Everything She Forgot (3 page)

“Anyway, I didn't care for a few years, or told myself I didn't. I had no idea where they were anyway. Kathleen was gone—not in Glasgow—and she'd basically said that her and the wean were well shot of me. But then I met Wee Malkie. He'd been on the oil rigs and had done work all over the north of Scotland. Did he not run into Kathleen with the wean? He said the wee one was the spit of me.”

“When was that?”

“Two years ago. I've found out where she lives.”

“Two years, people move.”

“People move, but not if you have a big house in Thurso. I know where they are.”

George downed the rest of his pint and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Tam was smiling again—that strange smile he offered when
Peter was in the garage. His eyes were scrunched up, which made people think it was a proper smile, but somehow it was out of synch with his mouth. His mouth was wary to commit. When Tam smiled like that, it looked as if he was in pain.

George turned to him, unsmiling, honest, wishing something worthy of Brendan McLaughlin: wishing that Tam was a bigger man. But George was not his father and George was determined to trust small, thin, terrified Tam, who knew an engine as a surgeon knows a body.

“I have the means,” said George slowly, leaning in so close that he could smell the starch on Tam's Friday night shirt. “Third time lucky. I'm going up north to ask Kathleen to be mine and then the three of us can go away together—me, Kathleen, and my wee girl.”

“Where on earth would you go?”

George leaned in closer to Tam and spoke to him in a whisper. “Can I trust you?” he said, squeezing Tam's upper arm.

“Yes.”

“You ever heard of a wee place called Penzance in Cornwall?”

“Cornwall, aye.”

“Well, I want to live there, in peace and quiet, right by the sea. That's where we're gonna be—me and my own wee family.”

“Why would you go there? Who do you know from there?”

“No one. My mother's family was from there. My mum lived there when she was wee and she used to tell me about it—the open spaces and the sea, the tiny houses. My mother owned some land there, a cottage on the South West Coast Path, between Sennen and Porthcurno. It's almost a ruin now, I believe. I've never been there, although she showed me pictures. My mother left it to me in her will. It was a secret, just between us. My brothers and sister don't know. If my mother
could've run away, back to that place, she would've. She told me all about it and that's where I'm gonna be. I'm gonna fix it up—build it from scratch if I have to—and live there with my family. My own family.”

“You're havering, man. If Kathleen's married, what makes you think she'll want back with you?”

“Would you take a look at this face, Tam. Just take a look at this face,” said George, raising his chin, his eyes brightening.

“I know but . . .”

“But what? She loves me. She's always loved me. Plus, I'm that wee girl's father and I think she deserves to know me.”

“What would you do with a baby?”

“She's not a baby any longer, is she?”

“How old is she now?”

“Seven.”

CHAPTER 3

I
'
LL COME WHEN
I
'M GOOD AND READY,” SAID
A
NGUS, UNABLE
even to turn and look at her.

“I was going to serve up.” His wife stood at the door, her hands folded in front of her body.

“I heard you the first time,” he said, hunched over his typewriter, waving at her without turning around, as if she were a bluebottle that was bothering him.

T
hree days he had been home from his office at the
John O'Groat Journal
, working on the manual typewriter that had belonged to Hazel's father, because Maisie was due to calve. The vet had said she would go into labor in about a week, and Angus was keeping an eye on her for signs. Anxious for her to calve as soon as possible, he was spending his evenings pacing the living room instead of reading, terrified that Maisie would go into labor on the Sabbath. The vet had said the calf was breech, although it could turn. When the time came, Maisie would almost certainly need his help.

“I'm sure that God will turn the calf or that Maisie'll calve before or after the Sabbath and we will help her,” Hazel had said when he told her of his worries.

“Are you stupid, woman? God doesn't rise to our commands.” All she had were worn phrases of consolation, already stale as the torn pan bread they used at Communion. Every time he cast eyes on the woman he was filled with vitriol. She would test the patience of a saint.

He was working on a story that would run with the headline O
RPHANED
O
TTER ON THE
R
OAD TO
R
ECOVERY
. He loved animals—more than people, he would sometimes admit—but the story was really
beneath
him. His searing journalistic talent was yet to be discovered, and now, not long after his forty-third birthday, he was beginning to wonder how much longer before he passed the window of discovery and entered the door of oblivion. Hazel's interruption had just caused him to mistype a word. All she did was keep him back. When the article was done, he would have to drive to the
Journal
's office in Wick to submit it.

Angus finished the piece and stacked the pages neatly by the side of the typewriter, then placed them in a file. These stories that he was forced to write belittled him: about otters, local politicians' disgraces, and winners of prizes that no one cared about. The Lord intended more for him.

Angus could see himself as a reporter, not for the
John O'Groat Journal
but for
The Times
. He dreamed of getting wind of a story that would be syndicated worldwide. The story was out there, but Angus knew he could find it within him, as he had found God.

F
inally, Angus went downstairs to dinner. Everyone sat down after Angus sat, and clasped their hands when he held his in prayer.

He closed his eyes and said the blessing quickly, for he was hungry.

As they had been taught, the children—Rachael, fourteen, and Caleb, twelve—waited until Angus raised his cutlery before touching their own. Rachael was turning into a gawky teenager: spots on her chin. Caleb was small and furtive: sleekit-eyed. Angus had had high hopes for them as babies—especially Caleb—but they both still required a lot of guidance.

It was roast lamb, cauliflower cheese, and boiled potatoes, and it was
cold
. Angus scooped a spoonful of cauliflower onto his plate and then tested the temperature.

He threw down his cutlery and held on to the table, facing Hazel.

“What is the meaning of this, woman? Are we animals that we should eat cold slops?”

“It . . . it . . . was warm. I-I . . .”

He hated her most when she stammered. It was as if all the weakness in her had welled up into her mouth and prevented the words from being born.

He had given himself a rule: not to hit her in front of the children, and so he merely swiped his plate to the floor and left for the barn.

“I'll be back in an hour and you know that I expect better,” he said, as he pulled on his Wellingtons and zipped up his anorak.

As he left, their three faces watched him, blanched and unknowing as uncooked buns.

T
he walk to Maisie's pen was five minutes at full pelt. The sheer expectation of seeing her brought warmth to Angus's palms, to his whole body. He had raised her since she was six months old. He loved the velvet pink of her nose and the strong
tendons of her legs, the curve of her flank, the knowing, loving look that she gave him: passive, adoring, pure. He could see clearly that Maisie loved him, as her master. She trusted him utterly and was devoted to him.

Angus had been brought up in Northbay on the southern tip of the Isle of Barra—the youngest of three boys, born to a fishing family. His father had a small boat, but the Campbells also kept a few animals by their croft: chickens, some sheep and cows, and two ponies. It had been Angus's responsibility as a child to look after the animals.

The Campbells' main business had been fish, and the stench of fish guts assumed the house almost as completely as Angus's mother's piety, but the barns had always been the place where he felt safe and most at home. The barns had smelled intimate, warm, and alive. Wild kittens scampered among the straw as Angus milked the cows by hand.

His mother had taught him to fear God and the pain of her wooden spoon. His salty-smelling father, with rough palms and face reddened by the sea wind, had done nothing but abandon him, leaving him alone day after day, taking the older boys out to sea with him, while Angus was left at home with his mother.

“The devil finds work for idle hands,” she would tell Angus, wagging a forefinger sequined with fish scales.

The animals had shown him what was right, more than his parents had, or else he put more weight on the lessons the animals taught him: Primrose rejecting his cold fingers on her udders, Bolt throwing him the day he tried to make him jump the stream. He had learned to love through loving animals. They had taught him boundaries, but they had also bowed to Angus's will. He had found sanctity at last. Love could not be cast back into his face, like sand.

M
AISIE WAS EATING
when he entered her pen. She chewed with diligence despite the heavy protuberance of her abdomen and Angus ran a palm across her flank. “There you go, my girl. I'll look after you. You know that I'll see you right.”

The cow turned to him pink-nosed, submissive. Her face was the kindest, gentlest thing he had ever seen.

CHAPTER 4

I
T HAD BEEN ONLY THREE DAYS SINCE THE CRASH,
BUT AL
ready Margaret was back at work. She had been absent for only one day—the Friday following—but in that time Stephen Hardy had been expelled. She felt exploited, but had yet to speak to Malcolm about it.

Everyone had been surprised that Margaret returned so quickly. Ben had begged her to take a week off, but she had refused. She had a few scratches still visible on her arms and face, and her ribs hurt when she laughed or twisted, but that was all.

“Why would I take a week off when there's nothing wrong with me?” Margaret had said to Ben, wide-eyed. “Besides it's nearly the Christmas holidays.”

“You need to listen to what the doctor said.”

The doctor had told her that she was suffering from shock. Margaret had told Ben that she was fine, and finally he yielded.

Her husband was a big bear of a man, with thick black hair and a lopsided smile. Margaret was tall—over five feet eight—but his size still dwarfed her. Love for them had sprung like mushrooms overnight, sudden but tender, seeming right. They
had been together since university in Bristol, when he had sat next to her in an English lecture—knees akimbo because he couldn't fit into the seat—and asked to borrow a pen from her, before putting it behind his ear and not making a single note for the duration. He was from Liverpool, with a singsong accent and a nice smile, and she had liked him right away.

Now, in her office on the third floor, Margaret remembered his face when she left for work that morning. He had been tired—fresh from sleep—lines on his cheeks from the pillow.

“I think you're being silly,” he said, again, shrugging, hands in his pockets and a night's stubble on his chin. She had stood on tiptoes to kiss him and told him once again that she was fine.

She was attending a deputy head teachers' conference that afternoon and had a presentation to give on behavior management, so she was working through her lunch hour. An uneaten egg sandwich sat by her keyboard.

The crash on the M11 had been a major incident, involving more than thirty vehicles. Most of the injured had been treated at the trauma center at the Royal London Hospital. Margaret knew that she was lucky to be alive.

She felt on edge and her concentration was worse than usual. Now, at her computer, she searched the Internet for news stories of the crash. There were several reports, even in the national papers, because the damage, fatalities, and injuries had been extensive. L
ONDON'S
W
ORST
EVER
P
ILEUP
, the
Mail
had called it.

Although she was trying her best to concentrate, her thoughts returned to the crash. The memory that haunted her most was of the moment when her car had concertinaed around her, the
airbag blew up in her chest, and the fuel tank burst. Each time she recalled it she could remember more details: the sound of metal rasping against metal, the sweat on her palms against the steering wheel, the precise pattern of snow as it blacked out the windshield.

She had come close to being burned alive in her car and the thought both petrified and transfixed her. She didn't know why, but the memory was compulsive. She had mentioned it briefly to the doctor and he had said it was a symptom of post-traumatic stress.

She was an atheist and had never been superstitious, but the burned man had appeared like a guardian angel, saving her seconds before a lingering, agonizing death. She had barely spoken to him and then he had disappeared into the snow, obviously wounded. At the hospital, the waiting room was crowded and Margaret had searched for his face, but she hadn't seen him.

T
HERE WAS A
knock on Margaret's office door and Malcolm entered. She pushed up her sleeves.

“I heard you were back. How are you?”

He had phoned the house over the weekend, but Ben had taken the call.

“I'm all right, thanks. Glad to be back.”

“You were so lucky. Absolutely horrendous . . .”

“I know.”

“You know it's fine if you take more time . . .”

“Thanks. I just wanted to get back and get stuck in. You know how it is.”

Malcolm nodded, frowning.

“Listen, I heard about Stephen,” Margaret said, standing up to face him, leaning against her desk.

“I'm sorry. I knew how you felt,” he said. “I spoke to Jonathan . . .”

Jonathan was the deputy head for curriculum.

“Why did you speak to him?
I'm
the deputy responsible for counseling services. What's Jonathan got to do with it?”

Malcolm smiled and colored. “Look, your opinion was the most important, and I took it on board, but ultimately it was my decision.”

“I asked you to consider
Stephen
, and his
life
. . .”

“Margaret, the decision's been made.”

“You had
no right
.”

“I think you'll find—”

“You
knew
how I felt!”

Malcolm closed the door, and it was only then that Margaret realized she had been shouting. Her heart was beating so fast that she could feel it against her rib cage. It was beating as hard as it had the moment when she thought she would die.

“It was my call and it was approved by the chair of governors. I don't exclude pupils lightly, but I think it was the right thing to do. I kept the police out of it.”

“That doesn't make it all right.”

“However valid your arguments, I wasn't convinced it was the best way to go. I'm sure there will be another time when your view will be supported.”

“This isn't
about me
!” said Margaret, feeling the heat in her face. “It's about him, don't you realize what you've done?” She began to cry.

Malcolm's lips parted in shock.

She tried to compose herself, immediately embarrassed and confused.

A
t 3
P.M.
, Margaret stood before a group of deputy head teachers from across the London boroughs to give her presentation on Byron Academy's behavior management strategy. The meeting was in a high school in Camden—a 1960s building with low ceilings and strip lighting. Midwinter and the heating was on full blast. She felt sweat at her hairline.

She had spoken to this group many times, but today she felt young and vulnerable before them. Her uneaten sandwich was still in her bag and her stomach rumbled. She placed a hand on her midriff to silence it.

Margaret glanced at her rough notes, then bent over the laptop to pull up her slides. Her fingers were trembling.

She knew the topic inside and out. Not only had she been in management for more than six years, but she had worked her way up and diversified her fields: head of department, head of the Learning Support Unit. She was one of the youngest deputies in the room, but she knew she was one of the most experienced.

“Thanks for coming, everyone, and thanks to John for providing the cakes,” Margaret began, her voice wavering. She cleared her throat, then reached for a glass of water, noticing again the tremor in her hand. There was a murmur of laughter and quiet conversation.

Margaret beamed a large smile at the group and clasped her hands. “Today I want to run through not just behavior management . . .”—she was aware of her heart beating—“but I want to talk about our school drugs and sex education policies and our counseling approach to . . . to . . .”

The notes shook in her hand and she lost her place.

“You can see here,” she began, turning to the image projected onto the whiteboard. It showed a pupil with his head
down on the desk. The words she had planned to say, about disengagement from learning and disenfranchisement, swirled inside her head. She had given this talk so many times before, yet now she struggled to formulate the words to explain the correlation between achievement and behavior. She knew it all by heart, but there was not enough air in her lungs to complete the sentence. A trickle of sweat coursed between her shoulder blades. She tried to swallow but her mouth was dry.

Her trembling forefinger was too heavy on the button for the next slide and she accidentally shunted too far forward, then fumbled for a moment with the mouse—tremulous cursor on the screen—until she retraced her steps.
Get a hold of yourself,
she thought.

She felt, in this safe, warm staff room, as she had felt trapped in her burning car.

The air wouldn't go deep inside her lungs when she tried to breathe. She turned to the slide again
,
full of hope for recovery, but could say nothing more. She thought she was going to faint. Every time she tried to speak, she sounded as if she were running upstairs.

“I'm sorry,” she said finally, touching her face and finding it damp with sweat. Margaret put down her pointer, picked up her coat, and left the room.

O
utside, the cold air was a deliverance. She was wearing a suit and an open-necked blouse and it was still freezing, but the weather was what she needed. She didn't know what was happening to her. Her heartbeat began to slow as shame filled her. She had actually cried in front of Malcolm and now she had humiliated herself further in front of all her regional colleagues. It wasn't like her. She was passionate but
professional. She had never shouted at a colleague, or burst into tears, or broken down in a presentation.

She put on her coat and walked to the Tube, feeling defeated. On the way, she took her phone out of her pocket and scrolled to Ben's name in her contacts, letting her thumb hover over the call sign, but then turned it off. She needed to get things clear in her own head first, before trying to explain to anyone else. Instead, she walked with her hands inside her parka, no longer sure of where she was going or what she was doing.

However much she wished to deny it, it was clear to Margaret that the crash had affected her. She had argued with Ben and forced herself to come straight back to work, but privately she admitted that the doctor might have been right that she was in shock. Yet shock wasn't a clearly defined illness. She had no spots or infection; she could find no wound. Apart from the breakdown at work, the only tangible change was in her mind, with its constant replay of being trapped in a car about to explode and burn. It was as if her mind was a scratched CD, returning and returning to that moment in her life when she nearly died.

At Camden Town, she stood looking at the Tube map, as if she were a tourist discovering it for the first time. She could go back to work, a few stops away, or she could go home. She felt cold and alone, almost disembodied.

Despite herself, her attention focused on Whitechapel station. After a moment's consideration, she pushed through the barrier, descended the stairs, and boarded the Northern Line, then changed to the Hammersmith & City. She was walking slowly and found that people jostled her on the escalators and the platform and again while climbing the stairs to ascend to street level. When she emerged, she followed the signs for the Royal London Hospital.

As she approached the hospital, she slowed her steps. It was bitterly cold and she turned up her collar, breathing through her nose to try to warm the air. She had been taken to the Royal London on the night of the crash, and she felt at once relieved yet anxious to be returning. She knew why she had been drawn here. She wanted to find the man from the crash: the memory of him walking away haunted her. She needed to know that he had received treatment for his injuries. She wanted to know his name.

W
hen she arrived, she went straight to reception.

“How can I help you, my love?”

“I'm sorry to bother you. I just wanted to ask if you remembered the M11 pileup a few days ago? I wanted—”

“How can I forget? I worked all night.”

“Oh, great,” said Margaret, smiling suddenly. “I mean, I'm sorry, that must've been a nightmare. It's just, I was one of the casualties . . . I was OK, only a few scratches, as you can see, but there was a man that helped me. He was hurt too, and I wondered if he had been admitted. I wanted to visit him and thank him.”

“Well, I can check for you. What's his name?”

Margaret raised her shoulders in apology. “I don't know his name. I wondered if you would be able to help me work out who he is?”

“Oh no, I'm sorry, love. If you don't know his name . . .”

“He was quite distinctive. This man, he had been burned—he had significant facial scarring, old scars from some time ago. He was strikingly disfigured.”

“I'm sorry, love, this is a hospital and—”

“He must have broken his hand and he was bleeding from his forehead. He might have been admitted for . . .”

“Well, there really is no way to identify him.”

“He
saved my life
.”

“I'm sorry, I can't help you.”

Margaret wanted to explain further, but there was a queue.

“I'm sorry,” the woman said again, as she turned her attention to the next person in line.

M
argaret stood outside the hospital, buttoning her coat and wondering what to do. She was near the smoking shelter and was surprised at how many people were crowded inside it to smoke. There were visitors in heavy jackets and patients with coats pulled over pajamas—smoking with one hand while the other was attached to a drip.

Margaret put on her gloves and was about to leave when a nurse who was smoking near her touched her arm.

“I heard you talking to Carol,” said the woman. She had large brown eyes and a grip that Margaret felt through the sleeve of her parka. “You were asking about the guy that came in the other night—the one with the scars.”

“Maybe,” said Margaret. “How did you—”

“He's scarred from the face to the waist . . . terrible. I've never seen anyone as bad and I'm a nurse. Is that the guy you mean?”