9. The Reckoning

REMEMBERING THE FORGOTTEN THINGS (9)

I guess I’ve become a memory addict. Or rather, a man addicted to discovering what really happened behind the fuzzy blur of what I thought I was remembering properly, and it was with this in mind that I found myself, the very next day after a restless night, returning once again to the home of my new friend, Professor Josiah Dingle.

“I can’t even sleep at nights,” I told him over coffee after explaining that I didn’t really know one thing about what I thought I could remember of the past.

“Really?” he asked in that irritating tone of his, somewhere between intense fascination and complete disinterest.

“I had completely forgotten that day at Perry’s reception,” I told him, “the way the lovely Katie had seduced me...”

“Or you seduced her?” he put in, mildly.

“Whichever way it was. But how come it had gone from my memory? How come I had no idea that it had happened?”

“You’ll have to try to remember what happened next,” he suggested. “Put it like this: we block memories as a form of self-protection because remembering some events is simply too destructive and painful. So something must have happened next because a quick fumble in a cloakroom isn’t enough to force you to put up the barricades and hide away from reality, surely?” he murmured, getting straight to the point in a way that made me flinch.

“I don't know,” I wavered.

“It’s in your head, Roger,” he said quietly, “not forgotten but hidden from your conscious self so that you can get on with your life untroubled by whatever it is you’re hiding. Did I understand you to say you and this girl, Katie, were planning to set up home together?”

I nodded. “We were,” I affirmed, “my mum had already moved in with a maiden aunt of mine ofter dad passed away, leaving me in need of a place of my own because, much as I loved her the last thing I wanted was to up sticks and move to the other end of the country now that I had a job at the town library.”

“You were librarian?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

I grinned. “No, just a lonely assistant working under a rather prim and severe librarian, but with ambitions to climb into his chair eventually,” I said, “the librarian, old Mr Gardener, was no spring chicken and I quite fancied that chair in his office! Anyway, I found a small flat and Katie was going to move in with me, but it never happened...”

“Why?” he asked, penetratingly.

“She died,” I replied, simply, “she went horse riding, and died when the horse threw her on a quiet country lane after a car zoomed past. So cruel. So thoughtless.”

“And you blame yourself for that?” he asked.

I hadn’t thought of it like that. Had I felt responsible even though I wasn’t driving the car that spooked the horse? Why, I hadn’t been anywhere near the darned animal! I wasn’t much into country pursuits and left that side of her interests strictly up to her.

“No,” I whispered, “it wasn’t down to me...”

“Well, something’s tied your little grey cells into forgetful knots,” he grinned.

“Maybe it would be better if it stayed that way?” I asked, “after all, I’ve had half a century of not worrying about it, so what good would be served by me starting to fret now?”

“It’s up to you,” he pointed out, “the chair’s there waiting to reveal all if you want it to.”

And that was the fork in my mental road. I could carry on as I’ve been for most of my already decently long life or I could explore a side turning and discover what had always prevented my going that way. Maybe it was nothing. Surely, I reasoned, if it was important I would have had some kind of inkling as to what it was.

Then, rashly, I decided.

“I’ll give it a go,” I said, and moved into his memory chair before I could change my mind.

“Good lad! I knew you would!” he said, grinning at me.

It wasn’t hard bringing the memory of Katie to mind, because one of the things that I was quite certain of was the clear recollection I’ve always had of her intention to share the flat with me, and I could even remember that without any assistance from the electronic circuitry devised by Josiah.

It had been a day unlike any other and to my utter shock and disbelief it seemed she had already moved some of her things into the small flat. For fifty years I’d thought the sound I could hear was rain pattering on the roof and windows as Katie ran like the lively and wonderful lass she was up to the door, and pushed it open. I’d remembered her being wet and her hair dripping with water, and as the image formed in my mind I could see that it was.

But instead of a raincoat she had a towel round her and another scrunched up on her head as she pummelled her hair dry.

She was already there! Showering in the flat, fresh from bed! Our bed!

“You had something you wanted to tell me,” I ventured, watching her, excitement rising within me as I saw how absolutely physically perfect she was, and how she mischievously revealed little flashes of her flesh as she dried herself.

“I did,” she said, “and it’s important.”

“Go on, then,” I invited her.

“You remember that wedding we met at?” she asked, “when your friend Perry married my friend Amanda?”

I grinned at her. “Could I ever forget it!” I said.

“And what we did in the cloakroom?”

To tell the truth I’d already become a bit hazy about what we’d done in that cloakroom. I knew she’d been in the driving seat and that my body had ended up in a state of unbelievably ecstatic bliss, but as if the actual deed itself, I was in two minds. Had we or hadn’t we? I knew that my part of the moment had been accompanied by a gigantic personal explosion of unbelievable ferocity, but had hers? And if so, had it been mutual? Look, I was a callow, shallow and unbelievably egocentric individual back then, and had absolutely no prior experience of that sort of thing.

“Sort of,” I admitted.

“What do you mean sort of? We did … it …, you know what I mean by it, and you must jolly well remember it!” she flared up. “And I let you because I took a real fancy to you from the word go!”

“I wasn’t sure…,” I rambled.

“Well then, Roger my lad, you’d better get used to it! And quickly! Because, don’t you know, you’re going to be a daddy soon enough and I don’t want a silly old ditherer as a father for my child!”

And there it was, out in the open like it should always have been.

“Me?” I asked, feebly.

That caused a flare up. “Of course you!” she said, tartly, “what sort of girl do you think I am and how many men do you think I’ve done it with? Eh? Of course it’s you, and you’d better get used to it!”

I knew as she said that that there was something wrong. Surely what had been no more than an almost juvenile fumble couldn’t have such monumental consequences as this, could it?

“I’m pregnant,” she continued, “and you’re the daddy! Now be an angel and pass me my clothes, those over there, I’m going out to the stable for a nice calming ride while you cook dinner.”

And she did that.

She dressed in her jodhpurs and tucked a riding had under one arm. And without saying any more, though she did whisper goodbye daddy as she slipped out, she made her way out of my home and my life for the very last time.

I would never see her again.

© Peter Rogerson 16.06.20