Acid Bubbles (7 page)

Two, was another sensation altogether. This one haunted me and over the next few days I was to learn a lot more about guilt. This feeling crawled like a vile fungus into my mind in the hours after awakening. This was an understanding I'd done something awful in my worldly life, something I'd hidden, that if discovered would plunge me into the world of depression and incarceration. If not those extremes I would be tortured by the knowledge of my hidden evils.

I lay there for the first three hours thinking about it. All the joy I had experienced with all that brilliant sensation and light. And was the me that wasn't me the person I could have been if I'd followed a different path? As the magic faded I could only focus on the growing anxiety that somewhere in my mind I harboured a great internal deception. What bad thing had I done to burden me with such depressive dark guilt? The next day this bleakness started to fade, and in the end it was no more than an ethereal sensation of mysterious guilt.

After the intensity of those joyous moments, I was wondering if this was a natural low following such a massive high. I could cope with these bad feelings if that's what it took to slake my desire to meet this wondrous girl at least once more. Sod the feelings of hidden guilt. I had to find the door to the universe I now wanted to live in regardless of any consequences!

My mind was a haze of confusion reeling with the revelation that I'd lost two years of my life. I was starting to think I'd suffered some strange aberration after all the alcohol consumed the night before, and once sober all the hundreds of days would come flooding back into focus returning my history. This strange situation forced me to reassess my alcohol consumption. I was drinking too much, my head told me that!

I didn't really think this amnesia was due to the excess of drink; my main concern was that I'd suffered some kind of stroke. All the while as I dressed, random thoughts poured through my alcohol soaked brain. This hangover never seemed to go away. Perhaps the pain in my head was the aftermath of some burst blood vessel, something giving way at this very moment, so at any time I might drop down dead!

We were both dressed and I was swimming in Sam's affectionate embrace. All the while she was telling me what a wonderful person I was and what a delightful lover I made. The only things on my mind were questions. Where the hell have I been the last two years? How do I know this woman? How the hell do I get out of this house and find some answers?

“Peter, I'm off now,” Sam said, giving me a big wet affectionate kiss. I didn't mind at all.

“So am I,” I said.

“I thought you were waiting for Mike. You two are playing pool together at one,”

My mind was racing.
Come on, come on. Make some excuse
.

“I've got to go to the farm and pick up something my sister got for me,” I replied.

“You're going to the farm? You never go to the farm, ever!” she replied, looking straight into my face with the strange enquiring look. This had me worried.

“I don't go to the farm?” I enquired.

“You told me that you never go there, ever,” Sam responded.

“Oh, well I've got to go today to see my sister. Can you tell Mike that I'm sorry but we'll have to make it another day?”

I was making all the usual leaving noises desperate to start my voyage of discovery. I had to suffer a few more not unwelcome embraces before I could leave. I was making my way down the drive all the while thinking of what could've happened inside my head. I heard the noise of the double front doors opening behind me. Sam's voice rang out. I couldn't quite make out what she was saying, but she was holding something up in one hand waving it at me.

“Peter, your car keys,” Sam said, trying not to shout.

I was about to say “I don't drive”, when it struck me quite forcefully that I didn't know anything about sex either and I'd learnt all of the techniques in minutes. I might drive. This skill may come to me in a matter of minutes from some hidden motor memories. I might be capable of many new things. After all, it had been two years or maybe more.

In the drive were two cars, a big Ford and a Ford Cortina GT XL 2 Litre, two door model. Nice car. Metallic bronze with brown leatherette covered roof and chromed wheels. The Ford Cortina couldn't possibly be mine, but then the big Ford couldn't belong to me. It wasn't my style, that much I knew, unless I got it cheap, but this wasn't the cheap car. What do you say? Saying I was a seventeen-year-old virgin seemed to work quite well, so on those lines I went for broke.

“Which car you want me to take,” I asked.

“What's got into you today,” was her response. No clues were given to help me identify my car. Sam didn't know that I didn't know. Sam was about to throw me the keys and I was in such a whirl I felt like slumping to the floor or throwing up, anything really to divert me from the maelstrom inside.

My problem wasn't just the identification of the car, it was the fact that I couldn't drive! I'd driven the old Land Rover on the farm, in a large field, but never ever on the road. And now I owned a 2 Litre sports model. I had to do some quick thinking on my feet, though at that time I don't think I was thinking in any rational sense at all. My body was walking around by its own volition separate from my head. A head filled with impenetrable white noise and cotton wool.
Think, come on think!

“Oh, I think it's got something wrong with the gearbox. I'll go to the garage and get them to come and take it, see if they can fix the problem.” This weak excuse was the only response I could think of.

“I am certain you had too much last night and you're still drunk by the sound of it. It's better if you walk,” Sam replied, giving me the excuse not to seem as crazy as a loon. She blew me a kiss and flattened her skirt rubbing her thighs with slow stretched fingers. I could see her red painted fingernails pressing hard into the material. Just straightening her clothes, somehow I didn't think so.

From cycling around the town in my previous life I had a fair idea where I was, and where the main road with the bus stop would be located. I walked boldly through the gate and took the left turn towards Leeds Road. Exterior confidence belied internal conflict. What the eye doesn't see…

At least once I was out of sight of the house I could slow and I would have time to think. I was a suffering a solid mental block having enormous difficulty even thinking about thinking. I'd lost two years, gained a very passionate older woman as a lover, and a car I couldn't afford or drive. I had a premonition this was going to be the biggest part of what I was to discover about my life. I was very wrong! What I knew at this moment was only the very tip of a giant grubby iceberg.

What to do next? What to do next? What to do next?
Stop asking yourself that question and do something! Go home. Yes that's it. Go home to the warmth of the farmhouse.

The bus stop seemed to hold some significance, quite why I had no idea. I waited, trying with desperation to think, coming up with nothing. The only thing in my head was the urge to return to the farm at least to have some good food and a rest. The bus approached, tall, red, normal. Why I thought the bus looked tall, red and normal I couldn't honestly say, but I was pleased it was. All through that journey I can say I registered nothing. All was a blur. I sat catatonic avoiding the turmoil inside my brain. Thinking nothing was the easy route.

The farmhouse looked exactly like the farmhouse. In two years nothing had changed on the facade of that 60s building. Other things were disturbing in their profound difference. Next to the farmhouse was a large new construction that could have been a barn or storage shed. To me this very large construction had appeared like a giant magic trick. The farmyard had been transformed overnight. It was as fascinating as it was frightening.

Sam had questioned me about my visit to the farm, with the suggestion that I never go there. I was more curious on several levels about this than the reception I would receive. It was obvious to me that I'd been moving about living my life in the local community for the last two years and the family would know most of my history. Once I explained I couldn't remember anything perhaps they could fill the gaps for me, or take me to the mental hospital? So as I walked up the driveway towards the farmhouse I was speculating as to what the new large shed contained: more shitty livestock or new tractors and ploughs?

When I arrived at the front of the house, all was quiet. The one thing I did notice was a new Triumph Trident motorcycle I assumed belonged to Jane, my sister. I was looking it, bending to examining the carburettors, looking at the exhausts and generally admiring this modern motorbike, a type which I'd never seen before, it was all new to me. I was standing speculating on how fast the machine could go when I got distracted.

The noise was horrendous! An enormous ear-splitting bang! “What the fucking hell,” was all I could manage. The shotgun pellets gouged their way into the door of the new storage barn close above my head. I threw myself to the floor behind the motorbike. Looking up I could see my brother George at the bedroom window with a twelve-bore shotgun. George, my own level-headed brother, was shooting at me!

“What the hell are you doing, George?” I shouted.

“It's just a warning. Stay away you bastard! We told you not to come here. You're not welcome in this house,” he replied with an audible hiss to the note of his voice. If he could have squirted venom I'm sure he would.

“Where's dad?” I asked.

“Dad's at St Peter's Church,” George said, all the while looking at me in the strangest of ways.

“Dad never goes to church. What's he doing there?”

George stayed very quiet for quite some time. I wondered if he was going to shoot at me again. He still had the gun resting on the windowsill, and I knew it had one cartridge left in the breech if he'd loaded both barrels.

“You know why he's there,” George said, breaking the silence.

“No, indulge me. Why's he gone to church?”

“You're a complete bastard,” George shouted. He pulled the shotgun off the windowsill and tried to force himself to aim it at me. I ducked down behind a motorbike praying the pellets wouldn't find their way through openings in the metalwork. George fired the gun high above my head once more, the pellets biting deep and hard into the woodwork of the new doors.

“Has one of the aunties died?” I was stabbing in the dark desperately trying to find a reason why my agnostic father would visit the church.

“Dad's been there for eighteen months. He is buried there!” George gave me a pitying look as he said these words as if he was talking to a small child that didn't understand.

“Daddy's dead! Daddy's dead!” I sounded like a five-year-old child. George just nodded. The tears flowed because I understood my very straight brother was not perpetrating some sick joke. I stood out there in the farmyard wailing like a small child. I was bereft. I'd lost all those days and my father. This was becoming a terrible nightmare.

I don't know how long I was standing in the yard crying, wailing like a lost child or whatever I was doing. I felt strong arms around me. It was George, and this time he was trying to comfort me and not kill me.

“How…?” was all I could say. This was the only word that could penetrate my wretched sobbing.

“You don't know how? You know how?” George was studying me as he said these words. He could see from my reactions that I didn't have a clue I'd lost my father, or how he'd died.

“No.” As I said this George took it all in, and seemed to grasp that I genuinely didn't know father was dead.

“It was that German machine the aunties didn't like. Dad was working with it and got wrapped up in the drive shaft. I was close by and managed to stop it. It didn't look much. He had a heart attack on the operating table. He was so bloody strong, so permanent. I still can't believe he's gone.”

He went on to tell me the aunties later attacked the German machine with petrol and cigarette lighters, destroying it. The new barn was to store all the new modern farming equipment safely away from the aunties. Most of it was foreign made, not necessarily German, but foreign enough to have it burnt to death for not being of pure English stock. The aunties had very strange views about foreigners, even Scots, and especially people from North Wales.

I asked George where Jane was. And the new Triumph, was that hers? The reply, Jane was now working at the veterinarian hospital. And yes, the motorcycle was hers.

“She's not riding it today because she is doing a twelve-hour shift, and doesn't want to ride home tired in the dark.”

I enquired after the aunties and was told by George they remained very much alive and brutally miserable down at the old cottage. With a hint of a smile he explained they spent their days smoking, bickering with each other and discussing the evils of all things not English. I think even Southern people were classed as foreigners.

I then asked George about the shotgun. All he said was it was a warning to stay away. Not to interfere any more in the house. Not to upset mother. I didn't have the slightest clue as to what evil deeds had banished me from the family farm. Even in close proximity to my old home, looking around I captured no clues, in the broad daylight hours I was in the darkest dark.

I told him about the morning. I didn't mention the details of the loss of my virginity for the second time. I wasn't telling my brother about today. What I was stressing to George was that I couldn't remember a single thing after I left The Cauldron drunk on August 17
^th
1971, two years ago!

George in his cynical way would probably have not believed me, but after witnessing my heartbroken reaction to the death of my father he took on board that something had happened to me, and on some level he understood I couldn't remember.

Whether George believed all I was telling him I do not know. No matter how much I thought about it nothing was coming back. Not even the death of my father. He continued to hold me and comforted me, seeming to understand something inside me was broken. He knew I was not myself. So crushed with the grief of my father's death even quarter an hour later I was still crying wretchedly with my shoulders jerking. I was George's snotty-nosed kid brother gripping him for comfort. It was obvious this wretchedness was genuine grief over my lovely, tough old father.

After a while he explained I'd never returned to the house other than sending some large greasy lout for my belongings. This was weeks after that last night around the table.

“If I don't live here then where do I live?” I asked.

“In your fancy flat,” he replied.

I asked him straight out where my fancy flat was, and why I rented a fancy flat, and what did I do for money to pay for the fancy flat.

George looked at me for some while before saying, “You don't rent your flat, you own it, all paid for! If you're not lying about this amnesia, I think you're in the shit!” He said this while looking at me like a condemned man.

George then informed me I'd been “up to no good” and I knew “all the wrong uns”. He also told me quite helpfully that I lived on the top floor of a very smart three-storey block on the edge of town near the posh new estate. It was a revelation to me that I lived on the same estate I'd been visiting this morning. I started to wonder how many times I'd visited Samantha's house on quiet mornings. I still couldn't understand how I would turn up at the home of my married mistress drunk and sleep on a sunlounger without her husband complaining.