Presence of Mind (19 page)

“No wonder it seems old!'

‘It's old, certainly. We have reasonably accurate records going back to about 500
A. D.
and every new dig produces more evidence. We seem to have had the lot round here – Normans, Vikings, the Black Death – you name it!' I stopped, aware of letting myself run on, but Gordon and Lance seemed glad of my prattling. To my relief Mrs Rose tapped on the door to announce that the meal was ready. Briony, quiet and subdued, joined us and we went through to the dining-room.

Time and again during dinner I was aware of Gordon's puzzled glance going from Lance to Briony and back again. It was only too obvious that Lance himself was under considerable strain, evident in his clenched jaw and the tremor which shook his hand. But if he was bracing himself for Briony's next unconventional outburst, at least he was spared that. She spoke only when necessary and then in monosyllables.

For my part I hardly tasted the food. The meal seemed to drag on endlessly, but it was finished at last. Briony immediately escaped upstairs and as soon as politeness would allow I, too, made my excuses. Possibly without our inhibiting presence the two men would be able to relax. For myself it was a blessed relief to bath slowly and creep between the sheets. Below me I could hear the low, intermittent murmur of their voices, and it was to that sound that, shordy, I fell asleep.

Lance had arranged to run Gordon to the station the next morning on his way to college.

‘Don't forget I shan't be in for dinner tonight,' he reminded me as they were leaving. ‘I have to attend that talk on cubism – they've landed me with being chairman. It won't be a late meeting, though. I should be home soon after nine. 'Bye, sweetheart.' He kissed Briony's unresponsive cheek and was gone.

As the sound of the car reached us, she produced from under the table the diary she was keeping for Max and handed it to me without a word. From the closed look on her face I deemed it better not to ask questions and opened it in silence.

The previous day, of course, had been her first entry, but an initial glance showed me that already something was very wrong. The first lines were what I had told her to write before dinner, about the sentences she ‘remembered' in her head and her certainty of having met Gordon before. Then, halfway down the page, the handwriting altered completely and in this entirely alien scrawl I read, stumblingly, another verse of the poem by Robert Burns:

Till a' the seas gang dry, my Dear,

And the rocks melt wi' the sun;

And I will luve thee still, my Dear,

While the sands o' life shall run.'

I lifted my eyes to hers.

‘I didn't write it,' she said.

‘No.'

‘What does it mean?'

‘I don't know, Briony.' I closed the little book and smoothed the shiny cover with my hand. It felt cool and faintly ribbed against my palm.

‘Someone must have come to my room and written it,' she said defiantly, daring me to contradict the only safe solution.

‘Yes,' I agreed numbly and added, clutching at straws, ‘We'll show it to Dr Forrest tomorrow.'

She gave a little shudder, but after a moment she nodded and bent to kiss my cheek.

‘Shall I give you a lift, since Daddy had to leave early?'

‘No thanks, I'll catch the bus.'

‘It's no trouble –'

‘Really, Mother, I – want to be alone for a while.'

I had to let her go. There was nothing else I could do. So Gordon's visit had provoked another crisis, as I'd feared. Most significant of all, it had confirmed the existence of Ailsa, though in my heart I think I'd always accepted it. After all, she must have been with us all these years just below the surface, continually reaching out for Lance's love. As long as Briony remained a child she was content to wait and simply be near him, but as she grew up Ailsa would become increasingly dominant. The strength of the headaches and resultant blackouts showed the force she was exerting to escape from the prison of Briony's other self. How long could the child withstand her? Was it possible, in this rational, scientific age, for a girl actually
to change into someone else?

Twice I went to the phone to ring Max. Once I even lifted the receiver, but each time I turned away. Tomorrow. We'd see him tomorrow. I couldn't ring him every time I felt anxious.

Moira Cassidy tapped at the door. ‘Mrs Tenby, do you happen to know if the invitation list is complete?'

I stared at her blankly.

‘The list for the invitations to the Open Day,' she repeated patiently. Obviously her opinion of my intellect had not improved in the last week or so.

‘Oh. I – haven't actually – thought about it.' I swallowed and tried hard to look interested.

‘Mr Tenby usually keeps a dozen or so tickets back for his own disposal. Most of your friends are on the list from last year, but I just wondered if you might know of anyone who has been unintentionally omitted. I was hoping to have posted them all today. In fact, I did ask Mr Tenby last Friday to let me have the names, but he was dashing out to the chemist with Briony's prescription and must have forgotten. I thought he might have left them for me on the tape but I haven't come across them yet.'

‘I'm afraid I can't help, Moira. I'll ask him tonight.'

‘Very well, I'll hold them back for the moment.' She hesitated. ‘Are you feeling all right?'

“Yes, thanks.' Did I really look so awful? As she went out I moved over to a mirror and studied my reflection critically. I did indeed look ill. My eyes were over bright, my features generally taut and strained, and a little nerve kept jumping irritatingly at the corner of my eye.

What had Max said, that day I first met him? ‘The power of the mind can be devastating.' I could hear the echo of his voice above the endlessly lilting tune which was circling in my head like a ghostly refrain. And devastating it certainly was. It had destroyed Briony, it was destroying Lance and myself. Where would it end?

I thought with a sudden spurt of anger: There's no reason why we should all behave like puppets. We have minds of our own. We would have to fight like with like, a psychic battle to the death. But Ailsa was presumably already dead and she was still stronger than we were. ‘While the sands of life shall run': that would be beyond the point of physical death. Life continued and sought a new outer casing, that was all. Energy could not be destroyed. As Roger had said, it made biological sense. Perhaps Ailsa would continue to pursue us down the centuries.

Agitatedly I walked up and down the long room, my fists uselessly clenched at my side. Once I stopped at the painting and leant forward to examine more closely the small, perfectly portrayed figures of the lovers beneath the flowering cherry. Lance and Ailsa, hand in hand. There was no vestige of doubt left. All the years of our marriage that concept had been kept literally before his eyes, hanging on our own sitting-room wall. Was it any wonder the marriage had been doomed to failure?

I pressed my hands against my burning eyelids. Was this insanity? Did I really believe that the past could have such a stranglehold on the present? And what would Max say, presented with these new developments? Surely the multiple selves he had read about in his technical journals had all been divisions of one integral self, not undeniable possession by a totally different being. He had tried to rule out reincarnation on the grounds that there were times when Briony was undoubtedly herself and not the poor, miming shadow of a dead girl. Yet if two personalities could exist side by side in one body, was it not equally possible that two souls might have inhabited it from birth, perhaps only one of which was returning to earth for a second time?

I stopped pacing, trying to calculate when Ailsa must have died. Yet the only proof that she
had
died was in her presumed continuing existence in Briony. Lance had never told me what happened to the girl he loved, and even in the early days I had been too unsure of myself to risk asking. Nineteen fifty-eight seemed the most likely date. It was that which Briony had written on her sketch, and in Glasgow Lance had said, ‘It's hardly changed at all in twenty years.'

Briony was not born until the autumn of nineteen sixty. ‘I'm absolutely convinced I've lived before, and not all that long ago, either.' Obviously she had been ready to accept her parasitic intruder before I was. All I could pray was that she would never connect Lance with that previous existence, and that, I knew, was becoming increasingly likely. Her attitude when he had challenged Mark to the tennis match showed that.

The front door. I halted abruptly halfway down the room. Had Mrs Rose opened it to someone? I hadn't heard the bell. Before any further possibility could suggest itself, the sitting-room door opened suddenly and Briony stood there. Or was it Briony? I gazed at the familiar, unknown figure in horrified fascination, and over her shoulder caught a glazed glimpse of Jan's frightened face. She said quickly, ‘I found her wandering in the High Street. I think she's lost her memory again. She doesn't seem to know who she is. Shall I phone for the doctor?'

I forced myself to say, ‘Thank you, Jan, I can manage. I'm very grateful to you for bringing her home.'

‘You're sure there's nothing I can do?'

‘Nothing,' I said with finality. Nothing anyone could do. Jan disappeared. I didn't register her actually leaving, just realised later that she had gone. The girl across the room said, ‘I don't understand. I thought Jamie would be here.'

‘Not at the moment, I'm afraid. Would you like to sit down and I'll phone and let him know you're here.'

To my relief she apparently accepted this. I fled to the hall.

‘Dr Forrest, please. It's extremely urgent. – No, I must speak to him myself. Mrs Tenby. Yes. – Max, it's happened again! Someone brought her home. I don't know what to do!'

‘I'll come immediately.' The phone clicked in my ear. How soon was ‘immediately'? It depended on the traffic. At this time of day, perhaps twenty minutes, with luck. Could I keep her calmly talking for twenty minutes?

As I went back into the sitting-room she said with a smile, ‘I see he still has the picture.'

‘Yes, indeed.'

‘Was Mac here yesterday, by any chance?'

‘Yes – I – yes. He spent the night with us.'

‘I'm sorry to have missed him.' She frowned. ‘I seem to remember catching sight of him, but perhaps I just imagined it.' The Scots accent was unmistakable. ‘I'm sorry,' she added, ‘I haven't introduced myself. I'm Ailsa Cameron, a friend of Jamie's.' Jamie again. Could she mean Lance?

‘How do you do?' I said idiotically. She glanced at me in smiling interrogation and as I continued to stare at her blankly, prompted gently.

‘You haven't told me your name?'

‘Ann,' I said from a great distance. ‘Ann Tenby.'

‘Tenby? You're a relation of Jamie's?'

‘A distant one,' I replied, totally without bitterness. Why do you call him Jamie?'

She smiled. ‘Just an attempt to make him sound more Scots, I suppose. There's a poem by Burns – “Young Jamie, pride of a' the plain, sae gallant and sae gay a swain.” It was just a joke, really, and it stuck.' She moved restlessly. ‘Will he be long?'

I moistened my lips. ‘I'm not sure. I'm – expecting someone else, too. A friend of mine, Max Forrest.'

‘Oh?' She was politely uninterested, caring only about Jamie. A tap on the door made me jump. Mrs Rose came in.

‘I was upstairs, madam, and I thought I saw Mrs Staveley driving away. Did -?' She broke off, her eyes widening as Briony turned towards her a face unmistakably not her own.

I said steadily, ‘This young lady is waiting for Mr Tenby, Mrs Rose.'

Beneath her rosy cheeks the colour ebbed away, leaving red circles garishly standing out like the painted face of a clown. I added quietly, ‘It's all right, I'll see to her.'

She nodded and slowly withdrew. A surreptitious glance at my watch showed barely seven minutes had passed since my phone call. On a flash of inspiration I said, ‘Do you like music? We've rather a lovely recording of Ravel's
Bolero.
' As I spoke I was opening the record cabinet and searching feverishly through the sleeves. She made no further comment as I put the record on the turntable and switched on the machine. And all the time I was repeating to myself over and over, ‘Briony! Oh, Briony!' with an agonised sense of bereavement. The girl who sat so composedly across the room had come from my own body, been at my own breast. Was there no lingering spark of remembrance inside her?

Sooner than I dared hope, Max's car skidded to a halt outside the window. I almost ran into the hall, but had no time to speak before Briony appeared in the doorway. I said flatly, ‘Max, this is a friend of Lance's, Miss Ailsa Cameron. Max Forrest.' I carefully omitted the ‘Dr'. There was a hint of impatience in her now, but to my relief Max immediately assumed control. He hesitated for a moment, glancing towards the stairs, before obviously abandoning the idea of attempting to get her to her room. Instead he took her arm and turned with her back into the sitting-room, seating her in the chair she had just left and drawing up a stool to sit in front of her. He was saying very gently, ‘You're not feeling very well, are you, Miss Cameron? Rather dazed and bewildered? It would be as well if you had a little rest. You're really very sleepy now – very sleepy.' The girl's eyes had drooped, opened, drooped again. Her head fell back against the cushion. ‘That's very much better. Can you still hear me?'

‘Yes.'

“What is your name?'

‘Ailsa Cameron.'

‘How old are you?'

‘I'm nineteen years old.'

‘I'm going to start counting and as I do so you will become a little older. No, don't struggle. Everyone has to grow older.'