Sunlit Shadow Dance (18 page)

Ross Sangster
brought two comfortable chairs into his examination room, separated
by a low coffee table, in preparation for his early morning meeting
before he and Vic parted last night. Then he set up the camera.

They decided,
at the end of their meeting, to tell Jane that the reason for the
visit was that Doctor Sangster was going to try and help her
remember things from her past. If she agreed, he would begin with
trying to help her remember more of her childhood before she came
to Australia. Regardless of his agreement to do this assessment of
her, he would only go beyond initial introductions if she agreed to
this.

Vic had only
told Jane thus far that he would like her to come to Brisbane with
him and meet a doctor friend of his who had some ideas on how to
help people get back their memory. He had said he hoped she would
be happy to talk to this doctor.

She had
answered that she would meet him though she did not feel she needed
to remember her past now that she and Vic were fully together and
happy. But she would do it for him if it pleased him.

So, this
morning, he helped her feed and dress the children, then he said he
would take the children for a walk in the park for an hour while
she met the Doctor. After they would meet at a café for a delicious
cooked breakfast, bacon and eggs for him, coffee and pastries for
her and treats for the kids.

Vic and Jane
were staying in a hotel just two blocks away so he and the children
walked with her to the meeting place.

As they
approached they saw Dr Sangster was waiting at the entrance to the
office building where his rooms were. As they parted David and Anne
smothered her in hugs before running off excitedly with Vic to play
in the park alongside the river. She followed the doctor
inside.

Ross Sangster
had first thought of bringing in the receptionist early so that she
could put a formal face on the process and operate the recording
equipment. But, after meeting Vic yesterday, he decided it was
better if it was only him there, he would have a meeting transcript
from both the audio and video recordings. The machines were simple.
He only had to turn them on before he started and they could
operate in the background. He was not a techno whiz kid but it was
simple stuff; press two “Power On” and “Record” buttons and let
them run.

Now he looked
at this lady carefully who stood before him. Her hair had auburn
blond tresses but darker roots were beginning to show. She wore
good quality clothes, but without any intrinsic sense of style or
of how they worked to best effect. Her hair was loosely tied, but
without obvious care. It seemed as if she looked at her image in
the mirror without real recognition and with no sense of how to use
her natural beauty to best advantage.

But what
struck him most strongly was the almost childlike innocence in her
face, open and trusting without the counter-play of those typical
more complex emotions of an adult. She looked slightly nervous at
the new and unfamiliar place but that was the only discernible
emotion.

He brought her
to the anteroom and began with his coffee and biscuits routine. He
had stumbled on this as a great way to relax uncomfortable people
and build first trust. It seemed to work now as her manner
softened.

She really was quite lovely he thought as he watched her in
the morning light,
ethereal and
vulnerable
were first thoughts but,
alongside,
damaged
.

He explained
to her what he wanted to do. “Vic has probably told you I am a
doctor who tries to help people who can’t remember things
properly.

“
Vic is hoping I can help you remember things from when you
were little, not bad stuff, but memories of growing up in England.
He thought it would be nice if you could tell your children your
own stories from these memories as they grow up, as it will help
them to them to know about their mother.

“
So I thought the way to start is to sit and chat for half an
hour in the other room. You can tell me whether you want to do this
or not. If you don’t that is fine, but I promised Vic I would meet
with you and talk about it.”

She nodded at
him thoughtfully, her face looking unconvinced.

Coffee
finished, he brought her to the examination room and showed her to
a chair, saying, “I use a camera and microphone to record my
meetings so I can remember what happened later. Do you mind if I
turn them on now.”

She replied in
a small voice, “Yes that is OK”

After he
turned on both recording machines he sat down opposite her. He
expected that it would be up to him to open up the conversation but
instead it was her who began.

“
Doctor Sangster, I know this is important for others, so I am
doing it for them. But, you see, even though it seems important for
these people to know about me from before it is not important to
me. I know I was someone else once, but I am not that person
anymore. I don’t need to know that person anymore to live a good
and happy life now.

“
For a little while, when I first met Vic and I wanted to know
how to behave as a woman with him, it seemed important. But now I
understand about that part, what a man and woman should do together
when they are married. So it is not important anymore. All the
other things I need to know for my life now I can learn through
watching TV or reading books. These things slowly fill my mind with
new memories and make me happy.

“
So it may be important to others for me to remember from
before but it is not important to me. I am happy to talk to you but
I don’t feel broken and needing fixing. If it makes Vic happy, I
will try to find memories from when I was little, but it is only to
please him.”

Ross Sangster
nodded and said, “OK, let us just talk about what it is you do
remember. Why don’t you tell me about when you met Vic, what you
remember from then. Tell me the story about you and your children,
how you met Vic, what made you decide to come away with him.”

She recounted
the story of the meeting of the helicopter pilot, her son’s instant
trust in him, how she wanted to sing for him in the church. It was
a simple story, simply told, with a gentle loveliness, but an
unreal feel. It felt like a story from a picture book, bright light
but without complex emotion.

Then Ross
said, “What can you tell me about coming and living in that place
before you met Vic?’

She described
finding herself standing by the side of a road, with the bag with
her name on it and nothing else and how the aboriginal ladies had
given her a lift into the town and she had gone and asked the lady
in the shop for a job. Then she told how she had lived and worked
there and her babies had been born and soon she started to become
friends with the people of the town, particularly the pastor and
his wife.

He asked her
if she had remembered anything about her life before that day
standing by the road.

She said, “No,
I thought I must have banged my head and got amnesia and the
memories would soon return. But they never did.”

He asked her
if it worried her.

She said, “No,
it is just the way it was. My life was good with my children. The
only time I wanted to know more about before was when I wondered
about things like how soon my children would walk. Then I thought
it would be nice to ask my mother but instead I had asked the
Pastors wife, my friend, Ruth. She answered my questions
instead.”

Again he found
these simple and unemotional descriptions clear but they were
unsatisfying, as if she accepted she would never know about another
life and felt no desire to look further. It was a tale without
colour.

He asked her
about the things she did know, like how to do the accounts at the
shop, whether it seemed strange that she knew this but had no idea
of how she learnt these things. Again she said it was just how it
was.

He asked her
how she felt when Vic came back and asked her to come away with
him. For the first time he felt there was some real emotion, she
told how Vic arrived in the middle of the night, that she had been
so happy to see him and trusted him. She told of how they had
shared the bed that night, him just holding her, and as she lay in
the circle of his arms she dreamt again a dream she had had before.
It was a dream of an unknown man that she needed to know. This
night she had realized that this unknown man was really Vic and it
had made her feel very happy. So she had trusted Vic and come with
him, happy to be with him and share her children with him too. The
time since had been wonderful, even better than she could have ever
imagined. The only strange part was, at first, not remembering how
a woman should be with a man.

Right from the
start she had known, though she did not have the right words, that
she loved him and he loved her. Then, once she realized that people
like them got married she wanted to marry him and when she said it
to him he told her he wanted to be married to her too. So she
became his lover as well as his friend and that was the most
wonderful thing that had ever happened to her.

Now her
emotion was real and vibrant though the rest of the story remained
without colour. But, as she told it, he was filled with a sense of
her simple goodness and joy. For the first time he had real doubt
as to whether he should help her to remember her life from
before.

He asked her
about the visit to meet her parents. Again she recounted the tale
in the simplest fashion, her happiness at meeting them, along with
her friend Anne, and knowing, even without remembering, who they
were. She told of the tiny memories she now had of parts of her
childhood with her parents, mainly of her brother and Anne, just a
fragment here and there. It seemed to be enough for her, a
connection to a distant past.

It seemed to
Ross that, for all the intervening years, her memories had ceased
to be important. Instead she was fully happy to have this huge
empty space in her life.

He asked her
what she most wanted to do with her life from here. Without a
moment’s hesitation she answered, “I want to get married to the man
I love. That is what I spend most of my time thinking about when I
am not busy. Now he has agreed I just want it to happen.” She spoke
with a dreamy and beatific smile that melted him.

There was no
sign of pain at memories repressed; it felt like a part of her life
had been washed clean, as if it had never been. Part of him thought
he should just leave it there, dig no further.

But a sense of
huge unreality gripped him. She said it was enough, she acted like
it was enough, she was clearly happy now. But her emotions, as she
talked of her life now, were like the emotions of a child, joy and
sorrow, happiness and sadness, but all the complexity was
missing.

He asked himself, in his mind,
Where
have all the shadows gone?

Where are the
mixed emotions of love and hate, the envy, jealousy, the anger, the
disappointments –the things that make a real human being real.

She said she
did not want them, she said she did not miss them, but without them
he felt only half a person was sitting in front of him. He asked
himself did he have the right to try and open cracks between the
old and new if she said she was happy to only have the new. His
ethics said he must not. Yet his deepest self, the part of
intuition, told him he must.

So he decided
to explore the edges of the memories from before they vanished.
Those early childhood memories seemed like a safe starting place.
He would take her back to them; see if he could get her to step
forward, even a tiny bit, to find more of her childhood and life as
a teenager in England.

So he asked
her to tell him the last thing she could remember from when she was
a little girl. It was her first year in High School, when she had
met Anne and the two of them had become friends. She said she could
only remember the day she first met Anne, two gawky twelve year
olds in their first week at High School. They had desks side by
side and used to talk when the teacher was not looking. He asked
her to try and put herself back into that place now and remember
the school holidays she had before that year, to remember where she
had been and what she had done.

He watched as
her mind drifted into this space, little flashes of light came into
her eyes as memories came. Then she began to speak.

“
I do remember those school holidays. They were summer
holidays. We went to a farm up in Scotland. It was the farm where
my Dad had grown up, in a valley between big green hills. His
parents lived in one house. His sister, who was married too, lived
in another house nearby. Her husband did farm work. My Dad loved to
help and I did too. So he would bring me out on the farm with him.
My brother Tim did not like farm work much. He had a cousin his age
and the two of them would spend hours playing together. There was
another cousin, but she was younger than Tim. I felt too grown up
to play with her. I liked her and talked to her but I did not play
with her much.

“
I also remember my Aunt Em, my Dad’s youngest sister. She
still lived at home with her parents, she had just finished school.
She was the baby of the family, that’s what Dad used to call her. I
was twelve and she was eighteen. She was to go off to University
after summer. She was really pretty and a bit wild. I would sit
with her and talk for hours about boys and going out and things
like that. I can’t really remember exactly what we talked about but
I just remember how much I liked being with her. She was so excited
to be going off to a big city to live and study. It all sounded so
exciting to me too. She would talk to me like I was as grown up as
she was.