusquely worked her way through her checklist of all the practical things she needed to sort out. Though our lives would continue to require contact and cooperation, she did not want to be my friend.
Desperately, I made one last pitch to her.
‘My memory loss might be the best thing that ever happened to us!’
‘For God’s sake, Vaughan, one of the things that used to drive me mad about you was that you forgot everything I told you. If it was anything about your life then you remembered it all right, sure, but if it was something I was doing, then it wasn’t important enough for you to register. And suddenly you don’t remember a thing about me and you think that’s going to make you more attractive to me? I’d say this was just the logical conclusion to the way the whole relationship had been going for twenty years. First you forget the milk I ask you to pick up on the way home; then you forget I’ve got an exhibition coming up, or that I asked you to come home early so I could get to the processors; then you forget our anniversary or that you gave me the same Christmas present last year; until finally you completely forget every single thing about me – my name, what I looked like … you completely forgot I even existed. I don’t see what the big deal is with the doctors and neurologists, because you forgot I existed years ago. This isn’t a mental illness. This is just who you are. It’s over, Vaughan! We are getting a divorce. End of story. End of us.’
And she got up and walked away, leaving fifty red roses on the table in front of me. I sat there, wincing at my overpowering cold espresso until the heater beside me flickered and then went out. Daylight was fading and I realized I was shivering. What had I been thinking – it was ridiculous to believe you could keep the summer going for ever.
Across the square I observed an elderly lady with a walking stick. She had stopped walking altogether and just stood still in the middle of the pavement, staring at the ground. She looked worn out; defeated even. Determined that some good might come out of all of this, I picked up the over-large bunch of roses and strode towards her.
‘Excuse me, would you permit me to give you fifty red roses?’ I said, with all the charm I could muster.
The Man Who Forgot His Wife Page 10