"That, after so many years you're still so in love with each other and still fooling around. You're lucky son, not everyone has that."
And with that she closes the door and walks away.
I turn and face Jane. I am speechless. Thoughts race through my head. Not only has my mum gone crazy, but it will only be a matter of seconds before Sarah will be racing up the stairs, and my marriage will disappear just like my job, my house and almost every other part of my life.
Quick, … I have to get Jane out of the room. Suddenly the bedroom door opens again, and the two screaming children return, rushing past me on either side, and jumping on Jane, joining her on the heap on the floor.
"Mummy. Mummy." They both scream. "Did Daddy shout at you too? Was he nasty to you as well?"
Jane looks up at me, her big, bright, beautiful eyes, smiling at me.
"No. Daddy and I were just playing…It’s okay."
And then it dawns on me.
Sarah won't be rushing up the stairs. And my marriage won’t be coming to an end after all.
For the simple reason, that it seems I'm no longer married to Sarah.
As far as I can tell, I'm now married to Jane.
Chapter Ten
The Party
.
This new part of my reality strikes me dumb. I sit down on the side of the bed, and then lie down on my back, facing the ceiling.
The Spitfire chases the Stuka Dive Bomber, and my head begins to throb.
"James, are you ok? Sorry I'm laughing, but you should have seen yourself. It was hilarious."
The two girls jump up on the side of the bed, and one rolls onto my stomach.
"Daddy, daddy, are you still cross with us?" the older girl screams, her words almost immediately echoed by the smaller girl, albeit in a slightly more childish, higher pitch. "Addy, Addy, are you sill cos with us?"
With my hand still cradling the back of my cranium I look down at them, both now preparing to do somersaults on my midriff.
"Girls, leave daddy and mummy alone for a moment. We have to get Daddy dressed for the party. Go down to Nana and we'll be down soon." Jane shoos the two girls out, and kneels down beside me on the mattress. She lifts up my head, and bends forward to look at my scalp, separating the hair away from the area of the bang, and inspecting it closely.
"Ouch! It's bleeding. We’d better wash it and put a plaster on that. Are you alright?" she says, genuine concern now showing in her voice.
"I feel a little sick," I say. Actually, physically I feel fine. Mentally though, it feels as if someone has just removed my brain through my nose. And my heart is beating so fast that I think it is most probably going to burst at any second, or just stop.
Then all of a sudden, thoughts start to pour into my mind. A flood, too many at once to make any sense of, and I struggle to control them. By now I am sweating, and I genuinely do want to vomit.
Jane is bending over me, looking into my eyes, I think probably checking to see if my pupils are dilated, or maybe just to see if I am still alive.
I need Sarah. Where is Sarah. Where is my wife?
"Come on, let's get you into the bathroom. I hope you don't have concussion. We'll put some cold water on your neck and head, and get you dressed. If you feel ill at all, we'll get you off to the doctors. But the guest of honor should be arriving in a few minutes, so let's welcome him first and see how you feel then? Okay, honey?"
Honey?
She kisses me on the forehead, and then once, long and slow on the mouth. Another sudden flurry of thoughts. And feelings. Sarah? Jane? Sarah? Jane?
The kiss, in spite of the bad timing, and incredibly poor surroundings and circumstances, is, I must admit, rather nice. At the same time I am conscious of the weight of her large breasts on my chest. It occurs to me then, just how mixed up I am. One second, I am missing my wife and am dumb with a mixture of worry and fear, and the next second, my penis has taken control of my whole body, and a sexual impulse is dominating all normal, realistic, mental processes. Confusion wracks me, and I close my eyes.
Jane stands up and pulls my hands upwards. Before I know it she has led me into the bathroom, washed me, and helped me to put on my clothes.
Ouch. She puts TCP on my cut scalp, and then applies a plaster. She looks me in the face once more, checks my eyes for any more signs of my pupils exploding, and then kisses me again.
"Sorry, honey. I didn't mean for you to fall over and smack your head. But I think you'll live…" I utter something incoherent back, but it doesn't matter, as Jane has turned away and is already leading me down the stairs. At the bottom, we turn and go straight into the kitchen. The two monsters are sitting at the table, scoffing their little round faces with crisps and peanuts, and don't take any notice as we walk in.
The door to the dining room opens and the sound of lots of people laughing and joking bursts through. My mother pops her head round the side of the cooker, switching off the light on the wall.
"He's parking the car. Quick, come on in. Girls, you too."
Who is parking his car? What is this party for?
I walk into the dining room, and immediately can't help but notice that the wall between the dining room and the front room has disappeared. What used to be two separate rooms, only two days ago when I last stopped by to drop off my mother’s shopping, has now become one large comfortable, tasteful open living area, straight out of the TV property program 'Location, Location, Location.' And in the centre is a large banner, announcing "Happy Retirement! "
To whom?
The room is full of people and the front curtains are drawn closed. On the other side, I notice my uncle, and some distant cousins who I never really knew, their wives and husbands in tow, but before I recognize the faces of the other people, someone switches off the lights. Suddenly we are engulfed in darkness.
Someone else goes "Shuuuuuush!" very loudly, and everyone stops speaking. All eyes are now on the door to the hallway. Jane steps up behind me, wrapping her arms around my waist, her chin on my shoulder, and her two little monsters…my two little monsters ?…stand beside me, pulling on my trouser legs.
We all hear the sound of the front door opening, and a few seconds later, the bang as it is shut firmly from within.
A ripple of excitement runs around the room, and all the people, some more of whom I have now recognized as a relatives whom I haven't seen in years, prepare to cheer and pull their party poppers. I join in, my attention now focusing as much as anyone else's on the handle of the door leading to the hallway.
Who is the mystery guest going to be? It can't be anyone I know…
The door handle turns, the door opens, and a hand reaches inside and searches for the light switch on the wall.
A flash of light. The sound of shouting, the sound of cheering. Poppers going bang all around. Everyone goes wild. The light is bright. Too bright. I blink to adjust my eyes. I see the person standing in the doorway, his jaw dropping and the surprise registering in his eyes. Stunned, he looks around the room for a moment or two before it dawns on him just what is going on. A second or two which rips open my heart, and impales me deeper and faster and more sharply than any spear or blade could ever do. A second or two, which tips me over the edge and into the darkness.
I see but I do not believe.
I hear his voice, laughing, but I do not dare to believe that it is him, and when he turns and sees me across the room and then winks in my direction, my knees give way and I crash to the ground.
But as I close my eyes and my mind shuts down, I realize that it is him. There is no mistake.
It is my father.
Who died of a heart attack five years ago.
But who now lives once again.
PART TWO
Chapter Eleven
Kingston Hospital
.
I blink a few times, the bright light shining in my eyes startles me, and I wake up rudely.
I am in a sterile and uninviting hospital room, a
doctor standing above me, waving a small pencil torch back and forth into my left eye.
The doctor smiles.
"Welcome back, Mr Quinn. How are you feeling?" he asks.
"I don't know yet." I reply. "It depends on what the matter with me is." (I'm still a hypochondriac then.)
"You're in hospital…"
"I can see that…which one? How did I get here?"
"You're in Kingston Hospital. Your wife brought you in earlier this evening. Do you want to see her?"
Sarah. My heart skips a beat at the mention of her name. It seems like years since I saw her last.
"Yes," I reply quickly. "But can I ask you some questions first?"
"Sure", he says, sitting down on the side of my bed, resting his hands on his knees and looking simultaneously concerned, friendly and paternal, just like a doctor in a hospital drama on TV. Except this is real.
"What is the matter with me? And please tell me the truth. A lot of strange stuff has been happening to me recently, and I need to know why."
"Well, we've given you a complete going over, checked everything there is to check, and the only thing we can find wrong with you is that it looks as if you might be suffering from a little concussion. There's nothing else. You suffered a small bump on your head, and your blood pressure was perhaps a little too high. But the concussion, if there was one, seems to have gone now and we have brought your blood pressure down. We would like to keep you in for observation overnight, but if everything stays the same, there's no reason not to let you go home in the morning."
Concussion. I understand it all now. Everything that has happened today has just been one big dream. I've been lying in this hospital bed all the time, whilst my subconscious has been working overtime creating a whole new world for me to live in.
But now it's over. In a few minutes I'll be with Sarah, and I will be going home to hug Keira and Nicole. Relief floods through me, and I relax back onto the big white fluffy pillow.
"Thanks Doctor. I suppose that could explain it all…Can I see my wife now please?"
The doctor turns and walks out. I turn and look out of the window. Outside it's dark, and I can just see the lights on the top of the Bentall Centre in Kingston, not too far away. Then I hear footsteps and the door opens again.
Sarah…
Only, as I turn to greet my wife, Jane walks in.
There is a moment of pure confusion. My mind races. Am I back in the dream, or is everything back to normal, but Jane has come to visit me? If so, I have to get rid of her quick, before Sarah comes in.
"Jane…"
"James. Bloody hell, you gave us all a scare. The girls haven't stopped crying. And I've been so worried…"
She comes across to my bed, and wraps her arms around me, kissing me passionately. There are tears pouring down her cheeks. "I'm sorry, James, this is all my fault…I didn't realize that you'd hurt yourself so badly."
Not knowing how to respond I wrap my arm around her head, and hold her close to me. I hold her there for a long time and as she sobs against my chest, I stare blankly into space behind her. My head races. I am still in the dream. I haven't woken up yet.
Or have I?
A bizarre and extremely frightening thought occurs to me. It comes at me from out of nowhere, and it refuses to leave, burrowing itself deep inside my consciousness and going round and round in circles, until suddenly it doesn't seem so daft after all.
What if this is not a dream? What if this is all real? I mean, everything I can touch, and feel and see is real. At least it seems to be… What if my memories of Sarah and Keira and Nicole, and Kitte-Kat, what if that is the dream, and this is the reality? And what if the reason I cannot remember anything about my new life, I mean, this real life, is because I do have concussion and I have lost my memory? Perhaps there is a perfectly rational explanation for all of this?
What is it that they say...I think they call it Occam’s Razor? …basically it goes, 'that which at first sight seems to be the obvious answer, generally turns out to be the answer'. So, if that is the case Jane and her two little monsters, and the rest of this world…this is my reality. Not Sarah. Sarah and the rest are just a figment of my imagination.
Is that possible? Should I ask the doctor? No. The absurdity of the suggestion hits me straight away. If I ask that they'll put me on drugs and lock me up in some mental institution. No, I have to figure this all out for myself.
So what shall I tell Jane? The truth? And what if it's not the truth, and I am in fact just mad?
No, I can't tell Jane either. If she's the only wife I have, I don't want to scare her with such wild thoughts …at least not until I have had some more time to think it all out.
So do I really have concussion? Did I maybe really get mugged this morning, and if so, did I actually really have concussion all along? Perhaps I didn't make it all up this morning after all. Maybe it was true. Then, maybe, when I banged my head at my mum’s for the second time it just made it worse?
Shit. This is too confusing.
On the other hand, if I do have concussion, or did, or might have had, if at all, or even if I don’t and never did have, they…the doctors and my wife and everyone else, they now think that I do, and that now gives me a totally legitimate excuse for not remembering what on earth is happening in my life now. For example: how long have I been married to Jane? I don’t know. What are our children called? I don’t know. How long have I been in advertising? I don’t know. Where do I live? I don’t know.
And if none of this is actually real, and it is all a dream, then by pretending to have concussion I can at least excuse myself from a lot of embarrassing moments, while I try to figure out where the exit door from this particularly bad reality is, an excuse I can use while I learn all about my life again.
"Jane, let's talk" I say, pulling her gently up and off my chest.
I lift up her chin, and dab the edges of her face with the edge of the white hospital blanket. She stops crying and looks into my eyes. The good news is that it looks like she genuinely does love me. (Which is not to say that Sarah doesn't. Although maybe that isn't relative anymore, particularly if Sarah is just a dream and Jane isn't).
"Jane. The doctor says I've got concussion. I don't want to scare you, but I don’t really know what's going on. I can't remember much…"
"What do you mean? Have you got amnesia? How bad is it?"
"I don't know… it’s too early to tell."
"But you know who I am, don’t you?" she says, wrapping my face in both her hands and staring at me with her big, beautiful eyes.
"Yes, but…"
"But what James, but what?"
"I can't remember much else. I can’t remember when we got married, the names of our children, where we live…nothing…it's all patchy…blurry…"
"Oh no…" she cries out again collapsing on my chest.
I stroke her hair, soothingly, wondering what to do next and where we go from here. A moment passes.
"Is it permanent?" she eventually asks, pulling herself up and starting to pace the room.
Good question.
"I don't know. The doctors say that my memory might come back, a bit at a time. Until then we just have to take it day by day, and to start learning a lot of it from scratch again." I got that bit out of a film. Which, if you think about it, proves that I don't have complete amnesia, doesn't it?
"James?" Another person has just walked into the bedroom. It is my father.
"Dad..."
Now this bit is really strange. Either this is real, and I am talking to my real live father, who in my dream died five years ago, or this is a dream, and he is still dead, and somehow I am getting a chance to talk to him again in my new, imagined world, or, and this is the weirdest one of them all: maybe he was dead, and is now alive again. Which, of course, is ridiculous.
"Jane, the kids are waiting outside with Mary. Tell them their father is okay, but I think it's best if they don’t come in just yet. Why not take th
em home, and bring them back tomorrow? I would like to talk to James alone for a while, if that's all right with you," my father says, holding open the door for Jane.
She kisses me once more on the lips, and strokes the side of my face, smiling. As she walks out of the door, I can taste her salty tears on my lips.
Suddenly I am left alone with my father. There is so much I want to say to him. So much that I never ever got the chance to say before he died.
I was away on business, in Germany, when I got the phone call in the middle of the night from my mum, telling me that he had been taken into hospital. I got a cab straight to the airport, and waited for three hours in the departure lounge, and caught the first flight home. When I got to the hospital the next day it was too late. The whole family was there. Everyone, apart from me. As he lay in the bed that night, nearing the end of his life, the rest of my family had managed to say something to him and make their peace with him before his heart eventually packed in. Everyone except me. I never got to tell him how much I loved him, how much I loved all the toys he used to make for us as children, how much I loved going fishing with him when I was a teenager, and how sorry I was that we had shouted at each other after the Christmas Dinner the year before. And now I have a second chance to say all the things I never did before.
Who Stole My Life? Page 8