Ossian's Ride (22 page)

Ah well, back we go to winning small points again, I thought to myself. Aloud I said, “I think I’ll finish the coffee, if you don’t mind?”

“Oh, not in the least.”

With bowed shoulders, and a slow gait, I went ahead of the man. But as soon as we were out of the door I whirled on him, as I had once whirled on the wretched Tiny. But this was a vastly easier proposition. The first punch was beautifully placed. He went down soundlessly like a fairground dummy. In an instant I was away down the road, heading toward the center of the city. There was more than a chance that the fellow was bluffing and that I was not surrounded at all, at any rate not for the moment. There had scarcely been time for one man to get on my track, let alone a whole squad.

I had gone about two hundred yards when two cars came toward me. They passed by, heading for the cafe. I cursed myself for a fool in wasting time over the coffee. Plainly my only hope now lay in an outrageously wildcat scheme. There was a helicopter landing square very close, and I headed at full speed toward it, hoping that I might find a machine in readiness for take-off. I had no idea at all about flying one of the brutes, but this was obviously the moment to learn.

I now had a fantastic run of luck. I was nearing the place when I heard one of the wretched things coming in to land. With complete assurance I walked to the square. I managed to get in without any challenge. I saw two passengers alight. The pilot got out on some errand or other, and without the slightest hesitation I walked toward the machine. Still without any challenge, I fumbled with the catch on the door. It seemed to be very stiff and far more difficult than it should have been. At last there was a clear space in front of me, and I was hauling myself into the cabin. But now I knew only too well that something was wrong, badly wrong. The coffee that I had insisted on drinking had been drugged. I slumped down into the pilot’s seat. My last thought was to try to will myself to bridge the gap of unconsciousness that I knew was to follow.

I had just one vision, of bright lights, of voices, and a startlingly clear impression of the half-blond man whom I had seen on the island of Inishvickillane. Then I found myself awake and perfectly well, back in my own bed in Apartment 619, Building J.

I knew it to be a Sunday, so I shaved, took a shower and dressed in leisurely style. It was a little surprising to find no Sunday papers to read over breakfast. I was also a little surprised to find that although I was thirsty I seemed to have little appetite for food. I packed a picnic lunch thinking to go for a three- or four-hour walk. Plainly I was in need of a blow in the fresh air.

It was only when I reached the road outside Building J that the situation became clear. This was not a Sunday. Everything was wrong; the sky was too dark, the air too chilly, and there were no flowers. This was more like a day in December than one in early October. I bought a newspaper and found that indeed the date was December 9, 1970. For some reason, there was a gap of more than two months in my memory. My last clear recollection was of arriving in Dublin by air in early October.

Although I was somewhat mystified by the situation, I wasn’t seriously worried. I had planned to go for a walk, so off I went. I caught sight of the sun at about two o’clock, and from its low position in the sky it was manifest that the December date was correct.

When I returned to my apartment I made a search through my papers to see if there was anything to throw light on the missing months. I found letters from I.C.E. addressed to Trinity College in which the terms of my appointment were clearly stated. Sure enough, there was a copy of my own letter saying that I would arrive by air on October 2, just as I remembered it. There was the stub of my airline ticket from London.

The problem was cleared up by a doctor, a jovial old boy who came to see me in the evening.

“Ah, it’s nice to see you back in the land of the living,” said he.

“And why shouldn’t I be in the land of the living?”

“My boy, you’ve had a really bad blow on the head. Lucky you’ve got a skull made of steel.”

“Where did it happen?”

“You’ve forgotten?”

“A whole two months seem to have dissolved away.”

“Ah well, that’s scarcely surprising. Temporary amnesia is very common in such cases, although I’m a bit surprised that it extends over as much as two months. The thing to do is to keep absolutely quiet for the next few weeks. Perhaps a little gentle walking, but don’t go out too much. I’ll make arrangements for food to be sent up here to you. And there are various sedatives that you ought to be taking twice a day. Try to get some sleep after lunch. It gives any ruptured blood vessels in the head a chance to heal.”

“But what in heaven’s name was the trouble?”

He lifted a finger and wagged it in a fatherly manner. “You aren’t the first young fellow that I’ve had to caution. Avoid fast cars, my boy. The next time you may not be so fortunate.”

This explanation took quite a weight off my mind, and feeling distinctly sleepy I went to bed about nine o’clock.

Once again I turned the matter over in my head when I awoke the following morning. I was glad to find my memories of the previous day perfectly clear and sharp, so that plainly my brain wasn’t impaired except by the loss of two months, which after all wasn’t a very serious matter.

Instead of taking a shower, I filled the bath. Lying in the water I suddenly noticed the marks of hypodermic needles in my thighs. Idly I wondered why one should be given injections for the treatment of a blow on the head. Perhaps there had been lacerations too. I looked myself over but couldn’t find any. There were no bruises either. Odd! Except for my head, which surely must be badly bruised. I felt slowly and gingerly. No pain anywhere, which was even more distinctly odd. I increased the pressure and still no pain. I certainly must have a skull of steel, just as the old fellow had said. Thoughtfully I shaved.

After breakfast, I looked again through the file of letters, those that I had written and those that I had received from I.C.E. Two more odd things. One of the I.C.E. letters mentioned physics and I had done no physics in my Tripos. And as long ago as May I had made arrangements to change my rooms in Trinity from Bishop’s Hostel to Great Court. Yet my letters were addressed in August and September from Bishop’s Hostel.

It seems incredible that I sat for an hour trying to reconcile all these facts before the first seeds of real suspicion entered my head. When they came, they came with a rush, however. Suddenly I knew with certainty that there had been no motor accident. I knew with compelling certainty that the missing months had been crammed tight with crucial incident. And with these uncertainties there came the suspicion that the letters in my file must be false, and that I might not have arrived in Caragh City from Dublin by air on the second of October. How I had arrived I could not say, for my mind had not only blankness in it, but many things that were false. Yet I had won my first victory. My curiosity was aflame.

The old doctor came to see me once again, bringing exactly the same advice as before, together with more medicines. Instead of accepting them, I went to the bathroom to fetch the first consignment of whatever stuff it was that he was trying to persuade me to swallow. I handed it back to him, saying that perhaps he would have better use for the material than I had.

He smiled in a rather kindly way as if to say “good luck,” bowed and left the apartment without further comment.

For the only time in my life I came near mental breakdown in the days that followed, for try as I would I could gain no entry to my missing memories. I was convinced that they were tucked somewhere in my brain, but nothing I could do seemed to wake them into consciousness. It was like the frustration of trying to remember a forgotten name, but a thousand times worse.

I had papers in my files relating to the cottage in Ballinskelligs Bay, and on the third week end after my awakening I decided to go down there. Friday was fine, so instead of using the bus, I walked along the hills overlooking the mouth of the Kenmare River. From the upper slopes of Mullaghbeg I lay on a rocky ledge watching the ever-changing swell of the sea breaking endlessly over richly colored rocks. My fingers touched a rough boulder and in an instant the memory of the appalling descent of the crags of Inishtooskert became alive again. Like the island itself, this solitary memory reared up sharp and clear out of a sea of oblivion.

A fine day is often followed by wind and storm. So it was on that particular week end. At the height of the gale I put on oil skins and made my way down to the edge of a roaring sea. Foolishly I went too close to the water and was hit by the flying top of a great wave. Even as the spray was driving furiously into my face I knew that another chord had been set in vibration. I knew that I had arrived in Kerry by sea, and in just such a storm as this.

After supper I built a great turf fire. Over a pot of coffee I worked away to extend the two breaches I had now made into the world of black uncertainty. Slugeamus was my next victory, and with him came Mike O’Dwyer and then Colquhoun. There was no longer any frustration. Methodically, like a jigsaw puzzle, I fitted the whole picture together. I worked both backward and forward, rediscovering detail after detail. Occasionally whole blocks of experience would suddenly click back into place. It was four in the morning when I retired to bed, exhausted but triumphant.

My memories continued to sharpen in the days that followed, until with the passage of a week the whole story had become every bit as clear as it had ever been. But I knew that I was only half victorious. I knew that in some subtle respect, one that I could put no name to, I had been changed. Something was different in me, and my agitation of mind was not decreased by a sense of mysterious uncertainty. I am the first to admit that I was appallingly slow in finding the solution to the major mystery of I.C.E., but I feel no shame in my failure to deduce the nature of the change that was even now taking place within me. At all events it was not a change that reduced my determination in the least degree.

As January passed to February, I came more and more to feel how completely I had been isolated. “Birds of a feather ...” Unfortunately there were no birds of my particular feather anywhere to be found in Caragh City. My only appreciable conversations were with the farmers I might meet in a day’s tramp among the hills, or with fishermen in Ballinskelligs Bay at week ends.

One afternoon, however, I happened to be in a store when I caught sight of a familiar head.

“Well, be the saints if it isn’t Thomas Sherwood!” exclaimed Cathleen. “Bull, me husband, often speaks of you,” she added.

“Bull?”

“Me name’s Bradley now.”

Then I remembered Bull Bradley, an experimental physicist from my Cambridge days. He was so named, not from his sexual proclivities, but from the roars with which he used to lead the forward line of the Clare College rugby fifteen. He was just the fellow to have tackled the monster back at Slievenamuck, and to have gotten his head broken for his pains.

Cathleen invited me to dinner at their apartment, where Bull Bradley greeted me with great heartiness.

“Sherwood, old boy, nice to see you.”

Then he roared with laughter. “You remember that manuscript of Cathy’s you threw away? Well, it wasn’t any good, you know. A deliberate piece of nonsense. We turn ’em out by the dozen in our department.” This remark persuaded me to keep the conversation at a purely social level.

The evening passed pleasantly and at the end I naturally returned the invitation. But although the return was accepted, it never in fact came to pass. Cathleen rang me up one afternoon asking if she could see me for a few moments.

When we met later, she said, “Thomas, I’m wondering about coming out with you on Thursday. I’m wondering for Bull’s sake, you see.”

“There’s been some talk about me in Bull’s department?”

She nodded. “They suspect you very much, Thomas. You must be careful.”

As we parted for the third time, she put her hand on my arm. “It’s sorry I am about those papers.”

Colquhoun had been very confident about Cathleen. Was it possible that this partnership with Bull Bradley had more to it than met the eye? In any case my acquaintance could only be an embarrassment to them, so it was clearly right that I should keep myself out of their way.

In fact this was my last attempt at any form of social life. I saw that I must accept the position of Ishmael, my hand against everyone. After all, this is what I had asked for and this is what I got for my pains. As the months rolled on I was to become bitterly lonely, but at least there was one profit to be wrung from the situation: I was able to work at a furious pace. Otherwise it would have been only too easy to have succumbed to the unaccustomed luxury in which I was now living.

The weather was rarely good these days, but very occasionally the week end would be clear and fine and not too cold. Then I would walk to my cottage by the sea.

A singular affair arose out of one of these trips to Ballinskelligs Bay. I should perhaps explain that my cottage is set aside by itself in a rather lonely spot. It had often occurred to me that if I.C.E. really wished to dispose of me nothing could be easier—but then the blonde girl might have settled the matter back on the cliffs of Inishtooskert simply by cutting the rope at the right moment. In some curious way I had a belief that an intellectual battle was really being fought—that the authorities in I.C.E., whoever they might be, preferred to use psychological rather than physical weapons.

One Saturday evening at about eleven o’clock there came a knock at my door. A man fell across the threshold as soon as I opened up. His head was heavily bandaged, his clothes torn, and he seemed to be suffering from multiple flesh wounds, not too serious as far as I could judge. But his left knee joint was giving him so much pain that he had been obliged to crawl a considerable way to the cottage.