The Man Who Forgot His Wife (13 page)

‘What, you and me give the marriage another go? That was pretty mad, you must admit.’

A round of applause echoed across the piazza. If she could only
get
to know me, she would surely see how sincere and attentive I was. She’d forget all that negative stuff she’d heard about me from her divorce lawyer and would be convinced that here, finally, was the man for her.

‘How are the kids?’ I was keen to hear about them, and I wanted to remind her of the things we had in common.

‘They’re fine. I’ve tried to give them an inkling of what’s happened to you, but Dillie was quite upset by it all. So we’re going to have to handle it very carefully …’

Privately I was frightened of being introduced to my own children. I was desperate to make the right first impression on two people who had known me all their lives. Surely they would see it in my eyes – my distance, my coldness.

‘Okay, I’ll follow your lead. But tell them I can’t wait to meet them.’

‘No, I won’t say that.’

‘I mean see them.
Again
.’

I ripped open the top of a sugar sachet and shared the contents between my coffee cup and the surface of the table.

‘Still taking sugar then?’

‘For as long as I can remember …’

‘But you’re not smoking? I can’t believe all those years I begged you to give up and you said it was impossible. And then you give up just like that!’

‘Yup, that’s all it takes, a bit of willpower. And a psychogenic fugue. Are you sure I can’t get you a blueberry muffin or anything?’

‘When have I ever eaten blueberry muffins?’

‘I don’t know, do I? I do not have the
mental capacity
to choose you a muffin.’

‘Sorry, I forgot.’

‘Hey, that’s my catchphrase.’

‘So just how much can you remember now? If you can remember the camping holiday when you ignored that gale warning and
the
time you got us kicked off the train … is it all starting to come back?’

I thought about her shouting at me about the smoke alarm. ‘No, there’s not much else yet.’

‘Well, maybe that’s a blessing.’

‘I don’t remember why we split up – it feels like it doesn’t make sense. I was serious about what I said in the courtroom. About us giving it another go …’

‘Come off it, Vaughan – we had long enough to make our marriage work. It was over a long time ago.’ And then she put down her coffee cup and her demeanour changed as if she had made a decision to stop being so restrained and adult about this. ‘God, when I think of the shit I had to put up with!’

‘Hey, it wasn’t all me, you know!’ I had no evidence to back this up, but I felt no responsibility for things of which I had no memory. ‘It takes two people to make a marriage fail.’

‘Yeah, that’s what Dr Crippen said …’

‘Anyway, there is something else I remember,’ I said triumphantly. ‘I remember you being too cross about trivial things. Going ballistic because I forgot to replace the battery in the smoke alarm—’

‘Trivial?’

‘In the broad scheme of things, yes. I mean I don’t see why it was such a big deal.’

She looked at me as if I was completely stupid. ‘Because there was a fire.’

At first I thought this must be a joke. I had spent too much time with Gary.

‘What?’

‘Because there was a fire. That’s why I was cross. There was a fire in our kitchen while we were all asleep, and the smoke alarm failed to go off because you had taken the battery out.’

This is why it is best to be in full command of the facts when you get into an argument.

‘Shit! That sounds scary. I – I don’t remember that bit …’ I mumbled.

‘But you remember me being cross about it?’

‘Vaguely … Were we outside?’

‘Er, yes, because our house was on fire. The whole family was standing in the back garden in pyjamas while the fire brigade chucked all the charred, smouldering kitchen units out on to the patio.’

I tried to picture the scene but it was still lost to me. ‘Blimey. So who raised the alarm?’

‘Er, well, I got the kids up when you nudged me and asked if I could smell smoke.’

‘Oh, well, so at least I raised the alarm.’

‘You woke me up and said “Can you smell smoke?” And then I leapt up and ran to the children.’

‘But I was the one who smelt the smoke? So that sort of cancels out removing the battery?’

‘No, it does not – we could all have been killed! We had to completely refit the kitchen! That could all have been avoided—’

‘I might have smelt smoke quicker than the alarm would have detected it …’

‘Okay – you were the hero of the hour! Wow, that’s quite a re writing of history there. Silly me – I must have remembered it all wrong.’

I couldn’t help thinking that this was our first tiff, but thought it best not to mention it.

‘A rose for the lady?’ said a flower-seller, in a powerful Eastern European accent. The scent of roses was slightly lost in the fug of tobacco smoke from the wet cigarette hanging from his lip.

‘Er, no. No, thank you.’

‘Hey, lady – doesn’t he love you? You want him buy you romantic flower?’

‘No, thank you very much.’

The vendor wandered off, but his appearance had punctured the increasingly dangerous atmosphere.

‘You can’t just wipe the slate clean and start again, Vaughan.’

‘But that’s exactly what’s happened! Okay, I’ve forgotten everything, but then so have you. You’ve forgotten how you used to feel. I meant what I said in the courtroom.’

‘Look, you’re attracted to this romantic idea of Vaughan and his happy wife, because you are understandably desperate to get your past back. But your past isn’t what you imagine it is. You can’t just go back to the happy bits. It wasn’t all drunken giggling in a tent, I can tell you.’

‘I’m not thinking about the past, I’m thinking about the future. When I first saw you and the home we made together … If you could have seen all that through fresh eyes like I did, you wouldn’t want to just let it all go.’

‘Yes, but your eyes can’t see
you
spoiling the view. It’s like seeing a pretty house from the motorway and thinking, “I’d like to live there.”’ A ripple of applause came from the crowd, as if to compliment Maddy on a point well made.

‘Look, people change,’ I pleaded. ‘Clearly I have changed. And I’m really sorry about all the things that hurt you when our marriage went wrong. I can’t imagine why I would have done them, but if it’s any consolation I clearly found it all so traumatic that my brain completely wiped any memory of it along with everything else. And now the only thing I can remember about you is how passionately I felt when we first met.’

‘Yeah, well, you wait till you get the rest of your memory back. You don’t love me, Vaughan. Your mind is still playing tricks on you.’

The chain-smoking flower seller had had no success and by now had started on the next café along from us.

‘Excuse me!’ I called across to him.

‘Vaughan, no!’

‘How much are the roses?’

‘Four pounds a stem,’ he said, rushing over. ‘Beautiful rose for beautiful lady.’

‘Vaughan – do
not
buy me a rose.’

But the nicotine-stained fingers were already pulling out one cellophane-wrapped instant love token.

‘No, no,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you fifty pounds for the whole lot.’

‘All of them?’

‘Vaughan – you’re wasting your money.’

‘Sixty pounds!’

‘Fifty quid and you can finish work now.’ The man gave an impassive nod and quickly exchanged the notes in my hand for a huge bunch of skinny red roses.

‘He love you very much.’

‘Actually, we were just finalizing our divorce,’ she explained.

‘Your wife – funny lady!’ laughed the flower seller. But neither of us joined in. My dramatic gesture had only irritated Maddy further and now she just brusquely worked her way through her checklist of all the practical things she needed to sort out. Though our lives would continue to require contact and cooperation, she did not want to be my friend.

Desperately, I made one last pitch to her.

‘My memory loss might be the best thing that ever happened to us!’

‘For God’s sake, Vaughan, one of the things that used to drive me mad about you was that you forgot everything I told you. If it was anything about
your
life then you remembered it all right, sure, but if it was something I was doing, then it wasn’t important enough for you to register. And suddenly you don’t remember a thing about me and you think that’s going to make you more attractive to me? I’d say this was just the logical conclusion to the way the whole relationship had been going for twenty years. First you forget the milk I ask you to pick up on the way home; then you forget I’ve got an exhibition coming up, or that I asked you to come home early so I could get to the processors; then you forget
our
anniversary or that you gave me the same Christmas present last year; until finally you completely forget every single thing about me – my name, what I looked like … you completely forgot I even existed. I don’t see what the big deal is with the doctors and neurologists, because you forgot I existed years ago. This isn’t a mental illness. This is just who you are. It’s over, Vaughan! We are getting a divorce. End of story. End of us.’

And she got up and walked away, leaving fifty red roses on the table in front of me. I sat there, wincing at my overpowering cold espresso until the heater beside me flickered and then went out. Daylight was fading and I realized I was shivering. What had I been thinking – it was ridiculous to believe you could keep the summer going for ever.

Across the square I observed an elderly lady with a walking stick. She had stopped walking altogether and just stood still in the middle of the pavement, staring at the ground. She looked worn out; defeated even. Determined that some good might come out of all of this, I picked up the over-large bunch of roses and strode towards her.

‘Excuse me, would you permit me to give you fifty red roses?’ I said, with all the charm I could muster.

She looked at me suspiciously for a moment. ‘Pervert!’ she said.

Chapter 10

‘VAUGHAN. I’VE GOT
some bad news, mate.’ It was exactly a month since my fugue and I had come in to find Gary seated in the kitchen, using a bread knife to try to skewer the last pickled onions in the jar.

‘What? What is it?’

‘Maybe you should sit down?’

‘Is it Maddy – is it one of the kids? Just tell me.’

‘No – it’s your father. He’s had another heart attack.’

A stunned pause followed.

‘
My father?!
I didn’t know I had a bloody father. My father is alive? Why didn’t you say that my father was alive?’

‘Er, well, I just assumed you knew. I mean, you never specifically asked …’ Gary raised his hands defensively as if to say it was nothing to do with him.

‘But you talked about my parents in the
past tense
. You said they
were
a great couple.’

‘Well – the past is like, when I knew them. So, anyway, that’s good news, then, if you thought he was dead. He’s not – he’s alive. Just. Although you might not want to leave it too long, mate …
Heart
attack – that’s quite serious, isn’t it?’ And then, as if he thought it might be some sort of comfort, ‘Do you want a pickled onion?’

Questions I wished I had asked long before were fired at Gary faster than he could fail to answer them.

‘How old is he?’ ‘Is he conscious?’ ‘When was his last attack before this one?’ And even harder to answer than the others: ‘What do I call him?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Do I say “Dad” or “Daddy” or “Pop”, or call him by his first name or what?’

‘I dunno. “Dad”, I think. Yeah, I’d say anything else would have been unusual enough for me to remember it.’

All Gary knew was that Madeleine had called to say that she was going to the hospital with the kids to see their grandfather. He was out of intensive care, and could be visited for a short period.

‘Madeleine called?’

‘She called Linda’s mobile. She said she thought you should know.’

‘Oh. Did Maddy say anything else? Did she want me to ring her?’

‘No.’

‘No, she didn’t say?’

‘No – she said don’t ring her. She left the number of the hospital. But here’s a funny thing …’

‘What?’

‘The number of the hospital ends in all ones. It’s like one, one, one, one. That’s weird, innit?’

I slumped into a chair and now that Gary could see the bad news had finally hit me, he did his best to empathize, in his blokey, awkward way.

‘It must be, like, really difficult for you, mate.’

‘Yeah, well …’

‘Not remembering anything about him, and then finding out the old ticker’s gone kaboom.’

‘Yeah – it’s not good.’

‘Not good. Exactly. That’s exactly what it is. It’s
not
good. These taste a bit off. Can pickled onions go off?’

‘Do you know exactly when Madeleine’s going to be visiting him?’

‘Er, no. But you could ring them. It’s because they’re in fancy vinegar, like balsamic or whatever.’

‘Maybe I should call her anyway. You know – to find out what time she’s going to be there and how it works and everything.’

‘You could do. Except she said don’t call her. Hmm – I feel a bit sick now.’

I had not felt ready to meet my own children yet, anxious that I should feel fully prepared. But with my father, events now forced me to arrange an immediate introduction. I had to get to know him so that I could be properly upset if he died.

There was a moment as I entered the hospital when I wondered if I ought to buy my dad something from the gift shop. A card perhaps, or some flowers? Or something to demonstrate confidence in the idea that he would soon be much better: a magazine maybe, or even a book? Nothing too long, though;
War and Peace
or the fourth Harry Potter would clearly be over-egging it. But of course I had no knowledge of my father’s tastes or interests. ‘Dad’ was currently an amalgam of all the paternal role models that had survived my amnesia. Baron von Trapp and King Lear were mixed up with Homer Simpson, Darth Vader and the jokey father from that 1970s gravy advert.