10. A Moment of Understanding

REMEMBERING THE FORGOTTEN THINGS (10)

“So that was it?” asked Professor Josiah Dingle, “she went out for a ride and the accident happened? She got thrown because a careless driver spooked her horse? And she died? And all that many, many years ago?”

“Don’t remind me,” I shuddered, “don’t forget, she’d just told me she was pregnant! We’d only known each other for a couple of months and I was going to be a daddy!”

“Rough,” was Dingle’s one word sympathy.

“It was,” I nodded.

“But nothing you’ve told me was your fault, so don’t beat yourself up over fifty year-old events,” he advised me, “from the way you explained it she didn’t leave for that fatal ride in any kind of bad mood as a result of a row or argument, did she? You hadn’t had a quarrel. You hadn’t parted badly.”

I had to agree with him. “I was to cook lunch,” I told him, “I’ve always liked work in the kitchen. It’s something that contrasts beautifully with the more cerebral job I was training to do.”

“Cerebral? I like that!” he laughed, “and I thought I was a bit on the boastful side when I told folks I was an astrophysicist! Before I retired, that is.”

“I know what I mean even if you don’t,” I spat at him.

“Tetchy! But I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. But tell me: how did you find out about the accident in which she was left for dead? Was it her folks who told you?”

“Eh? What? No, I don’t rightly recall,” I said, “I just found out, that’s all. And when I did find out her blasted mother wouldn’t let me anywhere near her! It’s just that … oh, it’s not so pleasant a memory, something I’d quite willingly consign to the pit of forgetfulness for ever.”

“And she really was pregnant?” persisted Professor Dingle.

I was still sitting in his memory chair, which may or may not have been a mistake because the fuzzy memory of the day I was informed that the love of my life was dead became accented in my memory rather than forced into any kind of pit of forgetfulness as it sprung seemingly ito new life.

“Sssh!” I hissed at Dingle.

“Sorry,” he murmured, seeing, no doubt, the glazed look on my face as I became aware of the details of a past day I’d willingly have forgotten for all time.

There was a knock at the flat door and I went to open it. I can see the me of fifty years ago now, as I glanced down at what I was wearing as I pulled the door open. It was a comedy apron, one I’d bought as a joke and rarely wore because, well, it was unbecoming for a serious and objective library assistant to be sporting two large naked breasts in the kitchen!

There was a policeman standing there. A serious looking young officer with a helmet that looked to be brand spanking new. And he was clean shaven: I took particular note of that clean shaven look. It was a detail that has travelled down many years even though I thought I’d forgotten it, locked inside my head, thank goodness, and never on the surface of my thoughts.

“Mr Pandrake?” he asked, and I nodded. “Can I help?” I asked.

“Does a Miss Bangles live here? A miss Katie Bangles?”

I nodded. “She moved in only the other day. What’s she done?” I asked, “because at the moment she’s somewhere in the country on the back of a horse...”

“I’ve bad news for you, sir...” he began.

And it all came spilling out. Horse riding down a country lane, a car racing past, much too fast, stupid really when there are people on horse back around, and the horse reared up….

“She’s in a bad way, sir,” he told me.

“I must go...” I stammered, “to see her, wish her well, tell her … stuff.”

“Of course you must, sir...”

But I didn’t get far, not even to my own front gate with the young police officer prepared to help me as far as my car before my vision was blurred by tears.

“Best catch a bus, sir,” he advised, seeing my problem.

I had my first car back then, an old Ford, it was, and not the most reliable beast when it came to starting the engine. But it was mine and it took me to college, I was in my last term there and already had been accepted at the borough library as assistant to old Mr Gardener, and that car actually managed to start most of the time. Anyway, when it had an unreliable spell there was always the bus service that ran past my flat.

And it was that bus that I caught. It was safer than driving with imperfect vision and the myriad thoughts whirring around in my head.

Katie’s parents, both of them even though they were living separate lives by then, were awaiting near the hospital when I got there. They were standing together, for all the world as if they were a married couple, and displaying a united front they pointed their angry faces at me.

“She’s going to die,” began Katie’s father. “Our daughter, the light of our lives, the loveliest creature...”

“They say so,” added her mother, “and it’s all your fault! Living like you do, dissolute, drunken most of the time I wouldn’t wonder, maybe on drugs? Yes, that’s it, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out, and letting her go out in that state!”

“Pregnant, and by your hand,” put in the father, “as if she’d ever do anything like that unless it was forced on her! Rapist! That’s what you are: a rapist!”

“I saw you at that wedding too,” added her mother, “caught you in the act, I did, trousers all in a mess, I’ll never understand what the precious girl saw in you!”

“Fifteen weeks,” almost shouted her father, “that’s what the doctors say, fifteen weeks pregnant, and you to thank for it!”

It was then that I think I must have come to a sudden understanding as I sat bolt upright in the chair and somehow interfered with the delicate circuitry that chased discreet memories in the brain from where they were hiding, and reconnected them.

“What is it?” asked the professor, “have you spotted something new? It is possible, you know, for old memories in their rusty and dusty state to be a bit askew...”

“Of course,” I whispered, “how very stupid of me… why hadn’t I already seen it? The morning sickness, the healthy bloom...”

“You’ve got me lost,” he confessed.

“Fifteen weeks,” I stammered, “that’s how pregnant they said she was, fifteen weeks...”

“So you said,” he acknowledged.

“But it was only eight weeks since I met her for the very first time!” I said, almost jubilantly, “and suddenly, with that little bit of information, an awful lot of that eight weeks during which we even started to live together falls into place, the speed with which she wanted to move her life from one road to another...”

“You mean?” he asked.

“If she was pregnant it was nothing to do with me!” I told him, “and I’ve worried so many times down those years if it was… if that fumble in the cloakroom wasn’t just an overexcited young man being what overexcited young men can be...”

“Not a nice thought, though,” he murmured.

“How?” I demanded, strangely relieved that my young past hadn’t been as sordid as I’d once thought it might be.

“That she should do it to you,” he said, quietly, “lead you on like that, convince you that she was perfect when all the time she must have known she was carrying another man’s child!”

That gave me pause to think for a moment. Then, “bit she was perfect,” I whispered, “stunningly. Beautifully perfect… My one and only love...”

“And Amanda?” he asked.

© Peter Rogerson 17.06.20