Brian Medhurst

   

 

"The past is written in pencil, Adrian and is easily erased." The woman's voice is soft and reassuring. "Soon you will make a fresh start."

     She seems to be addressing me but my name's not Adrian.  At least I don't think it is.  It just doesn't sound right. So what is my name? Regrettably I don't know. I seem to have forgotten. If I could only reach out a bit further I am sure I could pull it in.

     I feel the needle, sharp, pricking in my arm. The doctor seems to hold it there for some time before withdrawing it.

     I clutch a childhood memory in my hand.  I will keep this one safe. The room is full of memories I have pasted to the walls.  There is just this one small clear space where I can paste this one.  Here my memories will be safe from them.  With some relief I take the white piece of paper, which is already crumbling in my hands, and press it firmly into the space.  Now I have a whole wall of memories hidden away where they won't find them.  I can always come back here the next time I find I have forgotten something.

     "Please repeat after me, Adrian.  My name is Adrian Jones.  My mother's name is Ruth." It is the woman's voice again. I dully repeat what she said. It seems easier to go along with it than to fight.  I sleep all the time but I am so tired.

     ".. and your father's name was Anthony. But your father died when you were three years old."

     That certainly does not seem right.  I'm sure I remember my father helping me with my maths homework.  I must have been much older than three. And I remember, at least I think I remember, the two of us looking for crabs in the rock pools at some seaside place. Oh if only I could think of the name of that seaside town.  I am sure if I could remember that then all the other memories would come flooding back.

     I go to look for what I want in the room of memories but now there seems to be so many passages and turnings in my mind that I can no longer find my way.

     I concentrate hard on the one memory of my father I still cling to, the one image of him I still have.  He has this broad grin and booming laugh; he was always fun to be with.  When we were young he would tell us the same jokes again and again, but we always laughed at them even when we knew what was coming. I say we because that seems right. I don't really know if I have any brothers or sisters. 

     "My father's name is Michael and he is still alive," I say stupidly giving myself away and I hear someone muttering, a man's voice this time.  "Increase the dose."

     The woman's voice. "He's already on the maximum. Any more could do permanent damage."

     "Increase the dose!" the man insists and before long I feel the needle in my arm again.

     "I'm sorry about this," I hear the woman say quietly.

     I swim down corridors, past closed and open doors. There are faces in many of the open doors that seem familiar but I cannot put names to any of them. I do not see my father.  Is that because he died when I was three? Then who is the laughing man whose image I still retain? The further I swim the more closed doors there are so I turn around and swim back the way I came. Now the doors are all open and it is a woman's smiling face I see in all them. The same woman's face. I feel a warmth course through my body when I see her. I return her smile but seem unable to stop to talk to any of her myriad likenesses.  I am being sucked along the corridor away from the warm loving faces. I see the whirlpool ahead but I am helpless against it. I scream the single word, "Angela!"

     I am sitting in a chair but I feel as if I am still asleep. My arms and legs seem restrained but for some reason I don't look down to find out.  I'm looking at a big screen in front of me.

     "This is your mother, Adrian. Her name is Ruth."

I have never seen her before in my life.  They will never convince me that she is my mother. They show me other pictures, my brother, my sister a friend and his wife. They are all strangers to me.

     I am being swallowed by the whirlpool and then a hand stretches down. I look up into Angela's pale white face. She seems so concerned for me. She pulls me up from the whirlpool as if I were a child. We cling together on a narrow ledge.

     Cautiously we edge our way along a cliff face. We come to a cave. No it is a room. The room. The room of memories. But someone has been pasting yellow  pieces of paper on top of my white ones.  More than half the room is yellow. Angrily I tear down some of the yellow ones but they are stuck to the white ones and pull those off too. I cry out in frustration but Angela is there and she comforts me. She begins to tell me things I have forgotten and I write them down on white notepaper. They seem smaller than the previous memories I had but I paste them to the wall all the same covering the deceitful yellow ones.

     More injections, always more injections. The woman's voice is becoming familiar. I no longer resent her quite so much.

     I wander aimlessly but I can no longer find that other woman, the woman of the doorways who pulled me from the whirlpool.  I just about remember her doing that but what was her name? It takes some effort to recall her face but at last I do so.

     She has a long oval face, pale white skin, big round grey-coloured eyes that seem to take up more of her face than you'd expect. Now I remember. When I first met her I thought she had looked rather odd, ugly even. How I could ever have thought that I don't know. She is beautiful. We had been part of some club, something sporting, tennis I think. Yes that was it. Something was coming back. Other faces were crowding in. But there in the middle of them all was Angela. I have remembered her name. Oh what joy!

     It hadn't been love at first sight by any means. Not for either of us, but almost as if someone were pulling the strings, we had inexorably been drawn closer.

     It is becoming quite crowded in my brain as all sorts of people begin to reappear from their foxholes. People who have never known each other. Some even who are dead I think.  I am five years old, fifteen, twenty-five but the other people stay more or less the same age.

     It s a warm spring day. Angela and I have escaped the London crowds and have driven down to Keyhaven and the Pennington Marshes. The path meanders through beds of reeds, the sea to our right, the marsh to our left. From their secret nests come the chirrs and murmurs of the birds.  We stop to take in the scenery and Angela turns to kiss me causing a startled heron takes off in its lumbering flight and the redshanks to bolt from their hideaways. We both laugh and I press Angela against me in a warm embrace.  Later we see a kingfisher.. a flash of blue of gold..... a flash of blue and gold... a flash of blue and then a steady constant blue.  Angela fades before my eyes. Everything is obscured by the blue.

     I have the memory of that walk by the sea. Nobody will take that from me. I hurry to the room of memories to paste this fresh one. I have no trouble finding the room this time - except I cry to see the walls are bare! No white or yellow memories.  I paste this last precious one to the wall and watch despairingly as it dissolves before my eyes.