The Man Who Turned Into Himself (13 page)

'Emotion? How d'you see that happening, Rick?'

'For instance, through grief and denial after some terrible emotional blow — the death of a loved one, for example. Maybe sometimes, in the right circumstances, this can create sufficient — whatever — energy to send at least some part of the self spinning across time-space into a parallel reality, a reality in which that loved one has
not
died . . . but where the price to be paid may be other changes that are as hard or even harder to bear.'

I realised he was staring at me, unblinking, his fork poised above his plate. I had said too much and was running the very danger, even with him, that had led to such trouble in the other world. I forced myself to lean back in my chair and give an easy grin.

'Hey, Mike, I know what you're thinking,' I said. 'It's written all over your face. Look, I'm just discussing possibilities, that's all. You're the one who's always saying keep an open mind. That's all I'm doing.'

'Sure, Rick, I know.' He lifted a forkful of aiguillettes de canard to his mouth and chewed it ruminatively. I had the feeling he wasn't enjoying it as much as usual.

My lunch with Tickelbakker had been a mixed blessing. It had confirmed the reality of what had happened to me, but also underscored the unlikelihood of anyone ever believing it — even those, like Tickelbakker, best qualified to do so. It seemed as though everything conspired to increase my sense of isolation. I wondered how long my sanity could withstand the pressure.

In my dreams that night the two worlds mixed in surrealistic patterns. Anne was at the centre of them: a combination of my Anne and Richard's. I knew even before waking what these patterns meant: the spectre of jealousy that I had cruelly dangled before Richard was returning now to haunt me.

Charlie's nurse insisted on preparing breakfast for us both, although it was no part of her duties to do so. Her name was Peggy. She came from Kansas and was plump, well scrubbed, and with a broad, beaming face out of which shone pure good nature. My only regret was that, as she had warned me from the outset, she could stay only a few weeks before returning home to be married. But, as we sat around the table that morning, my thoughts were far from Charlie's ceaseless chatter, tuned though my ears were to listening for signs of distress or anxiety in him which I would do my best to deal with.

All I could think about was Anne: the difference between my dead Anne, and that other (presumably) still living one. And — God forgive me for even entertaining such a nightmare — the possible similarities.

I could not get the thought out of my head. If the genes which made up that identical twin were as near-perfect a copy as they had to be of the genes which had made up my Anne, then how many things could there have been about her — my Anne — that I never knew? By a slow, agonising process over which I had no control, my wife was becoming in retrospect a stranger to me. I began to imagine secrets, passions, lies and betrayals which in all likelihood had never happened, but which stained my memory of her like a slowly spreading poison. People around me imagined that my air of distraction was the result of my appalling loss. In truth it was suspicion.

She and Harold had always been close. I had been gratified by their friendship, taken its innocence for granted. Could I have been wrong? Could Harold's infinite concern for me in my sorrow be masking a secret, guilty sorrow of his own? It was the sort of question I could never put to him; an unthinkable accusation to make of a friend.

Anne's papers yielded no clue. No hidden cache of letters, no mysterious markings in her diaries, no tell-tale numbers on the records of her private phone line. I discovered that Balthazar's Motel existed in this universe exactly as it did in the other. I even went so far — I am ashamed to admit this — as to present Cy with separate photographs of Anne and Harold, tip him a hundred bucks, and ask him if he recognised either of them. He didn't.

Of course it could be that Harold had tipped him more to keep quiet. How could I know? How could I ever know?

How could I live without knowing?

Sometimes I think that when we describe something as 'unthinkable', what we mean is that we can't think about anything else. And when we dismiss a possible course of action as being 'out of the question', we mean that we've already decided to take it.

Harold's suggestion of a fishing weekend, just the two of us, had been tentatively put. He avoided phrases like 'do you good' and 'take your mind off things' — as, with 
his tactful, lawyerish nature, I would have expected. After satisfying myself that Charlie could safely be left with Peggy for a couple of days — indeed, I decided, it might be good for him to start becoming independent of me — we drove up early one Saturday morning to Harold's isolated lakeside cabin, as we had done so often before.

We took out his boat and caught fresh trout. Nothing much was said, but then it never had been on these weekends. We spoke if we had things to say, but our friendship was not the sort that made conversation a social obligation. Later, Harold cleaned and cooked the fish while I drove to the market and stocked up on bourbon, wine and beer.

By around ten that evening I was, in the metaphorical sense, feeling no pain. In a more literal sense, however, my anguish was unbearable.

'Harold,' I began, after a long silence broken only by the trickle of bourbon refilling our two heavy glass beakers, 'there's something I have to say to you.' I paused for emphasis, regarding him solemnly from beneath knitted eyebrows. 'I know.'

He looked at me, uncomprehending. 'Know what?' he asked, his eyes round and unfocused with alcoholic, bleary innocence.

'You and Anne. I know.'

'Me and . . . ? I don't know what you're . . . I haven't the vaguest idea what you . . . '

I was aware of my head swaying slightly above my hunched shoulders, elbows thrust forward on the table as I continued to fix him with a gimlet stare. I could see from the changing expressions on his face that he knew exactly what I was talking about.

His mouth worked for a few moments as though moulding the words into speakable shape.

'You can't be . . . you can't be serious!'

'I'm not making a big deal. I'm not going to kill you. I'm not even blaming you. For all I know it was half her fault — if "fault" is the word. I just want you to tell me. Yourself. I need to hear it, Harold. You owe me that.'

'Rick, I . . . I . . . ' He sat back, his face white and his posture crumpling as though a fist had slammed him in the stomach. 'I can't believe what I'm hearing.'

'Let's do this without dramatics, evasions, or prevarications. Just get it over. Between the two of us.'

'Rick . . . that is the most terrible thing I've heard in my life!'

'I didn't think it was so fucking great myself, if you want to know.'

'How can you possibly even . . . even think of such a thing?'

I continued to stare at him, wondering how long he would squirm before confessing. 'Did you love her?' I asked, my head feeling heavy so that I had to make an effort to prevent it falling forward on the table. 'Or was it just sex?'

'Christ, Rick . . . Oh, Christ . . . I can't . . . ' He pushed his chair back with a scraping noise. 'I can't . . . I can't handle this . . . I have to . . . ' He struggled to his feet and started unsteadily for the door, like a drunk in urgent need of a bathroom.

I didn't move. I looked at my hand, still clenched around the bottle. I pulled it away, flexing the fingers slowly. If I was going to kill him, which I didn't mean to, I was going to do it with my bare hands and not with a weapon.

My own chair made the same scraping noise as his had, and then fell over with a clatter. The room swayed, but I steadied it by gripping the edge of the table. Then I started out into the night after him, pausing only to reach back for the bottle, which I wasn't going to hit him with but drink from.

The darkness and night air hit me like a wall and I almost fell over again, but the thought of the half-full bottle somehow galvanised my sense of balance and, after a moment's tricky footwork, I regained my equilibrium and pushed on after him.

I didn't find him at once. When I did, he was sitting on a rock, slumped forward with his head in his hands. I didn't think he'd heard me, but he must have, because he spoke my name.

'Rick . . . Rick . . . I don't know why you said that, but it's all right . . . it's all right . . . '

'What d'you fucking mean it's all right?' I roared. I hadn't meant to roar, but I could hear my voice filling the night. 'You fuck my wife — you, my so-called best friend! — and then
you
tell
me
it's all right!'

He didn't answer. He was making a funny kind of sound. Then I realised he was sobbing.

'Listen,' I said, quieter now, 'I told you I wasn't going to do anything about it. I just wanted . . . I just wanted to know, that's all.'

We were silent for a while, him sitting there rocking, me swaying over him.

'Harold,' I began, my voice hoarse now, 'she's dead. It can't hurt her, but it's killing me. Tell me how it happened, how it started. Where? When?'

He looked up at me. My eyes had grown accustomed enough to the dark to see that his face was streaked with tears. He didn't speak, just shook his head slowly back and forth, back and forth. The motion made me dizzy. I lurched backwards, forwards, and then the ground came up hard and hit my knees. I continued to sway, but didn't fall any further. I just looked at him, kneeling, as though in prayer.

'I loved Anne,' he began, 'like I love you. Of course she was a beautiful woman. Of course I was aware of that. But I couldn't have. I couldn't!'

The words swirled around me, echoing in my head.

'Listen,' he went on, 'I'll tell you something. You want a confession? I'll give you a confession. I've had affairs. Not just the ones you know about. I've had affairs with married women. One of them almost wrecked my career — the wife of a client. I'm capable of being a bloody awful shit, and I can give you the names to prove it. D'you want the names?'

I started to shake my head, but the dizziness came back and I stopped.

'You can have them if you want them,' he said. 'All the names. I'll write them out. I'll sign them. But never Anne. I could never have done that. Nor could she. Believe me.'

I tried to speak. It wasn't easy. 'You're either a brilliant fucking actor,' I muttered through dry lips, 'or . . . ' I became aware of the alternative, arcing slowly through the air and exploding like a distant, muffled bombshell, 'or you're telling me the truth.'

'Of course I'm telling you the truth! You dumb great piece of shit! That's what I'm telling you!'

Suddenly I felt deflated and foolish, kneeling there, not knowing what to say or do. To fill the moment I held out the bottle for him to drink. I think it was a peace offering. He took it and flung it as far into the night as he could. I didn't hear it land.

'We've had enough. Both of us. I'm putting you to bed.'

'Yeah . . . okay . . . '

He helped me to my feet. By the time I got there I think I was helping him to stay upright as much as he was helping me. He looked at me, his face close to mine.

'What the hell made you say that?' he asked, his gaze moving back and forth between my eyes, trying to focus, trying to see into them.

'If I told you, you wouldn't believe me,' I said.

'Then let's forget it. It never happened. Come on.'

We stumbled towards the light inside the cabin.

***

I woke late to the smell of coffee and frying bacon. I don't know how I got to it, but I threw up from the window. A few minutes later, after pouring cold water on my head and rinsing my mouth, I faced Harold across the table we had been sitting at last night.

'How're you feeling?' he asked, looking none too well himself.

'Like a raw egg in a thin shell.'

'You'll feel better when you've eaten something.'

He put a plate in front of me, but my eyes stayed on him, looking for something. What? Resentment? Anger? I don't know.

'Harold,' I began, 'I remember what I said. And I want you to know that I'm sorry.'

'We agreed that we'd forget it,' he said, 'so let's do that. Now eat your breakfast, and let's go catch some fish.'

Looking back, I am convinced now that Harold must have sensed there was something more on my mind than just the pain, dreadful though it was, of my loss. He must have sensed a barrier growing between himself and me, and decided to provoke a confrontation that weekend by the lake to clear the air.

It had worked and I was grateful to him. I believed his denial. It had restored to me the memory of the Anne I loved and trusted, and wanted more than anything to go on loving.

Also, I found myself at last becoming free of the obsession to talk about and share the mystery of that split second between my arrival at the scene of Anne's death and my acceptance of it. I believed in what had happened to me. I believed that it was real.

But what is 'real'?

The question for now was of secondary importance. What mattered was life. My life, my son's life. Metaphysical speculation gave way to the problems of the day, like finding another nurse for Charlie before Peggy left, and doing something about the injection of money that my business sorely needed.

Before Anne's death, I had been so confident of the bank's backing that I simply hadn't thought in terms of alternatives. Harold had known they were going to offer me the money, and my own doubts and worries had not been serious. If I had been asked what would happen if the bank changed its mind, I would simply have said that we'd carry on the way we were. But things are never that simple.

Businesses, I was about to learn, either reach a plateau and die there, or they move on up to the next level. I had been on the point of making that move, and assumed that we would now pick up where we had left off. I had reckoned, however, without the innate conservatism of men in suits.

I was unaware of the whispering at first. It was Harold who told me what they were saying. They spoke to him as to the sensible member of the family, the one who could be relied on to avoid trouble, smooth things over, find ways out of situations which had become untenable.

'Look, Rick,' he began, clearly embarrassed by what he had to tell me, 'if you'd got a phone call at the bank saying that Anne had just been killed in an accident five miles away, you'd have been showered (a) with sympathy, and (b) with all the money you need.

'But the fact is that, well, the timetable of events that has emerged in retrospect has, I can only say, an "unusual" look to it.'

'What d'you mean?' I asked, not catching on at first.

'Rick you ran out of that meeting at the bank a full thirteen minutes before the accident happened.'

'Oh.' I was beginning to see.

'Exactly. And they've all picked up on that by now, and it bothers them.'

'Yes. I can see it might.'

Something was going on which did not sit easily on the ledgers and balance sheets of the financial world. I was no longer somebody with whom that world felt comfortable. I had become, although the term was never used openly, a 'freak'.

Harold did his best to argue with them that such things were not unknown to serious science. People who were very close sometimes shared levels of communication which defied all rational explanation. He cited cases from a stack of books on extra-sensory perception, but to no avail. The bank's mind, and vaults, were closed.

To be honest I didn't care that much. I was a natural optimist. If the business failed I would start over. The future to me had always been filled more with promise than with menace. Success, I believed, was generated by ideas, not by shuffling figures around on paper.

Harold, however, was worried. It was a good sign. I knew he would come up with something. Meanwhile I started interviewing nurses for Charlie.

The agency found by Harold and which had sent Peggy was highly efficient. I liked the first three girls they sent, but felt they weren't quite right for the position. Then one morning I got a call to say they were sending over a slightly more mature applicant whom they thought would be ideal. My heart stopped when I heard her name.

It was Emma Todd.

***

I opened the door and looked into clear blue, smiling eyes. Her car was parked in the drive behind her.

It
was
Emma. The same Emma. She looked younger. Her hair was a rich chestnut, falling nearly to her shoulders and framing her face in gentle contours. She wore little make-up, just enough to highlight those classic features which lit up with a smile of such warmth that I felt myself drawn down into it like a drowning man.

'Mr Hamilton?'

'Yes.' I cleared my throat. 'Miss Todd? Please come in.'

She moved with an easy, natural grace. Her clothes were simple and inexpensive, but chosen with an inherent sense of style. There was a freshness about her, a lightness in her every movement.

My voice seemed to come from somewhere else. It was high, not my voice. 'Won't you sit down?'

'Thank you.'

She looked up at me. I must have seemed strange, tongue-tied and awkward. 'Can I get you . . . I was just . . . I have some coffee . . . '

I put the tray in front of her, clumsily pushing aside books and newspapers. She took it black with no sugar. The ritual of pouring gave me precious moments to collect my wits. I could not believe that this was actually happening. But it was.

'I assume the agency sent you my references,' she said, taking the cup from my unsteady hand.

'Oh . . . yes . . . they seem fine.' In fact they were more than fine. She had been two years with the family of a high-ranking British Embassy official in Washington. I was a little surprised to find her prepared to take on such a relatively modest job as the one I was offering, and told her so.

'My parents live close by,' she told me. 'I'd like to be nearer to them than I have been.'

It answered one question, but left many more. Why was this beautiful woman unmarried, without children, without a more ambitious career? Why was she not blind? Why was the blind Emma Todd a psychiatrist and this one a children's nurse?

My head was full of questions that would have to wait. My only fear was that she wouldn't take the job and that I would never get around to finding out the answers.

'It seems to me the most important thing,' I said, sitting opposite her, 'is that you meet Charlie. He's just over the road. I'll call him.' I got to my feet again, using the restless movement to cover my nervousness, and picked up the phone.

Charlie adored her from the moment they met, and Emma clearly felt the same way about him. Within a week she was installed in the house. I couldn't believe my luck.

I knew I was in love with her. That much I didn't even have to ask myself. I was an irretrievably lost cause. I was also consumed with guilt at the thought of this happening so soon after Anne's death. It was ironic that my recent fears about her loyalty should be so quickly followed by my own betrayal of her memory.

And yet I didn't feel that it was a betrayal. I still loved Anne as I always had. If she were alive, Emma would be no threat to that love.

But Anne wasn't alive, and Emma was. Also Emma and I had a history, a unique relationship — even if I was the only one of us aware of it.

It was clear to me that I must say or do nothing to betray my feelings for the time being. In a way that was an advantage. Emma and I could get to know each other, becoming friends before we became lovers, as we surely must.

The thought that there might be any obstacle in that idyllic path did not at first occur to me. When it did, only hours after that first meeting at which she had agreed to take the job, I was pitched into a turmoil of anxiety.

Suppose there was another man? There had to be — a woman like that.

And yet she obviously lived alone, or else she would not have been free to take the job of full-time live-in nurse.

Could she be gay? It was a possibility, of course. But even if she was, she obviously had no firm commitments. Perhaps in time . . .

But I was getting way ahead of myself. I forced myself to calm down. It wasn't easy. I did something I have rarely done. I had a large Scotch at eleven in the morning.

***

The first month of Emma's stay in the house was both torture and delight. Torture because of the stranglehold I had to keep on my emotions, and a delight just because she was there.

At least I got to know her as I hoped I would. She was neither married, gay, nor in love with anyone else. She had been married once — at age nineteen, to a soldier. He was obviously a high-flyer, some years older than her and probably destined for the General Staff. She had adored him and had given up all thought of a career of her own to follow him on his postings. They had one child, William, who had been killed, aged five, by a hit-and-run driver in Germany. The driver had never been found.

In the way these things sometimes happen, the marriage had not survived the tragedy. Neither of them became involved with anyone else, but the special thing that had existed between them had gone. She was twenty-seven when they divorced.

She had done her best to pick up the threads of her life, but it was too late to realise fully the dreams of her youth. She had wanted once to be a doctor. She had done well at school and had been told it was a possibility. Now she settled for nursing training. The institutional life of hospital work had not suited her, but she had stuck with it for a couple of years. During that time she had an affair with a doctor. Then she had fallen ill with weakness and headaches.

The condition had turned out to be a viral infection which was quickly cured. However, in the course of diagnosis a rare genetic condition had been found. It in no way threatened her health or well-being, but meant that there was a 50 per cent danger that any future child she might have would be born blind, as Emma's brother had been. No one had suspected the reason until Emma's diagnosis.

Her relationship with the doctor had ended, because they had been talking of marriage and having children, but she refused now to take that risk. She had left hospital work and become a children's nurse.

That was her story to date. She adored children and was not unhappy. She did not think she would marry again.

'Oh, Emma, how wrong you are,' I said to myself, imagining the day, maybe ten months, a year in the future, when I would be able to say it openly to her.

I was proud of the fact that she had talked to me so freely, and encouraged by it. Clearly she trusted me. The fact that I made not even the most indirect of advances to her during those first weeks that she was in the house had given her confidence.

Of course there was talk among the neighbours, and she 
was as aware of it as I was. But we laughed it off and rose above such narrow-mindedness.

'But we'll give them something to talk about in time,' I promised myself. 'Just you wait and see, my darling Emma. Just you wait and see.'

***

Harold had redoubled his efforts to find the investment we needed, but without success.

I remained convinced in my old-fashioned way that stability, not growth, was the first law of business. Of course I didn't know what I was talking about, which only made me more determined to prove myself right.

Strictly speaking, we grew a bit. We added one new title to our list: the specialist journal for demographers that we had been talking about for some months. It was hardly a new plateau, but it was the sort of growth I felt comfortable with.

Inevitably the launching of a new title meant a good deal of extra work, but I was glad of that. It was a distraction from my loss — and from my new unspoken love.

Travelling also helped, and I had to do a lot. It felt good to be able to leave Charlie with the woman who would one day soon become his stepmother.

As the days and weeks passed, although still nothing had been said, I became increasingly convinced that Emma felt as I did. I sensed that same complicity growing between us that had existed in the other life. Sometimes I almost felt that, by some strange intuition, she already knew the whole story. But maybe that was wishful thinking.

The question of how much I should ultimately tell her became my main preoccupation. How much of my story would I share with the woman who was to share the rest of my life?

Would I take the risk — even though I was convinced in Emma's case it was an almost nonexistent risk — of having her think I was insane?

I turned the problem over in my mind as I flew back from a four-day trip to the west coast, where I had gone to sign up a UCLA psephologist as a regular contributor to the new journal. I would have to tell her something. Perhaps a hint before marriage, and the rest later.

Harold had insisted on meeting me at the airport. I quickly spotted him in the small crowd awaiting the flight, but as I approached I was surprised to see that Emma was with him. Instinctively I looked for Charlie, too, even though it was way past his bedtime. Then I realised that Emma's presence there probably meant he was staying over with a friend. I was happy to see her and touched that she'd made the effort.

I kissed her there at the arrivals' gate for the first time. Lightly on the cheek. She gave me a hug. Harold's being there made it all right. An affectionate but still innocent greeting.

But it set a precedent. A barrier had been breached. From now on physical contact between us would no longer be taboo.

On the drive from the airport Emma sat in front with Harold, leaving me room to spread out in the back. Harold, knowing that I never ate on planes, had booked a table at Chez Arnaud for a light supper. Emma confirmed my assumption that Charlie was staying over with friends. I suddenly realised with a shiver of excitement that she and I would be returning to an empty house together.

Harold ordered champagne while we looked over the menu. It was after we'd ordered that he dropped his bombshell.

'Naturally we wanted you to be the first to know, Rick,' he began. 'You've been so busy these last couple of months that you probably haven't even realised how much Emma and I have been seeing of each other. Anyway the fact is that I've asked her to marry me and, well, I'm very happy and proud to tell you she's accepted.'

I was speechless. I looked from him to her. She was gazing 
at him with a glow of love in her eyes. He was looking at her the same way. I might as well have not been there. I felt like, and was, an irrelevance. Excess baggage that would be got rid of as soon as was convenient.