Dispossession (2 page)

Again I shook my head, just not believing any of this.
Volvos don’t fly. But she’d turned away, she didn’t see.

“If I crashed in Cumbria,” I said slowly, “where am I now?”

“Home. Well, in hospital, but home. They brought you
straight here from the crash, it’s further but you had to have a CT scan to
make sure your brain wasn’t slopping about like mushy peas in your stupid
head...”

And then she slipped out from under, easing me back onto a
heap of pillows. And drew the curtains with a flourish to show me I was home,
and stood smiling brightly by the bed and said, “You finish that drink quick,
and I’ll go get the doctors, okay?”

“No, wait.” Hide what she liked behind a smile, she wasn’t
fooling me. I’d heard the remembered fear in her voice,
they never found you till morning
, and I didn’t
want to play charades any more. Time to be truthful. “Tell me one more thing,”
I said quietly. “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember your name.”

She hissed and stood motionless for a moment, biting her lip
hard, I thought; then she looked at me quizzically, looking for a joke and not
seeing it.

“Straight up?” she asked.

I nodded.

“So much for bloody scans, eh?” And suddenly she was nothing
but amused, trying to swallow little bubbles of laughter. “I
told
them, what does that machine know, I said,
there was plenty wrong with his brain even before he shook it all up like that.
But—oh, you
bastard...
”

“Sorry,” I said again.

“No matter. You know who you are, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

“I’m Jonty,” I said patiently.

“Jonty, right. And I’m Sue,” she said, or I thought she
said; but it didn’t seem certain on the face of it. Not with that face. Soo,
perhaps she’d said? Or Tzu?

“Er, how do you spell that?”

“The usual way,” she said. And then, helpfully, “It’s short
for Susan.”

Right. Okay, I’d put my hefty feet right in it. Damn it, I
used to know some people from Hong Kong—or we did, rather, they’d been Carol’s
friends more than mine:
like all our friends
,
a stray thought obtruded—and they’d had English Christian names. Come to think
of it, they’d been Christians; and she did have that crucifix round her neck,
that might be more than decoration...

“Susan what?” I asked with a gesture of surrender, hoping at
least for Wu or Wong, if I couldn’t have Manchu.

“Marks,” she said. And then, slowly, visibly uncertain
whether she should still be laughing, “I’m your wife.”

o0o

No. Not possible. Demonstrably, not possible. If I’d cracked
my head in a car smash—and certainly there was some heavy bandaging round my
skull, my reaching fingers found that instead of the floppy hair they wanted,
they needed to play with—I could imagine enough mental scrambling to make me
forget a new friend temporarily, or a recently-joined colleague, perhaps. But a
wife
? No. I was Jonathan Marks, LLB,
solicitor; fathered by the Reading Festival, raised by the sort of woman who
would tell a small boy that his father was a festival; employed at the firm of
Hesketh & Jones, with my eye on a partnership before I hit thirty; and
talking of partnerships, I had lived for seven years with Carol Carter, and so
far as I was aware neither one of us had ever thought of marriage, even to each
other. Bachelor of Laws, I was a bachelor in life also and meant to stay that
way.

Sorry, girlie. This was some kind of scam, it had to be;
unless she’d slipped away from the psychiatric wing, perhaps, when the
attendants had been distracted. Maybe she claimed a relationship with every new
patient who was in no state to refute it, maybe that was her thing. Like
someone who got off on confessing to crimes they hadn’t committed, and God
knew, I’d met a few of those...

Except that what she did then, smart girl with a natural
sense for the dramatic moment, she slipped out of the room before I could deny
her; and she came back a minute later with a couple of doctors in tow. Okay,
that was in character; confessors always go to the police. But these two
seemingly serious-minded souls called her Mrs Marks, and gave me no high-sign
to suggest they were only humouring a loony till more men in white coats came to
claim her.

Gave her a bollocking, though, they did, for the whisky in
the water, that I hadn’t had wit enough to finish; then they gave her another
for preempting their memory-tests by telling me about the crash.

Never mind the crash, I said, I wish someone would tell me
about the marriage.

That had them curious, concerned, asking what I meant; she
only stood and looked at me, not a muscle in her seeming to move.

It’s a fantasy, I said. Look, I said, I’ll give you name,
rank and serial number, I’ll give you the story of my life; whatever it is she’s
told you that doesn’t gel, I said, she’s making it up. I don’t know the girl, I
said.

So I took them through all the details of my CV, just as I’d
taken myself through those same details before they came. Jonathan known as
Jonty, bachelor at law and in life, I said; sharing said life with Carol
Carter. No wives, I said.

Um, they said. And then they asked me what the day was, and
what the date.

Actually, I’d been wondering about that myself; I was half
prepared for the question, and for the obvious thoughts behind it.

“I’ve lost some time, haven’t I?” I said, trying for a wee
grin as I spoilt their surprise. “I really don’t know where in the week we are,
you’ll have to tell me. How long have I been unconscious?”

Funny thing about doctors, they’re interrogation-proof. It
was definitely my turn to ask something, but the question slid off them like
water off oilskin, and they didn’t seem to notice it at all.

“What about the month, then?” one of them demanded. “Can you
tell me the month?”

Yes, of course I could, or nearly. “Come on, guys,” I said,
“you can’t con me. I haven’t been in a coma for weeks and weeks, there aren’t
enough machines going beep in here. I’m a bit muddled, I know; but if this isn’t
late January, it’s got to be early February at the very latest, right?”

The two docs looked at each other; one of them twitched an
eyebrow, the other made a note on a clipboard. It was Sue who risked their
wrath once more, by treating me like a human being with the right to know what
a fool I was making of myself.

“April,” she said. “Thirteenth, which makes it the Ides of.
Cute, eh? And I thought it was going to be so lucky for me. Just lucky it’s not
a Friday on top, I suppose...”

She was lying again, she had to be. I looked to the doctors
to tell me so, and all they did was nod. “It’s the thirteenth of April, Mr
Marks.”

“Christ.” So much for machines that went beep. They must
have wheeled them all away, when I started waking up. “So how long have I been
here, then?”

“Three days,” Sue said, perching herself on the side of the
bed and taking one of my hands in both of hers. “And I don’t care what anyone
says, you’re getting shaved tonight. Scabs or no scabs. You look disgusting. If
you won’t do it and they won’t do it, I’ll do it myself. Can’t stand prickly
men, I like ’em smooth...”

“Please, Mrs Marks,” one of the doctors butted in, bless
him. “I know this isn’t easy for you, but you’ll only confuse your husband
more.”

Damn right. I was trying to equate three days—or what she
said was three days, though she’d shown herself an utterly unreliable witness,
and I wished to God they’d stop supporting her—with what, ten weeks? Maybe
twelve weeks since I could find a solid, dependable memory with a date attached
to it. This did not compute. Nothing was hanging together, nothing made sense.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
, and it
felt like all that was holding me to Planet Earth right now was the hard grip
of a stranger, except that she was the most muddling thing of all, and every
time I thought something was coming clear she gave the whole mess another stir.

o0o

The doctors weren’t too much help just then, though
fortunately I wasn’t really expecting any better of them. Slowly and patiently
they told me what was known or obvious already: that I’d been in an accident,
that I’d sustained a significant jolt to my brain—an insult they called it
first, before catching themselves in jargon and correcting for the layperson
mentality—which had scrambled everything up a bit. I’d experienced some memory
loss—
no, really? Gosh, tell me about it
—and
once they’d checked me out physically, what they needed to do most urgently was
to establish the range and depth of that loss.

Which actually meant that after they’d poked and prodded and
shone lights into my eyes and such, they just needed to ask me a lot more
questions. We dealt quite efficiently with the President of the United States
and what had been the Christmas number one, but I couldn’t help them at all
with who’d won the Five Nations this year or what was the score in the last
Newcastle game. The last I remembered was one-all away at Stamford Bridge, but
that had been a January cup-tie and I couldn’t tell them who’d won the replay.

Sport and politics seemed to confirm the time-lag, that I
was missing near enough three months of my life here. Unless the doctors also
were lying to me—which would make them not doctors at all, I supposed, only
actors in white coats and this not after all a hospital, just a room dressed up
to look the part as they were. Some grand scam this could be, though the
purpose defeated me...

Except that I knew the view outside the window. The hospital
grounds had been a regular short cut for me, when I was a student and living
this side of town; I knew that building, that path, those trees. This was where
they said it was; which made them necessarily what they said they were. Too
much to believe that they’d hired or stolen time in this place to turn a
disused room into a stage-set, an operating theatre for some bizarre
conspiracy.

The men at least, what they said they were. Not the woman,
no way the woman...

So okay, I’d had a crack on the head and lost three months’-worth
of memories. I wanted them back, I was ready to riot if they told me I’d never
recover them; but I didn’t even get the chance to ask just then. The doctors
were homing in on personal stuff, and they weren’t giving out information, only
questions.

“What car do you drive, Jonty?”

“Volvo. Grey, 650, three years old.” Sensible, boring, safe.
Should have been safe, at least. No previously-recorded tendency to fly.

“Uh-huh. Do you ever drive anything else?”

“Yeah. Carol’s got a 2CV, she lets me out in that
sometimes.” I saw the way they glanced at each other, one doctor to the other
to Sue; and I sighed, and said, “Okay, you might as well tell me. What was I
driving when I crashed?”

“James the Second,” Sue said.

“Eh?”

“You bought him, you named him. An MR2? In British racing
green?”

I shook my head helplessly. What the hell would I be doing
with a car like that?

“Who was James the First?” one of the doctors asked. Trying
to catch me out, I guess, me or my memory or both.

“A Scottish king,” I said flatly.

Sue looked at me and said, “Writer. Ghost stories. Christ,
you really don’t remember, do you?”

“That’s right. I really don’t remember.”

“Okay. M R James wrote ghost stories; the car was an MR2;
so, obviously, James the Second. It was obvious to you, anyway.”

“I’ve never read M R James,” I said, still trying to put
distance between this girl’s version of the world and my own.

“You read them to me every night last month. Dead spooky. I
wanted candlelight but you wouldn’t do that, you said you couldn’t see to read,
but I reckon you were scared...”

Layers beneath layers: teasing on the surface, she was angry
underneath, or wanted me to think it. How dared I not remember what was so
potent, so shared? But I thought the anger was as artificial as the tease, with
something tight and frightened hiding down below.

I could get angry now myself, I thought; but I thought it would
be just as artificial, and what it hid in me would be just as craven. I knew
what I was scared of—and yes, you could call it a ghost story, this mythical
life she claimed for me, that I had never lived—but I was less certain about
her. I wanted to think about that, to try to draw some sense out of a skein of
impossibilities; but more even than that I simply wanted to be alone, to answer
no more questions for a while, neither to be faced with questions that I couldn’t
answer.

So I let my head topple back and roll into the pillow, and
there was nothing artificial in this, I felt completely shagged. And said so,
said, “I’m shagged. Can we save the rest till later?”

“Yes, of course, Jonty.” My God, considerate doctors? “You
sleep awhile, and try not to worry. Experience shows that most memories are
recovered, sooner or later. We can’t force nature in this respect, but she does
a pretty good job on her own account.”

They left, conferring in low voices before they were even
out of the door. Sue hesitated a moment, made half a move to come back to the
bed, half opened her mouth to speak; but I only looked at her, offering no
encouragement and certainly no help, and in the end she just twisted away and
walked out.

She might be short, but she did okay in proportion. Nice
legs, neat bottom. I barely registered, though, was in no mood to enjoy.

o0o

A nurse looked in an hour later, to check that I was
sleeping. I wasn’t. I’d not felt so exhausted, so drained and confused, so very
far from sleep since the first night I ever spent in someone else’s bed,
nervous and daring and massively, monstrously pleased with myself and with her.
The emotions this time were as different as their causes, but the effect was
similar.