(1990) Sweet Heart (18 page)

She saw the sad hang-dog face, the centre parting, the mutton chop sideburns, the cardigan the colour of dried mustard. Ernest Gibbon’s crows’ feet crinkled into the hint of a smile and his baggy jowls heaved. The microphone in its foam padding peered down at her like an inquisitive bird.

‘You are quite safe, Charley,’ he said in his soporific monotone. ‘You’re back with us.’

Tight bands of anxiety seemed to be cutting into her skin. Her heart thumped and her pulses throbbed.

‘Dick,’ the hypnotist said. ‘You called him Dick. Can you remember your name?’

She lay motionless for some while, then shook her head.

‘Do you know where you were? Did you recognise it?’

She thought hard before answering, trying to clear her mind, trying to work up the energy to speak. ‘Woods near where we live. I think I was asleep — dreaming — just a bad dream. There’s a girlfriend who —’ She paused, partly from tiredness, partly from embarrassment, and smiled lamely. ‘I — I’m jealous of.
Probably nothing in it. I keep thinking she’s making a beeline for my husband. I think I was dreaming about her.’

‘No, you were in a previous carnation,’ he said, as blandly as if he were talking about the weather. His jowls heaved up and down as if he were chewing a cud.

A vague smell of cooking was seeping into the room. Meat, potatoes, gravy. It made her feel queasy. Outside she could hear the wail of a siren and rain tapped on the window. Smells and sounds that should have been normal seemed alien.

‘What can you remember about the man you were with, Charley?’

‘I — I’ve seen him before.’

‘Would you like to tell me when?’

‘I told you I was regressed once before I came to you. I think it’s the same person.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘Quite nice looking. Rugged. He had short brown hair. Stocky, wiry. A bit like — I suppose he looked like that actor Bruce Willis but rougher. He was attractive.’

Gibbon pulled out a large polka dot handkerchief and began wiping his glasses. ‘Was he a farmer?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice tailed off. ‘I’m not sure. I think so.’

‘Were you living with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you have a wedding ring?’

‘I don’t know. Locket,’ she said. ‘I had the locket, the same locket I found in the tin I dug up. The tin I buried last time —’

He studied her. ‘And you were pregnant?’

She nodded.

‘Is there anything else you can remember about yourself? The clothes you were wearing?’

She thought. ‘A frock. A sort of muslin frock.’

He finished cleaning his glasses, and put them unhurriedly back on, settling them comfortably, adjusting first one side then the other. ‘Do you know what time period? Which century?’

‘It didn’t seem that long ago.’

‘How long ago?’

‘It felt quite recent.’

‘All past lives feel quite recent, Charley.’ He breathed slowly, steadily; the wheezing made him sound as if he were asleep.

‘It had to be recent,’ she said, hope dawning. ‘The woman was riding astride. She wore breeches. So I could have gone to the Wishing Rocks and watched someone bury it years ago and have forgotten. Cryptic something, isn’t it, when you’ve forgotten something you’ve done or read as a child?’

‘Cryptomnesia,’ he said, with a faintly glazed look, as if he were used to trotting out the same old defence against the same old hoary argument. ‘How much proof do you require?’ His voice sounded testy.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, deflated.

‘Are you frightened?’

‘A little.’

‘What of?’

‘I’m not sure.’

He smiled a smug teacher-knows-best smile. ‘Are you frightened of the idea of having lived before?’

‘I’ve always been sceptical about the supernatural. I still don’t believe that…’ The self-satisfied smile on his face distracted her, irritated her.

‘Don’t believe or don’t
want
to believe?’

She said nothing.

‘People who come to me are often full of traumas they don’t understand. These are caused by unpleasant happenings in previous carnations. Once people understand the reason for the trauma, the trauma goes.’ His
dreary voice could as easily have been reading out the instructions on a washing machine. ‘You want to have children, and are not conceiving. Now in this previous carnation we find you have been pregnant and some trauma has occurred — something which frightens you so much you can’t face it and I have to bring you back out. It could be the memory of this trauma that’s blocking you from conceiving.’

The words stirred something. A tiny frisson of doubt tapped its way down her corridors of nerves.

‘I’ve regressed many thousands of people, Charley,’ the hypnotist continued. ‘There are others who have found some sort of evidence to prove their regressions have not just been cryptomnesia, names in books … landscapes … But to go out and find an object, a buried object … This hasn’t happened before, you see. We need to continue, to have another session. It’s very important.’

‘Do you think we might find more buried treasure?’ she said more cheerily than she felt. He did not smile back.

‘It’s not the locket, Charley. It’s what we’ve dug up inside you. It’s the connection.’ His face tightened into trembling concentration. ‘There’s something in your past that …’

‘That what?’ she prodded, his expression making her nervous.

‘That’s more than a memory.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s — it must be something malevolent you’ve done in that carnation and I believe you have brought it with you, into this present life.’

‘Brought what with me?’

‘It’s that we need to find out.’

‘I don’t want to go on any more.’

‘I don’t think it’s up to you to decide,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ Anger arose at the smug, weird man. Creep.

‘You could bury the locket back on the hill, but you can’t bury this back in your mind. You see, it’s very strong. We had better make another appointment.’

You bastard, she thought. This is all a trick; a great con. ‘I’ll think about it.’ She opened her handbag and took out her purse. ‘Thirty-five pounds?’

He shook his head and waved a hand dismissively. ‘Give it to a charity. I support Guide Dogs for the Blind.’

She stared at him in amazement. ‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t want you to think I’m a confidence trickster.’ He smiled another teacher-knows-best smile, then stood up wearily and walked towards the door.

‘
Surprise him! Greet him at the front door in a sexy negligee with a glass of his favourite drink in your hand and music playing. Give him a candlelit dinner of his favourite foods; pamper him at the table; cherish him. Don’t break the spell … leave the washing up till morning!
’

Charley glanced around the crowded train compartment, trying to keep the cover of the magazine as low in her lap as possible so that no one could see the lurid teaser that had made her buy it at the bookstall.

HOW TO KEEP YOUR MAN TURNED ON!

The train rattled south, rain streaking the windows, through Gatwick Airport, backpackers waiting on the platform like refugees, past the hangars, the parked aircraft. A Jumbo was coming in overhead and she watched it until a tall warehouse blocked her view, regretting they’d cancelled their holiday in Greece because of moving; holidays were the only times these days she and Tom seemed to get remotely close.

She had played the tapes of her regression over and over when Tom had not been around, not wanting him to know she had been again, had spent more money. Each time she played them, part of her grew a little more sceptical and part of her a little more afraid.

She had worked in the boutique today, but had not seen Laura who had gone to France for two days, buying. They had not seen each other since her phone call to Laura which Tom had answered; when they had spoken on the phone a couple of days ago, Laura had chatted gaily; too gaily.

She had left the boutique at four, leaving another part-timer there, and gone to the nursing home to visit her adoptive mother. She had told her she had started the procedure for finding her real parents, and had half expected some angry reaction, but that had not happened. If anything (although she knew she might have imagined it) she thought she noticed a small expression of relief.

Sussex countryside was sliding by, and darkness was falling fast. A good-looking man in his mid-twenties was eyeing her. Being eyed always made her feel good, boosted her confidence. Right now it needed boosting.

Then she wondered if he had seen the cover of the magazine, if that was why he was smiling.

Her heart felt heavy again. She and Tom had made love once since they’d moved in, on the first night. For a long while they had only made love once a month, but that had been deliberate, on the instructions of her acupuncturist. The acupuncturist Laura had recommended, whose needles hurt like hell (even though Laura insisted they didn’t), who assured her she would become pregnant very quickly.

Nothing wrong … nothing wrong … nothing wrong. Her brain beat to the rhythm of the train, to the rhythm of the specialists they had seen over the years.

Nothing wrong, nothing wrong, nothing wrong.

She had ditched the acupuncturist, the funny little man with his strange ideas on celibacy and body balance and energy, and the pungent herbs he burned
from time to time and applied against her body. ‘
What are you trying to do? Conjure up a baby from black magic?
’ she had said jokingly to him once, but he had not been amused.

Now she wanted to make love with Tom, wanted it more than at any time in years, and he was not responding.

On Sunday he’d gone off for the day, told her he had to go to the office to deal with an urgent problem. On Sunday night he’d smelled of Laura’s perfume.

The rooftops of Haywards Heath appeared and the train slowed. She stood up and lifted the smart Janet Reger bag down from the luggage rack. It weighed nothing, and for a moment she was worried the negligee had fallen out. She opened it and peeked in. She could see the black lace and the receipt and her Access slip lying loosely down the side. £145.

She began to smile as she stepped off the train and joined the queue at the ticket barrier. Tom would be mad as hell. Good. He hadn’t lost his temper for ages. Maybe it was time. Sometimes their lovemaking was at its most tender after Tom had come out of one of his tempers.

Outside the station a line of cars waited, engines running, wipers shovelling away the rain, dutiful wives in their Volvos and Range Rovers and Japanese runabouts with their
Baby on Board
stickers and children’s faces pressed against the windows.

She felt a twinge of sadness, as if there was some cosy family club from which she was excluded, barred.

It was nearly a quarter to eight as she turned into the lane. She’d had to go to Safeways in Lewes to get steaks, and she’d bought scallops there as well. His favourite foods, as the article in the magazine had told her to do.
Scallops, steak, then vanilla ice cream with hot fudge sauce.

And sod the cost.

The memory of Apstead Road, Wandsworth, was beginning to fade. The new woman in there had rung up a couple of times relaying phone messages, but she hadn’t been very communicative, hadn’t said how much they loved the house. In fact, she’d sounded a little pissed off. Maybe they’d found damp or rot, though Charley knew there was nothing much wrong, apart from the leak in the roof of the utility room which she’d kept guiltily quiet about. It only leaked in heavy rain. It was probably leaking now.

Headlights came out of Yuppie Towers. It was Zoe in her Range Rover. ‘Charley, hi!’ She wound her window down and made a face against the weather. ‘We’re going to the George tomorrow. Do you and Tom feel like joining us?’

‘That would be nice, thanks — if he’s down in time.’

Zoe shielded her face with her hand. ‘See how you feel. Got to pick up the kids. Bye!’

Charley drove on down the lane. Hugh’s workshop doors were battened tightly shut, and a television flickered through the drawing room window of Rose Cottage.

She felt lonely as she drove down the steep hill, under the shadowy arches of the trees of the wood. Tom was playing squash and wouldn’t be home until after nine. Her headlights picked out the green hull of the upturned skiff, and the sign ‘PRIVATE. MEMBERS ONLY. NO FISHING’, nailed to the tree. They’d seen a few people fishing at the weekends, and one or two in the early evenings. There was a small card in the window of the grocery shop in Elmwood village with details of a name to phone for membership.

The surface of the lake was spiked by the rain, and an arc of grubby froth slopped against the bank. There was straw lying on the gravel and she looked at it, surprised for a moment, then remembered that today Hugh had been moving the old car out. The rain increased, stalactites of water hurtled down from the sky and shattered in tiny sprays on the ground. She sprinted with her carrier bag for the front door. She could hear Ben barking. ‘OK, boy!’ she shouted as she went into the hall and switched on the light. Then she stopped, staring at the hall table.

It was lying on its side in the middle of the floor, the mail scattered around it.

Ben? Had he knocked it over? She peered down the dark passage. There was a tremendous bang behind her. She spun round. The wind had slammed the front door shut.

Christ. Her nerves were shot to pieces. She switched the passageway light on, and, water running down her face, her clothes drenched, went into the kitchen. Ben barrelled out, jumping up. ‘Did Bernie look after you again? Take you for a walk, did he? Let’s go, outside!’

He loped down the passageway. She followed and stared uneasily at the table in the hall. How had it fallen over? Surely Bernie, or the other builders, or the plumber or electrician would have had the nous to pick it up? Clumsy fools. She would speak to them about it in the morning.

She let Ben out; he ran down the steps and cocked his leg on the polythene sheeting the workmen had left over their materials. She grabbed the groceries from the boot of the Citroën and rushed back in, Ben following.