The Man Who Turned Into Himself (4 page)

I must have stayed there for some time, gazing in at those strangers; and at, I now realised, that furniture, those paintings on the wall, that huge television dominating the room, all of which had nothing to do with me or my life there with Anne and our son. Someone had taken over our house and totally wiped out every trace of our ever having lived there.

That was when I became aware of the dog's frantic barking. The sound seemed to come at first from a great distance, then I realised that I was standing right up against a window, and the animal was scrabbling to get at me from the other side, only inches away. Instinctively I started to run, headed for the road. But I only got to the corner of the house when the man I had seen inside met me, rifle in hand, and looking like nothing in the world would give him more pleasure than to kill me. I put up my hands and tried to explain that I meant no harm. He told me to shut the fuck up and marched me at gunpoint in through my own front door.

His wife was on the stairs, white-faced and frightened, ushering the children to safety. He told her to call the police. Her hands shook as she dialed 911.

Through the door into the living room I was aware of the big-screen television on too loud. A newscaster was announcing the death of some public figure whose name meant nothing to me. Then they ran some archive film from the early sixties. It was peripheral to the situation I was in, but suddenly it jumped to centre stage and seized my whole attention. They were running some film of the first President Kennedy, Jack Kennedy. It was a scene in Dallas somehow connected with the person who had just died. I watched with growing disbelief, and at the same time the first glimmerings of understanding, as the scene unfolded.

I saw President Jack Kennedy assassinated in an open car 
alongside his wife on a sunny November day in 1963. The whole thing was presented as established history, a footnote from the past.

But as I and the whole world knew, Jack Kennedy had not been killed that day. True, somebody had taken a shot at him and missed, and had never been caught. Jack Kennedy served out his full term and was still alive. So was his brother Bobby who served one term as President after him.

And suddenly I knew. I knew what had happened.

I didn't understand.

But I knew.

***

The trip to the police station, the questions, the statements, all passed me by as little more than background noise. It was as though the whole world was just a television left on in the corner of the room, and the room was my head. It must have seemed to the cops that I was in a daze, but my mind was racing so fast I had to make a conscious effort not to cry out from the almost physical pain of it.

I don't know if they suspected something and called the hospital, or if the hospital had put out a warning by then that a patient was missing. At any rate I wasn't surprised to see two muscular male nurses arrive. I was resigned to going back. I was resigned by then to things I had never thought in my wildest dreams I might ever have to contemplate. My only concern was how to tell the truth without labeling myself a lunatic. I was turning over and over in my mind possible ways of beginning, thinking of people whose confidence I must win and whose help I would need. It amazes me, looking back, that I was so calm. But it was the calm of utter panic. I was frozen by the recognition of my situation like a rabbit in the headlights of a car.

A familiar voice pierced my absorption, and I turned to see Harold arguing with two cops at the desk. He looked like he had come straight from the airport, coat over his arm, bag at his feet.

Then I saw Anne pushing past him, her eyes on mine as she hurried towards me. All the little things that had bothered me about her last time I saw her didn't bother me any more. It all made sense now, if 'sense' was the right word; it was the only word I could think of. The idea of all that nonsense making sense made me laugh suddenly. Anne's face, already distraught from worry, took on such a look of alarm that I immediately felt guilty. I held her to me, assuaging her obvious pain with my leaden inner numbness.

'You have to give back the clothes, I've made good the money, and they won't press charges for theft.' I realised Harold was speaking to me.

'But what am I going to wear?' I heard myself saying in the dismayed tone of a perfectly reasonable man asked to do an unreasonable thing.

'Don't worry, we'll take care of that. Just say you agree.'

'Of course I agree,' I replied, adding: 'I only took them because — '

'Don't say any more,' Harold cut me off, holding up the palm of his hand. 'That's all I need.' He returned to his negotiations at the desk.

I looked down at Anne, and she met my gaze with a mixture of concern and puzzlement at my apparent calm. 'It's all right,' I said, 'I'm not crazy. I'll explain everything later.'

Of course 'explain' was the one thing I couldn't do. I could describe what was happening but not explain it — yet. Or maybe there was no difference. At that moment the distinction didn't bother me. All I felt was a flood of relief that I was able to function. 'It's all right,' I told myself, 'just take one step at a time and you'll get out of this.'

Again, looking back, I think I was afraid even to try to look further ahead than that. Had I done so I would have lost my precarious sense of balance and fallen off the tightrope into madness. It was strange, and also fascinating, to find myself so poised between two worlds. Or, more accurately, four: the world I had come from and this; and the worlds of sanity and madness.

Harold came back and drew us both aside, explaining in hushed clear tones what must be done. It was reassuring to have him there taking care of things. I realised not for the first time what a good lawyer, and good friend, he was. 'I can make a deal to get the trespass charges dropped and — maybe — get you released into Anne's custody. But you'll have to answer some questions. I've got a friend of mine coming over, a psychiatrist. If you can convince him that you're rational we'll get a provisional order — I've already called Judge Strickland — letting you go home.' He looked at me a moment searchingly. 'Can you handle that?'

'Absolutely,' I assured him. 'Thank you, Harold.' He nodded and went back to the growing crowd around the desk. I could see crew-cut there now, overcoat pulled up around his face. Behind him the man who had threatened to shoot me was watching me with dark suspicion. I tried to give him a smile of understanding, man to man, no hard feelings. He looked away.

The interview with Harold's psychiatrist friend, whom I'd never met before, took place in a bare room in the police station, just the two of us on either side of a table. He was around sixty with thinning hair, a tired face and heavy horn-rimmed glasses. The questions were routine: name, date and place of birth, parents' names, all of which I answered satisfactorily. Then he hit me with something I wasn't ready for. He asked me my home address.

I must have looked blank, because his eyes locked on to mine and he repeated the question. And suddenly I said, like it was the most natural thing in the world: 'Apartment 4b, Belvedere House, Castle Heights.'

How the hell did I know that?

***

The rest of the interview went like a dream — literally! Information poured out of me that I didn't know I had. 
Even simple stuff like who was president of the United States came out as a name I'd never heard before, but it was the right answer. My social security number, which tripped off my tongue as though I knew it by heart, was absolutely new to me; and yet was, apparently, mine.

Slightly trickier was the question of what I had been doing in the garden of the house where I was arrested. However, I had realised that this would have to be explained, and I think I managed to turn it to advantage. I was trying to escape, I said, from what I considered to be an unjust incarceration in the hospital. Obviously my home was the first place they would look for me when I went missing — home, for this purpose, being the address I had given in the wealthy Castle Heights district. So, with what little money I had managed to steal, I had taken a taxi in the opposite direction. Fortunately Long Chimneys was more or less in the opposite direction, taking the hospital as starting point. I paid off the taxi, I said, intending to cover my trail by walking a while before finding another cab to take me to the station or the airport. However, I needed more money and was, frankly, hoping to steal some from the house where I was captured.

The shrink seemed satisfied with this explanation, then started to ask questions about Charlie. On this I was also ready for him and knew exactly what to say. I even managed to look embarrassed and give a kind of aw-shucks grin. I told him that I had been driving at the time of the accident and Anne was in the car with me. We'd been going to lunch across town with some people called Webber (never heard of them before!). I must have got a bang on the head, because when I came out of it I didn't know who or where I was. Nor did I now have any idea who Charlie was, even though I'd made a lot of noise about him at the time. 'Figment of the imagination, I guess. Hell, I don't know how the brain works. You tell me — you're the expert.' This was said with the same aw-shucks silly grin, with no hint of challenge or defiance in the voice. I knew that if I could just hang on to 
that pose and bury the truth along with my real feelings, then I was free and clear.

And I was right.

***

Anne came and sat with me for ten minutes while the shrink went to make his report. We held hands like a couple of lovesick kids in trouble for staying out late and waiting to hear the verdict of their elders, but we didn't say much. I think she was afraid to talk in case she triggered some response that might unbalance me again; and I know I was afraid to talk in case I told her the truth. I told her I loved her — that was the truth. She said she loved me and that everything was going to be all right. I said sure it was and she mustn't worry. It was good to see her relax a little.

Harold came in with a senior police officer — who looked afraid I might produce a razor out of nowhere and slit his throat — and said everything was arranged. The senior police officer, glad to see the back of us, ordered a car to take us home.

As we approached Castle Heights, with its imposing houses on both sides of the road, my life unfolded for me like a visit to some childhood haunt, where everything is the same, exactly as you remember it, only it's different. And the difference is in you.

We took the elevator up to 4b. Anne unlocked the door with its heavy carved panelling that I knew at once I'd never liked and never would, and the three of us went in. I tried not to make a performance out of looking around — the designer furniture carefully arranged around the large drawing room, the modern art collection on the walls, the soft rugs under foot. I was glad when Harold reminded me that the police driver was waiting downstairs to take back the stolen clothes that I was still wearing.

Without any hesitation I headed straight for the bedroom, found the switch that turned on the artfully placed lighting that illuminated an entirely art-deco bedroom and 
vast adjoining bathroom, and started to undress. The only shock came when I glimpsed my naked body in the mirror. I'm kind of ashamed to admit this, but it jolted me to see that I had no muscles. This was not the body of Rick Hamilton, who worked out rigorously in the gym three times a week. These shoulders slumped forwards lazily, and the stomach was beginning to rival the chest in girth. This was the body of Richard A. Hamilton — and he was flabby.

Even that revelation lost its edge as soon as it had registered in my brain. It was a long, long time since I, this 'I', Richard, had taken exercise. I pulled on a robe that hung in my closet, a black and red affair of silk from . . . India. In fact, as I continued to recall, from Delhi. Yes, that was it. I clearly remembered having been with Anne to India and staying with friends — whose name would later come to me — in Delhi.

I handed the stolen clothes, wrapped in a Nieman Marcus shopping bag, to Harold. Anne had made some tea and brought it in from the kitchen, but Harold said he ought to leave and headed for the door. I watched out of the corner of my eye as they conferred briefly in the hall. She seemed to be assuring him that everything was all right. He scribbled something on a piece of paper that he left on the small Chinese table by the door, called out goodnight to me, and left.

Anne came up behind the sofa where I was sitting, leaned down and put her arms around me, and held me like that for a while, her cheek pressing on the top of my head. We were, if I can put it this way, the same couple that we'd always been. We didn't need to say much. We often did — talk, I mean — but we didn't always need to. The closeness was there, unchanged.

Yet that night there was a loneliness in the room, an emptiness, something missing. Maybe it was only because of what I knew and that I couldn't bring myself to speak of. Or maybe it was always there, between this Anne and this me.

We drank some tea and went to bed. It was after one in the morning and she was as tired as I was, if not more so. She asked if I wanted something to help me sleep, but I said no. I tossed aside the silk pajamas that lay on my pillow, and she did the same with her night-dress. We climbed into the huge bed, turned off the lights, and rolled naked into one another's arms. It was then that she began to talk, that little whispering voice of intimacy and complete trust that I knew so well.

I don't remember what was said, soft words of love and reassurance, little private silly things. But I do remember her saying, 'Darling, don't ever frighten me like that again. I don't think I could live through it another time.'

Tenderness, longing and physical arousal rose up in me and ignited the same feelings in her. Exhausted or not, we made love with a gutsy luxuriousness that would have drained us both at even the best of times. But we needed this affirmation. I, I suppose, more than she, needed physical, tangible proof of a closeness that would never, whatever happened, let me down.

I must have slept for two, three hours. I looked at the clock when I woke and it was after four. Anne was sleeping, breathing gently, but I was suddenly restless and afraid to wake her. Not just afraid to wake her; I was more generally afraid, and I didn't know of what.

Yes I did. It wasn't any nightmare, any guilty secret; I felt no guilt. It was an overwhelming, agonising loneliness. Our lovemaking had only served to emphasise the impossibility of living with this great lie that had come between us. Suddenly I knew with utter certainty that I could not do it. I had to share with Anne the truth of what had happened.

More than that, I had to trust her to believe me. Without that trust I didn't want to live.