The Man Who Forgot His Wife (11 page)

As soon as we are settled, I go and buy enough drinks for the whole journey; an hour or so later Maddy goes off to the buffet car to buy the food I neglected to get. But she is taking much longer than I had, and I find myself glancing down the aisle looking to see what has happened to her. There is still no sign of her when a message comes over the tannoy
.

‘This is a passenger announcement …’ (Back then we are only ‘passengers’; it is before we are re-graded as ‘customers’ so that we can be that much more indignant when we don’t get what we have paid for.) For a split second I think, ‘A female train guard – you don’t hear that very often.’

‘British Rail would like to apologize for the fact that the man serving in the buffet car is such a sexist wanker. British Rail now accept that none of the female passengers on this train wish to be asked if they have a boyfriend, nor be asked for their phone number by a middle-aged man wearing a wedding ring and a name badge saying Jeff.’ Maddy has the dull monotone delivery to perfection. Other people in the seats around me are suddenly looking at each other with widening grins, while my heartbeat has just got faster than the train. ‘They would also appreciate it if Jeff could attempt to maintain eye contact while serving the All Day Breakfast Bap instead of staring so obviously at the breasts of the female on the other side of the counter. Our next station-stop is Didcot Parkway, where Jeff really ought to consider alighting from the train and lying on the track in front of it. Thank you.’

There is a spontaneous round of applause from all the women customers in our carriage. A couple of them even cheer. Only the old lady sitting nearby carefully listens to the whole thing with concerned concentration, as if it were just another official announcement
.

I can’t wait for Maddy to come back. I am so fantastically proud of her; she is funny and brave and has made total strangers on a train start laughing and talking to one another. The hubbub is still going as she saunters through the door with a completely straight face as if nothing has happened. ‘There’s our rogue announcer!’ I boast loudly, demonstratively clearing the table so that the star of the moment can put down my beer cans and the now famous All Day Breakfast Bap. It is probably a mistake to tell the whole carriage like that. But we don’t particularly mind being turfed off the train at Didcot Parkway. I mean, it’s not as if there is absolutely nothing to do in Didcot on a Tuesday evening
.

The defining characteristic of this memory was the powerful sensations of love and pride it conjured up. Her entrance into our carriage felt like one of the funniest moments in the history of the world. Just the insouciance with which she calmly sat herself
down
and began eating the bap; it was a deadpan comedy triumph.

And yet it was deeply frustrating to have so little else of our past lives in which to place it. It was as if I was living in one tiny cell, my head bumping against the ceiling as I paced back and forth re-examining every familiar brick and floor tile. My life-map was incredibly detailed on everything that had happened since 22 October and then there were just a few aerial snapshots of the uncharted continent beyond.

The train-tannoy memory had come to me as I had woken up, with no logical associations or identifiable trigger. Except that I had been thinking about Maddy when I went to sleep and I was still thinking about her when I woke up. It was a few days after the court case and for once I had slept in late. I desperately wanted to have the story officially verified by Gary and Linda, but the two of them had already left for their appointment at the hospital. I think Linda may have booked an extra scan to prove to Gary that there really was a baby in there.

I made myself a cup of tea and thought I would try it without sugar, the way the old Vaughan took it. If I was going to return to normal, I reasoned, I should try to do everything as I used to. I took one sip, winced, and reached for the sugar bowl. I wandered around the flat in my pyjamas. I looked at the spines of the books on the shelves, rows of celebrity life stories ghostwritten by someone else. I turned on the television and flicked through dozens of channels, old repeats of soap operas featuring families screaming at one another, punctuated with adverts of families laughing and getting along. I turned it off and stared at the blank screen for a while. Beyond the television stand were various entangled wires, cables and redundant VHS plugs. It could be as chaotic and knotted as you liked behind the scenes as long as the right plugs stayed in the right sockets. ‘Come on, come on!’ I said out loud, and smacked my forehead in
frustration,
as if the picture might revert to normal if I hit the top of the set.

I resolved that I was going to go and talk to Maddy alone. She was probably still furious with me after my
volte-face
in the courtroom, but I felt I owed it to her to tell her, one to one, what had happened to me. If she was not at home, I had the address of ‘the studio’ where she worked. I had learned that Madeleine was not a painter, but an artist none the less, selling huge framed photos she had taken of London landmarks, which funded her more experimental photographic works displayed in galleries and exhibitions. It made me that little bit more proud of her. Maddy was a photographer, and a classy one by the sound of it. It was a relief that the woman I was divorcing did not spend every Saturday taking pictures of brides and grooms.

An hour later I was finally ready to leave the flat to face her. I took a last look at myself in the hallway mirror. And then I went and changed my entire outfit again.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’ said Maddy, opening her front door.

‘Hello.’

‘Well?’

‘I wanted to meet – I mean,
talk
to you. Properly.’

‘You’ve got a bloody nerve.’

Our first moments alone together. In my fantasy reunion I had imagined her being more pleased to see me.

‘I thought I owed you an explanation. Are you alone?’

The dog was barking from the back garden.

‘What business is it of yours?’

‘It’s just – well, it’s complicated, and if the kids are in, then …’

‘No, they’re at school, obviously.’ I hovered there for a decade or so. ‘All right, well, you’d better come in,’ and she turned and headed inside. I stood in the doorway, looking at a huge black-and-white photo of Barleycove for far too long, until she came back
out
from the kitchen and said, ‘Well? Are you coming in or not?’

‘Sorry, yeah. Do I need to take my shoes off?’

‘What? When have we ever done that?’

‘I dunno – I forgot …’

‘Makes a change …’ she mumbled to herself.

The dog came bounding down the hallway and nearly knocked me over with his enthusiasm. I tried to give him some attention as I gazed around in wonder. It was not one of those pristine and perfectly furnished homes you see in glossy property magazines. It would have been an unconventional interior décor consultant who suggested that the fruit bowl might also be the ideal place to keep that old phone charger and a ping-pong ball.

I could feel myself shaking as we entered the kitchen. I didn’t know quite where to start with my news. I didn’t want it to spoil my first moments with her. A battered iPod was plugged into some speakers and I recognized the song.

‘Hey, you like Coldplay! I love Coldplay!’ I said.

‘No, you don’t. You hate Coldplay. You always made me turn it off when you were in the house.’

‘Oh. Well, I like it now …’

‘So, what’s going on, Vaughan? You ignore all my emails and texts and then you turn up to the court and pull a stunt like that.’ Her brow went all creased when she looked concerned.

‘Erm, well, the thing is, that a couple of weeks ago – the twenty-second of October to be precise, at some point in the late afternoon I think—’

‘Yes?’

‘I was sort of … reborn.’

She looked at me with suspicion.

‘You’ve become a Christian?’

‘No! No, although you saying that now tells me that I wasn’t a Christian before, which I didn’t know.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I was in hospital for a week or so, following a psychogenic fugue.’

‘A what?’

‘It means that my mind completely wiped itself of all personal memories. I lost all knowledge of my own name, identity, family, friends. I still haven’t got my memories back. I’ve been told that we’ve been married for fifteen years and that I’ve known you for twenty. But standing here right now, it’s like I’m talking to you for the very first time.’

There was a pause while she just regarded me suspiciously.

‘Fuck off!’

‘It’s true. You can ring the hospital—’

‘Bollocks. I don’t know what your scam is, but you’re not getting this house!’ Her accent was more pronounced when she swore; it was a soft Scouse, presumably diluted by a couple of decades spent down south.

‘Yeah, Gary told me that we were getting a divorce, although I don’t remember why. The doctor said the stress I experienced from the marriage break-up might be what triggered the fugue.’

‘The stress
you
experienced! You weren’t ever here to experience any stress; you were staying late at work, or going round to Gary’s to fart around on computers while I was being stressed all on my own, and I haven’t forgotten that, I can tell you.’

‘It’s a lovely kitchen. Really homey.’

‘Why are you being so weird, Vaughan? And why are you patting the dog like that, you know he doesn’t like it—’

‘No,
I don’t know
! I don’t know anything. For most of last week I had a hospital label on my wrist saying “UNKNOWN WHITE MALE”. Look, I’ve still got it. And see this metal tag around my neck? It has my name and contact numbers on it in case my brain wipes all over again and I’m left wandering the streets not knowing where to go or who to call.’

She had made me a mug of tea and plonked it down unceremoniously in front of me.

‘Do you have any sugar?’ I asked.

‘You don’t take sugar.’

‘That’s what Gary said. He reckoned I used to smoke as well.’

She leaned closer and smelt me. ‘That’s what’s different about you. You don’t stink of stale nicotine. I can’t believe you finally gave up.’

‘I didn’t give up. It’s like the addiction was wiped along with everything else.’

She was leaning against the sink with her arms folded and seemed perplexed as to why I should make up such an extraordinary story. Then she pulled out her mobile phone and I heard one end of a conversation with Linda. She was looking at me as she talked, her eyes widening and her face draining of colour. When she had finished she just slumped down on a kitchen chair and stared at me.

‘That is so typical of you!’

‘What?’

‘All that crap I’m still dealing with and then you just wipe the slate clean and forget all about it …’

‘Oh. Sorry.’

‘My God, how are the kids going to take this? It’s bad enough that we’ve split up, but this means – well, now their own father doesn’t even know them!’

She seemed close to tears, and part of me wanted to comfort her, but her body language did not suggest I should move in for a hug.

‘The doctors reckon there’s a chance I could return to normal – though I don’t think any of them really understand what’s happened.’

‘They’ll be home from school in a few hours. What do I tell them? You can’t be here – they’ll be scarred for life.’

‘Whatever you say. You know what’s best for them – I don’t.’

‘Yeah, well, no change there.’ And she glanced up and saw me looking a little lost in the middle of her kitchen, then softened slightly. ‘Sorry. It’s just …’

‘It’s okay. Where’s the bin for the tea bag?’

‘Same as always. Oh, I mean you pull out that cupboard there. This is too weird …’

‘Oh, that’s clever – the lid lifts up as you open the cupboard. It really is a lovely kitchen.’

‘I thought you were being a bit odd in court from the outset. All that trying to catch my eye and give me little waves.’

‘Sorry, it’s just that normally you get to meet your wife
before
you divorce her.’

‘God, you were under oath in that courtroom – you’d promised to tell the truth.’

‘I
did
tell the truth – I said I couldn’t remember.’

‘So … I still don’t understand – you literally cannot remember us? Or any of this?’

‘Not really.’

‘Not really?’

‘All right – not at all. Although a couple of moments have come back. I remember the tent collapsing in Ireland and you using the guard’s tannoy on some long rail journey?’

‘Oh yeah, we got kicked off the train for that.’

‘Didcot Parkway.’

‘No, it was Ealing Broadway.’

I didn’t contradict her, but it was definitely Didcot Parkway.

‘But that’s all, so far. Except the other night I had a powerful dream about someone nicknamed Bambi.’

Maddy blushed slightly but said nothing.

‘What? You know, don’t you? Who’s Bambi?’

‘Bambi is what you used to call me. Years ago, when we were at university.’

‘Bambi?’

‘You said I had the same eyes. Can’t believe I fell for that.’ She mimed putting her fingers down her throat.

‘But Bambi was a boy, wasn’t he?’

‘Yeah, and a deer as well. Apart from that, I looked just like him.’

‘Yeah, well – if it’s not too forward of me – you have got very nice eyes.’

Maddy seemed momentarily lost for words and sipped her tea. ‘You really have forgotten everything, haven’t you? I have “nice eyes”? Where the hell does that come from? You said I was a selfish cow, you said I was ruining your life.’

‘Did I? I’m sorry if I said that. But I just don’t remember.’

‘Yeah, well, how nice for you.’

‘It’s not very nice really,’ I said slowly, staring at the floor. ‘It was incredibly distressing to start with.’

‘Sorry. It’s just a bit hard to get my head around it. So – like, you didn’t know your own name or anything?’

‘Not for the whole week I was in hospital. All I could think about was who I might have been before my amnesia. I began to worry whether my life had been a good one, whether I had been a good person, you know what I mean?’