The Glamour

I

The house had been built so that it overlooked the sea. Since its conversion to a convalescent hospital, two large wings had been added in the original style, and the gardens had been relandscaped so that patients wishing to move around were never faced with steep inclines. The graveled paths zigzagged gently between the lawns and flower beds, opening out onto numerous leveled areas where wooden seats had been placed and wheelchairs could be parked. The gardens were mature, with thick but controlled shrubbery and attractive stands of deciduous trees.

At the lowest point of the garden, down a narrow pathway leading away from the main area, there was a secluded, hedged-in patch, overgrown and neglected, with an uninterrupted view of the bay. In this place it was possible to forget for a while that Middlecombe was a hospital. Even here, though, were precautions: a low concrete curb had been embedded in the grass to stop wheelchairs rolling too close to the rough ground and the cliff beyond, and fairly prominent among the bushes at the back there was an emergency signaling system connected directly to the duty nurse’s office in the main block. Very few of the patients visited this place. It was a long way to walk down or back, and the staff were unwilling to push wheelchairs as far as this. The main reason, though, was probably that the steward service did not extend much beyond the terrace or the top lawns.

For all these reasons, Richard Grey came down here whenever he could. The extra distance exercised his arms as he worked the wheels of the chair, and anyway he liked the solitude. He could get privacy inside his room where there were books, television, telephone, radio, but when actually inside the main building there was subtle pressure to mix with the other patients.

He had always been an active man, and although he had been at Middlecombe for a long time, he had still not fully adjusted to the idea of being a patient.

Although there were no more operations to come, it seemed to him that his recovery was interminable. His days in the hospital were on the whole unpleasant. The physiotherapy was tiring, and left him aching afterward. On his own he was lonely, but mixing with the other patients, many of whom did not speak English well, made him impatient and irritable. Lacking friends, the gardens and the view were all he had to himself.

Every day Grey would come down to this quiet place to stare at the sea below. This was a part of the coast known as Start Bay, the western extremity of Lyme Bay, on the South Devon coast. To his right, the rocky headland of Start Point ran out into the dismal sea, sometimes obscured by mist or rain. To his left, just visible, were the houses of Beesands, the ugly neat rows of holiday caravans, the silent waters of Widdicombe Ley. Beyond these, the cliffs rose again, concealing the next village from him. The shore here was shingle, and on calm days he would listen to the hissing of the waves as they broke insipidly at the bottom of the cliff.

Above all, he wished for a stormy sea, something positive and dramatic, something to break his routine. But this was Devon, a place of soft weather and temperate seasons, the climate of convalescence.

It all reflected his state of mind, which had become unquestioning. His body had been severely injured, his mind less so, and he sensed that both would repair in the same way: plenty of rest, gentle exercise, increasing resolve. It was often all he was capable of—to stare at the sea, watch the tides, listen to the waves. The passage of birds excited him, and whenever he heard a car he felt the tremor of fear.

His sole aim was to return to normality. Using sticks he could stand on his own now, and he was sure the crutches were permanently in his past. After wheeling himself down the garden he would lever himself out of his chair and take a few steps leaning on the sticks. He was proud of being able to do this alone, of not having a therapist or nurse beside him, of having no rails, no encouraging words. When standing he could see more of the view, could go closer to the edge.

Today it had been raining when he woke, a persistent, drifting drizzle that had continued all morning. It meant he had had to put on a coat, but now it had stopped raining and he was still in the coat. It depressed him because it reminded him of his real disabilities—he could not take it off on his own.

He heard footsteps on the gravel, and the sound of someone pushing through the damp leaves and branches that grew across the path. He turned, doing it slowly, a step and a stick at a time, keeping his face immobile to conceal the pain.

It was Dave, one of the nurses. “Can you manage, Mr. Grey?”

“I can manage to stay upright.”

“Do you want to get back in the chair?”

“No … I was just standing here.”

The nurse had stopped a few paces away from him, one hand resting on the chair as if ready to wheel it forward quickly and slide it under Grey’s body.

“I came to see if you needed anything.”

“You can help me with my coat. I’m sweating under this.”

The young man stepped forward and presented his forearm for Grey to lean on while he took the sticks away. With one hand he unbuttoned the front of the coat, then put his big hands under Grey’s armpits, holding his weight, letting his patient remove the coat himself. Grey found it a slow, painful process, trying to twist his shoulder blades to get out of the sleeve without compressing his neck or back muscles. It was impossible to do, of course, even with Dave’s help, and by the time the coat was off he was unable to conceal the pain.

“All right, Richard, let’s get you into the chair.” Dave twisted him around, almost carrying him in the air, and lowered him into the seat.

“I hate this, Dave. I can’t stand being weak.”

“You’re getting better every day.”

“Ever since I’ve been here you’ve been putting me in and out of this damned chair.”

“There was a time you couldn’t get out of bed.”

“I don’t remember that.”

Dave glanced away, up the path. “You don’t have to.”

“How long have I been here?” Grey asked.

“Three or four months. Probably four now.”

There was a silence of memory inside him, a period irretrievably lost. All his conscious memories were of this garden, these paths, this view, this pain, the endless rain and misted sea. It all blended in his mind, each day indistinguishable from the others by its sameness, but there was that lost period behind him too. He knew there had been the bedridden weeks, the sedatives and painkillers, the operations. Somehow he had lived through all that, and somehow he had been signed off, dispatched to convalescence, another bed from which he could not get out by himself. But whenever he tried to think back to beyond that, something in his memory turned away, slipped from his grasp. There was just the garden, the sessions of therapy, Dave and the other nurses.

He had accepted that those memories would not now return, that to try to dwell on them only hindered his recovery.

“Actually, I came down about something,” Dave said. “You’ve got some visitors this morning.”

“Send them away.”

“You might want to meet one of them. She’s a girl, and pretty too …”

“I don’t care,” Grey said. “Are they from the newspaper?”

“I think so. I’ve seen the man before.”

“Then tell them I’m with the physiotherapist.”

“I think they’ll probably wait for you.”

“Can’t you do something, Dave? You know how I feel about them.”

“Nobody’s going to force you to see them, but I think you should at least find out what they want.”

“I’ve nothing to tell them, nothing to say.”

“They might have some news for you. Have you thought of that?”

“You always say that.”

While they had been speaking, Dave had leaned down on the handgrips and swung the chair around. Now he stood, pushing gently on the grips, rocking the chair up and down.

“Anyway,” Grey said, “what news could they have? The only thing I don’t know is what I don’t know.”

Dave let the chair tip down onto its two small wheels at the front, and moved around to Grey’s side.

“Shall I wheel you up to the house?” he said.

“I don’t seem to have any choice.”

“Of course you have. But if they’ve come all the way from London, they aren’t going to go back until they’ve seen you.”

“All right, then.”

Dave took the weight of the chair and wheeled it slowly forward. It was a long, slow climb up to the main house because of the uneven path. When propelling himself Grey had already developed an instinct about jolts and their effect on his back and hip, but when someone else pushed him he could never anticipate them.

They entered the building by a side door, which opened automatically at their approach, then rolled gently down the corridor toward the lift. The parquet flooring had a satin-smooth sheen, with no signs of wear. The whole place was always being cleaned; it smelled unlike a hospital, with polish and varnish, carpets, good food. The acoustics too were muted, as if it were really an expensive hotel where the patients were pampered guests. For Richard Grey it was the only place he knew as home. He sometimes felt he had been here all his life.

II

They ascended to the next floor and Dave propelled the chair to one of the lounges. Unusually, no other patients were there. At a desk in the alcove to one side James Woodbridge, the senior clinical psychologist, was using the telephone. He nodded to Grey as they came into the room, then spoke quickly and quietly and hung up.

Sitting by the other window was Tony Stuhr, one of the reporters from the newspaper. As soon as he saw him, Grey felt the familiar conflict on meeting this man: in person he was likable and frank, but the paper he worked for was a tabloid rag of dubious reputation and immense circulation. Stuhr’s by-line had appeared in the past few weeks on several stories about a royal romance. The newspaper was delivered every day to Middlecombe, especially for Richard Grey. He rarely did more than glance at it.

Stuhr stood up as soon as Grey entered the room, smiled briefly at him, then looked at Woodbridge. The psychologist had left the desk and was crossing the room. Dave stepped on the foot brake of the wheelchair and left the room.

Woodbridge said, “Richard, I’ve asked you to come back to the house because I’d like you to meet someone.”

Stuhr was grinning at him, leaning over the table to stub out his cigarette. Grey noticed that his jacket was falling open and a rolled-up copy of the newspaper was stuffed into an inner pocket. Grey was puzzled by the remark, because Woodbridge must have known that he and Stuhr had met on several previous occasions. Then Grey noticed there was someone with Stuhr. It was a young woman standing beside him, looking at Grey, her eyes flicking nervously toward Woodbridge, waiting for the introduction. He had not seen her until this moment; she must have been sitting with the reporter, and when she stood up had been behind him.

She came forward.

“Richard, this is Miss Kewley, Miss Susan Kewley.”

“Hello,” she said to Grey, and smiled.

“How do you do?”

She was standing directly in front of him, seeming tall but not really so. Grey was still not used to being the only person sitting. He wondered whether he should shake hands with her.

“Miss Kewley has read about your case in the press, and has traveled down from London to meet you.”

“Is that so?” Grey said.

“You could say we’ve set this up for you, Richard,” Stuhr said. “You know we always take an interest in you.”

“What do you want?” Grey said to her.

“Well … I’d like to talk to you.”

“What about?”

She glanced at Woodbridge.

“Would you like me to stay?” the psychologist said to her over Grey’s head.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s up to you.”

Grey realized he was unimportant to this meeting; the real dialogue was going on above him. It reminded him of the pain, lying in the intensive care unit in the London hospital between operations, dimly hearing himself discussed.

“I’ll call back in half an hour,” Woodbridge was saying. “If you need to see me before then, you can just pick up that phone.”

“Thank you,” said Susan Kewley.

When Woodbridge had left, Tony Stuhr released the foot brake on the chair and pushed Grey to the table where they had been sitting. The young woman took the chair closest to him, but Stuhr sat by the window.

“I’ve nothing to talk to you about,” Grey said.

“I just wanted to see you,” she said.

“Well, here I am. I can’t run away from you.”

“Richard, don’t you remember me?”

“Should I?”

“Well, yes. I was hoping you would.”

“Are we friends?”

“I suppose you could say that. Just for a time.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t remember much about the past. How long ago was it?”

“Not long,” she said. She looked at him only infrequently when she spoke, glancing down into her lap, or at the table, or across to the reporter. Stuhr was staring through the window, obviously listening yet not participating. When he realized Grey was looking at him, he took the newspaper from his pocket and opened it to the football page.

“Would you like some coffee?” Grey said.

“You know I—” She checked herself. “No, I only drink tea.”

“I’ll get it.” Grey propelled himself away from her and went to the phone, asserting a sense of independence. When he had ordered the refreshments, he went back to the table. Stuhr picked up his newspaper again; obviously, words had been exchanged.

Looking at them both, Grey said, “I might as well say that you’re wasting your time. I’ve nothing to tell you.”

“Do you know what it’s costing my paper to keep you in this place?” Stuhr said.

“I didn’t ask for that.”

“Our readers are concerned about you, Richard. You’re a hero.”

“I’m no such thing. I just happened to be there.”

“You were almost killed.”

“And that makes me a hero?”

“Look, I’m not here to argue with you,” Stuhr said.

The tea arrived on a silver tray: pots and crockery, a tiny bowl of sugar, biscuits. While the steward arranged them on the table, Stuhr returned to his newspaper, and Grey took the opportunity to look properly at Susan Kewley. He remembered that Dave had described her as pretty, but that was hardly the right word. What Grey noticed most about her was that she lacked distinctive features. She was probably in her mid to late twenties. She was plain, but plain in a pleasant sense of the word; neutral was perhaps better. She had a regular face, hazel eyes, pale brown hair which grew straight, slender shoulders. She sat in a relaxed way, resting her narrow wrists and hands on the arms of the chair, her body erect and comfortable. She would not look at him, but stared at the crockery on the table as if avoiding not only his eyes but his opinion too. Yet he had no opinion, except that she was there, that she had arrived with Stuhr and therefore must be associated, directly or indirectly, with the newspaper.

How had he known her in the past? What kind of a friend? Someone he had worked with? A lover? But surely he would remember that, of all things?

For a moment it occurred to him that she might have been brought here by Stuhr as some kind of stunt, to provoke a response he could write about in the paper. MYSTERY WOMAN IN LOVE BID would be about par for the newspaper’s course, and as true to the facts as most of the stories it ran.

When the steward had left, Grey said to her, “Well, what is it we have to talk about?”

She said nothing, but reached forward and pulled a cup and saucer toward her. Still she did not look at him, and her hair was tipping forward, concealing her face from him.

“As far as I can remember, I’ve never seen you before in my life. You’ll have to give me more to go on than that.”

She was holding the saucer, pale veins visible beneath her translucent skin. She seemed to be shaking her head slightly.

“Or are you here because he brought you?” Grey said angrily. He looked at Stuhr, who did not react. “Miss Kewley, I don’t know what you want, but—”

Then she turned toward him, and for the first time he saw all of her face, slightly long, fine-boned, wintry in color. Her eyes were full of tears, and the corners of her mouth were twitching downward. She pushed back her chair quickly, toppling the saucer with its cup on the table, colliding with the wheelchair as she pushed past him. Pain jabbed down his back, and he heard a gulping inhalation of breath from her. She ran across the room and went into the corridor.

To stare after her would mean turning his head against the stiffness of his neck, so Grey did not try. It felt silent and cold in the room.

“What a bastard you can be.” Stuhr threw aside his newspaper. “I’ll call Woodbridge.”

“Wait a minute … what do you mean?”

“Couldn’t you see what you were doing to her?”

“No. Who is she?”

“She’s your girlfriend, Grey. She’s come all the way down here in the hope that if you saw her again it might trigger some memory.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend.” But he felt again the helpless rage of his lost weeks. Just as he tried to avoid memories of the pain, so he shrank away from the weeks before the car bomb explosion. There was a profound blankness in his mind, one he never entered because he did not know how. “And if she is someone I know, what the hell is she doing here with you?”

“Look, it was an experiment.”

“Did Woodbridge cook this up?”

“No … listen, Richard. Susan approached us. She saw the stories in the paper, and she came forward. She said that you and she had once had an affair, that it was all over, but that seeing her might help you regain your memory.”

“Then it is a stunt.”

“I won’t deny that if you regained your memory I’d write about it. But really, this time I’m just here to drive the car.”

Grey shook his head, and stared angrily through the window at the sea. Once he had discovered he was suffering from retroactive amnesia because of the concussion, he had been trying to come to terms with it. At first he had probed the feeling of blankness, thinking that if he could somehow find a way he would penetrate it, but to do so made him profoundly depressed and introspective. What he was doing now was trying not to think about it, to accept that the weeks he had lost would stay lost.

“Where does Woodbridge come into this?”

“He didn’t set it up. He agreed to it, The idea was Susan’s.”

“It was a bad idea.”

Stuhr said, “That’s not her fault. Look at yourself— you’re totally unmoved by this! The only reservation Woodbridge had was that you might be traumatized. Yet you’re sitting here as if nothing has happened, and the girl’s in tears.”

“I can’t help that.”

“Just don’t blame her for it.” Stuhr stood up. He thrust his newspaper back into his pocket.

“What are you going to do now?” Grey said.

“There’s no point carrying on with this. I’ll call and see you in a month or so. You might be more receptive then.”

“What about the girl?”

“I’ll come back this afternoon.”

She was there, standing beside his wheelchair, a hand resting on the grip behind his left shoulder. At the sound of her voice, Grey started with surprise, jerking the stiffness in his neck, a completion of the movement he had failed to make when she left. How long had she been standing there, just beyond the periphery of his vision? Stuhr had given no indication she had returned.

Stuhr said to her, “I’ll wait for you in the car.”

He moved past them both, and again Grey felt that unpleasant sensation of everyone being taller than him. Susan sat down in the chair she had occupied before.

“I’m sorry about all that,” she said.

“No—I’m the one who should apologize. I was very rude.”

“I won’t stay now. I need time to think, and I’ll come back later.”

Grey said, “After lunch I have to go for physiotherapy. Could you come again tomorrow?”

“It might be possible. Tony’s driving back to London this afternoon, but I could stay.”

“Where are you?”

“We were in a guest house in Kingsbridge last night. I could probably stay another night or two. I’ll arrange something.”

As before, she was not looking at him when they spoke, except in short, darting glimpses through the strands of fine hair. Her eyes had dried but she looked paler than before. He wanted to feel something for her, remember her, but she was a stranger.

Trying to give her something warmer than this cold exchange of arrangements, he said, “Are you sure you still want to talk to me?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Tony said that we—I mean you and I—were once …”

“We went out together for a while. It didn’t last long, but it mattered at the time. I’d hoped you would remember.”

“I’m sorry,” Grey said. “I really don’t.”

“Let’s not talk about it now. I’ll come back tomorrow morning. I won’t get upset again.”

Wanting to explain, he said, “It was because you were with Tony Stuhr. I thought you worked for the newspaper.”

“It was the only way I could find out where you were. I didn’t understand the situation.” She had picked up her bag, a canvas holdall with a long strap. “I’ll come back tomorrow.” She had laid one of her long hands lightly on his. “Are you sure you’d like me to?”

“Yes, of course. Come well before lunch.”

“I should have asked you straight away: are you in much pain? I didn’t realize you would be in a wheelchair.”

“I’m better now. Everything happens very slowly.”

“Richard … ?” She still had her fingers resting on the back of his hand. “Are you sure—I mean, you really can’t remember?”

He wanted to turn his hand so that she would touch his palm, but that would be an intimacy he knew he hadn’t deserved. Looking at her large eyes and her clear complexion he felt how easy he must once have found it to be with her. What was she like, this quiet-spoken woman who had once been his girlfriend? What did she know about him? What did he know of her? Why had they split up, when their relationship had mattered to them both? She was from beyond the coma, beyond the pain of ruptured organs and burnt-off skin, from the lost part of his life. But until today he had had no idea she even existed.

He wanted to answer her question truthfully, but something prevented it.

“I’m trying to remember,” he said. “I feel as if I know you.”

Her fingers briefly tightened. “All right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She stood up, went past his chair and out of his sight. He heard her footsteps soft on the carpet, then more distinctly in the corridor outside. Still he could not turn his head, without the pain.

III

Both of Richard Grey’s parents were now dead. He had no brothers or sisters. His only relative was his father’s sister, who was married and living in Australia. After leaving school, Grey went to Brent Technical College, where he took a diploma in photography. While at Brent he enrolled in a BBC training scheme, and when he had won his diploma he went to work at the BBC Television film studios in Ealing as a camera trainee. After a few months he became a camera assistant, working with various crews in the studios and on location. Eventually he graduated to full camera operator.

When he was twenty-four he left the BBC and went to work as a cameraman for an independent news agency based in North London. The agency syndicated its news film throughout the world, but principally to one of the American networks. Most of the news stories he was assigned to were in Britain and Europe, but he traveled several times to the States, to the Far East and Australia, and to Africa. During the 1970s he made several trips to Northern Ireland, covering the troubles there.

He established a reputation for courage. News crews are frequently in the thick of dangerous events, and it takes a particular kind of dedication to continue shooting footage in the middle of a riot or while under fire. Richard Grey had risked his life on several occasions.

He was twice nominated for a BAFTA Award for documentary or news filming, and in 1978 he and his sound recordist were given a special Prix Italia for film reportage of street fighting in Belfast. The commendation read, “For obtaining unique and shocking pictures under conditions of extreme personal danger.” Among his colleagues, Grey was popular, and in spite of his reputation he never found people unwilling to work with him. As his stature grew it was recognized that he was not foolhardy, endangering himself as well as others, but used skill and experience and knew intuitively when a risk could be taken.

Grey lived alone in the apartment he had bought with the money his father had left him. Most of his friends were people he worked with, and because his work involved so much travel he had never settled down with a steady girlfriend. He found it easy to drift from one encounter to the next, never forming ties. When he was not working he often went to the cinema, sometimes to the theater. About once a week he would meet some of his friends for an evening in a pub. He generally took solitary holidays, camping or walking; once he had extended a working trip to the States by renting a car and driving to California.

Apart from the deaths of his parents, there had been only one major disruption to his life, and that had happened about six months before the car bomb.

Richard Grey worked best with film. He liked the weight of an Arriflex, the balance of it, the quiet vibration of the motor. He saw through the reflex viewfinder as if with an extra eye; he sometimes said he could not see properly without it. And there was something about the texture of film itself, the quality of the picture, the subtlety of its effects. The knowledge that film slipped through the gate, halting and advancing, twenty-five times a second gave an intangible extra feel to his work. He was always irritated if people said they could not tell the difference, on television, between a film sequence and one recorded on an electronic camera. It seemed to him that the difference was manifest: video “footage” had an empty quality, a brightness and sharpness that was unnatural and false.

But for a news medium film was slow and unwieldy. Somehow the cans had to be taken to a lab, then to a cutting room. Sound had to be synched in or overdubbed. There were always technical problems during transmission, especially when a local news studio had to be used or if the film had to be sent by satellite to one of the syndicating stations. The difficulties were increased when working abroad or in a war zone; sometimes the only way to get the story out was by taking the unprocessed film to the nearest airport and putting it on a plane to London, New York or Amsterdam.

News networks around the world were changing over to electronic cameras. Using portable satellite dishes, a crew could transmit pictures direct to the studio as they were being shot. There they could be edited electronically and transmitted without delay.

One by one the news crews were going over to video, and it came, inevitably, to Grey. He went on a retraining course and thereafter had to use an electronic camera. For reasons he never really understood, he found it difficult to transfer his skill. He could not “see” without the intervention of film, the silent whirring of the motor. He became self-conscious about the problem, attempting to overcome it by fundamentally rethinking his approach. He tried to adjust his eye so he could see again, a concept to which his colleagues were sympathetic even though most of them were making the same transition successfully. He kept telling himself that technology was a mere instrument, that his ability was innate and not a product of the medium. Even so, he knew he had lost his flair.

There were other jobs open to him. The BBC and Independent Television News were also changing over to electronic news gathering, and even though he was offered a film job with ITN he realized that in the end the same problem would arise. Another job offered to him was with an industrial documentary unit, but he had cut his teeth on news filming and it was never a real alternative.

The solution came when the agency unexpectedly lost its contract with the American network. Staff had to be made redundant, and Richard Grey volunteered himself. He had no particular idea in mind—simply took the redundancy money, intending to use it to buy time to reconsider his career. In the first month he went on a holiday to the States, then returned to his flat in London to plan what to do next.

He was not short of money. He had bought his apartment outright with his father’s money, and the redundancy lump sum would last at least a year. Nor was he idle, because he was given occasional freelance work.

But then there was a gap.

His next memories were fitful: he was in intensive care at Charing Cross Hospital in London, surviving on a ventilator, undergoing a series of major operations, in pain and under sedation. After this there was an agonizing journey in an ambulance, and ever since he had been at Middlecombe Hospital, convalescing on the South Devon coast.

Somewhere in the gap in his life he had been in a London street, where a car bomb had been planted outside a police station. It exploded while he was passing. He suffered multiple burns and lacerations, back injuries, fractures of pelvis, leg and arm, and ruptured internal organs. He had nearly died.

This was the extent of his memories on the day Susan Kewley came to see him, and she nowhere fitted into them.

IV

There was a conflict of medical opinion about Grey’s amnesia, and for Grey himself this was complicated by a conflict of personal opinion.

He was being treated by two men at the hospital: the psychologist James Woodbridge, and a consultant psychiatrist called Dr. Hurdis.

Grey disliked Woodbridge, because he found him high-handed and often remote, but he took a line that Grey found acceptable. Woodbridge, while acknowledging the traumatic nature of the injuries, and the effects of concussion, believed that retrograde amnesia could also be psychologically based. In other words, that there were additional events in his life, unconnected with the explosion, which Grey was now repressing. Woodbridge believed that the memories of these should be coaxed out gently by psychotherapy, and that the benefits of using other techniques to open up the memories would not be worth the risks. He thought that Grey should be rehabilitated gradually, and with a return to normal life he would be able to come to terms with his past, his memory returning in stages.

On the other hand, Dr. Hurdis, whom Grey actually liked, had been pressing him in a direction he tried to resist. Hurdis believed that progress with orthodox analytical psychotherapy would be too slow, especially where organic loss of memory was involved.

Against his personal feelings, Grey had so far responded better to Woodbridge than to Hurdis.

Until Susan Kewley’s arrival, Grey had not been too concerned about what might actually have happened in the weeks he had lost. What worried him more was the sense of absence, a hole in his life, a dark and quiet period that seemed forever remote from him. His mind instinctively shied away from it, and like the sore places in his body he had been trying not to use it.

But Susan Kewley had come to him from out of the absence, unrecognized and unremembered. She had known him then, and he had known her, and now she was awakening in him the need to remember.

V

In the morning, when Richard Grey had been bathed and dressed, and was waiting in his room for news of Susan’s arrival, Woodbridge came to see him.

“I wanted to have a quiet word with you before Miss Kewley gets here,” Woodbridge said. “She seems to be a very pleasant young woman, don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” Grey said, suddenly irritated.

“I wondered if you had any memory of her.”

“None whatsoever.”

“Not even a vague feeling that you might have seen her somewhere?”

“No.”

“Did she tell you anything about what happened when you knew her?”

“No.”

“Richard, what I’m getting at is that you might have had some kind of row with her, and afterwards perhaps dealt with it by trying to bury the memory. It would be perfectly normal to do so.”

“All right,” Grey said. “But I don’t see why that matters now.”

“Because retroactive amnesia can be caused by an unconscious wish to banish unhappy memories. I think you should recognize this.”

“Is it going to make a difference?”

“Seeing her now could deepen your unconscious wish to block her.”

“It didn’t yesterday. It deepened my wish to know her better. It just seems to me that she might be able to remind me of things I can’t remember by myself.”

“Yes, but it’s important that you accept she is not going to provide you with the solution on her own.”

“But surely it can’t hurt?”

“We’ll have to see. If you want to talk to me afterwards, I’ll be here for the rest of the day.”

Grey remained stubbornly irritated after Woodbridge had left. It seemed to him that there was a subtle but definite distinction between his private life and his presence in the hospital as a patient. He sometimes thought that his amnesia was seen as a professional challenge by the people who were treating him, something unrelated to his real life. If Susan really had been his girlfriend, their knowledge of each other was presumably intimate and deeply personal. Woodbridge’s questions intruded on this.

A few minutes after Woodbridge left, Grey took the book he was currently reading and went out of his room and along to the elevator. He propelled himself out to the terrace and moved to the far end. This was not only some distance away from the other patients, but gave him a vantage point over most of the gardens and the drive leading to the visitors’ car park.

The weather was cool and gray, with low clouds moving in darkly from the northwest. The sea was normally visible from the terrace, glimpsed through trees, but today there was a dulling haze over everything.

He settled down to read, but the wind was blustery and after a few minutes he called a steward and asked for a blanket. After an hour, the other patients went inside.

Vehicles arrived at intervals, nosing their way up the turning incline into the steep tarmacadamed drive. Two of them were ambulances, bringing new patients; there were several tradesmen’s vans, and a number of cars. With the arrival of each of these, Grey’s hopes rose and he waited excitedly for her to appear.

It was impossible to concentrate on his book, and the morning passed slowly. He felt cold and uncomfortable and, as midday approached, more and more resentful. She had promised, after all, and must have known what the visit would mean to him. He started to invent excuses for her: she had had to hire a car and there had been a delay; the car had broken down; there had been an accident. But surely he would have heard?

With all the helpless egocentricity of the invalid, Grey could think of nothing but this.

The time drew near to one o’clock, when luncheon was served and he would be taken into the dining room. He knew that even if she arrived in the next few minutes they could only have a short time together; at two he had to go for physiotherapy.

At five minutes before the hour a car turned into the drive. Grey regarded the sight of its silver roof and sky-reflecting windows with fatalistic certainty that it was Susan. He waited.

She appeared on the terrace with one of the nurses, Sister Alicia, and the two women walked across to him.

“They’re serving lunch now, Mr. Grey. Shall I wheel you in?”

Looking at Susan, he said, “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“I can’t stay long,” she said, looking not at Grey but at the nurse.

“Shall I tell them you’re staying for lunch too?”

“No, thank you.”

“Now you mustn’t miss a meal, Mr. Grey,” the nurse said, looking from one to the other of them. She walked away.

“Richard, I’m sorry I couldn’t get here before.”

“Where have you been?”

“I was delayed.”

“Was it the car?”

“What? Oh no—I hired that last night.”

“I’ve been waiting for you all morning,” he said.

“I know. I’m really sorry.”

She sat down on the low concrete parapet of the terrace. Her fawn raincoat fell away on each side, revealing her lower legs. They were thin, and clad in ankle socks over her stockings. He noticed that she was wearing a flowered skirt.

She said, “I had to telephone the studio this morning, and all sorts of problems have come up.”

“Studio?”

“Where I work. You must remember—no, I’m sorry. I’m a freelance artist, and I work three days a week for a design studio. It’s my only regular job.”

She leaned forward to take one of his hands. Grey stared at the ground, realizing dismally that for the second time he was feeling hostile toward her.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“And, Richard, I have to go back to London today.” He looked up at her, quickly. She added, “I know … but I’ll come back next week sometime.”

“Can’t you come before then?”

“I really can’t. It’s very difficult. I need the money, and if I let the studio down they’ll find someone else. It’s very hard getting the work.”

“All right, all right.” Struggling against his disappointment, Grey tried to get his thoughts straight. “Let me tell you what I’ve been thinking since yesterday. I want to look at you.”

He had already noticed that she rarely turned her face fully toward him, always presenting a quarter profile or keeping her head lowered. Her hair fell about her face, obscuring her features. It had seemed an attractive mannerism at first, a shyness, a reticence, but he wanted to see her properly.

She said, “I don’t like being looked at.”

“I want to remember you.”

She tossed her hair back with a light shaking motion of her head and looked straight at him. He regarded her, trying to remember or see her as he might have done before. She held his gaze for a few moments, then cast her eyes downward once more.

“Don’t stare at me,” she said.

“All right.” They were still holding hands. “But you see, I believe that if I can remember you then I’ll remember everything else.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“I know … but it’s so difficult for me. I’m always being told what to do by the staff, the newspaper keeps trying to make me tell my story, I’m stuck in this chair, and all I want to do is to get back to normal. The truth is, Susan, that I don’t remember you at all.”

She said, “But—”

“Let me finish. I don’t remember you, but I feel as if I know you. I honestly can’t tell if that’s because I really do know you, or because I’d like to … but whatever it is, it’s the first real feeling I’ve had since I’ve been here.”

She nodded mutely, her face hidden from him again.

“I need to see you as often as you can manage it.”

“I can’t afford it,” she said. “I’ve already spent most of what I have, just renting the car. And I’ve got to pay the train fare back to London.”

“I’ll pay for it all—I’ve got money. Or the newspaper can pay. Something could be arranged.”

“It’s just not very easy.”

“Are you going out with someone else now?” She was staring down the length of the empty terrace, and he wished she would face him.

“No,” she said. “There’s no one else.” Her hand was fidgeting, the fingers stroking the material of her skirt as if trying to tease up a fragment of the cloth. “There was someone else … but not anymore.”

“Is this why you haven’t been here before?”

“Partly. He knew how much I was missing you, but now it’s all over.”

Grey felt excitement in him, a tightening of muscles, a feeling he had not known since before he could remember.

“Susan, tell me what happened between us. At the end. Why did we part?”

“You really don’t know, do you?”

“No.”

She shook her head. “It seems impossible you could forget.”

“Can’t you tell me?”

“Well, it no longer matters. Now I’ve seen you again it’s as if it didn’t happen.”

“But I want to try to remember!”

“It wasn’t any one thing. I suppose it had never really worked from the beginning.”

“Was it a row? What was said?”

“No, not a row. It had been going wrong for some time, and we both knew we couldn’t carry on as we were. It was complicated. This—other person was around, and you were unhappy about that. You wanted to stop seeing me, but nothing was resolved. Then the next thing I heard was that you’d been hurt by the bomb.”

“Can’t you tell me more than that?” Grey said.

“Do you remember the cloud?”

“Cloud? What sort of cloud? What do you mean?”

“Just … the cloud.”

One of the stewards had appeared on the terrace, a napkin folded over his arm. “We’re about to serve the main course, Mr. Grey. Will you and your friend be requiring lunch?”

“I’m missing lunch today,” Grey said, and turned back to Susan. She had stood up. “What are you doing? You can’t leave now!”

“I’ve got to. I have to take the car back to Kingsbridge, then there’s a long bus ride to Totnes to catch the train. I’m already late.”

“What were you talking about just now? What did you mean about the cloud?”

“It was something I thought you’d remember.”

“I’ve no memory of anything. Tell me something else.”

“Do you remember Niall?”

“No.”

“What about those people sunbathing? Do you remember that?”

He shook his head. “Should this mean something?”

“I just don’t know what you want to hear! Look, we can talk properly next time. I’ve really got to go, and you should be having lunch.”

She was leaving; already she had turned away from him.

“When will you come again? Next week?”

“I’ll come as soon as I can,” she said. She crouched down by his chair and squeezed his hand very gently. “I want to see you, Richard. I’d stay with you now if I could. Do you believe that?”

She brought her face to his and kissed him lightly on the cheek. He raised his hand to touch her hair, and turned his head, finding her lips. Her skin was cold, from the weather. She held the kiss for a few seconds, then drew back from him.

“Don’t go,” he said quietly. “Please don’t leave now.”

“I really must.” She stood up and moved away from him. Then she stopped. “I nearly forgot! I brought you a present.”

She came back to him, reaching down into her deep canvas bag. She drew out a white paper bag, folded over and sealed with a strip of clear tape.

“Shall I open it now?” he said.

“Yes. It isn’t much, I’m afraid.”

He broke the seal with his thumb and pulled out what was inside. There were about two dozen postcards of assorted sizes and kinds. They were all very old, and most of them were black and white or sepia-tinted. Some of them were views of English seaside resorts, some were expanses of countryside, some were from the European continent: German spas, French cathedrals, Alpine scenery.

“I saw them in an antique shop in Kingsbridge this morning.”

“Thanks … they’re very nice.”

“I suppose you might have some of them already. In your collection.”

“My collection?”

She laughed then, a short sound, oddly loud. “You don’t even remember that, do you?”

“You mean I collect old postcards?” He grinned at her. “How much more am I going to learn from you?”

“Actually, there is something. You never used to call me Susan. It was always Sue.”

She kissed him again, then left, walking quickly across the terrace and vanishing into the building. He waited, and a short time later he heard a car door slam, then the sound of an engine starting. Soon he saw the windows and roof of her car as it drove slowly down toward the lane.

VI

Dr. Hurdis visited Middlecombe that weekend, and spent a large part of Saturday afternoon with Grey. Hurdis adopted a sympathetic approach, listening more than speaking, never leading his patient with sudden or surprising questions. He treated Grey as a participant in a problem rather than as a recipient of treatment, and often their sessions together were more like conversations than analysis, although Grey realized this was probably not the case.

He was in a communicative mood that day, because at last he felt he had something to talk about, and had an interest in himself that was lacking before.

Not that the two short meetings with Sue had solved anything; his amnesia remained as profound as ever, a fact which Hurdis quickly elicited from him. The principal knowledge she had brought him was the reassurance that he had actually existed in the lost period. Until now, he had not truly believed in himself; the sense of absence behind him seemed to exclude him. But Sue was a witness to the fact of himself. She remembered him, when he did not.

He had of course thought of almost nothing but her since she left. His mind and life were filled with her. He wanted her company, the touch of her hand, her kisses. Most of all he wanted to see her, to look properly at her, but in a strange miniature of his larger problem he found it difficult to remember what she was like. He could visualize peripheral details about her: the canvas bag, the stockinged ankles, the flowered skirt, her coat, her masking hair. He knew she had looked him straight in the face, as if allowing him a secret sight of her, but afterward he found he could not see her face in his mind’s eye. He remembered her plainness, the regularity of her features, but these too acted like a mask to her appearance.

“I think Sue is my best chance of recovering my memory,” he said. “She obviously knows me well, and she was there during the weeks I’ve lost. I keep thinking that if she only tells me one thing that jogs my memory, it could be enough.”

“You might well be right,” Hurdis said. They were in the office he used on weekends, a comfortable place with big leather chairs and a bookcase. “But a word of caution. You mustn’t be too anxious to remember. There’s a condition known as paramnesia, hysterical paramnesia.”

“I don’t think I’m hysterical, Dr. Hurdis.”

“Clearly not, in the usual sense. But occasionally someone who has lost his memory will grasp at any straw, any hint of a memory, and without knowing how accurate it might be let it lead to a whole sequence of invented memories.”

“I’m sure that couldn’t happen with Sue. She would put me right.”

“As you say. But if you started confabulating, you might not be able to tell the difference. What does Mr. Woodbridge think about this?”

“I think he’s against my talking to her.”

“Yes, I see.”

Grey’s preoccupation, since Sue had left, had been in trying to pry loose any memories she might have touched on. Fired by his new interest in her, the few things she had said became enormously important, and he examined them in his mind from every angle. He talked them out with Dr. Hurdis, glad to have an uncritical listener, someone who contributed by encouraging him to talk on and on.

In actual fact she had said remarkably little about their past together. It was symptomatic, according to Hurdis, that he should seize on such fragments and try to find relevance in them.

He had solved one minor mystery on his Own: the matter of the postcards. At first he thought he had stumbled on something from his lost weeks, something hitherto forgotten, but then, surfacing from the old past, the memory came to him.

He had been working in Bradford, in the north of England. During an afternoon off he went wandering by himself through the back streets, and came across a junk shop. He had a small collection of antique film equipment, and was always on the lookout for more. This particular shop had nothing of this sort, but on the counter he came across a battered shoe box crammed with postcards. He looked through them for a while, mildly interested. The woman who ran the shop told him the price of each card was marked on the back, and on an impulse he asked her how much she would want for the lot. A few seconds later the deal was closed for ten pounds.

When he got home a few days later, Grey went through the several hundred old postcards he now owned. Some of them had obviously been bought and collected by someone in the past, because they were unused; many of them, though, had messages on the back. He read all the ones he could decipher, scrawled in fountain pen or indelible pencil. Almost all of them were prosaic dispatches from holidays: a lovely time being had, the weather improving, visited Aunt Sissy yesterday, the scenery is beautiful, raining all week but we’re bearing up, Teddy doesn’t like the food, weather glorious, the gardens are so peaceful, the sun brings out the mosquitoes, we’ve all been swimming, weather, weather, weather.

Many of the cards went back to the Great War and before, their halfpenny stamps mute tokens of how prices had changed. At least a third of the cards had been sent from abroad: grand tours through Europe, rides on cable cars, visits to casinos, insufferable heat. They were messages from a leisured class now irretrievably vanished: travelers in an age before tourism.

The actual photographs were even more interesting to him. He saw them as stills from some long-lost travelogue of the past, glimpses of towns and scenes that in one sense no longer existed. Several pictures were of places he knew or had visited: Edwardian gentlemen and ladies strolling on seafront esplanades which now were littered with high-rise hotels, amusement arcades and parking meters; country vales where now broad motorways had been driven; French and Italian shrines now cluttered with souvenir stalls; peaceful market towns now jammed with traffic and chain stores. These too were memories of a vanished past, alien but recognizable, unattainable in every real sense.

He sorted the cards into groups by country, then returned them to the box. Whenever friends sent him cards after that he added them to the stack, thinking that they too would one day come to represent a certain past.

Sue’s reminder of this had surprised him, but the cards did not come from his amnesiac period. He had been in Bradford while still working for the agency, predating by at least a year any possible first meeting with her.

However, the fact that she knew about the postcards meant she must have seen them, or they had talked about them.

The rest of what she had told him was more vague. They had obviously been lovers, although for a short time. They had split up. There was someone else in her life, and the name Niall had been mentioned. She was Sue, not Susan. Then two odd details: the sunbathers, the cloud.

What had gone wrong with the relationship? The two times he had seen her at the hospital he had been initially hostile to her; was this an awakening from the unconscious? If there was someone else, had everything been wrecked by jealousy?

And what was the significance of the people sunbathing, the cloud? The two brought a mental image of a hot beach, people spread out in the sun, the interruption of a clouded sky. They were commonplaces; why had she selected these?

But taken as a whole, nothing she said stirred the slightest memory in him. From the traceable reference to the postcards to the enigmatic cloud, nothing helped.

Dr. Hurdis listened attentively, wrote down a few notes as Grey was speaking, but at the end sat with his notebook closed on his lap.

“There’s something I’d like to try,” he said. “Have you ever been hypnotized?”

“No. Would that work?”

“Well, it might. It’s sometimes helpful in recovering lost memory, but it’s imperfect and by no means a sure method. It could make a difference in your case, though.”

“Why haven’t you suggested this before?”

Hurdis said, smiling: “You’re motivated now, Richard. I’m due to make another call here on Wednesday. We’ll give it a try then.”

In the evening, Grey spent an hour in the pool in the basement of the hospital, swimming to and fro very slowly, floating on his back, thinking about Sue.

VII

She telephoned on the Tuesday evening. Grey took the call on the pay phone in the corridor; he had his own telephone in his room, but she must have been given the other number. As soon as he spoke to her he knew she was going to let him down.

“How are you, Richard?” she said.

“I’m a lot better, thanks.”

There was a short silence. Then, “I’m on a pay phone, so I can’t talk too long.”

“Hang up, and I’ll call you back from my room.”

“No—no, there’s someone waiting. Look, I’ve got to tell you something. I won’t be able to get down there this week. Will next week be all right?”

“No it won’t,” he said, against a thudding and inevitable feeling of disappointment. “You promised you’d come.”

“Well, it’s not possible.”

“What’s the problem?”

“I can’t afford the train fare, and—”

“I’ve told you, I’ll pay.”

“Yes, but I can’t get the time off. There’s a deadline, and I’ve got to go in every day.”

Two of the other patients walked slowly down the corridor, not speaking. Grey held the receiver closer to his ear, trying for privacy. The patients went through the door into the lounge, and he briefly heard music from the television set.

When the door had closed, he said, “Don’t you understand how important this is to me?”, but halfway through his sentence the pips interrupted him. He heard a coin fall, and the line opened again.

“I didn’t hear that,” Sue said.

“I said it’s very important that I see you.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Will you definitely come next week?”

“I’ll try.”

“You’ll try? You said you wanted to come.”

“I do, I really do.”

Another silence.

Then Grey said, “Where are you speaking from? Is anybody with you?”

“I’m at home—the phone in the hall.”

“Is somebody with you?”

“No, Richard. I’m just working in my room, trying to finish a piece of artwork.”

Grey realized that he had no idea where she even lived. A bead of sweat ran down his face beside his eye. “Look, the phone’s going to cut off in a minute. Have you got another coin?”

“No, I’m going to have to finish.”

“Please don’t. Get some more money, and call me so we can talk. Or give me the number, and I’ll call you.” Time was slipping away.

“I’ll try to come at the weekend, to make up for it.”

“Do you mean that? It’d be—”

But the pips started, and Grey groaned in frustration. This time no coin fell. The line opened again, the few seconds extra the machine always allowed.

“Please … call me now. I’ll wait by the phone.”

“All—” The line went dead.

He put the receiver back, churning with disappointment and fury. The whole building felt deeply silent, as if his words had sounded about the place for all to hear. It was an illusion, though: he could still hear the television set faintly through the door, and somewhere below him the central heating boiler was making its customary distant noise. He could hear voices at the far end of the corridor.

He sat in his wheelchair, the telephone just above head height, trying to calm his feelings. He knew he was being unreasonable; he was treating her as if she were answerable to him for all her actions and thoughts, as if vows were being broken.

Ten minutes passed, and then the phone rang. He snatched it down, hearing the damned pips again.

Sue said, “I was only able to borrow one coin. We can talk for about two minutes.”

“All right, about the weekend—”

“Please, Richard. Let me speak. I know you think I’m letting you down, but when I found where you were I came down to see you without thinking of the consequences here. I have to sort out my work, but I’ll come at the weekend—that’s a promise. You’ll have to send some money, though.”

“I don’t know your address!”

“Do you have some paper? Or can you remember it?” Speaking quickly, she dictated an address in north London. “Have you got that?”

“I’ll send a check tomorrow.”

“Now, there’s something else. Don’t interrupt, because there isn’t time. I’m all mixed up because you can’t remember me … but since I saw you, I’ve been thinking and thinking about you. I still love you.”

“Still?”

“I always did, Richard, right from the start. You’ll remember soon, I know you will.”

He was smiling; he could hardly believe what he was hearing.

“I’m not going to be here much longer,” he said. “Maybe a week or two. I’m feeling a lot better.”

“It’s terrible seeing you in that chair. You were always so active.”

“I walked a long way today—five times across the room. I’m doing more every day. You’ll see at the weekend. You will come, won’t you?”

“Of course! I can hardly wait to see you again.”

The mood of depression she had cast him into had evaporated. “I’m sorry about everything … I’m so cut off down here. It’ll be different next time.”

“I know.” The pips started, but now they didn’t matter. When the line cleared, Sue said, “I’ll come Friday evening.”

“All right. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, love.” The line died.

He hung up, then propelled himself down the corridor, thrusting down on the push wheels with all his strength. At the end of the corridor he swung around and speeded back to the elevator.

Once inside his room, he went through the cardboard box of personal documents that had been sent down by the police and looked for his checkbook. Just to see these pieces of card and paper was like glimpsing his old identity again: a driver’s license, two credit cards, a checkguarantee card (now expired), membership of the British Film Institute, an A.C.T.T. union card, a BBC Club card, an insurance certificate for his car, a bank statement, membership of the National Trust …

He found the checkbook and wrote a check for one hundred pounds. He scribbled a note on the hospital’s paper and slipped it into an envelope with the check. He wrote the address Sue had dictated to him, then propped up the envelope, ready for mailing in the morning.

He sat back in his chair for a while, dwelling pleasurably on her intimate and affectionate words at the end of the conversation. He closed his eyes, trying to remember her face.

A little later he returned to the documents he had scattered across the table. These had been in his possession since arriving in Devon, but he had scarcely looked at them. Nothing could have seemed more irrelevant. His affairs, such as they were, were being looked after by a solicitor retained by the newspaper, and in fact the check to Sue was the first he had written since the car bomb.

Suddenly interested in himself, he opened the checkbook and looked through the counterfoils. About half of the twenty-five checks had been used, and the dates scrawled on the counterfoils were all in the period immediately prior to the bomb. Hoping for a clue, he looked at each one but soon realized he could learn nothing from them. Most of them were made out to cash; there was one to British Telecom, one to the London Electricity Board, one to a bookshop, and one to G.F.&T. Ltd for the sum of Ł12.53. This last item was the only one he failed to understand, but he couldn’t see that it was significant.

His address book was also in the box—a small, plastic-bound notebook. He knew most of it was blank, because he had never been very good at writing down addresses, but nevertheless he turned to the page for K. There was no entry for Sue—unsurprising, but vaguely disappointing. It would have been a sort of proof, a link with his forgotten past.

He went through the entire book, examining everything. Most of the addresses were of people he could remember: colleagues, old girlfriends, the aunt in Australia. Several of the names had just telephone numbers against them. Everything in the book had that familiar feeling from his known past, providing him with nothing new.

Just as he was about to put it aside, he thought to look at the back of the last page, a memory stirring that he sometimes used it for scribbled notes. There he found what he was looking for: amid a number of obscure pieces of arithmetic, a reminder of a dental appointment and a couple of doodles was the word “Sue.” Next to it was a London telephone number.

For a moment he was tempted to pick up his phone and call her immediately, celebrate the fact that he had found her in his own past, but he held back. He was content with what had passed between them. He would see her on the weekend, and did not want to risk her changing her mind yet again.

He put the address book in his pocket, thinking he could easily check with her that this was still her present number. That would be enough to give him the sort of proof he needed, verify the link with himself.

VIII

The following morning Grey visited Dr. Hurdis’s office. He was still in the optimistic mood of the evening before, had slept well, and had done so for the first time without painkilling medication. The psychiatrist was waiting for him, and introduced him to a young woman who was also in the room.

“Richard, this is one of my postgraduate researchers, Miss Alexandra Gowers. Richard Grey.”

“How do you do?”

They shook hands formally, Grey registering that she looked very young. She was wearing a red skirt with a black woollen pullover, and had spectacles and long dark hair.

“With your permission, Richard, I’d like Miss Gowers to be present while you are hypnotized. Would you have any objections to that?”

“Not at all.”

“This is just a preliminary session. What I’d like to do is put you into a light trance and see how you react to that. If it goes well, I might try to deepen the trance a little.”

“Whatever you think is right,” Grey said. That morning he had been feeling curious about what hypnosis might be like, but not nervous at the prospect.

Dr. Hurdis and the young woman helped him out of his wheelchair, and then Hurdis took his weight as he lowered himself into one of the leather chairs and made himself comfortable.

“Now, do you have any questions, Richard?”

“I’d like to know about the trance—does it mean I will lose consciousness?”

“No, you’ll be awake the whole time. You’ll remember everything afterwards. Hypnosis is simply a form of relaxation.”

“That’s all right, then.”

“What I want you to do is try to cooperate as far as possible. You can speak, move your hands, open your eyes, and none of this will break the trance. The main thing I want you to realize is that we might not get results straight away, and you mustn’t feel disappointed.”

“I understand that.”

“All right.” Hurdis was standing to his side, and he reached over and stretched out an angle-poise lamp so that it was somewhere above Grey’s head. “Can you see this?”

“Yes.”

Hurdis moved it back a little. “What about here?”

“Just about.”

“Keep looking up so the lamp is on the edge of your vision. Relax your body as much as you can, and let your breathing get very steady and easy. Listen to what I’m saying, and if your eyes feel tired, let them close.” in the room, Grey was aware that Alexandra Gowers had moved away and was sitting on one of the straight-backed chairs against the walls. “Keep the lamp in sight and listen to me, and while you do so I would like you to start counting backwards to yourself, count to yourself, count from three hundred downwards, start now, keep counting, and listen to what I’m saying, but keep counting slowly 299 to yourself, and breathing 298 very gently and slowly, and think 297 of nothing but looking up at the lamp and 296 counting slowly backwards listening 295 to what I’m saying, and feeling your body very relaxed 294 and comfortable, very comfortable, your legs 293 feel very heavy, your arms feel very heavy 292 and now your eyes are beginning to feel 291 very tired, so if you wish you can close them, let them close, but keep 290 counting slowly and listening, your body is very relaxed 289 and now your eyes have closed but you are 289 288 still counting slowly, while you feel you are drifting backwards, very relaxed as you drift slowly backwards, and now 287 you are feeling very drowsy, very comfortable as you drift backwards, feeling drowsy, listening to what I’m saying but getting drowsy, drifting deeper and deeper into sleep, but still listening to what I’m saying …”

Grey felt comfortable and relaxed and drowsy, but was still aware of all that was around him. He had his eyes closed and was listening to Dr. Hurdis, but he could also sense further. Outside in the hall two people walked past, talking to each other, and somewhere in the room Alexandra Gowers had made a clicking noise with a ballpoint pen, and rustled some paper. In the next room a telephone rang, and someone answered it. Obedient to Hurdis’s suggestions his body felt completely relaxed, but his mind was alert.

“… drifting backwards, feeling drowsy, listening to me, your body is relaxed and you are sleepy. Good, Richard, that’s excellent. Now stay breathing very steadily, but what I want you to do is concentrate on your right hand. Think about your right hand, and how it feels, and concentrate on it, and perhaps you find it is resting on something very soft, something very light, very light, something that is supporting your hand, something that is pressing up very gently from below, lifting your hand, lifting your hand …”

As Hurdis said these words, Grey felt to his amazement that his hand was lifting away from his lap. It went gently upward until his arm was upright, or almost so.

“Good, that’s fine. Now feel it in the air, feel the air around it, supporting it gently. The air is holding it up, the air is holding it, holding it, and now you cannot pull the hand down again, the air is holding it …”

Thinking he should try, Grey tightened his arm muscles and attempted to bring his hand down … but the sensation of something soft and supporting was definite, and his hand stayed where it was.

“… holding it up, but now I want you to lower your hand as soon as I have counted to five, as soon as I count from one to five, your hand will fall back, but not until I reach five, Richard, one … two … your hand is still held up by the air … three … four … now you feel the air is releasing your hand … five … your hand is free… .”

Seemingly of its own will, the hand fell slowly back into his lap.

“… that’s fine, Richard, that’s fine. Now I want you to stay breathing slowly, your whole body relaxed, but when I tell you I want you to open your eyes, not until I tell you, you can open your eyes and look around the room, and when you open your eyes and look around the room, I want you to look, but not until I tell you, I want you to look for Miss Gowers, look for Miss Gowers, but you will not be able to see her, she is here but you will not be able to see her, but don’t open your eyes until I have counted to five, when I count from one to five I want you to open your eyes …”

Hurdis droned on and on, and Grey, listening closely, found the quiet speaking voice irresistible, compelling.

“… open your eyes when I reach five … one … two … three … four … I want you to open your eyes … five… .”

Grey opened his eyes and saw Dr. Hurdis standing slightly to one side looking at him, half smiling in a friendly way.

“You can’t see Miss Gowers, Richard, but I want you to look for her, look around the room but you cannot see her, look now… .”

Grey turned toward the row of chairs against the wall, knowing she was there. He had heard her sitting down, and just now he had heard her with her pen and notebook, but when he looked she was not there. Thinking she must have moved, Grey looked quickly around the room, but there was nowhere she could be. He looked back at the chairs, knowing she was there but unable to see her. Weak sunlight came through the window and struck the wall, but there was not even a shadow of her. He tried to imagine her red skirt and black top, but that was no help.

“You can speak if you wish, Richard.”

“Where is she? Has she left the room?”

“No, she is still here. Now, please sit back again and make yourself comfortable. Close your eyes again, steady your breathing and let your limbs relax, you’re feeling drowsy. Fine, that’s fine. You can feel yourself starting to drift again, starting to move slowly backwards, and now you feel very sleepy indeed, very sleepy, and you are drifting deeper and deeper, that’s fine, deeper and deeper, and now I’m going to count to ten, from one to ten, you will drift deeper and deeper, and with every number you will drift deeper, and feel sleepier and sleepier, one … very deep … two … you are drifting further and further … three… .”

But then there was a gap.

Grey next heard: “… seven … you will feel very refreshed, very happy, very calm … eight … you are beginning to awaken, you will be fully awake, fully alert, very calm … nine … your sleep is now very light, much lighter, you can see the daylight against your eyelids, and in a moment you will open your eyes and be fully awake, and you will be calm and happy … ten … you can open your eyes now, Richard.”

Grey waited a few more seconds, comfortable in the chair, his arms folded in his lap, sorry that it was over. He was reluctant to break the spell; he had been free of the stiffness in his body all through the hypnosis, with no threat of pain. But his eyelids fluttered, and a moment later he opened his eyes fully.

Something had happened. This was his first thought as he looked at the other two; both stood beside the chair, looking down at him.

“How are you feeling, Richard?”

“Fine,” he said, but already the pains of his body were returning, the familiar stiffness creeping over his hip, his back, his shoulders. “Is something wrong?”

“No, of course not. Would you like a cup of coffee?” Grey said he would, and Alexandra Gowers put down her notebook and left the room. Hurdis’s manner was abrupt and awkward. He moved to the other chair and sat down.

“Now, I want to ask you: do you remember everything that just happened?”

“I think so.”

“Would you mind describing it to me? What is the first thing you remember?”

“You told me to start counting backwards from three hundred, and I did. It was difficult to concentrate, and I gave up after a while. The next thing I remember was that my hand rose up in the air, and I couldn’t get it down until you released it. Then you made Miss Gowers disappear.”

Hurdis nodded slowly. “The only thing I’d say is that you were doing these things, not me.”

“If you say so.”

“What do you remember next?”

“I … think you wanted to go further, but then you seemed to change your mind. I’m not sure what happened. I started waking up.”

“And that’s all you remember?”

“Yes.”

Alexandra Gowers returned to the room, carrying a small tray with three cups of coffee. As she passed them across, Hurdis repeated what Grey had just said. Returning to her seat, she said, “Then it’s spontaneous.”

“I think so too,” Hurdis said.

Grey, whose feeling of mild euphoria had been quickly dispersed by the chilly atmosphere, said, “Would you mind telling me what you’re talking about?”

“You turn out to be an excellent hypnotic subject,” Hurdis said. “I was able to take you into a deep trance without any difficulty at all. Normally the subject is able to remember this afterwards, but in some cases he is not. I think you are one. You were in deep trance for about forty-five minutes. I was hoping you would be able to remember this.”

“It’s known as spontaneous amnesia,” Alexandra Gowers said, and Hurdis glanced sharply at her.

“It’s just a technical term, Richard.”

“Of course,” he said quietly. Most of what he had been forced to listen to in recent months consisted of technical terms, sometimes explained, sometimes not. He no longer cared; he was looking forward to hearing ordinary people saying ordinary things.

“The point is that I regressed you to the period obscured by the amnesia. It would obviously be better if you could remember by yourself, but if not it might help if we gently jog your memory.”

“Then you did take me back?” Grey said, interested now.

“When you were in deep trance I asked you to try to recall the events of last year. We can roughly date it to the end of last summer, the car bomb incident being at the beginning of September. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“As I had expected, you sounded traumatized. Your voice became emotional and it was difficult to make out a lot of what you said. I asked you to describe where you were, but you didn’t. I asked if there was anyone with you, and you said there was a woman.”

“Susan Kewley!”

“You called her Sue. I must tell you, Richard, that none of this is conclusive. It will take more sessions than just this one. We were unable to make sense of most of what we heard. For instance, some of what you said was in French.”

“French! But I don’t speak French! Well, hardly any. Why should I speak French under hypnosis?”

“It can happen.”

“Well, what did I say?”

Alexandra Gowers had her notebook open. She said, “At one point we heard you say encore du yin, s’il vous plait, as if you were in a restaurant.”

Grey smiled; it was more than three years since he had been in France. Then he had traveled to Paris with a crew to cover the French presidential elections. They had taken a research assistant to interpret for them, and during the whole trip he had hardly uttered a word of French. What he most remembered of the trip was that one night he had slept with the assistant.

“I can’t explain that,” he said.

“Maybe,” Hurdis said. “But you must not discount it either.”

“But what am I supposed to assume? That I was in France last summer?”

“It’s not safe to make assumptions. But there’s one more thing I think you should see.” He passed Grey a sheet of paper, apparently torn from a notebook. “Do you recognize this handwriting?”

Grey glanced at it, then in surprise looked more closely. “It’s mine!”

“Do you know what it means?”

“Where did you get it? I don’t remember writing this.” He read the words quickly: they were a description of what appeared to be a passenger lounge in an airport, with crowds of people, P.A. announcements, airline desks. “It looks like part of a letter… . When did I write this?”

“About twenty minutes ago.”

“Oh no, that can’t be true!”

“You asked for some paper, and Miss Gowers gave you her notebook. You said nothing while you were writing, and you only stopped when I took the pen away.”

Grey read the page again, but nothing about it struck any chord of memory. The passage had a familiar ring to it, but only in the sense that it conveyed the sense of bustle, boredom and nervous anticipation of airports. Grey had flown many times in the course of his job, but somehow that last hour before actually boarding was always a minor ordeal. To say he was scared of flying would be an overstatement, but he was nervous and unrelaxed, wanting to get the journey over and done with. This might then be something he would conceivably write or describe, but nothing could have been farther from his mind that morning.

“What could this be?” he said to Hurdis.

“You’ve no idea yourself?”

“No.”

“It could be part of a letter, as you suggest. It could be an unconscious memory, released by the hypnosis. It could even be an extract from a book, or something else you might have read in the past.”

“What if it’s an unconscious memory? Couldn’t this be the answer?”

“Of all the possibilities, that’s the one I believe you should be most cautious about.” Hurdis had glanced at the clock on the wall.

“But surely that’s what I’m trying to find!”

“Yes, but you must be very careful. We have a long way to go. Perhaps we should meet again next week?”

Grey felt a stirring of discontent. “I’m hoping to be out of here soon.”

“But not by next week?”

“Well, no … but soon I hope.”

“Very good.” Hurdis was clearly on the point of leaving. Alexandra Gowers had also stood up.

Still in the armchair, Grey said, “But where does this leave me? Have I made any progress?”

“At our next meeting I’ll implant the suggestion that you retain what happens in deep trance. Then we might have a better chance of interpretation.”

“What about this?” Grey said, meaning the page of handwriting. “Should I keep it?”

“If you wish. No, on second thought I think I’ll keep it with my case notes. I’d like to study it properly, and next week we might use it as the basis for regression.”

Hurdis took the paper from his unresisting fingers. Grey was curious about it, but in itself it did not seem important.

Before she left, Alexandra came over to him.

“I’m grateful to you for letting me stay,” she said. She extended her hand, and they shook as formally as they had at the beginning.

“When I was trying to see you,” Grey said, “were you here, in this room?”

“I never moved from the chair.”

“Then how could I not see you?”

“At one point you looked straight into my eyes. It’s a common test of suggestibility, called induced negative hallucination. You knew I was there, you knew how to see me, but your mind would not register me. Stage hypnotists work a similar effect, but they usually make their subjects see people without their clothes on.” She said this seriously, clasping her notebook to her side. She pushed her glasses up to the bridge of her nose.

“Yes,” said Grey. “Well, it was a pleasure to look for you, anyway.”

“I do hope you regain your memory,” she said. “I shall be fascinated to know what happens.”

“So will I,” Grey said, and they both smiled.

IX

That evening, alone in his room, Richard Grey levered himself out of his wheelchair and walked to and fro across the room, using his sticks. Later, feeling like a non-swimmer casting off from the side, he walked the length of the corridor and returned. It was a major effort. After a short rest he did it a second time, taking much longer, pausing for rests whenever he could. At the end of it his hip felt as if it had been hammered and bruised, and when he went to bed he could not sleep for the pain. He lay awake determined that his long convalescence must end as soon as possible, sensing that his mind and body would heal in unison, that he would remember only as soon as he could walk, and vice versa. Before, he had been passively content for time to take its course, but now his life was different.

The following day he had a session with James Woodbridge, but said nothing about what had happened under hypnosis. He wanted no more interpretations, no more technical terms. He was convinced that his forgotten past now had to be remembered, that it was in some way symbolic of overall recovery, that it opened the way to his personal future. Somehow those weeks leading up to the car bomb had been significant and relevant. Perhaps it was nothing more than a love affair with Sue, but it was important to remember even that. There too, the silent gap in his life gave promise of the future.

Thursday passed slowly, or seemed to, but then it was Friday. He tidied his room, obtained clean clothes from the hospital laundry, exercised his body, and concentrated all over again on trying to remember. The staff knew he was expecting Sue, and he took their teasing with good grace. Nothing could deflate his mood now. Everything was heightened by her, given form and meaning. The day went slowly, the evening came, and hope was modified by apprehension. Late, far later than he had expected, she called him from a pay phone. She had arrived at Totnes station, and was about to hire a taxi. She was with him half an hour later.